Charles Duhigg Quotes

We like songs that are familiar.

When marketers influence habits, they influence peoples’ self-identity. And so when a group or company does something that doesn’t correspond to our core values, it feels like a betrayal.

As cities have grown rapidly across the nation, many have neglected infrastructure projects and paved over green spaces that once absorbed rainwater.

A huge amount of success in life comes from learning as a child how to make good habits. It’s good to help kids understand that when they do certain things habitually, they’re reinforcing patterns.

Some financial advisers say anyone who may move in less than seven years should not take out a reverse mortgage.

Every habit is made of three parts… a cue, a routine and a habit. Most people focus on the routine and behavior, but these cues and rewards are really the way you make something into a habit.

Between calculated risk and reckless decision-making lies the dividing line between profit and loss.

As America becomes an older nation, it is also, by some measures, becoming sicker.

The specific steps for changing a specific habit differ from person to person and habit to habit, but the steps – the formula – is essentially the same, and once you learn it, you can do amazing things.

Bank of America is the story of some of the most ambitious, aggressive bank builders on the face of the planet.

Actually, attorneys say, copying a purchased CD for even one friend violates the federal copyright code most of the time.

Companies are very, very good – better than consumers themselves – at knowing what consumers are actually craving.

There is no central government database that allows officials to monitor water tests by local systems.

In the past, NASDAQ has defended flash orders.

Hank Paulson, the happy capitalist warrior who spent his life pursuing and defending free markets, is now the biggest interventionist Treasury secretary we’ve had since the Great Depression.

Merrill Lynch is this hugely prestigious brand.

A few decades ago, many people didn’t drink water outside of a meal. Then beverage companies started bottling the production of far-off springs, and now office workers unthinkingly sip bottled water all day long.

As the nation’s elderly population grows, dozens of industries have tried to harness the political might of older Americans for corporate goals.

For years, many public health campaigns that aimed at changing habits have been failures.

Since the 17th century, insurance agents have been the foremost experts on risk.

Because reverse mortgages do not require borrowers to make immediate repayments, the interest charges are added to the debt every day, and the total amount owed grows over time.

Candy bar companies, through commercials, have tied their products to low-energy cues, transforming what was once a dessert into a pick-me-up for cubicle dwellers.

Stock exchanges say that more than half of all trades are now executed by just a handful of high-frequency traders, who use rapid-fire computers to essentially force slower investors to give up profits, then disappear before anyone knows what happened.

The Great Bailout is mostly over for the banks. But for those troubled behemoths of the nation’s housing bust, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the lifeline from Washington just keeps getting longer.

Because the fees associated with a reverse mortgage are high, such loans make sense only for borrowers who expect to live in their home for a number of years.

After World War I, while France and other Allies were building military defenses modeled on trench warfare, German commanders were shaping a nimble fighting force.

Older Americans are perfect telemarketing customers, analysts say, because they are often at home, rely on delivery services, and are lonely for the companionship that telephone callers provide.

Cash from a reverse mortgage can be paid out in several ways, including a lump sum, a monthly payment, a line of credit, or a combination of those. If you do not need money right away, it is usually a bad idea to take all the money upfront, since it starts accumulating interest charges immediately.

There are systems called zero discharge emission systems that would prevent any pollution from making it into the water or the air.

In 1940, Germany toppled France in 20 days, and the panzerdivizion symbolized war’s shift from drawn-out conflicts using massive fortifications to rapid-fire engagements built around manned, motorized armor.

Back when Detroit was the head of auto manufacturing, it was clear where profits were created. Right? A car was made in Detroit. There was little argument that you could make that some of the money from that should be sent overseas to Ireland.

For Aristotle, habits reigned supreme. The behaviors that occur unthinkingly are the evidence of our truest selves.

Typically, when there are corporate habits that undermine individuals, it has emerged without any sort of central planning. Nobody sits down and says, ‘I’m going to create an evil habit for this corporation.’

Most people probably don’t even know what toothpaste they buy; they just recognize the box on the shelf.

In a sense, habits never really disappear. Once formed, they always remain in our neurology.

State and federal studies indicate that thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly.

Even if consumer confidence hit rock bottom, that most likely would not be enough, by itself, to cause a depression.

Medicare‘s top officials said in 2006 that they had reduced the number of fraudulent and improper claims paid by the agency, keeping billions of dollars out of the hands of people trying to game the system.

People who start habitually exercising tend on average to eat better. They also tend to use their credit cards less and procrastinate less.

Prosecutors say it would be next to impossible to get one teen to testify in court that another had slipped him or her a copied disc at lunchtime. And besides, isn’t sharing music a time-honored part of teen friendship?

There is a woman named Wendy Wood, who did a study when she was at Duke, and she followed around college students to try to figure out how much of their day was decision-making versus how much was habit. And what she found was that about 45 percent of all the behaviors that someone did in a day was habit.

Fraudulent and improper payments have long bedeviled Medicare, a $466 billion program. In particular, payments for durable medical equipment, like power wheelchairs and diabetic test kits, are ripe for fraud.

Someone once described Ken Lewis to me as the most competitive person in the history of the United States, including the Union Army.