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Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.

Charles Duhigg

If you want to do something that requires willpower – like going for a run after work – you have to conserve your willpower muscle during the day.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Conservation Day Run Willpower Work
When people have a willpower failure, it’s because they haven’t anticipated a situation that’s going to come along.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Failure People Situation Willpower Yourself
Habits are malleable throughout your entire life.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Change Habit Life Yourself
This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Choice Power Reality Yourself
Making your bed every morning is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well-being, and stronger skills at sticking with a budget.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Bed Better Budget Morning Production Strong
The waste from power plants is essentially what is left over when you burn coal. And as we all know, coal is a relatively dirty mineral.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Plant Power Relative Waste
Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Brain Effort Habit Save Science Way
Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Belief Community Occur
Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Choice Day Feeling Habit Product
There’s a natural instinct embedded in friendship, a sympathy that makes us willing to fight for someone we like when they are treated unjustly.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Fight Friendship Natural Sympathy Treat
Change might not be fast and it isn’t always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Change Easy Effort Fast Shape Time
The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can’t extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Bad Change Gold Habit Yourself
America is the Saudi Arabia of coal.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Coal Country Power
It is facile to imply that smoking, alcoholism, overeating, or other ingrained patters can be upended without real effort. Genuine change requires work and self-understanding of the cravings driving behaviours.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Alcohol Behaviour Change Drive Effort Reality Smoking Understand
There’s something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they’re by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Community Creation Disbelief Experience Powerful Share
The same process that makes AA so effective-the power of a group to teach individuals how to believe-happens whenever people come together to help one another change. Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Community Effect Individual Process Teaching

Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.

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Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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