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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

Once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp and the only option left is to get to work.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Easy Freedom Habit Option Understand Yourself
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
Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Advantage Application Small Win
The best agencies understood the importance of routines. The worst agencies were headed by people who never thought about it, and then wondered why no one followed their orders.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Agency Follow Order People Routine Understand Wonder
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
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
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
Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Change Habit Old Reward Routine
The problem is that your brain can’t tell the difference between bad and good habits, and so if you have a bad one, it’s always lurking there, waiting for the right cues and rewards.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Brain Difference Oneself Problem Reward 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
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
The biggest moment of flexibility in our shopping habits is when we have a child, because when you think about it, all of your old routines sort of go out the window, and suddenly a marketer can come in and sell you new kinds of things.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Flexible Kind Marketing Moments Window Yourself
Some say because music is as much about personal expression as listening pleasure, sharing is integral to why songs have value in the first place.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Expression Listening Music Personal Place Value
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
At some point, if you’re changing a really deep-seated behavior, you’re going to have a moment of weakness.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Behavior Change Moments Point Weakness
The more you focus, the more that focus becomes a habit.
CHARLES DUHIGG

Focus Habit Yourself

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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