Bank of America is the story of some of the most ambitious, aggressive bank builders on the face of the planet.
— Charles Duhigg
Since the 17th century, insurance agents have been the foremost experts on risk.
For Aristotle, habits reigned supreme. The behaviors that occur unthinkingly are the evidence of our truest selves.
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.
In a sense, habits never really disappear. Once formed, they always remain in our neurology.
You're much better off creating positive rewards, complimenting people for acting correctly, rather than punishing them when they act incorrectly.
Forty percent of all electronics sold are assembled by Foxconn.
Conditions in Chinese factories are harsh. They're much harsher than they are in, for instance, the United States or any Western nation.
Even though it's hard to learn how to back your car out the driveway at first, once it becomes a habit, you can do it almost automatically and think about something else, like the meeting that you need to go to today or what's on the radio.
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.'
Someone will write a resolution that says, 'I want to exercise more,' or 'I want to lose 15 pounds' - which is great, that's a great goal to have - but every study tells us that if you pose things in abstract, goal-related terms, it's much less likely that you will accomplish it than if you structure it as an actual activity.
It almost goes without saying that when you are a startup, one of the first things you do is you start setting aside money to defend yourself from patent lawsuits, because any successful company, even moderately successful, is going to get hit by a patent lawsuit from someone who's just trying to look for a payout.
We like songs that are familiar.
What studies say the number one best way to start an exercise habit is to give yourself a reward that you genuinely enjoy.
If you need five minutes every hour to look at tweets or to just surf the Internet, you need to schedule that into your schedule, allow yourself to do that. Because when people start procrastinating, what they've done is, they've tried to ignore that urge. They try to deny themselves time on Facebook or time surfing the web.
Habits are malleable throughout your entire life.
Merrill Lynch is this hugely prestigious brand.
Between calculated risk and reckless decision-making lies the dividing line between profit and loss.
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.
Technology giants have taken advantage of tax codes written for an industrial age.
Once you break a habit into its components, you can fiddle with the gears.
We love to receive praise, but usually we're not certain what message, precisely, we should take from it. On the other hand, when someone points out our flaws, we realize immediately that something needs to change.
Foxconn is hugely important, not only in China - it's the largest employer in China - Foxconn is important around the world.
Most people probably don't even know what toothpaste they buy; they just recognize the box on the shelf.
Companies are very, very good - better than consumers themselves - at knowing what consumers are actually craving.
When most individuals or most companies are talking about trying to create healthy habits, the key is to identify which habit or habits seem most important.
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.
Patents are being used to wage war in the digital world, and as a result, patents have become a toll gate on the road of innovation.
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.
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.
The more you focus, the more that focus becomes a habit.
The biggest moment of flexibility in our shopping habits is when we have a child, because all of your old routines go out the window, and suddenly a marketer can come in and sell you new things.
In 1688, Edward Lloyd opened a coffeehouse on London's seafront popular among underwriters, men in powdered wigs with mathematical minds and steely constitutions who offered to compensate owners if their boats were lost at sea.
Like solo sailors venturing into the Southern Ocean, climbers are seduced by risk. The desire to push to a summit or scale a rock face is so strong that they consciously or subconsciously minimize safety precautions drilled into their brains.
Credit default swap is basically just an agreement that I have with you, where I sell you insurance on some bond you own. If the bond goes belly up, I promise to pay you. And as long as the bond doesn't go belly up, you pay me for selling you insurance.
Consumer habits are key to understanding how to launch a product.
The discovery of the habit loop is important because it reveals a basic truth: When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks.
Some of the tactics that are used by Foxconn and other companies throughout China is, if you are late, if you violate one of the small rules, some of the punishment is that you have to copy down quotations from the chairman of Foxconn: you have to write out confessions explaining why you were late and promising never to do it again.
There are supply chains that exist in China and Asia now which the U.S. simply can't replicate.
You have to actually believe in your capacity to change for habits to permanently change.
Often in companies, you'll see tensions between sales and marketing. Sales people will want to give discounts to clients because they often get paid a commission based on how much they sell. So they're always pushing to give discounts because that will increase sales. Marketing, however, is judged by overall profitability.
People who start habitually exercising tend on average to eat better. They also tend to use their credit cards less and procrastinate less.
I think there's a lot of people who right now are worried that people are going down frivolous paths, like inventing new social networks or new games, instead of inventing the cures for cancer or fundamental technologies that will change the world.
Entrepreneurs do not try and create new types of smartphone technologies now because they know it's pointless: They're going to get sued almost immediately.
Your brain will eventually enjoy exercise for exercise sake, right; endorphins and endocannabinoids will create a sense of reward, but it doesn't know that at first.
You can't suddenly say, 'I want a brand new habit tomorrow,' and expect it to be easy and effortless.
At some point, if you're changing a really deep-seated behavior, you're going to have a moment of weakness.
