Charles Duhigg Quotes
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Between calculated risk and reckless decision-making lies the dividing line between profit and loss.
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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.
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During the 1970s and 1980s, Congress distributed more than $60 billion to cities to make sure that what goes into toilets, industrial drains and street grates would not endanger human health.
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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.
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Foxconn is hugely important, not only in China - it's the largest employer in China - Foxconn is important around the world.
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For Aristotle, habits reigned supreme. The behaviors that occur unthinkingly are the evidence of our truest selves.
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One goal of the Clean Water Act of 1972 was to upgrade the nation's sewer systems, many of them built more than a century ago, to handle growing populations and increasing runoff of rainwater and waste.
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State and federal studies indicate that thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly.
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Lawmakers in both political parties have often acceded to unions' requests to avoid political confrontations or to curry favor. They have pushed difficult choices into the future.
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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.
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Teenagers ultimately don't mind belonging to a group, because there's always the opportunity to eventually become someone new. The elderly, by definition, are running out of opportunities for reinvention.
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Forty percent of all electronics sold are assembled by Foxconn.
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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.
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In the 1970s, New York City defaulted on its debt, and yes, the consequences were painful. Enrollment plummeted at City University campuses, which until then had offered free education. Seven thousand police officers were laid off. Crime skyrocketed. Services for the poor disappeared.
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Older consumers don't want to be treated like teenagers; what's more, they don't want to believe they fall into any niche at all.
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In a flash order transaction, buy or sell orders are shown to a collection of high-frequency traders for just 30 milliseconds before they are routed to everyone else. They are widely considered to give the few investors with access to the technology an unfair advantage, even by some of the marketplaces that offer the flash orders for a fee.
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When people have a willpower failure, it's because they haven't anticipated a situation that's going to come along.
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There is a calculus, it turns out, for mastering our subconscious urges. For companies like Target, the exhaustive rendering of our conscious and unconscious patterns into data sets and algorithms has revolutionized what they know about us and, therefore, how precisely they can sell.
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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.
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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.
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Vast databases of names and personal information, sold to thieves by large publicly traded companies, have put almost anyone within reach of fraudulent telemarketers.
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While markets are supposed to ensure transparency by showing orders to everyone simultaneously, flash orders are currently allowed because of a loophole in securities regulations that allows for immediate trades.
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Some officials overseeing local water systems have tried to go above and beyond what is legally required. But they have encountered resistance, sometimes from the very residents they are trying to protect, who say that if their water is legal, it must be safe.
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Consumer habits are key to understanding how to launch a product.