Hiding what you know is sometimes as important as knowing it.

Habits are powerful, but delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness, or can be deliberately designed. They often occur without our permission, but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far more than we realize—they are so strong, in fact, that they cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense.

Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort.

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.

Cravings are what drive habits. And figuring out how to spark a craving makes creating a new habit easier.

The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can't extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.

Then one day, we’ll put the reward in the old place, and put in the rat, and, by golloy, the old habit will rememerge right away. habits never really disappear. They’re encoded into the sturctures of our brain, and that’s a huge advantage for us, because it would be awful if we had to relearn how to drive after every vacation. 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.