Between calculated risk and reckless decision-making lies the dividing line between profit and loss.

When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So unless you deliberately fight a habit -- unless you find new routines -- the pattern will unfold automatically.

A movement starts because of the social habits of friendship and the strong ties between close acquaintances. It grows because of the habits of a community, and the weak ties that hold neighborhoods and clans together. And it endures because a movement's leaders give participants new habits that create a fresh sense of identity and a feeling of ownership.

Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefields in a civil war. Yet despite this capacity for internecine warfare, most companies roll along relatively peacefully, year after year, because they have routines—habits—that create truces that allow everyone to set aside their rivalries long enough to get a day’s work done.

The brain has this amazing ability to find happiness even when the memories of it are gone.

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.

When people have a willpower failure, it's because they haven't anticipated a situation that's going to come along.