Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. The seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous.
The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become.
Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it. In fact, the people who don't have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom. Without good financial habits, you will always be struggling for the next dollar.
Conversely, when you have your habits dialed in and the basics of life are handled and done, your mind is free to focus on new challenges and master the next set of problems.
On the impact of environment on habits:
Behavior is a function of the Person in their Environment, or B = f(P,E)... In 1952, the economist Hawkins Stern described a phenomenon he called Suggestion Impulse Buying, which "is triggered when a shopper sees a product for the first time and visualizes a need for it." In other words, customers will occasionally buy products not because they want them but because of how they are presented to them.
Make the cues of good habits obvious in your environment.
On reprogramming your brain to enjoy hard habits:
I once heard a story about a man who uses a wheelchair. When asked if it was difficult being confined, he responded, "I'm not confined to my wheelchair - I am liberated by it. If it wasn't for my wheelchair, I would be bed-bound and never able to leave my house." This shift in perspective completely transformed how he lived each day.
Reframing your habits to highlight their benefits rather than their drawbacks is a fast and lightweight way to reprogram your mind and make a habit seem more attractive.
On how to make habits easy:
It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change: the fastest way to lose weight, the best program to build muscle, the perfect idea for a side hustle. We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action. As Voltaire once wrote, "The best is the enemy of the good."
I refer to this as the difference between being in motion and taking action. The two ideas sound similar, but they're not the same. When you're in motion, you're planning and strategizing and learning. Those are all good things, but they don't produce a result ... It doesn't feel good to fail or to be judged publicly, so we tend to avoid situations where that might happen. And that's the biggest reason why you slip into motion rather than taking action: you want to delay failure.
On how to make good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible:
... make your bad habits more difficult by creating what psychologists call a commitment device. A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future. It is a way to lock in future behavior, bind you to good habits, and restrict you from bad ones.
The key is to change the task such that it requires more work to get out of the good habit than to get started on it. If you're excited about the business you want to start, email an entrepreneur you respect and set up a consulting call. When the time comes to act, the only way to bail is to cancel the meeting, which requires more effort and may cost money.
On making your habits satisfying:
The ending of any experience is vital because we tend to remember it more than other phases. You want the ending of your habit to be satisfying. The best approach is to use reinforcement, which refers to the process of using an immediate reward to increase the rate of a behavior... Reinforcement ties your habit to an immediate reward, which makes it satisfying when you finish.
On the impact of in-born talent on your life:
The work that hurts you less than it hurts others is the work you were made to do.
Flow is the mental state you enter when you are so focused on the task at hand that the rest of the world fades away.
Whenever you feel authentic and genuine, you are headed in the right direction.
When you can't win by being better, you can win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it easier to stand out. You can shortcut the need for a genetic advantage (or for years of practice) by rewriting the rules. A good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses.
Boiling water will soften a potato but harden an egg. You can't control whether you're a potato or an egg, but you can decide to play a game where it's better to be hard or soft. If you can find a more favorable environment, you can transform the situation from one where the odds are against you to one where they are in your favor.
Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on.
On how to stay motivated in life and work:
The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.
The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.
Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.
One solution is to avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of who you are. In the words of investor Paul Graham, "keep your identity small." The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you.
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