Self-measurement brings self-awareness, and self-awareness strengthens our self-control.
Research suggests that when we have conflicting goals, we don’t manage ourselves well. We become anxious and paralyzed, and we often end up doing nothing.
Physical activity is the magical elixir of practically everything.
One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
Of all the things that wisdom provides for living one’s entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship.
My idea of this is the kind of person I am is so bound up in my habits and actions that it’s hard for me to see. But eventually, I realized that my sense of identity makes it easier or harder to chang...
My home is a place of unconditional belonging, which is part of its pleasure, part of its pain—as Robert Frost wrote, home is Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.
Many strategies help us change our habits, and four strategies tower above the others: Monitoring, Foundation, Scheduling, and Accountability.
Jamie has a transition habit when he comes home from work. He gives everyone a hello kiss, then disappears for twenty minutes or so. He changes out of his suit, sends one last round of emails, glances...
It’s fun to fail, I kept repeating. It’s part of being ambitious; it’s part of being creative. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.
It was interesting to have a better sense of my daily habits
In their thought-provoking book Focus, researchers Tory Higgins and Heidi Grant Halvorson argue that people lean toward being promotion-focused or prevention-focused in their aims.
If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough. Over-the-counter
I was surprised to learn from my research, however, that the well-known notion of anger catharsis is poppycock. There’s no evidence for the belief that letting off steam is healthy or constructive. In...
I used to think I was pretty typical, but now I see that I’m extreme. I can’t judge people according to what works for me.
I feel unsettled at any time when I’m not writing. And I mean that. There’s a sense of peace, and of being in the right place, that I experience only when I’m writing.
How about this, I suggested. Instead of feeling that you’ve blown the day and thinking, ‘I’ll get back on track tomorrow,’ try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoo...
From my observation, habits in four areas do most to boost feelings of self-control, and in this way strengthen the Foundation of all our habits. We do well to begin by tackling the habits that help u...
For an extensive and fascinating discussion of the use and pitfalls of rewards, see Edward Deci, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation (New York: Penguin, 1996); Alfie Kohn, Punished by...
By doing a little bit each day you can get a lot accomplished