Once I’ve cleared away the things I don’t need, use, or love, my surroundings reveal to me, and to others, the things that matter most to me. Careful curation means that my space and my possessions re...
One day, I’d stop twisting my hair, and wearing running shoes all the time, and eating exactly the same food every day. I’d remember my friends’ birthdays, I’d learn Photoshop, I wouldn’t let my daugh...
The harder it is to do something, the harder it is to do it impulsively, so inconvenience helps us stick to good habits. There are six obvious ways to make an activity less convenient:· Increase the...
One lives in the naïve notion that later there will be more room than in the entire past. —Elias Canetti, The Human Province
One of the best ways to make myself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy myself.
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.
One regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality. —OSCAR WILDE
One study estimated that for every hour of interrupted sleep during the previous night, people wasted 8.4 minutes in online puttering
One study estimated that people spend about one-fourth of their waking time resisting some aspect of desire—most commonly, the urge to eat, to sleep, to grab some leisure, and to pursue some kind of s...
Our lives are in the space between Isaiah Berlin’s We are doomed to choose and every choice may entail an irreparable loss and Borges’s Garden of Forking Paths, where every choice produces a quantum e...
Overbuyers, by contrast, find excuses to buy. They accumulate large quantities of office supplies or kitchen gadgets or travel paraphernalia with the thought This will probably come in handy someday....
People who feel less guilt and who show compassion toward themselves in the face of failure are better able to regain self-control, while people who feel deeply guilty and full of self-blame struggle...
Perfection may be an impossible goal, but habits help us to do better. Making headway toward a good habit, doing better than before, saves us from facing the end of another year with the mournful wish...
Pushing myself, I knew, would cause me serious discomfort. It's a Secret of Adulthood: Happiness doesn't always make you feel happy. When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself,...
Recently I’d been intrigued to read about a self-publishing site, Lulu.com. According to the Web site, I could print a proper hardback book, complete with dust jacket, for less than thirty dollars.
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.
Research—and my own experience—suggests that the less we indulge in something, the less we want it. When we believe that a craving will remain unsatisfied, it may diminish; cravings are more provoked...
Scheduling makes us far more likely to convert an activity into a habit (well, except for Rebels), so for that reason, I schedule even some slightly ridiculous habits, such as Kiss Jamie every morning...
What I Value What’s most satisfying to me: saving time, or money, or effort? Does it bother me to act differently from other people, or do I get a charge out of it? Do I spend a lot of time on somethi...
Some people love finishing, and some people love opening—both literally and figuratively. Finishers love the feeling of bringing a project to completion, and they’re determined to use the last drop in...
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