And of course, arriving at one goal usually reveals another, yet more challenging goal. Publishing the first book means it’s time to start the second. There’s another hill to climb. The challenge, the...
Another reason to avoid stopping a good habit is that, sadly, starting again is often far harder than starting the first time. It’s natural to think, Oh, I did this before, it will be easy to do it ag...
Another study suggested that getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for a person’s daily happiness than getting a $ 60,000 raise.
As I turned the key and pushed open the front door, as I crossed the threshold, I thought how breathtaking, how fleeting, how precious was my ordinary day Now is now. Here is my treasure.
As Michel de Montaigne observed, The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced.p 233
As the weeks wore on, along with keeping a food journal, I added a new monitoring habit: No seconds. When people preplate their food and eat just one helping, they eat about 14 percent less than when...
Both money and health contribute to happiness mostly in the negative; the lack of them brings much more unhappiness than possessing them brings happiness.p 169
But perhaps the most acute sense of happiness from writing was the happiness of expressing a very complicated idea - the kind of idea that takes hundreds of pages to capture.
But while it’s true that helping other people makes us happier, and that people feel a distinct helper’s high, it’s also true that when people are unhappy, they often find it tough to help others. If...
By catching ourselves in the act of invoking a loophole, we give ourselves an opportunity to reject it, and stick to the habits that we want to foster.
By finding my reward within the habit itself, with a reward that takes me deeper into the habit. If I look outside a habit for a reward, I undermine the habit. If I look within the habit for the rewar...
By getting rid of the things I don’t use, don’t need, or don’t love, as well as the things that don’t work, don’t fit, or don’t suit, I free my mind—and my shelves—for what I truly value. And that’s t...
By giving something up, I gain.
Concern for Others Loophole: We tell ourselves that we’re acting out of consideration for others and making generous, unselfish decisions. Or we decide we must do something in order to fit into a soci...
Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly. According to a footnote, the argument of the growing heap is: If ten coins are not enough to make a man rich, what if you add one coin? What if you add another? Finally,...
Eventually I learned to reject this advice. Somehow, I figured out that it was easier for me to resist certain temptations by never giving in to them.
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...
Gary Taubes, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (New York: Anchor Books, 2010). For an expanded discussion of Taubes’s arguments, see Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversi...
Getting in control of our possessions makes us feel more in control of our fates. If this is an illusion, it's a helpful illusion--and it's a more pleasant way to live.
How I Like to Spend My Time At what time of day do I feel energized? When do I drag? Do I like racing from one activity to another, or do I prefer unhurried transitions? What activities take up my tim...
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