For Rebels, the ability to choose is so important that sometimes they make a choice—even when it’s against their own self-interest or it’s not what they prefer—just to reassure themselves that they ca...
Turn off your email; turn off your phone; disconnect from the Internet; figure out a way to set limits so you can concentrate when you need to, and disengage when you need to. Technology is a good ser...
We can use decision-making to choose the habits we want to form, use willpower to get the habit started, then - and this is the best part - we can allow the extraordinary power of habit to take over....
The Levity Effect,
Studies show that if you reward people for doing an activity, they often stop doing it for fun; being paid turns it into work.
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...
Many assume that offering a reward will help people to jump-start a healthy habit, which will then persist after the reward fades away. Not so. Often, as soon as the reward stops (and sometimes before...
I’m not getting any sleep, she said. I’ve already given up caffeine. What else can I do? Lots of things, I said, prepared to rattle off the tips that I’d uncovered in my research. Near your bedtime, d...
I knew I wouldn't discover happiness in a faraway place or in unusual circumstances; it was right here, right now— as in the haunting play The Blue Bird, where two children spend a year searching the...
Happiness, wrote Yeats, is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing. Contemporary researchers make the same argument: that it isn’t goal...
Happiness is a critical factor for work, and work is a critical factor for happiness. In one of those life-isn't-fair results, it turns out that the happy outperform the less happy. Happy people work...
We won’t make ourselves more creative and productive by copying other people’s habits, even the habits of geniuses; we must know our own nature, and what habits serve us best.
Read the news every morning or Call one client each day are easy to monitor, while vague resolutions such as Be more informed or Cultivate better client relationships are hard to monitor....Accurate m...
Like Dr. Johnson, I’m an Abstainer: I find it far easier to give up something altogether than to indulge moderately. And this distinction has profound implications for habits.
Jamie is a funny mix. He has a sardonic side that can make him seem distant and almost harsh to people who don’t know him well, but he’s also very tender-hearted. (A
I always had the uncomfortable feeling that if I wasn't sitting in front of a computer typing, I was wasting my time--but I pushed myself to take a wider view of what was productive. Time spend with m...
For this reason, we should pay close attention to the convenience of any activity we want to make into a habit.
Don't grieve limitations
By mindfully deciding how to act in line with my values instead of mindlessly applying my rules, I was better able to make the decisions that supported my happiness.
By mindfully choosing our habits, we harness the power of mindlessness as a sweeping force for serenity, energy, and growth.