Sprinters call Marathoners plodding, and Marathoners call Sprinters irresponsible, but there’s no right way. Procrastinators, however, are happier when they change their work habits to work more stead...
Like most people, I have several pet subjects - that may or may not be interesting to other people. Don't get me started on happiness, or habits, or children's literature, or Winston Churchill, unless...
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....
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...
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...
For people who want to eat and drink more healthfully, keeping a food journal can be extremely effective. For instance, one study showed that dieters who kept a food journal six or seven days a week l...
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...
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...
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'd always vaguely expected to outgrown my limitations.
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...
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 choosing our habits, we harness the power of mindlessness as a sweeping force for serenity, energy, and growth.
People are powerfully moved by imagination, belief, and knowledge. They can consider the past and future. They can make changes in their behavior out of reason in a way that animals can't do.
If I can do something in less than one minute, I don't let myself procrastinate. I hang up my coat, put newspapers in the recycling, scan and toss a letter. Ever since I wrote about this rule in 'The...