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...
There is no Future-Gretchen, only Now-Gretchen.
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.
The opposite of happiness is unhappiness, not depression.
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...
Make it easy to do right and hard to go wrong.
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
It’s a Secret of Adulthood: Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy.
In an interview in the Paris Review, novelist and Rebel John Gardner made an observation that I’ve never forgotten: Every time you break the law you pay, and every time you obey the law you pay.
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...
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.
How a couple fights matters more than how much they fight.
And the
You can choose what you do; you can’t choose what you like to do.
When deciding what to buy, remember that some things are easy to buy—but then we have to them. If they're not used, they don't enhance our lives; they just contribute to guilt and clutter.
This is one of the many paradoxes of happiness: we seek to control our lives, but the unfamiliar and the unexpected are important sources of happiness.
Research suggests that about 40 percent of our behavior is repeated almost daily, and mostly in the same context.
Money. It’s a good servant but a bad master.
It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.