Sam Thomas Davies's Blog, page 18

Off-Ramps: Or Why A Little Clarity Goes a Long Way

Imagine you’re a college student asked to participate in a study about a college food drive. Here’s how it works: You’re asked to nominate two groups of peers — those “least likely” to contribute to the food drive and those “most likely” to do so. [1] Researchers, then, divide each group in half. They send half of the […]

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New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work. Build Systems Instead.

We’re four days into the New Year. How are you progressing with your New Year’s resolutions? Have you even made any? If not, you’re not alone. According to research by the Statistic Brain Research Institute, only 45% of Americans actually make New Year’s resolutions. And of that 45%, only 8% are successful in achieving their […]

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My 2015 Annual Review

Every December, I conduct an annual review. This is an opportunity for me to identify what I did well, what I didn’t do well, and what I’m going to focus on next year. Usually, I conduct my annual reviews in private, but I realised if I published my annual review online, many of you could […]

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Best of 2015: The 10 Most Popular Articles of The Year

I published 81 articles in 2015. Some were a pleasure to write. Others were not. Regardless, writing taught me an important lesson: If you want to achieve a goal (lose weight, exercise regularly, discipline your children, etc.), you have to show up consistently and “ship” your work on schedule (especially when you “don’t feel like […]

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Do You Have a “Shouldy” Approach to Life?

One of the most common causes of unhappiness in everyday life is making “should statements”. We make should statements like, “I should exercise regularly” or, “I should eat healthily” or, “I should be more productive” or, “I should start a company” or, “I should discipline my children”. But we don’t. Why? Because we’re only human. […]

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Do You Make These 4 Mental Errors When Developing Good Habits?

Every day, we make judgments and decisions about our habits. What time should we go to the gym? Which diet is right for us? Will “just this once” hurt in the long-term? We like to think we’re objective, logical, and capable of taking in and evaluating all the information in the world around us. The […]

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What 449 ‘Failures’ Can Teach Us About Success

In the 1960s, Unilever, a company known for manufacturing laundry detergent, had a major problem. The problem wasn’t their manufacturing process (pumping boiling hot chemicals through a nozzle and collecting the powder in a vat); their problem was the nozzles didn’t work properly. They kept clogging up. ‘The nozzles were a damn nuisance,’ said Steve […]

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The Delicate Art of Letting Go (A Step-By-Step Guide)

What do you do when you feel angry, irritated, frustrated or any other negative emotion? Some people turn to immediate gratification: alcohol, food, pornography, shopping, smoking … even though they know it won’t give them long-term pleasure. Others try to pick themselves up, naturally, without relying on quick fixes. They might turn to a self-help […]

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The Secret to Sustained Motivation? Association

In 2003, Greg Walton and Geoffrey Cohen devised an intriguing experiment. They took a group of Yale freshman and gave them an insoluble maths puzzle to work on – but with a catch. Beforehand, the undergraduates were asked to read a mix of magazines articles, including a one-page-first-person account of a former Yale maths student […]

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How to Break Bad Habits by Surfing The Urge

We all have bad habits we want to break. We want quit smoking, nail biting, binge eating, spending, etc. If we want to break a bad habit in the long-term, we need to understand how habits work. Here’s what we know: Most habits are triggered by cues. A cue can be a time of day, […]

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