James Clear's Blog, page 13

Announcing the 2015 Habits Seminar (Live Event on February 18th)

Today I am excited to announce the 2015 Habits Seminar, which is a live online class that I will be hosting on February 18th.

Each year, I conduct one seminar on the science of behavior change and how to build habits that stick. We’ll talk about what’s working now, what always works, and what to avoid if you want to stick to good habits and break bad ones. Hundreds of people have already signed up and I’m going to take this opportunity to share more details about the event.

First, let me talk about why you would want to attend…

The Two Identities We All Have

Last week, a reader named Ryan sent me an email talking about the two identities that we all have: BIG ME and LITTLE ME.

BIG ME is the version of yourself that comes out when you’re at your best. BIG ME is the identity you display when you fulfill your potential, live up to your values, and achieve your goals. BIG ME is when you are on top of your game and fully engaged.

LITTLE ME is the version of yourself that shows up when you’re inconsistent, when you lack focus, and when you fall short of your potential. LITTLE ME is that side of you that makes excuses and hesitates when faced with uncertainty or discomfort.

Here’s the thing about BIG ME and LITTLE ME. They are not different people. They are two versions of the same person. And these two versions of yourself compete to show up on any given day.

What Makes the Difference?

We all have good days every now and then—days when we feel motivated, productive, powerful, and healthy. But having a good day every day is really hard. What makes the difference between the days when you show up as the BIG ME version of yourself versus the LITTLE ME version of yourself?

In my experience, your habits make the difference. The top performers in nearly any field of life have developed systems and routines that help them make better decisions each day.

If you want to perform near the top of your game on a more consistent basis, then you have to understand how to build habits that stick.

Some examples…

Fitness: The list of people who went to the gym on January 1st is very long. The list of those still going on December 1st is much shorter.
Writing: You might get lucky with one article, but producing your best work over and over again requires consistent creative habits.
Productivity: You can be incredibly effective when you finish your most important task first each day. Imagine if that happened every day.
Sports: Anyone can have a big game, but great players have big seasons because they build the right practice habits.

The 2015 Habits Seminar is focused on helping you build the habits and systems that will enable BIG ME to show up more often.

The 2015 Habits Seminar

The seminar will have a special focus on sharing practical ideas for overcoming the five barriers that hold most of us back:

Lack of Time and Too Many Commitments
Inconsistency With Taking Action
Procrastination and Laziness
Self-Doubt and Lack of Confidence
Lack of Focus

Click the link below to learn more and register for the seminar. (Note: Early Bird pricing ends on February 16th at 11:59PM EST. Use offer code: EARLY)

The 2015 Habits Seminar: Click here to learn more and register for the event.

 

Fear vs. Ambition

Last year, I started adding little pieces of inspirational hand-drawn art to my articles. I’m not much of an artist, but I’ve enjoyed visually displaying the ideas and values that our community believes in.

Because the feedback I’ve received about the images has been popular, I’m going to start sharing them more frequently. Occasionally, I’ll share an image by itself (like today) and let the image spark some thoughts for you rather than writing a full post on the subject.

Here’s a new one on creativity, entrepreneurship, and sharing your work with the world. I hope you like it.

Fear vs. Ambition

Entrepreneurship happens where continual self-doubt meets courageous ambition. (This is true for all forms of entrepreneurship: creating art, building a tech company, starting a side business, and so on.)

P.S. 2015 Habits Seminar

Hundreds of people have already signed up for the 2015 Habits Seminar next week. (Each year, I conduct one live class on the science of behavior change and how to build habits that stick.) I’ll have full details for you on Thursday, but if you already know that you want to sign up, you can learn more and grab early bird tickets here.

Why Stores Place Candy by the Checkout Counter (And Why New Habits Fail)

Selling candy bars can teach you a lot about building better habits.

Before I tell you why, let’s start at the beginning.

The Science of Candy Bars

In 1952, an economist by the name of Hawkins Stern was working at the Stanford Research Institute in Southern California where he spent his time analyzing consumer behavior. During that same year he published a little-known paper titled, “The Significance of Impulse Buying Today.”

In that paper, Stern described a phenomenon he called Suggestion Impulse Buying, which “is triggered when a shopper sees a product for the first time and visualizes a need for it.”

Suggestion Impulse Buying says that customers buy things not necessarily because they want them, but because of how they are presented to them. This simple idea—that where products are placed can influence what customers will buy—has fascinated retailers and grocery stores ever since the moment Stern put the concept into words.

How to Sell Candy Bars

Candy sales are very seasonal. Bulk candy purchases tend to be made around Halloween and other holidays, which means during the majority of the year candy never makes it onto the grocery list. Obviously, this isn’t what candy companies want since they would prefer to have sales continue throughout the year.

Because candy isn’t an item you are going to seek out during most trips to the grocery store, it is placed in a highly visible place where you’ll see it even if you aren’t looking for it: the checkout line.

But why the checkout line? If it was just about visibility, the store could put candy right by the front door so that everyone saw it as soon as they walked inside.

The second reason candy is at the checkout line is because of a concept called decision fatigue. The basic idea is that your willpower is like a muscle. Like any muscle, it gets fatigued with use. The more decisions you ask your brain to make, the more fatigued your willpower becomes.

If you saw a box of candy bars at the front door, you would be more likely to resist grabbing one. By the time you get to the checkout counter, however, the number of choices about what to buy and what not to buy has drained your willpower enough that you give in and make the impulse purchase. This is why grocery stores place candy at the checkout counter and not the front door.

Ok, but what does a Kit Kat bar have to do with building better habits?

3 Ways to Change Your Habits

At a basic level, a store that wants to sell more candy wants to change human behavior. And whether you’re trying to lose weight, become more productive, create art on a more consistent basis, or otherwise build a new habit, you want to change human behavior too. Let’s take a look at what the grocery store did to drive additional purchases of candy bars and talk about how those concepts apply to your life.

First, grocery stores removed the friction that prevented a certain behavior. They realized that people were only buying candy in bulk around the holidays, so they cut down the size of the purchase and sold candy bars one at a time.

You can do the same thing with your habits. What are the points of friction that prevent you from taking a behavior right now? Does the task seem overwhelming (like the equivalent of buying 40 pieces of candy when you only want 1 piece?), then start with a small habit. Examples include: doing 10 pushups per day rather than 50 per day, writing 1 post per week rather than 1 per day, running for 5 minutes rather than 5 miles, and so on. Starting small is valuable because objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

Second, grocery stores created an environment that promoted the new behavior. Retailers recognized that unless the holidays were around the corner, people were unlikely to browse the store and seek out candy bars, so they moved the candy bars to a place where people didn’t have to seek them out: the checkout line.

How can you change your environment, so that you don’t have to seek out your new habits? How can you adjust your kitchen so that you can eat healthy without thinking? How can you shift your workspace so that digital distractions are minimized? How can you create a space that promotes the good behaviors and prevents the bad ones? Surround yourself with better choices and you’ll make better choices.

Third, grocery stores stacked the new behavior at a time when the energy was right for it. As we’ve already covered, you’re more likely to give in and buy the candy bar at the checkout line because decision fatigue has set in. Of course, it’s not just decision fatigue that saps our willpower and motivation. There are a variety of positive and negative daily tasks that drain your brain. Periods of intense focus, frustration, self-control, and confusion are all examples of how you can deplete your mental battery.

When it comes to building better habits, you can deal with this issue in two ways.

You can take active steps to reduce the areas that deplete your willpower. In the words of Kathy Sierra, you have to “manage your cognitive leaks.” This means eliminating distractions and focusing on the essential. It’s much easier to stick with good habits if you subtract the negative influences. Self-control has a cost. Every time you use it, you pay. Make sure you’re paying for the things that matter to you, not the stuff that is useless or provides marginal value to your life.
You can perform your habit a time when your energy is right for it. Stores ask you to buy candy bars when you are most likely to say yes. Similarly, you should ask yourself to perform new habits when you are mostly likely to succeed. Your motivation ebbs and flows throughout the day, so make sure the difficulty of your habit matches your current level of your motivation. Big habits are usually best if attempted early in the day when your motivation and willpower are high (or after a lunch break when you’ve had a chance to eat and rejuvenate).

Your Environment Drives Your Habits

We like to think that we are in control of our behavior. If we buy a candy bar, we assume it is because we wanted a candy bar. The truth, however, is that many of the actions we take each day are simply a response to the environment we find ourselves in. We buy candy bars because the store is designed to get us to buy candy bars.

Similarly, we stick to good habits (or repeat bad habits) because the environments that we live in each day—our kitchens and bedrooms, our offices and workspaces‐are designed to promote these behaviors. Change your environment and your behavior will follow.

P.S. The 2015 Habits Seminar

If you enjoyed this little lesson on sticking to new habits, then you’ll love my live Habits Seminar. Each year, I conduct one live class on the science of behavior change and how to build habits that stick. We’ll talk about what’s working now, what always works, and what to avoid if you want to stick to good habits and break bad ones.

Over 1,000 people attended last year and we’re going to do it even better this time around! There will be a special focus on sharing practical ideas for overcoming the 5 barriers that hold most of us back: 1) Lack of Time and Too Many Commitments, 2) Inconsistency With Taking Action, 3) Procrastination and Laziness, 4) Self-Doubt and Lack of Confidence, and 5) Lack of Focus.

The seminar is going to be on February 18 (audio recording will be available to those who join). Full details are coming next week, but if you already know that you want to sign up, you can learn more and grab early bird tickets here.

Why Stores Place Candy by the Checkout Counter (And Why We Fail With New Habits)

Selling candy bars can teach you a lot about building better habits.

Before I tell you why, let’s start at the beginning.

The Science of Candy Bars

In 1952, an economist by the name of Hawkins Stern was working at the Stanford Research Institute in Southern California where he spent his time analyzing consumer behavior. During that same year he published a little-known paper titled, “The Significance of Impulse Buying Today.”

In that paper, Stern described a phenomenon he called Suggestion Impulse Buying, which “is triggered when a shopper sees a product for the first time and visualizes a need for it.”

Suggestion Impulse Buying says that customers buy things not necessarily because they want them, but because of how they are presented to them. This simple idea—that where products are placed can influence what customers will buy—has fascinated retailers and grocery stores ever since the moment Stern put the concept into words.

How to Sell Candy Bars

Candy sales are very seasonal. Bulk candy purchases tend to be made around Halloween and other holidays, which means during the majority of the year candy never makes it onto the grocery list. Obviously, this isn’t what candy companies want since they would prefer to have sales continue throughout the year.

Because candy isn’t an item you are going to seek out during most trips to the grocery store, it is placed in a highly visible place where you’ll see it even if you aren’t looking for it: the checkout line.

But why the checkout line? If it was just about visibility, the store could put candy right by the front door so that everyone saw it as soon as they walked inside.

The second reason candy is at the checkout line is because of a concept called decision fatigue. The basic idea is that your willpower is like a muscle. Like any muscle, it gets fatigued with use. The more decisions you ask your brain to make, the more fatigued your willpower becomes.

If you saw a box of candy bars at the front door, you would be more likely to resist grabbing one. By the time you get to the checkout counter, however, the number of choices about what to buy and what not to buy has drained your willpower enough that you give in and make the impulse purchase. This is why grocery stores place candy at the checkout counter and not the front door.

Ok, but what does a Kit Kat bar have to do with building better habits?

3 Ways to Change Your Habits

At a basic level, a store that wants to sell more candy wants to change human behavior. And whether you’re trying to lose weight, become more productive, create art on a more consistent basis, or otherwise build a new habit, you want to change human behavior too. Let’s take a look at what the grocery store did to drive additional purchases of candy bars and talk about how those concepts apply to your life.

First, grocery stores removed the friction that prevented a certain behavior. They realized that people were only buying candy in bulk around the holidays, so they cut down the size of the purchase and sold candy bars one at a time.

You can do the same thing with your habits. What are the points of friction that prevent you from taking a behavior right now? Does the task seem overwhelming (like the equivalent of buying 40 pieces of candy when you only want 1 piece?), then start with a small habit. Examples include: doing 10 pushups per day rather than 50 per day, writing 1 post per week rather than 1 per day, running for 5 minutes rather than 5 miles, and so on. Starting small is valuable because objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

Second, grocery stores created an environment that promoted the new behavior. Retailers recognized that unless the holidays were around the corner, people were unlikely to browse the store and seek out candy bars, so they moved the candy bars to a place where people didn’t have to seek them out: the checkout line.

How can you change your environment, so that you don’t have to seek out your new habits? How can you adjust your kitchen so that you can eat healthy without thinking? How can you shift your workspace so that digital distractions are minimized? How can you create a space that promotes the good behaviors and prevents the bad ones? Surround yourself with better choices and you’ll make better choices.

Third, grocery stores stacked the new behavior at a time when the energy was right for it. As we’ve already covered, you’re more likely to give in and buy the candy bar at the checkout line because decision fatigue has set in. Of course, it’s not just decision fatigue that saps our willpower and motivation. There are a variety of positive and negative daily tasks that drain your brain. Periods of intense focus, frustration, self-control, and confusion are all examples of how you can deplete your mental battery.

When it comes to building better habits, you can deal with this issue in two ways.

You can take active steps to reduce the areas that deplete your willpower. In the words of Kathy Sierra, you have to “manage your cognitive leaks.” This means eliminating distractions and focusing on the essential. It’s much easier to stick with good habits if you subtract the negative influences. Self-control has a cost. Every time you use it, you pay. Make sure you’re paying for the things that matter to you, not the stuff that is useless or provides marginal value to your life.
You can perform your habit a time when your energy is right for it. Stores ask you to buy candy bars when you are most likely to say yes. Similarly, you should ask yourself to perform new habits when you are mostly likely to succeed. Your motivation ebbs and flows throughout the day, so make sure the difficulty of your habit matches your current level of your motivation. Big habits are usually best if attempted early in the day when your motivation and willpower are high (or after a lunch break when you’ve had a chance to eat and rejuvenate).

Your Environment Drives Your Habits

We like to think that we are in control of our behavior. If we buy a candy bar, we assume it is because we wanted a candy bar. The truth, however, is that many of the actions we take each day are simply a response to the environment we find ourselves in. We buy candy bars because the store is designed to get us to buy candy bars.

Similarly, we stick to good habits (or repeat bad habits) because the environments that we live in each day—our kitchens and bedrooms, our offices and workspaces‐are designed to promote these behaviors. Change your environment and your behavior will follow.

P.S. The 2015 Habits Seminar

If you enjoyed this little lesson on sticking to new habits, then you’ll love my live Habits Seminar. Each year, I conduct one live class on the science of behavior change and how to build habits that stick. We’ll talk about what’s working now, what always works, and what to avoid if you want to stick to good habits and break bad ones.

Over 1,000 people attended last year and we’re going to do it even better this time around! There will be a special focus on sharing practical ideas for overcoming the 5 barriers that hold most of us back: 1) Lack of Time and Too Many Commitments, 2) Inconsistency With Taking Action, 3) Procrastination and Laziness, 4) Self-Doubt and Lack of Confidence, and 5) Lack of Focus.

The seminar is going to be on February 18 (audio recording will be available to those who join). Full details are coming next week, but if you already know that you want to sign up, you can learn more and grab early bird tickets here.

February Reading List: 3 Good Books to Read This Month

Welcome to another edition of my reading list.

In addition to the books below, you’re welcome to browse my complete list of the best books I’ve read. As always, I only share books that I’ve actually read and recommend. (I try to avoid sharing books that aren’t worth your time.)

With that said, here’s what I’ve been reading recently.

Into Thin Air

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer

RATING: 5/5

Into Thin Air is the best nonfiction book I’ve read in the last 5 years—possibly ever. The book is a fast-paced account of the disaster that happened on Mount Everest in 1996. The man who wrote it, Jon Krakauer, is a professional writer who also happens to be an accomplished climber. Additionally, Krakauer also happened to be part of the team that was climbing Mount Everest the day of the disaster.

This incredible combination of events is only part of what makes Into Thin Air so great. It is incredibly well-written and remarkably swift for a nonfiction book. In fact, it reads like fiction, which is probably why it’s so popular. It’s just an incredible story all the way around. Highly recommended.

Paperback | Audiobook

A Brief History of Time

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

RATING: 5/5

If you love science even a little bit, then this book will blow your mind. I’ll admit that I like to geek out about space and planets and asteroids and other wonders of science and astronomy. That said, I honestly think everyone should read this book—the first half of it especially. As I was reading it, I felt like I was discovering what our world is actually like for the first time. Many of the things that I was taught in high school and college science classes were finally explained in a way that not only made sense, but also seemed incredibly reasonable.

But the first half of the book is just laying the groundwork for the big reveal at the end where Hawking shares his best theory about how the universe began, how it will end, and what it all means. What makes this book so great, in my opinion, is that it is filled with what I’ll call “deep knowledge.” Hawking doesn’t just tell you surface level facts, he tells you how we understand things to be facts. That level of knowledge is really hard to come by in my experience. Even if someone can tell you a true statement, they don’t always understand why it is a true statement. A Brief History of Time is an amazing book for anyone interested in science, God, space, or the origins of the universe.

Paperback | Audiobook

The Little Prince

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

RATING: 5/5

This book has long been a classic (it is one of the best-selling books of all-time), but I just got around to reading it. The Little Prince is both simultaneously an easy-to-read children’s book and also a deep philosophical book about life. It’s an incredibly short read (it took me about 90 minutes to finish), but each story within the book makes you think through an important part of life. In particular, the book highlights the way our mindset changes as we grow from children to adults and questions whether our hunger for money or power or approval is really worth it.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from The Little Prince:

“All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.”
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

I’ve added The Little Prince to my list of the best fiction books, but I can’t quite decide where to put it. It lacks the depth of other great stories like Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, but it also accomplishes the remarkable feat of sharing many of life’s most important lessons in just a few words. I’ve placed it at number 5 for now. Regardless, it’s a wonderful read.

Paperback | Audiobook

More Book Recommendations

Looking for more good books to read? Browse the full reading list, which lists the best books in each category. Also, I want to thank the many readers who offered suggestions on ways to improve my reading list so that it would be more useful for you all.

Here are a few of the changes we’ve made so far…

Breaking the list of book recommendations into multiple pages rather than one overwhelming. (Thanks for suggesting Drew!)
Adding links to the audiobook version when possible. (Thanks Guennael! More audiobook links coming soon.)
Sharing a few books each month in addition to the entire reading list, hence this post. (Thanks Karim!)

If you have other ideas on how to make these reading suggestions more useful for you, I’m all ears.

P.S. The 2015 Habits Seminar

Each year, I conduct a live Habits Seminar. You can think of it as my annual class on the science of behavior change and how to build habits that stick. We’ll talk about what’s working now, what always works, and what to avoid if you want to stick to good habits and break bad ones.

Over 1,000 people attended last year and we’re going to do it even better this time around! There will be a special focus on sharing practical ideas for overcoming the 5 barriers that hold most of us back: 1) Lack of Time and Too Many Commitments, 2) Inconsistency With Taking Action, 3) Procrastination and Laziness, 4) Self-Doubt and Lack of Confidence, and 5) Lack of Focus.

The seminar is going to be on February 18 (audio recording will be available to those who join). I’ll share full details next week, but if you already know that you want to sign up, you can learn more and grab early bird tickets here.

Vince Lombardi on the Hidden Power of Mastering the Fundamentals

It was July of 1961 and the 38 members of the Green Bay Packers football team were gathered together for the first day of training camp. The previous season had ended with a heartbreaking defeat when the Packers squandered a lead late in the 4th quarter and lost the NFL Championship to the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Green Bay players had been thinking about this brutal loss for the entire off-season and now, finally, training camp had arrived and it was time to get to work. The players were eager to advance their game to the next level and start working on the details that would help them win a championship.

Their coach, Vince Lombardi, had a different idea.

“This is a football.”

In his best-selling book, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life Of Vince Lombardi, author David Maraniss explains what happened when Lombardi walked into training camp in the summer of 1961.

He took nothing for granted. He began a tradition of starting from scratch, assuming that the players were blank slates who carried over no knowledge from the year before… He began with the most elemental statement of all. “Gentlemen,” he said, holding a pigskin in his right hand, “this is a football.”

Lombardi was coaching a group of three dozen professional athletes who, just months prior, had come within minutes of winning the biggest prize their sport could offer. And yet, he started from the very beginning.

Lombardi’s methodical coverage of the fundamentals continued throughout training camp. Each player reviewed how to block and tackle. They opened up the playbook and started from page one. At some point, Max McGee, the Packers’ Pro Bowl wide receiver, joked, “Uh, Coach, could you slow down a little. You’re going too fast for us.” [1] Lombardi reportedly cracked a smile, but continued his obsession with the basics all the same. His team would become the best in the league at the tasks everyone else took for granted.

Six months later, the Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants 37-0 to win the NFL Championship.

Vince Lombardi is carried off the field by his players after defeating the New York Giants 37-0 to win the 1961 NFL Championship. (Image Source: Green Bay Press-Gazette Archive)
Fundamentals First

The 1961 season was the beginning of Vince Lombardi’s reign as one of the greatest football coaches of all-time. He would never lose in the playoffs again. In total, Lombardi won five NFL Championships in a span of seven years, including three in a row. He never coached a team with a losing record.

This pattern of focusing on the basics has been a hallmark of many successful coaches. (For example, basketball legends John Wooden and Phil Jackson were known for having a similar obsession with the fundamentals. Wooden even went so far as to teach his players how to put on their socks and tie their shoes.)

However, it is not just football and basketball where this strategy is useful. Throughout our lives, a focus on the fundamentals is what determines our results.

It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one critical event or one “big break” while simultaneously forgetting about the hidden power that small choices, daily habits, and repeated actions can have on our lives. Without the fundamentals, the details are useless. With the fundamentals, tiny gains can add up to something very significant.

Simple Ideas, Deeply Understood

Nearly every area of life can be boiled down to some core task, some essential component, that must be mastered if you truly want to be good at it.

Fitness: There are plenty of details you can focus on in the gym. Mobility work is great. Analyzing your technique can be important. Optimizing your programming is a good idea if you have the time and energy. However, these training details will never substitute for the one fundamental question that all athletes must answer: Are you stepping under the bar and getting your reps in?

Love: Displays of affection are wonderful. It’s nice to buy your loved ones flowers or to spread joy with presents. Working hard for your family is admirable (and often very necessary). It’s wonderful to upgrade to a larger house or to pay for your children’s school or to otherwise advance to higher standard of living. I’d like to do these things myself. But make no mistake, you can never buy your way around the most essential unit of love: showing up. To be present, this is love.

Web Design: Building a website is like painting on a canvas that never gets full. There is always space to add a new feature. There is never a moment when something couldn’t be optimized or split-tested. But these details can distract us from the only essential thing that websites do: communicate with someone. You don’t need fancy design or the latest software or faster web hosting to communicate with someone. The most basic unit of any website is the written word. You can do a lot with the right words.

Mastery in nearly any endeavor is the result of deeply understanding simple ideas. For most of us, the answer to becoming better leaders, better parents, better lovers, better friends, and better people is consistently practicing the fundamentals, not brilliantly understanding the details.

“This is a football.”

Sources

When Pride Still Mattered: A Life Of Vince Lombardi By David Maraniss. Page 274.

Announcing the Reading List: 100+ Good Books to Read

I’m excited to share a new project with you today! It’s called the reading list and, as you would expect, it’s filled with good books to read.

Our community has grown quickly from a handful of people two years ago to more than 125,000 people today. (Thank you so much for taking the time to read the free newsletter each week! It is an honor to share my work with you.)

As we have grown, I have steadily received more requests to share my reading list with you all. Well, after some work, I have a list of more than 100 reading suggestions divided out by category and topic.

Click here to view the full reading list.

Why Create a Reading List?

Amazon already has every book in the world, right? Why list them here?

There are a few reasons…

First, because many readers asked for it. Whether it is an individual article or this website as a whole, I want to create resources and share ideas that help you live a better life and build habits that stick. Sharing additional reading materials is one way to further that cause and help you continue the slow march toward greatness.
Second, I’m doing it for me. As I have mentioned before, I want to do more proactive reading (seeking out good books) and less reactive reading (clicking the latest social media article). My hope is that categorizing my favorite reads and building a wonderful resource for you will provide some (tiny) pressure and nudge me in the right direction.
Third, context is important for getting good suggestions. If you wanted to browse Amazon or Goodreads for hours, you could find plenty of wonderful books to read. On this site, however, I am acting as a filter. This should be a good thing. If you’re looking for books on habits and psychology, health and strength, creativity and contribution, or any of the other topics I write about each week, then it would make sense that my reading list would be a good place to start.

In addition to my own ratings for many books, the reading list also includes a list of the best-selling books of all-time and the best-selling book series of all-time. I think it’s kind of fun to have these lists to refer back to as well, but as time goes on my ratings and rankings will make up the majority of the list.

Click here to browse the reading list and see what you think.

If you love the idea, we’ll keep it forever! If you think it’s lame … well, it wouldn’t be the first time I missed the mark. Either way, this project is just beginning so if you have feedback on ways to improve (book organization, usability, etc.), I’m all ears.

Happy reading!

P.S. Want to read more books? Here is the strategy I use to read 30+ books per year.

6 Famous Artists Talk About What It’s Like to Overcome Fear and Create Beauty

Long before I was publishing articles for the world to read, I wrote in a private document. I did this for more than a year. There were a variety of reasons and excuses that I used to rationalize why I wasn’t sharing my writing with others, but in many ways it boiled down to fear.

Here’s what I didn’t realize at the time: fear isn’t something that must be avoided. It is not an indicator that you’re doing things wrong. Fear is simply a cost that all artists have to pay on the way to doing meaningful work.

Obviously, not everything that is thought or written or created needs to be shared. In our age, where everyone has a voice and a platform, there is a lot of noise created.

However, if you have a story inside of you, I think you should share it. If you have an idea that you’d like to create, I think you should build it. If you have a dream that would make the world a slightly better place, then I think it’s your responsibility to deliver it to the rest of us. But it won’t be easy. All artists deal with fears, self-doubts, questions, and a roller coaster ride of emotions.

With that in mind, here are six passages from famous authors, actors, and artists on overcoming fear and unleashing your creativity.

Fear Tells Us What We Have to Do

Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates the strength of Resistance. Therefore, the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.

–Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

In the beginning, it is more important to start than it is to succeed. It is only through starting that we reveal the opportunity for growth.

Start Small

What we need to do is say, “What’s the smallest, tiniest thing that I can master and what’s the scariest thing I can do in front of the smallest number of people that can teach me how to dance with the fear?” Once we get good at that, we just realize that it’s not fatal. And it’s not intellectually realize – we’ve lived something that wasn’t fatal. And that idea is what’s so key — because then you can do it a little bit more.

–Seth Godin (full interview)

Mental toughness is a skill and like any skill it can be developed. Learning how to overcome fear is just like building a new habit. Start small and increase slowly.

Run to the Roar

When you are thinking about doing something and it feels scary, when it feels like this big lion is waiting at the finish line and he’s roaring and he’s ferocious and he’s going to tear you apart… you should just run toward that lion anyway. Run to the roar.

–Tina Essmaker (full interview)

It’s not your job to tell yourself no. It’s not your job to reject yourself or grade yourself or debate the value or worthiness of your ideas. Your job is to create. Your job is to share. Your job is to overcome fear and run the race.

Yes, if you build something people might judge it or dislike it. But if you don’t create and share the things that you have inside of you, then you’ll commit the far worse crime of rejecting yourself. You can either be judged because you created something or ignored because you left your greatness inside of you.

Now is as Good a Time as Any

It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There’s almost no such thing as ready. There’s only now. And you may as well do it now. I mean, I say that confidently as if I’m about to go bungee jumping or something — I’m not. I’m not a crazed risk taker. But I do think that, generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.

–Hugh Laurie (source)

It will never feel like the right time. Do not wait for someone to give you permission to begin. Nobody is going to tap you, nominate you, appoint you, or choose you and say, “Now, it’s time to start.”

Give yourself permission. Successful people start before they feel ready.

Artists Endure

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities – I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not – that one endures.

–Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Ultimately, the chance to persevere through self-doubt and fear and procrastination is one of the greatest opportunities we have for self-discovery. It is through creating that we find out who we really are and what we are truly made of.

Live in the arena rather than judging from the crowd. It’s more exciting down there. Whether you win or lose, the fight is the reward.

The Bottom Line

Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished?

Yes; work never begun.

–Christina Rossetti

Contribute to the world around you. Create and share the brilliance that you have inside of you. Life is not meant to spent solely consuming the things that others have made.

Mental Models: How Intelligent People Solve Unsolvable Problems

Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest physicists of all-time. (He was a pretty solid bongo player as well). [1]

Feynman received his undergraduate degree from MIT and his Ph.D. from Princeton. During those years, he became known for waltzing into the math department at each school and solving problems that the brilliant math Ph.D. students couldn’t solve.

Feynman describes why he was able to do this in his fantastic book, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman! (one of my favorite books that I read last year).

One day [my high school physics teacher, Mr. Bader,] told me to stay after class. “Feynman,” he said, “you talk too much and you make too much noise. I know why. You’re bored. So I’m going to give you a book. You go up there in the back, in the corner, and study this book, and when you know everything that’s in this book, you can talk again.”

So every physics class, I paid no attention to what was going on with Pascal’s Law, or whatever they were doing. I was up in the back with this book: Advanced Calculus, by Woods. Bader knew I had studied Calculus for the Practical Man a little bit, so he gave me the real works–it was for a junior or senior course in college. It had Fourier series, Bessel functions, determinants, elliptic functions–all kinds of wonderful stuff that I didn’t know anything about.

That book also showed how to differentiate parameters under the integral sign–it’s a certain operation. It turns out that’s not taught very much in the universities; they don’t emphasize it. But I caught on how to use that method, and I used that one damn tool again and again. So because I was self-taught using that book, I had peculiar methods of doing integrals.

The result was, when the guys at MIT or Princeton had trouble doing a certain integral, it was because they couldn’t do it with the standard methods they had learned in school. If it was a contour integration, they would have found it; if it was a simple series expansion, they would have found it. Then I come along and try differentiating under the integral sign, and often it worked. So I got a great reputation for doing integrals, only because my box of tools was different from everybody else’s, and they had tried all their tools on it before giving the problem to me.

–Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman! [2]

Richard Feynman (Image Source: California Institute of Technology)
Mental Models

Point of View is worth 80 IQ points.

–Alan Kay

A mental model is a way of looking at the world.

Put simply, mental models are the set of tools that you use to think. Each mental model offers a different framework that you can use to look at life (or at an individual problem). Feynman’s strategy of differentiating under the integral sign was a unique mental model that he could pull out of his intellectual toolbox and use to solve difficult problems that eluded his peers. Feynman wasn’t necessarily smarter than the math Ph.D. students, he just saw the problem from a different perspective.

I have written about mental models before. For example, you can use the Inversion Technique to view situations in a different way and solve difficult problems.

Where mental models really shine, however, is when you develop multiple ways of looking at the same problem. For example, let’s say that you’d like to avoid procrastination and have a productive day. If you understand the 2-Minute Rule, the Eisenhower Box, and Warren Buffett’s 25-5 Rule, then you have a range of options for determining your priorities and getting something important done.

There is no one best way to manage your schedule and get something done. When you have a variety of mental models at your disposal, you can pick the one that works best for your current situation.

The Law of the Instrument

In Abraham Kaplan’s book, The Conduct of Inquiry, he explains a concept called The Law of the Instrument.

Kaplan says, “I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.” [3]

Kaplan’s law is similar to a common proverb you have likely heard before: “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” If you only have one framework for thinking about the world, then you’ll try to fit every problem you face into that framework. When your set of mental models is limited, so is your potential for finding a solution.

Interestingly, this problem can become more pronounced as your expertise in a particular area grows. If you’re quite smart and talented in one area, you have a tendency to believe that your skill set is the answer to most problems you face. The more you master a single mental model, the more likely it becomes that this mental model will be your downfall because you’ll start applying it indiscriminately to every problem. Smart people can easily develop a confirmation bias that leaves them stumped in difficult situations.

However, if you develop a bigger toolbox of mental models, you’ll improve your ability to solve problems because you’ll have more options for getting to the right answer. This is one of the primary ways that truly brilliant people separate themselves from the masses of smart individuals out there. Brilliant people like Richard Feynman have more mental models at their disposal.

This is why having a wide range of mental models is important. You can only choose the best tool for the situation if you have a full toolbox.

How to Develop New Mental Models

In my experience, there are two good ways to build new mental models.

1. Read books outside the norm. If you read the same material as everyone else, then you’ll think in the same way as everyone else. You can’t expect to see problems in a new way if you’re reading all the same things as your classmates, co-workers, or peers. So, either read books that are seldom read by the rest of your group (like Feynman did with his Calculus book) or read books that are outside your area of interest, but can overlap with it in some way. In other words, look for answers in unexpected places. [4]

2. Create a web of ideas that shows how seemingly unrelated ideas connect. Whenever you are reading a new book or listening to someone lecture, write down the various ways that this new information connects to information you already understand. We tend to view knowledge as separated into different silos. We think that a certain set of ideas have to do with economics and another set have to do with medicine and a third set have to do with art history. This is mostly a product of how schools teach subjects, but in the real world information is not separated like this.

For example, I was watching a documentary the other day that connected the design of the Great Pyramids in Egypt with the fighting rituals of animals. According to the historians on the show, when animals are battling one another they will often rise up on their back feet to increase their height and show their dominance. Similarly, when a new Pharaoh took power in Egypt, he wanted to assert his dominance over the culture and so he built very tall structures as a symbol of power. This explanation links seemingly unrelated areas (architecture, ancient history, and animal behavior) in a way that results in a deeper understanding of the topic.

In a similar way, mental models from outside areas can reveal a deeper level of understanding about issues in your primary field of interest.

Don’t try to tighten a screw with a hammer. The problems of life and work are much easier to solve when you have the right tools.

Sources

Feynman was famously eccentric and varied in his hobbies. Among other things, he played the bongos, spent years as an artist drawing nude models, and cracked a safe with top secret information about the atomic bomb inside.
Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman. Pages 86-87.
The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science by Abraham Kaplan. Page 28.
This isn’t to say that you should avoid reading the books your peers are reading. You should probably read those too, so that you have the same baseline of knowledge.

Thanks to Shane Parrish for sending me down the rabbit hole of mental models.

Joseph Brodsky Explains Perfectly How to Deal With Critics and Detractors in Your Life

In 1962, a young man named Joseph met a woman named Marina.

They lived in Russia together. They shared a passion for art. He wrote poetry. She created paintings. They fell in love and had a child together.

It was shaping up to be a good life until one day in 1972, the Soviet officials came knocking at the door. They stormed Joseph’s apartment, took him captive, tossed him on a plane to Vienna, and informed him that he was exiled from the Soviet Union.

He never saw Marina again.

Anti-Soviet

Joseph was Joseph Brodsky, the famous poet. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987. His poetry, mostly written in Russian, was received favorably by pretty much everyone except the Soviet government. They claimed Brodsky’s writing was “anti-Soviet” and over the course of a decade he was slandered in the papers, pushed out of his job, and eventually exiled from the country.

Thanks to the help of some fellow poets, Brodsky was able to find refuge in the United States and soon he had teaching positions at Yale, Cambridge, and the University of Michigan. In 1991, nineteen years after being exiled from the Soviet Union (and what must have seemed like an entirely different lifetime), Brodsky was appointed the United States Poet Laureate.

How to Deal with Your Critics and Detractors

In 1988, Brodsky delivered the commencement speech to students at the University of Michigan. The full speech is shared in Brodsky’s book, On Grief and Reason: Essays. I think it shares a beautiful strategy and method for dealing with the critics, detractors, and negative influences in your life.

“Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those — in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed. Suffer them if you can’t escape them, but once you have steered clear of them, give them the shortest shrift possible. Above all, try to avoid telling stories about the unjust treatment you received at their hands; avoid it no matter how receptive your audience may be. Tales of this sort extend the existence of your antagonists; most likely they are counting on your being talkative and relating your experience to others. By himself, no individual is worth an exercise in injustice (or for that matter, in justice). The ratio of one-to-one doesn’t justify the effort: it’s the echo that counts. That’s the main principle of any oppressor, whether state-sponsored or autodidact. Therefore, steal, or still, the echo, so that you don’t allow an event, however unpleasant or momentous, to claim any more time than it took for it to occur.

What your foes do derives its significance or consequence from the way you react. Therefore, rush through or past them as though they were yellow and not red lights. Don’t linger on them mentally or verbally; don’t pride yourself on forgiving or forgetting them — worse come to worse, do the forgetting first. This way you’ll spare your brain cells a lot of useless agitation; this way, perhaps, you may even save those pigheads from themselves, since the prospect of being forgotten is shorter than that of being forgiven. So flip the channel: you can’t put this network out of circulation, but at least you can reduce its ratings. Now, this solution is not likely to please angels, but, then again, it’s bound to hurt demons, and for the moment that’s all that really matters.”

–Joseph Brodsky, On Grief and Reason: Essays

“It’s the echo that counts”

The impact of negativity is magnified when we talk about it, no matter what we say. We breathe life into poor decisions, bad ideas, and evil people by discussing them over and over again. You wouldn’t want to waste all of your meals on junk food. Why waste your thoughts on junk ideas and your energy on junk people?

The best thing that can happen to bad advice is that it becomes irrelevant, ignored, and forgotten. In the words of Brodsky, “it’s the echo that counts.” Negativity doesn’t deserve a louder voice. Spend your time echoing something worth hearing.

Thanks to Maria Popova of Brain Pickings for originally sharing Brodsky’s quote.