More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
July 6 - August 4, 2019
What we do every day matters more than what we do once in a while. Make it easy to do right and hard to go wrong. Focus on actions, not outcomes. By giving something up, we may gain. Things often get harder before they get easier. When we give more to ourselves, we can ask more from ourselves. We’re not very different from other people, but those differences are very important. It’s easier to change our surroundings than ourselves.
We can’t make people change, but when we change, others may change. We should make sure the things we do to feel better don’t make us feel worse. We manage what we monitor. Once we’re ready to begin, begin now.
“that people with strong self-control spent less time resisting desires than other people did.… people with good self-control mainly use it not for rescue in emergencies but rather to develop effective habits and routines in school and at work.” In other words, habits eliminate the need for self-control.
Habits make change possible by freeing us from decision making and from using self-control.
Behavior that Obligers sometimes attribute to self-sacrifice—“Why do I always make time for other people’s priorities at the expense of my own priorities?”—is often
The weight of outer expectations can make Obligers susceptible to burnout, because they have trouble telling people “no.”
Obligers may find it difficult to form a habit, because often we undertake habits for our own benefit, and Obligers do things more easily for others than for themselves. For them, the key is external accountability.
Knowing our Tendency can help us frame habits in a compelling way. I exercise regularly because it’s on my to-do list; a Questioner rattles off the health benefits of exercise; an Obliger takes a weekly bike ride with a partner; and when my Rebel friend Leslie Fandrich wrote about how she started running, she emphasized Rebel values of freedom and desire: “Running seems like the most efficient and independent way to get myself back into shape … I can go when it suits my schedule without having to pay for a gym membership. I also love getting outside for some fresh air and it’s a great way to
...more
The happiest and most successful people are those who have figured out ways to exploit their Tendency to their benefit and, just as important, found ways to counterbalance its limitations.
The habit of the habit is even more valuable than the habit itself;
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.
A key step for the Strategy of Monitoring is to identify precisely what action is monitored. Specific habits such as “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. I
A friend once told me, “I cleaned out my fridge, and now I feel like I can switch careers.” I knew exactly what she meant.
For most people, whenever possible, important habits should be scheduled for the morning. Mornings tend to unfold in a predictable way, and as the day goes on, more complications arise—whether real or invented—
Consistency, repetition, no decision—this was the way to develop the ease of a true habit.
the habit of the habit is more important than the habit itself.
to keep those habits every single day. Mostly was good enough to keep those habits strong, and to accomplish
Counterintuitively, I often find it harder to make myself do something that I enjoy than something that I don’t enjoy. And I’m not alone. A reader posted: “My ‘thing’ is song-writing on the piano. But a lot of days, I will do everything else before I sit down to compose.”
The mere presence of a mirror—which allows people literally to watch over themselves—makes people more likely to resist bullying, to argue their own opinions, to work harder at tasks, and to resist temptation.
The key, as always, is to use self-knowledge and to consider our own nature
One flashy kind of commitment device is the “nuclear option.” A friend who enjoys experimenting with strategies of personal productivity used this approach to quit drinking for sixty days. He gave his assistant a stamped, addressed envelope with a check he’d written to an “anti-charity,” an organization whose policies he passionately opposes, with the instruction to mail the check if he had a drink before the time was up.
Many Obligers feel a powerful sense of obligation to be good role models.
“If I’m asked to do something—give a speech, attend an event—I always imagine that it’s happening next week. It’s too easy to agree to do something that’s six months off, then the time comes, and I’m sorry I agreed to do it.”
Adults help children to manage transition—by giving them bedtime routines, cleanup reminders, and warnings of “Five more minutes!”—but we adults often expect ourselves to careen effortlessly from one activity to the next. I’m in the habit of writing a blog post every day, yet every day I have to gear up to start. Running activities too closely together makes me feel harried and irritable, and habits of transition help me to switch gears more calmly.
The fact is, while some habits are almost unbreakable, some habits remain fragile, even after years. We must guard against anything that might weaken a valuable habit. Every added link in the chain strengthens the habit—and any break in the chain marks a potential stopping point.
Something that can be done at any time often happens at no time, and waiting vaguely for the right time to start again is very risky. (Starting tomorrow usually sounds like a good plan.) But the more tomorrows go by, the more intimidating it becomes to take that first step back.
Because habit formation often requires us to relinquish something we want, a constant challenge is: How can I deprive myself of something without feeling deprived? When it comes to habits, feeling deprived is a pernicious state. When we feel deprived, we feel entitled to compensate ourselves—often, in ways that undermine our good habits.
when I deprive myself altogether, I feel as though I haven’t deprived myself at all. When we Abstainers deprive ourselves totally, we conserve energy and willpower, because there are no decisions to make and no self-control to muster.
“Abstainers” do better when they follow all-or-nothing habits. “Moderators,” by contrast, are people who do better when they indulge moderately.
“Much easier to say no to something once and be done with the whole issue than to go back and forth endlessly.
Self-knowledge will enable us to use the approach that works for us—which may also mean ignoring the advice of people who insist that their way is the right way.
“I can’t give myself a negative,” she told me. “I have to make this a positive thing. So I tell myself, ‘Now I’m free from French fries.’ ” “ ‘Free from French fries!’ Exactly!” I said. “Free from decisions, free from guilt! Free from the breadbasket and the candy bowl.”
Everyone knows that it’s healthier to take the stairs than the elevator or escalator, but most people don’t bother. However, when a subway station in Sweden transformed its stairs into a piano keyboard that actually played notes as people walked on it, 66 percent more people took the musical stairs. When the Schiphol Airport put the image of a housefly above the drains of urinals, men began to aim at it—a change that reduced spillage rates by 80 percent. “Gamification” is used in the design of devices and apps to help people improve their habits. Doing something a few times for fun isn’t
...more
The irony of “convenience foods” is that for the most part, they’re exactly the foods that we should make less convenient. As author Michael Pollan advises, “Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.”
If-then planning is one of the most important tools within Safeguards, because it arms us to face any high-risk situation with a carefully considered plan. We can be prepared for the times when we go on vacation, travel, have a new baby, get a new job, move, go to a holiday party … the list goes on. Once we’ve put the effort into making an if-then plan, it takes much less energy to put it into operation.
I’d need a lot of self-control to develop the habits to limit my Internet usage when I’m at home—but at the library, the Internet never tempts me. Why waste self-control energy unnecessarily? It’s easier to change my surroundings than to change myself.
As explored by writers such as Alfie Kohn in Punished by Rewards and Daniel Pink in Drive, rewards have very complex consequences.
This well-documented—but too often ignored—consequence of rewards relates to the difference between outer and inner motivation.
We’re extrinsically motivated when we do an activity to get an external reward (a carrot) or to avoid an external punishment (a stick); we’re intrinsically motivated when we pursue an activity for its own sake. Drawing on intrinsic motivation makes us far more likely to stick to a behavior, and to find it satisfying.
People who are around Obligers can help ward off Obliger burnout, and Obliger rebellion, by encouraging them to treat themselves (healthfully) and by providing external accountability to make sure they follow through. “You said you wanted to take a nap, and you’ll be irritable if you don’t. Go lie down. We won’t expect to see you for an hour.”
Two kinds of clarity support habit formation: clarity of values and clarity of action. The clearer I am about what I value, and what action I expect from myself—not what other people value, or expect from me—the more likely I am to stick to my habits.
Research suggests that when we have conflicting goals, we don’t manage ourselves well. We become anxious and paralyzed, and we often end up doing nothing.
When we push ourselves to get clarity, when we identify the problem, sometimes we spot new solutions. I
I can’t make people change, but when I change, others may change; and when others change, I may change.
One partner’s health behaviors—habits related to sleep, eating, exercise, doctor visits, use of alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana—influence those behaviors in a partner. If one partner has type 2 diabetes, the other partner
Because we’re quite susceptible to “goal contagion,” we may rapidly pick up someone else’s habits, so it’s helpful to be around people who are good role models. Other people can have a tremendous influence. In fact, I’ve found that I’m more likely to be persuaded by seeing one person’s successful action than by the most impressive research.
“When I think about what sort of person I would most like to have on a retainer, I think it would be a boss. A boss who could tell me what to do, because that makes everything easy when you’re working.”
The most important thing I’d learned during my study of how we change our habits? We can build our habits only on the foundation of our own nature.
On the other hand, the less we do, the less we feel like doing.
