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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Time magnifies the
margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.
The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision.
Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
In the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh, “The score takes care of itself.” The
same is true for other areas of life. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.
More precisely, your habits are how you embody your identity.
Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.
The focus should always be on becoming that type of person, not getting a particular outcome.
Every action is a vote
When you binge-eat or light up or browse social media, what you really want is not a potato chip or a cigarette or a bunch of likes. What you really want is to feel different.
habits form based on frequency, not time.
Stories like these are evidence of the Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided.
of behavior change—make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time. It completes the habit loop.
The French economist Frédéric Bastiat explained the problem clearly when he wrote, “It almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. . . . Often, the sweeter the first fruit of a habit, the more bitter are its later fruits.”
Put another way, the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.
The vital thing in getting a habit to stick is to feel successful—even if it’s in a small way. The
The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.
What went well this year? What didn’t go so well this year? What did I learn?
My yearly Integrity Report answers three questions: What are the core
values that drive my life and work? How am I living and working with integrity right now? How can I set a higher standard in the future?
Make it obvious. Make it attractive. Make it easy. Make it satisfying. Round and round. Always looking for the next way to get 1 percent better.
