Elastic Habits: How to Create Smarter Habits That Adapt to Your Day

by Stephen Guise

Doing nothing is somehow the most stressful lifestyle.

With the freedom to shift habits up, down, or even sideways, winning streaks can extend for years, and you can make the most out of any situation.

Instead, we can encourage all progress and eliminate shame, which only weakens the self and one’s sense of freedom.

You need to like and respect what you’re doing (and all it entails) if you want to keep doing it for weeks, months, and years.

You’ll quit anything that resembles bondage, as you should.

Self-discipline is freedom, and if cultivated correctly, it will feel that way too.

Action birthed from freedom is more powerful and effective than action birthed from brute force.

Freedom is the only path worth considering, because if freedom is innately more important to us than nearly anything else, we can’t afford to sacrifice it for the sake of our goals.

Freedom is like a table saw. You can make a nice cabinet with it, but you can also cut your finger off. Skill and strategy determine whether you add a cabinet or subtract a finger.

Because freedom is powerful, it must be paired with practice.

Freedom gives us the power, and practice gives us the skill.

Don’t make a cheeseburger the symbol of freedom if you want to lose weight.

Flexibility opens your eyes to opportunities.

If you have flexibility in your arsenal from the start, you will gain a wider field of vision to better anticipate incoming threats and opportunities in your life.

Flexibility lets you allocate resources more efficiently and boosts your sense of freedom.

Flexibility is the most powerful form of resilience against whatever threatens your progress, making it a primary source of strength.

Mini habits are exceptionally small behaviors done every day to form habits over time.

To prioritize consistency means to set your marks low enough that you won’t ever miss.

Willpower is a conscious decision to act despite not being motivated to act.

Small wins offer the power of ultimate attainability.

Attainability will decrease as we increase the size of the goal, but will another source of motivation increase to make up for it?

When you’re having a down day, you’re going to climb into the arms of attainability.

When you’re frustrated with mediocrity, you’re going to respond by fighting hard for a large and valuable win.

When you’re somewhere in between, you’re going to take the middle ground and be than...

Having three vertical options effectively triples your motivation by opening it up to the full spectr...

Price anchoring happens when someone puts a large price (or value) on something, even if they don’t plan to sell it for that much.

Having an elastic habit feels like a super power because of how effortlessly it pushes you forward.

Some habits don’t work well with lateral flexibility or don’t need it.

When you’re at a low point, forward motion in small amounts can feel (and is) meaningful.

She continues this sprinting and resting pattern for some time.

Tracking your habits is the most important part of habit formation.

A smart system considers solutions for all possible situations.

Elastic habits feature real-world environment integration.

There are a lot of problems we encounter when pursuing goals and habits; most of them are internal.

We make excuses, we want perfect action (and do nothing as a result), we get sick of following the same boring goals that we set months ago, we procrastinate and postpone our dreams, we lose motivation, and so on.

Good design facilitates the fixing of problems; great design solves problems before they happen.

With lateral flexibility, you can still pursue guitar every day by studying music theory as your fingers recover.

If it’s a rest day, you can go for a walk or a light swim to meet your requirement.

You can pivot your activity on any day and keep your winning streak alive.

My three elastic habits are reading, writing, and exercise.

Not all habits will be doable outside of the home, but many can be adapted in some way.

Elastic habits will open your eyes to new opportunities in more places and situations.

With a flexible strategy, you’ll find ways to get that daily win when circumstances are less than ideal.

An elastic habit can expand and contract, from spectacular highs to moderate middles to very easy lows.

Transforming your brain and behavior for the better is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

You can watch someone succeed, but just because you’ve seen their tactics does not mean that you can replicate their success.

Ultimately, he gave up his queen in exchange for several pieces that were less valuable individually but more valuable collectively.

All tactics are bound by context, which is why those who copy tactics will have wildly different results.