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Started reading
September 1, 2024
If you want to mimic someone, look beyond their tactics (what they do) and into their strategy (why they do what they do in those specific contexts).
Actual strategies involve analyzing your strengths and weaknesses, looking at potential obstacles and opportunities (your environment), and devising a plan that gives you the greatest chance of success within common and uncommon contexts.
A great strategy will consistently put you in advantageous situations and leverage your effort.
Most strategies out there are so bad that they only work when you’re at your best.
War is an apt metaphor for many aspects of life. We battle against ourselves to do the right things. We battle against circumstances that stand in our way. We battle against limitations of time, energy, and resources.
He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.
Elastic habits allow you to alter the application, terrain, and intensity of your habit, depending on your current situation.
Just as every part of an army unites to make the whole stronger, each level of success you can attain with an elastic habit contributes to your ability to do more of the things that matter to you (and make them into habits).
Be patient as you pursue change.
Be patient and accept the victories you can get right now.
For a general to succeed in military operations, he needs the freedom to make decisions based on real-time conditions.
The sovereign could be seen as the typical goal or program that tells you exactly what to do at all times.
Some days are about not losing. Others are about winning.
There is great value in both stability and flexibility, but the greatest value comes from combining them.
Stability gives structure and control. Flexibility gives options and maneuverability. We need both!
The hip’s stability allows us to stand without using significant muscle contraction, saving us energy.
Unlike the human body, in goal systems, it’s rigidity that costs us energy.
Rigidity (or stability) means that you must adapt to your goal, requiring more effort from you for success.
Flexibility means that your goal adapts to you, requiring less effort...
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Flexible goals take much less energy because they always fit your life.
It’s good to have more than one win condition.
Tracking both validates your success and excites you for the higher tier levels.
With all choices, especially trivial ones, it’s best to reduce the number of options as quickly and efficiently as possible.
It’s rarely about choosing the very best one. It’s about choosing a good or very good one and being happy with it.
There’s always something better out there, but good doesn’t become bad in the presence of great.
Scientific studies have shown that making decisions wears us down to a certain extent. This makes sense, since we use brain power to make choices.
It takes an enormous amount of mental energy to do something that you know doesn’t fit today’s agenda or at least not at its current capacity.
Resentment of static goals builds over time because they demand the same thing from you regardless of your situation.
Every time you force action that doesn’t make sense for your situation, you’ll wonder if your goal is right for you.
Even if your goal is designed to have built-in, flexible skip days, having only one measure of victory creates an all-or-nothing situation, leaves progress on the table, kills habit formation, and makes losing streaks likely if not inevitable.
When you’re forced to improvise with a static goal that is designed for predictability, disaster is inevitable.
Every decision carries an energy cost. The cost is determined by how difficult the decision is.
When your goal is rigid, the assumed decision to do the behavior can wind up being more difficult than the decision you make with a flexible goal.
Choice paralysis is caused by triviality and unrestrained choices.
Elastic habit choices are not trivial.
Elastic habits introduce choice into an area that desperately needs it.
We’re all familiar with small, medium, and large sizes, and so we can quickly parse those options and what they mean in relation to each other.
Elastic habits are a beacon of flexibility and freedom in a dark world full of rigid and brittle goals.
In casinos, the house always wins and you’re guaranteed to lose money in the long term.
Casinos utilize variability of result to keep people’s interest.
If you’re to pick something to get addicted to because of variable results, healthy habits are your best choice.
Goals such as exercise are generally too vague to be actionable.
Because your elastic habits start broadly before narrowing to specific applications, you can see the bigger picture and its components.
Use the broadest terms possible to cover multiple specific applications.
If your habit is attached to something you care about, you’ll want to do it.
Any behaviors derived from your values are prime candidates for your elastic habits.
Just because there are multiple possible behaviors for a habit does not mean you need to utilize them all.
In the case of journaling, you can review previous entries.
In our daily lives, we are likely to round out precise numbers in order to process their meaning.
