The beauty of good habits is that, like defaults that you can “set and forget,” they take advantage of our inherent laziness.* Once honed, habits put good behaviors on autopilot so we engage in them without even thinking about it. In fact, in a fascinating series of six studies conducted with children and adults, psychologists Brian Galla and Angela Duckworth proved that positive habits are key to what we often mislabel “self-control.” Those around us who seem to have tremendous willpower—people who run three miles every morning, are focused at work, hit the books hardest at school, and
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