"“Everybody already knows that” is very different from “Everybody already does that.” Just because a solution is known doesn’t mean it is utilized."

"just because a solution is implemented occasionally, doesn't mean it is implemented consistently."

"Mastering the fundamentals isn’t sexy, but it works. No matter what task you are working on, there is a simple checklist of steps that you can follow right now—basic fundamentals that you have known about for years—that can immediately yield results if you just practice them more consistently."

"Progress often hides behind boring solutions and underused insights. You don’t need more information. You don’t need a better strategy. You just need to do more of what already works."

"What most people forget, however, is that Newton worked on his ideas about gravity for nearly twenty years until, in 1687, he published his groundbreaking book, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy."

"Creative thinking requires our brains to make connections between seemingly unrelated ideas."

"one study of 272,599 students found that although IQ scores have risen since 1990, creative thinking scores have decreased."

"According to psychology professor Barbara Kerr, “approximately 22 percent of the variance [in creativity] is due to the influence of genes.”"

"being in the top 1 percent of intelligence has no correlation with being fantastically creative. Instead, you simply have to be smart (not a genius) and then work hard, practice deliberately and put in your reps."

"In the words of researchers from a 2013 study, “we obtained evidence that once the intelligence threshold is met, personality factors become more predictive for creativity.”"

"your creative skills are largely determined by whether you approach the creative process with a fixed mindset or a growth mindset."

"People who are praised for talent now worry about doing the next thing, about taking on the hard task, and not looking talented, tarnishing that reputation for brilliance. So instead, they’ll stick to their comfort zone and get really defensive when they hit setbacks."

"what should we praise? The effort, the strategies, the doggedness and persistence, the grit people show, the resilience that they show in the face of obstacles, that bouncing back when things go wrong and knowing what to try next. So I think a huge part of promoting a growth mindset in the workplace is to convey those values of process, to give feedback, to reward people engaging in the process, and not just a successful outcome."

"Constrain yourself. Carefully designed constraints are one of your best tools for sparking creative thinking."

"By producing a volume of work, I created a larger surface area for a creative spark to hit me."

"Broaden your knowledge. One of my most successful creative strategies is to force myself to write about seemingly disparate topics and ideas."

"psychologist Robert Epstein, “You'll do better in psychology and life if you broaden your knowledge.”"

"Sleep debt is cumulative and if you get 6 hours of sleep per night for two weeks straight, your mental and physical performance declines to the same level as if you had stayed awake for 48 hours straight. Like all cognitive functions, creative thinking is significantly impaired by sleep deprivation."

"spending time in nature and increasing your exposure to sunlight can lead to higher levels of creativity."

"Positive psychology research has revealed that we tend to think more broadly when we are happy. This concept, which is known as the Broaden and Build Theory, makes it easier for us to make creative connections between ideas. Conversely, sadness and depression seems to lead to more restrictive and limited thinking"

"creativity is just hard work. The single best thing you can do is choose a pace you can sustain and ship content on a consistent basis. Commit to the process and create on a schedule. The only way creativity becomes a reality is by shipping."

"Creativity is a process, not an event. It's not just a eureka moment. You have to work through mental barriers and internal blocks. You have to commit to practicing your craft deliberately. And you have to stick with the process for years, perhaps even decades like Newton did, in order to see your creative genius blossom."

"According to Young, innovative ideas happen when you develop new combinations of old elements. In other words, creative thinking is not about generating something new from a blank slate, but rather about taking what is already present and combining those bits and pieces in a way that has not been done previously."

"the ability to generate new combinations hinges upon your ability to see the relationships between concepts. If you can form a new link between two old ideas, you have done something creative."

"Gather new material. At first, you learn. During this stage you focus on 1) learning specific material directly related to your task and 2) learning general material by becoming fascinated with a wide range of concepts."

"Thoroughly work over the materials in your mind. During this stage, you examine what you have learned by looking at the facts from different angles and experimenting with fitting various ideas together."

"Step away from the problem."

"Let your idea return to you. At some point, but only after you have stopped thinking about it, your idea will come back to you with a flash of insight and renewed energy."

"Shape and develop your idea based on feedback. For any idea to succeed, you must release it out into the world, submit it to criticism, and adapt it as needed."

"“An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.” —Robert Frost"

"1) gathering material, 2) intensely working over the material in your mind, 3) stepping away from the problem, 4) allowing the idea to come back to you naturally, and 5) testing your idea in the real world and adjusting it based on feedback."

"In order to believe in a new identity, we have to prove it to ourselves."

"The key to building lasting habits is focusing on creating a new identity first. Your current behaviors are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously)."

"To change your behavior for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself."

"There are three layers of behavior change: a change in your outcomes, a change in your processes, or a change in your identity."

"Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe."

"Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits."

"Ask yourself, “Who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want?”"

"Changing your beliefs isn’t nearly as hard as you might think. There are two steps. 1. Decide the type of person you want to be. 2. Prove it to yourself with small wins."

"when you want to become better at something, proving your identity to yourself is far more important than getting amazing results."

"You can't rely on being motivated. You have to become the type of person you want to be, and that starts with proving your new identity to yourself."

"If you're looking to make a change, then I say stop worrying about results and start worrying about your identity."

"ultimate productivity hack is saying no."

"Do whatever favors you can, and be warm-hearted and direct when you have to say no."

"When you say no, you are only saying no to one option. When you say yes, you are saying no to every other option."

"the economist Tim Harford put it, “Every time we say yes to a request, we are also saying no to anything else we might accomplish with the time.”"

"No is a decision. Yes is a responsibility."

"Saying no is an important skill to develop at any stage of your career because it retains the most important asset in life: your time. As the investor Pedro Sorrentino put it, “If you don’t guard your time, people will steal it from you.”"

"Steve Jobs, who said, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”"

"You may have to try many things to discover what works and what you enjoy. This period of exploration can be particularly important at the beginning of a project, job, or career."

"Upgrading your no doesn't mean you'll never say yes. It just means you default to saying no and only say yes when it really makes sense."

"If an opportunity is exciting enough to drop whatever you're doing right now, then it's a yes. If it's not, then perhaps you should think twice."

"This is similar to the well-known “Hell Yeah or No” method from Derek Sivers."

"What is true about health is also true about productivity: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

"More effort is wasted doing things that don't matter than is wasted doing things inefficiently. And if that is the case, elimination is a more useful skill than optimization."

"Peter Drucker quote, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”"

"Pareto noticed that a tiny number of pea pods in his garden produced the majority of the peas."

"approximately 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by just 20 percent of the people. Similar to the pea pods in his garden, most of the resources were controlled by a minority of the players."

"The majority of rewards always seemed to accrue to a small percentage of people. This idea that a small number of things account for the majority of the results became known as the Pareto Principle or, more commonly, the 80/20 Rule."

"In the 1950s, three percent of Guatemalans owned 70 percent of the land in Guatemala. In 2013, 8.4 percent of the world population controlled 83.3 percent of the world's wealth. In 2015, one search engine, Google, received 64 percent of search queries."

"Imagine two plants growing side by side. Each day they will compete for sunlight and soil. If one plant can grow just a little bit faster than the other, then it can stretch taller, catch more sunlight, and soak up more rain."

"Situations in which small differences in performance lead to outsized rewards are known as Winner-Take-All Effects."

"Any decision that involves using a limited resource like time or money will naturally result in a winner-take-all situation."

"The advantage of being a little bit better is not a little bit more reward, but the entire reward. The winner gets one and the rest get zero."

"The margin between good and great is narrower than it seems. What begins as a slight edge over the competition compounds with each additional contest."

"as The Matthew Effect, which references a passage in The Bible that says, “For all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”"

"The 1 Percent Rule states that over time the majority of the rewards in a given field will accumulate to the people, teams, and organizations that maintain a 1 percent advantage over the alternatives."

"Efficiency is about getting more things done. Effectiveness is about getting the right things done."

"“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”"

"making progress is not just about being productive. It's about being productive on the right things."

"When applied to your life and work, the 80/20 Rule can help you separate “the vital few from the trivial many.”"

"The 80/20 Rule is like a form of judo for life and work. By finding precisely the right area to apply pressure, you can get more results with less effort."

"the downside of the 80/20 Rule: A new path will never look like the most effective option in the beginning."

"The 80/20 Rule is calculated and determined by your recent effectiveness."

"The downside of being effective is that you often optimize for your past rather than for your future."

"That’s when Tu volunteered to be the first human subject to try the medication. In one of the boldest moves in the history of medical science, she and two other members of Project 523 infected themselves with malaria and received the first doses of their new drug."

"Today, the artemisinin treatment has been administered over 1 billion times to malaria patients. It is believed to have saved millions of lives. Tu Youyou is the first female Chinese citizen to receive a Nobel Prize, and the first Chinese person to receive the Lasker Award for major contributions to medical science."

"she has no postgraduate degree, no research experience abroad, and no membership in any of the Chinese national academies—a feat that has earned her the nickname “The Professor of the Three No's”."

"damn was she a hard worker. Persistent. Diligent. Driven. For decades she didn't give up and she helped save millions of lives as a result. Her story is a brilliant example of how important hard work can be in achieving success."

"Luck matters more in an absolute sense and hard work matters more in a relative sense."

"As a general rule, the wilder the success, the more extreme and unlikely the circumstances that caused it."

"The more local the comparison becomes, the more success is determined by hard work. When you compare yourself to those who have experienced similar levels of luck, the difference is in your habits and choices."

"As outcomes become more extreme, the role of luck increases."

"As Nassim Taleb wrote in Fooled by Randomness, “Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.”"

"You can only control the slope of your success, not your initial position."

"In Atomic Habits, I wrote, “It doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful you are right now. What matters is whether your habits are putting you on the path toward success. You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.”"

"“The more time passes from the start of a race, the less the head-start others got matters.”"

"In fact, one study found that, if success is measured by wealth, then the most successful people are almost certainly those with moderate talent and remarkable luck."

"At some point, good luck requires hard work if success is to be sustained."

"the mathematician and computer engineer Richard Hamming summarized what it takes to do great work by saying, “There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn't. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not.”"

"the person who works hard, pursues opportunity, and tries more things is more likely to stumble across a lucky break than the person who waits."

"“The harder I practice, the luckier I get.”"

"A good book can give you a new way to interpret your past experiences."

"As Patrick O'Shaughnessy says, “Reading changes the past.”"

"Knowledge will only compound if it is retained. In other words, what matters is not simply reading more books, but getting more out of each book you read."

"Patrick Collison, the founder of Stripe, put it nicely when he said, “Life is too short to not read the very best book you know of right now.”"

"Start more books. Quit most of them. Read the great ones twice."

"One way to improve reading comprehension is to choose books you can immediately apply. Putting the ideas you read into action is one of the best ways to secure them in your mind. Practice is a very effective form of learning."

"Keep notes on what you read. You can do this however you like. It doesn't need to be a big production or a complicated system. Just do something to emphasize the important points and passages."

"store your notes in a searchable format."

"I prefer Evernote over other options because 1) it is instantly searchable, 2) it is easy to use across multiple devices, and 3) you can create and save notes even when you're not connected to the internet."

"Ebook: I highlight passages on my Kindle Paperwhite and use a program called Clippings to export all of my Kindle highlights directly into Evernote. Then, I add a summary of the book and any additional thoughts before posting it to my book summaries page."

"Keeping searchable notes is essential for returning to ideas easily. An idea is only useful if you can find it when you need it."

"You can learn more and improve reading comprehension by “linking branches” and integrating your current book with other knowledge trees."

"As Charlie Munger says, “If you get into the mental habit of relating what you’re reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom.”"

"As soon as I finish a book, I challenge myself to summarize the entire text in just three sentences. This constraint is just a game, of course, but it forces me to consider what was really important about the book."

"What are the main ideas? If I implemented one idea from this book right now, which one would it be? How would I describe the book to a friend?"

"The Feynman Technique is a note-taking strategy named after the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. It’s pretty simple: Write the name of the book at the top of a blank sheet of paper, then write down how you’d explain the book to someone who had never heard of it."

"I’ve found that almost nothing reveals gaps in my thinking better than writing about an idea as if I am explaining it to a beginner."

"If you only read one book on a topic and use that as the basis for your beliefs for an entire category of life, well, how sound are those beliefs? How accurate and complete is your knowledge?"

"The philosopher Karl Popper explained the benefits nicely, “Anything worth reading is not only worth reading twice, but worth reading again and again. If a book is worthwhile, then you will always be able to make new discoveries in it and find things in it that you didn’t notice before, even though you have read it many times.”"

"Returning to great ideas cements them in your mind."

"“A good book gets better at the second reading. A great book at the third. Any book not worth rereading isn’t worth reading.”"

"“Learning one new idea won’t make you a genius, but a commitment to lifelong learning can be transformative.”"

"if you examine how human behavior has been shaped over time, you discover that motivation (and even talent) is often overvalued. In many cases, the environment matters more."

"When agriculture began to spread around the globe, farmers had an easier time expanding along east-west routes than along north-south ones."

"agriculture spread two to three times faster across Asia and Europe than it did up and down the Americas."

"We tend to believe our habits are a product of our motivation, talent, and effort. Certainly, these qualities matter. But the surprising thing is, especially over a long time period, your personal characteristics tend to get overpowered by your environment."

"If you want to maximize your odds of success, then you need to operate in an environment that accelerates your results rather than hinders them."

"First, automate good decisions. Whenever possible, design an environment that makes good decisions for you."

"It is important to remember that the environment drives our good behaviors as well as our bad ones. People who seem to stick to good habits with ease are often benefitting from an environment that makes those behaviors easier."

"Winners often win because their environment makes winning easier."

"The Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker put it this way, “People are embraced or condemned according to their beliefs, so one function of the mind may be to hold beliefs that bring the belief-holder the greatest number of allies, protectors, or disciples, rather than beliefs that are most likely to be true.”"

"“Faced with a choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof.”"

"“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”"

"Humans need a reasonably accurate view of the world in order to survive."

"truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. Humans also seem to have a deep desire to belong."

"“Humans are herd animals. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers. Such inclinations are essential to our survival. For most of our evolutionary history, our ancestors lived in tribes. Becoming separated from the tribe—or worse, being cast out—was a death sentence.”"

"Sometimes we believe things because they make us look good to the people we care about."

"When we have to choose between the two, people often select friends and family over facts."

"Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties."

"You have to give them somewhere to go. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome."

"For all the large-scale political solutions which have been proposed to salve ethnic conflict, there are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force them to eat supper together."

"Facts don't change our minds. Friendship does."

"the most frequent learning occurs from people who are nearby. The closer you are to someone, the more likely it becomes that the one or two beliefs you don't share will bleed over into your own mind and shape your thinking."

"the best place to ponder a threatening idea is in a non-threatening environment. As a result, books are often a better vehicle for transforming beliefs than conversations or debates."

"With a book, the conversation takes place inside someone's head and without the risk of being judged by others. It's easier to be open-minded when you aren't feeling defensive."

"Silence is death for any idea. An idea that is never spoken or written down dies with the person who conceived it. Ideas can only be remembered when they are repeated. They can only be believed when they are repeated."

"Clear's Law of Recurrence: The number of people who believe an idea is directly proportional to the number of times it has been repeated during the last year—even if the idea is false."

"Your time is better spent championing good ideas than tearing down bad ones. Don't waste time explaining why bad ideas are bad. You are simply fanning the flame of ignorance and stupidity."

"The best thing that can happen to a bad idea is that it is forgotten. The best thing that can happen to a good idea is that it is shared."

"Tyler Cowen's quote, “Spend as little time as possible talking about how other people are wrong.”"

"Most people argue to win, not to learn."

"“Are you willing to not win in order to keep the conversation going?”"

"Haruki Murakami once wrote, “Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.”"

"The word “kind” originated from the word “kin.” When you are kind to someone it means you are treating them like family. This, I think, is a good method for actually changing someone's mind. Develop a friendship. Share a meal. Gift a book."

"Continuous improvement is a dedication to making small changes and improvements every day, with the expectation that those small improvements will add up to something significant."

"The typical approach to self-improvement is to set a large goal, then try to take big leaps in order to accomplish the goal in as little time as possible. While this may sound good in theory, it often ends in burnout, frustration, and failure."

"improving by just 1 percent isn't notable (and sometimes it isn't even noticeable). But it can be just as meaningful, especially in the long run."

"If you get one percent better each day for one year, you'll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done."

"We often waste the resources and ideas at our fingertips because they don’t seem new and exciting."

"In the real world, it is often easier to improve your performance by cutting the downside rather than capturing the upside. Subtraction is more practical than addition."

"In many cases, improvement is not about doing more things right, but about doing fewer things wrong."

"We often measure our progress by looking forward. We set goals. We plan milestones for our progress. Basically, we try to predict the future to some degree."

"measure backward, not forward."

"Measure backward and then get a little bit better. What did you do last week? How can you improve by just a little bit this week?"

"The children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures."

"Success usually comes down to choosing the pain of discipline over the ease of distraction. And that’s exactly what delayed gratification is all about."

"Every time the researcher made a promise and then delivered on it, the child's brain registered two things: 1) waiting for gratification is worth it and 2) I have the capability to wait. As a result, the second group waited an average of four times longer than the first group."

"the child's ability to delay gratification and display self-control was not a predetermined trait, but rather was impacted by the experiences and environment that surrounded them."

"if you want to succeed at something, at some point you will need to find the ability to be disciplined and take action instead of becoming distracted and doing what's easy."

"Success in nearly every field requires you to ignore doing something easier (delaying gratification) in favor of doing something harder (doing the work and putting in your reps)."

"Start incredibly small. Make your new habit “so easy you can't say no.”"

"Improve one thing, by one percent. Do it again tomorrow."

"Use the “Seinfeld Strategy” to maintain consistency."

"Find a way to get started in less than 2 minutes."

"Habits are the small decisions you make and actions you perform every day. According to researchers at Duke University, habits account for about 40 percent of our behaviors on any given day."

"Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits."

"What you repeatedly do (i.e. what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray."

"Every habit you have — good or bad — follows the same 3–step pattern: Reminder (the trigger that initiates the behavior), routine (the behavior itself; the action you take), and reward (the benefit you gain from doing the behavior)."

"By simply removing yourself from an environment that triggers all of your old habits, you can make it easier to break bad habits and build new ones."

"Having a bad day is just one of the tiny emergencies that prevents most people from sticking to their goals and habits."

"The Stoics believed that by imagining the worst case scenario ahead of time, they could overcome their fears of negative experiences and make better plans to prevent them."

"Inversion is a powerful thinking tool because it puts a spotlight on errors and roadblocks that are not obvious at first glance. What if the opposite was true? What if I focused on a different side of this situation? Instead of asking how to do something, ask how to not do it."

"Great thinkers, icons, and innovators think forward and backward. Occasionally, they drive their brain in reverse."

"Great art breaks the previous rules. It is an inversion of what came before. In a way, the secret to unconventional thinking is just inverting the status quo."

"Doing what you have faithfully engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct. You want to avoid sloth and unreliability."

"Sometimes it is more important to consider why people fail in life than why they succeed."

"it might be useful to ask, “What would alienate our core customer?” A different point of view can reveal surprising insights."

"You can learn just as much from identifying what doesn't work as you can from spotting what does. What are the mistakes, errors, and flubs that you want to avoid? Inversion is not about finding good advice, but rather about finding anti-advice. It teaches you what to avoid."

"Blindly chasing success can have severe consequences, but preventing failure usually carries very little risk."

"“We should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.”"

"Inversion is an essential skill for leading a logical and rational life. It allows you to step outside your normal patterns of thought and see situations from a different angle. Whatever problem you are facing, always consider the opposite side of things."

"Picasso said, “It took me thirty years to draw that masterpiece in thirty seconds.”"

"the researchers found that most groundbreaking work peaked during the late thirties — at least a full decade into any individual career."

"cognitive psychology professor John Hayes found that out of 500 famous musical pieces, nearly all of them were created after year 10 of the composer's career. In later studies, Hayes found similar patterns with poets and painters."

"the “ten years of silence.”"

"the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts."

"In any creative endeavor, you have to give yourself permission to create junk. There is no way around it."

"Amateurs create when they feel inspired. Professionals create on a schedule."

"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. —Chuck Close"

"“The most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that … the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.”"

"Finish something. Anything. Stop researching, planning, and preparing to do the work and just do the work. It doesn't matter how good or how bad it is. You don't need to set the world on fire with your first try. You just need to prove to yourself that you have what it takes to produce something."

"Don't let judgment prevent delivery."

"Share your work publicly. It will hold you accountable to creating your best work. It will provide feedback for doing better work. And when you see others connect with what you create, it will inspire you and make you care more."

"What seems simple to you is often brilliant to someone else. But you'll never know that unless you choose to share."

"Finding your creative genius is easy: do the work, finish something, get feedback, find ways to improve, show up again tomorrow. Repeat for ten years."

"Inspiration only reveals itself after perspiration."

"big goals shouldn’t be your main focus in life. Instead, you should be utilizing frequent, repetitive actions and systems to help develop habits that stick."

"Instead of wasting your time setting unachievable goals with drastic changes, all you have to do is make one minor change daily."

"The quality of your life depends on the quality of your habits."

"We are what we do every day. In this way, habits form our identity. So, when repeated daily, even the smallest actions have a considerable effect."

"1% of personal improvement each day means you’ll be 37 times better by the same time next year. Here’s the math: 1.01 to the power of 365 days is 37.78 (in other words, 37 times better)."

"Atomic habits are the compound interest of self-improvement."

"Success is the product of daily habits, not once in a lifetime transformations."

"Goals are the results you want to achieve. Systems are the processes that lead to those outcomes."

"Winners and losers have the same goals."

"it’s the winners’ systems that help them achieve success and get results."

"Goals do not create long-term progress, but systems do."

"cue –> craving –> response –> reward"

"Encourage better habits by changing your environment. Create cues that are as obvious as possible, and you’ll be more likely to respond to them."

"Build temptation. Humans are motivated by the anticipation of reward. Our brain releases dopamine (the feel-good hormone) not only when we do pleasurable things but also when we anticipate them."

"Getting started is the most critical step."

"habit tracking itself is an attractive and satisfying habit."

"Simply knowing that someone is watching can be a powerful incentive to keep going."

"make the craving more attractive is joining a culture where your desired behavior is normalized."

"the three layers of behavior change: outcomes, processes and identity."

"In the end you won’t maintain this habit unless it becomes part of your identity."

"Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No individual action will transform your beliefs overnight. The evidence of your new identity grows as your positive actions build up."

"The simplest system to implement is one that helps you get 1% better every day."

"The experiment began by bringing each child into a private room, sitting them down in a chair, and placing a marshmallow on the table in front of them."

"Published in 1972, this popular study became known as The Marshmallow Experiment, but it wasn't the treat that made it famous. The interesting part came years later."

"The researchers followed each child for more than 40 years and over and over again, the group who waited patiently for the second marshmallow succeed in whatever capacity they were measuring."

"this series of experiments proved that the ability to delay gratification was critical for success in life."

"Did some children naturally have more self-control, and thus were destined for success? Or can you learn to develop this important trait?"

"You can imagine the impact these experiences had on the marshmallow test. The children in the unreliable group had no reason to trust that the researchers would bring a second marshmallow and thus they didn’t wait very long to eat the first one."

"Meanwhile, the children in the second group were training their brains to see delayed gratification as a positive. Every time the researcher made a promise and then delivered on it, the child's brain registered two things: 1) waiting for gratification is worth it and 2) I have the capability to wait."

"In fact, the effects of the environment were almost instantaneous. Just a few minutes of reliable or unreliable experiences were enough to push the actions of each child in one direction or another."

"Success in nearly every field requires you to ignore doing something easier (delaying gratification) in favor of doing something harder"

"the key takeaway here is that even if you don't feel like you're good at delaying gratification now, you can train yourself to become better simply by making a few small improvements."

"by promising something small and then delivering. Over and over again until your brain says, 1) yes, it's worth it to wait and 2) yes, I have the capability to do this."

"n 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his groundbreaking book, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, which described his three laws of motion. In the process, Newton laid the foundation for classical mechanics and redefined the way the world looked at physics and science."

"What most people don't know, however, is that Newton's three laws of motion can be used as an interesting analogy for increasing your productivity, simplifying your work, and improving your life."

"First Law of Motion: An object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force"

"In many ways, procrastination is a fundamental law of the universe. It's Newton's first law applied to productivity. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest."

"It works the other way too. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion."

"In my experience, the best rule of thumb for getting started is the 2-Minute Rule."

"Here's the 2-Minute Rule adjusted for productivity: To overcome procrastination, find a way to start your task in less than two minutes."

"Notice that you don't have to finish your task"

"Motivation often comes after starting. Find a way to start small. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion."

"Second Law of Motion: F=ma. The vector sum of the forces on an object is equal to the mass of that object multiplied by the acceleration vector of the object."

"There is one important thing to note in this equation. The force, F, is a vector. Vectors involve both magnitude (how much work you are putting in) and direction (where that work is focused)."

"If you want to be productive, it's not merely about how hard you work (magnitude), it's also about where that work is applied (direction)."

"To put it simply, you only have a certain amount of force to provide to your work and where you place that force is just as important as how hard you work."

"Third Law of Motion: When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body."

"We all have an average speed that we tend to perform at in life."

"Your typical levels of productivity and efficiency are often a balance of the productive and unproductive forces in your life — a lot like Newton's equal and opposite forces."

"The first option is to add more productive force. This is the “power through it” option. We gut it out, drink another cup of coffee, and work harder."

"The second option is to eliminate the opposing forces. Simplify your life, learn how to say no, change your environment, reduce the number of responsibilities that you take on, and otherwise eliminate the forces that are holding you back."

"If you reduce the unproductive forces in your life, your productivity will glide forward naturally."

"Kasparov was a fiercely aggressive chess player who thrived on energy and confidence."

"At one point, after Kasparov had lost a big game and was feeling dark and fragile, my father asked Garry how he would handle his lack of confidence in the next game."

"Garry responded that he would try to play the chess moves that he would have played if he were feeling confident."

"He would pretend to feel confident, and hopefully trigger the state."

"So if Garry was feeling bad, but puffed up his chest, made aggressive moves, and appeared to be the manifestation of Confidence itself, then opponents would become unsettled."

"“Fake It Until You Become It”"

"A confident and positive mindset can be both the cause of your actions and the result of them. The link between physical performance and mental attitude is a two-way street."

"Confidence is often the result of displaying your ability."

"Amy Cuddy, a Harvard researcher who studies body language, has shown through her groundbreaking research that simply standing in more confident poses can increase confidence and decrease anxiety."

"Confidence is a wonderful thing to have, but if you find yourself overcome with fear, self-doubt, or uncertainty, then let your behavior drive your beliefs."

"In short, what would a brave person do?"

"The man who invented a solution to this problem was named Frederic Eugene Ives. He went on to become a trailblazer in the field of photography and held over 70 patents by the end of his career."

"Nearly all great ideas follow a similar creative process and this article explains how this process works."

"“I went to bed one night in a state of brain fog over the problem, and the instant I woke in the morning saw before me, apparently projected on the ceiling, the completely worked out process and equipment in operation.”"

"The Ives Process, as it came to be known, reduced the cost of printing images by 15x and remained the standard printing technique for the next 80 years."

"The printing process developed by Frederic Eugene Ives used a method called “halftone printing” to break a photograph down into a series of tiny dots. The image looks like a collection of dots up close, but when viewed from a normal distance the dots blend together to create a picture with varying shades of gray."

"According to Young, innovative ideas happen when you develop new combinations of old elements."

"In other words, creative thinking is not about generating something new from a blank slate, but rather about taking what is already present and combining those bits and pieces in a way that has not been done previously."

"Most important, the ability to generate new combinations hinges upon your ability to see the relationships between concepts."

"Step away from the problem. Next, you put the problem completely out of your mind and go do something else that excites you and energizes you."

"Fourth, his idea returned to him. Ives awoke with the solution to his problem laid out before him."

"Finally, Ives continued to revise his idea for years. In fact, he improved so many aspects of the process he filed a second patent. This is a critical point and is often overlooked. It can be easy to fall in love with the initial version of your idea, but great ideas always evolve."

"Being creative isn't about being the first (or only) person to think of an idea. More often, creativity is about connecting ideas."

"The key feature of The Helsinki Bus Station Theory is that it urges you to not simply do more work, but to do more re-work."

"As he looked out at the graduating students, Minkkinen shared a simple theory that, in his estimation, made all the difference between success and failure. He called it The Helsinki Bus Station Theory."

"“It’s simple,” he said. “Stay on the bus. Stay on the f*cking bus. Because if you do, in time, you will begin to see a difference.”"

"“The buses that move out of Helsinki stay on the same line, but only for a while—maybe a kilometer or two. Then they begin to separate, each number heading off to its own unique destination. Bus 33 suddenly goes north. Bus 19 southwest. For a time maybe 21 and 71 dovetail one another, but soon they split off as well. Irving Penn is headed elsewhere.”"

"“It’s the separation that makes all the difference,” Minkkinen said"

"And once you start to see that difference in your work from the work you so admire—that’s why you chose that platform after all—it’s time to look for your breakthrough. Suddenly your work starts to get noticed. Now you are working more on your own, making more of the difference between your work and what influenced it. Your vision takes off."

"I write frequently about how mastery requires consistency. That includes ideas like putting in your reps, improving your average speed, and falling in love with boredom."

"The best athletes actively critique each repetition and constantly improve their technique. It is the revision that matters most."

"hey are so busy jumping from line to line in the hopes of finding a route nobody has ridden before that they don’t invest the time to re-work their old ideas."

"Show up enough times to get the average ideas out of the way and every now and then genius will reveal itself."

"I think what we often miss is that deliberate practice is revision."

"Instead, we should stay on the bus and commit to the hard work of revisiting, rethinking, and revising our ideas."

"How do you know the right answer? You don’t. Nobody knows the best bus, but if you want to fulfill your potential you must choose one."

"In many cases, improvement is not about doing more things right, but about doing less things wrong."

"The key insight I’d like to point out here is the difference between focusing on getting better vs. not getting worse."

"Japanese television makers did not seek out more intelligent workers or better materials, they simply said, “Let’s build the same product, but make fewer mistakes.”"

"Japanese companies improved by subtracting the things that didn’t work, not by creating a bigger, better, or more expansive product."

"Improvement by addition is focused on doing more of what does work: producing a faster car, creating a more powerful speaker, building a stronger table."

"Improvement by subtraction is focused on doing less of what doesn’t work: eliminating mistakes, reducing complexity, and stripping away the inessential."

"Nearly every manager in the world wants to “do more great work”, but very few people want to “do less bad work.”"

"Our desire for that next level of performance causes us to disproportionately focus on the front end of the curve."

"In the real world, it is often easier to improve your performance by cutting the downside rather than capturing the upside."

"First, it is often easier to eliminate errors than it is to master peak performance."

"Second, improvement by subtraction does not require you to achieve a new level of performance."

"Problem 1: Winners and losers have the same goals."

"Problem 2: Achieving a goal is only a momentary change."

"Eventually, I began to realize that my results had very little to do with the goals I set and nearly everything to do with the systems I followed."

"In the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh, “The score takes care of itself.”"

"Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress."

"Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment."

"What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results."

"Problem 3: Goals restrict your happiness."

"Furthermore, goals create an “either-or” conflict: either you achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and you are a disappointment."

"It makes no sense to restrict your satisfaction to one scenario when there are many paths to success."

"Problem 4: Goals are at odds with long-term progress."

"Finally, a goal-oriented mind-set can create a “yo-yo” effect."

"This is why many people find themselves reverting to their old habits after accomplishing a goal."

"True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking."

"Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win."

"He would later say, “I realized that if you started absolutely from scratch you could easily spend your life making a toaster.”"

"Starting from scratch is usually a bad idea."

"However, creative progress is rarely the result of throwing out all previous ideas and innovations and completely re-imagining of the world."

"The Wright brothers learned from and built upon the work of these people during their quest to create the world's first flying machine."

"The most creative innovations are often new combinations of old ideas."

"Iterate, don't originate."

"We are mostly blind to the remarkable interconnectedness of things."

"When you are dealing with a complex problem, it is usually better to build upon what already works."

"The more we limit ourselves, the more resourceful we become."

"You can either be judged because you created something or ignored because you left your greatness inside of you."

"Constraints actually increase our skill development rather than restrict it."

"As an entrepreneur, I struggled to manage myself until I realized that I needed to add some structure to my day."

"Underrated: Courage and creativity."

"“Most people need degrees because they don't have the courage to ask for what they want.”"

"Underrated: Changing your environment."

"The effects of motivation essentially vanished after a day."

"By default, any good book that is more than 10 years old is filled with life-changing ideas. Why? Because bad books are forgotten after a decade or two."

"The greatest skill in any endeavor is doing the work. You don’t need more time, more money, or better strategies. You just need to do the work."

"Too often, we value immediate results over long-term improvement."

"Underrated: Not missing workouts."

"It is better to make small progress every day than to do as much as humanly possible in one day."

"In a variety of studies, researchers have shown that website visitors have learned to ignore the common areas of webpages loaded with advertisements."

"Known as “banner blindness” this phenomenon is essentially saying that as you read more articles online, you learn to ignore the irrelevant or unimportant pieces of the experience."

"This basic idea – that you can focus on one part of an experience and ignore others – is a cognitive psychology concept known as selective attention"

"It's also called the “cocktail party effect,” which is named after the idea that your brain can pay attention to a single conversation while standing in a crowded room full of people talking."

"The thing is, when you look at how the top performers in the world operate and examine what is really going on in their minds and bodies, you often see the complete opposite of a hack. You see repetitions and consistency."

"Why is this important? Because he has proof of whether or not he is making progress in his life and work. Because he is measuring these numbers, he is also looking to improve these numbers."

"If you want to get better, then practice consistently and measure constantly. Use that feedback to figure out what is working and what isn't. Then, spend your time putting in more reps rather than searching for another hack."

"the only way to know what works is to put the time in."

"Those graves mark the final resting place of the Tendai Buddhist monks who have failed to complete a quest known as the Kaihogyo."

"The Tendai monks believe that enlightenment can be achieved during your current life, but only through extreme self–denial."

"During the first 100 days of running, the monk is allowed to withdraw from the Kaihogyo."

"However, from Day 101 onwards, there is no withdrawal. The monk must either complete the Kaihogyo … or take his own life."

"The Marathon Monks are an extreme version of the “complete or kill” mentality. But you can take the same approach to your goals, projects, and work."

"Either something is important enough to you to complete, or it’s time to kill it. Fill your life with goals that are worth finishing and eliminate the rest."

"If you choose, you can make a similar decision in your life. Sure, your daily goals may not carry the same sense of urgency as the Kaihogyo, but that doesn’t mean you can’t approach them with the same sense of conviction."

"3. It doesn’t matter how long your goal will take, just get started."

"Never give up on a dream just because of the length of time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway."

"You have the opportunity to choose a goal that is important to you and the privilege of failing with very little consequence. Don’t waste that privilege."

"The biggest lesson that the Tendai monks offer for everyday people like you and me is the lesson of commitment and conviction."

"“Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,”"

"Not doing something will always be faster than doing it."

"This is not to say you should never attend another meeting, but the truth is that we say yes to many things we don't actually want to do."

"Many of them are not, and a simple “no” will be more productive than whatever work the most efficient person can muster."

"We agree to many requests not because we want to do them, but because we don't want to be seen as rude, arrogant, or unhelpful."

"But even after we have accounted for these social considerations, many of us still seem to do a poor job of managing the tradeoff between yes and no."

"“Every time we say yes to a request, we are also saying no to anything else we might accomplish with the time.”"

"Yes is a form of time debt."

"It is also a strategy that can help you become successful."

"“If you don’t guard your time, people will steal it from you.”"

"The opportunity cost of your time increases as you become more successful. At first, you just eliminate the obvious distractions and explore the rest."

"As your skills improve and you learn to separate what works from what doesn't, you have to continually increase your threshold for saying yes."

"In other words, you have to upgrade your “no's” over time."

"“Saying no is so powerful because it preserves the opportunity to say yes.”"

"“If I had to do this today, would I agree to it?”"

"If it doesn't excite you, then say no."

"“It’s easier to avoid commitments than get out of commitments. Saying no keeps you toward the easier end of this spectrum.”"

"The checklist strategy implemented at Michigan hospitals was named the Keystone ICU Project."

"We have a tendency to undervalue answers that we have already discovered."

"We underutilize old solutions—even if they are best practices—because they seem like something we have already considered."

"“Everybody already knows that” is very different from “Everybody already does that.”"

"We assume that new solutions are needed if we want to make real progress, but that isn't always the case."

"Of course, these answers are boring. Mastering the fundamentals isn’t sexy, but it works."

"Progress often hides behind boring solutions and underused insights. You don’t need more information."

"What if this unequal distribution was present in other areas of life as well?"

"To his surprise, he discovered that approximately 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by just 20 percent of the people. Similar to the pea pods in his garden, most of the resources were controlled by a minority of the players."

"This idea that a small number of things account for the majority of the results became known as the Pareto Principle or, more commonly, the 80/20 Rule."

"Examples of the Pareto Principle exist in everything from real estate to income inequality to tech startups."

"Just 1.4 percent of tree species account for 50 percent of the trees in the Amazon."

"From this advantageous position, the winning plant has a better ability to spread seeds and reproduce, which gives the species an even bigger footprint in the next generation."

"Scientists refer to this effect as “accumulative advantage.”"

"What begins as a small advantage gets bigger over time."

"They typically occur in situations that involve relative comparison, where your performance relative to those around you is the determining factor in your success."

"The advantage of being a little bit better is not a little bit more reward, but the entire reward."

"Winner-Take-All Effects in individual competitions can lead to Winner-Take-Most Effects in the larger game of life."

"This idea is sometimes referred to as The Matthew Effect, which references a passage in The Bible that says, “For all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away."

"The people and organizations that can do the right things, more consistently are more likely to maintain a slight edge and accumulate disproportionate rewards over time."

"We can call this The 1 Percent Rule. The 1 Percent Rule states that over time the majority of the rewards in a given field will accumulate to the people, teams, and organizations that maintain a 1 percent advantage over the alternatives."

"The 1 Percent Rule is not merely a reference to the fact that small differences accumulate into significant advantages, but also to the idea that those who are 1 percent better rule their respective fields and industries."

"Martin’s story offers a fascinating perspective on what it takes to stick with habits for the long run."

"“10 years spent learning, 4 years spent refining, and 4 years as a wild success.”"

"While there is still much to learn, one of the most consistent findings is that the way to maintain motivation and achieve peak levels of desire is to work on tasks of “just manageable difficulty.”"

"The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard."

"If you want to learn how to stay motivated to reach your goals, then there is a second piece of the motivation puzzle that is crucial to understand. It has to do with achieving that perfect blend of hard work and happiness."

"This blend of happiness and peak performance is sometimes referred to as flow, which is what athletes and performers experience when they are “in the zone.”"

"In order to reach this state of peak performance, however, you not only need to work on challenges at the right degree of difficulty, but also measure your immediate progress."

"If you want to stay motivated for good, then start with a challenge that is just manageable, measure your progress, and repeat the process."

"Productivity gurus will often suggest that you focus on being effective rather than being efficient."

"Efficiency is about getting more things done."

"Effectiveness is about getting the right things done."

"And no reasonable analysis of the highest and best use of her time in 1967 would have suggested that volunteering for UNICEF was the most effective use of her time."

"This is the downside of the 80/20 Rule: A new path will never look like the most effective option in the beginning."

"The 80/20 Rule is calculated and determined by your recent effectiveness. Whatever seems like the “highest value” use of your time in any given moment will be dependent on your previous skills and current opportunities."

"The process of learning a new skill or starting a new company or taking on a new adventure of any sort will often appear to be an ineffective use of time at first."

"“You don't know whether you're going to be born rich or poor, male or female, infirm or able-bodied, in the United States or Afghanistan. All you know is that you get to take one ball out of a barrel with 5.8 billion balls in it. And that's you.”"

"“you're going to participate in what I call the Ovarian Lottery. And that is the most important thing that's ever going to happen to you in your life. It's going to determine way more than what school you go to, how hard you work, all kinds of things.”"

"Buffett has long been a proponent for the role of luck in success."

"So what it is? What determines success?"

"Absolute Success vs. Relative Success"

"The absolute view considers your level of success compared to everyone else."

"The more local the comparison becomes, the more success is determined by hard work."

"When you compare yourself to those who have experienced similar levels of luck, the difference is in your habits and choices."

"Absolute success is luck. Relative success is choices and habits."

"As outcomes become more extreme, the role of luck increases. That is, as you become more successful in an absolute sense, we can attribute a greater proportion of your success to luck."

"“Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.”"

"There is a tendency to discuss outcomes in either a global sense or a local sense."

"“How can you not see your privilege? Don’t you realize how much has been handed to you?”"

"Here's the key: You can only control the slope of your success, not your initial position."

"They both matter and hard work often plays a more important role as time goes on."

"Time erodes every advantage."

"“There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn't. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not.”"

"And when it does, the way to honor your good fortune is to work hard and make the most of it."

"what matters is not simply reading more books, but getting more out of each book you read."

"1. Quit More Books"

"Quit books quickly and without guilt or shame."

"“Life is too short to not read the very best book you know of right now.”"

"2. Choose Books You Can Use Instantly"

"3. Create Searchable Notes"

"Just do something to emphasize the important points and passages."

"I keep my notes in Evernote"

"I. Audiobook: I create a new Evernote file for each book and then type my notes directly into that file as I listen."

"III. Print: Similar to my audiobook strategy, I type my notes as I read. If I come across a longer passage I want to transcribe, I place the book on a book stand as I type."

"4. Combine Knowledge Trees"

"One way to imagine a book is like a knowledge tree with a few fundamental concepts forming the trunk and the details forming the branches."

"5. Write a Short Summary"

"If you feel like you can’t squeeze the whole book into three sentences, consider using the Feynman Technique."

"6. Surround the Topic"

"“Beware the man of a single book.”"

"Reading a book takes effort, but too often, people use one book or one article as the basis for an entire belief system."

"As Morgan Housel noted, “Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what's happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you think the world works. We're all biased to our own personal history.”"

"7. Read It Twice"

"“Anything worth reading is not only worth reading twice, but worth reading again and again. If a book is worthwhile, then you will always be able to make new discoveries in it and find things in it that you didn’t notice before, even though you have read it many times.”"

"It's only natural for different sentences to leap out at you depending on the point you are at in life."

"As Charles Chu noted, “I always return home to the same few authors. And, no matter how many times I return, I always find they have something new to say.”"

"“When we only learn something once, we don’t really learn it—at least not well enough for it to change us much. It may inspire momentarily, but then becomes quickly overrun by the decades of habits and conditioning that preceded it.”"

"f you want to stick with a habit for good, one simple and effective thing you can do is keep a habit tracker."

"Elite performers will often measure, quantify, and track their progress in various ways. Each little measurement provides feedback. It offers a signal of whether they are making progress or need to change course."

"Habit formation is a long race. It often takes time for the desired results to appear. And while you are waiting for the long-term rewards of your efforts to accumulate, you need a reason to stick with it in the short-term."

"The most basic format is to get a calendar and cross off each day you stick with your routine."

"To make this process as easy as possible, I created the Habit Journal, which includes 12 habit tracker templates—one for each month. All you have to do is add your habit and start crossing off the days."

"Benefit 1: A habit tracker reminds you to act."

"Research has shown that people who track their progress on goals like losing weight, quitting smoking, and lowering blood pressure are all more likely to improve than those who don’t."

"Most of us think we act better than we do. Measurement offers one way to overcome our blindness to our own behavior and notice what’s really going on each day."

"Benefit 2: A habit tracker motivates you to continue."

"Benefit 3: A habit tracker provides immediate satisfaction."

"You’re not fixated on getting six-pack abs, you’re just trying to keep the streak alive and become the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts."

"In Atomic Habits, I recommend using the Two-Minute Rule, which suggests you scale your habits down until they take two minutes or less to perform."

"For something to become truly habitual, you need to repeat it frequently."

"It can feel like a burden because it forces you into two habits: the habit you’re trying to build and the habit of tracking it."

"First, manual tracking should be limited to your most important habits."

"Never miss twice."

"Generally speaking, the first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows."

"One popular answer right now is 66 days because there was one study that found that, on average, it took 66 days to build a habit."

"The honest answer is: forever. Because once you stop doing it, it is no longer a habit."

"Meanwhile, improving by just 1 percent isn't notable (and sometimes it isn't even noticeable). But it can be just as meaningful, especially in the long run."

"Step 1: Do more of what already works"

"Step 2: Avoid tiny losses"

"Step 3: Measure backward"