Notes

• Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits You get what you repeat.
• When nothing seems to help I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two and I know it was not that last blow that did it but all that had gone before.
• On improving system rather than habits — If you’re an entrepreneur your goal might be to build a million-dollar business Your system is how you test product ideas hire employees and run marketing campaigns.
• The problem with a goals-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone.
• You do not rise to the level of your goals You fall to the level of your systems.
• Outcomes are about what you get Processes are about what you do Identity is about what you believe.
• Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are.
• Your identity is literally your repeated being-ness.
• Your goal is simply to win the majority of the time.
• The 1st law Cue Make it obvious The 2nd law Craving Make it attractive The 3rd law Response Make it easy The 4th law Reward Make it satisfying
• Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate
• Every habit should have a home. Use laptop on study table only
• dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure but also when you anticipate
• Temptation bundling
• A genius is not born, but is educated and trained.
• Join a culture where 1 your desired behavior is the normal behavior and 2 you already have something in common with the group
• You have been sensing the cues the entire time but it is only when you predict that you would be better off in a different state that you take action
• Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and we can use this insight to our advantage rather than to our detriment
• Reframing your habits to highlight their benefits rather than their drawbacks is a fast and lightweight way to reprogram your mind and make a habit seem more attractive
• The best is the enemy of the good.
• If you want to master a habit the key is to start with repetition not perfection
• Repetition is a form of change
• Every action requires a certain amount of energy The more energy required the less likely it is to occur
• Master the habit of showing up
• the costs of your good habits are in the present The costs of your bad habits are in the future
• What is immediately rewarded is repeated What is immediately punished is avoided
• The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly you shouldn’t do it
• The first rule of compounding Never interrupt it unnecessarily
• To be productive the cost of procrastination must be greater than the cost of action
• Genes can predispose, but they don’t predetermine
• You can’t control whether you’re a potato or an egg but you can decide to play a game where it’s better to be hard or soft
• Until you work as hard as those you admire don’t explain away their success as luck
• At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day doing the same lifts over and over and over
• The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom
• Men desire novelty to such an extent that those who are doing well wish for a change as much as those who are doing badly
• Professionals stick to the schedule amateurs let life get in the way
• You have to fall in love with boredom
• The more you let a single belief define you the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you