Too busy to read?

When you can't win by being better, you can win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it easier to stand out. You can shortcut the need for a genetic advantage (or for years of practice) by rewriting the rules. A good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses.

"the aggregation of marginal gains," which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do. Brailsford said, "The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together."

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.

Boiling water will soften a potato but harden an egg. 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. If you can find a more favorable environment, you can transform the situation from one where the odds are against you to one where they are in your favor.

Pointing-and-Calling is so effective because it raises the level of awareness from a nonconscious habit to a more conscious level. Because the train operators must use their eyes, hands, mouth, and ears, they are more likely to notice problems before something goes wrong.

Junk food, for example, drives our reward systems into a frenzy. After spending hundreds of thousands of years hunting and foraging for food in the wild, the human brain has evolved to place a high value on salt, sugar, and fat. Such foods are often calorie-dense and they were quite rare when our ancient ancestors were roaming the savannah. When you don't know where your next meal is coming from, eating as much as possible is an excellent strategy for survival.

One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. New habits seem achievable when you see others doing them every day. If you are surrounded by fit people, you're more likely to consider working out to be a common habit. If you're surrounded by jazz lovers, you're more likely to believe it's reasonable to play jazz every day. Your culture sets your expectation for what is "normal." Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You'll rise together.

In fact, the tendency for one purchase to lead to another one has a name: the Diderot Effect. The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases.14 You can spot this pattern everywhere. You buy a dress and have to get new shoes and earrings to match. You buy a couch and suddenly question the layout of your entire living room. You buy a toy for your child and soon find yourself purchasing all of the accessories that go with it. It's a chain reaction of purchases.

Goodhart's Law. Named after the economist Charles Goodhart, the principle states, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."9 Measurement is only useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you. Each number is simply one piece of feedback in the overall system.

In summary, habit tracking (1) creates a visual cue that can remind you to act, (2) is inherently motivating because you see the progress you are making and don't want to lose it, and (3) feels satisfying whenever you record another successful instance of your habit. Furthermore, habit tracking provides visual proof that you are casting votes for the type of person you wish to become, which is a delightful form of immediate and intrinsic gratification.

I know of executives and investors who keep a "decision journal" in which they record the major decisions they make each week, why they made them, and what they expect the outcome to be. They review their choices at the end of each month or year to see where they were correct and where they went wrong.

Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail. --LAO TZU

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.

"disciplined" people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.

You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.

Reward is on the other side of sacrifice. Response (sacrifice of energy) always precedes reward (the collection of resources). The "runner's high" only comes after the hard run. The reward only comes after the energy is spent.

The punch line is clear: people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through.

The Japanese railway system is regarded as one of the best in the world. If you ever find yourself riding a train in Tokyo, you'll notice that the conductors have a peculiar habit. As each operator runs the train, they proceed through a ritual of pointing at different objects and calling out commands. When the train approaches a signal, the operator will point at it and say, "Signal is green." As the train pulls into and out of each station, the operator will point at the speedometer and call out the exact speed. When it's time to leave, the operator will point at the timetable and state the time. Out on the platform, other employees are performing similar actions. Before each train departs, staff members will point along the edge of the platform and declare, "All clear!" Every detail is identified, pointed at, and named aloud.fn1 This process, known as Pointing-and-Calling, is a safety system designed to reduce mistakes.

The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside of habits is that you get used to doing things a certain way and stop paying attention to little errors. You assume you're getting better because you're gaining experience. In reality, you are merely reinforcing your current habits--not improving them. In fact, some research has shown that once a skill has been mastered there is usually a slight decline in performance over time.

Happiness is simply the absence of desire. When you observe a cue, but do not desire to change your state, you are content with the current situation. Happiness is not about the achievement of pleasure (which is joy or satisfaction), but about the lack of desire. It arrives when you have no urge to feel differently. Happiness is the state you enter when you no longer want to change your state.

democracy is founded on beliefs like freedom, majority rule, and social equality.

if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you'll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you're done.

reliable approach is to cut bad habits off at the source. One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it. # If you can't seem to get any work done, leave your phone in another room for a few hours. # If you're continually feeling like you're not enough, stop following social media accounts that trigger jealousy and envy.

# The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. # The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. # As habits become routine, they become less interesting and less satisfying. We get bored. # Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It's the ability to keep going when work isn't exciting that makes the difference. # Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.

If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection. You don't need to map out every feature of a new habit.

Thomas Frank, an entrepreneur in Boulder, Colorado, wakes up at 5:55 each morning.7 And if he doesn't, he has a tweet automatically scheduled that says, "It's 6:10 and I'm not up because I'm lazy! Reply to this for $5 via PayPal (limit 5), assuming my alarm didn't malfunction."

The central idea is to create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. Much of the battle of building better habits comes down to finding ways to reduce the friction associated with our good habits and increase the friction associated with our bad ones.

It is a simple two-step process: Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery

Four Laws of Behavior Change until you find the next bottleneck. Make it obvious. Make it attractive. Make it easy. Make it satisfying.

Whenever you want to change your behavior, you can simply ask yourself: How can I make it obvious? How can I make it attractive? How can I make it easy? How can I make it satisfying?

"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.19 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."

The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It's one thing to say I'm the type of person who wants this. It's something very different to say I'm the type of person who is this.

The process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.

A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.

No matter how consistent you are with your habits, it is inevitable that life will interrupt you at some point. Perfection is not possible. Before long, an emergency will pop up--you get sick or you have to travel for work or your family needs a little more of your time. Whenever this happens to me, I try to remind myself of a simple rule: never miss twice. If I miss one day, I try to get back into it as quickly as possible. Missing one workout happens, but I'm not going to miss two in a row.

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

You do not want to turn on the television, you want to be entertained. Every craving is linked to a desire to change your internal state.

changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you're willing to stick with them for years.

Seneca's famous quote, "Being poor is not having too little, it is wanting more."

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

the last mile is always the least crowded.

The first mistake is never the one that ruins you.7 It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident.8 Missing twice is the start of a new habit.

One of my readers and his wife used a similar setup. They wanted to stop eating out so much and start cooking together more. They labeled their savings account "Trip to Europe." Whenever they skipped going out to eat, they transferred $50 into the account. At the end of the year, they put the money toward the vacation.

There is another benefit to implementation intentions. Being specific about what you want and how you will achieve it helps you say no to things that derail progress, distract your attention, and pull you off course. We often say yes to little requests because we are not clear enough about what we need to be doing instead. When your dreams are vague, it's easy to rationalize little exceptions all day long and never get around to the specific things you need to do to succeed.

In summary, the cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop--cue, craving, response, reward; cue, craving, response, reward--that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits. This cycle is known as the habit loop.