The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life

In Braverman’s terms, the machines that enhance people’s skills are considered life-supporting, while those that deskill people and devalue their work are life-destroying.2

The ideas in this book are rooted in the design thinking tradition. Whereas others have applied its tenets in organizational innovation and change,3 I have chosen to focus on personal transformation and empowerment.

Who am I? What do I want? What is my purpose? Ask yourself each of these questions repeatedly and respond with whatever comes to mind. You can write out your answers in a journal or notebook, or just say them to yourself. Don’t overthink; just answer the questions.

In my class he learned not to recoil or procrastinate when a new idea arose, but to act. Just that small insight, which we call bias toward action (which we’ll discuss later), has changed his worldview and pushed him down several roads in the last two years.

1. Empathize. This is where it starts. When you design, you’re not primarily doing it for yourself; you’re doing it with other people’s needs and desires in mind.

What I find more to be the case is that we tend to rise without thinking. There is a ladder that exists in many career paths, and society brainwashes people to think they are supposed to climb it.

Design thinking emphasizes that you always make sure you are working on the real problem.

Morphological Analysis This is the process of matching up elements from different columns of attribute lists.

Success is doing what you love and being happy about it.

the mistake we make by working on an answer as though it were a question.