Supritha S

Visual Cues. In the supermarket, placing items on shelves at eye level makes them more visual and more likely to be purchased. Outside of the supermarket, you can use visual cues like the Paper Clip Method or the Seinfeld Strategy to create an environment that visually nudges your actions in the right direction.

The process of human flight followed a similar path. We typically credit Orville and Wilbur Wright as the inventors of modern flight. However, we seldom discuss the aviation pioneers who preceded them like Otto Lilienthal, Samuel Langley, and Octave Chanute. The Wright brothers learned from and built upon the work of these people during their quest... See more

But it would help us to remember that what we really want isn’t the thing itself. What we want is the experience of ease and unfettered enjoyment that is promised, falsely, by the thought of acquiring the thing—the restaurant meal, the cruise, the raise, the loving relationship—even though everything comes with its own pains and complications and... See more

That said, the study cited above found the average habit takes about 66 days to become automatic. (Don't put too much stock in that number. The range in the study was very wide and the only reasonable conclusion you should make is that it will take months for new habits to become sticky.)

When I’m meditating consistently, I simply have fewer impulses to entertain and comfort myself, because ordinary moments feel more than good enough, most of the time. The smart phone is good barometer of this impulse, because it’s used as an instrument of escape much of the time—escape from boredom, escape from making the next decision, escape from... See more

Visual cues can be used to drive short-term and long-term motivation. The Paper Clip Strategy can provide daily motivation, but you start from scratch each day. However, another type of visual cue, like the “Don’t Break the Chain” Calendar that I described in my article on the Seinfeld Strategy can be used to showcase your consistency over longer... See more

When your goal is to be the most efficient machine possible, your work never ends. We never reach the point of being done, no matter how many daily widgets you churn out. Productivity, without barriers, is a race to the bottom, a race where no matter how fast we go -- we never truly arrive.