Supritha S

Exercising willpower is painful, and we can’t rely on having enough of it to sustain us for the months it takes for the new standard to become easy to meet. From the start, we can’t wait to be done with our campaign of self-restriction, so we fall (or dive) off the wagon, and maybe try again in a few months.

Similarly, if you adopt a bunch of new behaviors you can't sustain, that's not habit creep. In other words, the key is to avoid the trap of trying to grow too fast. Lifestyle creep happens so slowly that it is almost imperceptible. Habit creep should be the same way. Your goal is to nudge your behaviors along in very small ways.

For example, if you smoke when you get stressed, then it's a bad plan to “just stop smoking” when that happens. Instead, you should come up with a different way to deal with stress and insert that new behavior instead of having a cigarette.

Another view is that there are costs to generalizing and that you’re better off hiring specialists — employees who have very deep expertise in an important area — or encouraging your employees to become specialists in whatever they do.

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.

Without a specific application point, a piece of classic wisdom is just a platitude.

Today, Aurelius is perhaps best known for his collection of essays called Meditations. Although we don’t know many details about Marcus' day-to-day life, Meditations offers a glimpse into his mind, his habits, and his approach to life. The very act of writing Meditations, which took him at least 10 years, is evidence to his commitment to habit,... See more