Or as Steven Pressfield describes it, the resistance. The resistance is the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise.

In other words, it is all about average speed, not maximum speed. Daily failures are like red lights during a road trip. When you’re driving a car, you’ll come to a red light every now and then. But if you maintain a good average speed, you’ll always make it to your destination despite the stops and delays along the way.

Bartlett's research was the first major study that proved how our beliefs about the world can actively change the way we remember and interpret information.

When you start taking these more specific actions, the power of present-focused living starts to reveal itself. When these revelations happen to you, they feel fresh and concrete—the opposite of what you’d expect from an abstract, familiar phrase like “Live in the present.”

The second variation is from — well, God knows where it’s from. (The last person to remind me of this idea is Tiger, who reached out for a chat after reading this blog, and I’m quite grateful to him for it). The technique I’m talking about here is the incredibly common trick of leaving something unfinished before you end your work for the day.

Opt-Out vs. Opt-In. There is a famous organ donation study that revealed how multiple European countries skyrocketed their organ donation rates: they required citizens to opt-out of donating rather than opt-in to donating. You can do something similar in your life by opting your future self into better habits ahead of time. For example, you could s... See more

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day.

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.

The originators of these and other ideas didn’t begin with status, affiliation or convenience, but that’s what ended up working.