People generally think of habits as bad things they want to break. On the contrary, creating habits that you want is what creating a life you want means. It’s a big part anyway. Creating habits you want frees you from trying to do things all the time. It frees you from using your limited willpower. I wrote yesterday about making behaviors you like habitual using your relationships. Today I’ll write[…] Keep reading →

Many studies show that quitting smoking and losing weight spread through networks like diseases do (see links below). Many other behavioral changes work similarly. I like academic studies, but we don’t just want information. We want to use it to improve our lives. Here’s how. Make behavior you want into habits Trying to change behavior through willpower alone doesn’t work in the long term, as my series on willpower described.[…] Keep reading →

Monday night I told my second story at the Moth, to about two hundred people. A bit scary, though not as scary as last time, but awesome! Improving public speaking improves your abilities in almost any field. Few structures match the story structure in engaging people to listen. That’s why I stuck my neck out to practice storytelling in public — to exercise useful skills. And to have fun, of[…] Keep reading →

Kids learn to ski easily, before they learn to fear falling. After I learned to ski in my mid-twenties I asked my mom why they never took us skiing. She answered “We couldn’t afford that” quick enough I could almost hear an unspoken “duh!” following it up. I love skiing so much I suggested my sister take her kids while they were young. President’s Day weekend she told me she[…] Keep reading →

I wanted to love the China Study, a bestselling book by a scientist and doctor on nutrition. It’s gotten a lot of media attention (from the NY Times, Huffington Post, Bill Clinton, and Oprah, for example). It’s based in science, promotes healthy eating, and does two main things — one well, one not so well. Overall, I like the book and recommend it. At the end of this post I[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on my daily exercise and starting and keeping challenging habits. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] A few words on burpees and working out to follow up the past two days’ posts (yesterday, the day before) Having read that some people consider[…] Keep reading →

Following up yesterday’s thoughts on illusions our leaders benefit from, another occurred to me in learning about ping-pong diplomacy, the 1970s sports phenomenon that contributed to opening relations between the U.S. and China. In particular, the United States and Chinese governments followed, not led, the opening process. The government of each country called the other its enemy and armed itself against the other. Yet I expect most people of each[…] Keep reading →