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Book Freak #26: Building Positive Habits

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Building Positive Habits

Book Freak is a weekly newsletter with cognitive tools you can use to improve the quality of your life.

In this issue, advice from Gretchen Rubin’s book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives.

Fail small, not big
“Instead of feeling that you’ve blown the day and thinking, ‘I’ll get back on track tomorrow,’ try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter. Fail small, not big.”

For a good habit to stick, make it convenient
“To a truly remarkable extent, we’re more likely to do something if it’s convenient, and less likely if it’s not. For this reason, we should pay close attention to the convenience of any activity we want to make into a habit.”

Build a foundation to develop positive habits
“From my observation, habits in four areas do most to boost feelings of self-control, and in this way strengthen the foundation of all our habits. We do well to begin by tackling the habits that help us to: 1. sleep 2. move 3. eat and drink right 4. unclutter”

Pair activities
“In the Strategy of Pairing, I couple two activities, one that I need or want to do, and one that I don’t particularly want to do, to get myself to accomplish them both. It’s not a reward, it’s not a treat, it’s just a pairing.”

Book Freak is one of four newsletters from Cool Tools Lab (our other three are the Cool Tools Newsletter, Recomendo, and What’s in my bag?).

11/19/19

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