Habits

Systems beat goals. Build, maintain and edit the daily habits that compound into results.

Chapters

  1. Why 1% Better Isn’t Enough
  2. Consistent But No Progress? It’s the Hurdle Rate
  3. To Achieve Your Goals, Aim at Your Habits
  4. Why Comfort Will Ruin Your Life: The Turkey Problem
  5. Willpower Is Finite (How to Do Hard Things Anyway)
  6. My Cold Shower Got Better. My Business Didn’t.
  7. Substitute, Don’t Subtract: How to Break a Habit
  8. Start Laughably Small
  9. The Con I Run on Myself to Start Working
  10. The One Minute Rule for Habits That Stick
  11. The Tardigrade Test: How to Build Habits That Last
  12. Why Some Habits Stick: 12 Tardigrade Traits
  13. The Minimalist Philosophy of a Jellyfish
  14. Why Rich People and Dying Spacecraft Follow the Same Rule
  15. The Cure For Anxiety Is Doing More Of It
  16. Mental Toughness via Meditation
  17. Confidence Is a Trailing Indicator
  18. Madam C.J. Walker: $1.25 to 20,000 Agents
  19. Chase Risk Before It Chases You
  20. How Meditation Eats Stress
  21. The Optimization Trap That Broke My Meditation Habit
  22. Ray Dalio’s 42-Year Daily Habit
  23. The 10,000 Hour Rule Counts the Wrong Thing
  24. An AI Named the One Trait That Predicts Success
  25. Habits of Great Writers, Founders and Investors
  26. The Habit Range System
  27. How to Adapt to Change Fast Enough
  28. How I Build Habits That Don’t Break
  29. How to Make Habits Stick When Life Pushes Back
  30. I Had Too Many Habits. Here’s What Saved Me.
  31. Your Habits Are Your Investment Portfolio
  32. Your Habit List Is a Single Point of Failure
  33. Work-Life Balance Is a Myth. Choose Your Table.
  34. You’re in a Status Game Whether You Entered or Not
  35. Stop Trading Your Habits Like Stocks
  36. Anti-Habits: The Discipline of Saying No
  37. The 10pm Rule I Failed for Two Years
  38. Why I Can’t Drink a Latte (and Billionaires Pay No Tax)
  39. I Optimized My Habits Until They Broke
  40. Optimizing Your Life Is Killing Your Progress
  41. Your Habits Have a Hurdle Rate
  42. I Pay 34 Minutes a Day for My Business to Grow
  43. The Navy Cured Scurvy. Then It Uncured It.
  44. The 200-Million-Year Test for Any Habit
  45. 190,000 Taste Tests Said Yes. Customers Said No.
  46. Why I Went to the Gym at Midnight (The Streak Method)
  47. One Small Promise, Kept 108 Mornings in a Row
  48. Why Mormons Get Rich and Adventists Live to 100
  49. Your Habits Are Only as Strong as Your Worst Day
  50. The Map Is Not the Territory (And Why That’s Fine)
  51. Habit Banking: What You Can Bank and What You Can’t
  52. Stop Raising Your Standards. Start Proving Them.
  53. Patagonia’s 5-Word Policy for Getting Work Done
  54. How to Focus on One Thing All Day
  55. Why Good Habits Get Boring
  56. You Stopped Feeling It. It Didn’t Stop Working.
  57. Your Cold Shower Is an Exposure Therapy Rep
  58. Why Achieving Goals Doesn’t Make You Happy
  59. What 2,000 Days of Building in Public Proved
  60. Why Rest Days Made Everything Harder
  61. I Stopped Taking Rest Days. The Binges Started.
  62. The 3am Binge Isn’t a Willpower Failure
  63. The Same Loop That Killed Sears Runs Your Nights
  64. Moving Averages for Life
  65. Small Habits, Big Results: 47 Novels Before Work
  66. Most Habit Trackers Miss the Point
  67. Get More Done by Counting What You Finish
  68. The Tater Tots Trick for Repurposing Content
  69. Eat The Frog Last
  70. The Morning Habits That Stick (Why Order Matters)
  71. Your Morning Habits Work. The Order Doesn’t.
  72. Compound Lifts
  73. Analysis Paralysis Is a Bundling Problem
  74. You’re Not Lazy. The Step Is Too Steep.
  75. The Atomic Ivy Lee Method
  76. Force Ranking
  77. Everything Feels Important? It’s a Ranking Problem
  78. The Resistance Rule
  79. The Replay Protocol
  80. 4 Things I’d Tell My Younger Self. One Changed Everything.
  81. How I Review a Year in One Hour
  82. Words Are Software
  83. Friction is the Feature
  84. How I Use a Paper To-Do List to Finish What Actually Matters
  85. Why I Rewrite My Principles by Hand
  86. Think on Paper to Keep Your Principles Sharp
  87. The 150-Year Art of Delayed Gratification
  88. Neil Gaiman’s Two-Draft Rule
  89. Don’t Hard-Code Trauma: How to Let Go of the Past
  90. How I Get Business Ideas
  91. How to Get Startup Ideas: Build the “Dumb” One First
  92. Is It Necessary?
  93. I Deleted Social Media. Here’s What I Kept.
  94. The One-Hour Trap
  95. Why I Check Email Once a Week
  96. The Sound That Trained Me to Overwork
  97. The Hidden Cost of Moving: Decision Fatigue
  98. Proximity Is Power. Here’s the Math.
  99. Not Perfect, But Better
  100. The Hidden Cost of Unreliability
  101. Climb to See the Next Peak
  102. Simplicity Through Intensity
  103. Consistency Over Intensity: What Pushing Harder Costs
  104. You’re Not Undisciplined. Your Habit Is Too Big.
  105. The $4.6 Billion Lesson in Not Rushing
  106. Do Less, Get Better: I Removed a Good Chapter
  107. Do Less, Get More: The F1 Math
  108. The NBA Deleted a Shot. Your Habit Needs the Same.
  109. Not All Trade-Offs Are Real
  110. The 3% Mortgage Debate Is Really About Sleep
  111. Revenge Bedtime Procrastination Isn’t About Sleep. Ask Hermès.
  112. Fifteen Years on One Wall. One Day Off the Business Week.
  113. How to Close a Chapter Without Regret