Habits
The advice industry and how to read it
Self-improvement writing has a structural incentive to overstate, and a handful of tests separate the useful from the confident.
Habits
Cues, friction, streaks and why most systems fail in week three.
Habits
Reviewing your own systems
Personal systems accumulate features and stop being used, and a periodic review is the only thing that prevents it.
Habits
Accountability, and what makes it work
Telling someone your plan does very little. Specific arrangements with specific people do considerably more.
Habits
Decision fatigue, and what survived the replication crisis
A popular concept whose headline studies did not replicate well, and a residue of practical advice that holds up for other reasons.
Habits
Exercise as a cognitive intervention
The evidence for effects on mood and executive function is reasonable, the effect sizes are modest, and the dose required is smaller than most people assume.
Habits
Sleep is the intervention nobody wants to hear about
It has the largest effect on mood, attention and self-control of anything discussed on this site, and it is the least popular recommendation.
Habits
Routines, rigidity and the difference between them
A routine that only works on a perfect day is not a routine. It is a set of conditions you are hoping for.
Habits
Tracking behaviour without becoming preoccupied by it
Measurement improves behaviour up to a point, past which it becomes the behaviour.
Habits
Breaking a habit is a different problem from building one
The cue-response link does not get deleted. It gets outcompeted, which changes what the strategy has to be.
Habits
Habit stacking, and where it breaks down
Attaching a new behaviour to an existing one is genuinely effective, provided the anchor is more reliable than most people assume theirs is.
Habits
The environment does more work than willpower
Self-control research has moved substantially, and the people who appear to have the most of it mostly arrange to need less.
Habits
Streaks, and when they stop helping
Counting consecutive days is genuinely motivating and creates a specific fragility that most people discover the hard way.
Habits
Why habits fail in week three
The first fortnight runs on novelty and resolve. What replaces them determines whether anything survives.