Last week, I came across a fascinating section in Josh Kaufman’s book that I’ve been thinking about a lot – his discussion on Reference Level.
From the book:
Reference Level – a range of perceptions that indicate the system is “under control.” When a perception is within the system’s Reference Level, nothing happens. When the perception violates the Reference Level by being too high or too low, the system will act to bring the perception back under control….
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“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” ~Mark Twain
It’s one of the oldest, most persistent, and most frustrating problems we face in the modern world.
We all have important, and sometimes scary, things that we want to accomplish in our lives. We have no problem planning for these things, dreaming about them, and thinking about achieving them at some distant time in the future. But when it comes time to actually accomplish these things in the present, they don’t get accomplished.
Why is it that the earlier you have the opportunity to do something, the more resistant you are to actually start working on it?…
We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.
~Napoleon Hill
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Our everyday environment is something that affects us more than we know.
When we go to the store, all of the milk is placed in the back. Why? So that we have to walk past everything else in the store. And we’ll probably end up buying more because of it. What influenced you to buy the cookies in addition to the milk? Was it because you planned on it? No matter what you would have searched for the cookies?…
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A few weeks ago, on Amy Clover’s blog, I wrote about a 30-second daily workout routine I’d put together – this based on Tim Ferriss’ Occam’s Protocol from The 4-Hour Body.
I was being hyperbolic with the title: obviously 30-seconds is not quite what you would hope for in terms of meeting your daily recommendations for exercise. But it’s just an example of how something extremely small can lead to a long-term exercise habit.
This week I’ll share my results with this experiment. How I did with this routine over the last month, what I learned, and what I’ll change moving forward.…
I'm a goofy guy obsessed with figuring out why we do what we do, and what to do about it.
