Author: Brian Gitt

It’s not easy to become great at anything. No one is born a great entrepreneur, artist, or athlete. We have to earn it. One thing I’ve noticed about high achievers is they leverage the compounding principle by designing their life around it. The compounding principle is based on incremental, constant, progress over a very long-time frame. Albert Einstein is said to have called the “compounding principle” the most powerful force in the universe. Most of us are familiar with compound interest, which is how this principle is applied in economics. Compound interest works because you earn “interest on your interest” and your money compounds over a long-time frame.

Consciously designing your life around the compounding principle will give you a similar exponential return in learning new skills, enhancing diet and exercise, or building a successful business. Watch what happens when you invest a small amount of time every day to work toward a goal that is important to you.

This principle breaks down into three building blocks.

1. Long-term thinking. Identify what you want in the long term and aim for that.
2. Commitment. Focus on your long-term goal and employ self-discipline to work toward it daily.
3. Incremental constant progress. Get a little better every day. Consistency develops ability.

We need goals to know where we are going and daily habits to help us get there. Compounding works best when we are consistent, and that’s the hardest part.

A common mistake people make is they tend to want to carve out a larger chunk of time one, two, or three times per week. Instead, it’s better to create daily habits and invest a smaller amount of time every day. Life has a way of getting in the way. Most of us have competing interests for our time and it’s easy to get distracted or get pulled into other activities by your job, friends, and family. Habits are reinforced and work best when you do them at the same time every day.

Before I commit to any new practice, I find it useful to ask myself this question:

Can I commit to working on this new habit every day for the next 5 years?

If the commitment sounds overwhelming, then consider reducing the amount of time you dedicate daily. For example, if not for 30 minutes a day, how about 20?  Or simply 5?  Remember, it’s consistent, incremental progress that yields compounded results.

Here are a few examples of how I’m using the compounding principle daily:

• Exercise to improve my health, increase my energy level, and reduce stress.
• Meditation to increase the clarity of my thinking and reduce emotional reactiveness.  
• Reading and listening to podcasts to expose myself to new ideas and learn.

Learning thrives on the compounding principle. Imagine the advantage you get by investing five minutes a day to learn one new idea. In one year you will add over 300 new ideas to your mental toolbox. These ideas can help de-risk business decisions, improve the clarity of your thinking, and work more effectively with people.

Now it’s your turn. What’s your goal? What daily habits can help you achieve it?

Leverage the compounding principle by designing your life around it.

What if we could power robots, sensors, tools, and all electronic devices wirelessly? Imagine if designers of devices in health care, manufacturing, logistics, and construction were not limited by wires or batteries. Wireless power is going to unleash a wave of new innovation just like wireless communication unlocked smart phones and WiFi liberated data and information.

Reach Labs, born out of MIT and Y Combinator, has developed new technology to deliver long-range wireless power.

What is wireless power?

Wireless power distributes electricity without wires. This is accomplished using electromagnetic fields, which is how the sun transfers energy to the earth. The force you feel when you hold two magnets with opposite charges near each other is an example of an electromagnetic field.

To understand how wireless power works, it’s helpful to understand how energy is created. Everything on earth is made up of small particles that have positive or negative charges. Opposite charges are attracted to each other, which creates motion. As charged particles move, they create an electromagnetic field.

We use electromagnetic energy for different purposes, and the frequency of the wave determines the level of energy intensity. Low-frequency radio waves allow us to listen to music in our cars, open garage doors, and unlock hotel rooms. High-frequency waves allow us to X-ray our bones to determine if they are broken. In between, in the middle of the spectrum, visible light from the sun allows us to see what’s around us.  

There are three main ways to distribute wireless power.

1. Induction. My wireless electric toothbrush charges using induction. If you pass electric current through a coil of copper wire, the coil will create a magnetic field. Place a second copper coil in the magnetic field, and the power will transfer from one coil to the other. This approach can be used to charge a phone or an electric car, but it is limited because the copper coils need to be very close together.

2. Lasers. A focused beam of nonvisible light aimed at a target equipped with a solar cell can transform a laser’s energy into electricity. This approach requires a direct line of sight to the target, and the high concentration of energy in the laser beam creates safety concerns. 

3. Radio waves. Antennas transmit electromagnetic waves through the air until they are received by another set of antennas, which convert the wave’s energy into usable power.

Reach Lab’s advantage

Reach Labs’ technology focuses on using radio waves to deliver long-range power in industrial applications. Most companies working on wireless power concentrate on consumer applications (e.g., charging cell phones, tablets, electronics, etc.) because their underlying technology is constrained to short-range applications.

Reach Labs’ hardware and software platform maximizes long-range power transmission by optimizing the path of the radio waves. The software ensures optimal transmission configuration of the waves and routes them to bounce off each other and reflect from objects in a pattern to direct the energy in the most efficient path to the target receivers. This approach allows the radio waves to be directed via multiple pathways instead of a single, focused, high-energy beam.

Benefits

Long-range power distribution. Liberates electronic devices from needing wired power connections or batteries. One transmitter can distribute power up to 100 feet.

Improved performance. Sensors and connected devices are no longer constrained by battery life and can process, analyze, and store more data, enabling quicker response times and instant decision-making. More sensors mean more data for implementing machine learning insights and automation.

Safe. Operates below Federal Communications Commission (FCC) exposure limits. As sensors detect a person, the power is either scaled down to prevent any exposure higher than FCC limits or shut down. 

Modular and scalable. Powers anything from a microwatt sensor to a 400W industrial robot—depending on the size of the transmitter, size of receiver, and distance between them. Software allows antennas to be deployed in different configurations to accommodate a wide range of power specifications.

Flexible. Transmitters power multiple devices, do not require line of sight, and can adapt to any environment including inconvenient, hazardous, or inaccessible locations.

Monitoring and control. Dashboard accessible via web browser, which provides real-time monitoring of all powered devices on the network.

How it works

1.     One or more antennas are connected to a power source.

2.     Antennas convert electrical current into electromagnetic radio waves.

3.     A separate communication channel allows transmitting antennas to communicate with receivers.

4.   Software optimizes the path of the radio waves to reach all receivers.

5.   Radar, sensors, and software detect human presence, allowing radio waves to be instantly scaled down under FCC limits.

6.     Dashboard allows authorized users to remotely manage devices on the power network using advanced monitoring, controlling, and reporting capabilities.

Applications

An overwhelming number of industrial, asset management, and supply chain applications can potentially be powered through this wireless technology. Consider cordless tools and scanners, mobile warehouse robots that never need charging, digital price tags in big box retail stores, and fleets of security drones that never need to land.

Wireless sensor networks in manufacturing, logistics, and retail are Reach Lab’s first target applications. Sensors typically require short-lived batteries that are inconvenient to replace. Millions of dollars can be lost shutting down industrial machines in a power plant or manufacturing process. Unrestricted placement of sensors can increase performance due to better monitoring and data processing.

Power-hungry video and audio sensors, along with other industrial sensors tracking temperature, motion, vibration, tilt, force, voltage, and water level, can improve quality, minimize waste, and boost overall efficiency of a manufacturing process.

In logistics, sensors such as GPS trackers, RFID tags, and BLE beacons ensure effective tracking and delivery of products.

Retailers such as Walmart and Costco can power electronic shelf labels, LED displays, and LCD touch monitors to create a more engaging experience for shoppers.

Education provides the foundation of our prosperity as a society. Our chance to improve our quality of life requires transferring knowledge to the next generation to spur innovation and accelerate technology development.

To compete in the global marketplace, the United States must deliver high-quality education to its citizens. History is littered with failed civilizations. Unless Americans reimagine higher education, our freedom and way of life are at risk.

Gaining specialized knowledge to contribute value to society is also the best way for individuals to gain financial freedom. However, possessing specialized knowledge is not enough; you must know how to apply that knowledge to solve problems and advance innovative ideas. Learning multidisciplinary approaches to apply the big ideas of the major disciplines, including physics, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, and biology, will give you a major competitive advantage.

With the exception of training in the hard sciences, most liberal arts higher education has been designed to allow you to earn a credential and build social connections. College is rarely designed to train you for specific jobs in the workforce. Companies use the credential to filter graduates when hiring. Students and their parents use the degree to signal status.

Although there are always exceptions, U.S. higher education overall is failing to deliver on its promise of multidisciplinary training that provides a foundation for critical thinking, creative problem-solving, and innovative decision-making.

Contributing to this failure are misaligned incentives between schools and students. Schools require payment up front but offer little accountability for the outcome. Students have to pay up front with little certainty that their degree will help them get a job or advance their career or enrich their lives.

I’m not suggesting that no one should go to college. In select professions such as medicine, science, and academia, college is valuable. However, a large percentage of college students and older adults seeking retraining need new models that could provide a better-quality, career-focused education at significantly lower costs.

Four converging trends create a massive market opportunity to develop new models in higher education.

One new model

Lambda School is an example of a new model in education that aligns incentives of the student, school, and employers. The online school offers live instruction, mentoring, and career placement, and its curriculum has been designed to meet specific skills needed by employers. Students sign an income share agreement (ISA) and pay no tuition until they land a job that pays over $50,000 per year; when they reach that point, students pay 17% of their gross income for up to 24 months. Because the ISA is capped, the maximum a student will pay is $30,000.

This model allows the student to avoid going into debt and encourages the school to invest in its students because their ability to pay for their education is based on their career earnings. The nine-month program trains students in computer science or data science. Lambda plans to expand to other job categories, such as nursing and cybersecurity.

New models in higher education are needed to improve our country’s overall quality of life and ensure our citizens can compete in the global market. Students need access to both multidisciplinary education and specialized knowledge in order to contribute value to society and gain their own financial freedom. A massive market opportunity for new models in higher education has been created by the convergence of high tuition costs, changing workforce requirements, the threat of AI and automation, and the advance of online learning. Continue to learn throughout your career to ensure that you cultivate relevant skills and maintain your financial freedom.

Mental models help startup founders avoid bias and blind spots, thus making decisions less risky. A mental model is an idea that helps you better understand the reality of the world around you. They provide shortcuts to higher-level thinking by forcing your brain to think about a problem or decision from different perspectives.

Mental models come from multiple disciplines including physics, psychology, biology, chemistry, economics, and mathematics. There are thousands of models. The good news is that about 100 models can do the heavy lifting for most decisions. The website Farnam Street provides an overview of the most beneficial 109 mental models.

All startup founders are biased, and all have blind spots. Biases are pervasive and highly resistant to feedback, and they can cause us to overlook or dismiss crucial information. Getting feedback from customers, advisors, and employees is essential to overcoming biases. However, founders are forced to make dozens of decisions a day, making it difficult to always get timely advice. Time constraints and the difficulty of finding quality information can lead smart people to make poor decisions.

In the summer of 2016, I went through the startup accelerator Y Combinator (YC). One of the most valuable aspects of that experience was called “office hours.” During office hours I had an opportunity to meet with a YC partner and get feedback about a specific problem or decision. I gained new insight as the partner helped me view my problem through a different lens.

Mental models can function like a YC partner or advisor by forcing you to see a problem from a different perspective. They teach us how to think better. Models can also provide your team a common vocabulary and stimulate useful discussion when you are facing important decisions. Investing time to learn and operationalize these models will help you and your team improve your decision-making process.

Here are a few of the mental models I find most useful.

Hanlon’s razor

Don’t attribute malice or bad intent to actions or outcomes that could be explained by carelessness, busyness, or ignorance. Give people the benefit of the doubt.

Use when: A customer is not returning your call. A colleague missed an important internal meeting without informing you in advance. A new potential partner didn’t sign and return the partnership agreement by the agreed timeline.

Thinking gray

Delay forming an opinion until you have reviewed all the important facts and heard from all key stakeholders. This technique is useful to overcome confirmation bias, which is our tendency to search for, interpret, and favor information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs and desired outcome.

Use when: Designing a go-to-market strategy. Identifying the target audience for a marketing campaign. Determining which features should be prioritized on the product roadmap.

Five whys

This model forces you to push through your intuition and optimism to reveal the underlying truth. Keep repeating the question “Why did this happen?” or “Why do we need this?” at least five times to reveal the root cause of the problem.

Here is an example from the book Super Thinking – The Big Book of Mental Models. The example shows how this mental model was used to identify the root cause of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.

1. Why did the Challenger’s hydrogen tank ignite? Hot gases were leaking from the rocket motor.

2. Why was the hot gas leaking? A seal in the motor broke.

3. Why did the seal break? The O-ring that was supposed to protect the seal failed.

4. Why did the O-ring fail? It was used at a temperature outside its intended range.

5. Why was the O-ring used outside its temperature range? Because on launch day, the temperature was below freezing, at 29 degrees Fahrenheit. (Previously, the coldest launch had been at 53 degrees.)

6. Why did the launch go forward when it was so cold? Safety concerns were ignored at the launch meeting.

7. Why were the safety concerns ignored? There was a lack of proper checks and balances at NASA. That was the root cause, the real reason the Challenger disaster occurred.

Use when: Conducting postmortems to determine why a project or product failed. Deciding to create and hire a new role in the company. Designing new human resource processes or procedures.

Inversion

Flip a problem around and approach it from the opposite end of the natural starting point. Instead of starting at the beginning and thinking forward, start at the end and think backward. This allows you to identify and remove obstacles to success.

Use when: Designing a user experience for a new product. Creating the onboard experience for new employees. Identifying the best strategy to sell a target customer.

Eisenhower decision matrix

This model employs a two-by-two grid (matrix) that helps you prioritize based on urgency and importance. Stephen Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, was inspired to create the matrix below based on U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower’s quote, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”

Examples of when, how to use

	Urgent	Not Urgent
Important	I. – Manage   Meeting customer deadlines Resolving key employee issue Fixing web server problem	II. – Focus   Developing strategic plan Building relationships Deep work
Not Important	III. – Triage   Last-minute meeting requests Most events	IV. – Avoid   Most conferences Most things that distract from focus on customers and product

Opportunity cost

Every choice you make carries a cost. Choosing to do one thing means choosing not to do another. Identify multiple scenarios and evaluate the costs of each before committing. Select the one with the lowest opportunity cost.

Use when: Building a new product feature. Deciding whether to attend a conference. Determining which customer to target.

Summary

Mental models help us avoid bias and blind spots and de-risk our decisions. They teach us to think clearly. Investing time to learn several models will help you and your team improve your decision-making process and make fewer wrong calls. To learn more about this process, take a look at my post, “Avoid Blind Spots and Make Smarter Decisions.”

To learn more about mental models, I recommend the following:

Super Thinking – The Big Book of Mental Models by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann

The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts by Shane Parrish

Poor Charlie’s Almanack – The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger edited by Peter Kaufman

People who struggle with victim mentality blame other people and their circumstances for their unhappiness. Blaming other people is not productive. Victim mentality robs us of our agency and power. It prevents us from taking responsibility and action to improve our situation.

According to Webster’s dictionary, “a victim is someone that has been injured, tricked, duped or has been subjected to oppression, hardship, or mistreatment.” At some point in our lives, we are all victims of oppression and tyranny. However, you decide how these experiences shape your worldview.

In middle school, I was bullied because I was Jewish. Kids called me a kike (ethnic slur for a Jew), spit in my face, put dog poop in my books, and physically intimidated and assaulted me on a routine basis. The abuse got so bad that I would hide on property next to the school while waiting for my carpool to avoid my tormentors. When I saw my ride, I would sprint to the car.

I chose not to fight back because I did not want to get into trouble at school. Instead of identifying myself for the rest of my life as the scarred victim of cruel kids, I choose to see myself as someone who rose above that abuse.

Scratch the surface of anyone’s life and you will find suffering and hardship. Oppressors and tyranny come in many forms and from many sources. Most of us experience oppression at some point in our lives from a classmate, boss, parent, spouse, teacher, sibling, or stranger. If you are lucky enough to escape human oppression, you won’t be able to avoid all of Mother Nature’s myriad sources of suffering, such as disease, natural disasters, predators, or aging. No one is exempt. Even the most privileged billionaires get terminal diseases, grow old, suffer injuries, and helplessly watch as people they love die.

However, the biggest tyrant of all lives in your head. The stories we tell ourselves about our experiences shape our mental state. Our mental state is our reality. Therefore, if you allow a tyrant to live in your head, you will suffer unnecessarily.

If you are reading this essay, it means you are alive and have access to a computer and the internet. This puts you in an elite group of humans who have benefited from a level of prosperity unimaginable even 50 years ago. We all have a lot to be grateful for.

But I admit, it’s not easy to resist the tyrant in our heads, the one who wants us to wallow in our suffering and point fingers at everyone but ourselves for our problems. Here are a few ways that have help me avoid feeling and acting like a victim.

• Be self-aware. Monitor and understand your emotions. Practice meditation or any mindfulness exercise that provides perspective on your mental state.
• Embrace responsibility. Seek out opportunities to improve your situation. Own your mistakes and the ways you have contributed to your current reality.
• Practice gratitude.Write down three things you are grateful for every day. Even when we are experiencing extreme hardship, we can find things to be grateful for.
• Be optimistic. Believe in your ability to solve problems and overcome adversity. Set high expectations for yourself. Low expectations kill competence and success.
• Show humility. Accept help and support from other people.

Don’t blame other people or let the tyrant in your head shape your mental state. Victim mentality will rob you of your agency and power. Take action to improve your situation and be grateful you’re not rotting in the ground.

What’s the meaning of life?

It took me decades to realize I was asking the wrong question. There is no one answer that applies to everyone. Rather, we create meaning through our beliefs, thoughts, and actions.

Now, I ask a better question:

How do I create meaning and purpose in my life?

From listening to other people’s experiences and undertaking lots of personal trial and error, I’ve learned to create significance in my own life by pursuing the following actions:

• Contribute value
• Take responsibility
• Acquire knowledge
• Make good decisions
• Help people

Contribute value.

Identify your talents and interests and then apply effort and self-discipline to build competence in those areas so you can to contribute value to society. We’re not born equal. Everyone has different natural talents. These include creativity, cognitive abilities or aptitudes in music, art, or sports. We feel good when we contribute to something bigger than ourselves.

Take responsibility.

Find meaning by voluntarily shouldering as much responsibility as you can manage. This is not intuitive. Our culture tells us to seek pleasure, accumulate material wealth, and shed responsibility to live “the good life.” In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl provides three paths to a meaningful life. Dr. Frankl was a Holocaust survivor, professor of neurology and psychiatry, and founder of Logotherapy, a type of psychotherapy based on the premise that an individual’s primary motivational force is to find meaning in life. Notice how taking responsibility underlies each of his recommendations.

Dr. Frankl says a meaningful life can be found on these three paths:

• Through meaningful work;
• Through nurturing and caring for another person (e.g., raising children); and
• Through overcoming adversity and suffering.

Acquire knowledge.

Learning starts with curiosity. We learn best when we are interested and want to learn. Be curious, expose yourself to new ideas, listen more, speak less, and engage with people who have different viewpoints. However, the desire to learn is not enough. Knowledge is not acquired simply by memorizing information.

We need to build a learning system that will help us avoid blind spots, overcome bias, test and analyze new information, and embrace diverse viewpoints. Design your learning system around the following elements.

• Learn mental models. The models in our head shape our experience of the world. You want a toolbox of multiple models across disciplines (e.g., physics, chemistry, mathematics, psychology). Unfortunately, most high schools and universities don’t teach the multidisciplinary mental models needed to solve problems and make decisions effectively. I highly recommend the book Super Thinking to upgrade your brain by incorporating the most important mental models. The website Farnam Street also provides an excellent overview of the most beneficial 109 mental models to help make better decisions.
• Expose yourself to new information and diverse viewpoints. Read nonfiction and science-fiction books, listen to podcasts and audiobooks, watch educational videos, and attend lectures. You can find a list of my favorite podcasts and books I recommend at the end of this essay.
• Write about what you are learning. Writing is thinking, and the act of writing will help you synthesize your ideas and integrate your knowledge. Capturing your insights and lessons learned will also help organize and catalogue your knowledge.
• Apply new knowledge to solve a problem. Working on a problem helps you integrate knowledge at a much deeper level than memorizing a solution.
• Learn by teaching. Teaching other people forces you to internalize learning at a deeper level. Gaps in your understanding will appear instantly when you try to explain and teach someone else. Teaching forces you to break down concepts into easily digestible parts.

Make good decisions.

Your decisions shape who you are and the reality you live in. Decisions you make about school, career, health, and relationships have massive impact on your individual well-being and success. Your decisions also impact the value you contribute to the world. Your ability to make good decisions depends on the quality of your thinking. The quality of your thinking depends on the quality of the models in your head. A model is an idea that helps you better understand the reality of the world around you. We all have models in our head based on our genetics, experiences, and backgrounds, and we need multiple models to make good decisions because one mental model is not sufficient.

Help people.

Share your talents to benefit others. Helping other people provides us with a sense of purpose. However, in order to truly help others, we need to provide value. Therefore, we first need to build competence. You can find many opportunities to share your talents, including through your work or relationships or by raising children or volunteering.

Summary

Ask yourself the right questions. Asking the wrong question can lead you down the wrong path. Contribute value by cultivating competency in the areas of your talents and interests. Find meaning by shouldering as much responsibility as you can manage while pursuing activities that allow you to use your talents and skills. Acquire knowledge by building a learning system. Make good decisions to improve your well-being, success, and the value you contribute. Find purpose by sharing your talent and helping people.

The advance of knowledge requires the collision of ideas. Good ideas survive deep skepticism and intense competition. Look at the United States Constitution, which is a collection of ideas that were fiercely debated and challenged before it was adopted. Those ideas have stood the test of time.

Stress-testing ideas exposes their weaknesses and highlights their strengths. Organizations that adopt this principle gain the advantage. Innovation happens when people are encouraged to put forward their best thinking, no matter their status, power, or tenure.

I recently heard Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and chairman, speak at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. He attributed a lot of Google’s success to implementing the competition of ideas principle. Google embodies this ethos and approach to innovation in X Development, its semi-secret research and development innovation lab that works on new moonshot technology, such as Google’s self-driving cars. The lab celebrates failure and gives bonuses to teams that successfully kill their own projects by disproving their hypotheses.

Easy to understand but difficult to implement.

Most of us enjoy seeing our ideas adopted and don’t like watching them be criticized. When you combine this self-protective tendency with the hierarchies that develop in organizations, you can unintentionally protect bad ideas. You have likely witnessed a situation at work where no one wants to criticize an idea because it’s a pet project of someone who holds power in the organization. In addition, most organizations are filled with people who have misaligned incentives, competing agendas, biases, and blind spots.

Shutting down criticism is dangerous.

Surrounding yourself with people who think like you do blinds you to flaws in your thinking. The search for truth, knowledge, and innovation requires a free and open exchange of ideas. Seek out people with diverse viewpoints and invite criticism. Allow the best ideas to grow and let the bad ones die. Natural selection has been implementing this principle since life on earth began.

Learn to embrace failure and argue constructively.

Innovation requires failure. As profiled in Entrepreneur magazine, British inventor Sir James Dyson spent 15 years creating 5,126 versions of his dual cyclone vacuum cleaner before he found the right design.

Criticize ideas not people. The competition of ideas only works if people share their best thinking. No one likes to be attacked or disrespected. Not all ideas are going to be good. However, people need to feel safe and supported to share their ideas. Here are a few ways to frame conversations and to argue productively.

Five ways to argue productively

1. Identify the goal. Why are you having the conversation? Can you agree on a desired outcome? For example, if you are discussing a contentious issue, such as rent control in San Francisco, start by finding agreement on the goal. In this example, the ultimate goal is affordable housing — not rent control. Affordable housing is needed to support the local economy and enable key workers such as teachers, firefighters, police, and service personnel to live in the city.

2. Steel man the opposing view. The steel man argument (or steelmanning) is the opposite of the straw man argument. If you disagree with an idea or someone’s view, start by re-expressing your understanding of the other person’s position as clearly as possible in the most fair and favorable light. Identify all the points you agree with and highlight anything you learned from their idea and viewpoint. Only after summarizing the most charitable version of their position do you identify your points of disagreement.

3. Listen actively. Listen with the intent to learn. Most of us are guilty of thinking about our response while someone else is speaking. Instead, intently listen and try to understand the other person’s perspective.

4. Have fewer strong opinions. How many subjects are you really an expert on? If you are honest: not many. Yet most of us — including me — are guilty of holding strong opinions on many topics. What is your opinion on nuclear energy? Immigration? Climate change? To have a truly well-informed opinion on these topics would require hundreds of hours of intense study, exposure to diverse viewpoints, and review of the scientific literature.

5. Let the data decide. Often the best way to choose between two opposing views is to run an objective test. Software and the internet allow many kinds of tests to be completed quickly. For example, if your marketing team disagrees on the best message to promote a new product, run a comparison A/B test and see which campaign performs better.

Summary

The search for truth, knowledge, and innovation requires a free and open exchange of ideas. Stress-test ideas to expose their weaknesses and strengths. Do not shut down criticism that can expose your biases and blind spots. Embrace failure and learn to argue constructively. Follow the five steps above to create productive conversations and drive innovation.

Every problem we face — including war, crime, climate change, and income inequality — can be traced to decisions made by an individual or group of individuals. A company’s success or failure is the result of decisions. Decisions you make about school, career, health, and relationships have massive impact on your individual well-being and success.

The stakes are high, so what if we could learn to consistently make better decisions? We might find that the solution to most of our problems is hiding in plain sight right under our noses. In this post, I will present a 10-step, structured decision-making process. Adopting this process can help you avoid blind spots and choose actions that will help you build the life you want.

Your brain is a decision-making machine.

Our brains make thousands of decisions every day. In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author Daniel Kahneman summarizes decades of scientific research on how the human brain makes decisions. He outlines how our brains have two modes of thinking.

System 1 is fast, instinctive, and emotional.

You use System 1 when you:

• solve 2+2 =?
• drive a car on an empty road
• display disgust when you see a gruesome image

System 2 is slower, more deliberate and more logical.

You use System 2 when you:

• solve 17 X 24 =?
• count the number of vowels in a sentence
• parallel park in a tight parking space

Both functions are useful depending on your situation. Our brain also creates shortcuts called judgment heuristics to save time, allow us to think faster, and to conserve energy. These mental shortcuts are usually helpful, but they also can be biased, creating blind spots when we are trying to make important decisions.

All humans are biased and have blind spots.

The science is clear. All humans have bias and blind spots. And we often make decisions without possessing or reflecting on quality information.

As Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Smart people can make terrible decisions. Cognitive bias, blind spots, difficulty finding quality information, and time constraints can lead to poor decisions. Biases are pervasive, hardwired, and highly resistant to feedback, and they can cause us to overlook or dismiss crucial information.

The following are examples of common biases.

Availability bias. This bias leads you to believe that what you see is all there is. It can cause you to give preference to info and events that immediately come to mind, usually because they were recent, you personally observed them, or they were memorable.

Example. Most people overestimate the number of people killed by terrorism and underestimate risks associated with driving motor vehicles. According to a report created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in 2017 there were 18,753 people killed globally by terrorists. According to Safer America, every year, roughly 1.3 million people die in car accidents worldwide — an average of 3,287 deaths per day. Therefore, more people die in six days due to car crashes than die from global terrorist attacks in a year.

Representative bias. This occurs when two things look or seem similar and you assume the two things will be the same or will lead to the same outcome. Representativeness is basically stereotyping.

Example. Many people may assume that Jim would major in engineering based on his interests and activities. Jim grew up playing chess and video games. He was president of the computer science club in high school and loved to build things. Is Jim more likely to major in business or engineering? Jim is more likely to major in business. There are almost four times the number of business degrees given compared to engineering degrees. According to a report by the National Center for Educational Statistics in the year 2014-15, there were 364,000 degrees in business and only 98,000 engineering degrees.

Confirmation bias. This describes our tendency to search for, interpret, and favor information that confirms our preexisting beliefs and desired outcome. It is not based on objectivity.

Example. Confirmation bias is prevalent in politics and can be seen when people consider emotionally charged issues such as immigration and abortion. Deeply held beliefs can cause people from left-wing and right-wing political viewpoints to see the same event in radically different ways and to reject alternative explanations.

Affect bias. This happens when you make decisions based on a strong positive or negative emotional state or you make a “gut” decision without consulting all the evidence.

Example. Attitudes towards nuclear power, climate change, and consumer judgments are commonly influenced by affect bias. I’ve been guilty of this bias. I worked for twenty years promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency. Due to my strong beliefs and bias, I did not fully consider the benefits of nuclear power and fossil fuels. I was wrong.

Decisions are influenced by many factors.

Humans are not consistent. In addition to bias, stress, fatigue, distractions, excessive attention to an outcome, peer pressure, or too much trust in an “expert” can all impact our decisions. The way information is presented and our natural limitations in memory, attention, and processing also can contribute to poor decisions.

On its own, rigorous, detailed analysis does not drive good decisions. Research conducted by McKinsey and Company, which included a survey of 2,207 executives, shows good analysis in the hands of managers who have good judgment won’t naturally yield good decisions. The third ingredient — the process — is also crucial.

Make smarter decisions.

Life requires lots of decisions, but not all decisions are equally important. Just because a decision is urgent and time sensitive does not make it important. Some decisions have greater influence on our lives, and those are the ones that deserve your best efforts.

Your ability to make good decisions depends on the quality of your thinking. The quality of your thinking depends on the quality of the models in your head. A model is an idea that helps you better understand the reality of the world around you. We all have models in our head based on our genetics, experiences, and backgrounds, and we need multiple models to make good decisions because one mental model is not sufficient.

“To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

 – Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

Life is too short to not learn from other people’s mistakes. Using multiple mental models allows you to learn from other people’s experience and look through a multidisciplinary lens. Using mental models activates the System 2 part of your brain and helps you see the problem or opportunity from different perspectives. The website Farnam Street provides an excellent overview of the most beneficial 109 mental models to help make better decisions.

Here are two examples of useful mental models.

Inversion. This model provides a thinking tool to help you remove obstacles or avoid a stupid action. Flip the problem around and think backward. By approaching the problem from the opposite end of where you normally start, you find an opportunity to identify obstacles in a different way.

Example. If you want to lose 25 pounds, you might normally think about the actions you need to take to accomplish that goal — eating healthier, exercising, etc. Inversion looks at the problem in reverse and involves identifying all the things to avoid — going to happy hour, walking by your favorite bakery, etc. Inversion doesn’t always solve the problem, but it helps you think more clearly about removing unnecessary obstacles.

The map is not the territory. Maps are useful tools, but they are a reduction of what they represent. Maps are an abstraction and therefore flawed. They are useful in guiding you as long as you test real world conditions as you go.

Example. Online dating profiles are maps. Anyone who has ever met a few different people from an online dating website knows that people do not always live up to how they describe themselves on their profile. The map is not the territory.

10-step process to avoid blind spots and make smarter decisions.

The best way to improve your thinking and the quality of your decisions is to refine your decision-making process. Not all decisions are important enough to require a process. But important decisions need a process to avoid bias and blind spots and give you the best chance to be successful. This process requires thinking deeply and writing down your answers to each step.

1. Define the problem or opportunity. Start with a blank sheet of paper and write down the problem or opportunity using clear and precise language. Don’t use jargon. Do use simple vocabulary that an eight-year old can understand.

2. Start with WHY? Why do you need or want to solve this problem? Or why do you want to pursue this opportunity? Is this the right problem or opportunity to work on?

3. What is the goal? What does success look like? How will you know if the problem is solved or the goal is met?

4. Who makes the decision? Identify and write down everyone involved in making the decision. If you are the only decision maker then it’s easy. But depending on the context or complexity of the decision multiple parties may need to be involved.

5. Identify and weight decision criteria. List up to five criteria to evaluate and test potential solutions or scenarios. Weight the decision criteria based on importance. For example, if I were evaluating new job opportunities, I would use the following five criteria and then apply a rating (1 to 10 scale with 10 as the best score) to each criterion for each job. This would provide a score for each job opportunity.

Five Criteria

Interest level: interest in the mission and the problem the business is solving

Financial return: total compensation including base salary, benefits, and stock options

Location: distance I’ll need to commute to work

Impact: my potential impact in the company

Learning opportunity: how much will I learn in my role at this company

6. Select and apply mental models. Mental models force you to think about the problem or opportunity through different lenses. They provide a 360-degree view of the problem or opportunity to help reduce blind spots and minimize bias. This step may require compiling data and conducting analysis. In my example above regarding representative bias, I highlighted that Jim would be more likely to major in business instead of engineering. The only way to know this is to apply mental models such as the “insensitivity to base rates” or “regression to the mean,” which require creating a reference class that is statistically significant.

7. Create a minimum of three imagined scenarios. Develop at least three different potential solutions or scenarios with a detailed list of benefits and consequences for each scenario. Assume each scenario is wrong. Try to disprove them!

8. Get feedback from people with diverse viewpoints. Encourage competition of ideas from people with different backgrounds, skills, and perspectives. Be sure to include all people involved in making the final decision. Update scenarios and lists of benefits and consequences based on feedback.

9. Dedicate time to think. Set aside time to review and think about scenarios. Grapple with tradeoffs, uncertainties, and risk.

10. Make the decision. After you go through this type of structured decision-making process and think deeply about the problem or opportunity, you will often find that the answer is clear. However, if the answer is still not obvious, resist the temptation to make the decision by consensus. Review all the scenarios and feedback and make the final decision.

Summary

Your decisions shape the quality of your life. Success of companies and countries depends on better decision-making processes. All humans have bias and blind spots, and we often make decisions without quality information. Just being aware of your biases does not help you make better decisions. You must make the effort to utilize a deliberate process to overcome them. We form impressions way too quickly and then use selected evidence to confirm our initial conclusion. Experience brings increased confidence, but you should not rely on confidence in your intuition. Most people don’t recognize the limits of their expertise.

Use the 10-step process above and look for evidence that disproves your explanation. Resist and overcome your tendency to develop strong impressions and opinions too quickly. Problems need to be studied from multiple perspectives to ensure you are limiting your blind spots. Use mental models from multiple disciplines so you can see the problem from different perspectives. Then look to understand how these models fit together into a coherent whole. Knowledge is alive and subject to change as new evidence arrives. We need to continuously learn and relearn.

If you want to learn more about how to make smarter decisions, I recommend the following:

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin

The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts by Shane Parrish

Articles on decision-making on Farnam Street Website

People are the most valuable asset of a company. Developing people is the key to building a successful company. Companies gain competitive advantage by investing in leadership development and building a healthy, high-performance culture, on a foundation of feedback and support.

Great leaders inspire people to act.

Inspiring others provides a person his or her greatest opportunity to impact the world. Like moths to a lightbulb, people flock to great leaders who can inspire them to work collaboratively toward a common goal. People follow great leaders because they want to, not because they have to. Leaders are evangelists who believe that the product, service, or cause they are selling creates value and solves an important problem in the world. Their words are authentic because they are passionate and believe in their mission. This authenticity cultivates trust, and trust builds relationships that inspire loyalty in customers, employees, and followers.

Great leaders recruit diverse skills, personality traits, and viewpoints to solve big problems.

The world is complex. An effective leader, recruits team members who are cognitively diverse and possess complementary skills. Collectively, the group will be smarter and wiser than any one individual on the team. A high-performing team includes not only diverse skills but also diverse viewpoints. Individuals bring different mental models, experiences, and world views, creating an opportunity for a competition of ideas that reduces blind spots and spurs innovation. Diverse personality traits are also an important ingredient for success. The Big Five personality traits are defined as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Consider these traits when selecting people for specific roles and ensuring balance across the team. For example, you want your sales leader to score high in extraversion, but that is not as necessary for your bookkeeper.

Great leaders do not fit one mold.

People choose to follow leaders with different personalities, backgrounds, skills, and experience. Author Simon Sinek, in his book “Start With Why,” identifies the common attribute of great leaders as the ability to inspire people about a purpose, cause, or belief. They all start by asking, “Why does this (product, service, or cause) exist?” The answer to that question grows into the central focus of the leaders’ communication strategy, which they use to connect with people’s hearts. Great leaders first tap into the part of our brain called the limbic brain, which controls emotional decision-making. Only after connecting to our emotional center do they follow up with logic and reason, which are processed in the rational part of our brain called the neocortex.

Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Wright brothers have all employed this communication strategy. People may claim to buy Apple products because of quality, service, and features, but most people buy Apple products because it fulfills an unconscious desire to be respected by people they want to associate and connect with. Our need to belong is primal and baked into our DNA. As marketing guru Seth Godin loves to say, there is nothing more powerful than tribal marketing that focuses on helping “people like us do things like this.” I’m not suggesting that you can’t build a successful business based on price, quality, or features, but these strategies don’t produce loyalty, and you risk becoming a commodity in a crowded field, competing on price in a race to the bottom.

Great leaders develop new leaders.

Human capital is the most under-optimized asset class. One of my biggest mistakes in running my past companies was not making leadership development and mentoring a top priority. Prioritizing employees over customers may sound counterintuitive, but employees are an organization’s most valuable asset, and they are the ambassadors of the company. Leadership development starts with personal development. In a Harvard Business Review article, “Leadership that gets results,” author Daniel Goleman cites a study that links emotional intelligence to business results. The study is based on a random sample of 3,871 executives from a database of 20,000 executives worldwide. Unlike IQ, which is largely genetic, emotional intelligence can be learned through training, practice, and commitment.

Great leaders create a culture of high performance.

A group of people who come together around a common set of values and beliefs share a culture, which is a term for how people act and communicate with each other. People improve when they are given constructive feedback and support, and feedback cultures drive success and continuous improvement. Build a healthy, high-performance culture on the foundation of reciprocal feedback that is frequent, direct, and constructive. Healthy feedback requires trust. The intention of the giver must be to help the receiver grow, and the receiver must value the giver’s perspective, even if they disagree.

Effective feedback is specific, with the giver providing examples and a recommended solution to the problem. Both parties should practice active listening—repeating back key points before responding to ensure effective communication. Invest in personalized coaching for all managers and track their performance.

Great leaders take these 10 actions.

1. Be trustworthy. Display integrity and be consistently open, honest, and vulnerable.
2. Show humility. Surround yourself with people smarter than you.
3. Be self-aware. Monitor and understand your emotions and build your team around your strengths and weaknesses.
4. Show empathy. Take an active interest in understanding other people’s perspectives and emotions and practice active listening.
5. Pursue a growth mindset. Be curious and seek out opportunities to gain knowledge.
6. Embrace responsibility. Lead by example, regulate your emotions, own your mistakes, and act on feedback.
7. Be persuasive. Communicate your ideas clearly.
8. Be optimistic. Believe in your team’s ability to solve problems and in your ability to spot future opportunities that other people can’t see.
9. Be supportive. Set clear boundaries and expectations, provide incentives and opportunities for growth, remove roadblocks, and invest in building relationships by being generous with your time and advice.
10. Stay connected. Make people feel that they belong, consistently share key success metrics, create reciprocal feedback loops, and reinforce vision and mission daily.

Great leaders avoid 4 damaging behaviors.

Dr. John Gottman is a world-renowned psychologist and co-founder of The Gottman Institute,  which has conducted breakthrough research on relationships and communication for over 40 years. The Gottman research suggests that leaders should avoid these four behaviors that undermine healthy relationships and prevent the development of a high-performance culture.

1. Criticism. Disagree about ideas, but don’t attack the person or their character.

2. Contempt. Do not be mean, treat others with disrespect, mock them with sarcasm, call them names, or roll your eyes.

3. Defensiveness. Take responsibility for your role in the situation.

4. Stonewalling. When frustrated, do not shut down, withdraw from the conversation, and stop responding.

Summary

Great leaders inspire action, rather than manipulating people to act through the use of carrots and sticks. Great leadership inspires loyalty. Start with “why” to trigger emotionally driven decisions and then support those emotions with facts. Provide an opportunity for people to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Build teams with diverse skills and viewpoints to encourage a competition of ideas. We can all learn to lead and develop new leaders. Invest in coaching and leadership development and create a healthy culture built on feedback and support.

Tracking progress and being accountable to my goals is difficult. Work and family responsibilities constantly compete for time. Without building in a method to track progress and hold myself accountable, it’s unlikely I will be able to build the life I want.

Track what is important.

Track areas of your life that are most important to you. As management guru Peter Drucker said, “What gets measured, gets managed.” I find it useful to ask what is most important to achieve my goals, sustain my health, and become the person I want to be. Thinking about these questions and writing down my answers help me determine what to track.

Tracking is important because most people have terrible memories. Neuroscience and psychological research have repeatedly proven that human memory is unreliable and susceptible to distortion. According to an article from the US National Library of Medicine, “The Neuroscience of Memory: Implications for the Courtroom,” people are unable to retrieve, just one hour later, 50% of the information they consume.

Take this quick test: Do you remember how many nights you slept for at least 7 hours last week or how many emails you sent yesterday? Most likely not—unless you are intentionally tracking these activities and recording the results.

Progress motivates.

Tracking displays your progress over time. This can create a positive feedback loop, building your confidence that you are producing momentum toward achieving your goals. I noticed this recently when using the Waking Up meditation app. For the first 50 days, the app opened by showing me how many days of meditation I had completed. As the number grew, I felt good about my progress. However, after I had completed fifty days, the app stopped displaying this metric and instead opened with a “Daily Meditation” screen. This small change had a negative psychological impact because I didn’t immediately see how many days I had completed the meditation exercise.

Metrics matter.

Tracking requires metrics. A metric is simply a method to measure something and to determine the result. It’s important to focus on significant metrics. For example, there are many metrics you could track regarding your car, such as tire pressure, miles traveled since your last oil change, or when you need to check and replace your air filter. These metrics might be very important to make sure your car is achieving optimal performance. But if you’re driving the car, the most important metric to track is how much gas is in the car’s tank. You need to watch the fuel gauge to know how far you can drive without running out of gas.

When building the life you want, I recommend focusing on a few key metrics that map to your goals. For example, when it comes to exercise, some people use a step tracker such as Fitbit or an iPhone app to record how many steps they take each day. Some of those people have set specific steps-per-day goals, so this is a valuable metric for them. My personal goal is to get one hour of exercise each day, so instead of tracking my steps I track how many hours of exercise I get per week. If I were tracking my exercise by measuring the number of steps I take, I know I would be susceptible to skipping a workout when I had a busy day that required a lot of walking.

Make it easy.

The most effective tracking requires little or no effort. There are many devices (e.g., Fitbit) that track information automatically and tracking apps (e.g., Streaks) that require very little time to use on your phone. Some people prefer to use a simple Excel spreadsheet or their calendar to note what tasks or activities they have completed. The tracking method doesn’t matter. You just need to find an approach that works best for you.

If you are like me and don’t like to wear a watch or use a bunch of different tracking devices, you can track a few simple metrics and make them part of your daily routine.

My daily metrics

• Sleep: 7 hours/night
• Exercise: 1 hour/day
• Meditation: 10 minutes/day
• Reading: 30 minutes/day
• Writing: 1 hour/day

If you prefer using a tool there are multiple popular tracking tools options. Here are just a few:

• Streaks (general tracking app)
• Exist (general tracking app)
• Cronometer (general tracking app)
• Health app (iOS tracking app)
• Fitbit (wearables and tracking app)
• Garmin (wearables and tracking app)
• Oura (wearable ring that tracks sleeps and activity)

Be accountable — own the outcome.

Take responsibility for your actions and own the outcomes. Tracking provides data and transparency but does not necessarily keep you accountable. It won’t matter how meticulously you track your metrics if you neither reward yourself for success nor penalize yourself for shortcomings.

In my experience, it’s easier to be accountable to other people than to myself. I don’t want to let the other person down, especially if they are relying on me, or I’m fearful of the consequences, or both. Without building in some type of accountability, it’s easy to get busy with work or family obligations and neglect activities that are important but not urgent — even if you’re using a tracking app that shows when you do or do not reach your goals.

Here are four strategies for building accountability into your tracking system. In my experience, these approaches work best if done on a weekly basis. Experiment and find the approach or combination that works best for you.

1. Work with an accountability partner. Work with a friend to help each other keep your commitments. This is my preferred approach. I check-in with a friend once a week to report on the prior week, and we each share our goals for the coming week. Knowing that I will be reporting what I have accomplished provides an additional nudge to get things done.
2. Create a weekly reward. Build in a weekly reward for achieving your goals for the week. This could be carving out time for your favorite activity, eating a favorite food, or anything that motivates you and gives you pleasure.
3. Create a weekly consequence. Enforce a penalty, such as an extra workout or undesirable chore around the house, when you don’t meet your weekly goal.
4. Share results and compete with friends. Many of the tracking apps I listed allow you to share data about certain activities. You can create a friendly competition or just allow others to monitor your progress toward your goals.

Track areas of your life that are most important to you. Build habits to incorporate your metrics into your daily routine. Don’t rely on your memory. Focus on a few key metrics that map to your goals. Use technology or methods that are easiest for you to track your progress. And build accountability into your process.

Few things impact the quality of your life more than daily habits. Good habits help you become the person you want to be, whereas bad habits lead to pain, suffering, and self-loathing. Your behavior has a huge impact on the quality of your life. Therefore, it’s worth your time to build good habits and remove the bad ones.

We see overwhelming evidence for the power of habits all around us because we all know people who choose to create habits for exercising, eating healthy, reading, writing, and getting enough sleep. They usually perform better, live better quality lives, and enjoy more success. We also know people who choose to drink too much, smoke, eat junk food, and skip exercise, and we know they typically encounter more pain and health problems and are often not successful.

So if the evidence is overwhelming and the roadmap is clear, why don’t we all choose to build good habits and break bad ones?

For most people, it’s not because they lack good intentions or refuse to set goals. Instead, most simply lack the structure to consistently support good behavior and discourage bad behavior.

“We don’t rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems.”

—James Clear, author of Atomic Habits

Habits are actions we repeat routinely until they become automatic.

Life would be unproductive and unnecessarily stressful without habits. According to Duke University researchers, habits account for 40% of our decisions.

Do you remember the first few times you drove a car? How much attention did you pay to every detail to ensure you didn’t crash? Yet after years of driving, many of us text, listen to the radio, eat, and talk on the phone without thinking much about the actions it takes to actually drive the car. I’m not recommending distracted driving, by the way, but lots of people successfully do lots of things while they are driving every day. The steps needed to drive become habits, freeing up energy and attention to focus on additional actions.

Habits reduce cognitive load.

We create habits to think less. Habits and routines reduce stress and provide the structure we need to function in everyday life. Crest and Colgate make dozens of different varieties of toothpaste. Do you really want to spend several minutes deciding which toothpaste to buy every time you pick up a new tube? No, you don’t. Therefore, you make it a habit to buy the same type of toothpaste so you don’t waste time and expend energy.

Habits are deeply rooted in 20,000-plus years of evolutionary biology.

Our bodies evolved to be lazy and conserve energy. No wonder we love to lie on the couch and binge-watch Netflix. In the last few hundred years, most humans have had consistent access to food, but for thousands of years before that, food was scarce, and therefore our bodies evolved to conserve energy. This reality of evolution also explains why we love sweet and salty foods that are loaded with calories. Our brain tells us to eat as many high-calorie foods as possible at every opportunity.

This deep, unconscious instinct doesn’t realize that modern food scientists have engineered food to trigger this impulse or that there is a grocery store a short distance away where we have access to almost any food imaginable. But our impulse to eat kettle corn while lying on the couch watching movies makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective.

Habits are explained by behavioral psychology.

For over 100 years, scientists have been studying behavior in animals and humans. Unsurprisingly, they have discovered that we tend to repeat behaviors that result in good outcomes and avoid behaviors that lead to unpleasant outcomes. Most habits start through trial and error. When we try something new it takes a lot of mental energy to analyze the situation until we stumble upon something that works. Our brains release a chemical called dopamine when we finally find what works for the first time. Once we know what works, our brains create a new rule to help us repeat the action more easily in the future. This is the same chemical release that occurs in the brain when a person gets praise from the boss, receives “likes” on a social media post, or snorts cocaine.

In his book Atomic Habits, author James Clear states that all habits proceed through the following four stages.

Habit Loop

1. Cue: triggers your brain to initiate a behavior based on information that predicts a reward (e.g., money, status, food, sex, praise, approval, sense of satisfaction)

2. Craving: links to a desire to change your internal state

3. Response: transforms your action into a habit

4. Reward: satisfies your craving and desire, which is the ultimate goal of the habit

When you understand how the habit loop operates, you have a better chance to design good habits. 

Habits are influenced by our physical environment.

Our physical environment has a major impact on our behavior. Lee Robins’ studies of heroin use by Vietnam veterans offer a great example: “Robins’ studies found high rates of heroin use (34%) and symptoms of heroin dependence (20%) among U.S. soldiers while serving in Vietnam. In the first year after returning to the U.S., only 1% became re-addicted to heroin, although 10% tried the drug after their return.” Key factors such as price, availability, and social norms influenced the soldiers’ drug use, but being in a stressful war zone had an outsized impact on behavior. You don’t need a scientific study to understand this idea. How would your behavior be different if you were sitting with friends at happy hour rather than in the gym?

Habits are shaped by people around us.

Humans are social animals. We evolved in groups to survive, and we want and need to be accepted by other people. The social norms of our group shape our behavior. Every social group has its own culture and norms, which is why bikers, bankers, hippies, startup founders, hipsters, and rappers dress and act like their peers. If the behavior of the people around you does not align with the person you want to become, then you need to find a new group because the social pressure in your old group will be too difficult to overcome. Watch this video of people in an elevator facing the wrong direction to see how social pressure changes lifelong behavior and social norms in just a few minutes. The video is a simple, innocent example, but social pressure also played a role in the horrific atrocities of the Holocaust. Don’t underestimate the power of the people around you to influence your behavior.

Habits compound to help or hurt you.

In finance, interest compounds when added to a principal amount and then the sum of interest plus principal earns interest, and so on. We can get a similar exponential return on learning, exercising, eating healthy, sleeping, and meditating by investing a small amount of time into the chosen activity every day. But beware: bad habits also compound. Drinking, smoking, eating junk food, and failing to exercise can have cascading effects on your health and productivity.

Habits are designed.

Experimentation and iteration are useful when designing habits and routines. Design good habits by removing friction for a desired behavior. Break bad habits by adding friction to a negative behavior. For example, if you want to lose weight, buy healthy food and make sure it is conveniently available before you get hungry. Don’t keep junk food at home, which will make it necessary to expend effort to get it.

Step 1: Make a new habit part of your identity.

The most important step in creating a new habit is to embrace the identity of who you want to become. Identity is shaped by our beliefs, behavior, and worldview. Creating a better life requires continually learning and upgrading your identity.

I never thought of myself as a writer. I started writing to synthesize and focus my thinking about ideas I’m interested in. When I first started writing, I viewed it as an activity I wanted to do, but it was not part of my identity. In the beginning, I found writing difficult and not always enjoyable. I noticed a big shift in my mental state and motivation when I embraced writing as a part of my identity. It’s still challenging, but writing no longer feels like a forced activity. Instead, it feels more like I’m building a useful skill and also shaping the way I think and act in the world.

Step 2: Use “inversion” to identify and remove obstacles.

Inversion is a thinking tool that allows you to flip a problem around and think backward. For example, if you want to lose 25 pounds, you might normally think about the actions you need to take to accomplish that goal—eating healthier, exercising, etc. Inversion looks at the problem in reverse and involves identifying all the things to avoid—going to happy hour, walking by your favorite bakery, etc. Inversion doesn’t always solve the problem, but it helps you think more clearly about removing unnecessary obstacles.

Step 3: Start with baby steps.

The best way to start a new habit is to make it easy. Motivation and willpower are useful for getting started, but they are unreliable. Don’t make the mistake of setting goals and expectations too high. You want to build habits from the ground up and not impose big challenges. You are building new neural pathways in your brain, and you want to eliminate all friction and resistance. Repetition and consistency are more important than pushing yourself to do more. If you want to read more, then start by reading one page every day. If you want to start meditating, then start by meditating one minute every day. For writing, start with one sentence a day. This may seem too easy, but resist the temptation to do more in the beginning.

Step 4: Make very small improvements every day.

Start small but make tiny improvements each day. For example, let’s say you want to get stronger. Maybe you start with one pushup on your first day. On your second day, you do two pushups. On the third day you do three pushups. Continue this habit and in a month you will be up to 30 pushups a day. But make sure that you’re not pushing yourself too hard too quickly. As you increase the number of pushups, you’ll need to break them up so you can accomplish your goal without failure.

Motivation has been studied often in psychology. Follow the Yerkes-Dodson Law, which says that maximum motivation occurs when we face a challenge that is not too difficult to manage but not so easy that it bores us. The point is not to see how many pushups you can do, but rather whether you can build a habit of doing pushups daily for the rest of your life.

Step 5: Be consistent.

The key to creating a new habit is doing it every day. Repetition and consistency are critical. The amount of time you invest is less important than repeated, deliberate, daily practice. Never miss two days in a row. Missing one day every once in a while will not have a big impact, but missing two days in a row will have a negative effect. This principle applies to any new habit, including learning a language, exercising, playing a new instrument, or meditating.

Step 6: Focus on long-term benefits

Focus on small, incremental improvements over time. When I consider incorporating a new habit into my life, I ask myself the following question: Can I do this every day for the next 3-plus years? Unless your new habit becomes part of your identity and lifestyle, it will not stick. This is why most people fail at dieting. They may lose weight in the short term, but they will most likely regain it because they cannot sustain the diet across time.

Habits that will improve your life

The following habits will make your life better. No matter what your goals or interests, these habits will improve your work performance, make you a better parent, improve your art, and help you lose weight, gain strength, learn, improve your relationships, and think more clearly.

• Exercise: increase energy, lose weight, gain strength, and feel better
• Meditate: train for less emotional reactivity
• Read: inject new ideas into your head and accelerate learning
• Write: synthesize and focus your ideas and internalize learning
• Eat healthy: get more energy and reduce health risks
• Sleep: get seven hours per night to improve productivity and cognitive ability

Good habits help you become the person you want to be. Bad habits lead to pain, suffering, and self-loathing. Habits and routines reduce stress and provide the structure you need to function better in everyday life. Your habits are shaped by your physical environment and the people around you. Design habits by removing friction for behavior you want and adding friction for behavior you want to avoid.