Veritasium says it all. The key 3 points of how to make New Year’s resolutions that stick:

• Keep it small
• Write it down
• Adapt your environment, not yourself

See the entire thing here:

Another Seth Godin post, because the man’s an underappreciated marketing and business genius.

When making a choice between two options, only consider what’s going to happen in the future, not which investments you’ve made in the past. The past investments are over, lost, gone forever. They are irrelevant to the future.

Sunk costs are the number one reason for inertia, for failing as a company. You’ve invested so much money, prestige, emotions into something that you can’t change course.

You’re stuck in the past, rather than considering the future. You’re working with old paradigms, trying to get your foot in the door at a Big 5 publishing house when you could just as well go indie, or go with small genre publisher, or share your writings for free and earn money from supporters.

There are thousands of options. Don’t be the one who holds onto hard-won knowledge that’s become outdated!

And read Seth’s take on sunk costs.

So you’re finally going to start writing that novel. But there is a problem. You don’t know how to craft the perfect first sentence.

But you’ve found a book that talks about this. That’s good. However, it’s going to be two week’s delivery. That’s bad.

But you’ve found it in a second hand shop two towns over. You can get it today. That’s good. Except that your car has summer tires, and it’s a bit snowy outside. That’s bad. (more…)

I don’t usually plug email spam, but this you’ve got to see.

James Clear, writer of Atomic Habits, has a weekly newsletter where he delivers 3 quotes from himself, 2 quotes from others, and 1 inspiring, actionable question.

The quotes are all short, to the point, and, quite frankly, great. The question usually has me thinking about how I can improve my life.

Here are some examples: (more…)

I’ve got a soft spot for learning methods.

Anything that promises to be a productivity hack gets my attention. This video is a quick and sometimes brutal overview of how to study, it’s aimed at students but works for everyone.

Also, I wish I’d found it earlier because I’ve already implemented a number of those techniques on my own. Watching a 12 minute video would have been a much faster way of doing it. (more…)

We humans are obsessed with easy and free.

The five minute workout. The sweepstakes giveaway. The 10 simple ways to increase your productivity. Seven habits of highly successful people. Three core rules of effective leadership.

All of this is a result of our biology. (more…)

Once upon a time in the dark ages of economic history, the human being was a rational agent.

We evaluated what we want, and found the cheapest way to get it. This, of course, had nothing to do with how humans act in reality. Instead, there came the much simplified theory of behavioral rewards.

It said that the brain creates neural pathways, using dopamine to reinforce or suppress them based on the rewards it’s received. This, too, proved wrong. (more…)

There is an element of chance in everything we do. Call it chance, fortune, Lady Luck. Call it whatever you want. But it means that if you did great today, you’re doing worse tomorrow. Here’s why.

Imagine that you have an amazing writing day. Let’s say that you managed to type in 4000 beautiful words in a single afternoon, producing four times as much as you normally do.  Everything is great. You’re totally on a roll. (more…)

I’m switching web hosts, and nothing is working.

The problem is that I’ve changed the domain registrar, the people who make sure this web site is in the global internet address book, together with my web host. Unfortunately, the address change hasn’t spread to the rest of the internet.

So whenever someone types wiltgren.com into the browser, they’re being directed to my old web host instead of my new web host.

It’s a very minor thing. Just a little switch of direction. And yet, it make everything I do flawed. (more…)

Hank Green, as in John Green’s brother, as in the brother of the GreenLit-king, as in, well, you get the point. He’s talking about something that I’ve had trouble with, perfectionism, and not doing anything because I can’t go all the way. Well, 80% FTW, baby! (more…)