LASZLO POLGAR

Changing our habits is challenging for two reasons;

1. we try to change the wrong thing;
2. we try to change our habits the wrong way.

Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it

• Desire is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be in the future.
• It is the emotion that allows you to mark things as good, bad, or, indifferent.

refers to the strengthening of connections between neurons in the brain based on patterns of activity.

• Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard.
• Technology creates a level of convenience that enables you to act on the smallest whims and desires.
• The world has changed so much in recent years, but human nature has changed a li...

The Goldilocks Rule is that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right at the edge of their current ability. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.

• Never break the chain.
• Never miss twice -  This is talking about missing to do a habit.
• The first mistake is never the one that ruins you.

Cue, Craving, Response, Reward

- Readers with psychology background may recognize these terms from:

• "Stimulus, Response, Reward" - B.F Skinner 1930s
• "Cue, Routine, Reward" - Charles Duhigg

It makes no sense to restrict your satisfaction to one scenario when there is so many paths to success

• Genes do not determine your destiny. They determine your areas of opportunity.
• If you can't win by being better, win by being different.
• Our genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on.
• It's more productive to focu...

• And boredom is perhaps the greatest villain on the quest for self-improvement.
• The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.
• You have to fall in love with boredom.

When you start a new habit it should take less than two minutes.

A task that can be finished in under two minutes should be done first

• You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven't changed who you are.
• IMPROVEMENTS are only temporary until they become part of who you are.
• The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do.

• Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.
• Bad Habits are autocatalytic; the process feeds itself.

Riots, protests, and movements are rarely the results of a single event. Instead, a long series of microaggressions and daily aggravations, slowly multiply until one events tips the scale, and outrage spreads like wold fire.

• GOALS are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
• Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves

FORGET ABOUT THE GOALS, FOCUS ON THE SYSTEMS INSTEAD

commit to the PROCESS, determine...

is the ability to perform a behavior without thinking about each step which occurs when the nonconscious mind takes over.

• The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.
• The lack of self-awareness is poison.
• Happiness is not about the achievement of pleasure, but about the lack of desire.
• Being poor is not having too little, it is wanting more.

• Success is the product of daily habits- not once-in-a-lifetime transformation
• Success is not a goal to reach or to the finish line to cross. It is a system to improve an endless process to refine.