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The Compound Effect
Choices Shape Your Destiny
Everything in your life exists because you first made a choice about something. Choice is at the center of all success and failure. It is what we choose that makes the biggest difference.
Too often we sleepwalk through our choices. We default to choices that our society and culture tells us we should do. And it's not big choices, but ones that you think don't matter or count for much that derail us.
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Key Ideas
Counterproductive goal tracking
When you make progress toward your long-term goal, your brain – with its mental checklist of many goals – turns off the mental processes that were driving you to pursue your long-term goa...
How to combat The Progress Trap
- View your actions as evidence that you are committed to your goal.
- Always remind yourself why you want to reach your goal, especially as you reach milestones along the way.
- Look at your accomplishments to see that you really do care about your goal.
- After you make positive steps toward a goal, ask yourself: “How committed do you feel toward that goal?”
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Key Ideas
The Akrasia Effect
Resistance towards what can help us progress is something human beings are experiencing for centuries. Philosophers call this extremely active and relentless force Akrasia...
Akrasia And Emotional Management
Akrasia is an emotional management problem keeping us from having a better future. It will make up any story to keep us away from something good. It will always prefer instant gratification, harming us in the long run, rather than doing something valuable that can help us in a positive way.
The side effects of Akrasia are stress, guilt, resentment, and missed opportunities.
Approaching Akrasia With Mindfulness
While the much-hyped motivation and willpower have little effect against Akrasia, mindfulness meditation has the power to refocus your actions, and stop the mindless time-wasting.
Mindfulness acts as a foundation for conquering procrastination. We need to proactively take control of our feelings and act towards our goals, something which is possible only with a mind sharpened with mindfulness.
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Key Ideas
The bandwagon effect
It's a cognitive bias that causes people to think or act in a certain manner because they believe that other people are doing the same.
For example, the bandwagon effect might cause...
Examples of the bandwagon effect
- The bandwagon effect can influence people’s political choices.
- It can influence consumers’ decisions regarding which products to buy.
- It can influence users’ decisions regarding how to rate stories or comments.
- It can influence investors’ financial choices.
- It can influence doctors’ medical decisions.
- It can influence organizations’ implementation of new technologies.
Why the bandwagon effect happens
It serves as a mental shortcut that people instinctively use in order to make a decision quickly.
Specifically, bandwagon cues, which are signs that other people believe something or are doing something, can trigger the thought that “if other people like this, then I should too”.