repetition is a form of change : Apparently, Brian Eno says the same thing in his excellent,
creatively inspiring Oblique Strategies card set, which I didn’t know when I wrote this line!
Great minds and all that.
Automaticity is the ability to perform a behavior : Phillippa Lally et al., “How Are Habits Formed:
Modelling Habit Formation in the Real World,” European Journal of Social Psychology 40,
no. 6 (2009), doi:10.1002/ejsp.674.
habits form based on frequency, not time : Hermann Ebbinghaus was the first person to describe
learning curves in his 1885 book Über das Gedächtnis. Hermann Ebbinghaus, Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology (United States: Scholar Select, 2016).
CHAPTER 12 this difference in shape played a significant role in the spread of agriculture : Jared Diamond,
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: Norton, 1997).
It is human nature to follow the Law of Least Effort : Deepak Chopra uses the phrase “law of least
effort” to describe one of his Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga. This concept is not related to the
principle I am discussing here.
a garden hose that is bent in the middle : This analogy is a modified version of an idea Josh
Waitzkin mentioned in his interview with Tim Ferriss. “The Tim Ferriss Show, Episode 2:
Josh Waitzkin,” May 2, 2014, audio,
https://soundcloud.com/tim-ferriss/the-tim-ferriss-show-
episode-2-josh-waitzkin
.
“it took American workers three times as long to assemble their sets” : James Surowiecki, “Better
All the Time,” New Yorker, November 10, 2014,
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/better-time
.
addition by subtraction : Addition by subtraction is an example of a larger principle known as
inversion, which I have written about previously at
https://jamesclear.com/inversion
. I’m
indebted to Shane Parrish for priming my thoughts on this topic by writing about why
“avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.” Shane Parrish, “Avoiding Stupidity Is
Easier Than Seeking Brilliance,” Farnam Street, June 2014,
https://www.fs.blog/2014/06/avoiding-stupidity
.
