My goal is to read 12 books this year. So far, I’ve finished one book that I started in December, and I started a new book that I learned of from The Tim Ferris Show podcast. The book is The One Thing, and the author is Gary Keller, founder of Keller Williams Realty.
I may do a book report when I complete the book, but I wanted to share something that I thought was simple, and hopefully useful.
One of my goals this year is to read 12 books. Maybe I should do Book Reports.
Typically, with self-improvement, I strive to focus on building new positive habits, and the books drops some gems about making it easier to build good habits. But this sentence struck me in an interesting way:
“A pioneer of quality-control management, [Joseph M.] Juran had noticed that a handful of flaws would usually produce a majority of the defects.”
The focus of the chapter was basically, the Pareto Principle, efforts, and results, but this sentence struck me, because it got me thinking in the opposite way I’m usually working.
If a handful of flaws produced a majority of the defects, what if in life, we first aimed to set up little actions or systems to eliminate the habits that don’t serve us? For me, a lot of times I try to develop a useful habit that may be difficult to train, but what if instead, I first worked on ways to make it hard for me to make certain bad decisions.
Examples:
- SPENDING LESS TIME ON MY PHONE is a worthy goal, but what if I 1.) Buy a watch (My Father would be happy to hear this, which will be a blog post when I buy a watch). A watch would help because right now, I have to pick up my phone to keep track of time. 2.) Only put the interesting apps on my iPad (which stays in my studio) 3.) Keep magazines in the bathroom (so i have something to look at other than Instagram)
- DRINKING A GALLON OF WATER DAILY would be nice, but what if I bought Sparking Water or tea (which, for me, makes it easier to drink less beer.)
And perhaps I’m just thinking about it in reverse, but the thought is, if I first focus on making it harder to make bad decisions, significant improvements can come before I’ve accomplished the challenging work of building a “positive” habit. And perhaps that improvement can give the momentum to build better habits. I’ll give it a shot and let you know how it’s going.