A habit is like a hill that’s steep and muddy at the bottom, but which levels off and becomes less slippery as you go up. At first, it’s very hard to get a foothold and make progress. It’s really easy to slip back down to the bottom. But if you can make it past the difficult beginning, continued progress gets easier and easier. This is similar to how memory works… Read More »A Habit is Like a Muddy Slope
A little over a year ago, I got a membership to 24 Hour Fitness. I’ve long had a routine of working out at home, so I had no intention of using the gym for exercise. I got the membership because it was the easiest way to gain access to a hot tub. But I’m a big believer in little experiments, so about a year ago, I decided to try a… Read More »5 Lessons from 1 Year at the Gym
Everything you do is controlled by your brain. Muscle memory? Nope. That’s brain memory. Like all memories, it’s stored in your brain as a neural pathway – a connection between neurons. The first time you learn something – whether it’s how to throw a frisbee or the square root of 49 – your brain forms a new neural connection. It literally grows a tiny filament between two or more neurons… Read More »Habits are Neural Pathways
On April 16th, 1963, the reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was in a bad position. Specifically, he was in a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama. More broadly, the civil rights movement had few allies and was being violently opposed by the people in power.1 He could have spent this time becoming bitter about his imprisonment or stoking anger among his followers. He could have despaired about how badly things were… Read More »Stoic Positioning