💡 Key Concepts

The Downside of Creating Good Habits

4 concepts to master

Habit Decline, Deliberate Practice, and Mastery

Concept

Performance in a mastered skill can slightly decline over time due to reduced attention and feedback sensitivity, but mastery requires combining automatic habits with focused, intentional practice aimed at improvement.

How It Works

As habits become automatic, conscious attention and error correction decrease, leading to subtle performance degradation despite continued practice. Habits provide a foundation of automaticity, freeing up mental resources for deliberate practice, which then refines and builds upon those habits, creating a cycle of improvement.

Reflection and Review

Concept

A system for consciously evaluating performance and habits to identify areas for improvement and prevent complacency.

How It Works

By intentionally examining past actions and outcomes, one can identify mistakes, biases, and areas where habits are no longer effective, enabling course correction and refinement.

Flexibility of Identity (Keep Identity Small)

Concept

Avoid tying your entire identity to a single aspect or belief, to maintain adaptability and resilience.

How It Works

A narrowly defined identity makes it difficult to adapt to changing circumstances or embrace new ideas, leading to brittleness and potential identity crises.

Career Best Effort (CBE)

Concept

A system for tracking and improving individual performance by small increments through consistent effort and reflection.

How It Works

By quantifying various contributions and comparing them to past performance and peers, one is encouraged to consistently improve in all aspects of effort