An amazing mistake

My greatest weakness is that I am a perfectionist. My whole life I have been obsessed with quality and it is a big advantage as a scientist/engineer. But it is also a curse. If the world were run by engineers, I don’t think anything would ever be accomplished. We would be too busy tweaking our products to improve it beyond that 99th percentile. Luckily, since a couple of years I have constantly challenged myself to produce content with low quality and instead go for quantity. This week I made an amazing discovery, which proves that I am now on a much better path.

HabitsRikard ÖqvistFebruary 20, 2021habits, productivity, progressnotperfection, growth Comments

The one-minute method

A New Year’s resolution is a good example of a (commonly) failed commitment. Many people promise that they are going to do this and that on a daily basis, and then they do it a couple of times and then they give up. I believe the problem is that they set the bar too high. The solution is to define a daily activity and set your bar so low – I mean extremely low – that you cannot find an excuse not to do the daily activity, no matter what happens. Read that last sentence again. The habit must be performed Every. Single. Day. Because the moment you stop doing it, it is not a habit anymore. And if the bar is too high, the habit forming can be very difficult, because we all have bad days.

Art, Habits, PhilosophyRikard ÖqvistSeptember 19, 2020consistency, habits, discipline, progressnotperfection, growth, routineComment