Blog
Thoughts on goal setting, habit building, and the quiet work of becoming who you want to be.
July 25, 2026
·8 min read
Why You Perform Worse When It Matters Most
Choking under pressure has a precise mechanism: attention turns inward and dismantles a skill that had become automatic. One kind of practice prevents it.
Choking occurred in golf putting but not in an alphabet arithmetic task, because only a skill that has become automatic can be disrupted by watching yourself do it
July 18, 2026
·8 min read
When Your Goals Are Fighting Each Other
Some goals do not compete for time. They contradict each other. Goal conflict shows up as thinking about something constantly and never acting on it.
In three weeks of randomly sampled thoughts and activities, people acted less on their conflicted goals and spent more time thinking about them
July 11, 2026
·8 min read
The Effort Paradox: Why Hard Things Feel Worth More
Every model says effort is a cost we avoid. So why do we value what we sweated for, and sometimes pick the harder option on purpose?
Builders paid more for a plain storage box they had assembled themselves than non-builders would pay for the identical pre-assembled box
July 4, 2026
·8 min read
The People With the Most Self-Control Use It Least
Self-control sounds like resisting harder. The evidence points the other way: the people who score highest report less effortful inhibition, not more.
People with better self-control report using less effortful inhibition in daily life, and beneficial habits account for the difference
June 27, 2026
·8 min read
Why You Stay Up Late When You Wanted to Sleep
Nothing is keeping you up. No deadline, no baby, no late shift. Bedtime procrastination is its own documented problem, and it is a self-regulation one.
In a representative sample of Dutch adults, the link between poor self-regulation and insufficient sleep ran through bedtime procrastination
June 20, 2026
·8 min read
People Will Help You More Than You Think
Asking for help feels like an imposition, so most of us do not ask. Across thousands of real requests, people badly underestimate how often the answer is yes.
Across a research program in which participants approached more than 14,000 strangers, requesters underestimated how often people would say yes by 48% on average
June 13, 2026
·8 min read
Why Your Goal Got Boring, and What That Means
Boredom is not laziness in a costume. It is a signal with two separate causes, and which one you have decides whether to change the task or change the goal.
Boredom comes from two separate mismatches, one in attention and one in meaning, and each one produces it independently of the other
June 6, 2026
·8 min read
Do Group Goals Work? It Depends What You Aim At
Group goals reliably lift group performance. But the personal goal you carry inside the group can help enormously or wreck the whole thing.
Inside an interdependent group, personal goals aimed at your own performance hurt the group result, while goals aimed at your contribution to it help
May 30, 2026
·8 min read
You Think You're Done Changing. You Are Not.
At every age, people say they changed a lot in the last decade and will barely change in the next. The end of history illusion, and what it costs your plans.
People at every age say they changed a great deal in the past decade and will change relatively little in the next one
May 23, 2026
·8 min read
Want Motivation? Give Advice Instead of Taking It
When you are stuck, the instinct is to go find advice. The research says the struggling person who gives advice ends up more motivated than the one who gets it.
Struggling students who gave motivational advice to younger kids did more homework the next month than students who received advice from expert teachers