I’ve started reading Maximum Willpower by Kelly McGonigal – a book recommended by Seth Godin. The book is based on “one of the most popular classes ever offered by Stanford”. It’s already a great read and I am only on the first chapter. I like books with a) scientific research and b) anecdotes. It’s already ticked both those boxes.

It feels like serendipity that I’ve started reading this book. I had been thinking just the other day about how I take a scientific approach to difficult goals – giving up smoking, giving up drinking, exercising. One by one I address each scenario where I fail and work out strategies to fix them. For example, with smoking my failure points were ‘after dinner’ and ‘after work’. Each failure I considered as just an experimental result, and I would develop a new hypothesis and try again if I failed. Even if I succeed sometimes I experiment with better ways. That’s what I do to achieve my goals. The times when I don’t achieve my goals? Is when I don’t take the scientific approach.

This book recommends this same scientific approach. So it might not work for everyone, but I’m hopeful it will work for me. Let’s see…