The 75 laws
Each one carries an honest mark for how strong the proof is, a link to the study it came from, and the two or three things you can actually do about it today.
Habits & Behaviour Getting yourself to do the thing — again tomorrow, and the day after — without arguing with yourself first.
H·01 The If-Then Plan A goal becomes an action only when it names a trigger: “When X happens, I will do Y.” proven H·02 Friction Beats Willpower Twenty seconds of added effort kills a habit; twenty seconds removed creates one. proven H·03 Habits Live in Contexts, Not in You About 43% of daily behaviour is repeated in the same context. Change the context and the habit has nothing to hold on to. proven H·04 Temptation Bundling Chain the thing you should do to the thing you want to do, and let the want carry both. solid H·05 The Fresh Start Effect People act on aspirations after a temporal landmark — a Monday, a birthday, a first of the month, a new job. solid H·06 Never Miss Twice One missed day does not measurably damage a habit. Two consecutive misses are how habits die. solid H·07 Sixty-Six Days, Not Twenty-One Median time for a behaviour to become automatic is 66 days. The observed range was 18 to 254. solid H·08 The Reward Must Be Now Persistence is predicted by how much you enjoy the activity, not by how much you value the outcome. solid H·09 Bind Your Future Self People who impose costly deadlines on themselves perform better than people who keep their options open. solid H·10 Be the Noun, Not the Verb Describing an action as an identity — “be a voter”, not “vote” — raises the rate of doing it. solid Learning & Memory Learning things so they are still in your head next year, not just until Friday.
Decisions & Judgment Choosing well when you only get one go at it, and cannot see how the other way would have turned out.
Focus & Deep Work Guarding your attention. It is the one thing real work is actually made of.
F·01 Attention Residue Part of your attention stays on the previous task — unless you left it with a written plan for resuming. solid F·02 The Phone Doesn't Have to Buzz A smartphone within reach reduces available working memory even when it is face-down, silent and switched off. solid F·03 Give the Peak to the Hard Thing Analytic performance peaks in the first hours after waking for most people; protect that window, and spend the trough on admin. solid F·04 Brief Deactivation Restores Attention Vigilance decays over a long task. Short, complete breaks restore it; “breaks” spent on a screen do not. solid F·05 Work Expands to Fill the Time Give a task a deadline and a fixed box, or it will consume everything available and finish no better. solid F·06 Close the Day Explicitly A defined end-of-day ritual releases work thoughts far better than trying to stop thinking about them. solid F·07 Multitasking Is Just Switching You never do two things at once. You alternate, and every alternation is paid for. proven F·08 Four Things, Not Seven Working memory holds about four items. Everything past that is being dropped while you believe you are still holding it. proven F·09 Four Hours Is the Ceiling Nobody sustains more than three to four hours of genuinely hard cognitive work a day. The rest of the day is a different kind of work. solid F·10 Specific and Hard Beats Do Your Best A specific, difficult goal outperforms a vague one or an easy one in nearly every task ever tested. proven F·11 Small Wins Run the Day The strongest driver of a good working day is visible progress in meaningful work — ahead of recognition, incentives and clear goals. solid F·12 Boredom Is Where the Idea Arrives For a problem you have already worked on, an undemanding task beats both rest and more effort. solid F·13 Three Times a Day, Not Thirty Checking email on a schedule rather than continuously measurably lowers daily stress. solid F·14 Speech Is the Worst Noise Background speech you can make out words in degrades reading, writing and arithmetic. Meaningless noise at the same volume does not. solid Influence & Negotiation Getting a yes without tricks — and spotting it when somebody is working on you.
People & Relationships Friends, family, the person across the table. Nothing else predicts a good life this strongly.
P·01 Relationships Are the Whole Finding Across 85 years of following the same men, relationship satisfaction at 50 predicted health at 80 better than cholesterol did. proven P·02 Five to One Stable relationships run about five positive interactions for every negative one during conflict. Below that, they fail. solid P·03 Turn Toward the Small Bids Couples who stayed together turned toward each other's small bids for attention 86% of the time. Those who split, 33%. solid P·04 How You React to Good News Responding to someone's good news with active, enthusiastic interest predicts relationship health better than how you respond to their bad news. solid P·05 The Strength of Weak Ties Jobs, deals and opportunities arrive mostly from acquaintances, not from close friends. proven P·06 Escalating Disclosure Builds Closeness Forty-five minutes of reciprocal, increasingly personal questions generates closeness comparable to long-standing friendships. solid P·07 They Liked You More Than You Think After a conversation, people systematically underestimate how much the other person liked them and enjoyed it. solid P·08 Praise the Process, Criticise the Behaviour Praise directed at effort and strategy holds up under later failure. Praise directed at the person collapses. solid P·09 Proximity and Repetition Make Liking Who you become close to is mostly a function of who you repeatedly, incidentally encounter. proven Mind & Body Sleep, movement, daylight, food. The body everything above runs on.
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