John Darnielle Quotes

I've never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

My inability to stick with any journal or calendar has been a pattern for God-since-forever.

Staying consistent with positive habits can be a challenge.

I don't think of myself as a fast reader. I just read a lot. When someone else might think, 'I might do the dishes,' I don't. But then the dishes multiply.

I resolved to start journaling every day, and so far I've been journaling every day, and it's been great.

If you've ever tried to start up the habit of early-morning exercise, you have probably encountered how easy it is to get derailed by too much choice.

I have a bad history with resolutions! I don't think I have kept up even one of them so far. Once, I promised to myself that I would wake up at 6 A.M. every day - it didn't even last for a week.

Every day, I'm journaling and making sure things I do wrong I change or try to fix and make better and things I do right I continue to do those more often.

If you were to fault yourself in one of three areas, which would it be: (1) the inability to prioritize; (2) the inability or desire to organize around those priorities; or (3) the lack of discipline to execute around them? ... Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe that is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and minds. They haven't really internalized Habit 2 [Begin with the end in mind].

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

In 'Before and After,' I identify the sixteen strategies that we can use to make or break our habits. Some are quite familiar, such as 'Monitoring,' 'Scheduling,' and 'Convenience.' Some took me a lot of effort to identify, such as 'Thinking,' 'Identity,' and 'Clarity.'

We cannot waste time. We can only waste ourselves.

I'm not always as disciplined as I should be. I don't sit down and write every day, but I should.

Apparently, despite my awareness of its pejorative connotation, procrastinating is something I fall victim to quite frequently. I'm not proud of it; I'm just being honest.

January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year's resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken.

If I'm exhausted and I just don't feel like it, then I don't do it. I am a human being, after all. But I also know I'm the kind of person who, if I take one day off, well, it's very easy for me to take the next day off and then quit exercising.

A New Year's resolution that I can never keep? To be able to make decisions.

I would step into a place of being lined up with a sense of purpose and my inner compass, and everything was going in the same direction. Then I'd get lazy and get off the track. And then things would start to fall apart, and I'd back up and get it together again.

The soaps are great training. You can form good habits - or you can form bad habits. You have to set your goals. If you're not clear on what you want, you can slip into bad habits. It can become a comfortable place, and you don't grow.

Twenty-eight days is what is takes to break a habit and to implement a new set of habits.

The first step in making better choices is to simply be brutally honest about your own behavior to yourself. What are the choices you are making? How are you spending your time? What are you neglecting that you shouldn't?

The key to forming good habits is to make them part of your 'rituals.' I have a morning ritual, afternoon ritual, and Sunday ritual. It's one way to bundle good habits into regular times that you set aside to prepare yourself for the life you want. Rituals help you form habits.

Procrastinating is a habit that I have to overcome.

In the future, I want to be consistent from Day 1. We're still making adjustments. I still believe that I can be better.

If only I could master that demon of procrastination that goes about like a roaring lion and devours all my good intentions, I should become the most punctual man in the world.