BOOK
The Principles of Psychology, chapter IV - Habit
🚦 Status🗂️ Library
✍️ AuthorWilliam James
📚 Genre
PsychologyClassic
⭐ Rating⭐⭐⭐⭐
🏷️ Topics
habitspsychology
🏁 Finished25 Feb 2025

📊READING PROGRESS
100%24 of 24 pages
🛠️PUT INTO PRACTICE
🟢 Applied
🎯CORE THESIS
Habit is the nervous system economising: what is done often gets done with less attention, which frees attention for everything else. So the practical task is to make useful actions automatic as early and as firmly as possible. He gives maxims for it: start with as much momentum as you can arrange, allow no exception until the habit is rooted, act on a resolution at the first chance, and keep the capacity for effort alive with a small unnecessary exertion every day.
⚡QUICK JOTS
- One chapter of a very large book: two dozen pages, read on Saturday 22 February and again on the Tuesday, in the week after the launch slipped.
- I had not walked for five days and wanted someone from 1890 to tell me off. 🏛️ William James obliged.
- He writes about habit as something laid down in the body, like a crease in paper. Sentimental in places, and then suddenly very hard.
- I counted it towards 🎯 Finish 16 books and keep notes on the ones that matter with a slightly bad conscience. It is a chapter. It did more than most books.
💬QUOTES
🧩KEY CONCEPTS
📖LITERATURE NOTES
💎PERMANENT NOTES
🏛️RELATED FIGURES
🏛️ William James