Currently, I am reading a book called “Smart Thinking” by Art Markman PH.D.

I find it quite interesting,

so I guess it would be better if I summarize it. Doing this everyday will help me to form smart habit,
which is the key to smart thinking. I know there will be a lot of mistakes, but I believe that practice
makes perfect. (Well not a summary, just my random thoughts and personal experiences)

I’ve just read about changing your habits. Although most of your habits are good initially, they can turn
out to be very bad. For example, if you have the habit of biting your fingernail, it will eventually make
you suffer from pain and even stand the risk of losing your fingers. Thus, it is no longer a good habit and
you need to change.

Before we get start, I want to explain about the formula of a habit. Basically, a habit, as I understand, is
formed by two factors: environment and repetition. In the first place, environment refers to where,
when and even who you do the habit with while repetition is the frequency. Therefore, if you want to
change a habit, you will have to interfere with the two former factors, but how?

For the environment, you can try to change the mapping between it and your habit. To illustrate, I have
the habit of checking Facebook and Messenger whenever I open my phone, which is time-consuming.
Hence, I need to change this habit. By rearranging apps in my phone, I have successfully reduced the
amount of time I spend on these two apps. What I do here is that I switch the place of The Guardian and
Messenger, so, instead of logging into Messenger, I often accidentally tapped on The Guardian. After
one week, though I got fed up with this new position, I quickly adjusted to it and I even formed the habit
of reading The Guardian, which I had never done before. My “accidental tapping” on The Guardian is
also an act of repetition, thus, I somehow managed to adopt a new habit.

The above example represents the key to succeeding changing a habit as well. Remember that, you
cannot replace something with nothing. So, in lieu of deleting Messenger app, I just simply replaced it
with The Guardian and it has proved to be very effective.

Now, I’m moving on to Chapter 3, “Promoting quality learning by learning your limits.”