Quotes from Chip Heath

When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur…. Don't look for the quick, big improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That's the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts.

in situations where change is needed, too much analysis can doom the effort. The Rider will see too many problems and spend too much time sizing them up.

This is what we mean by "thinking in moments": to recognize where the prose of life needs punctuation.

to make progress on a change, you need ways to direct the Rider. Show him where to go, how to act, what destination to pursue. And that's why bright spots are so essential, because they are your best hope for directing the Rider when you're trying to bring about change.

Richard G. Tedeschi and Lawrence G. Calhoun (2004). "Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence," Psychological Inquiry 15: 1–18. The researchers have a test of post-traumatic growth, called the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), that you can find online. We also recommend the excellent Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg. Also see:

The error lies in our inclination to attribute people's behavior to the way they are rather than to the situation they are in.

Solutions-focused therapists use a common set of techniques for discovering potential solutions.

What do you expect?" she said. "Kids get to their teen years, the hormones kick in, and they spend a few years operating without a frontal lobe.

That's what sticky ideas do—they make people feel something. Change comes from feeling, not facts.

Passion is individualistic. It can energize us but also isolate us, because my passion isn't yours. By contrast, purpose is something people can share. It can knit groups together.

Make it concrete: Look back over your schedule for the past week and ask yourself, What, specifically, would I have given up to carve out the extra three or four or five hours that I'll need?

prospective hindsight" to work backward from a certain future—they are better at generating explanations for why the event might happen.

Kotter and Cohen observed that, in almost all successful change efforts, the sequence of change is not ANALYZE-THINK-CHANGE, but rather SEE-FEEL-CHANGE.

increase an employee's productivity by one to two minutes a day, you've paid back the cost of wireless.

Change isn't an event; it's a process.

As recounted in his book It's Your Ship, one of Captain Abrashoff's first moves was to interview every one of the 310 crew members on the ship. He learned their personal histories and their motivations for joining the navy, and he sought their opinions about the Benfold: What do you like most? Least? What would you change if you could?

To lead a process requires persistence.

Peter Bregman, a productivity guru and blogger for the Harvard Business Review, recommends a simple trick for dodging this fate. He advises us to set a timer that goes off once every hour, and when it beeps, we should ask ourselves, "Am I doing what I most need to be doing right now?

Let's replay that scene, where things were working for you. What was happening? How did you behave? Were you smiling? Did you make eye contact?

Statistics aren't inherently helpful; it's the scale and context that make them so.

In his book Unleashing Change, he observed an encouraging dynamic in his change efforts: Once the change started, it seemed to feed on itself.

the fourth villain of decision making is overconfidence. People think they know more than they do about how the future will unfold.

So if one of your stars leaves, you can simply wish him the best of luck on his new bus. And then grow another star to take his place. May

First, you fill the pits. That, in turn, frees you up to focus on the second stage: creating the moments that will make the experience "occasionally remarkable." Fill pits, then build peaks.