Pivoting is expensive

So it’s best to change course only when it’s necessary—after you’ve put in the work of comparing your aspirations and options against what you realistically can and want to accomplish.

If you want to lose weight, the best way is to stop eating junk food indefinitely. Because, after all, if you quit today only to start again next Tuesday, (and then quit again the following Friday), you’re going to end up consuming a lot of (otherwise uneaten) calories.

What’s more, if you continue this cycle indefinitely—stopping and restarting incessantly—what you’ll discover is that you’ll never lose weight. You’ll just create and reinforce a habit of changing your mind when your mood changes.

Perhaps that’s why commitment—true commitment—is committing to a habit regardless of how you feel in the immediate present. And decisiveness is simply the ability to make a choice and stick with it without changing your mind.

We talk about these qualities like they are inborn traits, when in fact they’re verbs. Things you do, things you choose.

Their habits. Born and bred out of the realization that a choice made and then unmade is as good as a choice extinguished.