Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

People who are better at delaying gratification have higher SAT scores
: Walter Mischel, Ebbe B.
Ebbesen, and Antonette Raskoff Zeiss, “Cognitive and Attentional Mechanisms in Delay of
Gratification,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21, no. 2 (1972),
doi:10.1037/h0032198; W. Mischel, Y. Shoda, and M. Rodriguez, “Delay of Gratification in
Children,” Science 244, no. 4907 (1989), doi:10.1126/science.2658056; Walter Mischel,
Yuichi Shoda, and Philip K. Peake, “The Nature of Adolescent Competencies Predicted by

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Preschool Delay of Gratification,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54, no. 4
(1988), doi:10.1037//0022–3514.54.4.687; Yuichi Shoda, Walter Mischel, and Philip K.
Peake, “Predicting Adolescent Cognitive and Self-Regulatory Competencies from Preschool
Delay of Gratification: Identifying Diagnostic Conditions,” Developmental Psychology 26,
no. 6 (1990), doi:10.1037//0012–1649.26.6.978.
CHAPTER 16
“I would start with 120 paper clips in one jar”
: Trent Dyrsmid, email to author, April 1, 2015.
Benjamin Franklin
: Benjamin Franklin and Frank Woodworth Pine, Autobiography of Benjamin
Franklin (New York: Holt, 1916), 148.
Don’t break the chain of creating every day
: Shout-out to my friend Nathan Barry, who originally
inspired me with the mantra, “Create Every Day.”
people who track their progress on goals like losing weight
: Benjamin Harkin et al., “Does
Monitoring Goal Progress Promote Goal Attainment? A Meta-analysis of the Experimental
Evidence,” Psychological Bulletin 142, no. 2 (2016), doi:10.1037/bul0000025.
those who kept a daily food log lost twice as much weight as those who did not
: Miranda Hitti,
“Keeping Food Diary Helps Lose Weight,” WebMD, July 8, 2008,
http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20080708/keeping-food-diary-helps-lose-weight
; Kaiser
Permanente, “Keeping a Food Diary Doubles Diet Weight Loss, Study Suggests,” Science
Daily, July 8, 2008, 
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080708080738.htm
; Jack
F. Hollis et al., “Weight Loss during the Intensive Intervention Phase of the Weight-Loss
Maintenance Trial,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 35, no. 2 (2008),
doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2008.04.013; Lora E. Burke, Jing Wang, and Mary Ann Sevick, “Self-
Monitoring in Weight Loss: A Systematic Review of the Literature,” Journal of the American
Dietetic Association 111, no. 1 (2011), doi:10.1016/j.jada.2010.10.008.