Nir Eyal

If you could have some kind of intervention that made you four times more persistent, being able to study for that big exam four times longer, working on those sales calls four times longer, having four times the patience with relationships that's frustrating a person that's annoying you, having four times the persistence to run a marathon for four times longer, that would be incredible.

That would be an unprecedented intervention.

But that's not what happened.

that what happened is that the rats did not swim for 30 minutes or 45 minutes or even 60 minutes.

They swam for 60 hours.

Not 60 minutes, 60 hours of nonstop swimming.

Now, why?

What had changed?

Their rat bodies hadn't changed.

They didn't suddenly become super rats.

Their bodies were exactly the same.

The environment hadn't changed.

It was the same exact experiment, same exact cylinders.

We can't ask the rats, obviously, but something we think changed in their minds.

It was the only variable left.

That something about their belief system changed when they believed that salvation might be possible, that maybe that hand might reach in again and save them if they kept swimming.

And so what's so remarkable about this study and why I start the book with it is because it demonstrates to us

that there is a hidden power inside all of us to sustain motivation.

Now, why is motivation so important?

It turns out that the number one determinant of whether you succeed at a goal or fail at your goal is not your intelligence, although that helps.