If you have tried and failed to learn how to play the guitar, the reason is simply this: One day, you put the guitar back in its case and never took it out again.

That’s how people end up not completing the online courses they signed up for: They just stop logging in.

And the diet and exercise plan…the effort to quit smoking or drinking…the new budget that will allow us to save money for once…we abandon these initiatives when life gets in the way.

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A young man had a big dream. He wanted to leave his job and create a business that would sustain him. He was afraid of failing.

I asked him how he would define failure — and success. After all, if you know what you are going for and what you’re trying to avoid, you can create a vision for the future and a map that will help you find your way.

To my surprise, he defined failure as an inability to make the business replace his day job within a tight time frame (I think it was six months).

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I remember the exact moment when I decided to be a straight-A student…and the moment when I decided not to be anymore.

At the end of the first marking period in ninth grade, a giant bulletin board was posted. It showed the honor roll students in each grade along with their pictures.

There was a section for those who received A’s and B’s — and another section for those who received only A’s. I was one of only three freshman to get all A’s.

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One of the most important lessons I learned from Karen Pryor’s amazing Don’t Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training is that operant conditioning can be humane — so humane that you can use it successfully on yourself. In doing so, you can improve your results and more reliably engage your powers of self-discipline and follow-through.

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You could say that the point of making something is to have that thing when you’re done.

But if that were truly the case then it would be more economical (sometimes in terms of time and money) to just go buy whatever it is that you’re trying to make. Chances are, you can find it at a low-cost retailer for a fraction of of what you would spend on buying the materials, let alone the opportunity cost of the time spent making a thing.

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Jerry Seinfeld, when asked about his method for success in comedy, shared a very simple strategy: He wrote new material every day. In order to accomplish this, he drew a big red X on his wall calendar for every day he wrote. A day without an X became unthinkable.

“Don’t break the chain!” he said. In other words, keep that streak going — do whatever it takes to earn that X.

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