Moderation isn't mushy. Learn from extremists by drawing hard lines -- just draw them in different places. Get the clarity of cold turkey abstinence without the sweeping deprivation.

No time to exercise? Get philosophical. Use enlightened self-mockery, a neo-Kantian personal categorical imperative, and an existential leap of action to get you moving.

How to use index cards for todo lists at the three scales of the chain of command: daily, monthly, yearly.

Organize your self improvement efforts on three temporal scales: year=general, month=officer, day=footsoldier.

Make your goals fun, important, and attainable with Personal Olympics.

A month is a much better granularity than the more typical yearly resolution we make on new years, because you can estimate better on that smaller scale, and recover and reset faster. And it's long enough (over 21 days!) for some habituation to occur, even with a slip up or two.

Limit your celebratory eating to the holidays themselves. Adjust your expectations so that your goal is mere maintenance. If you screw up, don't wait till new years to get back on the wagon.

One thing that every self help guru can agree on is that you have to have an arbitrary number in your system. It is a little weird that the most rational concepts we have available to us -- numbers -- are so irrationally inspiring. But it clearly is the case.

Strictness builds habit faster. Dumb down what to be strict about with "fence around the law." Avoid punishment and reparations.

Use the full habit traffic light for 21 days to build your habit, then switch to more efficient negative tracking.