My goal is always to build something that is useful. It is easy to say and hard to do. So the next question is: how? My answer is one word: habits.

Pickleball shows this clearly. When I play and try hard to improve, there are lots of things — tricks — to master. Some tricks I found by myself. One day I noticed: when I dink or reset the ball, if I crouch down a little, my aim gets better. My body found it first. In play, without a plan, my body made a small change — and my mind caught up later and said: that worked, keep it.

I learned pace the same way. I can slow a point down, hit soft again and again, and make the other player lift the ball up. By then I am already at the kitchen line, waiting to attack. I am not just answering the ball. I am setting the point.

But I also know the limit of learning alone. I play with high-level players, and they do things I cannot even see. I do not mean things I cannot do. I mean things I cannot see — moves made on purpose that look like nothing. A learner can only practice what she can see. So I borrow eyes: better players, slow video, one good question after a game — “Why did you stand there?”

Habits must be built not only for dealing with matters, but for dealing with people. And people are harder than physics or math. In math and physics, the world answers the same way every time. True is true. This is why I loved them.

People are not like that. The same words heal one person and wound another. There is no single true and false. And in the moment, I cannot think and act at the same time. I act — too much of myself, too direct, or too silent — and only later, in the quiet after, do I see what I did.

For a long time I thought this was a flaw in me. But it is not entirely a flaw: some of my reactions are good, some are not. There is no clear rule or verdict, as there is in physics. But I have one inside rule: live out the maximum of my potential. That is my compass in the fog.

Once I have the compass, bad habits need to be overwritten. Anchoring — installing the reaction before the moment — is the how. We need to realize: your first reaction, in the half second before thought, was installed in you by repetition — by parents, by ads, by the voices around you as a child. It was written in without your permission. Willpower cannot fix it, because willpower arrives after the reaction has already fired. But the door that wrote it in is still open. You can write in a new one.

So we need to practice deliberately to build better habits. A habit must be acted, not felt. “When I dink or reset, I crouch a little and hit soft” — not “be more careful.” “When I meet a new person, I ask one question about them first” — not “be more friendly.” And so on, and so forth.