On March of 2019 I read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. I don’t like to be dramatic so this is a little uncomfortable to say but the concepts in this book quite literally changed my life.
I have always been impatient with myself, if I tried something and didn’t quickly become competent at it, I would abandon it and move on to the next thing. I was naturally proficient at some things so I gravitated towards those and later on in life I indeed got better at being persistent with some things, but I was never really consistent with anything, at least not anything positive (flashback to young me consistently staying up until 7AM watching garbage TV in my college years).
As a kid, school was relatively easy for me, and ironically that turned out to be mostly a net negative in my life. I failed to learn resilience, I failed to learn consistency, and in the last couple of years I have come to realize how important these concepts are for success, but most importantly for leading a satisfying life.
Getting by without planning or structure was a badge of honor for me. It’s not that being resourceful and figuring things out under pressure aren’t good skills to have, but I realized that the majority of the stresses in my life were avoidable if I had known back then about the importance of consistency.
Small, consistent changes can have a surprisingly large impact on your life, you always hear about the drop of water breaking the stone and all of that, but who has the time to wait for it? Well, turns out that in most cases there are no reliable shortcut and it’s best to commit to the long term payoff, while enjoying the process.
If you want to make a positive change in your life, you should recognize that change requires patience, as well as confidence that your habits are keeping you on the right trajectory – even if you aren’t seeing immediate results.
James Clear – Atomic Habits
The problem is that this is not easy to do, or rather, it is relatively easy but not intuitive. The best way to solidify a new habit is to make it so easy that it would be very difficult to fail. This is very counterintuitive but if you think about it for a few minutes makes a lot of sense, because once the habit becomes automatic, it’s easier to gradually increment the amount, duration or intensity of it until you reach the desired result. Not doing this is why we fail at habits, because we think we must do too much too soon, get overwhelmed, get frustrated and quit (many years of failed resolutions are undeniable proof of this).
This book taught me a foolproof strategy to build new habits and so far it has worked extremely well to help me create lots of habits that I still practice, many that I don’t need any more and many others that I will build in the future because now I know how to do it. I have also failed to set some habits, but instead of quitting for good, I reviewed what happened and tried again, sometimes multiple times. It took me several tries to solidify a consistent exercise habit, but now I have it and it is one of the topics that I would like to write about here.
In fact, this blog is the newest habit that I decided to start because I want to share all the good that has come to me from researching into the topics of productivity, motivation, mindset and meditation. I will also write about other interests such as music production, sports and in particular I have a draft for a multi part series about the wacky world of Japanese alternative idols, which I will publish someday.
I can say without any doubts that I am now a better person and can be self motivated and productive, all because of the tools I got from this book (and many others that I have read since then). Sometimes I wish I had read this (or something similar) when I was much younger, but regrets are not productive and wallowing is pointless. The past is unchangeable and that future doesn’t exist yet, so what’s left is to be consistent and continue building towards the person I want to become, now I know the way to get there.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Chinese Proverb