Last week, I picked up a self-help book about good habits and within the very first page the author admitted that he had been hit in the head with a baseball bat. It gets worse. This accident happened in 2002 and the writer was a sophomore in high school at the time.
I consider myself a fairly open-minded person, but this didn’t sit well with me. I prefer to take life advice from someone with a few more decades of experience than I… ideally, from a person who has not suffered a massive head injury.
Is that unfair? Totally. Ruling out what someone has to say because they are relatively young is a mistake I constantly complain about. I understand that overcoming illness or injury often does provide a sense of perspective that makes people seem wise beyond their years. Besides, a best-seller is a best-seller and I already bought the book. So I read it anyway and this is what I learned.
The main premise of the book is this: Tiny behavioral changes make a big difference in reaching long-term goals. Like interest, incremental improvements compound over time and add up to significant gains. Put another way, massive success is not a result of a single massive action, but a series of small changes that accumulate over time – a concept the author calls “the aggregation of marginal gains.”
According to the book, every action is a choice and thus an opportunity for improvement. If you repeat the action often enough, it becomes a habit. At that point, the behavior becomes automatic, which means that you perform the task without much awareness. When you do things out of habit, you’re reaping the rewards of the activity over and over while also freeing up valuable mental energy that can be spent on something else. In this way, a habit isn’t rigid and constricting but liberating.
Even if you don’t have the time or energy to form a new habit, the book lays out a good case for how making better choices here and there can accumulate into significant gains. For example, I had picked up this book the day before I was about to take an 8-hour bus ride from Germany to Italy. As in trips past, I had planned to pass the time as mindlessly as possible: catching up on reality TV on my laptop; browsing social media; listening to music. But after reading a few chapters of the book the day before I left, I realized that just because I typically pass a bus hour a certain way doesn’t mean that’s how I haveto spend the time now. I have a choice: Sit on the bus and watch TV or write a blog post. Scroll Twitter or read a book. Eat a Bavarian pretzel from a rest stop or pack myself a small salad. I could make choices based on entertainment, convenience and accessibility, or I could use the time to be productive, mindful and health-conscious.
This is something that I know and you probably do too. But what I found helpful about reading the book was the reminder that reaching my goals is not an all or nothing approach. Making one net-new good decision per day is a win. Further, one does not need to hold a perfect record to make gains.
In reading this book, I also realised that I sometimes make myself choose between two things without considering that I could do both. Going back to the bus ride example, I had eight hours to work with. Surely I could write a post, read a book, browse Twitter, catch up on reality TV and still have time left over. Why was I convincing myself that I had an A/B choice when it was possible to do all of the above? It’s like I got hit in the head with a bat or something.
There were a lot of other examples in the book that I would place in category of common sense, though not quite conscious behavior:
Identity-based goals: Defining your goals in terms of who you want to be as a person, as opposed to the task you want to complete. E.g., years ago, I started identifying as a writer (instead of a marketer), since my long-term career aspiration is to publish a book.
Environment design: Making good choices easier/obvious and bad choices harder/invisible; e.g., If it’s approaching meal time, I eat before leaving the house so as to avoid the temptation or grabbing something quick and easy (and expensive and unhealthy!) along the way.
Temptation bundling: Incentivizing yourself to complete a task by doing something you already enjoy at the same time. For example, I wanted to get into the habit of eating yogurt and fruit for breakfast, so I added granola with dark chocolate nibs and hazelnuts to make it more appealing.
Culture imitation: Joining a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. Hello, #amwriting! Shout out to my blogger friends, Das Goose, AwkardlyAlive and FarmGirlMiriam who check in and cheer me on regularly.
Hard Habits Opportunity: Reframing tasks not as things you “have to” do, but things you “get to” do. When I get frustrated about having to lug an overloaded suitcase across town, I remind myself that I am so lucky that I am able to travel – and that I’m sturdy enough to take the stairs with 20kg on my back.
Decisive moments: Recognizing that habits are less about the actual behavior than setting yourself up to perform the task. On exercise days, I wake up and change into workout clothes because it sets me up mentally for a morning workout… and changing out of my running clothes without going for a run feels like more of a failure than actually skipping the workout.
Habit stacking: Tying a habit you want to adopt to one you already do. For example, I know that I am supposed to use facial toner every night, but I always forget to do so. On the other hand, I always take off my makeup before washing my face. So I linked doing one with the other by setting out two cotton swabs on the counter every night as I began my bedtime routine – one for makeup and one for toner. I don’t forget to use the latter because the idling cotton swab reminds me.
Looking at that list, it might seem like reading the book was a waste of time. After all, if I’m already doing a lot of the things the writer suggests then how helpful could it really be? But that’s the interesting part: The examples I give above are truly habits – things I started doing a long time ago and reinforced over and over. At this point, eating healthy, saving money, working out and writing blog posts are automatic behaviors. I hardly ever miss an appointment with myself to do them.
But just because I have certain areas of my life on lock doesn’t mean I don’t need a reminder of how to get the rest in gear. Sure I habit stacked facial toner and makeup remover, but I haven’t quite managed to do that with flossing and brushing. I’m a pro at decisive moment workouts, but I haven’t found a way to do the same for language learning. I blog on the weekly, but that book still isn’t finished, no matter how loudly I identify as a writer.
Atomic Habits makes it clear that even if you’re killing it in life, there is still room for improvement. You can always make small, incremental gains through slight behavior shifts. So whether you’re a person who feels like you’re starting from scratch or a person who’s just looking to level up, this book will give you some helpful strategies for getting started or getting just a little bit further ahead.
Hope to see you on the road… from the bus window or my running route. Either way, I’ll be gaining on myself.
I need to read this book. There are a few behaviors I could change and better habits I could have. Thanks for blogging about it!
definitely worth checking out… I know there are many like it too. :) thanks for always being a pal.
Thanks for the shout-out Nova! #amwriting for the win.
What always strikes me about self-help books is that their advice seems obvious, but is still helpful because we need the reminder.
Even though we know what a healthy and happy life looks like, we still have to go through the obstacles and failures before we finally manage to implement the steps to get there.
Being human is messy.
yes – I totally agree. so obvious and so helpful at the same time! Being human is messy and I really appreciate people like you who share that process openly and honestly. :) xx
I’m such a sucker for self-improvement tactics, and this book sounds like my JAM.
Also, hi back! Thanks for the shout-out!
Yes, it was good – I can recommend it. Kind of repetitive at times, but worth it. Definitely helpful to take a few minutes and really think about how you do things, why you do them, and how to improve all around.