Atomic habit
Monday, June 8, 2020
Recently, I come across a book with the title "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. How reading this book will benefit you? It shares about how small habits can fulfill your potential and how to create a good habit or change a bad habit.
The backbone is a four-step model of habits - cue, craving, response, and reward. If you are in search of the lasting principles you can rely on year after year, you are in the right post. It doesn't matter whether your goals center on health, money, productivity, relationships or all of the above.
First, small habits make a big difference. If you get 1% better each day for one year, you'll end up 37 times better by the time you're done. Conversely, if you get 1% worse each day for one year, you'll decline nearly down to zero. Yes, habit behaves like compound interest of self-improvement. However, habit oftens make no difference until you cross a critical threshold to unlock a new level of performance, it requires patience. A bit of an experience I would like to share: as a student, I attend tuition classes, complete various reference books exercises etc. I obtain good results in academic, gradually coming up top in the class. All this while, I think it is merely luck- that I'm too lucky. I often disregard my 'hard work', I think that's what everybody does, except that's not. You reap what you sow. I guess I was that weird kid which requested my mum to send me to tuition center.
This book focuses on system instead of goal. Goal is only for setting a direction, e.g I want to win a championship, while system makes progress. Everyone wants to win- successful and unsuccessful people share the same goal, so goals cannot differentiate the winners from the losers. The goal had always been there, it was only when you implement a system of continuous improvements that you achieve a different outcome. You think you need to change your result, but the result is not the problem, but the system that cause that result. Fix the input and the output will fix itself. I like the quote by Jeffrey Archer, "if you take care of the pennies, the pounds will take care of themselves", the same goes in term of financial. It is not about a single achievement, but a cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. If I quit to work hard after my SPM, I will not have finished my matriculation study, not to mention my undergraduate study. In this case, my system is concentrate in class, understand the concepts completely and prepare well for every examinations. My goal is to obtain great results. Without a proper system, a goal is nothing but unachievable.
One of the most effective way to change your habit is to focus on who you wish to become, not on what you want to achieve. For instance, each time you write a page, you are a writer. Each time you practise the piano, you are a musician. The habits guide you to trust yourself, you start to believe you can actually accomplish these things. After you have successfully written 365 pages in a year, you might believe you are a writer, because by then you are actually one. Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs and to upgrade and expand your identity. Whether you are a write, an athlete, a leader, you are the one who decide. Remember the four laws of behavior change you can use to build better habits: (i) Make it obvious. (ii) Make it attractive. (ii) Make it easy. (iv) Make it satisfying.
« Older posts - Newer posts »
