James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits, which emphasises the benefit of small changes/ improvements that you make on an everyday basis eventually leads to a major, fundamental change in behaviour and develops the habits that you desire. The way we go about forming new habits and break bad ones is all wrong. Many people focus on big goals and do not think of the small steps they need to take along the way. Like compound interest, small changes done consistently every day ultimately lead to significant improvements.
In an interview on HBR Ideacast with Allison Beard, he talks extensively of his book, Atomic habits and further on how it will help everyone to .overcome the inertia, and start incorporating new habits. This is one sure-shot way of beating procrastination. Here we present a summary of the interview.
Success requires discipline. Successful leaders/ achievers developed great habits, stick to a plan and get more out of their careers and life. Lots of times we start with goals, ideas that are very big and scale it down to something that is simple and easy to do to increase the likelihood that you will stick to it.
The two-minute rule- Whatever goal or habit you are trying to develop, scale it down to something that takes two minutes or less to do. It may seem silly at first, but habits need to be established before it can be improved. It has to become a standard in your life before it can be optimised or improved.
Focus on your identity rather than the outcome - What type of person is a writer? A person who writes regularly and consistently. So for you to become a writer you must first focus on the habit of writing regularly, every day so it becomes a routine and you no longer have to think about it. So focus on building habits rather than the outcome.
Many a time you limit yourself by saying that you can't do this, you don't like this, and the way to change this is to develop a habit and change your internal narrative. It changes your self-image. You do it every day for ten days, 30 days, 60 days and you may still think you have not adapted fully but continue and at some point of you will cross the threshold and start to think, maybe I have changed and maybe I can do it and yes, I can do it now.
Every action you take is a reaffirmation of the person you want to become. The more you do it, the more the confirmation the more it gets embedded as a habit that you don't think about. You may fake it for some time but it is like asking you to believe something that you are not and that's nothing but delusion. At some point, our brain would reject this and it fails. Let your behaviour lead the way. When you are doing it, at least at that moment, you are it and that cannot be denied. Hence the objective is not to publish a book but to become a writer, not to run a marathon but to become a runner. True behaviour change is identity change.
At work, we can broadly group habits into two categories
First, energy habits, habits that help you perform better any other habit, like getting good sleep, exercise, stress reduction
Second, habits of attention, habits related to knowledge work. What one reads and consume are important and is a precursor to the thoughts we have or the ideas we come up with as part of our work. Our ability to curate, edit, refine will determine our output.
Other habits we need to develop is not to bring things in but to keep them out. Today our mobile phones are the biggest distraction and we are forced to look at it every time it beeps. the first thing one should do is to keep it far away which forces you to get up and walk rather than keep it close to you.
Redesign your work desk, make actions of least resistance the good and productive activities and increase the friction of activities that take your attention away.
Read the remaining summary, here
Click on the following link for the full original transcript.
The right way to form new habits
James Clear - HBR podcast 201912
Comments
Post a Comment