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. You can hear the entire podcast here by following this link.
This is part 2 of the summary. the first part can be read here. Part 1
Proactivity is an important habit to develop. It's a great quality to have. We should ask the following questions to any task that we are trying to achieve.
- What is the goal?
- What would it look like if it is easy?
- What is the way to achieve this without friction?
It is important to recognise there are many behaviours that we have, that pulls us into doing some task - perhaps it is easy, attractive, convenient or aligned with our personality or strengths. Focusing on what naturally pulls you in is the right approach to take rather than pushing it upon ourselves.
Networking is a typical example. having a strong network is important and very powerful in the modern work environment. However, for an introverted person, it is no easy task to indulge in chit chat. However, in today's interconnected world, there are many ways to network. One of the most effective is to create great work and share it publicly on blogs, podcasts, youtube. It becomes a magnet for like-minded people and becomes a much more powerful form of networking.
By asking the above three questions, you often find a way to find an alternative path to achieve the same outcome.
Again, when you get down to doing important work, make the habit an entry point not the exit point. What are the high-value tasks that one needs to e doing? Walk back the behavioural chain and identify the entry point. If you can identify what those first two minutes of the activity look like and make that into a habit, automate it then you will find the required chunk of time falls in place automatically. eg. (from the book) You want to go to the Gym. The habit to form is not going to the Gym but to take the vehicle that takes you the Gym.
Once you have started with the entry point for a few times, you want to graduate to the next level. Get one per cent better every day. This multiplies the effects of habits over time as you repeat it daily. Doing extra 10 minutes of work every day may not seem much on a day to day basis but over time doing this extra 10 minutes every day would compound to a huge improvement.
If you have good habits, time becomes your friend. Be patient. there are times when you will stall, regress. But have the willingness to continue. Doing habits every day leads to small, imperceptible improvements which you do not notice on a day to day basis. The work is not getting wasted, the delayed results have not shown up yet. A simple example -a stonecutter hammering a rock 100 times without any result and at the 101st strike the rock splits into two. So it should be remembered that it is not the 101st strike that gave the results but the 100 that went before that.
In work, it may be difficult to know if you are making a progress, compared to practising for physical activity like running, jogging, tennis etc., here the feedback is immediate - you know the timing of your run, in tennis, you know if your serve was accurate and this feedback helps you improve on it. The best way to do this in work is to tick off an activity on a calendar or to-do list every time you do it so that you can visually see the progress. this visual feedback acts as a strong feedback mechanism to push you to continue the activity you have started.
When it comes to intangibles, like being a better manager, how does one break it up into small steps and measure the progress? the first thing to do is to define qualities of that attribute, observe other role models, analyse their work into a set of consistent activities that are repeated over time. these become the building blocks and start doing these activities every time there are opportunities and mark on your calendar the progress.
You often observe that bad qualities are easily formed whereas good qualities are very difficult. If you analyse why you will find that bad quality is very obvious in the sense they are easily available, with little effort. The lesson here is that for a good habit to stick make it abundantly available in your environment.
Another reason is that bad habits are frictionless they have the least resistance. hence if one wants the good habits to stick make it as easy and as convenient as possible.
One more reason for bad habits to stick is that the benefit is immediate and the cost is delayed whereas it is the exact opposite in case of good habits. The cost of good habits is in the present and the cost of bad habits is in the future. This is one of the main reasons why bad habits form so readily.
If one understands the above three factors and starts taking small incremental steps in forming good habits, it would prove beneficial in the long run.
Click on the following link for the full original transcript.
The right way to form new habits
James Clear - HBR podcast 201912
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