Its day 21st of 90 days daily writing challenge to improve my English writing and thinking skills. With this challenge I am aiming to reach a level of proficiency at English writing where I can produce high quality content effortlessly.
In this article I will be sharing my takeaways from the book Atomic habits by james clear. Although I haven’t read the whole book yet but I have went through its detailed summary on English is EZ with Connor YouTube channel so I want to keep notes of whatever I have understood of it on my blog.
Make it obvious
The first step to build a new habit is to select the habit that we want to develop. Then create an environment that would serve as an cue for our habit in order to adopt them easily. For example if I want to adopt a new habit of reading books then I should keep the preferred book near to me like on my study table so that whenever I sit there it reminds me of reading book. This way it will increase the likelihood of me reading the book hence developing the desired habit.
Make it attractive
In order to develop a new habit its essential to make them attractive. By pairing our new habit with activities we enjoy we can make them appear more appealing to do. For example if I want to continue reading book I can start consuming contents which talks about benefits of reading book or I can surround myself with like minded people who already have this habit and are pretty good at it.
Make it easy
To adopt a habit it necessary that we reduce the friction between us and the habit. The easier it is to perform a task, the easier it becomes to develop them as a habit. In addition to the example that I discussed in make it obvious session, I can keep a pencil or some light weight object between the pages where I finished reading so when I start reading the next day I can easily find where I have left.
Make it satisfying
It is must to reward oneself after performing the habit in order to stick it for a long period of time. Without rewarding ourselves we can’t develop our new habit because it would become boring and tedious performing them which would eventually lead to quitting them. One can reward themselves with something they enjoy after finishing the task. For example after reading certain number of pages of a book I can listen to music to reward myself and to have a feeling of immediate success.
Focus on systems rather than goals
What I have understood about this is that instead of focusing solely on goals we should try to develop a system i.e all the steps one can take to get better at performing the task each day. Focusing on results or outcomes won’t help in achieving the goals but improving the process involved would surely set us in the right direction. For example instead of focusing on finishing the book I should focus more on developing better reading strategies in order to get better at reading as well as understanding the book.
My experience writing this article
After watching the summary of the book Atomic Habits by James Clear I tried putting them in words but I realised how weak my understanding was while doing so. This time I did research on each points and tried understanding them thoroughly before writing about them that’s why this article is better in terms of quality than the previous ones.
Time it took me to write this article
This article took me 2 hour in total to finish which is bit more than what I expected. Still I am satisfied with the result because this article is better than the previous ones in terms of quality.