Lately in PGP, aka the Personal Growth Plan, we have been introduced to a book by James Clear titled ‘Atomic Habits’. This book would help us figure out how to create good habits, how to end bad habits, and how to regain full control of you life. One topic present in this book is taking it percent by percent. When you set a goal in life you want to get to 100% by some point, reaching your goal, completing the task, and feeling completed.
I know in my life (where I struggle with planning goals) using this style of moving forward through tasks has really helped me and proven to be useful in my life. James Clear does quite a good job at helping the reader find ways to build good habits. And after reading this book I can say that this is a must read for any student struggling with breaking bad habits and building good ones.
One thing you have to keep in mind though is that these things take time, persistence, and dedication, which shows that you cant build a good habit unless you really want to. This book was broken up into four. crucial sections, and this is where I can start getting into the nitty-gritty of this post.
Law Number One: Make It Obvious
Before I start on this first law, keep in mind that these laws are all built on creating good habits, according to james clear, these laws are crucial to keep in mind when trying to create new habits. Also, you have to make sure that you know exactly what a habit is, a habit is doing something you don’t even think about doing (once it has fully implemented itself in your life) so getting to that point is going to take some work.
When you start on creating a habit you have to think about what steps you can take to start cementing the thing you want to make a habit. Wether it be quitting cigarettes, going for a jog every morning, or drinking more water.
One method present in this book that I found extremely useful was habit stacking, habit stacking is when you take an already built habit (in my case it was making music on my computer once my homework is done) and stack a not-yet built habit on it so that when you travel to the place to help build the habit, it seems natural and wont discourage you from doing that thing you want to make into a habit (in my case it was working out). So whenever I would go from my living room to my room to make music, I would also work out so that it seems more natural and not so abrasive (as to help my brain turn this into a regular thing).
When kicking bad habits it can be hard to identify which habits are good and which habits are bad. In this part in the book you are introduced to the habit scorecard.
I found this activity to be extremely useful in identifying bad and good habits in the things I do everyday without paying attention to them. For this activity, you would write down each crucial thing you do every day into a list, then beside
it, you would write positive, negative, and neutral, to help you identify what things in your life you should consider changing and what things you should keep the same and even possibly build off of. Most days I barley think about the average things I do to be negative or positive but I realized that a significant amount of things after school is over become negative, I am still working on turning these things positive but I am grateful that this book was able to show me this method of identifying positive and negative habits.
Law Number Two: Make it attractive
For this law it was important to associate your habit you want to implement with positive feelings, it is important to make you habit attractive to you so that you WANT to do it, this is crucial when creating a new habit. One habit that I have started implementing in my life is working out in my room, I think that staying fit helps you stay feeling happy and productive, so I found this to be a perfect habit to build on.
One way I helped make this habit attractive to me was by stacking my music habit with working out as mentioned in the first law. It helped me blend the dopamine I get from making music with working out to help me stay motivated to work out. Another thing that helped me accomplish my goal was looking at the result of working out before I started, I would be feeling happy for pretty much the rest of the day.
Law Number Three: Make it easy
Most of the time, if a task is difficult us humans wont do it. Thats why making a habit easy helps you implement it in your life much easier. Preparation is by far the easiest and most effective way to help make a task easier. One example of this in my life is breaking my day down into tasks on the notes app on my phone with a checkmark button beside each task, this helps me gain satisfaction from seeing that beautiful yellow checkmark beside a task, it also helps make my days incredibly more easy which makes me happy!
Law Number Four: Make it satisfying
In the case of me completing tasks, if there is no reward I will be significantly less motivated to complete the task versus me being rewarded in some way, I think most people can relate to this in some way. One way I helped reward myself after each workout session would be to relax! Play video games, watch a movie. Anything to help get my mind off the stress of daily life. Another thing that helped me was looking in to the future where i’m more fit than I have ever been! Opposed to looking forward to a positive outcome, having a punishment has also helped me overcome obstacles.
One example of this recently was skateboarding with my friends, I was dead set on landing a kick flip over this barrier at the skatepark that I got my friends to punch me in the arm every time I didn’t land it. Unfortunately we had to leave before I got the chance to land it which means I will have to come back and land it sometime in the near future.
In conclusion, living life percent by percent, task by task, and moment by moment, has seriously bettered my mental health and given me a more positive outlook on life. I have had a serious problem with stressing myself out to a crippling level by looking and worrying to far into the future. I am ecstatic that we were given the opportunity to read and reflect on this book, I think this book is amazing and is a must read for every student. Anyways, after reading this book and figuring out that these skills and methods of building habits and completing tasks actually work, I feel like my life has become much more doable and controllable!