Thought 48: Atomic Habits ⚛️

How does balance in my life create opportunity?

Our first project of PGP (Personal Growth Plan) 10 is almost an extension of one of our projects in Maker 9. Around the end of Maker 9, we read the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective people, and this is probably the most important book I have ever read. This could be because of the content of the book, or the fact that I don’t read much. Luckily for my poor reading habits, the book we read this year, can help me fix that. This year, we read the book Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results, by James Clear.

But before we started reading, there were a few things we had to do first. We started this project by watching a TED talk called The Happiness Advantage, by Shawn Achor. This TED Talk discusses how a positive mindset can lead to improved job performance and other benefits. To be honest, I didn’t really like this talk much, and I liked it less and less each time we watched it. We ended up watching this 4-5 times and each time we were given an assignment where we take our notes from the video and in groups, combine them into one idea. I don’t think I learned something new each time, but I definitely remembered a good chunk of the video.

In the video, the speaker explains there are 5 things we can do to enter a positive mindset: Exercise, Journaling, Meditation, Gratitude, and Random Acts of Kindness. Our next task was Positive Brain Training: Using these 5 practices to build habits of productive mindsets. We spent a bit of each class focusing on one of these 5 things, and we did this for about 3 weeks. For example, one day we did Random Acts of Kindness, and our task was to leave a nice comment on an Instagram post. This was the day after the Grammy Awards, so I left a comment congratulating Kendrick Lamar on his win for Best Rap Album.

Another thing we did at the start of each class was dedications. We dedicated each class to someone we admired, and could use their teachings in the classroom. I think the best example of this was when Landon dedicated our class to music legend Playboi Carti. One of his reasons for this was “He is very handsome” which led to Ms Willemse projecting pictures of Carti in the classroom. I also think it is important to note that the opening line of my favourite Playboi Carti song is “No cap and gown, I ain’t go to class.” 

Finally, we started to actually read the book. When we first started reading I liked the book. I thought it was interesting, and I liked how the author was straight and to the point. I made myself the goal of reading 5 pages each night, but some chapters where 6-10 pages, so I just decided to push through and read an entire chapter each night, which led to me finishing the book a bit sooner than expected. I also made sure to highlight important parts of the book and record them in a Craft PKM (Personal Knowledge Manager). Over time, I did get pretty tired of the book, but I still recognized the value of its message and I learned some important methods for building habits. In this blog post, I will talk about the most important topic in this book: the 4 Laws of Behaviour Change.

1. Make it Obvious
2. Make it Attractive
3. Make it Easy
4. Make it Satisfying

These are the 4 laws for building good habits, but you can also do the opposite to break bad habits. I really like this method because it is clear, doesn’t use complicated words, and probably does work. When I am thinking about building or improving habits, I try to do at least one of these things.

This project is a bit different from other projects. This time, the blog post is the final product. This is actually not a problem, because as the PLP teachers often say, the only true learning is in reflection. The goal of this blog post is to answer the driving question: “How does balance in my life create opportunities?”

Using the methods taught in Atomic Habits, you can build habits to manage different aspects of your life. You can build habits that can make you more efficient in your everyday tasks. This removes excess stress that can cause poor mental health and wasted time. These 2 benefits can lead to better job performances, relationships, and growing as a person. These are the opportunities that come with using habits to balance your life.