Atomic Habits

Why did I do 12 hours of 3-d modelling for a careers class? It’s a mystery.

…unless you read this spectuaroulous blog post!

        [spec-tac-ur-arol-us] = spectacular + marvellous

Hello! it’s once again me! this time, we going to be taking a look at the first PGP project of this year: Atomic habits! Our driving question for this project was “How can small changes in my habits shape my success this year, and beyond?”

Centred around the self-improvement book ‘Atomic habits’ written by the author James Clear, we explored his strategies for creating good habits and breaking bad ones. We used many methods from his book to do this, but everything was centered around four main rules.

1. Make it obvious
2. Make it attractive
3. Make it easy
4. Make it satisfying

These were the rules we learned for creating good habits, but I also tried to implement throughout the rest of this project as I will touch on later. While reading the book we also had some tests just on the content of the book. Yes, you read that right, paper! every PLP kids worst fear.

We also did a little bit of work on who we want to be and our learning intentions for this year. Then we created our artifact, which was something we came up with and created that showcased what we learnt in the book and how we were going to implement it into our lives.

I decided to create a slightly odd marble run/habit tracker hybrid that used marbles to track your progress on your to-do’s. Here is the final 3-d model:

My artifact represents a couple things from the book. It was created using design principles that were the same as those for forming a habit in the book: easy, obvious, attractive and satisfying. It also uses the paperclip method (A visual method to see completed work) of a very visible indication of what has been done and what needs doing. It can/will help me manage my time and have a clear visual indicator of my work as talked about in the book as well as a few other things:

• Reducing friction
• Immediate reward for good actions
• Designing my environment for success

It was also very fun to design and went though many different iteration of each part. Revision as always.

Concept design:

And the finished product!

I also have a time-lapse of me designing a single part. (half an hour real time for reference):

I think that this project was very helpful for me, as it did help me develop some methods for forming good habits, but it also taught me about my own mindset and how I work much better when working on something I find fun or care about. I do genuinely feel more competent and in control after this project, so thanks to the teachers for that.

As for answering out driving question for this project: Small changes in my habits can enable me to live a better, more controlled life where I am organized and in control this year and beyond.

Thank you very much for reading as always. Goodbye. *BWweDeloOop