What’s the easiest way to make big changes? Is it a change of schedule, a new diet, or a different attitude? Well, according to James Clear, the tiniest changes can have the biggest results. In this blog post, I’m going to break down exactly how this system works, and why it’s changed the way I view habits. 

What makes a habit a habit? This is question I found myself asking during our most recent project, Atomic Habits. In this project, we read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. A habit can be defined as an action that you repeat over and over, day after day. A habit can become part of a routine, which makes breaking a bad one such a struggle. This same philosophy also means that starting a new good habit can be just as difficult. When something is part of a roultine, it’s done automatically. It’s hard to randomly start doing something new in a whim. 

To solve the before mentioned issues with creating good habits, James Clear created a method for making a new habit easier. First, you need to make a new habit obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. This might not make sense at first, but I’ll break it down. 

OBVIOUS: Making a good habit obvious can be as simple as leaving your gym bag with your work stuff at the door, so you don’t forget it.

ATTRACTIVE: Making a habit attractive could be having a weight goal to think about while you work out.

EASY: To make a habit easy, you could do something like planning out a workout routine ahead of time. 

SATISFYING: By making a habit satisfying, by doing something like rewarding yourself with an hour of Netflix after a workout, you can create a good association with the habit, which will drive you to complete it in the future. 

James Clear also has four steps to quit a bad habit. They are to make it invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying. They are the inverse of the four laws. For example, to quit a bad habit like smoking, you could make it invisible by throwing out all your cigarettes. Then, to make it unattractive, you could remind yourself about the dangers of smoking. To make it difficult, anytime you buy a new pack of cigarettes, you have to go for an hour long jog. Finally, to make it unsatisfying, maybe you’d have to eat something gross afterwards. He also implements this graphic, which refers to Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward. I suggest you read the book to learn more. These are just examples, but I found this incredibly useful to implement in my daily life. 

For this project, we had to create an “artifact” that showcased our knowledge of the James Clear method, and how we planned to implement it into our daily lives. My plan was to do a sort of visual representation of the thought process of how I try to improve my shooting form in basketball.

 

Another product of this project was something called a “pop art.”  For this assignment, we had to create a piece of art that showed our learning intentions for the year. To read all about what mine means, click here.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you’ve learned a little bit about how I think, and how the smallest changed have the biggest affects! Have a great day!