Atomic Habits: Build The System Forget The Goal.
Today I talk about best selling book Atomic Habits by James Clear. This is the I have ever read How easy to build a habit. I love the book most as well as IEDAS from the book. This book helps me build better habits. In Quarantine time, everything was changed. That time I was in depression and frustration on me. The most important part is this book help to overcoming depression and frustration. Now I am so happy and productive. I can’t even count how many times I failed to build new habits. Now I know, how I was wrong previously to build habits and how to act to build new habits.
How habits change our life.
Habits are two edge sword. If you use it for good, you will change your life like Haven. Or if you use it for bad, you will make your life worse like Hell.
Why Haven or Hell? I think you realize it already. Think yourself how Haven or Hell.
How we live our day we live our lives.
Yes, How we live our day we live our lives. And our days are spend with habits. Habits are like atoms of our life. Those atoms shape quality of our life. So we have to choose atoms so wisely. Otherwise, our life will be wasted.
How Atomic Habits (small change) change our life dramatically
Drop by drop is the water pot filled. (Buddha)
We decline small changes daily basis because it is not notable in the present moment. We think massive success or changes requires massive action. Small changes can be far more meaningful in the long run. It compounds itself and leads to astonishing results.
If you become 1% better/worse everyday, where you will be 1 year latter?
Make a guess before reading furthermore.
Is your guess right? I was wrong to guess.
You see, 1% better every day makes THIRTY-SEVEN times better within one year and 1% worse every day you are decline close to ZERO within one year.
The Most Powerful Outcomes Are Delayed.
1% better or worse can be a difficult concept to appreciate in daily life.
For one day, If you did 10 push-ups, you will not see any result at the end of the day. You will see the result after one month or one year later.
Your Work Was Not Wasted. It Is Just Being Stored.
Our mind wants to get the result instantly. If something delays we become frustrated. Imagine you want to melt ice but you are become frustrated after increasing 1 degree from 27 degrees. Ice start melting at 32 degrees.
You want to get a result you have to cross a critical threshold otherwise you will not get any result. This is the main part where we give up on building new habits.
We think it going to be linear but it is not. We get frustrated and give up.
Remember those previous quotes as well as graphs. This helps me a lot to build new habits.
Build The System Forget The Goal
If you are having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system.
This is the most favorite part of mine. This helps to get more happiness and build a better life. I fall in the trap of goal and I started to ruin my life.
What is the difference between Goals and Systems?
Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
Your goal might be to build Six-pack abs. Your system is to eat healthy foods, go to the gym daily, get enough sleep.
If you don’t have the goal still you can achieve Six-pack abs. Don’t get me wrong goals are needed to direct your life.
A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goal and not enough time designing your life.
Previously I did that, then I didn’t know about systems before reading this book. My whole time spends on goal. And Again again get frustrated. Without systems nothing stayed last, I got only momentary change.
Here some of the problems from setting goals.
- Winners and losers have the same goals.
I think you already know about survivorship bias. If you don’t know please read the topic, this is interesting. Everyone wants to get good grades in the exam but only who gets this who has a proper system of reading, taking notes, practice what he/she learning. Goals have nothing to with results but Systems does.
- Achieving a goal is only a momentary change.
If your goal is to read the book not become a reader. Then you will finish the book but you again stop reading. Then you find the motivation to read. Again start setting the goal to find motivation. This is not a good process.
Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.
- Goals restrict your happiness.
I have experienced it most. I set lots of goals and I went far from happiness. My mindset was if I achieve the goal I will be happy. That way, I loose to enjoy the present moment. I felt so stressed. Because I failed to achieve most of my goals.
- Goals are at odds with long-term progress.
I set I will solve 50 coding challenges from Leetcode as a goal. When I solved 50 coding challenges then I lose motivation to solve more challenges. Goals become the odds of my long term process. If I build the system I will be very good at programming.
The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal less thinking. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement.
Last words
I highly recommend you read the book If you want to know more about habits and want to build/break good/bad habits. If you love the idea of James Clear, You can subscribe to his 3–2–1 newsletter. Every Thursday you get an email full of wisdom. It’s really worth it. Also, you can follow him on Twitter.
Thanks for your time, I appreciate you.
