Tag Archives: Atomic Habits

Habits Matter

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“The real reason that habits matter is that your habits are how you embody a particular identity. So every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” ~ James Clear, Entrepreneur and bestselling author of Atomic Habits

James Clear, New York Times bestselling author of Atomic Habits, has inspired readers to change their health behaviors for the better. He puts it simply:

“Who we are reflects our habits.”

With his helpful metaphors and refreshingly straightforward and sustainable mindset techniques inspired by psychology greats, he contends that we can all build habits that make us shine.

“Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.” ~ Jacob Riis

The boulder did not crack just because the one hundred and first hit, but the accumulative effects of the previous hits. Thus, you must have the mindset of patience and wait for the results that will come.  Be patient and let things accumulate.

Habits matter are how you habit are how you embody a particular identity.

Building Wealth ‘One Brick at a Time’

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“Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour.” – James Clear

Laying bricks systematically to build a city works similarly well for building wealth. Building wealth is a slow systematic process of investing over the long term and compounding returns over time for most savers and investors. Successfully building wealth is not an overnight success.

“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems [habits] are best for making progress.” ~ James Clear

Atomic Wealth Building Habits

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“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” James Clear, a core philosophy of Atomic Habits:

“An atomic habit is a little habit that is part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results,” writes James Clear, author of the best selling book, Atomic Habits.

Applying the principles and philosophies of Atomic Habits to your wealth building, money management and achievement of financial freedom can grow into life-altering outcomes.

Focusing on little habits repeated over a long period of time is how to create good habits, break bad ones, and get 1 percent better every day.

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run. “It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent,” writes Clear.

Thus, habits are a double-edged sword. They can work for you or against you, which is why understanding the details is essential.

Small changes often appear to make no discernible difference in the short term until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient. “Many of the choices you make today will not benefit you immediately,” Clear explains.

If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead. “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems,” stresses James Clear. “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress,”

Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa) There are three levels of change: outcome change, process change, and identity change.

Focus on who you wish to become

The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become, writes Clear. Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity. Your behaviours are usually a reflection of your identity. “What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are either consciously or non consciously.,” Clear says.

The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.

A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity,” said James Clear.

The ultimate purpose of habits is to resolve the routines, challenges and problems of daily life with as little conscious energy and effort as possible.

References:

  1. https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
  2. https://waymakerfinance.com.au/blog/applying-atomic-habits-to-your-finances

Patience is a Virtue

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“The most useful form of patience is persistence. Patience implies waiting for things to improve on their own. Persistence implies keeping your head down and continuing to work when things take longer than you expect.” ~James Clear, author of Atomic Habits

Patience, along with effective habits, are a necessity and essential virtue in order to make changes and improvements in your life.

As James Clear points out: “Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your physical fitness is a lagging measure of your eating and training habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits.”

Effectively, you get in your life what you repeat over the long term.

And, patience is imperative in investing.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett reminds investor regarding the importance of patience when he quipped that: “Successful investing takes time, discipline, and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time. you can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

“The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.” ~ Arnold H. Glasow

References:

  1. https://www.purposefairy.com/75545/quotes-on-patience/
  2. https://bizadda360.com/quotes/warren-buffett-quotes

Systems are Best for Long Term Success

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“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.” James Clear

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, spoke at a conference I attended about ‘goals and system’. During his insightful talk, he explained that “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress. ”

Furthermore, he said that, “I began to realize that my results had very little to do with the goals I set and nearly everything to do with the systems I followed.” To explain, he writes that “If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal might be to build a million-dollar business. Your system is how you test product ideas, hire employees, and run marketing campaigns.”

Moreover, goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress and reaching your destination.

Goals can become too limiting, says Scott Adams, the nationally syndicated cartoonist of Dilbert. Systems, in contrast, habits are things that people regularly do and that increase the odds that an event ends up creating an experience that leads to an eventual success, even though that success might not be immediately apparent.

A system, says Adams, contributes to a positive attitude that widens a person’s field of perception, which he contends is what makes some people luckier than others in that they can see more opportunities.

Build a system for getting 1% better every day.

In Clear’s opinion, “a handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems.”

https://twitter.com/atomichabitss/status/1498825041835823105

According to Clear, several problems arise when you focus on goals and ignore the system, such as:

Problem #1: Winners and losers have the same goals.

Successful and unsuccessful people often share the same goals, thus the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers. It wasn’t the goal of winning the Tour de France that propelled the British Cyclists to the top of the sport, states Clear. Presumably, they had wanted to win the race every year before—just like every other professional team. The goal had always been there. It was only when they implemented a system of continuous small improvements that they achieved a different outcome.

Problem #2: Achieving a goal is only a momentary change.

To truly have meaningful and long-lasting change, you must change your habits that led to the problem or challenge in the first place. Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. That’s the counterintuitive thing about improvement. You think you need to change your results, but the results are not the problem. What you really need to change are the systems that cause those results. When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.

Problem #3: Goals restrict your happiness.

The problem with a goals-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone. Happiness should not be just something for your future self to enjoy.

Furthermore, goals create an “either-or” conflict: either you achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and you are a disappointment. You mentally box yourself into a narrow version of happiness. It makes no sense to restrict your satisfaction to one scenario when there are many paths to success.

A systems-first mentality provides the antidote. When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running. And a system can be successful in many different forms, not just the one you first envision.

Problem #4: Goals are at odds with long-term progress.

Finally, a goal-oriented mind-set can create a “yo-yo” effect. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it? This is why many people find themselves reverting to their old habits after accomplishing a goal.

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’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.

Fall in love with systems

James Clear surmises that “goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress. Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.”

The next time you think about a goal, something you deeply desire to achieve, think of the system that you will follow — and how often — in order to reach it.

References:

  1. https://jamesclear.com/goals-systems
  2. https://www.cioinsight.com/careers/dilbert-creator-focus-on-systems-not-goals/
  3. https://jamesclear.com/good-habits
  4. https://medium.com/swlh/thinking-in-systems-not-goals-2b9a4105d0d3

James Clear is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits.

“The most useful form of patience is persistence. Patience implies waiting for things to improve on their own. Persistence implies keeping your head down and continuing to work when things take longer than you expect.” ~James Clear