Atomic Habits
The TLDR version (6 minute read)
My Fiancé and I listen to Atomic Habits by James Clear and I reframe my annual goals to better reflect my beliefs. I use these beliefs as the driver to set some new habits to build on my identity.
My Fiancé Bree is a master of habits. She succeeds where I am hopeless so much of the time. Soon after we moved in together, she committed to go for morning walks around a nearby park at 6am every morning. Despite my fondness of waking up and going straight in to the shower to start the day, I followed her around the park and in retrospect, I’m much better for it. In September, when COVID lockdowns in Perth eased, she created what I now call a habit stack where she decided it was best to build on a good thing and precede each park walk with a visit to the gym. After many mornings waking up at 5am as she left home with me going back to a mediocre hour-long sleep before she came to fetch me for a walk, she was the author of a new habit for me once more. It became easier for me to sign up for a gym membership and join her than suffer this morning unease. She is a master of sticking with something until it is second nature and something which we crave and expect from an otherwise busy day. I am her apprentice.
Sunset on our first day down-south
Yesterday I learned something about habits that will change the way I set and pursue goals.
We took a long drive to the south-west of Australia and discovered James Clear’s Atomic Habits on Audible. We got out of the car at 10pm after a 4 hour drive with more energy, not less, buoyed by the ideas we had debated along the way. My take away was that while my past habits of annual goal setting had been adequate, the practice could be improved. My focus has been on setting the goal and taking incremental steps towards that goal when I think about them on occasion but that’s not always a sustainable activity. How to master reaching your goals? Create incremental habits that will bring you closer to reaching them.
Key elements from Atomic Habits
James Clear is very transparent from the start of his book that his strategies and frameworks stand on the shoulders of giants. He builds on a solid foundation then adds some key insights. James talks about three layers of behavioral change. He points out that habits (as processes) lay at the intersection of your beliefs/identity and the long term outcomes of what you do.
“Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits.”
Image taken from this great analysis of Atomic Habits
Epiphany:
I’ve been attempting to build habits based on the outcomes or goals I want to reach. If I initiate habits based on my beliefs, I am more likely for form enduring habits that will in turn deliver my desired outcomes.
James’ point when introducing these three layers of behavioural change is that it’s much easier to set new habits and stick to them when those behaviours and processes are more about ‘who you are’ rather than ‘what you want to achieve’.
Assessing goals for 2021
So, 3 months in, things are going pretty well and armed with frameworks from Atomic Habits, I can already see a trend among those goals that have been going better than others.
Belief based habits: Three weeks ago, I started as a core team member of Project Symphony. This team is so well aligned to my top work goal for 2021 to align my role with energy transformation and more subject matter expertise, in this case regarding the creation of a virtual powerplant with roughly 500 customer premises under orchestration. In this case, I found it quite easy to continue agitating my leaders at Synergy to move me to a role which could exploit my passion for distributed electricity proliferation. It’s that consistent reminder that resulted in an offer to get involved. In this case, the belief that I was an active contributor to WA’s energy transformation meant that the habit to prod in that direction was always top of mind. It was easy to form the habit and stick to it. When I move in a direction that resonates with that belief, it forms a stronger part of my identity and the habit becomes more effortless.
“In order to believe in a new identity, we have to prove it to ourselves.”
Outcome or goal based: In contrast, my 2020 goal to refine my photo collection fell by the wayside last year. What was different about this? Well the obvious observation might be that it just wasn’t a very high priority goal which is partially true but I think there’s more to it. At the end of the day, I think that I prioritised my others interests and goals because they were more closely linked to my beliefs and identity. At no point was I telling myself “I’m the sort of person who curates their memories to share with those they care about”. All I was really focussing on was the yearning to have an easy-to-find collection of my old photos. This, coupled with the fact that I had no ‘trigger’ to remind myself to occasional sort through old photos, meant that I was destined to make no progress on this new year’s resolution.
Reframing goals for 2021
In reframing my goals, I asked myself “what belief do I hold or want to append to my identity that compelled me to set that goal at the beginning of the year?”
If I am to achieve my goals for 2021, it’s best to reframe them as beliefs as drivers for a more vision-driven trigger for new behaviour.
If I am the sort of person who takes the time to stay strong and healthy, that’s what I’ll tell myself when I’m deciding whether to get up to go to the gym in the morning.
If I want to make my wedding a special moment, I’m more likely to book in time in to my calendar to find a photographer or draft vows that really mean something to me.
If I want to enable a transition to a more decarbonised future, perhaps my tactics will be more creative than just seeking a new role.
A new belief
Behaviour flows from belief, not the arbitrary goals and milestones I set at the beginning of the year. Instead of stating these goals while asking “what do I want to do next year?”, I’ll ask myself “who do I want be?”
Why? Because I’m the sort of person who wants to be a better person, not just someone who achieves their new year resolutions.
The habit loop - my next steps
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
So now I’ve got a set of beliefs. How do I ensure that these more generic identity notes don’t ring false at the end of the year? James Clear had that covered too and that was really the bigger topic in the book. How do you form new habits as a process that will convert belief to outcomes that you can be proud of?
The habit loop is the core of the formation of an atomic habit. If you can make cues that remind you about the habit you want to form, you’re more likely to get started. If you make the habit attractive (aligned with your beliefs and identity), you’re more likely to crave it. If you make the habit easy to do, you’re more likely to do it and if you make it satisfying, you’re more likely to do it again.
My next step is to notice the opportunities and cues to exhibit my beliefs more, each and every day. As James says: “You get what you repeat.”
Image taken from this great analysis of Atomic Habits.
Samuel Thomas Davies also gives a good summary of the book here.
Gaining flexibility with belief-based resolutions
“Men are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life.”
Having now stepped through my journey of reframing my goals as beliefs, here are the steps you might want to follow to reframe yours:
Reflect - Have a look at your new years resolutions for the last two years. Which ones worked and which ones failed?
Identify traits - What behaviours were you trying to reinforce with your goals? If you achieved those goals, what did they help you believe about yourself?
Prioritise beliefs - Do these beliefs matter to you? Choose beliefs that will focus your attention for this year.
Commit - List the beliefs as your new years resolutions based on who you want to be rather than what you want to do
Follow through - Determine cues and new habits that you’ll try out to be the you that you want to be
Let me know how it goes in the comments!
