I really like this question. If I'm honest, it rarely happens that I don't finish stuff. But this wasn't some magical switch that happened overnight. Rather, a bunch of stuff, so this question kind of gives me an opportunity to reflect on what led to meaningful change: 1. Action vs Motion. A lot of comments alluded to this here, and the best I've seen it articulated was in James Clear's book Atomic Habits. You have 'Motion' which is thinking, imagining, whiteboarding, planning, talking about...everything that goes around the doing. And you have 'Action', which is actually doing. Motion is…
I started my first workday today and I prepped for tricking my procrastination skills. I can't post on how it worked out yet (I might do 2 months from now), but here is what I did to trick myself: - When in the shower, do one yoga stretch to get acquainted with yoga. I do this one [1], but then really really badly. I keep asking myself the question: what do I find fun about this? And relentlessly focus on that. It took a while to develop, but one answer is now: it feels relaxing. And yes, I'm still terrible at it. - Whenever I walk in and out the door of the living room I have to do one set…
See also Atomic Habits by James Clear: https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits In Franklin’s autobiography, he names 13 virtues and describes his “fake it until you make it” approach, as boz characterizes it. My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judged it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time, and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone thro’ the thirteen; and, as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of…
In my opinion, the hard part of habit change isn't discovering the specifics of the changes you need to make in order to alter your habits. The hard part is meta aspect of actually doing the things that you know you need to do for long enough to break your old habits and to form new ones, all while your subconscious mind is longing for the sweet comfort of your old habits! We are masters at fooling ourselves, at talking ourselves into momentary pleasure at the cost of our long-term wellbeing, at repeatedly procrastinating 'just this once' until we completely forget that we were trying to make…
Read books about habit formation and apply the ideas about identifying a trigger to a habit, and altering the response. Most importantly, you can consider identifying and addressing the emotional motivation behind the habit. I’m a fan of BJ Fogg’s “Tiny Habits” as the book includes memorable summary diagrams, and the author is credible as an active researcher (his work was cited in the lectures of a university course I later took, after reading his book on my own). Alternative books are James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” (which cites BJ Fogg’s work) and Charles Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit.”…
Most people I know consider me a “disciplined” person. I’m a fitness junkie who has very rarely missed a workout in the last 10 years. I maintain a not-as-strict-as-I’d-like-but-seemingly-better-than-most diet. I prioritize habits that help me or that I enjoy like sleep and reading. There are days I do not want to. There are days when I am tempted. There are days when I am depressed, busy, etc. Things get in the way. I am not perfect, and do not claim to be. That said, what helps me with adherence, and I know this will sound overly simplistic and un-helpful, is I just do the things. I have a…
In the ruthless monetisation of all things, it feels capitalism has done to our behaviour/thoughts/habits what it has done to any other resource - how can I maximise financial output from this thing at the cost of something else? Battery farming and animal welfare. Public transport and social mobility. Processed food and nutritional value. The human mind is just the next frontier where the battle to make everything you do something that is “valuable” where value = economic output. I’m stressed because I’ve been in that place for too long. I started the year reading James Clear’s book…
I think a better alternative is the concept of the minimum viable habit from James Clear's Atomic Habits. SOFA gets one thing right which is it reduces the pressure and the expectations. But it doesn't seem like an approach to life which results in anything permanent. This post literally says "nothing is permanent, nothing lasts" which is a nihilistic and self-defeating view of life - perhaps technically true but not useful. Contrast with "play long term games" which is the idea that good things compound over years and even decades and this compounding is how you can lead a truly…
This is my list for this Summer (Southern hemisphere here): * [reading] Atomic Habits (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1847941834) * [reading] So Good They Can't Ignore You (https://www.amazon.com.br/gp/product/1455509124) * 97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1492050903) * The Manager`s Path (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1491973897) * The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0787960756) * Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0787976377) * Who: The A Method for…
The way to cure this is to develop a habit that severely limits undirected online browsing and socializing. Part of it is just an education of your own aesthetic sentiments. I read James Clear's "Atomic Habits" (not that this is a special book, I was just on another kick in which I really needed to improve my productivity and picked up a suggestion to use a physical counter of some kind to make a habit stick. I bought a bunch of marbles, and for every bloc of time that I avoid undirected browsing or social media use, I move a marble from one container to the other. My goal every day is to…