Atomic Habits – Book Report
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Atomic Habits by James Clear is a book about focusing on your typical routines to become the person you want to be. Very little consideration is put towards setting and achieving specific goals. Rather, Clear focuses on forming seemingly insignificant habits that make very little difference day-to-day, but over time, they will add up to remarkable achievements.
Clear spends a lot of time building trust in this concept. He expresses how you might not feel like your efforts are making a difference in the grand scheme of things, so to bring more faith, he gives a few comforting mental models for reassurance. These gave me more confidence in taking things one step at a time. Here are two examples.
Imagine you get only one percent better each day. Over the course of a year, you will have gotten almost forty times better. If you are not practicing your skills, then that could be a one percent decline in your skills each day. Over the course of a year, your skills will have deteriorated to about a hundredth of what they were.
The other example that sticks in my mind is a parallel with the melting point of an ice cube. Through hard work, you can metaphorically change the temperature of the room from 10 degrees, to 15 degrees, to 30 degrees. Still, nothing appears to change when you look at the ice cube. Only when you raise the temperature above 32 degrees does the ice cube start to melt. While your efforts are accumulating, the results may not be visible until the “melting point”.
The quote I like the most in the entire book is the one underneath the title of this book report – “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Outcomes are the superficial component of living your dream life. To go deeper, focus on the processes. To go even deeper than that, focus on identity. When these habits of process become so normal and natural that you can do them without even thinking, you will have become someone who “just does those things”. That person is also the person that accomplishes the goals you wish to achieve. I am now asking myself, what habits would an internationally renowned product manager possess?
I want to form the new habit of checking out articles on Silicon Valley Product Group’s website every day. James Clear has handed me a big ol’ toolkit of ways to make this new, unfamiliar habit automatic. One of the concepts he introduces is called “habit stacking”. This means chronologically chaining good habits together. Since I already have a very very strong habit of brushing my teeth before I go to bed (this is one thing in my life that will never change ever), I will plan to read the product articles right after that. Since I need to be specific about both time and location, I choose the location to be in bed.
In an effort to make this new habit of reading product articles as easy as possible when I am actually laying down for bed, I need to make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. I am already in the habit of giving Instagram one last checkup before I fall asleep, so I placed both Safari and Instagram in a folder called “Evening Ritual” with Safari coming first. In order to get to Instagram, I tell myself I must open Safari first. Upon opening Safari, I see the SVPG website saved in my favorites, making it very easy for me to click on. After I browse through the articles, I can give myself the satisfying reward of exploring Instagram. Thank you for this new addition to the structure of my life, James Clear!
