The Most Underestimated Bridge to Success – Habits
Introduction:
Buy The Most Underestimated Bridge to Success – Habits
Habits are not just repetitive actions as we normally define them. It’s more than that. We tend to look at habits from the surface level. Although according to James Clear, the author of the book Atomic Habits, the concept of habit formation and destruction is as deep as the ocean. It’s a science, and hence one should begin from the atomic level.
The Autopilot mode:
It’s 1st January, the new year’s first day. Time to implement the universal new year resolution- ‘I am going to wake up early and exercise’. Imagine this scenario, it’s morning, your alarm rings at 7:00 am. But all these years of waking up at 10:00 am is already a huge hindrance in your resolution. The mere idea of leaving your cosy bed hurts you. Exactly at that moment, a voice in your head says ‘You are twenty-three, you have never exercised in your life. You are not obese, so chill’. And with that you hit the snooze button and this continues for a few days.
Fast forward to day fifteen and you still haven’t exercised. The alarm is still set at 7:00 am but, something else has changed. When you kept hitting the snooze button for the first few days, you should have stopped and taken a moment to think what you are doing. But of course, you didn’t. And there! you formed a habit, which will take care of itself without handing you the control. Your alarm buzzes> you wake up> hit snooze> go back to sleep. Repeat. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Welcome to the autopilot mode. More about Autopilot mode and ways to tackle it in Atomic Habits….
Why are habits important?
Imagine this scenario. You want to become a guitarist, which demands a lot of practice. A friend of yours who has read Atomic Habits advises you to play the guitar for ten minutes everyday. Another friend advises you to play the guitar on weekends but for at least an hour. You pick the weekend option. It’s all good on the first weekend, you did practice the guitar for an hour and half. Congratulations. And then you didn’t see your guitar for six days. When you return the next weekend, you forget what you played last time. Your fingers won’t move as smoothly as they moved last time. And now you have to start it all over again. The same story repeats weekend after weekend and you still haven’t gotten anywhere. Frustrating, isn’t it?
How do I get near my goals without draining myself?
In the book, the author talks about getting 1% better everyday. And for so many of us, that might not sound as a good option. We fall for the weekend option and in the process get nowhere. Only if you stop and do the simple math. Becoming 1% better every day means you get 37 times better in one year. On the contrary getting 1% worse everyday means you are stuck where you began. The book explicitly explains this concept in depth with graph.
Why we shouldn’t underestimate the power of habits?:
A very famous example is of the British Cycling team. For a long time, the team had been doing okay, winning only a single gold medal since 1908. To improve the performance, they hired a new performance director Dave Brailsford. Brailsford bought a revolution in the team by focusing on small improvements first. Like getting comfortable bike seats, making sure that the teammates washed their hands very well so that they stay fit, choosing the best massage gel for fast recovery of injuries, even using comfortable pillows for a good night sleep. To anybody watching, these improvements might have seemed very insignificant in the beginning, almost unnecessary. They were, after all, the cycling team. Shouldn’t they just get to practicing? Thanks to Dave Brailsford, the tiny changes adopted by him and the team accumulated overtime to make history. The British team won 60% medals at road and track cycling events within the next five years. In the next four years they set nine Olympic records and seven world records. In a span of a decade, they won 178 World Championships and 66 Olympic and Para Olympic golds. Who would have thought!
Still don’t believe in the 1% principle? The book contains many such examples along with scientific facts enough convince you otherwise.
Conclusion:
Habits are a double-edged sword, they can either make you or break you. Indeed, the only difference between successful and non successful people is their habits, says James Clear, author of the international bestseller book Atomic Habits – Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results. We have been lacking in understanding habits, their implementation, and the science behind it. This book is an epitome of the self-help genre which will surely help you in developing good habits and breaking bad ones but, the right way!
