Revisiting Habits
Why some habits continue and some don’t ?
Context: The motivation of this blog came from reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. This was one of the most recommended books everywhere, on Amazon, on Google, by my colleagues and by my friends.
Since I do not read a lot of non-fiction, so I thought it would be a waste of time. Moreover, I thought what good it might possibly add, I am self sufficient for building my own habits.
Yet, I thought to give it a shot for once. And then I wanted to thank everyone who suggested it to me.
And here is why:
I am a consistent person, well, mostly. For instance, I have been working out for 4 years now. Sure, I have missed some workouts when I was down sick or had a morning flight to catch, but I made sure I did something. If not a full fledged workout, maybe just a plank or some skips. And this made me think, if I can be consistent here, I can be consistent anywhere.
Of course I can be consistent anywhere. But, am I? Simply, NO!
I realized that I am practicing consistency only in specific areas of my life, just where I want. And I don’t think I would have realized that if not for the book.
There are countless things which I am trying to improve in me every single day but to no results:
- One of them being, writing blogs. I wrote the last blog more than a year ago and since then I have been promising myself to write another blog, or at least finish one in the 9 drafts that I have.
- Another one being sitting (and standing) straight. Thanks to working from home, I have been slouching my way throughout. My posture is a disaster and it takes up effort straightening up, so I just gave up knowing how bad it can turn up to be in the future.
- Another one, drinking water. I started drinking 3 litres for a while but dropped down to 2 or sometimes 1.5.
- I have this weird habit of cheek biting, like nail biting, which helps me concentrate. I know this is stupid, but it is what it is.
- Scrolling Instagram every 5 minutes. I bet this is everyone’s problem, and if it isn’t, I respect you *salute*!
And the list goes on and on and on… (song playing in background)
The crux for this entire rant I just did was, I, and in general I think we have habits, some good and some bad, and we are trying to add some new good habits to our bag, and letting go of some bad ones. And reading this book made me aware of that. This is the main reason I recommend everyone to read this book at least once.
Being self aware is the first and the foremost thing which I believe one can do to change or build habits. For instance, humans tend to repeat activities in which they find an immediate satisfaction. I realized that although the ultimate goal of exercising is being healthy, I like when I am sweating after a good workout as that gives me a sense of accomplishment. I like my workout clothes very much. The excitement to wear them every morning which subconsciously contributes to the motivation. Over the years, I have mixed exercises so that I am not bored. This adds up. Similarly, although my goal was to become a good coder, the green ticks and a solution being ACCEPTED gave the immediate satisfaction which one needs.
All these triggers, and satisfaction, and motivation were absent for the all the activities I listed above. So, that now I kind of know where I am going wrong, it will become easier to track and correct myself.
Maybe this would make much more sense if you have already read the book. Anyhow, these tactics and motivations can be applied to the other N number of habits we want to build, and I am going to go try that. Let’s see where that goes!
And when I am hopefully able to tackle one of these habits, I will write upon how I did that!
