Ironically, I found out about this famous productivity book while rotting in bed, scrolling on Instagram Reels. Although I was a bit skeptical at first, I managed to get it on Libby as a Skip-The-Line book and tried to read a chapter a day.
It changed my life.
But the book is quite hard to get a hold of unless you buy it or you get lucky (like I did). So here’s a brief summary of what I think was most useful for students, and what I found was most applicable in my own life.
1. Compound
Similar to why we brush our teeth every day instead of for 24 hours for one day per year, it’s important to deconstruct our goals into daily habits instead of wanting to finish the whole thing at once. It’s really crucial to change our mindsets from focusing on results and the end goal to the process that must be taken to get there. Without doing what needs to be done to get to that dream, it remains exactly as it is – a dream.
If we put in a few minutes of work every day, it will eventually compound into a lot of time that has been put toward the end goal. But we need to put in that time, and consistency is difficult… unless you make it easy. But how can we do that?
2. 2 Minute Rule
Many people know this rule as telling yourself that you’re only going to do an unappealing task for two minutes as a way of reducing your hesitancy. After all, it’s only two minutes so it can’t be that bad right?
James Clear, the author of the book, explains it a little differently. Instead of setting really big goals for the habits that you’re going to form, you should plan for each of your habits to be completed in 2 minutes max. This is the “atomic” part of Atomic Habits. The habit is really small.
For example, if your goal is to get in shape, instead of telling yourself that you’re going to run for an hour every morning, reshape that habit into something shorter. Maybe your habit will just be to put on your running shoes and jog down your driveway. That takes less than 2 minutes. Chances are, you’ll probably end up going on the jog since you’re already there.
3. Make it Obvious
It’s easy to ignore, forget, or excuse ourselves for not doing our habits. You didn’t study because you forgot there was a test tomorrow. Didn’t do the assignment because you forgot the deadline. You decided not to the gym because you left your gym bag at home.
In order to avoid excuses like this, try to make your habits more obvious. Schedule a reminder as soon as the teacher tells you about the assignment. Leave your textbooks on your bed, lay out your pencil and assignment on your desk as soon as you get it. This way, whenever you walk past, you’ll be reminded. Leave your gym bag at the door the night before you go to the gym. Make it impossible for your excuse to be “I forgot.”
4. Track Your Habits
Oftentimes I’ll log into Duolingo and do a lesson for the sake of not losing my 375-day streak. Similar to how Duolingo encourages its users to keep their streak, or how SnapChat has a Streaks feature, try to track your habits. Leave rewards for yourself for being consistent.
Some ways you can do this:
- Print out a calendar and markup each day that you’ve done your habit
- Keep a tally sheet
- Create a social media account and upload videos of yourself doing your habit
- Journal
This is useful because on those days when you really don’t feel like doing anything, you’ll still be motivated by your streak. It gives you a final push to do your 2-minute habit, because after all you didn’t come this far to only come this far, right?
TL;DR
James Clear wrote an incredible book called Atomic Habits. It’s changed a lot of people’s lives, including mine. One of the most useful takeaways from the book is that the best way to achieve a goal is to focus on the process. You can take different measures to make the process a little easier on yourself, which will encourage you to actually finish the process and get to the goal.
