PGP in grade 11 is cantered around a book called atomic habits, this post will go through my reading and learning experience with the book and how I am going to incorporate new ideas into my life. There are 4 different assignments I did with the book as well as four different laws that the book was based on that will be featured in this post.

Stepping stone 1: Habit Score card

The habit score card was really interesting to me because I didn’t fully realize how many things I was doing each day that made my life harder. I always end up leaving right at 8:25 on a school day, and while it should not be that much of a issue as I live extremely close to the school I often find myself just so slightly late because I could not find my shoes that morning or for some other bizarre reason. 

I have been keeping this in mind and actively reducing the bad habits as long as I am conscious of them. It’s definitely helped as I am now on time almost every day.

Stepping stone 2: Implementation Intention 

Remembering some tasks is really important. Right now my biggest one is rinsing out my mouth with salt water after every meal as I just had my wisdom teeth removed and it is important to prevent infection. So I made an Implementation Intention for this process. The action is rinsing, the time is after a meal and the location is my bathroom, because I don’t have many other places to slosh around salty water for 10 minutes at a time…

Stepping stone 3: Habit Stacker

Habit stacking was kind of hard but I found useful ways of using it in recent weeks. For example, I recently started stacking brushing my teeth with rinsing my mouth with the saltwater that was mentioned in Implementation. They are in the same are so it makes sense that it would be convenient to sort of combine them. Then I took it a step further, making the saltwater requires me to boil water. I am a big fan of some classic english black tea in the morning and at night before bed. So whenever I make tea, I stack making saltwater. Now theres always a cup ready for when I need it. 

Laws:

Number one was a lot easier than I thought to follow. Making it obvious really came to me in the form of apps. I got back into things and really tried to have push notifications be as utterly irritating as possible to force me to remember my commitments. I made a few goals, like spending a set amount of time on homework a day and the saltwater and I have not had them fade into the back of my mind yet so thats going pretty well.

Number two was making it semi enjoyable, well for a start doing the task would get rid of the notifications as long as I didn’t cheat myself. I’d also reward myself with small things like bits of leisure time or a food snack. 

Number three was accomplished mostly by habit stacking. I had a bunch of habits I looped together to make a sort of micro routine where if I started one thing I would not stop until Od done the others. This happened because they all shared locations or tasks that made it easy to transition or do something fun simultaneously.

Number four is still kind of in the beginning steps. I have made it satisfying through reward but my habits don’t give me any short term reward. This new streaks app is interesting though, I know from playing games with daily logins and other things of that sort in the past that I do not like breaking the chain and once I get this working I think I will definitely stay on track.

If Im being fully honest this is the first year where I think I have actually gotten growth from PGP and will be continuing these strategies on my own free will which is a first for me.