Hey Y’all, Max here.
A while ago ( almost exactly this time last year ) I were reading and ( trying ) to understand a book called “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” ( here’s the link to the blog post ). I remember I was conflicted when I was reading it; I could tell there were a lot of things that would be beneficial to practice, but at the same time I knew I would never stick to them, somewhat ironically.
SO imagine my surprise, shock, exhilaration, and utter disillusionment when I saw we would have another project focused on a book that has the word habits in the title. Regardless, the point of this project was to remember key points from ‘The 7 Habits’ and learn from “Atomic Habits’ to answer the driving question: “How does balance in my life create opportunities?”
I began this project with confusion because I think I missed the first day and nobody explained to me what we were doing. It took me a while to figure out everything and by that time the class had pretty much moved on. So not a great start, but whatever. Anyways, there were a few TED talk videos with this guy Shawn Achor as the presenter. If you couldn’t guess, he is the guy who’s book I would be reading. The TED talk’s were a bit of a blur to me, and to be honest I only remembered a few important phrases and explanations. I think I was changing ADHD medication at this point so that would be the best explanation.
After this period, the most distinct part of this project were the different days associated with a different act / action. Exercise, Journaling, Meditation, Gratitude, and a Random Act of Kindness are all things we did on different days of the week. We would do these most days of every week, for about 2-3 weeks before PLP 10 left for Florida. Dedications before each class were also a little bit of weekday fun we did daily. It is also worth mentioning that there are more class dedications to rappers ( Playboi carti and Kanye West ) than students in the class.
The Book
Atomic Habits contains a lot of the wisdom of The 7 Habits, just in a more condensed form.
I say this because it’s split up into 4 individual sections, whereas I found The 7 habits was less organized.
The 4 sections of the book are known as the “4 laws of behavioural change”.
These are steps to take when starting a new habit, and sticking to it. The steps are:
- Make it obvious: utilize time and location cues to always remember to accomplish an habit.
- Make it attractive: positive-association with habits makes it more enjoyable to accomplish.
- Make it easy: The point is practice, not planning. Repetition is the best way to do this.
- Make it satisfying: It’s also important to celebrate and find reward after success, as a motivator.
The steps are pretty self-explanatory. In comparison, here are the 7 habits:
- Be Proactive
- Begin with the end in mind
- Put first things first
- Think Win-win
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood
- Synergize
- Sharpen the saw
Of course I’m not going to go into the 7 Habits now, but the point is when they’re lined up next to each other, don’t the atomic habits look simpler, and more condensed? Just my thinking.
Atomic Habits is a pretty long book, so of course I had to have a plan on how I was going to read it. My plan was foolproof, until it failed. I’ll attach a screenshot of it below.
The reason it failed was because of two reasons. a) I didn’t commit b) Florida
Not committing is as simple as it sounds. I simply didn’t give myself enough time, and I wasn’t specific enough in my plan. And the Florida trip just kind of came through and messed everything up, interrupting the reading schedule I had.
Anyways, for the driving question: “How does balance in my life create opportunities?”
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I think I have a well thought-out answer. I think that there are two important, and very different parts in any work: what needs to get done ( the process ), and how it’s going to get done ( the work ). It’s important to separate the two, or else they could get intertwined and it could get confusing. Some of the work I did on the 7 Habits and Atomic Habits became confusing to me after a while, maybe because the work I needed to get done was literally the process. But when you can balance these two properly, that is when you can utilize both the work and the process, to accomplish whatever you need to do, and open doors for opportunities.
That was a very long answer, and I apologize if it was too confusing. There really isn’t a better way to explain my thinking, so that’s the best I can do. See ya.