Atomic Habits - Chapter 16 - 20

 

I spent the past week reading the last few chapters of Atomic Habits . 

This is the book I was reading for book club where we read one chapter per day

Here are some of my thoughts and takeaways

Chapter 16 - How to stick with good habits everyday 

My two main take-aways from this chapter were -

• Habit tracking

• It’s ok to not be perfect as long as you show up.

Habit Tracking

I’m glad that the author acknowledges that habit tracking in itself is a habit. It can be hard to stick to tracking daily progress and it’s ok for this to be temporary. 

Perfection

I think this is something most people acknowledge internally but in a world that is driven by everyday social media perfection it often needs constant re-enforcement.

Chapter 17 - How an accountability partner can change everything

This chapter was a very quick read, and looking back at some of the quotes I highlighted, the following two stood out -

We’ll jump through a lot of hoops to avoid a little bit of immediate pain.

The keyword here being immediate.

I think creating a habit contract is a bit extreme, and I don’t see myself doing that. That said, I do understand how signing a piece of paper would make a person feel more accountable to not giving up.

Chapter 18 - The truth about talent (When genes matter and when they don't)

Gabor Mate notes, “Genes can predispose, but they don’t predetermine.”

I think this entire section is the author's way of tempering our expectations. The 4 laws are nice and all, and provide a great framework for habits. But at the same time - one needs to be pragmatic. You are not always going to get what you want. Play to your strengths not to your weaknesses.

Chapter 19 - The Goldilocks rule - How to stay motivated in life and work

This chapter and the previous one seem out of place

Nevertheless, I think there are important messages here. The four rules can help us get started in establishing habits. But, if we truly want to sustain them, we need to ensure two things -

Small Advancements

Status Quo can make a habit boring. It is necessary to make small increasingly challenging adjustments that cause us to stay motivated.

This reminds me of most single player PC games - the game usually starts off easy and gradually progresses to higher levels of difficulty. Each level of difficulty is offset with newer skills or improved weapons. This rate of increase is the secret sauce for keeping a gamer engaged. At the end of the game the difficulty peaks and interest in the game rapidly wanes.

Fall in love with boredom

When a habit is truly important to you, you have to be willing to stick to it in any mood.

I think this is easier said than done. Relying on motivation alone can be a gamble. What if you are bored every time ? I think at this point we would need to re-evaluate and make changes.

Chapter 20 - The downside of creating good habits

Reflection and review ensures that you spend your time on the right things and make course corrections whenever necessary

The main takeaway in the chapter, is that one needs to periodically review and reflect on how our habits are progressing and make improvements or adjustments. This is important because as we gain mastery at our current level, it is easy to become comfortable and complacent. 

The process of mastery requires that you progressively layer improvements on top of one another, each habit building upon the last until a new level of performance has been reached and a higher range of skills has been internalized.