Jan 13
Have an Awesome Year by Focusing on Habits
It’s still January, so most of us are in the throes of New Year’s resolutions. The goals have been declared.
Since what seems like the dawn of time, I’ve had the goal — at the beginning of the year — to get in great shape. I’ve almost met the goal a couple of times. But my lack of stick-to-itiveness has derailed my transformation.
Crawling from my bed to my living room and putting on the workout video gets old. So on one too many days, I hit the snooze button. Pretty soon, I’m no longer working out. I am unsuccessful with the goal.
I had visions of it being easier. I thought the transformation would happen quicker and the results would be evident. Sound familiar?
Success is the product of daily habits — not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.
~ James Clear
Habits, people. That’s what helps.
James Clear, in his book, Atomic Habits, often refers to habits as systems. If you have a clear system in place, it’s harder to fail. Not impossible, but harder.
Define the habits to meet the goal.
I’m working on building my blog here on Medium. It’s part of my life plan. Read about it here:
The goal is for this blog to be part of a larger plan for additional revenue streams. Right now, I’m nowhere near meeting these goals, let alone the goal Medium sets of one hundred followers to monetize the page (help a girl out, follow me if you like my content.) But I have a system set up.
1. Write every day.
2. Publish five days a week.
3. Do the first two steps for a minimum of one year.
I’ve only been at this for a week. I know this is going to take a while and if I don’t have some serious habits in place it’ll never happen.
But one happy occurrence I’ve noticed is that the daily writing has ramped up my creativity loop. I’m constantly thinking about creating stuff, not just writing, but also art. I’ve always known creativity gets more creativity, but it’s nice to be reminded of it.
The Message
Try getting a simple two or three-step habit in place. Give it a chance. Pretty soon you might just find that the habit has become second nature. You win.
