Getting my shit together — what I learned from 2021

It all comes down to one word — habits.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

At the start of the year, I set three New Year’s resolutions for 2021. Then…nothing happened. I procrastinated and work piled up, my health lagged behind, and I didn’t start any of the projects I’d dreamed of. I felt like I was eternally running on a hamster wheel, putting off my dreams for “after I finish all this work” but only having more and more work pile up as I procrastinated. No matter how many times I told myself “tomorrow will be different”, nothing changed, and the wheel kept spinning.

This continued for much of the year. Then, in September, I picked up a book I’d read in 2020, which had been sitting on my shelf gathering dust since, James Clear’s Atomic Habits. Written in big bold letters on the front cover were the words, “Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results”. Upon reflection, I realized I had missed one of the major points made in the book. The changes I wanted to make had to be tiny. I had been attempting to change all of my habits and become focused and productive in one day. Naturally, it didn’t work, and I stayed where I was.

Atomic Habits Cheat Sheet

I decided to try something new, based on the lessons taught in the book. I printed out a habit tracker which I found on Google, and put it up in front of my desk. I wrote down a few small habits which I wanted to develop, things I wanted to do each and every day. At the end of the month, I printed a new tracker and added some more habits. Within the span of four months, my life turned around. I was on top of my work, I felt more in control of my schedule, and I had free time to pursue other ambitions. It would be an exaggeration to say that I eliminated all of my bad habits and stopped procrastinating, but I became consistent with a few small daily habits which greatly influenced my productivity: (Read, “Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results”)

Habit Tracker

• A “15 minute head start”, which required me to work for 15 minutes as soon as I powered on my laptop in the morning, before opening any distractions such as Discord— this created some momentum, which motivated me to get back to work once I’d finished reading email and cleared my Discord messages, instead of opening up Reddit and doom scrolling for the entire morning.
• Three intensely focused work periods daily, without any distractions whatsoever, each lasting for at least 45 minutes (Okay I’m still working on this habit, but I’ll get the hang of it soon enough…)
• Not eating any junk food, such as cheap chocolate, chips, or pop

The important thing to note is that my life didn’t change overnight. Rather, small successes slowly built up on top of one another, until I realized that I was happier and more productive than I could ever remember being. With the lessons from Atomic Habits and my experiences from the past four months in mind, here is the three-part formula I developed for forming new habits and improving myself:

1. Start small. For any new habit, ensure that it’s not too difficult or time-consuming to develop. If you want to be more focused when working, eliminate distractions for a 15-minute work period first, and then build up on that, instead of trying to focus for 3 hours from the get-go. If you’re trying to eat healthier, eliminate a certain type of food first (e.g. specific junk food), rather than setting the overly broad goal of “eat healthy”. In addition, don’t try to develop too many new habits at once.
2. Use the habit tracker. Habit tracking sheets are surprisingly good motivation for being consistent with new habits. For whichever new habit you’d like to develop, simply write it down on the habit tracker and start doing it. As existing good habits solidify, add new ones. A good day on the habit tracker is a column with every habit filled in, and a bad day is one with many holes.
3. Schedule it. In Atomic Habits, James Clear writes about the effectiveness of “implementation intentions”, which is just the intention to do a particular task at a particular time. After using my habit tracker for a few months, I realized that adding a new habit to the sheet didn’t work by itself. To ensure I followed through, I had to schedule the new habit on my To-Do list.

With these three steps, I hope to develop many new habits in 2022 and continue on an upward trajectory.

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