Ironically, I am reading a productivity book but I am not productive in the process. But as I am going to start reading the second book, I will apply the things that I learned from Atomic Habits. I learned a lot from it and decided to apply them to my daily habits.
Four Laws of Behavior Change
In the book, James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, discusses the four laws of behavior change.
- Make it obvious
- Make it attractive
- Make it easy
- Make it satisfying
Make it obvious
The main keyword in the first law is “obvious.” If you are planning to initiate and start a new habit, you need to make it obvious. It is difficult to start a new habit because it is not on your system yet, you may forget to do it later.
This is why making the habits obvious will help you, but how? Let me give you an example. If you are planning to be productive every morning and you want to start your day by making a to-do list, then put a piece of paper and a ballpen in your working area or at the place where you usually go first in the morning. By this, you will start taking action by making a to-do list after seeing the cues—your paper and ballpen.
The inverse of the first law is the cues are not visible so you have nothing to start the activity and initiate your habit. I find this law effective because I applied it in my life while reading the book. I started to make a to-do list every day and tried my best to finish them all before the day ends. It is better to have an outline for the whole day so you can accomplish things productively and avoid procrastination.
Make it attractive
The system of a regular person is to do the easiest thing and avoid the hard activities. This is why we are avoiding working out despite knowing its benefits. When we are dieting, it is hard to do it because we need to resist eating less…but eating more is easier than eating less. Those are the usual hindrances of why you can't do good habits and choose the bad ones.
In the process of your habit, you need to make it attractive by doing the things that you love while doing the activity. For example, you want to start working out but you have no motivation and you are always lazy to start. On the other hand, you love listening to music. This is when the second law will be applicable. You can start working out while listening to music. In this way, you are doing what you love and start working out which is your primary goal.
The beginning is always hard, but you need to keep pushing and continue doing your habit until it becomes automated on your system.
Make it easy
When we are trying to start a new habit, we focus on the result, not on the system. We always want to achieve the goal quickly and start doing things where we force ourselves to start professionally although you are not.
For example, you want to gain abdominal muscles so you started working out. But since you want to achieve it quickly, you will choose high-intensity exercises thinking that high-intensity can give the results quickly. Yes, maybe it is possible, but it can lead to discouraging you to continue because you will soon realize that working out is difficult.
This is why it is better to start with light and easy activities and level it up in the process. By this, you are encouraging yourself that exercising is easy and does not force your muscles from the exercises.
Make it satisfying
Starting a new habit is like training your pet with their new skills. When we are training pets, dogs, for example, we are giving them a treat as their reward when they did an act correctly. It is the basic concept of the fourth law, to make it satisfying. When we want to start a habit, it is better if we will treat ourselves after doing a great job, but this reward shouldn't oppose your goal and habit.
If you plan to diet and exercise, giving yourself an ice cream as a reward is ironic. If you plan to save money, buying your favorite book as a reward isn't the correct one. This is why we should align our habits to their reward. Instead of buying a book if you are saving money, why not walk in your favorite park as your reward? This way, you are not spending money. The reward relies on your habit, make sure that they are not opposing each other.
Reading this book is life-changing, you will learn a lot from it to become productive and start building new habits. You will learn how to keep the good habits and break the bad ones. Furthermore, you can apply the process and other ways to be productive that were discussed in the book. I tried some of it and it works for me.
After all, being productive depends on the person but you can be one if you will start to build good habits and make it automated in your system.