Hello there, wonderful, smart, and strong you! How have you been doing? Let me welcome you again to a new month. I would congratulate you if you utilized the 31 days in January well. You have February right in front of you. Use February well. Use it even better.
If you didn't use January well, you have another chance now.
One sad thing about time is that it's irreversible. We can't rewind or fast-forward it. And the time we have wasted is gone forever.
We are never getting it back. Unless, of course, you have one of those time machines.
In this article, we will complete our “James Clear’s Better Habit Building Course.” I started studying it and sharing my learning with my readers and community. And I took a little break and stopped at lesson seven. I had to attend to other writing projects and demands.
Let's finish this and head to what I have next for you.
Lesson 8 of 11: How to Create A Reward That Makes Habits Satisfying
"The vital thing in getting a habit to stick is to feel successful—even if it's in a small way. The feeling of success is a signal that tells your brain that the habit paid off and that it was worth the effort." - James Clear.
When we get rewarded for an action, we are automatically nurturing satisfaction. It's biological and natural for human beings [and animals - dogs, cats, chimps, etc].
This mechanism can be harnessed to build better habits.
Though the reward mechanism is essential when trying to identify a habit, it's expected that you get to a point where you don't need to be motivated by rewards to do the things you have to do. At this point, we say the habit is now an identity, it has become part of you.
And we are also cautioned to not practice good habits because of the rewards. You won't make any tangible progress because the idea is to use the reward system to propel you into action, keep you going, and in the long run, give you the motivation to keep building those habits without those rewards—build your habit formation around this mentality.
Here are some excerpts from the course I want to share with you:
The first one:
"One of my favourite examples comes from a group of city engineers in Stockholm, Sweden. These engineers laid a series of sensors across a set of stairs in the subway and decorated them to resemble a giant set of piano keys. When pedestrians walked up the stairs, musical tones played from nearby speakers. Suddenly, using the stairs was fun and surprising. Each step was accompanied with a musical note. Motivated by the immediate satisfaction of making music as they walked, 66 per cent more people took the stairs as they exited the subway rather than riding the escalator nearby."
Ensure you watch the video. It explains the fun theory—we can change people's habits if we make doing it fun.
It's so amazing and interesting that our behaviour can be influenced by something this simple.
Make it fun to do, and more people will do it.
I found more fun theory videos for you to watch. Find them here.
So, put it into practice. If you want to develop the habit of reading. Reward yourself for every book you finish or every chapter of a book you complete, with rewards that help you, in turn, reinforce the habit that matches the identity you want to form.
You will want to avoid rewarding yourself with eating junk after working out for an hour. Eating junk as a reward does not tally with the identity you want to build—taking care of your body.
"Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit." - James Clear.
However, we must know that the ultimate reward is mastering the habit. It's the habit that makes us better and not necessarily the reward.
The overall goal of the reward system is to get you to the point where habits become natural. They become your identity.
Lesson 9 of 11: Visualize Your Progress And Stay The Course With A Habit Tracker
"The most effective form of motivation is progress. When we get a signal that we are moving forward, we become motivated to continue down that path." - James Clear.
Tracking your habit provides proof of your progress.
Suppose you make your habit formation process measurable. In that case, it's easier for you to resolve to get to the end because you can see the beginning [how you started] and visualize the end—the end here is when you become what you want to become—that's when the habit becomes an identity, it becomes part of you.
Visualizing your progress is a great way to stay motivated, especially on days or moments when you feel less motivated.
You can use a calendar as Clear suggests [or his habit template] or any method that creates a strong visual picture of your progress. It can be an app or a small book where you journal your progress. Just make sure you are documenting and visualizing your journey [progress].
Week 3 Summary:
"Rather than having some linear relationship with achievement, habits tend to have more of a compound growth curve. The greatest returns are delayed. Temptation bundling and commitment devices are two helpful strategies that may enable you to get over the hump and build a habit that lasts."
"External rewards are one of the best strategies we have for maintaining motivation while we're waiting for long-term outcomes to arrive."
"If you have to wait for long-term rewards, then the feedback loop is often too long for you to maintain motivation. If, however, you're focused on tracking your actions, then you'll have immediate visual proof that you are showing up and living out the habits that are important to your life and goals."
Ensure you take the course directly. There are a lot of details you are missing if you don't take it directly. I am only presenting you with my summaries and picking tiny parts from the course that I enjoyed, like quotes, summaries, and my findings.
Lesson 10 of 11: The Role of Family And Friends In Shaping Habits
"The way that social environment influences our habits is through the tribes we belong to and the groups we are a part of. We are all part of multiple tribes. The tribes we belong to shape our behavior." - James Clear.
Our social environment as people dramatically influences the way we behave, our habits and our perspectives. Countries, religions, workplaces, neighbourhoods, and friends and families go a long way in moulding our behaviours.
From how we talk, dress, eat, interact, spend money, and view the world. This is why we must be extremely cautious of what we allow to influence us.
"Your culture sets your expectation for what is "normal." Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You'll rise together." - James Clear.
If you pick a baby eagle when it is just hatched and place it quietly among baby chicks and let it grow up with them, the eagle will grow up behaving like a chicken. It will think it's a chicken. It's not the eagle's fault; it's the environment it found itself in.
This same natural principle applies to human beings.
If you want to develop any habit, try associating yourself with people who have successfully integrated that habit into their lives. Like a sponge, you will soak up those habits even without being aware.
"Show me your friends, and I will tell you who you are."
When I was very young, I always wondered about this statement. It sounded odd to me. But as I matured and began to understand social interaction, it dawned on me that the people around us greatly influence us in one way or another. Sometimes we may not even know when we begin to talk like them, walk like them, act like them, eat their food, and drink their drinks, we gradually soak up their culture and tradition. That's the immense power of association.
We can harness this principle for our own good.
Look for a tribe or community that shares your desire to grow and identify with them. Their shared identity begins to nurture your individual identity, and before you know it, you grow together and start looking alike.
This is the power of community.
Become part of a book club, join a gym community, search for people pursuing financial freedom and mastery, attach yourself to them, and let their scent rub off on you.
Before you know it, the good stuff begins to diffuse into you, and you begin to exhibit the same habits you desire. It's natural.
Lesson 11 of 11: Habit Graduation: Moving From Two Minutes To Mastery
"When you start out building a new habit, it's exciting in the beginning because it's new. When things are new, it's novel and interesting. Over time, however, habits become routine. They become learned and the outcomes become expected. Once you know what to expect, habits tend to be less interesting. Sometimes they even become boring. This can be one of the first signals that it's time to graduate your habit to the next level. You scale up when what was previously challenging is now the new normal." - James Clear.
Growth and development are in stages. Your capacity enlarges, and your ability stretches.
When you want to form the habit of exercising, you start with small and easy steps. When you stick with the small and easy for a while, your body gets used to the small steps. At this point, you should start doing more because your body may no longer respond to small tasks.
In the journey of building better habits, we get to the stage where the small actions we take to develop habits become regular and routine. It becomes easy to do, there's no more friction, it has become an identity, and you are now taking the steps without thinking of them. This is an indicator you need to graduate into bigger things.
"The key is once you get bored, you stick with the same habit, but find a new detail to master or get interested in." - James Clear.
James Clear advises that you take it slow, don't be hard on yourself, and don't be in a hurry to attain mastery.
Masters still have to follow the basic rules. The difference between masters and beginners is that they have internalized and personalized all the basic rules. They perform the basics without even thinking about it. It has become a part of them.
Clear talks about a theory of motivation called the "Goldilocks Rules." It states that
"humans experience peak levels of motivation when working on tasks of just manageable difficulty. Not too hard, not too easy, just right."
So, you want to push yourself into that zone [the Goldilocks zone] and remain there.
That's where mastery is easily achieved. The task doesn't get boring and isn't too difficult either. It's just right, the perfect temperature, and you don't remain in one spot. You keep making admirable progress all the way up!
You are missing all the action if you don't take the course yourself and hear from the horse's mouth. You must go see for yourself, and I know you will find something new that isn’t in my summary.
I have only extracted the ideas and concepts that intrigued and fascinated me.
Week 4 Summary:
“Nothing sustains motivation better than belonging to the tribe. It transforms a personal quest into a shared one.”
“We've discussed a variety of strategies for building habits that last. The Habit Contract brings everything together on one page and formalizes your plan for change.”
“When you start out building a new habit, it's exciting in the beginning because it's new. Over time, however, habits become routine. Sometimes they even become boring. This can be one of the first signals that it's time to graduate your habit to the next level. You scale up when what was previously challenging is now the new normal.”
I always encourage readers to take the course directly. There are a lot of details in it that I don't cover in my summaries. Check it out now.
This is Unbounded, my personal Substack publication, where I share my learning.
Writing has always been my ultimate escape. When I write, I decompress, letting steam and pressure out from within. When I write, I am thinking, sharing, learning, and growing.
Writing is my strength, my medicine, and the only way I have ever known to express myself—I envy those who can express themselves with other art forms like speaking, dancing, etc. And as a scientist, discovering writing has helped me immensely.
What should you expect from Unbounded?
I write about leadership, personal development, innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity, politics, culture, society, marriage and romance. Some themes are more common than others. I try to make it a complete cocktail of themes and topics that deeply interest me.
Am I promising you anything? Well, I promise you only that you will learn something new every time I publish.
I am not promising to make you a millionaire within 3 months or give you the secret to getting a million social media followers in a week. Honestly, I don't know how to do that. I prefer to stay natural and organic while informing my followers, readers, community, and friends about what I can [and cannot] do to help them.
I love helping people become better. And, unfortunately—I mean, fortunately—writing is the most effective method for me.
So here, my work focuses on how I can inspire you to do more. With my words, the stories I tell, the analysis I make, the events I cover, the reports I write, and all that I do here on Unbounded and across other outlets and platforms I write on, that's my ultimate desire: to inspire people to do more.
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See you around the corner.