I read my first book!!!!

 ATOMIC HABITS by James Clear

Introduction

Where do I start? How do I start? Well, i was never fascinated by books. I was a movie-series guy. I love to watch anything rather than a read, be it Harry Potter, Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Sherlock Holmes or any other for say. Being a lazy person who just won't turn up for reading books to a habitual reader. How? HOW?? It was a fine evening, on 3rd of July, 2024, I got a free coupon in a book fair. I saw hundreds and thousands of books of different genre : Fiction and fantasy, biography and autobiography, documentation, history, mystery, romance, thriller, poetry, and many more. I'm a big crime-mystery-thriller fan if you see the movie buff in me. But, the coupon I had wasn't worth enough for me to buy any crime thriller nor any mystery book at the fare. Hence i decided to buy 'Atomic habits by James Clear' never I knew it would create a huge impact on my lifestyle or my mental health. Trust me, it worked a lot well. I started reading this book from July 4 and promised myself that no matter what, I'll read 10 pages a day. The first few pages of Atomic habits were just intriguing. It just pointed directly why we should read it completely, sort of a clickbait! but it was justified later. What is a habit? or do we really want to have a good habit or a reward? it ringed the bell for me. The concept of 'cue-craving-response-reward' were just fascinating and moreover relatable. Imagine a person who procrastinates their works, sleeps late and wakes up late and imagine that person is you. You would never want yourself to do that, placing yourself in a bad environment just sounds awful, however we just do it everyday. What are we doing wrong exactly from the people who achieved peak in every aspect? What do they do more than us? This just sounded it just was for me and i kept my promise going.

Impact on my life - How I changed?

As i started to read through, i broke my promise. Yes, i broke it. I didn't read 10 pages a day but more than that. And the number of pages i read a day just kept increasing. There were days when i just read 30+ pages at a stretch. That, that captivated the reader in me. It was a 300 pages book, and I completed it in 17 days. That's 13 days early than what I intended to do. He(James, author) was sure about one thing, we actually don't want a good habit but results and rewards. We don't workout just to have a good habit rather to have a great physique. We diet not to be healthy. At least that's what i was always about. But his extended research over the human psychology has proven good. The simple technique on how to break the bad habits and build good ones. And, it is not just about building a good habit but sustaining to it, that's the hard part. That's why bad habits just don't go away even if we feel we just put considerate amount of effort. It's not about the result, the results are just temporary pleasure. You win some, you lose some, but the craving for results just blinds our eye what falls in front of us. The change that occurs for the result is yet again a temporary pleasure or remedy. The change should happen in the system. If the system is wrong, then expecting the expected expectation isn't expect-able (felt like i just made a tongue twister out of nowhere, lol). The change should occur at the system level, that's the permanent remedy one should seek and pursue. 

The 4 laws that constitutes in creating good habits: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy and make it satisfying, and the 4 laws to break bad habits are just the inverse of it: make it invisible, make it unattractive, make it difficult, and make it unsatisfying. Upon reading i just listed out all the habits i had; good, bad, ugly. Rather than trying to break the bad ones first i started making the good ones stronger. The basement has to be strong to hold the building. (Basement-um strong-u, building-um strong-u; referencing to a famous dialogue from Tamil film 'Thalai Nagaram' by Vadivelu). I made all the possible good habits that I was doing already and that I wanted to do, very obvious, right in front of my eyes. That worked well, a good reminder. Good habits always resonates who the person you want to be. The goal is always about the identity, the goal was never to read atomic habits but to become a reader. The goal isn't to go to gym but to exercise. Making the good habits attractive was the easiest part among all, you can just trick yourself for a few days that whatever you're doing is attractive. Once you have that motivation to do something, it just automatically looks attractive to you, whatever the habit is. Making it easy was the hardest part. When you feel something that you do is not easy, its highly unlikely that you'll turn up for the task again. Trying to make it easy requires an ample amount of effort at the least, but once you started doing it, its hard to stop doing it actually. Make it satisfying is just directly connected with the output of the task that you perform. Faster the reward, more satisfying it is. 

To break a bad one, just make it invisible. If you want to reduce scroll time, restrict the app after the amount of time you want to. If you want to reduce eating junks, stop going in that way where the shop is. Making it invisible solves half of the problem. The second and third law were kind of coherent I'd say. You make it Unattractive, it just automatically becomes difficult to continue. And finally making it unsatisfying requires effort as we hung to the bad habits because of the pleasure(temporary) it gives, hence rather than making it unsatisfying try making something else satisfying, probably that could work. 

Well, I just got lost, where was I? What impact it left on me? Well that's a remarkable one. I was never a reader myself, starting with a tiny change, 10 pages a day. It's 3rd of Aug, almost a month and I've read 2 books already (including atomic habits) and on the verge of completing 3rd one. I got to experience one of the greatest pleasure in human's life. Now i can just happily say that I'm a reader. I achieved something that I wanted to. I wanted the identity of mine to be a reader after reading atomic habits and I'm grateful I was able to accomplish it this soon. Long back when I was having conversation with my friends, what will you do if ever get belly fat yourself?, my immediate response was I'll just live with it. Well, becoming a reader at the least can be something that I could've dreamt of earlier but exercising was never such. But, I still don't know why I started exercising, but I just do. I started doing a simple 10 minutes exercise every day from 19 of July and it's 3rd of Aug and I've never missed a day ever since. That's 16 days on trot. SIXTEEN DAYS! I never imagined my identity to have a fit and a good physical appearance. More than the reward of exercising, I wanted to make stop scrolling right away when I wake up, in order to make that invisible, I started exercising and it was obvious for me to do (to stop scrolling), it was attractive (as i did something new when i wake up), it was easy (i didn't do any hard exercises, just jumps, squats, pushups, plank, lunges, mountain climbers, high knees, bicycle crunches and ends with few stretches). I know it sounds a lot but doing 1 minute each was never a hard task, rather you wouldn't know that even you did this much, it was attractive though. And finally, satisfying. The satisfaction of not scrolling, the X marks in my calendar, the streak in Samsung Health App just made it a habit. 

I'd conclude with this, the core objective of this book was to embrace how tiny changes could produce bigger results. Giving a little 0.01% more effort will yield you a better result than not doing it. Giving that little 0.01% push every day throughout the year gives a whopping 37% better results. (1)³⁶⁵ = 1 however, (1.01)³⁶⁵ = 37.7834343329. That's what motivates me to push myself just a percentage daily. Afterall, who don't want dramatic results for a tiny action that is negligible on a daily instance.

Conclusion

I will keep the conclusion short as I don't know how to conclude actually. Writing a blog was either something that I never thought I'd do nor never wanted to be a person who was blogger or who writes blog (this is my first blog, hence not a blogger yet). This blog idea is just to reward myself. A tiny reward or appreciation you give yourself or someone will do wonders hitherto undreamt of. Officially, finally, surprisingly, interestingly I've completed a blog! Well feel free to share your opinions and good luck. 

If you've read so far here is something that you wouldn't like to miss out, you can download cheat sheets, templates, journals and other insightful stuffs from https://jamesclear.com and I've posted the experience in LinkedIn as well, you can check that from my profile : www.linkedin.com/in/aravinthv

With love

ΛV