Atomic Habits - Great book for software professionals
/We are starting a new series on great books for software professionals. The plan is to find books that help us become better professionals in the software development field. We plan to cover both technical books like programming, architecture, etc. and also non technical books that help with our people skills, improve motivation, that help us manage work and life better.
We start this series with one our favorite self help book - Atomic Habits by James Clear. A book that is for everyone. It shows in very simple and clear language with actionable steps how making small changes in our life leads to amazing improvements overall. This is a perfect book for software professionals as they deal with a huge amount of complexity in their work for which they have to constantly learn new things, manage their time better to improve and hone their skills. We’ve benefitted a lot from it and hope you will too.
Summary
When we want to achieve a goal, what do we do? We set the goal and work for it. But is that enough or does that truly lead to the goal that we want to achieve!
Here comes the big question, what does it take to truly achieve the goal? The simple answer is process. But when we hear about the process, we think of a long boring stuff that requires patience and persistence. So, is it really that tough?
What makes the difference between the winners and losers is action. When we set a goal and do nothing but watch the time passing by, in the long run become losers. On the other hand, who follow the system, make continuous small improvements, actually achieve the goal. Just like any particle is made of small atoms, remarkable results are also made of atomic habits. Habits that make the real difference. So, if we want to achieve it, we have to forget the goal and follow the system instead.
Changing Habits
Generally, habits can be changed in two ways- outcome based and identity based. Let’s draw a very practical example that can help us.
Suppose, someone wants to quit smoking, now if he is asked to smoke, he can possibly give this answer “Sorry, I am trying to quit smoking”. Now, let’s be honest, we all know it doesn’t help much. Here, the person is trying to improve but is not ready to change his identity. And this makes it harder for him to fight against the person who he thinks he is.
WHAT IF ….
He put a different answer instead? Like, “Sorry, I’m not a smoker”.
Anything that we do repeatedly, becomes our identity. Our every action votes for the person we want to be. Because no single action can change our identity. Rather the repeatability of that action can change our identity. When we confidently talk to someone, our identity as a public speaker gets recognized; when we influence others, our identity as leader gets recognized. Hence, first we have to decide, what type of person we want to be and according to that, we have to keep voting on that identity. If you want to be a gentleman, then your behavior on the road, bus, train should be accordingly. Because we are changing our identity with our belief system.
Four actions
Our habits are generated through the following four steps-
· Cue
· Craving
· Response
· Reward
Cue is what reminds us of the reward. Craving pushes us towards get the reward and our response makes us to achieve the reward. And we want the reward because we will either have satisfaction from it or we can learn something. And if anything is insufficient among these 4 steps, changing any habit won’t be possible properly.
From these 4 steps, we can say that, we can follow 4 steps to build a book reading habit-
Cue: This should be highly visible. If the books are visible, then we can easily notice that, yes, I have to read books.
Craving: Here we have to make the visibility attractive. For example- we can add bookmarks on the book so that we can easily know how much we have and where we had left.
Response: This should be easy to respond. So that, it doesn’t become hard for me to reach them.
Reward: Here we can choose the right book. So that, it brings a higher level of satisfaction for us.
Ways to remove bad habits-
· Cue should be invisible
· Craving should be unattractive
· Response should be difficult
· Reward should be unsatisfying
We can apply these 4 steps to remove any addiction like- smartphone addiction.
We usually imitate our habits from these three groups of people
The close, the many, the powerful. We are inspired by these three groups in general. Some people think that, they lack motivation. But actually, they lack clarity. They actually don’t know how to start things and how to proceed them. In real- environment is more important than motivation. For example- in case of buying a product, the things that are placed in front of a store, we tend to try them in the first place. So, in case of building a habit or leaving it, we have to setup proper environment for that.
People think that, self-controlled people are driven by their willpower and self-discipline. But actually they design their life in such a way that in order to be disciplined, they don’t need much of discipline. For example- if they think television is killing their time, then they will remove the television from their house.
And when we try to build a habit, we have to keep tracking that process that we are following and try to measure that progress.
To sum it up
We have to remember that, our brain loves challenges. That doesn’t mean it will like challenges that we can never achieve. For example- I love to play tennis. Now if I am put against Roger Federer, then very soon I will lose all my enthusiasm. And if I start to play against a little kid then I will get bored. So, the challenges should not be bored or overly challenging.
Atomic habits are the key to a massive change. So, rather than daydreaming, we have to develop a process and act on it.
Here’s a quick book review in Bangla…
