The book mainly covers 4 aspects of forming sustainable habits. I am not going to go in detail for all of the four, but I am going to share some of my thoughts on 2 of them.
First, the 1% rule: most days, we all focus on making drastic changes to our lives. We want to see an instant outcome whenever we attempt to do something different. But we often forgot to cultivate all the little habits we can have throughout our lives. Thinking that impact and the outcome we can achieve in 5, 10 years time, it is important for us to have that 1% of improvement every day rather than sitting there and do absolutely nothing. It is this minute difference that defines who we are.
Second, the importance of focusing on the process rather than the end goal: very often we set different goals to motivate ourselves and we put all our attention to the final result. But we forget to enjoy the progress and simply immerse ourselves into the field to explore and challenge. We often get depressed and frustrated when we fail to meet the goal but we forget we must have learned something along the way. We have to come to the realization that goals are moments. When we eventually made it to the end and the moment of joy may just last for seconds, what pushes us to grow even more is what we have done and will continue to achieve in the future. Therefore, rather than setting goals, we may just need to keep doing what we enjoy the most and forget about the urge of giving a purpose to it.
I realize I’ve put most of my focus when I see other people with big success but often I forget all the perseverance and consistency that are formed behind the sense. Of course, it takes years and years of practice. Hopefully, I get to involve more atomic habits in my life and I am excited to see what these habits will take me after years.
