Atomic Habits Advanced Tactics
Advanced Tactics
How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great
Chapter 18 The Truth About Talent - When Genes Matter and When They Don’t
Choosing the right field of competition is the trick to maximizing your odds of success.
Biological determinism: genes seem to be fixed and not able to control, but this is a short-sided perspective of gene’s influence on behavior. Genes determine your areas of opportunity and competence depends on context. While Micheal Phelps is an amazing swimmer due to his long torso and strong arms, he would not be successful as a runner due to his longer torso and shorts legs.
Direct your efforts towards activities that excite you and that match your natural skills. Cater to what you enjoy and what you’re good at by aligning your ambition with your ability.
Your personality and genes effect everything. The “Big Five” is a great spectrum of behaviors to look at when analyzing your own predispositions:
Openness to experience: from curious and inventive vs. cautious and consistent
Conscientiousness: organized and efficient vs. easygoing and spontaneous
Extroversion: outgoing and energetic vs. solitary and reserved
Agreeableness: friendly and compassionate vs. challenging and detached
Neuroticism: anxious and sensitive vs. confident, calm and stable
Building habits that work for your personality rather than habits that are the most popular is vital. Then, you can design your environment and situation to a place where you have the natural advantage.
Picking the right habit makes progress easy so when you find habits that come more natural to you, you are more likely to perform said habit.
Try out as many opportunities as you can and explore the options in order to find what you not only enjoy, but are also good at. This strategy is most effective when the best results are delivered 80-90% of the time and the other 10-20% you spend is pure exploration. Keeping at this rate will ensure that you don’t waste your life away on all things exploring before reaching the opportunity that is perfect for you.
Questions to ask yourself:
What feels like fun to me, but work to others? This is the work you are meant to do.
What makes me lost track of time? Reaching flow is the perfect balance of challenge and desire.
Where do I get greater returns than the average person? Behavior is more satisfying when comparison is in our favor.
What comes naturally to me? Feeling authentic and genuine is ideal.
When you can’t win at being better, you can win at being different.
A man liked to draw, but wasn’t the best artist. He also liked to tell jokes, but wasn’t the funniest comedian. So he decided to put his jokes and drawings together and form something different. This man is Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created Dilbert comics. Combining your skills reduces the level of competition and increases the chances of standing out.
Specialization is a way to overcome the “bad” or unfavorable genetics that you have. Play the game and focus on a specific skill. Work hard on the things that come easy.
Chapter 19 The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work
The Goldilocks Rule: humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard, not too easy, but just right.
When starting a new habit, keep the behavior easy so that you can stick with it even on the bad days. Then you can slowly level up as you begin to reach the flow state (when you get so caught up that you lose track of time and are “in the zone”). A task must be 4% beyond your current ability to challenge you just enough for the flow state. When the habit is on the edge of your ability, you can maintain motivation.
Boredom is the greatest villain for self-improvement, but mastery requires practice so you have to get over being “bored” with doing the same reps at the gym (my biggest boredom activity is counting my reps. I feel like my whole life count and during exercise is when it really gets to me.).
Variable Rewards: experiences that offer continual elements of surprise (slot machines). This creates a craving for the 50/50 split chance of winning. You need just enough winning to experience satisfaction and just enough wanting to experience desire.
Most good habits do not result in variable rewards, though, so we must fall in love with being bored. Stepping up through the boredom is what turns us from amateurs to professionals.
Chapter 20 The Downside of Creating Good Habits
Mastery is created by habits. However, sometimes when we’re on auto-pilot performing habits, we tend to slip up and make small mistakes. Just being we are gaining experience through performing the habits does not mean that we are improving. We actually go backwards on the improvement scale with most habits that turn into auto-pilot. ex. Brushing our teeth is something we do not necessarily think about but usually it’s “good enough” so it doesn’t have much of an effect.
Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
Each time you master a habit, you can level up and build on a new habit.
To analyze this, establish a system for reflection and review (habit trackers, annual review, or life evaluation).
Doing this can help you become more aware of the long-term improvement to notice mistakes and build on the positive behaviors more strongly. Habits have to be fine-tuned sometimes as we make sure that we’re working on the right habits and not the wrong measures.
Annual Review Questions to ask yourself:
What went well this year?
What didn’t go so well this year?
What did I learn?
Six months later, perform an Integrity Report:
What are the core values that drive my life and my work?
How am I living and working with integrity right now?
How can I set a higher standard in the future?
This prevents the gradual mid-year slide, puts life into perspective, and allows us to see upgrades in our habits. We are able to see the compounding effects when looking at our habits in large chunks of time rather than day-by-day.
Reviewing allows us to also revisit our identity.
If your attachment to your identity becomes too strong, you may be too prideful and end up denying your weak spots or being “blind” to your flaws and end up not improving them. When we cling to a certain identity so tightly, it’s difficult to grow beyond that identity. One way to fix this is to not make one identity an overwhelming part of you..
“Keep your identity small.” - Paul Graham
You want to be able to adapt when life challenges you, so don’t become brittle and cling to one identity.
Redefine your identity in a way that observes the aspects rather than the person.
ex. “I’m an athlete” becomes “I’m the type of person who is mentally tough and loves a physical challenge.”
ex. “I’m the CEO” becomes “I’m the type of person who builds and creates things.”
Practicing this allows your identity to flow with the change of circumstance rather than working against it.
*this summary is based on the writings in the Atomic Habits book by James Clear. I am not the owner of this summary and do not take credit for the ideas and writings in this post.
For more info, visit the Atomic Habits Website.