What Are Atomic Habits?  Part III

Part three of understanding and using habits for your health and freedom

In this final post about Atomic Habits from author James Clear, I’ll cover the best ways he recommends to implement the habits you’ve decided will help you become the person you wish to be.

Implementation of Habits

Clear explains this fascinating point well.  As it turns out through various studies on the subject, implementation of habit comes from clearly designing a plan and a process for creating the habit you have chosen.

This means what he calls the “implementation intention” is extremely valuable to you in order to make the new habit idea into a new habit.

To do this you need to choose where and when you will perform this new intention.  In effect, use the cues of time and location to make the habit repeatable.

Formula: When X happens, I will perform response Y

In other words, saying to yourself, “I’m going to start an exercise program” or “I’m going to start eating better” without tying it to the where and the when just keeps these ideas foggy and more unlikely to continue.  Instead, use the above formula to make them into a concrete action plan.

Remove the need to rely on coordinating your motivation to match the time you want to perform the habit.  In this way you don’t need to make a decision but instead just follow your plan.

Here is what this looks like:

“I will make my wife a cup of coffee at 8 am every day in the kitchen.”

Or

“I will workout at 10 am on Tuesdays at DeSisto Strength Training in San Francisco.” (Great idea!)

Other Benefits Of Implementation Intention

When you choose to follow a plan that leads to new good habits you automatically remove things that pull you off course and distract you.

So, you can build a wall around your plans by clearly stating what you are going to do and then doing it.  That is easier to defend than just a general “I’m going to exercise more” mentality that gets sidetracked just because it’s raining today.

Stack Those Habits

Finally, to make it even easier to bring your new habits to light, you can take a habit you already have and just link it to the new one you want to accomplish.

“After I lay down in bed each night I will say out loud three things I am grateful for today.”

You already have many habits so you can use them as the trigger to start your new ones.  Stacking might be the simplest way to make the progress you want with minimal effort.

Bringing It All Together

Habits will simplify your life because they take advantage of your innate ability and desire to make life more efficient and conserve energy.  Habits that benefit you sometimes take effort even though you know intellectually it is worthwhile to create them.

Seeing the person you want to become will help you choose what habits you want to create.  Once you have taken the time to do this you are ready to make a system that will override your simple goal-oriented ideas into a useful and powerful plan.

Implementing that plan through intention and describing it clearly will make it more real and easier to achieve.  Then, finally, you can stack those habits onto existing habits to truly make those life changes accelerate.

A new habit doesn’t need to be daunting or difficult.  It takes clarity, systems and intention, however.  Use these processes and see how much easier life becomes and how much more time you will have for new, deeper and more enjoyable personal choices going forward.

If you are in San Francisco and are ready to start making exercise a new habit in your life, let me show you how to create a habit of just 20 minutes of exercise per week that will change your body and mind.

Contact me here and let me help you get started.

If you missed Part I of the series, find it here.