trisected

Tag: atomic habits

  • A Weekly Learning?

    My goal this year was to try hit 100 books read. This means I currently read about two books a week, and also means there’s a ton of information in my head.

    Not all of the reading translates to actual learning points. For example, reading whodunnits like Agatha Christie’s Poirot, or Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, my learning is quite specifically observed in the way each author releases the information for you to guess the clues along the way. I read pacing, and I experience it. Something like a chef tasting a whole range of foods, but the learning is within their pallet. They can’t teach you that, and neither can I explain how the pacing and reveals in stories are beneficial. They’re just there and I go through them.

    But I’m also reading through some non-fiction. This ranges from self help, or other journalistic documentation. I try not to touch biographies too much, because I tend to read and formulate conspiracies of sorts. But I would cover some for sure. I do celebrities and icons within my interests. Like, Felicia Day’s autobio has sat on my shelves for a decade I think. There are others about different types of people doing specific things, and I don’t mean Murakami about running, although I might want to re-read that this year.

    I’m thinking of consolidating these thoughts into a weekly blog update, along with my regular life pinning, and hopefully it becomes a little more beneficial for everyone, myself included. I basically want to get back into writing often, but I don’t know if I can commit to daily writing. I also don’t know if I should keep on with self reflection for just my emotional events, or if I should intentionally plan articles. I already do that for work, so I am thinking if my side approach should be different.

    But then again, if I should throw this whole plan out the window, I think it should not be unexpected. You can count on me to have fun doing whatever I’m doing, so if it’s not fun, I’m probably not going to do it.

    All that said, here’s some thoughts I have from Atomic Habits, which I finished reading the past week

    My thoughts on Atomic Habits by James Clear

    There are many good habits and bad habits we’ve picked up along the way, and Clear thinks that building good habits would develop yourself into a better human being somehow. As much as I agree and understand this is a definite possibility for some people, most people would find it difficult to do. Because if it was That Easy, everyone would do it.

    And that is also why everyone is doing it now. Everyone is trying to build their good habits and their million dollar business over a weekend (I’ve already read Million Dollar Weekend, and it was pretty good actually. A good framework to start on, maybe even better than Atomic Habits). All the YouTubers, and self help authors are throwing down references to Atomic Habits, and they’re doing these goals, but honestly, its another new self made person out of the thousands already flooding the world.

    Lamenting aside, this book sells better than Million dollar weekend, because the steps are a lot less intrusive into other people’s lives. It’s not going to ask you to talk to other people; its just asking you to build yourself into the person you want to be, one habit at a time. Anyone can do that, because it’s just one habit. Making habits easy to approach, and to make them enjoyable. Straight up simple stuff.

    I actually did learn some key points. Building your identity based on your habits was something quite unique. I was reminded of Marie Kondo’s Kon-Mari method, which also involves owning the pieces you can imagine yourself looking great in, and throwing the rest away.

    Life involves so many darn obligations at times. As I gear up to be a dad, I hear people telling me what I ought to prepare for being a dad. But those expectations and obligations are not my actual responsibilities just yet. I do think alternatively about roles a lot of the time, because I understand command with a non-traditional approach. This means, I don’t care about the Dad everyone else thinks I should be, I will care about being the Dad Allison will need me to be, and the Dad to support the Mother Clarice wants to be. That will be the role I play, and my habits will cater to that. Taking the point properly, my lifestyle will direct that.

    Along with fatherhood, I am navigating this line of writing, and illustration and visual arts. I am doing both at the same time, but it’s not the same at all. Both require huge amounts of time out of my life. This is where I thought habit stacking would kick in, but Atomic Habits doesn’t really cover your schedule. You gotta work out the principles into your calendar yourself. ChatGPT, help please?

    Anyway, all in all, it was a good book. Good refresher for many life principles. Here are my read-already recommendations (I read these books already, therefore I suggest them as alternatives or supplementary to Atomic Habits):

    • Culture Code by Daniel Coyle
    • Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan
    • The Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

  • My compulsion to buy new stuff

    I keep loading up things to buy but I honestly have no need to. I’ve got an iPhone and a MacBook but I’m looking at PCs or some cheap android when I’ve already spent a lot more than any of those items. I don’t know why I keep doing this, and I have things that are worth so much more than what I’m looking at. But my brain tells me life would be a little better if I had those things. It’s so strange because I know my life won’t be, and instead I have many more things o could do on what I have but I still start searching over and over again.

    I tell myself things like having a dedicated device would move me to do more intentionally. But if would also increase the hurdle to get things published. And that’s not the hurdle I wanted to make.

    So instead of searching some more, I’m writing this, as a directed action to make more. Instead of doom scrolling and watching more tech reviews about boosted productivity, I should just be productive. Then there would be no need for me to actually search. It would be like when I was in school again, where my time was focused on getting my work out, in the least likely of situations.

    I was reading Atomic Habits like all other 30 something year olds, and I remembered a good number of things about myself and the goals I had set out for myself to do. They’re not difficult things to achieve, but I do remember wanting to clear space as a whole. There are things I was hoping to get better at, like coding and building tech items on my own. But they’ve since fallen on the wayside, because it’s just a smaller bit of what I really want to do. Maybe more concretely, it’s not who I really want to be.

    Perhaps the need for my personal novelty is a big part. I feel the need to have items from the past, to retain memories one way or another. It’s fun, but it means I have a lot of random things that I could do without 80% of the time.

    I was thinking if it would be helpful to have a habit that stops me from buying things. One of the funniest moments from the keyboard phase was when I could just memorise my three credit cards, because I was so used to writing them in. (Different stores would accept different cards, so I had to try all three.)

    I feel a little more settled about me as a person, after doing some deeper reflection about why I buy when I buy. The question I am now asking myself is Who is buying it? Is it the person running away from the immediate work and decision making I ought to be doing? Or is it someone who has worked really hard and wants just a break? Or is it a spoiled brat who wants something new and novel yet again? All those questions about the person helps me a lot more. I don’t have the time to waste, pretending to be someone else, or feeding the spoiled brat who isn’t growing up to match the actual person I am. I will learn how better to embrace myself in the things and the material wants.

    In the latest episode of Diggnation, Kevin Rose shared about how he lost everything when his house burned down in the Californian fires. The things he wanted to keep the most were the cards from his kids, the woodwork his dad made for him when he was growing up, things that were relational. He was ok-ish about the comic books that were burned, the wine collection, the tech. His conclusion was he might have gone too far in buying and keeping stuff, which made his decision making in the current rebuild a lot more steady. He knew what items he had barely touched, and maybe those things did not deserve another purchase. He could do without it.

    I would like to think about material possessions that way, without a fire burning down my house. There are definitely things I have not touched in forever, and all the projects I wanted to do some day. But time’s running out on things in some way or another. I need space for my baby girl to grow up and own her own stuff. There’s a lot that I could give up, if put to the Fire Test. But I still hold on to them.

    I will aim to start working on them in the current year, and to start, I will actually tell stories about them here. It gives me reason to write, and also I can say goodbye to some items, one at a time.

    Some simple resolutions, as we start the second month of the year.