Habits are overrated(without this)

I recently read Atomic Habits, and I learned a lot.

And I thought, why isn’t everyone who reads this book successful?

Some people just read it and don't have the initiative to take action, but for those who do, what prevents them from getting results?

And I think I know 2 things that prevent this.

But before we get to that, we must first understand that "your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits" (James Clear, Atomic Habits).

The main problem is people struggle to continue with positive actions because their results occur later.

For instance, if you start writing on Twitter and write one tweet today, you won't see massive improvements unless you consistently take action.

The main thing that happens is that people will take action for a day, a week, or even a few weeks, but they won't see satisfactory results, so they quit.

Then, vice versa, it happens with habits that create outcomes you don't want. The poor results take a while to take shape, and the instant pleasure blinds you.

This happened to me with video games and staying up late. When I was in 7th grade, I stayed up and played video games for hours and hours. While the pleasure in the moment was great, the results for weeks to come and even the next day were not satisfactory.

If you're not aware of your habitual actions, you will create a life of pain.

Your mind will find the path of least resistance, which usually means you will fall into bad habits.

The main things that will cause you to take habitual actions that create an undesirable life are:

• Hedonism

• Lack of Self Awareness

• Lack of Personal Responsibility

2 things that prevent people with initiative from success with habits and outcomes

Need Goals/Reference Point

The solution to all of these things is to have a reference point.

You need a goal.

It's not either habits/systems or goals; it's both.

You need goals as a reference point to create your habits.

Need Self Reflection

If you want to Fast Track your results and the quality of your inputs, you must have analysis and reflection.

It makes most sense to build the habit of being relatively automatic first and then build the habit of analyzing it. For example, if your habit is writing and you have done it for 21 days, the next step would be creating a process to study and improve your writing.

If you can consistently take action and find that you're not improving as fast as you would like, the key is self-reflection and constant iteration.

I could have done better during the six months I spent on Twitter. I consistently made inputs but didn’t analyze them to increase their quality over time.

Now, making consistent inputs is better than making no inputs(obviously).

The reason is that you cannot steer a ship that isn’t in motion.

5 Steps to Consistent Good Habits and Eliminating Bad Habits

1. Anti-Vision

If you're a regular reader of my newsletters, you will find that the first two steps are a feature of much of my advice. Without a reference point, creating the life you want is almost impossible. You can't create it without a reference point of what you want and don't want.

So for this step become extremely clear of what you don't want.

The lifestyle you don't want.

The feelings you don't want.

The body you don't want.

The self-image you don't want.

Get as specific as you can.

2. Vision

Then, you can reverse engineer your Anti-Vision to create your vision of the future.

These first two steps can be switched around depending on what you want. However, humans are often better at finding problems than what they want.

You want a vision that makes your face light up and excites you to create that extraordinary life.

This vision should give you hope and be grandiose. Make it unrealistic.

I recommend for both the visions creating it for different timeframes:

• 6-12 months

• 1-3 years

• 5-20 years

6-12 months helps it to feel palpable, while the longer visions help you fully understand the power of your habits.

3. Define the Habits you can't take

Once you have your anti-vision, write down all the habits you are doing or have done that align with this vision. List at least 20.

If part of your anti-vision is a lack of mental clarity, then you would need to stop getting less than 8 hours of sleep a night.

Once you have your Anti-Vision, this step should be more straightforward.

Once you have those 20 habits, the next step is to pick the three highest-leverage habits you will commit to removing for the next three months.

4. Define the Habits you need to take

List out all the habits that align with your vision. List at least 20.

If you want to improve your writing, you must build a habit of writing daily for a certain amount of time.

Once you have those 20 habits, the next step is to pick the three highest-leverage habits you will commit to for the next three months.

5. Habit Formation

This is where some of the tactics you learn from Atomic Habits come into play.

For habits that you want to build, you need to:

• Make it Obvious

• Make it Attractive

• Make it Easy

• Make it Satisfying

For habits you want to break, you need to:

• Make it Invisible

• Make it Unattractive

• Make it Difficult

• Make it Unsatisfying

That’s all for this letter.

If you enjoyed it, you’ll enjoy what went on this week (below).

Christian LaBosco

Update on This Last Week

I'm doing one-hour brand clarity calls for new creators on Twitter who want help with brand clarity and direction and to get any questions they have answered.

​If this interests you, you can DM me the word CREATOR here.​

I'm only doing 3 calls for the rest of this month, so DM me if you are interested.

PS. The YouTube version of this newsletter will be up in 2 weeks, and I hope you have an excellent rest of your week.