Why 'Atomic Habits' may not be working for you
krishnabharadwaj.info
krishnabharadwaj.info
The book actually gave me some practical tips on how to stop living a life like that and actually do the things I want to do. Stuff like working up the courage and routine to go to the gym in the morning, or spend my evenings on practicing my favorite hobbies instead of scrolling the phone. Finally, some discipline!
The best improvement I’ve found is to just simply stop caring. Then I’m more happy, then it’s easier to do the things that need to do. The things that don’t get done? Well, they just weren’t meant to be - oops. Maybe one day, but forcing it won’t help.
I do get some of the OP blog poster’s anxieties about somehow optimizing every facet of one’s life using these techniques but I always approached atomic habits as making small but very meaningful changes over time and it’s been incredibly helpful for me
it is because in the technological age, we have come to view ourselves as machines to optimize rather than humans with beautiful unpredictability, passion, intuition, creativity, not being hyper-productive, etc.
I highly doubt that such a person is happier than the healthy fit one.
As an example, video games and mindless doomscrolling eat up an inordinate number of hours. Hours that are precious and could be used towards a goal that I would feel proud of experiencing or achieving.
The whole idea of combatting nihilism is to overcome it. You do that by balancing chaos and order.
You are right that life is not "better" by trying to overcome. That there isn't a true recipe for happiness and thinking so is a fool's errand.
Nietzsche and John Stuart Mill had similar ideas that happiness is not the goal. But one feels happiness when resistance is being overcome. That happiness is not found, it is achieved.
I think the problem is that people want habits like “be productive” when should have multiple habits like “check todo list in morning”. They also try to pull off big things like “exercise daily” or “eat healthy” when should have steps as habits. There are also other tools to get organized; both of these could be calendar events. Todo lists are great for non-automatic things, I’m not going to completely remember my packing list.
This doesn’t sound like failure to me, it sounds like the normal consequences of your life becoming busier. Of course it is hard to resume those habits, especially if your life is still stressful and busy.
Maybe we should consider our own limits and be more accepting of why we might fall into bad habits. This obsession with balance and productivity does a lot of damage.
As a final point, everyone has a different tolerance for stress and productivity. But western morals assume all people are equal and any failing are thus a moral failure. This harms those of us who, through random environment + genetics have different strengths and weaknesses. Many ADHDers go through life thinking of themselves as shit people because they can never even get close to the moral standard of balance.
Bad habits for me is something to escape, not to accept. Not doing good habits directly impact quality of life.
Even if you ultimately want to see your life optimized for “quality” (whatever that means!), the road to getting there sometimes involves being less self-reflective.
For many ambitious and high-key people, letting go and accepting themselves as they are is the untested hypothesis that’s actually been holding them back.
I embrace simplicity. The modern world has been designed in such a way that being busy is considered a badge of honor and we should be proud of our busyness. Being busy is a cult. And then there's the shadow work we all need to do behind the scenes like self-checkouts at supermarkets where we are not /paid/ to do that, but we do it anyway, along with many other examples I won't list out here.
And I even personally prefer the social moment of a cashier to performing self-checkout.
But from the “simplicity” perspective, it’s actually pretty reasonable to tally and tender your own purchases. It’s the kind of simple practical task we probably benefit from making time for.
If someone were to help you, of course they should get paid, but it’s only a quirk of history that that’s been the default.
I have this opinion about cooking, or walking the dog. Self-checkout I see as a missed opportunity for social interaction (or maybe not, considering the amount of times an employee comes over to unblock the system :)
Recently I've had a project at work which is just enjoying and engrossing, so I'm "choosing" to be busy with it at all hours at the expensive of other "good" habits. (Spending long hours "in the zone", if you will). I take the motivating and energizing peaks at work when I can get them.
I found this audio book enjoyable and accessible. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it does shed some interesting light on the "busy" epidemic we feel surrounded by.
https://www.audible.com/pd/Addicted-to-Busy-Audiobook/178753...
that doesn’t strike me as a good example. i’ll take unpaid checkout at the supermarket over hunting or growing food or making chocolate or making wine myself every single time.
And to be fair, I didn't get paid to stand in line and make small talk with whoever decided to talk to me, just to get to the cashier and wait while they cater to me. Shopping almost always involves an amount of unpaid work.
I think I was more incensed by skimming the introduction to Atomic Habits which is just the author boasting about themselves.
Reminds me of Marie Condo, who eased up on tidying, and it's no longer her top priority, after having kids: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/entertainment/marie-kondo-sto...
> After becoming a father and undertaking a major rewrite at work
You mention moral failure. Although the author mentions deep work, my suspicion is the rewrite at work is taking long hours. This assumes certain values too, where work is first.
> Here I am equipped with all the directions in the book, but I could not apply any of them
He could not do 1 min of meditation a day to build the habit? Or do one push up before showering?
From the blogpost I get the impression the author is prioritizing work and rationalizing it. At the same time, they are setting too ambitious targets in too many areas, instead of aiming for an incremental and sustainable habit.
If you really think you need to optimize yourself, I’d recommend to skip the millennial bestseller lists and to closer to the source.
A few recommendations:
Self Help Without the Hype (R. Epstein) Tiny Habits (BJ Fogg) Self-Directed Behavior: Self-Modification for Personal Adjustment (Watson/Tharp) Don't Shoot the Dog (Pryor)
Really, just the first one will likely be enough.
Skinner is probably the most underestimated figure in 20th century science. His ideas are generating billions in value to this day. And yet the sentiment most people hold about him is the one you just shared.
I’m on my phone and can’t go into details. But the whole aspect of gamification - in games, social media, TikTok, productivity apps, learning apps - is very much OG Skinner. And ChatGPT reinforcement learning? Behaviorism applied to virtual agents.
> Skinner was the happiest, most productive, most creative person I've ever known, largely because he was so skilled at self-management.
That’s from the first book I mentioned.
There is an article by the author that covers some of the topics of the book, which is freely available as a PDF:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1284070/pdf/jab...
Yeah I looked for it there and in other places, but there doesn't seem to be any digital copy available at all (legal or otherwise)
I am familiar with Skinner and his work and I would also not recognize him from a photo. I also wouldn't recognize Freud, Jung, Pavlov, or Zimbardo from their pictures either. Am I missing something?
With Skinner, even if you just read a biography, I would imagine that it's hard that one would not want to Google more about his stuff... his "Baby In A Box" thing, pigeons playing ping-ping, 1960s learning machines, etc.. And there are several very interesting YouTube videos about these things, many originals from the 1950s-1980s. If one is even just mildly interested in learning more about the kind of behavior modification that Skinner popularized, it seems really odd to me how one could not look at the man himself.
Besides, there are photos in most biographies. [1]
I don't expect the person on the street to know who Skinner is. But if someone makes their living writing blog posts and books about Skinnerian ideas, I do expect them to have done their homework.
When I was interested in Jung, I actually went to Küsnacht. Even met his grandson. Watched all the video interviews with him that still exist. And I'm not a journalist at all. Just deeply curious when I encounter someone with ideas that interest me.
But perhaps that's exactly my point:
Being successful in writing and marketing books about behavior modification and actually modifying behavior are two completely different sets of skills.
OG Skinner one the one hand and these popular books based on his ideas on the other hand are, to me, polar opposites:
Skinner did the experiments and found the things that worked. But he was terrible at anything one could consider marketing or self-promotion. The Aircrib story is the best example. Good stuff; terrible packaging.
A book on today's bestseller list about behavior modification that's written by an author who, apparently, has never even read a biography of Skinner, or watched a single interview with him, is the very opposite. Great packaging; zero original work.
Skinner, to me, is Zero to One. Self-Help books repackaging his ideas are One to Many. It's totally fine that this second category exists. Yet if people struggle with the second category of material, I want to encourage them to go looking closer to the source.
Like in programming, where you may go from using someone else's paid API to using an open source library. It increases your understanding of the problem space, makes you feel more confident in your abilities, and, most important of all, makes you appreciate the work of all those that came before you.
[1] B.F. Skinner: A Life, by Daniel W. Bjork is amazing. I think it would be a fun read even to someone not interested in psychology per se, given the "hacker mindset", natural curiosity and "make do" mentality that Skinner exemplified.
Somewhere in between. I read about his concepts from secondary sources. In college, as a part of a project, we built a crude conditioning chamber. The thing I remembered the most was that handling lab animals is difficult, especially if you're not trained to do it.
Which of Skinner's experiments have you tried to replicate?
> With Skinner, even if you just read a biography, I would imagine that it's hard that one would not want to Google more about his stuff.
I'm not a big fan of biographies. One of the few I enjoyed was Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, but it's more of a collection of anecdotes. And even then I was more interested in the environment the stories took place in rather than Mr. Feynman himself. (As an aside, I'm going to read the biography you recommended.)
I'm more of a "separate art from the artist" kind of person. Or rather "ideas should stand on their own". Sure, I lose a lot of context by discarding the person behind it. But if it's necessary, then it means the original idea wasn't explained clearly enough.
Because you talked a lot about Skinner's photo, I looked it up. He looks unremarkable. I don't know what to make of it. If you show me his photo again in six months, I won't remember it. His ideas would be the same if he was bald, wore a monocle, had a beard, or if I've seen his picture taken 20 years earlier. It has no effect on his body of work.
We don't have photos of ancient philosophers. It doesn't make their ideas inferior or incomplete.
> Like in programming, where you may go from using someone else's paid API to using an open source library. It increases your understanding of the problem space, makes you feel more confident in your abilities, and, most important of all, makes you appreciate the work of all those that came before you.
I haven't thought about it, but it sounds reasonable. It still doesn't push me to learn about their personal lives or find their photos.
There are people in my life that I'm interested about on a personal level. My family. My friends. My neighbors. They are important to me. I'm happy to see their photos.
> A book on today's bestseller list about behavior modification that's written by an author who, apparently, has never even read a biography of Skinner, or watched a single interview with him, is the very opposite. Great packaging; zero original work.
> Skinner, to me, is Zero to One. Self-Help books repackaging his ideas are One to Many. It's totally fine that this second category exists. Yet if people struggle with the second category of material, I want to encourage them to go looking closer to the source.
This is interesting and it's worth exploring. You seem knowledgeable about it. Have you thought about writing more about this gap? Perhaps even bridging it yourself. It would do a lot of service to the OGs of the field.
Basically the experience this YouTuber explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2sS00egAzg&t=22s
I never got done reading 'Getting Things Done' either.
Previously I was so hard on myself when I made mistakes or wasn't up to my own (very high) standards, that I would quit after a while because it was a horrible experience.
Now, no matter how many mistakes I make, I don't beat myself up about it and I keep trying the next day. And I am seeing that not only am I getting more things done, but I am actually enjoying life more day-to-day, which is the ultimate goal imo.
I totally get what you are talking about too. Sometimes I remind myself: "If it's something that is worth doing, it's still worth doing badly (Or inconsistently)."
I can't even recognise the person I was 4 years ago. I've left that person far behind.
Battery farming and animal welfare.
Public transport and social mobility.
Processed food and nutritional value.
The human mind is just the next frontier where the battle to make everything you do something that is “valuable” where value = economic output.
I’m stressed because I’ve been in that place for too long. I started the year reading James Clear’s book only to immediately follow up with 4000 Weeks as the antidote.
Atomic habits are great if you want to push the boundaries of human achievement. The big realisation for me (and perhaps many of us) is “I’m not trying to do that”.
All the good books on performance, habits, marginal gains reference all the contexts where pushing boundaries is the normal state - Formula 1 pit crews working together to minimise time, Southwest Airlines and their 20min turn arounds, the British Cycling team and the pursuit of TdF/Olympic success.
My personal belief is we’re inviting in a dangerous logic to one of the few remaining bastions of our humanity. Float. Be free. Don’t force your mind to do something it cannot or does not want to do. Sure there’s a balance, but there is a threshold beyond which you’re deviating from your natural wants and wishes which equates to stress. Too much of that and you’re going to have a bad time.
Changing habits will change your life, but you need to learn the process and know yourself. You learn the best when you fail, but that's when people give up trying. The whole idea of habit formation is that it sucks to do something different and new... Until it's not new anymore.
The author certainly did the most biggest mistake: Too much, too fast. => Focus only on Meditation. Bingo!
One habit at the time, build the habit as slowly as possible. Everyone can do it. But they... Just don't.
Disclosure: Founder of Habinator Health Coach app.
Becoming a father makes you have to practice discipline everyday. You don't get time to just waste time like you used to. You have to schedule it.
While Atomic Habits is a good book and best seller for a reason, the change we go through as individuals is much more telling of successful sticking habits.
Atomic Habits just makes you a little more aware which can also be done through any awareness practice (meditation, journaling, reading, etc).
> After that, I never bothered to track any of them.
After a certain point, your habits become...habit. You don't need to track them. That's because you're constantly aware of them and you've outgrown habit formation books.
I wrote an adjacent piece about what happens when your life operating system receives a breaking change like having kids:
For me it brought up that I'm carrying a lot of tension and knots in the back and shoulders, which is a good thing to realise, but during meditation it would build up a lot of "pressure" or "tension" on my head, which according to some traditions is "bad". According to other traditions you just "power through" with more meditation. I have explored different things but reduced how much I meditate for now.
> That's when I realised it wasn't working quite as well as it had the first time.
This is exactly what the book is great at. From the discussions I've been a part of, the book did a great job of really breaking down and creating a system for folks to achieve things.
The author did note that the books' success is part of the rise of the industry its a part of and that's one thing I think a lot of people who discuss this book (for good or bad) overlook. Whatever the ROI has been for the book will always be individually contextual.
Mental stimulation refers to engaging in activities that challenge the brain and promote cognitive function. It can involve a wide range of activities that are intellectually stimulating and require active mental engagement. Some examples of mental stimulation include:
- Learning a new skill or language
- Playing brain games, such as Sudoku or crossword puzzles
- Reading books, newspapers, or magazines
- Engaging in creative activities, such as painting or writing
- Participating in educational programs or classes
- Solving problems and puzzles
- Engaging in debates or discussions
- Playing musical instruments or listening to music
- Learning a new sport or physical activity
- Traveling to new places and experiencing different cultures
By being able to discard those during meditation, they were able to work on deep thoughts and make enough time for those instead of getting occupied by the unnecessary(bad) habits.
> Besides, meditation itself is a habit and one that is the easiest to ignore as it doesn't bring immediate benefits (lacks instant gratification)
But thats the crux of building good habits, one needs to teach themselves to not run for instant gratification. Precisely, this article. Atomic Habits try to teach that you to by various habit building techniques in the book. It teaches you how to harness this instant gratification idea to build good habits slowly yet in a way that appeals that part of your brain.
The author is trying to refute this exact thing, that these all work for a while until it all comes crashing down and it becomes really difficult to break away from bad habits.
One is practice in managing thoughts and feelings. If you just sit and breathe, you'll begin to notice how much the mind wanders, how much thoughts randomly arise and pinball around your head. Meditation gives you a lot of practice in not getting caught up in that.
The other is what I think of as self-instrumentation. As with any sort of performance tuning or debugging, the foundation is paying attention to what's actually going on. Meditation has greatly increased my ability to introspect, which helps me solve a lot of things that in the past were mysteries to me.
Is there any theory of how meditation offers evolutionary benefits?
The book Mindfulness in Plain English is a great introduction to mediation if you are curious.
But, a quick, short answer - meditation is like going to the gym for your brain. In meditation, you practice detaching from thoughts. A practical example: Let's say you have a rocky relationship with your boss or a colleague. Maybe they say something you perceive as a slight while grabbing a coffee in the morning. Instead of fixating on it all day and letting it disturb your work, you just let it go. Not attaching to our thoughts doesn't mean we can't focus very hard on things - in fact, letting your negative thoughts go is what is going to allow you to focus hard on your work the rest of the day!
(Also, there are many types of meditation, this is just one form of meditation... again, lots of nuance here that is hard to get across in this format.)
That said, reading about meditation is never going to get you a full understanding of it, any more than reading cookbooks will give you an understanding of a cuisine you've never eaten.
Right. And do you really even need a whole book to explain how to do meditation?
Can it not be explained in one paragraph?
Is it even as complicated as a recipe in a cookbook with many steps and ingredients?
How many steps and subtasks and ingredients are there to do meditation?
Now I would be interested in seeing a book that explains some rational as to why a given meditation technique does some good to you. I believe it does, but don't know why. Therefore could it be like placebo?
Edit: Of course you are correct that the actual technique is very simple and can be explained in a few sentences. But there is much more to it than that - how do you process the results? That's what you need a book/teacher/help for.
You need many books to explain how to do meditation, because people vary widely and it's a complex set of skills with subtle goals. However, reading a thousand books is not sufficient to understand it, any more than reading all the books about bicycles can make you able to ride a bike.
That said, what helps me with adherence, and I know this will sound overly simplistic and un-helpful, is I just do the things. I have a friend who is also into fitness, and we agree that the most important workouts to do are the ones you don’t want to do. They build the discipline to do things you don’t want to in the moment, in order to satisfy your higher, long term goals. And we agree that the best way to do those workouts is to…do them. Go put on some gym clothes and get to the gym, and your mind and body will hardly argue with you that it doesn’t want to work out anymore.
Some of the ability to do that, I expect, comes from the fact that I am an “all or nothing” person. I don’t do moderation well. I do well when I can do something with all my intensity. For instance, when dieting, I find it much easier to adhere to an incredibly strict and mundane diet than to try to enjoy my food.
This ties into the idea of having and/or making the circumstances in which one can be disciplined. There is an excellent post here [0] that discusses what we need psychologically in order to actually do things. Stress, other priorities, distractions, etc., all impede our capabilities. For the author of this blog post, they found that meditation cleared their mind and that is what enabled them to lower their stress and return to better habits. They also discuss 16:8 IF, which I also do and find to be a huge boost to my focus (I joke that eating is my kryptonite). I also find having a rigorous schedule helps me; the activities I (in my mind) “have” to do, e.g. work out, work, etc., are not optional: they’re built in. I do not know why these techniques work, and there are many others which do as well. I hypothesize that these little and easy “mini habits” or tweaks to one’s way of living facilitate accomplishing goals.
As an aside, discipline is an area that I want to work on in my life! There are a few books I’d like to read. One is Discipline Equals Freedom. I think the incredibly hard headed military guys (see also David Goggins) are the ones closer to the right track (or at least what makes sense to me) than the sciencey types who theorycraft infinite nudges to encourage people who “want” to be disciplined to be disciplined. I am no fan of Nike, but “just do it” really resonates with me.
[0]: https://macrofactorapp.com/behavior-change/?ck_subscriber_id...