Bad habits are the bi-product of our breakneck, capitalist culture. A truck spits out Co2. We spit out bad habits.

2022 is coming swiftly. In just a few days, 2021 will be history, and you’ll start to judge the outfits and decisions you deliberated on so heavily. Many people, myself included, are excited to start the new year by building a new habit. But when you stop to consider new habit goals taken on in past Januarys, you might get discouraged.

I don’t just mean the discouragement we have to overcome to make a habit stick. I’m talking about the storylines and barriers we have to overcome emotionally to allow ourselves to commit to certain habits.

If you want to build a habit of working out, you better redefine what working out means to you. The thing that gets in the way of habit development is feeling like our small steps aren’t meaningful enough to pursue.

I opened up this browser thinking I would write one word. Just to keep the streak alive. But that’s the funny thing about habits. Once I wrote one word, the next one followed pretty easily, and then they started flowing. And now I’m done.

It’s simple yet profound: if we create a frictionless environment in which we can create, it becomes much easier. Those who achieve extreme consistency don’t necessarily have more willpower than the rest of us—they simply have designed an environment in which a large amount of willpower isn’t necessary.

“One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. New habits seem achievable when you see others doing them every day.”

The key concepts of The Power of Habit are in the title. Duhigg explains how much power habits have over our lives, as well as how to understand and leverage that power for our own good. He doesn’t just talk about snacking or fingernail biting either–he focuses on how community habits affected the social justice movement and how corporate habits destroyed massive organizations.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
–James Clear, Atomic Habits

Our environments have a strong effect on what we end up doing with our time. What we do with our time has an effect on who we become.

I’ve identified this as something that kills the momentum of my morning, so I have been looking for a way to defeat this habit. Well, I’m happy to report that in the first week of trying, I’ve been able to successfully start rewiring this habit by changing the routine, while keeping the cue and the reward the same.

Habits are incredibly powerful. Habits have ruined the lives of gamblers, drinkers, and smokers. Simultaneously, habits have been the catalyst of massive success for YouTubers, writers, singers, and entrepreneurs.