Kia Ora Friend,

Happy Te Rā o Waitangi for last week. It's was also my 28th birthday yesterday, and happy Valentines day for today.

Moving on... In this week's newsletter (and every newsletter), we are going to change our lives for the better. We are doing to do this with habits.

Good habits are a powerful thing. So powerful, I'm encouraged to summarise two books about it:

• Atomic Habits by James Clear, and

• Good Habits, Bad Habits by Wendy Wood.

When we think about habits, we think of bad ones. Smoking, eating junk food, overspending. But there are also good habits too. In fact, habits run a sizeable portion of our day — about 43 percent of it.

What are Habits and Why are they Important?

Habits are actions performed on a routine basis almost automatically.

Willpower. Willpower is thought to be the sole recipe for success. Those who are successful have an abundance of it. But this medieval notion couldn't be further from the truth.

Successful people do not have anymore willpower than the average person. There is no superpower in stopping a late night series binge. No magical ability in resisting junk food. Willpower is finite to them as it is to us.

Instead, what the more successful among us do is they leverage their environment. Use the environment to encourage the good habits and discourage the bad.

Habits are essential because they take mental load of our brain. Repeatable, routine actions are off-loaded to our autopilot, allowing our conscious minds to focus on more important tasks.

Habits are truly atomic — in its two meanings*.* They are small, almost invisible, improvements we make everyday that result in huge gains in the long term.

Going to the gym everyday, you won't see much change day-to-day, but over the long run, consistency will give results. Investing a little every week, won't make you rich tomorrow, but over years, the returns will stack up.

How do we create good habits?

Habits need to accepted as our identity. Then, we build an environment for good habits to thrive and bad ones to perish.

Bad habits persist and good habits elude because we do not accept then at the level of our identity level. A smoker who 'quits smoking' is a smoker who is temporarily halted the action. A smoker who becomes a non-smoker is much more powerful. The act of smoking is not a part of who they are — their identity.

When we set goals we need to think about our identity. Goals are usually finite. For example, a goal of running a marathon. When the marathon is over, so is the desire to train. Instead, the goal is to become a runner. This will keep us training for as long as running is part of our identity.

Change is not as simple as a snap of the fingers. An action made for our desired self is one small vote to the person we want to be. We need to build up lots of votes to elect our new identity. It's okay to slip from time to time (e.g. have takeaway instead of that prepared salad), but all we need to do is win the majority (e.g. then, we will get in shape).

Habits have a flow:

• Cue → Craving → Response → Reward

James Clear has an excellent framework for creating good habits that links up to this flow:

1. make it obvious,

2. make it attractive,

3. make it easy, and

4. make it satisfying.

An inversion of the above list is a way to kill bad habits (e.g. make it invisible, make it unattractive, make it hard, and make it dissatisfying).

Habits begin with a cue. A notification on your phone, or when the clock strikes noon for lunch. Going to sleep on time is an example of a good habit. We can make an obvious cue by setting a timer to automatically dim the lights when its time to go to bed. If we want to discourage a bad habit, we can turn off phone notifications so the cue becomes invisible.

Following the cue, there is a craving. For a cocaine addict, the peak of excitement is just before taking the hit, not after. The power of craving is what makes action. What we can do is build a craving through association. For example, I enjoy listening to podcasts. I like listening to podcasts when I'm at the gym. Putting on earphones to listen to the podcasts make me crave going to the gym. On the other hand, I want to avoid overspending. Instead of carrying around a card, I take cash. Handing over cash, physical money, is a lot more painful that swiping the EFTPOS card.

If we want to initiate a response, the task must be easy. We do this reducing friction. I recently began learning the guitar. By putting the guitar right next to my couch, this reduces friction to pick up and practice. Conversely, I want to stop looking at my phone when I'm work, so I leave it in my bag, increasing friction to access it. In addition to this, when making a good habit, we want to start easy. When playing the guitar, we aim for just two minutes or practice. I'm only allowed to play for two minutes. After playing just for two minutes, I can decide if I want to play for longer or not — chances are I'll keep going.

Finally, to make the habit stick, it must be rewarding; it has to satisfy. To make an action go away, there needs to be immediate pain. If I hit publish on a newsletter, I see an increase in interaction to my material. This keeps me in the game for longer. When our habits start becoming a part of your identity, simply performing the action is a reward in itself. Light up a cigarette — you are immediately going to feel a sense of sadness as you slip away from your desired self.

How to keep the Habits going?

When habits are established, there is risk they can decline in quality as they become more automatic.

When measuring success of a habit, we sometimes lose sight of what is important to measure. At time we may overvalue the wrong thing and undervalue the right. Gym attendance is not the same as putting in the reps. The number of books read is not the same as the content being applied. We need to think of the context and bigger picture without falling for numbers.

To become a master at something, learning the habit alone is not enough. We need to keep improving with fine-tuning.

We need to remain flexible. We need to reflect and change.

As an optometrist, a lot of tests become habitual. The entire job has the risk of falling into autopilot. As time goes on, boredom sets in. Boredom can lead to unhappiness.

Not only this, our skills slowly decline. We start to make small mistakes that we let slip; our standards decline. To avoid this, we need reflection.

A simple tactic I employ is to print the day's appointments. After each patient has been seen, I put a smiley face or a sad face judging by how the interaction went. The simple act doing this shows I'm engaging with what I am doing — I am reflecting. A smiley faces encourages me to keep doing what I am doing. A sad face will mean I need to improve on some aspect of what I'm doing.

We need to be the person who was a few months into the job. We weren't too overwhelmed but we weren't too complacent either.

Conclusion

Atomic Habits by James Clear and Good Habits, Bad Habits by Wendy Wood are both excellent books about habits. Clear is a more practical guide to habit formation, while Wood provides a more scientific approach.

Habits are essential to success, because we cannot rely on will power alone.

We form good habits and break bad ones by altering our environment. We introduce cues, making a good habit obvious and a bad habit invisible. We then induce a craving by associating a enjoyment or misery with the action. Next we can make the response easy or difficult to perform. In the end, we administer an instant reward or pain for the habit displayed.

Habits on their own are not enough. Mastery involves constant reflection of our habits and improvement.

Finally, to get the most out of these books is to read them and make your own interpretations. Then, you share them with the world!

Did you find this useful? If you did, please forward this on to family and friends so they can find it useful too.

Got any feedback? Reply to this email, I'm listening.

Thanks for reading and all the best for the week ahead.

Mā te wā,

Shivan :)

My Favourite Things

1. Film The White Tiger directed by Ramin Bahrani is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Aravind Adiga. The film focuses on Balram Halwai — a servant from an impoverished and unknown village in India — and his steep rise to fortune. For me living in New Zealand, I could not fathom having no opportunity to live life you want — to be stuck. I asked myself: how does the average person in the world live? And in our living situation, how do we compare to the rest?

2. Video How to Speak Clearly and Have an Attractive Voice | 3 Steps by Captain Sinbad is as the title suggests. Personally, I've struggled to speak clearly. It affects my confidence. Whenever I approach someone to speak too, I'm constantly worried if they will be able to understand me. Captain Sinbad offers some helpful steps: practicing tongue twister (a simple one is 'toy boat' said repeatedly and quickly), singing in high and low tones, and changing our mindset (channel the inner Pharoah — Yu Gi Oh! reference).

3. Video/Seminar Building an Idea Factory with Ali Abdaal David Perrell hosts a discussion about building an idea factory. Writing is one of the hardest things we can do. Beginner creators may feel they have no ideas to put out there. In this video seminar, we learn ways to generate ideas. One example is to not start from a blank page. We can use other sources of information as inspiration. Just like fracking oil, we can go into depth and then move laterally to provide a unique perspective on an idea. For example, writing about Atomic Habits by James Clear and how this relates to optometrists.

Books

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear — www.goodreads.com Atomic Habits book. Read 13,577 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for...

Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick by Wendy Wood — www.goodreads.com Good Habits, Bad Habits book. Read 199 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. A landmark book about how we form habits, and what we can ...

Kindle Highlight of the Week

I've been lucky enough now in my life to meet all sorts of extraordinary and accomplished people... What I've learned is this: All of them have had doubters. Some continue to have roaring stadium-sized collections of critics and naysayers, who will shout "I told you so" at every little misstep or mistake. The noise doesn't go away, but the most successful people I know have figured out how to live with it, to lean on the people who will believe in them, and to push onward with their goals.

Michelle Obama, Becoming