Imperfect action is better than no action
In a world where perfectionism is rampant, it’s hard to take action without the fear of making a mistake. I definitely find myself stressing and obsessing over getting things absolutely perfect. This means I hardly ever finish things, and consequently, I have a laptop filled with half finished blog posts, phone notes with bright ideas I haven’t acted upon, and notebooks with fragments of poems scribbled in them.
Whilst looking through my notes of “bright ideas” I found some quotes I’d typed up from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits.
‘Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations’.
‘Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become.’
‘A habit must be established before it can be improved’
In his book Atomic Habits and the many podcasts he has been on, James Clear speaks about how he made a commitment to himself to write every day and to upload blog posts twice a week - every Monday and Thursday. He did this for three years without fail, granted some posts were a few sentences long, but he showed up nonetheless and did not break his commitment to himself.
I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on my career and how I seem to be avoiding doing the thing I love the most, writing. I know that my style and writing ability is a work in progress, like most things it takes consistency, dedication and courage to “make it” as a writer, and by this I mean creating meaningful work that generates enough income to pay the bills.
So, as a creative who struggles with consistency and self doubt, I really need to establish the habit of writing and challenge my fear of being criticised and rejected. It requires me to first allow myself to be vulnerable, as Brené Brown states: “vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.” Secondly, I need to show up for myself no matter how terrifying it might seem.
I decided to take a leaf out of James Clear’s book and start taking imperfect action. I’ve committed to writing a sentence a day and hope to increase this slowly to a hundred words then so on and so forth. I hope to be able to post one blog post a week. I guess I’m writing this to keep me accountable.
If, like me, you are looking to build a new habit, I’ve listed below some of the tips James gives to help people build habits sustainably. However, the most effective way to learn about this is to read or listen to his book. I found it to be incredibly inspiring and motivating.
In the meantime, here are three steps he recommends to make something a habit:
Start small - for me it’s one sentence. For you it could be one push up or reading one page of a book or meditating for one minute.
Increase your habit in small ways - Here he talks about one percent improvements, asking yourself how you can be or do 1% better today than yesterday. These one percent improvements add up surprisingly fast. So going back to the example of the push up, maybe it’s ensuring your form is correct. In the case of meditation, maybe it’s really focusing on your breath and being present for 1 minute.
As you build up, break habits into chunks - So, if my goal is to write 1000 words a day, perhaps I could write 500 words with a 25 minute break, then writing another 500 words. Or maybe it’s just working in 25 minute blocks until I reach my goal. If your goal is to meditate 20 minutes a day, maybe you want to do 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening. If you want to do 50 sit ups you could do 5 sets of 10.
In the book he provides a helpful framework for building new habits. He explains that building a habit can be divided into four steps: cue, craving, response and reward. “These four steps form a neurological feedback loop—cue, craving, response, reward; cue, craving, response, reward—that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits (Clear: 2022). These four steps can be transformed into a practical framework used to create good habits and eliminate bad habits. This framework he labels ‘The Four Laws of Behaviour Change’. They are:
How to Create a Good Habit:
The 1st law (Cue) - Make it obvious.
The 2nd law (Craving) - Make it attractive.
The 3rd law (Response) - Make it easy.
The 4th law (Reward) - Make it satisfying.
I’ll do my best to give a brief explanation, but I really do recommend the audio or book to fully understand and absorb the concept.
The cue is what triggers the brain to initiate a behaviour. So in order to create a good habit, the cue should be obvious. For example, if the habit was to go for a daily walk, a cue could be to lay out your walking boots and coat so you see it as soon as you get up, prompting you to go for a walk. The craving refers to the motivational force behind the action. He states that without craving a change, we have no reason to act. I guess this means digging into the deep why - maybe you want some time for yourself or to live a healthier lifestyle. For this we need to make it attractive and enjoyable. A couple of suggestions might be: having your headphones ready and saving an interesting podcast for the walk, listening to your favourite music during this time or maybe you take a nice cup of coffee in a flask with you, whatever will make it more enjoyable and fun. Next is the response, this is the actual habit you have to perform (in this case the walk) and finally, it’s the reward which is the end goal of every habit, the feeling of pleasure of having completed the goal.
We can invert these laws to learn how to break a bad habit.
How to Break a Bad Habit:
Inversion of the 1st law (Cue) - Make it invisible.
Inversion of the 2ndlaw (Craving) - Make it unattractive.
Inversion of the 3rdlaw (Response) - Make it difficult.
Inversion of the 4thlaw (Reward) - Make it unsatisfying.
I really recommend implementing some of these steps and of course, going back to the source material, links below!
Are you building any habits this year? Did this help? Let me know by leaving a comment below, emailing me or messaging me on instagram.
Clear, J., (2022), How To Start New Habits That Actually Stick, [online]., Available from: https://jamesclear.com/three-steps-habit-change
Atomic Habits by James Clear:
World of Books: https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/james-clear/atomic-habits/9781847941831
Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/1847941834
Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/atomic-habits/james-clear/9781847941831