Out With the Old, In With the New
Published:
It’s been a few years since I read Atomic Habits and since then, I haven’t really incorporated many of its insights into my day to day living.
In fact, the precise reason why I stopped reading self-help works is that their value is not from just understanding the anecdotes and lessons but rather in the realization and action that comes after. What you put in is what you get out. It takes work beyond the reading to gain value and I was not doing that. Whether it was habit tracking, building a habit stack, finding accountability buddies, or making high yield habits sexy, while I understood the logic behind why they were effective, I didn’t proactively make any changes.
But yesterday, wanting to ride the productivity wave from a fruitful day of work, I felt the need to keep myself accountable for a new habit and what better way of doing that than to immortalize my intentions online. I’m trying a technique from Atomic Habits where I couple an existing unhealthy habit with a new, good one instead. Whenever I have the urge to scroll on Instagram reels, I will drop everything and go on a run.
Running has never been my thing. I always hated the hoarse, burning feeling I would get in my throat and abhorred the intolerable full body exertion. My cardio sucks and it’s one of the things that hold me back in taekwondo.
But I do love the feeling after. My head clears and the ensuing shower leaves me feeling refreshed and ready to tackle anything. The problem really is the cue; I don’t have any intrinsic nor extrinsic trigger for going on a run which is why I think this strategy may work well. I really hope I can also get rid of this doomscrolling tendency…