Book Club: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Seems to work for me
Screenshot%20from%202018-11-20%2023-51-20
Look at the settings

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Thanks for checking. I had the same settings, it didn’t show up. Used the phone for input, then it worked.

But now… I am wondering if

2018 12 15

might actually be interpreted as the 12th in the 15th month of 2018? I am always confused by non-monotonously increasing or decreasing [1] date formats.

[1] Is there a less technical description of mm/dd/yyyy or yyyy/dd/mm?

Beeminder dates are YYYY-MM-DD, so 2018 12 15 is “2018 December 15”. We use this date format because it goes largest->smallest (as years > months > days), and is sortable! :slight_smile: … (American schools teach kids garbage for dates. and 12-hour time. Programmer parent’s nightmare!).

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Also, by default you only see 2 weeks into the future, so anything that’s on 15 Dec wouldn’t normally be visible yet.

Yes! I can understand smallest-to-largest and largest-to-smallest, but everything else throws me off. :smiley:

That means it wasn’t the date at least. It also wasn’t the X-max, I had adjusted that before. But it has worked every time since, so everything’s good.

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Opened up the discussion thread for part 1: The Fundamentals.

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Opened up the discussion thread for part 2: Make It Obvious.

@clarissalittler and @apolyton: I am not intending to book-club shame you, but we didn’t hear from you in the discussion last week. Is the pace still OK, or should we slow down and give you a chance to catch up?

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Oh well the problem I’m having is the same problem I had with Willpower Instinct. I burned through it in an afternoon, wrote down my thoughts, and now am not sure how to chronologically disentangle my notes to only be about particular sections since I don’t have the book anymore.

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There’s no harm just sharing your thoughts on the book as a whole in this thread. If nothing else, we can tag you into particular threads if you had a comment pertinent to the discussion.

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Thanks for the reminder! I had already read through the first parts by the time we setup this club and then got into a couple of other books. No need for a speed change!

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Opened up the discussion thread for part 3: Make it Attractive.

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Opened up the discussion thread for part 4: Make It Easy.

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Opened up the discussion thread for part 5: Make It Satisfying.

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Opened up the discussion thread for part 6: Advanced Tactics.

I intended to update the table of contents for the discussion posts at the top of the thread, but I no longer have an edit button. Is there a limit on the number of allowed edits for a forum post?

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Sounds plausible, but try again now; I just made you a moderator!

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I’m going to brainstorm my next habit here so anyone can chime in or get inspiration for similar habits.

So, I want to create a habit: When I notice that {my mind becomes weak and I keep distracting myself, ignore beeminder goals etc.}, I want to {meditate and make a short plan with tasks and a schedule for the rest of the day}. It’s not a huge problem, since I don’t get into that situation all too often, but I would just like to have my personal standardized exit strategy.

Atomic Habits tells me to:

Make it obvious: I do notice when I get into that state of mind (I call it “self-destruction mode”, although it’s usually not as bad as that sounds). What I need to make obvious is the exit strategy: meditation + scheduling. How would you do this? Meditation is not a physical object that I can put next to me. Although I could possibly get a meditation pillow and a small notebook and pen just for scheduling.

Make it attractive: Meditation and scheduling makes me feel good and leads to productivity, which makes me feel even better after a while. BUT, surfing that stupid website right now makes me feel good right there and then. Not sure how to combat this. Any ideas?

Make it easy: Again, meditation pillow and notebook/pen make it easy physically. But the hard thing is saying no to instant gratification of some distracting website or app. Maybe I could make the requirements super low, like “sit on a pillow and count 10 breath cycles, then write down all tasks and pick the next three in order”. I think that might work.

Make it satisfying: This seems like the easiest one since it’s really satisfying to be productive. Maybe I can celebrate it a little more by filling up my water (fresh water is super satisfying), taking a huge sip, and then diving into work.

Sorry for “spamming” with my individual habits here, but I guess I needed to brainstorm publicly to make myself formulate these steps clearly. I find that all those steps lined out in Atomic Habits sound great but aren’t always very tangible. So if anyone has any ideas for or remarks on that specific habit (especially how to make it “attractive”), I’d be happy to hear them! Thanks! :slight_smile:

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I think that workshopping a goal like this is an excellent way for us all to get some practice with the ideas in the book! Thank you for sharing.

Having a special notebook for your habit (especially if it has good paper and feels nice to write in!) is a good approach to making it attractive, because you’re associating the positive habit with a pleasurable ritual.

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Thanks, @dehowell! You are right, having a really nice notebook just for that could help make it attractive!

Feels like all four steps are really interconnected and a good tool helps at multiple steps: The notebook makes it obvious (and easy) if I put it next to my laptop. And it makes the scheduling attractive because now it’s going to be the nicest notebook I can get. :wink:

Well thanks to the book (and re-reading these concepts from James Clear, i think he was giving away a short ebook on habits) I’ve upped my methods on trying to reduce mobile use: social media apps are removed, Screen Time is enabled and beeminded, and almost all sites are blocked behind a “parental” passcode :smiley:

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Have you find a method other than manual data entry?