[[James Clear]] [[Books/Highlights/Atomic Habits|Highlights]] Actions are the substrate over which you can change. Plans and goals are helpful, but result in nothing by themselves. It is the decision, in the moment, to take one action or to do the opposite, that compounds over time to achieve a goal or execute a plan. This requires the discipline to make the right choice each and every time.  **Small disciplines build good habits.**  I build small habits one week at a time. One habit a week. Then the next one. These habits build synergistically to create profound changes.  Start running once per week. Run three times a week. Plan an entire week of workouts the week before. Never skip a workout for weather. Run in the mornings. Lift in the afternoons. Bring healthy food to work. Eat only vegan food for breakfast and lunch. Eat 3000 clean calories a day.  Those are habits I built, one at a time, one per week. I didn't plan them out or even have a strong sense of what would come next. I focused intensely on committing to that week, and learning what it would take to master that habit.  Put clothes out the night before. Plan meals on Saturday. Cook on Sunday. Buy a visibility vest. Learn what I can eat as healthy snacks. Find a good brand of vegan butter. Track calories in my app. Plan the next day's calories to make sure I'm eating enough. Read a book on intermittent fasting.  Those are the simple behaviors I learned I would need to do consistently to support my habits. Are those habits too? Sure. That's why it's so important to focus on one habit at a time-any habit is actually a constellation of behaviors that add up to the thing you're committing to.  If you try to take it all in at once, you'll be quickly overwhelmed by the magnitude of the change. But once you've locked in a habit-a week is typically sufficient unless it becomes obvious it won't work within your other constellation of habits-it’s on autopilot. You know all of the simple things you need to do to make it happen. Now you can shift focus to the next one.  If each of those habits makes you just one percent better, you will be noticeably better at this time next year than you are today. Over five years, you'll be 13x better.   As James clear points out in atomic habits, true habits, those that persist for your life, originate from your identity, not your goals. When I ran the Colfax Marathon I had a lofty goal of running under 1:45. I ran it in 1:44. Then I stopped running for months. I went from 20 miles a week to once a month instantly. I had done it. I was done.  What if instead you are a runner? You run everyday. Because that is who you are. That is your identity. There are physical limits, of course, you will age. But why give up after you reach your goal? Why stop eating well, exercising, and lifting heavier and heavier weights? It's not a goal. It's who you are.  Changing your identity doesn't happen overnight. And, paradoxically, it is true that we are what we do. So how do you both create habits and become a stronger person at the same time? A penny a day. Small habits, one at a time.  My favorite piece of advice from atomic habits is to make each new habit less than two minutes. This doesn't mean run for two minutes. Instead, reframe the behavior as just the first two minutes. Put on your running clothes. That's it. Just put on your running clothes. It takes less than two minutes. And you'll feel pretty silly taking them right back off again. By just doing the first two minutes, you've already done the thing. It also overcomes our mental block of procrastination, where we think something will be bad but once we start we realize we actually enjoy it.  What we're trying to do is build momentum. Momentum in the sense that we have forward inertia to keep doing the good habits we develop.  But also momentum in the sense of a flywheel. Each little push, or action, compounds with all of the pushes before it to build a huge momentum machine.  It can be frustrating at first to see so little result from each push, despite great effort. But with time, and maybe a great deal of time, those pushes add up. Then the change appears to happen in an instant. Suddenly there is a transition in the system, you reach a tipping point, add the straw that broke the camel's back. But it wasn't that piece of straw, it was that piece of straw in combination with all the straw before it, starting with the first straw.  Everyday, think about how your choice of action, whether it's to do a habit or skip it, to choose this food or that, or to focus on this task or that, think about how that action might contribute (or detract) from the momentum you've already built and the momentum you hope to build.  The challenge then is to evaluate all of the small decisions you make everyday. What do you do right when you wake up? Think about in the shower? Look at when you pick up your phone? How do you start the workday? Prep for a meeting? For each of those things, how much will that contribute to or detract from the momentum you're trying to build? Take time each day to reflect on what you did well. Pat yourself on the back. This will not only reinforce that behavior, it will also make you a happier person. Being happy will make it easier to do the hard things.