Despite knowing all this, I still broke the system I created for myself. On the name of the break, On the name of the Diwali holiday. This is a story of how I undo my mistakes.
Ok so those who read my blogs, would (might… or at least I hope) remember that I started on a self-improvement journey in Jul of 2022.
Why you might ask? Honestly, I wasn’t happy with who I was becoming. I would plan goals at the beginning of the year but would lose sight of them as the days would pass.
Well, I had many goals for the year 2022. Such as I wanted to be healthy, and I wanted to complete a few certifications. When I read articles on the Medium platform, I also felt the urge to publish blogs on FB, LinkedIn, etc. When some of my friends from IIM talked about the economy in fancy business terms, I wanted to speak like them too. When I heard some of the senior leaders profess their love for books candidly, I also wanted to read books.
I understood that I needed a system. A system that would work for me. So, I set up a system using the Loop Habit app, to track my behaviors. Each of the behaviors was linked with what I wanted to achieve.
So the number game began. How much time did I do yoga in a week (health goal)? How many pages did I read in a month (reading goal)? How many blogs I am writing(writing goal)? Etc. I thought let me put a goal around these numbers, maybe it would make a lot more sense.
To keep this blog post short, I will take reading book behavior for a detailed explanation. So yeah, I wanted to read books like those senior leaders. Since more than half of the year had gone, I decided to keep the target of 3 books to be completed by Dec 22. Now to ensure this behavior is repeated every day, I decided to put a metric around it. At least 4 pages a day. Reading a few pages out of 315 was a constant reminder of the remaining pages but with this system of 4 pages each day, it was easy to repeat and feel motivated. And as days went past, there was progress. By Oct end, I was done with 2 books. I was easily going to achieve reading 3 books in the remainder of the year.
And that was the problem. Now that I knew the goal was within reach, I became complacent and I was not able to derive motivation to repeat my behavior each day. And in came Diwali when all of my family members, were just so free. I thought I was bound by my habits and then I decided to take a break.
Post-Diwali, when I picked up my 3rd book, it was Atomic Habits, call it serendipity or god’s grace. I completely related to the 4 laws of behavior change discussed in the book. A few things I did right was, breaking down a goal at each day level which made doing the behavior or habit relatively easy, like my reading habit translated to 4 pages a day. But I also understood the flaw in my system. I had designed my system for failure.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” This quote hit me hard from Atomic Habits.
I extended my break but dug deeper into improving my system. I wanted it to be flexible to accommodate more goals and wanted it to have robust steps to achieve each goal. Considering 2023 is just around the corner, I invested more time.
What was my goal?
To complete 3 books. When the goalpost was in sight, I slacked.
But that was never the goal, was it?
I wanted to be a reader. I didn’t want just the output of 3 books, but I wanted my identity to be A Reader.
When you start thinking like a reader, you focus on process changes rather than output. And when you improve the process, the output takes care of itself.
How do u define a reader? what would be the process of a reader? A reader who not only reads but also captures knowledge from the book reflects on it and puts it into implementation. Improving yourself is the main output rather than how many books you have read.
Now that opened a few more questions to me… how to capture knowledge, how to effectively capture it so we can reflect on it later, draw inspiration from it and ultimately improve your life. The answer was Notion. The notion is a perfect knowledge management tool. You can create a searchable database of notes which is very easy to recall. You can set up a system in which you revisit the notes you created at least once in two months.
But the obvious question was, do I have time to make notes? Reading 4 pages was easy, and now on top of it, I am aspiring to make notes. Well, there I recalled a concept I read in the book called To Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty.
Audit your time.
For a couple of days, just observe how are you spending your time and make a note in 3rd person i.e. Mandar watched a Netflix series for 2 hours. When we read through this audit log, reflecting upon it after a few days, we understand how much time we have wasted.
One of the key findings from this audit was that I was wasting at least 3 -4 hours on mobile, watching Reels on Insta, FB, etc. “Just one more min”, the attitude was costing me 3-4 hours.
So I decided to use 2 apps. App locker + Digital Wellbeing. The Digital Well-being app helped me configure how much time I can watch an app per day. And App locker helps lock the apps in particular timeslots. So I locked my apps from 10 – 6 PM every day and on top of it, I configured Digital Wellbeing for insta to be used only 15 mins per day, Twitter to be used for 30 mins per day, etc.
the result, my screen time is drastically reduced to 2 hr or less per day.
This locking automatically made time for making notes and other additional improvements across various of my habits.
So now, I have a rich database of notes across all the books I have read. I refer them at any time to draw a concept for implementation. Those ideas also helped me write this blog easily. As of today, I have already started my 4th book – Get Things Done by David Allen, and hope to enjoy reading it.
So, I have set up a system for all my habits. Mapped each of the habits into an identity goal and now I feel motivated to put the effort into becoming that new me.
Now there is another concept that truly blew my mind in the Atomic Habits book. To declare your identity to others, make the world an accountability partner. When you declare to the world, come what may, you don’t want to break that vow.
So Now I am declaring to the world that, I will continue to do all of my habits
- Perform exercise (yoga or 4KM walking) to be a healthy person. I will consciously maintain my diet as well.
- Do complete certifications and prosper in my career.
- Read at least one Finshot article and at least 4 pages of the book per day and capture knowledge and implement it to improve daily life.
- Write a daily journal (minimum 500 words a day) and write a blog that expresses my thoughts per week and publish it over social media (Medium, Fb, Linkedin, etc)
Now, though this break has caused a dip in my habits scores, this break was worth setting up a system. The focus of my system is on becoming that type of person, not getting a particular outcome.
Now each time I repeat the behavior in alignment with the identity I want, I am gathering more evidence of becoming that identity.
So now I turn to you, Audit your time, identify who you are and what you’d want to be, and make a system around improving your identity.
So who you are going to be?