What I Missed in Atomic Habits, and What You Shouldn’t.

The blank sheet always makes me confused. As someone who writes, I hate blank pages with a passion. No matter how much I want to share, my mind goes blank once I sit in front of this screen. But that’s why I’ve started this “On What I Read” series. It makes things interesting.

Now, I pour my mind to you rather than choosing what to write about from a list of tens or hundreds of topics. I don’t know if there are readers for what I am doing now. But I know one thing. The value of these articles might not be high at present. But imagine each article’s quality and depth if this goes on for hundreds of days.

Influence on my writing.

But this is how everyone starts. I’m finding this fun now, but who knows what can happen later? Honestly, the number of people reading these articles is countable in my hands. So, who knows when others can read this if I don’t put this in a publication? And that’s my point. I’m not perfect, but I’m trying to shift my mind from the readers and reach of my article to the content and quality of my writing.

I won’t overload myself with many writing tips, marketing techniques, or title-making steps available that confuse me. Instead, I’m taking the opposite approach. I will take one improvement point, focus on that, and go to the next one. An example? Reducing the amount of adverbs I use in an article. I am focusing on reducing this and making things as smooth as possible. Once this is done, I will go to the next step: write a better title, vary the sentence lengths, or maybe do something entirely different.

That’s what atomic habits have taught me — small improvements over a long time lead to wonderful effects. And I want to believe I can do this. Of course, I have integrated my learnings into all my day-to-day tasks and work. But we miss some things in the allure of the grand dream. And these small things bite us back hard, and by the time we realise that something like this has happened, it’ll be too late.

Tiny things I often miss.

The concept of atomic habits was simple. It could lead to many interesting things. But there’s a hidden problem in Atomic Habits. And that is boredom. No matter how exciting the craving is or how satisfying the reward is, things will be boring after a while.

How do I know this? It’s because it’s from my habit stack I built around my fitness and writing goals. As I have said in my previous articles, I am trying to integrate a daily walk habit into my routine. And once I return home, I will start writing before finally finishing this with a coffee. I have been doing this for 15–20 days, and this morning, I felt going for a walk was too boring.

To put things differently, you have to understand the temptation-bundling. I use the allure of listening to new songs and bundling it with my morning walk. My decisive moment is to put on my XM5s instead of thinking of going for a walk. If I do that, the rest of the habit stack, including writing and doing the dishes, will be done within 1.5 hours.

And that system worked perfectly for 3 weeks. But now, Spotify recommendations are so repetitive that I lost the fun of listening to music, which affected my walking habit. Luckily, I listen to podcasts or do something else to keep walking. But boredom is not going to go anywhere. There’d be a day when I feel bored walking or doing the dishes. But I still have to do that.

Repeating the same thing over and over is boring, especially when it’s the tiny things we often ignore. At some point, we must take the call and stick ourselves to boredom. There’s no other way to do those amazing things. As someone with ADHD, boredom is my Achilles heel. But I am taking that shot, sticking to boredom. I want to keep writing and possibly interact with those who know better than me through my reading.

That’s the one thing I had missed and wanted to share about Atomic Habits. I hope you remember this the next time you’re going to quit a habit. What’s the boring habit that is most important to your life? Please share it with me in the comments!

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Thanks for staying till the end! Until next time!✌️