I’m not a huge believer in New Year resolutions. It irks me that people wait for this arbitrary date to make a meaningful change in their life. Given the time of year I’ve seen stacks of memes about people making new year's resolutions that they pretty much blow on the first day. 

Creating and achieving new personal goals can be one of the hardest things we do for ourselves. Unlike work related goals, we have to hold ourselves accountable - there is no boss making sure we hit our KPI’s and no consequences if we don’t. Well, unless your goal is to stop smoking for example and then by not doing so you have poorer health… but you get my point. Self motivation is the key and changing our habits is the path we must take to achieving our goals.

Way back in BB#58 I looked at James Clears ‘Atomic Habits’. This is the best book about forming good habits and breaking bad ones I’ve ever read. I highly recommend reading it if you have trouble sticking to plans that you set for yourself. This book changed the way I lived my life and I wanted to revisit it briefly because most new year's resolutions are about forming a new habit or breaking an old one.

By understanding how habits are formed we are more likely to succeed. 

Habits can be broken down into four stages. 

1. Cue - this is what sets the habit in motion. Something that triggers the brain and is predicted by the reward. We are constantly scanning for cues from our environment as they mean we are close to a reward. Once the cue has been locked onto we then crave it.

2. Craving - this is the motivation behind every habit. Without it there would be no reason to act. Craving is linked to changing your current internal state and is different for every person.

3. Response - this is the habit itself. This could be a thought or action that is fulfilling the craving.  Interestingly enough a habit can only happen if you are capable of it. The response leads to the reward.

4. Reward - Every habit has a goal. Fundamentally it should be satisfying the craving from stage 2 but they also teach us the habit is worth repeating again in the future. The reward completes the cycle.

The above four steps create a habit loop.

The more you repeat the ‘habit loop’ the more likely the habit will become automatic. If you miss any of the four stages of the loop then it is impossible for a habit to form. Remove the cue for example and the loop will never start. Take away the reward and why bother?

Clear refers to these four stages as the “Four Laws of Change”. When creating a good habit we want to do the following:

1st Law (Cue) - Make it obvious.

2nd Law (Craving) - Make it attractive.

3rd Law (Response) - Make it easy.

4th Law (Reward) - Make it satisfying.

To break a bad habit you need to reverse the laws.

Invert 1st Law (Cue) - Make it invisible.

Invert 2nd Law (Craving) - Make it unattractive.

Invert 3rd Law (Response) - Make it difficult.

Invert 4th Law (Reward) - Make it unsatisfying.

This year I have decided I’m going to try and read 40 books. I was on Goodreads the other day and a pop up asked if I wanted to set a reading goal for 2022. I thought I’d only been using the platform to record my books for a year and last year it said I’d read 37 books so 40 books this year sounded reasonable. It wasn’t until my friend commented “Woah, 40!” that I actually checked my stats again and it was only 12 books I read last year! I had dumped a whole lot of titles from previous years that were included in that 37. Whoops. Oh well, 40 it is! 

In order to achieve this outrageous goal I have to do two things using the “Four Laws of Change”. Firstly I’m making it obvious. I have books all over my house. In the lounge, in my bedroom, at the office. Everywhere I hang out I have books. I have also moved my reading apps on my phone to the front home screen, so ‘borrow box’ and ‘iBooks’ is now the first thing I see when I open my phone.

In conjunction with this app reshuffle I have removed all social media from my phone. I wasn’t sure I could, or even wanted to do it but now every time I pick up my phone there is nothing to do but read a book, or check the weather which you can only do so many times in a day. Maybe it's because people are still on holidays but I feel a lot calmer and in control without social media notifications popping up all the time. 

I don’t know if I’m going to read my 40 books this year and to be honest I don’t really care if I do or don’t make it. Like most things in life it's the journey that provides the most value on your way to achieving something. The goal of reading 40 books means that I’m going to be spending a large amount of this year cosying up somewhere with a book! How delightful is that!