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Video 8 in our series on James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits.

Transcription

Habit tracking, does it actually work?

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo. Welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today, we’re going back to Atomic Habits, by James Clear, and we’re talking about the fourth section of the book, called the fourth law, to make it satisfying.

This includes multiple chapters but each one goes to that fourth step in building a habit. And so just to review for those of you who may be coming in on this or if you just need a refresher, there are four basic laws, four basic steps that James Clear, discusses in green a habit, the first one is to make it obvious.

The second one is to make it attractive.

The third one is to make it easy. And here’s the fourth one, make it satisfying.

I’ll tell you that there’s a lot of good stuff in here that I highlighted and have gone back to over and over again, in this chapter. But I wanted to talk about one main thing that I think was the most important.

That main thing is habit tracking, what is habit tracking? Okay, so if you’re trying to get a habit going, one of the main things you want to do is start tracking it. This goes back to the concept.

The last couple of times, we were talking about being aware, and how awareness really makes habits work.

You really have to be aware of what’s going on for one thing, it tells you what type of habits to go for. But it also will help you to just automatically if you’re aware of what’s going on, you’re going to get better in any given area.

The same thing is true of habit tracking I’m looking for, you could see me if you’re watching, you see me looking down the book here, I’ve got it right here. And I’m looking I just lost my spot. When it comes to habit tracking.

This is within the second. Let me see here, I believe it’s, it’s within the second chapter in this section called, How to stick with good habits every day.

Yep, here it is, how to keep your habits on track.

This is a big deal. In fact, he goes back to the concept of not breaking the chain, which is what we’ve discussed it here before when we were talking about the book, consistency chain for network marketing is a network marketing-specific book, but the concept is true.

No matter what you’re doing, even if you’re not even doing business, if you understand that habits happen across the board, then you can take this that the idea is if you can build up a habit, consciously, purposefully build up a good habit.

You do it on a daily basis, let’s say it’s an easy way to be able to think about this as if it’s daily. If you’re doing something every single day, then the idea is to not break that chain is that every day, you’re able to put another link in the chain and another link and another link.

As soon as you miss one, you’ve broken the chain, you kind of have to start over with that count the well. And one thing he says here is that it’s going to happen. I mean, you’re going to break the chain at some point that you can’t get around it, life will get end up getting in the way at some point. And that’s no big deal.

He says no matter how consistent you are with your habits, it’s inevitable that life will interrupt you at some point perfection is not possible. Before long an emergency will pop up, you get sick or you have to travel for work or your family needs a little more of your time.

When this happens to me, I try to remind myself of a simple rule, never missed twice. If you miss twice, now you’re building the habit in the opposite direction. But if you can get right back up on the horse and keep going.

That’s the big thing about about tracking, keeping, keeping that there’s also there’s a part of tracking that is extremely satisfying.

So one of the things that I’ve done just recently and one of the habits I’m trying to adapt, I needed it to be an accountability thing.

So I have a team of people that I’m accountable with and those of you watching you know, you know who you are. We have a team of people to that I’m accountable with.

At the same time, I want my family beyond the part of it. I took a calendar, just one of these blank calendars that you can print out your Google blank monthly calendar template or something like that. and you get one that doesn’t have it has the days.

It has, you know, four weeks worth or whatever on there. But it doesn’t have numbers so you can make it whatever month of whatever year you want. And so I just put the latest month and I put the numbers up there and number correctly, and voila, I have a calendar ready to go.

The only point of this calendar is to track on whether I’ve kept the link going for every day. And I have a black sharpie. So this calendar is, is magnetized to my fridge, right?

I’ve got a black sharpie hanging on it, and I pull it off, and I exit out.

That is one of the most satisfying things is rather than doing the habit itself, I look forward to getting home and putting another X on the thing. I don’t know why it still hasn’t lost its effect on me after nearly two weeks of of being on it.

But the little things, the little things that are satisfying if you can make it satisfying. And that’s, that’s what makes it work in the long run. When he says when when successful people fail, they rebound quickly.

The breaking of a habit doesn’t matter if the reclaiming of it is fast. Or Charlie Munger said the first rule of compounding is never interrupted unnecessarily. And habit building is compounding. That’s what we’re looking at doing here.

Let’s see, really great stuff throughout this chapter. There’s another point that he makes in here is that it’s easier to do one thing at a time.

Rather do one thing at a time as perfectly as you can, versus trying to adapt a whole lot of habits at the same time.

Now, some people, if you’re familiar with this process, you may be able to handle adding in a bunch of habits at a time I have a friend that has a list, a little notebook, it’s all graphed out.

He has like about five or six habits that he’s doing at the same time, each one’s a daily habit. And he makes sure he puts an x for every last one.

Now maybe you can get away with that with me, I know I’ve got to start slow. So I’ve got one, one habit I’m hat, I’m adding it in any given time.

Once I feel more secure in that habit, I can one thing grow on, on how large it is that I’m handling everyday but also be able to add another habit, I definitely have some exercise habits and so forth that I want to I want to add on.

So something we’ll be adding to it as we go along.

That’s really the gist of what I got out of this section. There’s a whole bunch of other pieces that we can dig into. But I’m not going to bore you with that.

Go and check out this book, Atomic Habits by James Clear.

I don’t get any kickback from it. In one place, I do get a kickback. From that I like to mention, at least once every time that we get together is my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

This is a way for me to get to know people, and also a way for people to get to know me if there’s ever going to be a relationship. If I’m looking to invest in a company or anything else I make sure they they check out and release leaf through my book once so that they have an understanding of where I’m coming from. This is s far as from your perspective.

This can help you this book can help you if you are looking to grow your business and stand out in your industry to the point to where you no longer have really any viable competition.

If you want to end a competition that’s what I call being Amazon-Proof because even amazon.com can’t stop you that you want to go get a copy of this book.

You can purchase it wherever books are sold, or he can get a free digital copy over at my website, AmazonProofBook.com. AmazonProofBook.com.

That’s all I have for tonight. You have a good one. We’ll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.