Goals, Systems, and Identity
This is the second of the summary of the book: Atomic Habits.
Find the first here.
While the book is about creating habits, it also differentiated between goals and systems.
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There’s also a voice summary at the end. You can choose to hurry there to listen to the happenings at the beginning of the book.
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Goals vs Systems
Whenever you’re trying to form an habit, you will most likely set goals. A goal is short-term. It’s just in the moment.
You’re only trying to achieve a change that is for the moment or for a short time. And after you achieve that goal, you can slip back into your old habit.
But then, instead of focusing on goals, why don’t you have a system?
The difference between goals and system is that for a system, you become more consistent such that even after you finish your goal, you keep doing what you’ve been doing to achieve your goal.
It eventually becomes a part of you and that’s how you form that habit.
Goals come with short-lived happiness.
You can take losing weight as an example. Let’s say you want to lose 30 pounds in a week. You work hard on this goal and in a week, you lose the 30 pounds.
It’s very possible for you to relax. Before you know it, you are back to old habits. This happens because you set a goal and you achieved it.
But if you set a system, you know that you consistently have to do things that would help you lose weight, not just for a short time, but something that you want to keep doing.
Habits
When it comes to habits, it touches 3 areas. It’s either you are trying to:
- achieve an outcome
- change a process
- become something
The emphasis here is on the ‘becoming something’. If you are trying to become something, it means that that’s all you want to be.
Identity
And you will want to do everything possible to become that person you want to become.
For example, if you want to break off from smoking, you have to give yourself that identity that you’re not a smoker.
It’s until you have that inner identity and you are willing to become that person who is no longer a smoker, that you begin to take conscious efforts to break off.
This is unlike you saying, “I want to stop smoking.”
These are two different things.
“I’m not a smoker” and “I want to stop smoking” are two different statements and they are based on identity — who you’re becoming.
Summary
The summary of this part of the book is that habit is all about who you are becoming — not just what you are trying to do but who are you becoming.
What you’re becoming would help you form habits or break away from the kind of habits that are not helping you achieve the identity that you so desire.
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Share this with everyone who haven’t gotten a chance to read Atomic Habits but would be interested in a book summary.
Catch you in the next one.
I plan to do this as a 13-day series. So, in 13 days, you can learn all about the book like you read it yourself. This is Day 2.
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