6 AM: Wake Up
6:30-7 AM: Breakfast
7 – 10 AM: Aimless Panicking
10 AM – Noon: Questioning Whether I Should Be an Entrepreneur
Noon: Lunch
1 – 3 PM: Existential Crisis
3 – 4 PM: Sales Calls
“Hmm… I finished my whole list today, but earnings are still down. Weird.”

TIPS & TRICKS

Book Recommendation

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Psychology

Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

By: James Clear

“The quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits,” James Clear writes. “With better habits, anything is possible.”

When we are feeling encouraged, determined, and inspired, we can get onboard with this kind of a thing – yet far too many times, January’s New Year’s resolutions turn into February’s obligations and March’s regrets. It isn’t just resolutions, either. It is far too easy to recognize an area where we need to make improvements, but it’s hard, and the natural thing to do is beat ourselves up over our lack of self-discipline.

James Clear asks the question, ‘What if we are looking at the problem all wrong?’

“Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits,” Clear writes. “Habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance.” He likens the early stages of habit-formation to changing the temperature in a frigid room with an ice cube on the table. If the room is 15 degrees Fahrenheit, and you successfully raise the temperature to 25 degrees, the ice cube will appear unchanged, and yet you have made significant progress toward your goal. Once it hits 33 degrees, that ice will melt. You’re on your way, even if there aren’t impressive visible signs of that fact just yet.

“You should be far more concerned with your trajectory than with your current results,” Clear says. “Mastery requires patience.”

This book is an intriguing addition to the business and general self-help cannon, because it does not offer a quick-fix, unrealistic solution to our problems. What it does instead is provide a behaviorist framework for slowly changing your life and business, 1% at a time. Clear affirms the value of goal-setting for giving us something to aim at, but argues that we are overly fixated on goals, which are the lowest level of change.

“Goals are good for setting direction; habits are good for making progress.”

In this transformational book, James Clear will teach you how to hack your system, build sustainable, long-term habits, and set yourself up for success. His description of “The Habit Loop” and how you can harness the power of the four-step process your brain is already taking every day is inspiring and practical. If you haven’t yet read Atomic Habits to help you stick with your financial goals, your personal development goals, relationship, fitness, or other goals… What are you waiting for?

“Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.”

You can check out Atomic Habits here.

Quick Hits

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• A case before the Oklahoma Supreme Court could pave the way for religious charter schools.
• The NBA bans a player for life over a sports-betting scandal. The Wall Street Journal suspects this is just the beginning of the burgeoning field of legal sports gambling debasing the sports industry as a whole. Oh, and his brother is routinely name-dropped by Christian hip-hop artist Andy Mineo.
• High school teens will need to find a new supplier of church clothes: Express has filed for bankruptcy and will close nearly one hundred stores.