I’m going to do something a little different here. There won’t be anything Next Life related in this post, but I think you’ll enjoy this all the same. I’ve taken a couple free classes from self-publishing school among a few other things I’ve been focusing more on marketing this past week. I also purchased a lifetime subscription to 12 min books which is where this blog post stems from (I love listening to it before bed). One of the 12 min book summary I listened to is called Atomic Habits by James Clear.

So how does this relate to marketing and why might you be interested? To tell you the truth, it doesn’t relate to marketing, or anything specific for that matter. The premise is changing one aspect of your life and turning that into a habit can either become a noticeable negative, or a noticeable positive. One soda every so often, or pizza may not balance the scales (no pun intended) one way or the other, but if you do that every day it’s going to eventually affect your life.

An easy way to think of it is compound interest. Let’s take me for example. I currently have 50 followers on twitter. I was tweeting maybe 1-2 times a week (and that’s being generous for a lot of weeks), now is that going to do anything? Not really I may gain 1 follower every couple weeks. Now say I keep up what I’ve been doing these past few days and posting multiple times a day. It doesn’t need to be original posts it can be replies, post, or even a gif if appropriate for the context. That’s going to start compounding. The followers I gain will translate into more exposure as one or more are likely to retweet me every so often and then someone else will see it.

Remember, this concept holds true both for negative and positive changes. You might struggle to do, or not do, that one thing. Here’s where a little “cheat” comes in. Your brain craves dopamine (that’s why a lot of us are lazy, and if you don’t like your work you’re not motivated at all). Luckily for me when it comes to my work, those who know me know I’m overly passionate and hardly take a day for myself anymore.

So what is the cheat, you ask? Simple, reward yourself. Have a project you need to do? Do it and then have one of your favorite snacks afterward. Need to read a report or a book? You can do the same concept and then after so many pages switch to a book you enjoy, or watch an episode of something. Whatever gets that dopamine flowing and makes you “happy,” use that as your reward/cheat mechanism. According to James (though he used different phrasing) even something as simple as listening to music while doing the dishes can change your mind’s view on it. You may hate doing the dishes now, but if you keep listening to music, you really enjoy as you clean, soon enough you’ll actually look forward to it.

Now is that true? I’m not sure as there are other factors of how much you like the music vs how much you hate doing the dishes, or how often that reward is used when not doing the dishes that I think would weigh in. Perhaps there’s more to this in the full book. Remember that this was a 12 minute summary. But as for the original concept of atomic habits, I think it’s a brilliant concept and we should all try to better ourselves even if it’s by cutting out a guilty pleasure or habit.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the look into this book via a 12 min summary. If you want to check out the full book on amazon get it here. I’ll try to update more when I can, but as always, Stayed posted!