Choices and systems
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“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you think you are.” —James Clear (https://mobile.twitter.com/jamesclear/status/1048612840615997441?lang=en)
One of my favourite films is the US remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris. There’s a great moment in the story where one character says to another: “There are no answers, only choices.”
That line really stuck with me.
It’s a reminder that we are not the sum of the story we tell ourselves or tell others.
Rather, we are the product of our choices.
Every choice is the expression of a habit we have: good ones and bad ones. You and I as creative pros have an obligation to ourselves to check both kinds of habits on an ongoing basis, because that’s what it means to have a sense of agency (https://us4.campaign-archive.com/?u=89226eb68936fc712577977b8&id=f2d1272f9d) and self accountability.
James Clear, in his insightful book Atomic Habits (https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits) , points out that good and bad habits each require their own strategy.
If you want to create a good habit, he says, make it attractive, obvious, easy to do and satisfying.
If you want to break a bad habit, he adds, make it unattractive, invisible, and both difficult and unsatisfying to engage in it.
That approach has potential whether you’re changing your nighttime routine in your personal life or tackling procrastination in your professional life.
But we warned. Both habit breaking and habit making can be undone by one thing: your mistaken belief in the need for perfection.
To explain, I’ll give you another example.
A few years ago, I made a decision to be healthier and to exercise more. And just like everyone else, things went great for a while until I wasn’t losing weight anymore. Then frustration set in.
I struggled for a while, because I lost sight of what that entire exercise was really all about. It wasn’t about the weight. That’s just a goal built around a binary question—did you gain or did you lose?—and it set me up for failure more than success.
The point to my efforts was about embracing better habits and repeating them. Nothing more. Once I understood this, things got better.
Systems—not goals—are the reliable predictor of meaningful change. So make your choices. Live into them by building small, repeatable steps that you can do daily. As my favourite Buddhist monk reminds me about dealing with things that feel difficult: this is not hard to do.
Very best, Patrick
P.S. How does this newsletter help you? Drop me a line. And yes, you bet I read and reply personally to each and every note.
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