Habits

I wanted to get better at writing. My plan: “I’ll write every day.” What happened: Day 1: Wrote 500 words. Felt great. Day 2: Forgot to write until 11 PM. Rushed 200 words. Day 3: Too tired. Skipped. Day 4: “I’ll write tomorrow.” Day 7: Hadn’t written since Day 2. The problem: I relied on willpower and memory. Willpower is finite. Memory is unreliable. Then I built a system. The system: ...

January 1st, 2022. I made a resolution. “This year, I’m going to become a 10x better developer.” My plan: Learn 5 new frameworks Build 3 major projects Read 20 programming books Contribute to 10 open source projects Ambitious. Exciting. Completely unrealistic. By February 15th, I’d read half a book, started (not finished) one project, and felt like a failure. The problem: I was chasing big, dramatic improvements. The thing nobody tells you: Big improvements don’t compound. Small ones do. ...