There have been times in my life when I wanted to become a completely new person overnight. I think everyone feels this way from time to time. And sometimes, during these incidents, I would make some sweeping changes. I would start an intense workout program. I would dedicate four hours to writing. I would vow to run (ha!) every morning. In every one of these cases, I would last for maybe three days. And then it would be back to the old me.
In 2019 I did make some drastic overnight changes, mainly in breaking up with my wife and living on my own for the first time in over 20 years. Around this time, I did some reading on habits and lifestyle changes. Two of these were Atomic Habits by James Clear and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson.
In 2019, after the breakup, I faced a crisis of identity. I had devoted the last 20 years of my life to taking care of my family. And I was still trying to take care of my children, but they were 19 and 16, so the remit was different now. I’d always wanted to be a writer and had written a significant amount over the years (4 complete books, several of abandoned projects, and I’d had three short stories published in small press anthologies), but especially in recent years my consistency in writing regularly had waned. There were a lot of reasons for that, most of which had to do with a major years-long depressive episode stemming from having lived my life in the closet and being in a marriage that was not working.
We broke up April 25, 2019. I spent May and June kind of flailing, trying to make sure I had the resources to survive on my own (I did), making sure we worked out how each of our relationships with our kids would work (she wanted full custody of the one who was still a minor but I stayed involved), and also all the financial relationships that must be untangled when a long term marriage breaks up.
In all this process, my ex and I were gracious with each other, which helped. We were both done, and acknowledging this in reality was a relief, I think, to both of us.
Anyway, I now had to decide what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Nothing like a big question to wake you up. And I knew that now that my life was (mostly) mine again, I wanted to return to writing, which I hadn’t done consistently for a couple of years.
I decided I would finish the book I had in progress first and devoted myself to writing just 1000 words a day. I doubled that a couple of months later, when NaNoWriMo came around, and then went back to 1000. I started that one daily consistent habit, and over the course of the year, I finished that half-completed novel.
Now, it was probably objectively terrible. And way too long (237,000 words) and it set up a series of books that I now had no interest in writing, but it was done. That next August, I set myself the task of writing All the Promised Stars and then finished it in like 3 months. I’d gone from finishing nothing, not even short stories, to having 2 books completed at the end of 2020.
The thing was, I didn’t make any major drastic changes to get this done. I wrote 1000 words five days a week, which generally took me about an hour (I write fast or not at all, apparently). Over that year and a half, those little word counts added up in a big way.
This is something James Clear says in Atomic Habits. The book, and the concept of that, is named that way because little habits compound over time, leading to big results.
And that’s the thing with change, or when you’re working toward a goal. Making small changes over time is much more sustainable than changing your entire life all at once. Making intense changes might work for a few days, but you will quickly burn out.
Consistency compounds, Intensity combusts.
A lot of other things changed for me over the course of those several years. I entered therapy and became more comfortable with myself, leading to me coming completely out of the closet in 2020. All of these were smalls changes, baby steps, I added in over time. But they led to a complete transformation of my life.
When I decided I wanted to get control of my weight and work on my fitness, I remembered this. I started walking regularly and going to the gym 1-2 times a week. I did not become a gym rat. I did not show up at 5am four times a week for four hours. I found a couple of things I enjoyed doing, came up with a program that I could stick with, and over the course of a couple of years I lost 60 pounds and got into the best shape I’ve been in since my early 30s. It took time. It sucked at first but eventually my body got used to it. It took me about six months for my body not to hate lifting weights. I would have bailed on the whole project if I was trying to do it more often. And I’m left with a sustainable habit that has led to great change.
But it happens a little bit at a time.
You must stick with it though, even though it’s really easy to convince yourself that you’re making such little progress in every repetition, that skipping won’t matter. And technically, that is correct, but a little bit of skipping leads to more skipping and that kind of consistency adds up over time too. James Clear and other experts have noted that it’s probably a good idea never to miss more than once in a row. Two in a row is building a new habit.
You can apply this to anything. Do you want to finish your novel this year (or next)? Find a small sustainable version of the writing habit and STICK WITH IT. Maybe it will take you a couple of years with the amount of time you can devote to it. That’s fine. Those years are going to pass anyway, so you might as well have a completed novel at the end.
Same things with an exercise habit. If all you can manage every day is a ten-minute walk to the end of the street and back every day, that is a great place to start and those calories burned muscles built will add up over time.
Start that degree. But do you know how old I’ll be when I’m done if I can’t be a full-time student? The same age you’ll be if you don’t do it, you’ll just also have a degree or certification you can be proud of to show for it.
Consistency compounds. Intensity combusts. Small, consistent actions over time really add up. This is something that can be helpful to internalize. Few of us can become new people overnight (and probably don’t need to) but making important changes is possible.