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If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero.

I haven’t blogged in a while, and trying to be better at this again. Lately, I’ve been trying to keep up with my health - eating healthy and trying to be a regular at the gym. There was one noticeable difference this time - I made it to the gym every day for 3 consecutive weeks. Looking back, I think a lot of improvements could be attributed to the way I’ve looked at habit formation after reading the famous book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. A lot of it is also because of Amazon’s Leadership Principles (which is where I work) which I also applied in my personal life. I find Amazon’s Leadership Principles and “tools” very wildly useful. I think it has slowly slipped into my thinking process and has definitely improved not just my productivity but also who I am as a person.

My favorite ones are “Ownership” and “Bias for Action”. At every point in my life where I’m confused or feel uncertain. I ask myself, if I don’t take ownership of this situation, who is going to? - the answer almost always leads me to have some bias for action. But in order to decide what action to take, I always try to look back and see what “datapoints” I have in order to take an action. Personally this has saved me (and in many cases people I care for) from a lot of trouble, and have resulted in many little successes over time.

Another great thing to learn from Amazon’s culture is relentless pursuit of metrics and mechanisms. I have tried to apply this at different factions of my personal life, at varying levels and have found it really helpful to not lose track of things.

Earlier this year, I tried to mix all of this with some of the techniques I learnt from Atomic Habits. I am pleasantly surprised with the outcome I’ve achieved. I began by thinking why is it so hard for me to stick with a workout routine? What prevents me from staying consistent?

I identified many “friction points” and used various techniques from the book and Amazonion way of doing things to figure out how I can overcome those -

  • I actually did not have enough work-out wear. The ones I had were either tight fitting and I just did not like the experience of putting them on.
    • Mechanism - Apply “Make it attractive” - I bought 10 new sets of workout attire which look good, and I was definitely excited to put them on.
  • I always stopped at at-most a week mark.
    • Mechanism #1 - This is where I decided to keep a streak count. I purchased a board and I update the streak count on it everyday I come back from the gym. Something about seeing it daily on the refrigerator helps me “realize” it. I’ve used habit forming apps in the past and I feel they are an abomination - they often use notifications which are just another source of distraction and our mind is conditioned to avoid ones we find distracting.
    • Mechanism #2 - I allow myself to just go to the gym for just a 5 minute session. If not that, I allow myself to just do a very basic one minute home workout. But once I start putting on the activewear, that often becomes a cue and I end up going to the gym and doing a full workout. I think this might have been one of the biggest reasons I’ve been able to stick with this.
  • I feel lazy going to the gym
    • Mechanism - I looked at why I was feeling lazy. In past, I’ve mostly done intense cardio in the gym. This time, I decided to explicitly not do cardio (or at least go with that intent). I allowed myself to do weight training. I have an app which made a nice strength plan for me, and I just decided to follow it, but I allowed myself to slice it in half if I was “just not feeling it” a certain day. In the first week, I skipped cardio entirely. In the second week, I did at most 5 minutes of cardio and kept cardio at the last.
  • I usually use Apple Watch to track my workouts, and it usually runs out of battery, which is an excuse “cue” for me to skip a workout.
    • Mechanism - This is where Amazon’s practice of finding a “mechanism” came in handy. I set a rule, whenever I put down Apple Watch off my hand, it has to be kept on the charging stand. I just cannot put it anywhere else.
  • There are no results
    • Mechanism #1 - I applied the two approaches suggested in the book - I remind myself that I am in the “valley of disappointment”. This actually applies to your body. The science says if you consistently workout, the physical changes only start to appear at a 3 month mark.
    • Mechanism #2 - I realigned thought process. The goal wasn’t to have abs. The goal is to be a part of “self-care club”. I want to be a person who takes care of himself. I aligned my whole identity around this. Because of this, I also started eating healthy - things that I had never imagined consuming before - raw fruits, leafy greens (hello, Kale !).

I decided to extend my habit with a few more, and using similar techniques

  • By habit stacking, I decided to drink a post-workout smoothie (make it “attractive”), I got myself all the ingredients in their most accessible form (make it “easy”). I printed out the menu from Juice Generation and a local smoothie place that I like, and I made sure I had all ingredients stacked in my refrigerator. Whenever I’m hungry, I just pick an option from this “menu” and make myself a smoothie. I make sure its sweet enough using Agave or Splenda or in many cases, Yogurt - this makes sure it is “satisfying”.
  • I decided to be better at French, and I actually feel much better at this now. I decided to enroll in a class, and added a future enrollment (just to make sure I don’t have a reason to stop).
  • I decided to limit online food ordering, I keep a count of number of times I’ve ordered in a month

I was now going to extend and add more habits (read more, and save more money). As I was adding these, I decided to compile all the superpowers I’ve used, and here they are.

Focus on the system, not goals

Goals are useful for setting direction, but systems are what actually produce results. “I want to get fit” is a goal. “I go to the gym every day and follow my strength plan” is a system. The difference matters because goals are binary: you either hit them or you don’t, and then what? A system keeps running. Every person who fails at the gym had the same goal as the person who succeeded. The difference was always the system.

I stopped thinking about outcomes and started thinking about processes. What do I do today? What do I do when I don’t feel like it? What’s the default behavior? When you build a good system, the goals take care of themselves.

Change your identity

This was probably the single most powerful shift. Instead of “I want to lose weight,” I started thinking “I am a person who takes care of himself.” That’s an identity statement, not a goal. And once you adopt an identity, your actions start to align with it naturally.

When I started thinking of myself as someone who belongs to the “self-care club,” eating kale didn’t feel like a sacrifice. It felt like something that person would do. Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become. You don’t need a unanimous vote. You just need a majority.

Take ownership

This one comes straight from Amazon. At every point where I felt confused or uncertain, I asked myself: if I don’t take ownership of this situation, who is going to? The answer is almost always nobody. Nobody is going to drag you to the gym. Nobody is going to meal-prep for you. Nobody is going to learn French for you.

Ownership means you stop waiting for the right moment, the right motivation, or the right circumstances. You just start. And when something breaks, you fix it instead of blaming the situation.

Make it easy, satisfying and attractive

These are three of the four laws from Atomic Habits, and they work remarkably well together. I bought workout clothes I actually wanted to wear (attractive). I allowed myself five-minute sessions (easy). I rewarded myself with a smoothie after every workout (satisfying).

The key insight is that your brain doesn’t care about long-term benefits when deciding what to do right now. It cares about what feels good, what’s convenient, and what’s appealing. So you design your habits to win on those dimensions. The long-term benefits come as a side effect.

Environment - “the invisible hand”

Your environment shapes your behavior more than your willpower ever will. I printed out smoothie menus and stuck them on my fridge. I stacked all the ingredients in visible, accessible spots. I put the charging stand for my Apple Watch right where I take it off.

You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your environment. If you want to eat healthy, fill your kitchen with healthy food. If you want to read more, put a book on your pillow. If you want to go to the gym, lay out your workout clothes the night before. Make the right behavior the path of least resistance.

Identify friction points, set mechanisms

This is where the Amazonian approach really shines. Before trying to fix anything, I sat down and actually listed out why I kept failing. Not vague reasons like “I’m lazy,” but specific friction points: my workout clothes were uncomfortable, my watch kept dying, I was doing cardio I hated.

For each friction point, I set a mechanism. A mechanism is not a promise or a resolution. It’s a concrete, repeatable process that removes the friction. “Whenever I take off my Apple Watch, it goes on the charging stand” is a mechanism. “I’ll try to remember to charge it” is not. The difference between people who stick with habits and people who don’t is almost always the quality of their mechanisms.

Two minute rule - Walk Slowly, But Never Backward

Or as an Amazonian would say it, have bias for action.

The two-minute rule says: when you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do. Want to read more? Read one page. Want to work out? Put on your shoes. Want to learn French? Open the app for two minutes.

This sounds almost too simple to work, but it does, because the hardest part of any habit is starting. I allowed myself to go to the gym for just five minutes. Most days, once I put on the activewear and walked in, I did a full workout. But on the days I genuinely only did five minutes, that was fine too. The streak stayed alive. The identity stayed intact. You can optimize a habit that exists. You can’t optimize a habit that doesn’t.

1% Change

This is the core idea from the opening quote. Getting 1% better every day doesn’t feel like much. On any given day, the difference between doing nothing and doing something small is almost invisible. But compounding is not linear. 1% better every day for a year is \(1.01^{365} = 37.78\). That’s not 365% better. That’s 3,778% better.

The flip side is equally true. 1% worse every day for a year is \(0.99^{365} = 0.03\). You’re left with almost nothing.

This is why systems beat goals, why streaks matter, and why showing up on the days you don’t feel like it is more important than crushing it on the days you do. The gains compound. But so do the losses.

80-20 Rule

Not all habits are created equal. The Pareto principle says roughly 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Once I started tracking my habits, it became clear that a few key behaviors were driving most of the improvement: consistent gym attendance, meal prepping on Sundays, and sleeping before midnight.

The temptation is to add more and more habits. Resist it, at least initially. Find the few things that move the needle the most and get those locked in first. Stack new habits only after the foundation is solid. I made the mistake in the past of trying to change everything at once. It never worked. This time, I started with just the gym. Everything else followed.

99% of all effort is wasted

This sounds depressing, but it’s actually liberating. Most of what you do won’t matter. Most experiments will fail. Most days will feel unremarkable. That’s normal. The 1% that works is what compounds into something meaningful.

The trick is to keep going long enough for the 1% to accumulate. James Clear calls this the “valley of disappointment,” the gap between what you expect to happen and what actually happens in the early days. You expect linear progress. Reality gives you almost nothing for weeks, then a sudden jump. The science backs this up: visible physical changes from consistent exercise typically appear around the three-month mark. Not the three-week mark.

So if you’re in the valley right now, whether it’s fitness, learning, career, or anything else, keep going. The compounding hasn’t kicked in yet. But it will.


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