Fractal Habits

So, we now know how to appreciate the wisdom of what not to do. We know how to form habits. We know how to efficiently spend our mental bandwidth. Now we know that habits are truly scalable.

The collection of habits that we’ve accumulated over the years make us who we are. Remember, “you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” 

Our habits are mostly hidden from us. Often, we’re not quite sure how we developed any given habit. We’d also be hard pressed to list all of the habits we have. As Warren Buffett said, “most behaviors are habitual. The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”

On the Tim Ferriss podcast, Gary Keller described an interesting view. He believes that most people simply accrue habits instead of forming good ones. We have to develop big, scalable habits in order to implement our plans. That is, if we’re thinking big.

Here’s our path forward. We become more mindful of our habits. We not only take a mental accounting of our good and bad habits, but we intentionally focus on forming new habits. 

Think back to fractals. They exhibit self-similarity. At every level, zooming in or out, the same pattern is exhibited at different scales. When thinking about our habits, begin by thinking about the big picture. Begin with the end in mind and work backwards.

Once you have a plan, zoom in to the smallest possible unit and start intentionally building atomic habits.