A procrastinator’s attempt to build good habits
Exploring how to build habits and what pitfalls to avoid when it comes to self-improvement.

The first of January is the start of a new year, and with a new year comes new aspirations and goals. Therefore, it seems ironic that the second Friday of January is called “Quitter’s Day,” when we give up on our New Year’s resolutions and goals.

We’ve all picked up habits that never stuck, which is why many of us have failed to keep up our resolutions. That said, this article will explore what actually makes habits stick, as I also touch on my own experience and share my two cents.

Last summer, after closing out my worst semester thus far, I felt like I needed to make a change. So I decided to read Atomic Habits by James Clear. In fact, many articles about self-improvement reference Atomic Habits. 

In 2025, I tried and failed to implement strategies from Atomic Habits. This January, I decided to re-evaluate myself and try again. To my surprise, some methods worked.

I’ll touch on my experiences with Clear’s methods, where I failed, and how I’ve gotten back on the right track. I want to be clear (an unfortunate pun) that this article is not a summary of Atomic Habits. It’s a case study on how I tried to start new habits based on the book, in the hopes that something in my experience strikes a chord with you.  

A focus on changing my identity

One of the concepts that struck me from Atomic Habits was the idea that you can change your behaviour by focusing on who you wish to become. Clear explains that habits or behaviours often arise from how we view ourselves. For example, I signed up to write articles for The Medium because I identify as a writer. Or, I eat Indian food because I identify as an Indian.

Both of these behaviours, like writing articles or eating Indian food, are automatic—they are habits for me. They are automatic for me because of my self-belief. I was enamoured with the idea of changing myself through my self-perception.

So, I decided to write down some identities I wanted to develop, things like “I want to be someone who exercises” or “I want to be someone who does research.” Then, I read these notes each day to reaffirm my belief in those identities. 

The results did not work, however. For one thing, I didn’t read the affirmations every day, because that was another habit I needed to develop. But more importantly, I completely misunderstood Clear’s point on how to change your identity.

Rather than the message inspiring me to rethink who I am and take action, I needed to take action first to reframe my identity. If I want to identify as someone who exercises, I need to start consistently exercising. If I want to identify as a researcher, I need to start consistently researching. 

Clear describes this as “voting” for your identity. Each time you act, you cast a vote for that identity. And gradually, the more votes you accumulate, the more your self-image changes.

This failed experiment of mine led to my lack of progress from September to December in 2025. One failed day led to another, and it was a vicious cycle where I couldn’t see myself recovering. However, in January 2026, I decided to re-evaluate my position.

Systems over goals

Usually, when we want to start a new habit, we set a goal and try to achieve it. However, that isn’t a very sustainable approach to building habits, because goals only give short-term motivation. 

Take the example of studying. For many students, including myself, our goal for studying is often just to pass the exam. Our act of studying is simply fueled by upcoming exams. We’ll study particularly hard right before the exam, and slack off after it’s done. We have no impetus to continue studying and develop the habit.

Clear suggest that instead, we should focus on developing an appropriate system. Rather than worrying about your goals, create a robust system that ensures you study every day. Analyze what you are doing right now, and what you need to fix to develop strong habits.

Taking this into consideration, I decided to take a look at what was hindering me. 

Taking a deeper look

First, I thought about the identities I wanted to develop. I decided to focus on the following: first, I want to be someone who exercises daily. Second, I want to be someone who researches and explores things after school or work.

I looked up what I have been doing so far. While I was successful in exercising or being productive after school for one or two days in a row, it would all crash down when I experienced a bad day. I wouldn’t have enough motivation to continue doing the careful things I planned out. 

When I came home, I felt exhausted and not motivated to do anything. Then I would be sucked into YouTube Shorts for the entire evening until midnight. The lack of sleep then disrupts the rhythm of my ideal lifestyle, and I start spiralling out of control. Based on how I failed, I decided to tackle my problems one by one. 

Baby steps through minimal but meaningful habits

Clear defines four components to make a good habit:

1. Make sure the habit has an obvious cue
2. Make sure the habit is attractive
3. Make sure the habit is easy to do
4. Make sure the habit is satisfying

When I wanted to develop a habit of exercising, I decided to buy a purple exercise mat. Every night before I sleep, I would set up the exercise mat and shoes, so the first thing I see in the morning is the shoes and mats—they were my obvious cue. 

I noticed that, given my reluctance to exercise, it would be unlikely for me to drag myself to a gym, so I decided to exercise at home to make the habit easier.

I also started to keep track of every day I exercised. This showed me how much progress I was making and provided a sense of pride and reward.

However, despite optimizing my habits, I rarely exercised in the morning. The exercise mat started to be more like a rug. The tracking system that was supposed to reward me started to depress me instead. 

Then I realized the issue: I hadn’t made the exercise easy enough for me. I planned on doing 30-minute workouts from day one. However, for someone who hadn’t consistently exercised for a long time, that was still a large barrier to cross. I was so focused on doing the most I could and being perfect, but I couldn’t maintain that perfection.

Clear advises that we should start with a two-minute habit. Eventually, after doing that two-minute habit for multiple days, we’ll get used to the idea of doing that activity every day. Then we’ll start to expand the activity on our own.

I decided to go with a different approach. I defined my minimum viable exercise: 10 pushups, 10 situps and 10 squats. I made a rule—as long as I did the minimum exercises, I would earn one exercise point. However, if I decided to exercise for 30 minutes that day, I would stick with it until it’s completed.

This approach helped me move forward on days when I feel like it’s too hard to do exercise for 30 minutes, and it made exercising easier for me. Currently, I’ve been able to consistently exercise multiple days in a row. 

Restructuring my system

Clear also explains that we can reverse the four components of a good habit to break a bad habit: make the habit’s cue invisible, make it unattractive, make it harder to do, or make it unsatisfying. However, this was hard to do with my obsession with YouTube Shorts.

I deleted the YouTube app from my phone to make it harder, but I could just search for YouTube on Google. Furthermore, the cravings hit me whenever I was feeling bored at home, triggering a spiral.

I tried to quit YouTube by not accessing it at all, but I couldn’t do it. Other than YouTube Shorts, there are a lot of content creators I enjoy on YouTube. Giving up on it meant not seeing those content creators as well. But merely watching their videos lured me into shorts, and this addiction would ruin my day.

I couldn’t make YouTube invisible, unattractive, harder to access or unsatisfying. So, I just restructured my schedule to restrict YouTube.

Instead of completely banning it, I decided to only watch YouTube on Sundays. That has surprisingly worked for me so far. I haven’t binged on shorts or videos for a while now. With this tiny modification, I was able to be rid of a habit that’s bothered me for a while.

Although it doesn’t seem to have much effect, because then I dived into bingeing anime. While anime is better than YouTube Shorts, content-wise, it doesn’t really solve my issue, which leads to my next point.

The appropriate environment

Clear explicitly discusses the idea that motivation isn’t enough to carry a habit through. Rather, you need to create an appropriate environment for the habit to flourish. If you simply rely on motivation, you crash and burn on a bad day. But if you curate a proper environment, you can keep your motivation high despite your mood. 

In this case, my house is not a proper environment for me to do any serious work. I live in a one-room basement, and I do everything there. I eat, watch television, wash dishes, fold clothes, sleep, and occasionally exercise at home. This is a place of relaxation for me. It’s no wonder I can’t properly focus on work at home. The environment has set my mind up to drift to other things.

Recently, I’ve had to write three articles for The Medium. I was having a particularly good week, so I was able to sit down and start writing at home. But I could barely get past the first three paragraphs of my first article. Then, on the day before it was due, I decided to write at Tim Hortons. Within that hour, I was “in the zone” and started working through the entire article. 

I realized that for me, the best environment to achieve my goal of researching and exploring knowledge is outside of my house, away from distractions. So, I have been exploring different locations to help me become more productive in my off time.

The final reflection

I’m still in the process of constructing a system that works for me. It’s not perfect yet, given the fact that I am writing this article at 5:47 a.m. after pulling an all-nighter two hours before my shift starts at work.

However, I am starting to be more consistent. I’m able to identify what needs to be improved and implement systems according to changes I want to make. I hope that my observations and experience have helped you in your self-improvement journey.