Over the past couple of months I have spent countless hours trying to find the best way to improve the way that I spend my time. In any topic, skill or ability, comes a large amount of dedication. I often find myself genuinely, deeply unsatisfied with the amount of progress I end up making on tasks, often times studying, but in relation to anything. I yearn to be a capable software engineer, yet find myself wasting time on meaningless tasks in nearly every task I pick up. I'd assign goals for myself, for each month and new year, attempt to micromanage my time and schedule, yet it was never something I could actually stick with, despite the countless digital reminders and sticky notes I plaster on my walls.

One of my goals I gave myself for 2026 was to try to become addicted to programming. How can someone fail as a Softawre Engineer if they are addicted to programming and learning. The majority of skills I have, I have grown immensely due to being personally addicted to it. My past hobbies, whether it be photography, playing guitar, illustration, all resulted from some form of personal addiction, and me wanting to do a task on a daily basis. I have always been this way, particularly hyperfocusing on something for months at a time until I get bored or plateu. I gave myself this goal under the guise that, if, I artificially gain the same addiction to this aspect of devlopment that isn't particularly my favorite as of now, I can at some point reach the level of proficiency I am pushing for. In the first month of trying this, I struggled, even trying to figure out how to artificially enjoy something. At some point in researching how to actually reach my goal I began reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. It is a book I stumbled across initially believing it wouldn't directly address my problem at hand, but I've found that it has restructured the way that I thought about this goal I set for myself in what seems to be a life-changing manner, something I plan on extrapolating to all other aspects of my life. I encourage anyone reading this to actually go through and read this book if you can, but for the sake of giving a high-level understanding, I wish to explain my biggest takeaways.

Habits allow for small improvements of even 1% to be compounded. Under the assumption that all readers have an understanding of exponential growth, it becomes clear how fast 1% can grow in terms of overall return. Given an entire year, with a 1% improvement each and every day, at the end of this period you would be over 37 times ahead of where you began. 1% on a daily basis seems very attainable, and looking at that return over a year makes it even more clear that putting in the effort, even if just a little bit, to whatever goal you are trying to achieve can go a long way. Clear also brought attention to the distinction of setting goals and finding a system. He argues that setting a specific goal, often will set you back in some manner, while changing your mindset to having a specific system set around growth can lead to a much better overall outcome and outlook on your own improvement. These two statements made me rethink the way that I thought about this goal, and many others I set. I always aspire to be a better person but struggle in actually making progress towards where I want to be. Somewhere along reading this I realized that the discipline alongside working towards something on a day-to-day basis may be more important than a short-term motivation would ever be. I found that I can apply this in many aspects of my life. I gave myself daily lists of tasks that I wish to become personal habits of mine. From simply learning a few phrases in Mandarin to assigning myself at the minimum of hour of programming, I find that I can turn these habits, given time, into an invaluable amount of progress.

I left out much of the details that make this very special book actually special, so please do read, but this was my quick, direct experience in applying his concepts into my own life. I truly believe that this could be what a lot of individuals need to get themself over a huge hump in their lives, but again this is personal so take all with that in mind.

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