Strategies I Used
Habit Stacking
Habit stacking is one of the first ideas from Atomic Habits that really hit it off to me. The idea is quite simple instead of trying to create a brand new habit from scratch, you “stack” it on top of something you already do consistently one of your already built habits. That existing habit acts like a trigger to help you remember the new one. For example, instead of just saying “I’ll start going over my notes daily,” I built the habit by saying: “After I eat dinner, I’ll open up and read my notes for a few minutes.”
What made this so effective for me was the fact that something like eating my dinner was already automatic daily task. I didn’t have to think about doing it. It was already a solid part of my routine. Tying the new habit to something reliable like that gave it structure and made it harder to forget. At first, I still struggled to actually follow through. Sometimes I’d eat my dinner then do something like grab my phone or get distracted with games. So even if I got distracted a few time attempting to build this new habit that was okay.
In the book the author brought up a nice idea that habits are built little by little and not all at once. It's okay to only get a 1% improvement every week as this is how we build our habits as gradual improvements.
Over time, I noticed that the stacked habit started to become more and more automatic. It wasn’t perfect every single day, but even hitting it 3-4 times a week helped me feel more in control. It helped to set the tone for the rest of my day and gave me a clearer sense of what I needed to prioritize. Without that small start, I would’ve probably kept putting things off and scrambling last minute like I always used to do.
The 2-Minute Rule
The 2-minute rule is another strategy from the book that seems almost too basic at first, but it’s actually a super helpful technique. The idea is: when building a new habit, make it so easy that it can be done in two minutes or less. The goal isn’t to change your entire life all at once — it’s just to get moving. James Clear calls it the “gateway habit.” You’re just trying to begin the first sentence, not finish the whole essay, you know?
I applied the 2-minute rule mostly when I was facing big assignments, like a group project — the kind that usually made me want to avoid even starting. Instead of telling myself, “I’m going to complete all this work in one night,” I’d say, “I’m just going to look at the assignment and write a couple lines of code.” That small act of starting was enough to kill that initial barrier. Once you break through that, you usually end up working way past two minutes.
One specific example that stands out was when I had a big group coding project due for another class. I had been dreading it because it was such a large assignment, and no one else on the team had started it yet either. Using the 2-minute rule not only helped me get started, but also helped jumpstart my teammates — once they saw my work was in the repo, they began contributing too.
Honestly, this rule changed the way I look at most tasks now. Whether it’s sending an email, starting a project, or even cleaning up my desk, I tell myself, “just start for 2 minutes.” And almost every time, that momentum carries me further. The hardest part is just starting, and this rule gives me a way to beat that first barrier.
