Giving the Way You Live a Software Update
By: Connor Hearld
Tags: Self Improvement, Minimalism, Creative, Change, Self

This sounds far more complex than it is.

Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

If you have read any of my other articles then you know that I like to keep things as simple as I can. Having a simple and meaningful relationship with the way you live is one of the easiest ways to achieve general happiness amongst our busy world and individual lives.

Over the years, I and I’m sure many of you, have a read a handful of self development books. All of them acting like a written handbook for my success — our success. Or at least that is what every single one of these books has told us and made us believe. If you’re like me then likely you need a little bit more than motivational pages to feel inspired to make change in your life.

Of the countless books that I have either listened to or read, not a single one of them made as much of an impact as Atomic Habits. While I give it credit for being an easy read and informational, there was a single fact that stood out among the rest. It only takes 66 days to form a completely new habit. After listening to those words, I had a sort of eagerness to put it to the test. The way I saw it, I was either going to have a few productive days and end up back where I was or a completely new habit to have an increasing benefit to myself.

To test it myself, I started doing a couple things to really nail in a new habit or fail miserably. I started running nearly every weekday with ever increasing distances followed by weekends of rest, as well as starting on a vegan diet for the increased challenge. I did this for well over 66 days. Breaking my weekday run on occasion but not letting it break me down and following it with another successful run. The success of my vegan diet being broken only once by my forgetfulness to routine and taking a sip of a plain latte.

I broke weekday runs, I broke my vegan diet. Something I did not break was my attention to trying for 66 days to make the new habit.

With that information and proof, it got me thinking, if I could do this, then what else could I do? Viewing my life like gaining perks or like a software update meant that I could start pushing out changes that I want make to my lifestyle in as many as 66 days. That is 5.53 potentially major changes to your life a year simply by just trying at least 5 different things and keeping at it. Five incremental changes a year doesn’t sound like it could make much of a difference, but choosing the right thing to change is where the magic of this starts to come in. Say in my case, I chose running and a vegan diet. Assuming I was doing both of those correctly and in a safe way, there is only benefits from these changes. Now assuming you take another objective to introduce to your life and you do it correctly and safely, you also could have a change that lasts for the one reason of wanting to do a task for 66 days alone. If this fact proves correct, then regardless of your deposition to continue the action for over 66 days, then it will become a habit by just the nature of your biology and brain. Of course there is the opposite side of the spectrum where 66 days does in fact not make a habit but acts like a sugar pill would, a placebo. Always with a surprise, we all know that those already work. So even if it doesn’t work but we believe it to work, it will.

Have I sparked your interest?

With that mentality in our daily lives, we can sculpt our lives into the forms and shapes we’d prefer. Let that take you for as far as it’ll go. Imagine 1 year with 5 major changes, then the next year with another 5, and then the year after that with 5 more. With a list of 25 things you want to accomplish, you could make leaps towards making those huge changes a new part of your life in just 5 years, even without stacking your 5 years. If you had say 3 new habits for every 66 days, you could make an astounding 16 major changes to your life a year. A total of 82 major life changes in just 5 years.

Astounding really when you think about.

This isn’t to say that it wouldn’t be difficult. It would be hard. REALLY hard. If you kept it up for 66 days though, it could change your life forever.

Would you take your 66 day plunge?