A while back, I reread Atomic Habits.
Not because I hadn’t understood it the first time; I had. :)
I could explain identity-based habits.
I knew the four laws.
I could even quote the good parts.
But here’s what I noticed.
Nothing in my day had changed.
My habits were still relying on willpower.
My routines were still fragile.
And every few weeks, I felt like I was “starting again.”
So instead of rereading the book for insight, I tried something different.
I asked one question:
What would it look like if this book actually ran part of my life?
Not as motivation.
As infrastructure.
I took the ideas and turned them into a simple system.
Not a vision board.
Not affirmations.
A place where:
habits lived as action items, not intentions
every habit had a status (not started, implementing, mastered)
each one was tied to an identity I was trying to become
reviews were scheduled so nothing depended on memory
For example, instead of saying “I want better habits,”
I could see things like:
“Install habit tracker” — active
“Audit daily routines” — scheduled
“Design first ‘make it obvious’ cue” — queued
What surprised me wasn’t productivity.
It was relief.
I stopped asking myself:
“Am I doing enough?”
“Why can’t I stick to this?”
“What should I work on next?”
The system answered those questions for me.
Each morning, there was a small, obvious next step.
Each week, a short audit instead of vague guilt.
Each month, a review that showed what was actually compounding.
The book hadn’t changed.
My relationship to it had.
That’s the difference between reading a book and installing it.
I’ve been quietly building a small tool that helps do this; turning a book into a working structure you can actually use (I’m currently running it as a paid beta).
It’s not magic.
It doesn’t replace thinking.
It just removes the friction between knowing and doing.
If you want to try the beta tool, sign up here:
👉 https://cover-mind-json.lovable.app/
And if you want help installing a system like this for your degree or project, I also offer a small number of walkthrough sessions where we build it together.
I’ll share more about that soon.
For now, I just wanted to name this:
If your reading feels heavy,
it’s probably not because you’re lazy or undisciplined.
It’s because the ideas don’t yet have a place to live.
— Greg