A Shared identity is your identity, and your tribe can work together to build good habits.
Atomic Habits Lesson 9 – Find Your Tribe
https://youtu.be/V-HspKaeMpA
“You are the average of the 5 people you associate with most.” Quote via Tim Ferriss.
After a story that compares gamblers to calendars, the question is posed: “How will you track the progress of your habits?”
Atomic Habits Lesson 8 – Habit Tracking
And remember, the calendar doesn’t lie.
Lesson 7, ‘Rewards and Mistakes’, examines two ideas. First, what are positive versus negative rewards? And then, what do you do when you make a mistake?
Atomic Habits Lesson 7 – Rewards and Mistakes
Most people fall out of good habits after a mistake because they don’t have a plan…
If ‘oops’, then what?
We are about to pass the half-way point of these 10 lessons. I hope that you are finding them useful.
Lesson 6 examines how identity habits are much easier than motivation. If I believe that I am someone who regularly or always does something, that’s a lot easier than motivating myself, and trying to convince myself, that I should do that same thing.
Atomic Habits Lesson 6 – Make it Rewarding
Lesson 5 is about reducing friction and habit stacking. How do you decrease or eliminate things that make your habits hard to get started, and how do you stack your habits so that they become an automatic process once you get started?
Atomic Habits Lesson 5 – Make Habits Automatic
This is the first ‘Storytime’ in the series, where I share a personal story. I share my fitness routine to exemplify how I use this lesson to my full advantage. My morning routine is automatic, and so I only have to initiate one habit and then the entire habit stack just gets done.
Lesson 4 looks at designing and priming the location where you do your habits, so that the environment works for you.
Atomic Habits Lesson 4 – Place Based Routines
Reduce friction and distractions, do your 2 minute planning, and then get to it!
Lesson 3 asks three questions:
Developing good habits starts with obvious intentions. This works well as part of the 2 Minute Planning suggested in Lesson 2.
Atomic Habits Lesson 3 – Make It Obvious
Lesson 4 will be shared on Monday, I’ll be taking the weekends off from these 10 lessons because they are being introduced to Inquiry Hub students on 10 consecutive school days.
Creating Lesson 1 was a comedy of errors.
Version 1: I have Descript which adds captions, but I didn’t use it for my upload, despite knowing that I have a hearing impaired student at my school. That wouldn’t do.
Version 2: I added the captions, re-uploaded to YouTube, and only then noticed that the captions spelled James Clear’s last name as Clare. That wouldn’t do.
Version 3: I uploaded the 3rd version and noticed my cover title said ‘Identity based Goals’. The whole video is about Habits, not Goals. That wouldn’t do.
Version 4: Is live and good enough!
I’m going to focus more on just getting these done now, rather than changing minor imperfections. That said, I’m open to feedback.
Atomic Habits Lesson 2 – The Two Minute Rule.
This goes more specifically into Two Minute Planning. I’m not sure if this follows the true intention of James Clear’s two minute rule, but I think it works well for students to ritualize a good habit.
I’ve had this ‘in the works‘ for a very long time. Here is lesson one of ten:
Lesson 1, ‘Identity Based Habits‘, is the first of 10 Lessons based on James Clear’s book ‘Atomic Habits’. It was created by Principal David Truss for Inquiry Hub Secondary Students.
I will share all 10 lessons here over the coming weeks. Atomic Habits is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I wanted to share what I’ve learned with students at our school. These students get a lot more unstructured time than most high school students, and developing good habits about using that time well is something that can drastically improve a student’s effectiveness and output.
I hope to help guide our students to better productivity.
I can’t describe the joy of participating in grad at Inquiry Hub. These students are amazing. Our student focused show, with performances and videos that highlight the whole school are such a community building and community honouring event. The night warmed my heart, and I teared up more than once.
Here is my grad address. I really don’t have more to say, other than it was an evening that recharged my battery. It reminded me of why I love my job.
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Now and the Future – iHub Grad Address 2024
Greetings Honoured Guests, Parents, Family Members, Teachers, and Students including our very special Grads of 2024.
In your yearbooks, I wrote this as part of my message to you:
Asking questions is key to learning and I think at Inquiry Hub we do a pretty good job of getting students to ask good questions… and then answer them. There is a lot of conversations, dialogue, and debate that happen inside our school walls, and from that students learn not just about things, but they also learn the skills to discuss and negotiate and support their ideas in meaningful ways… and sometimes even to change their minds. A growth mindset is so much better to navigate life with, compared to a fixed mindset.
In a civil society, dialogue is the one problem-solving strategy that should be sacred. To do this, free speech is essential. But right now, outside the walls of our schools, there is a culture of ‘attack the opposition’ that is very scary. We need to be resilient when hearing opposing views, and understand that, we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference. When we can’t have conversations with people that have different views, we don’t grow as a culture or as a society.
That was a message for right now. There is so much conflict and strife in the world, and it can sometimes feel a little bleak.
But here’s the thing, I’m really excited about the future our grads have before them. It’s a future that is beyond my ability to predict, but I’m going to try anyway.
Our grads understand how to see the world from multiple perspectives.
You understand the challenges but you are also solution oriented. And you are going to have tools and strategies that no other generation has had.
Here are four predictions:
All this to say that while it seems like us old folks have left you a pretty messed up world, we are less than a decade away from some key turning points where you have more freedom and choice, more access to cheap energy, and more free time than we could ever have imagined as recently as when you were in Grade 9.
It’s an exciting time to think about what the future holds, and when I think about you all as creators, artists, thinkers, dreamers, and leaders, I’m excited about your generation building the future I get to grow old in.
Inquiry Hub isn’t perfect, but it is a very special school. It is a place where our students feel they belong. A place where you get to be courageous learners and leaders, and a place that I hope you carry fond memories from.
To the class of 2024, I can’t wait to see what the future holds for you… and for what you will do to help shape that future. Be brave, be strong, and help build a community where everyone feels they have a place, and a way to contribute.
Thank you.
