Why Tiny Changes Are the Real Path to Aiming Up
Jordan Peterson, Scott Adams, and I walk into a coffee bar.
It sounds like the start of a joke, but it isn’t. It’s exactly the kind of conversation I’d love to have been part of—sitting with them, coffee in hand, picking their brains about what they think it looks like to be Aiming Up in our chaotic world.
Since that won’t be happening, I'll settle for reflecting on their writings (and some of my own thoughts from previous posts here on aimingUp.blog).
Scott Adams, in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, focused on the frame-changing truth that systems beat goals every time. “Goals are for losers”, he says. They're future-oriented, specific, and leave you in a constant state of "not yet there." Systems, on the other hand, are repeatable processes that tilt the odds in your favor day after day, even through failure. Adams unapologetically drove home his belief that winners build systems while losers chase goals. Systems work for the long-haul.
Jordan Peterson's Rule 4 from 12 Rules for Life grounds us with healthy expectations. While we may not have specific goals, we do have a trajectory. "Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today." It's a call to incremental, honest progress—focusing on your personal trajectory and velocity instead of endless social comparison that breeds resentment and disappointment. There will always be someone who currently excels beyond you in at least one area. We tend to beat ourselves up because we focus on comparing ourselves to those people, not our potential.
Now it's a Party!
In walks James Clear. Now it’s a party!
His book Atomic Habits takes those ideas to heart and runs with them. Clear shows how we literally become our habits: small, atomic (tiny but powerful) changes compound into remarkable results. He puts it succinctly:
That's the core revelation. Grand ambitions without the right daily routines are just daydreams.
There is a lot of justifiable pushback on the “self-help” genre. While the works of Adams, Peterson, and Clear certainly fall into the self-help category, each are stand-outs for being very grounded, pragmatic, and rigorous. I want to steer clear of typical pitfalls of oversimplification, short-term change, false hope, a substitute for real help, simplistic solutions, manipulation, and even funnels to upsell to other products. Instead, I want to emphasize slow, steady, sustainable growth that highlights who and what you want to become. When you see the need for help outside of yourself, get it. When you try and fail, learn, without harsh judgement. I want to ensure that we’re aiming to be more genuinely “us”. We’re not defining success as fitting someone else’s mold for us, we’re targeting being the best, most complete version of ourselves.
If you've ever felt stuck despite big goals, or burned out from comparison, this is for you. If you’ve achieved big goals, only to discover that they didn’t fulfill the way you’d anticipated, that’s not surprising. It's normal to ask, "okay, what now?" Just pick a bigger goal?
Additionally, one of the most common struggles in achieving goals is that they’re a struggle against what we genuinely want. What do I mean? Consider someone who wants to run a marathon. Do they want to run a marathon or to be a runner? Or do they want to finish a marathon or run a marathon? Do they view the training as a painful, unfortunate part of the process that they'll stop as soon as the marathon is over? Or is running regularly and with purpose an obvious part of the system of being a runner?
In another example, a person who wants to lose weight by exercise and diet – do they want to be a fit, healthy person, or just lose 20 pounds? What happens when they lose the 20 pounds? Are they now free from their diet and exercise regime? Will they reward themselves with a donut or milkshake because the healthy food was a burden? However, the “health-focused person” will view the healthy food as part of their identity. If a donut is still considered a "treat", they're still conflicted in their identity. It doesn't align with who they really are or want to be.
Becoming The Person Who Would
This, then, is the million dollar question: how do I become the person that will, naturally, achieve the outcomes I know I want, not the outcomes that are the logical conclusion to who I am today?
Build the right systems—tiny habits that make good behavior obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying—and you start voting for a better identity with every action.
Clear creates a practical blueprint. Habits aren't chores; they're votes for your identity. Small actions compound, environments shape behavior more than motivation, and the ultimate win is becoming the person who naturally does the right things.
Consider that if you improve by 1% per day in something, after a year, you won’t be 365% (3.65x) better, you’ll be 37x better than when you started. Persistence is the key. Persistency for 6 months yields a modest increase of 6x, while a 2-month commitment garners a 70% improvement. (The math, if you’re interested: 1.01365, 1.01182, and 1.0160, respectively). That’s the power of compounding interest! On the flip side, consider the compounding negative impact of a bad habit. I’ll just leave that out there.
In this series we’ll take a look at Clear's framework for developing good habits and putting aside our bad habits. We reverse engineer our ambitions to gradually, deliberately, and intentionally become the person we need to be.
Clear's framework consists of his Four Laws of Behavior Change:
- Make It Obvious (and the Inversion: Make It Invisible)
- Make It Attractive (and the Inversion: Make It Unattractive)
- Make It Easy (and the Inversion: Make It Difficult)
- Make It Satisfying (and the Inversion: Make It Unsatisfying)
For each “Law” we’ll look at creating positive behaviors and, what he refers to as the “inversions”, where we change our bad or unhelpful behaviors. We’ll see how Clear's practical tools amplify Adams' systems mindset and Peterson's emphasis on meaningful, self-directed growth.
Admittedly, small habits aren't sexy, but they're no joke—they're how we actually aim up.
Please join us at the bar and keep Aiming Up!
