Upon reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits, a book about how changing your actions by 1% each day will have a massive impact, I was left with lots of frameworks and strategies on how to build better habits and stick to them. However, one way of framing things that seems pretty tiny has really stuck with me. That is, the idea of switching your mindset when you are about to perform a task from “have to” to “get to”.
The idea here is that we often go about our days saying we “have to” finish that big project for work, we “have to” get up early and go for a run, or we “have to” watch your kid for the day. By simply re-framing these as “get to’s” your outlook on them immediately changes to a positive one. I get to work on that big project for work, let’s say its project managing a new website launch. To me, this is great. While I’m working on this website project I get to improve my WordPress skills, I get to develop on my project management skills, I get to improve how I collaborate and work with others with different skill sets, and I get to create an awesome website experience that I can look at and be proud of.
When you stay in the “have to” zone, things always seem less fun and there is fairly rarely an upside. There are always positives to be found and sometimes you just have to re-frame the problem to find them.