The coaching profession can be older than it seems at first sight. Once people had mastered primitive skills, the acquired knowledge had to be passed on to the next generations. That is how the rudiments of training activities came into being. Compared to the teachers of antiquity, the modern work of a trainer is more complicated, because it includes not only pedagogical but psychological aspects. A football coach faces many challenges every day that hinder professional and personal growth. The development of useful and the rejection of bad habits can help overcome such problems. This gives rise to the necessity of studying the most effective methods of mastering habits. This paper aims to discuss the effect that the book Atomic Habits by James Clear has had on my career as a football coach.
First of all, it is necessary to mention that the main idea of Atomic Habits is to motivate the reader to change their typical way of thinking. For example, Clear argues that all failures related to learning new skills are not caused by laziness, but the lack of a precisely defined goal (Clear, 2018). This thought is deeply reflected in my mind, as I was always faced obstacles on my professional path of the sportsmen. Difficulties with training and no strength for a morning run could be dictated not by the desire to rest, but by the impossibility to formulate a clear goal. The current profession of a football coach imposes a significant responsibility because, as a specialist, I have to work on the weaknesses of students and develop their sports and intellectual skills. Therefore, discipline and self-organization should be my firm rules. After a long search for a solution to the problem of more effective self-study, I turned to the book Atomic Habits to find the answers.
This book is structured in such a way that it gradually introduces the reader to the technology of the consolidation of new habits. Moreover, James Clear provides a large number of examples from life situations to better describe the ideas put forward. This makes it easier to understand the rules of authorship. As an athlete, I would like to spend more time on physical training: an exercise in the gym, and morning and evening running. However, I do not always have enough free time for sports. Hence, I regularly postpone my training to the next day. To create the habit of doing exercises according to the schedule, I found it useful to have a method of precise goal setting. James Clear writes that the critical factor in the failure of a new habit is not understanding what a person wants to achieve. For example, instead of saying, “I should go for an evening run,” I can say, “I should run for thirty minutes.” At first, this does not seem like a significant step towards self-development, but several days of practice have shown the opposite. When an exercise was motivated by a specific task, I had more strength and desire to do it.
The author writes that human life consists of hundreds of solutions, but everyday habits cause almost each of them. In other words, it is not the choice to have dinner at home or go to a restaurant that plays a significant role, but what leads to this choice. If a person has fresh vegetables at home, the decision is likely to be made in the direction of home food. On the contrary, if one feels hungry in the street, the restaurant is most probably the place where dinner will take place. These are incredibly essential thoughts that give a different perspective on familiar issues.
As a specialist, I would like to spend more time studying new training techniques and exploring current trends in professional football. In this regard, the option of an earlier wake-up call was considered to be able to complete more tasks. The book Atomic Habits gives a direct answer to how making a habit of first waking more productive and more comfortable to perform. In particular, using the methods described by the author, I automate morning wakeups with a small action, such as switching on an electric coffee kettle. In fact, there is a critical link between wake-up and coffee, as the entire volume of morning tasks, like a snowball, develops gradually. An early wake-up is necessary so that I turn on the kettle and then take a shower and go for a jog. It is impossible not to notice that the action turns out to be automated, which, according to Clear, helps to strengthen the new habit.
In general, at this stage, it is still difficult to determine how much Atomic Habits influenced my career. Since I have only recently finished reading, I am only trying to incorporate some of the lessons learned into the practice of a football coach. Some changes have already been noticed, such as a simpler perception of physical activity by specifying a goal. In addition, Clear’s book helped to think about the mistakes that I made trying to implement new habits. It should be noted that in the past, the habits that I wanted to achieve in my lifestyle were quite complicated. In particular, I could set myself a goal to read a thematic book about the work of a football coach, but I was not always able to finish reading. With the help of the rule created by James Clear, I set myself the goal of reading one page a day in precisely two minutes. This effect strongly affects the psychological aspect of reading, making professional tasks easier. These factors may lead to the conclusion that Atomic Habits has motivated me to reach new heights and self-development.
Reference
Clear, J. (2018). Atomic habits. Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group.