Why habits matter

“Keep it in the red”

I yell that almost every day at practice, as the girls start their warm up with two laps around the courts. Our courts are blue, with red background, and I remind them to watch their feet, to stay in the red outside the white lines, and to pay attention to what they are doing. Run full laps and finish strong to the net post.

I ask the team, “why is it important for you to keep it in the red when you run your laps?” The girls are fairly well versed at this point, having heard me riff on this since February 22, or for 1, 2, or 3 years that they have been on the team. “To focus on what we’re doing,” says one. “To run the right way,” says another. Yes, those are great answers, on point. There is a right way to do things….both in sports and in life. I do not want my team members to rip themselves off, take the easy way out, lapse into a moment of laziness, or develop a bad habit. Even during a simple warm up run, which is something that might seem to them as mundane or insignificant.

Underneath it all, I believe that the little things matter. A lot. Little things make big things happen. Little things are the building blocks, and serve as the foundation for any system. We talk a lot in the sports world about the process. You have probably heard the expression, trust the process. But the process is only as strong as the foundation upon which it is built. James Clear talks about this in his book, Atomic Habits (highly recommend, great read). He describes how our habits create our systems; we do not rise to the level of our goals, but fall to the level of our systems. Our performance in life is really based on the system created by our smallest actions, our habits. “Habits are like the atoms of our lives,” writes Clear. Just like atoms are building blocks of life, the smallest unit of ordinary matter that has chemical properties, habits are the smallest units of a system. Each habit in and of itself might seem small, or insignificant in the moment, but when we develop and string together purposeful habits, they compound into a system that gets great results, results beyond the scope of the individual habits. The ‘whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ kind of results. It may not happen right away, but dedicated consistent pursuit will at some point translate. Mastery requires patience.

So keeping it in the red is an atomic habit. It seems small and insignificant in the moment, but it is “a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do, but is also the source of incredible power; a component of the system of compound growth.”

On the matter of habits, little things make big things happen.