061 Atomic Habits for Accountants, Pt. 2: The Four Laws | #FreshBookReports Vol. 2

Episode 61

#FreshBookReports @ Accounting High (the miniseries)

Recorded March 4, 2022

Back with us today is Twyla Verhelst, CPA. Twyla is the distinguished director and leader of the FreshBooks Accounting Partner Program. She supports and empowers other accounting professionals as they help small businesses flourish.

Thank you to our sponsor of this miniseries, Freshbooks!

Atomic Habits for Accountants Part 2 of 3

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear. Whether you’ve read the book or you haven’t, this series of episodes will definitely open you up as to why it has been a favorite among our peers.  Scott and Twyla give us an in depth look at what the four laws of behavioral change are and how we can use these laws to make or break our habits. Let’s hear how they applied these laws in their professional and personal affairs.

Shoutout Dhruv & Vimal (vic) Bava, CPA

4 It's a great book, an easy read. It’s something that changes based on your perspective and worldview at the time

Shoutout James Clear

8 1st law of behavioral change: Make It Obvious (Make It Invisible)

9 Scott shares a personal shift that he did in breaking a bad habit

12 Travel season: How can we keep up with our habits as we move away from our usual spaces

14 2nd law of behavioral change: Make it Attractive (Make It Unattractive)

15 Good habits can be very difficult to keep up with in the short-term

16 Ensuring that you do the things that are working towards your future self and where you’re going

18 Making “rewards” work towards our habit building

Shoutout to LuluLemon & MeetUp

21 3rd law of behavioral change: Make It Easy (Make It Difficult)

23 When a habit get easy and it gets automatic, that’s when it gets Atomic

27 It’s finding the time for that action and making that action easier and automated

31 Make the bad habits difficult

34 4th law of behavioral change: Make It Satisfying (Make It Unsatisfying)

35 What is rewarded is repeated

36 Habit tracking is part of the rewards. It’s obvious, attractive, and satisfying.

39 What should we track? Scott gives us an example of how tracking habits became beneficial to his accounting firm

42 It’s better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all

44 Scott and Twyla wrap up the 2nd part of this series with the 4 laws of behavioral change, building good habits and breaking bad habits as follows:

• Building Good; make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying
• Breaking Bad; making it invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying