Atomic Habits in Disc Golf

Atomic Habits, by James Clear, is a book that has a lot to offer anyone looking to improve almost any aspect of their life. As such, there is much that can be applied to disc golf that result in long-term gains. This post will take you through some of the take-aways that can be had. As usual, the most value will come from reading the book yourself.

Atomic Habits and Disc Golf – An Introduction

I am very pleased to have read this book, Atomic Habits, by James Clear early on in my disc golf “resurrection”. I feel as thought it is shaping how I approach my daily practice routine.

The general premise is that the book makes a strong, research-based argument, as to how building productive habits can completely change your life for the better. Obviously James Clear didn’t necessarily have disc golf in mind when he wrote it. He did address sports, however. Overwhelmingly, it was a general outline on how productive daily habits can lead to life-altering changes over the long haul.

It’s a long-term, acquisition of marginal gains, that adds up to irrefutable results over time kind of idea.

Applying that to disc golf… Sitting where I sit now as an objectively bad disc golfer, that sounds pretty good to me!

In this post, I’ll show you how it can have an impact on your game on the course, and your life off of it.

Atomic habits introduction

I suppose this is a spoiler, but this book isn’t exactly found in the “mystery” section of your book store. Plus, it’s the intro, so you’d know this after a few pages anyways…

Basically, James Clear starts right off by telling us that, at a young age, he had an accident playing baseball that set him back considerably. In fact, by the time he had graduated high school he hadn’t played more than a handful of innings (11) of varsity baseball.

How then, did he end up setting 8 school records at his college while also landing a spot on ESPN’s Academic All America Team and get awarded the President’s Medal, by the time he graduated college? (Do you see how there is value here?)

As you might have guessed, he created a series of beneficial habits that accumulated over time allowing him to thrive in the game he loved (and off the field as well).

The results were glaring. He was onto something. This realization spring boarded his career. Ultimately it led him to writing the book, Atomic Habits.

In it, he breaks down all the steps one needs to know in order to incorporate these life-changing habits into your life.

atomic habits and Disc golf

“Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development.”

I feel like that quote encapsulates it perfectly. We need to build on our successes little by little. Once we develop these knew skills we can look to add to them.

It also ties closely to this equation he uses:

“Habits + deliberate practice = Mastery”

Think about what goes on when you break down a disc golf throw. It’s a series of movements/skills stacked together in one fluid motion that hopefully results in an accurate shot or a made putt.

Trying to put them all together at once can be incredibly difficult and lead to lapses in other areas. One application of this concept is the slow, methodical building of these-micro skills that build on top of each other to improve results. When you master one through “deliberate practice” you can add to it.

Another way of looking at this might be, “practice drills (done well, frequently and in a logical order) are good.”

Zooming out, I think this can have an all-encompassing impact on your overall game by applying this to the mental aspect of the game as well.

When the physical and mental game are working in concert, you’ve got yourself a round!

A vote for quantity over quality

James Clear makes a very compelling case for quantity over quality. As usual he supports it all with research and evidence.

In this particular instance, he was citing a University of Florida professor, Jerry Uelsmann’s, experiment he performed on his photography students in the categories of quality vs quantity.

Both groups were performing semester long photography projects and would be graded on their final result .

One group simply had to take as many pictures as they could to get a good grade.

The other group had to submit just one picture, of the very highest quality they could muster in order to get their “A” in the course.

The result, as I already alluded to, were intriguing. All of the best photos came from the quantity group and not the quality group. (Even the professor was surprised!).

This is where the author, James Clear, injects his 2 cents and posits that the quantity group, because they were taking a lot of photos, were always experimenting with lighting, composition, darkroom methods and all the rest. Because of this, their photos got incrementally better over time.

In short, they were tinkering!

With each repetition, they would uncover one smaller element to make their photos that much better. When stacked together, they ended up with some pretty damn good photos.

The quality group was delving into the speculative, hypothetical world of photography. The end result was a lot of hot air and some subpar photographs.

Applying quantity to disc golf

I know some of you are dubious. But before I go on, know that the end thesis is not to just chuck as many discs as you can at a basket (in the case of putting) everything else be damned.

Remember from before, that “deliberate practice” is part of the equation.

But I do think there is a lot to be said for quantity and tinkering!

Here’s how I think of it. You know how some of rock and rolls most iconic guitar riffs are actually rather basic on the guitar? If you picked someone off the street, with no guitar experience, you could probably get them to play the riff to “Smoke on the Water” by the end of the day right?

But, then, let’s say you were blindfolded and you also got to hear a world-class guitar player play the exact same riff. Do you think you would be able to tell the difference?

Of course you would!

But it’s the same notes being played, so how is it so easy to pick out the expert? Because the world class player has honed their skills over decades of practice. They have the timing down to a tee. They know exactly where to press on the fretboard to create the best sound AND prevent that buzzing sound that is so endemic in beginner guitar players. The list goes on and on, but the beginner has none of it.

The expert has deliberately practiced their craft and all the skills inherent within the craft. There would be no doubt in your mind who the professional is, even with a blindfold.

Bringing it back to disc golf, I think there’s a take-away as well. To improve we should absolutely watch Youtube videos, BUT we have to spend a lot of our time practicing deliberately. Like the world-class guitar player, there are probably thousands of nuanced movements that take place with each shot. These couldn’t all possibly be taught in a video.

We need to find those through repeated, deliberate practice and activate our bodily kinesthetic intelligence.

It’s the artist making the master stroke of the brush on a painting they’ve been working on for months. Those subtle, nuanced masterful skills accumulate and culminate in the awe-inspiring painting.

Make putting your canvas and have each putt be masterful!

I think I let this one get away from me here! But I hope you see the value that I see in that particular lesson of quantity over quality.

It’s not a matter of just getting the reps in. It’s getting the reps in while deliberately working on your skill(s). And all along way you can be tinkering. As one element becomes automatic it makes room for the next and the next…

Other Interesting/applicable tidbits

“The most powerful of all human sensory abilities, however, is vision. The human body has about eleven million sensory receptors. Approximately ten million of those are dedicated to sight.”

Applying that concept to the previous concept of nuance in movements and master strokes, I’m openly wondering if a little blindfolded putting is in my future?

Sitting here right now and rubbing my hands together (try this) as soon as I close my eyes, my other senses activate more acutely. I hear the sound and feel the sensation in a more pronounced manner.

If I can take out my vision, could I expedite my mastery of some of those nuanced movements?

Now, I’m just spit balling but this book filled me with all sorts of thoughts like that.

Another interesting tidbit was this concept of “gateway habits“. Basically, the biggest obstacle to maintaining a habit is actually starting it successfully (and ultimately maintaining it. Think New Years Resolutions.)

The idea with a gateway habit is that you make it so unbelievably easy at first that it’s almost harder not to do it. If you wanted to start a yoga habit, for example, for the first couple of weeks you might only just put out your yoga mat, then roll it back up. Little by little you are adding more, and before you know it, you’ve got yourself a habit.

Applying this to disc golf, and knowing the value of deliberate practice, maybe it means only doing 1-2 minutes of putting per day. Who doesn’t have 1-2 minutes right? Then, after a few weeks, you add a minute or two. Before long you have a habit. A year later, you have hours upon hours of putting practice in your back pocket that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Nobody will argue that that 1 minute putting sessions will make you a master. But by building the habit, you can clearly see how hundreds of hours, spread out over months and years can make a serious dent.

Atomic habits in summary

Whether you’re looking to improve your disc golf game or anything else in your life, this book offers a lot and I highly recommend it. Obviously I couldn’t capture even a fraction of it in this post. I still tried to show you the value it could provide.

I got my copy from the library and I’m happy if you do the same.

If you are interested, you can also find out more insight from the author at his website found here.

There is a lot to be gleaned from this book, but in the end it boils down to a simple concept that, when applied to our lives (or our game), can have an undeniable lasting impact.

Small changes can lead to big outcomes over time.

I hope that you have found this helpful and I welcome your thoughts below. Reach out and contact me any time. And while you are there, go ahead and subscribe. I’m charting my progress in disc golf and I want to take you along for the ride! In the meantime, keep on disc golf’n around!