Because I am somewhat of a tech bro, I’ve read Atomic Habits. I theorize that as soon as you know what an OKR is, capitalism just hurls a copy of it toward your frontal lobe.

And because my wife and I lead annual goal-setting retreats, I’ve read it several times. What can I say! I love “nacho reading” — easy to snack on, with little morsels of insight that actually contain some nourishment.

For those of you uninitiated (happy for you, btw), author James Clear built a very large bestseller on a simple premise, wherein treating behavior change as a design problem — rather than a failing of character — is the way toward achieving goals. It’s a nice reframe, really.

Amid many other tips, Atomic Habits offers four laws of that redesign: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. 

As a quick explainer, imagine you were trying to become better at flossing.

You can invert each one if you’re aiming to halt a habit instead of start one. There’s a lot written about these laws, but since this is a tarot newsletter, I’ll share a different kind of insight.

There is a knight for each suit of the tarot. In most decks, they are: Knight of Wands, Knight of Cups, Knight of Swords, and Knight of Pentacles. (I’ve talked about the court cards before; read this post for more.) In tarot, the knights are about taking action, making moves, and gathering momentum toward a focused goal. Traditionally, they are depicted on horseback, and they’re in motion. They go after things — in the same way one would pursue a goal or forge a habit.

I am a tarot reader who likes to give my clients homework. Or at the least, something they can take away and noodle on with pen to paper. I’ve found that a tarot reading is most nourishing when it’s a dynamic, ongoing engagement with your subconscious mind, which the reading simply cracks open.

Therefore, I mapped the four riders to Clear’s four laws. When a knight emerges in a reading, I like to consider the following.

Let’s imagine we’ve asked the tarot for advice in making a behavior change and one of these knights appears on the table. Here’s how we could work with it.

Wands correspond to fire, the only element you can spy from across a dark field. It’s used as a signal or sign of life, announcing itself well with its aroma and otherworldly glow long before it arrives. If you’ve read my post on the Knight of Wands you know it’s also an audacious, shamelessly look-at-me energy.

With this knight, the cue has to be loud. This knight does not do subtlety.

What to do: Clear’s first law is designing your life so you simply cannot ignore something: if you want to get better at guitar, place your guitar on a stand in the middle of your living room, preferably next to where you hang out in the evenings anyway. If you forget to take your morning vitamins, put them in your coffee cup. If you want to focus on dating, create an automation on your phone that opens your dating app every night at a certain time. If you want to get better at running your business, subscribe to a entrepreneurial newsletter or app that you see in your inbox regularly.

Cups corresponds to water. The Knight of Cups is the romantic of the tarot — the charmer who sparks those lovey-dovey feelings deep within your heart chakra. In many decks, The Knight of Cups offers the cup (symbolizing emotions, love, intuition, the arts, and relationships) ahead of them like a gracious offering. They’re the soft dreamboat bringing you flowers and calling you pet names. 

This knight asks you what makes you fall in love with life again, what inspires you to mold mundane tasks into delectable, enticing moments where you feel even one percent more enchanted that you’re alive.

In Atomic Habits, making it attractive seems a welcome antidote to the productivity industrial complex, where we almost bully ourselves into tackling things “because we should.” It reminds us that really, we do things because we want to. Because it’s even a little romantic to do so.

What to do: So, the knights — and Clear’s second principle — are about making us want to. Engineering some yearning within us. Do you strive to dream journal? Get a nice-ass pen with a little feather poof on it, a la Cher from Clueless. Do you wish to meditate regularly? Create a serene corner, bedecked with satchels of crushed lavender and fairy lights. Make it A Child’s Delight in there. Go nuts. Want to get better at speaking Spanish? Watch a show with people you find to be hot. Get that green owl outta here.

One technique is temptation bundling: you only get the prestige drama while you’re doing your pelvic floor therapy exercises, or you only listen to that one podcast when you’re cleaning the kitchen.

Remember in college when you started a paper 10 hours before it was due, and you chugged a cold brew, locked yourself in the library, and let ’er rip? (Just me?) Knight of Swords is that energy. It’s the fastest rider in the deck. To the Knight of Swords, it doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be articulated, communicated, or made manifest ASAP.

In the Pamela Colman Smith version of the deck, the knight charges forth with the sword — symbolizing the mental realm and communication — slicing the frontier before it.

Swords corresponds to air, the element that takes the path of least resistance every time. Clear’s third law is friction reduction, which is to say fewer steps between you and the thing. Less energy! No-brainers reign here.

What to do: Sleep in your gym clothes. Delete the app sucking up all your time. Get vegetables delivered to you, already cooked, if you can. Change your daily fiber supplement from a drink you detest to a little pill you can volley into your gaping maw with glee. Use voice dictation instead of texting. Buy envelopes already self-addressed and stamped, so it’s simpler to fire off a thank-you card. IDK, get a bidet!

I love the lessons of this knight. The Knight of Pentacles is what I’ve dubbed “the Filipino work ethic card,” after observing how my grandfather from Tarlac province would garden. This knight still takes action, but it’s methodical, deliberate, and taking the longest out of all the other knights. What’s also notable is this knight takes pleasure in the actions: akin to how a honeybee relishes floating from blossom to blossom and motor-boating a new sea of pollen every time.

For success, you need to make a habit satisfying for the long-term. Ask yourself: What would feel most gratifying in 6 weeks? In 12?

What to do: Clear often cites habit tracking, via techniques like marking an X on a calendar (so you can sit back later and view your progress). These correspond nicely to the pentacles suit, which aligns with earth and rules over tangible things. 

Other examples include the pleasure of rifling through a full sketchbook that proves your new drawing habit, displaying your photos of your sourdough bread attempts in a coffee table book, or hosting a dinner featuring the produce you grew in your garden. 

You can also make the action more pleasurable. It’s similar to “make it attractive,” but focusing on the sensory experience. If you detest washing dishes, get a blissfully scented dish soap, maybe from the hippie co-op that knows what’s what with the good herbal shit. Or buy a cushioned mat with some of that foot-massage topography to sit in front of your sink.

Those are the knights. What I love about this technique of matching Clear’s methods to the knights is it underscores a key facet of tarot: the diagnostic question stops being what is wrong with me and turns into something kinder: which knight is ready to help me where I am and design a life I love? 

Reply and tell me who your favorite knight is.

Thanks for reading, Cristina

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