# Why Reps Matter More than Time | Imam Tom Weekly

**Author:** Tom Facchine
**Series:** Imam Tom Live
**Published:** 2025-01-06
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/R58WFP0U92o
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/why-reps-matter-more-than-time-atomic-habits-imam-tom-weekly
**Topics:** Culture, Family & Community, General Psychology, Psychology & Mental Health

## Description
Are you stuck planning the perfect moment? On Imam Tom Weekly, learn why taking action—imperfectly—might be the secret to your success and how it can transform your habits.

## Transcript
**[0:00]** We've crossed over to law number three. Make it easy. That your habits and your new habits, you want to make them as easy as possible. So the first part of this section is walk slowly but never backwards. Now he gives an example, and I think it was a really powerful example

**[0:16]** of a professor of photography. He had a photography class and he divided his class into two halves. He had one group that was focusing on quantity and one group that was focusing on quality. Which group do you think submitted the better photos at the end of the year? It was the quantity group. The group that took

**[0:32]** the most pictures became the best at taking pictures. And the group that only took a few and just submitted one, their pictures were not so good. They weren't very good whatsoever. Sometimes when we want to start a new habit we focus a lot on the plan.

**[0:48]** And we plan and we plan and we plan and we never do anything. Imagine we're part of that quality group. We're only going to shoot one photo and submit that one photo. We might think theoretically about where to shoot the photo and what the lighting should be and how to do this and how to do that, but we're not actually doing anything. When we sit down to do it,

**[1:04]** our execution is off because we're out of practice or we don't have enough practice. Whereas the other group, they are the doers. They are the ones that are just doing it and by doing it they are actually getting better and better and better at it as they are going along. So his point is to plan less and to start doing more.

**[1:20]** As is well known, there's a phrase, perfect is the enemy of good. That if you wait and wait and wait until things are perfect, usually you'll end up not doing anything. And if anybody writes here, then you definitely know this is true. Writing and meeting a deadline, you're like, well, it's not perfect yet.

**[1:36]** Well, I have to review this. Well, I have to, this sentence isn't quite right. It's better for you or as one of my mentors, Imam John Starling down in New Jersey said, be a happy C student. Don't be the straight A student or the A plus student. Be a happy C student.

**[1:52]** You'll actually end up being better because you'll have more practice and you'll be more productive and you'll get things out. So the author distinguishes between motion and action on one hand. Motion is basically all of that pre-work. You're making your list and you're thinking about what to do, etc. But you're not actually doing it.

**[2:08]** Action is what produces results. Action is what actually makes you better at the thing that you want to be better at. Now, what's tricky about motion and why motion is so appealing, all the lists, all the journals, right? All the, oh, today I'm going to start journaling or today I'm going

**[2:24]** to make my list or whatever, is that that's motion and motion can trick us into thinking that we're making progress without actually risking anything. Because to truly take action, to write the book, to write the paper, to do the workout, that actually has risk involved.

**[2:40]** But to think about it and to plan and to plan and to think, that doesn't have as much risk. It's kind of safe. So the main point of the author is to practice, to practice, to practice, to practice. Get your reps in. Getting your reps in is the most important factor to establishing a new habit. He says,

**[2:56]** when people ask, how long does it take to establish a new habit? That, it's the wrong question. The right question is how many repetitions does it take to form a new habit? Repetitions are the path to change and habits are all about

**[3:12]** frequency, not time. So at point A, the habit, the new habit requires a ton of effort. It's not automatic. A ton of concentration and it's not fun. Pick one thing that you're already doing, a habit that you're already doing, that you just want to do more of, that you want to increase

**[3:28]** the reps for. If it's pushups, if it's reading, if it's language study, if it's Quran, if it's salah, whatever it is, try to do more of it this week, just on your own and see how it goes. Then what we're going to do is we're going to try to do more of it using his techniques for how to make doing more reps easier

**[3:44]** and we're going to see if we can observe the difference.

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