Atomic Habits: by James Clear

An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick to them for years. Quality of life <-- quality of habits Same habits --> same results

The aggregation of marginal gains → tiny margin of improvement in everything you do. Break a task into the smallest components and improve each one by 1% → the result will be a tremendous increase in performance of the original big task.

1% better each day for a year → 37 times better after a year (1.01pow365 = 37.78) 1% worse each day for a year → 0 (0.99pow365 = 0.03)

Be concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.

Habits ( like bamboo/cancer ) appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance.

Plateau of Latent Potential - habits need to persist long enough to break through the plateau where you feel no growth after a period of time, when you finally break through people call it overnight success since they majorly focus on the most dramatic event.

Setting up a good system to achieve your goals is more important than focusing entirely on the goal. Goals can give you direction but system is the one that brings progress.

Focusing entirely on goals can instead lead to problems : Winners and losers have same goal Achieving a goal is only a momentary change Goals restrict your happiness Goals are at odds with long term progress

Possible reasons for not being able to change habits : Trying to change the wrong thing Trying to change the habit in wrong way

Change can occur at 3 levels: Outcomes : changing your results : losing weight, publishing a book, winning a championship etc. Most of goals are set according to this level Process : changing your habits and systems, implementing new routines, decluttering your desk, meditation. Most of Habits are built with this level Identity : changing your beliefs, worldview, self image, judgement about yourself and others. ---> Outcomes are what you get, Processes are what you do and Identity is what you believe. It is more effective to take an identity first and outcome last approach towards changing yourself, otherwise you will set a new goal and new plan but you haven’t changed who you are and ultimately the old habits (the old you) will catch up to you.

You might start a habit due to motivation but you’ll only stick to it if it becomes a part of your identity. Identity emerges out of your experiences and habits. The more evidence you have for a belief, the more strongly you will believe it. For eg if you go to the gym even when it’s snowing you have proof that you are committed to fitness. Every action you take is a vote to the type of person you wish to be, no single instance will transform your identity, but as the votes pile up so does the evidence of your new identity.

We can boil it down to 2 steps : 1. Decide the type of person you want to be 2. Prove it to yourself with small wins

Habits hence are fundamentally not about having something but about becoming someone.

Behaviours followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated. Try, fail, learn, try different - feedback loop behind all human behaviour.

Habits do not restrict freedom, instead they create it. By making fundamentals of life easier you can create the mental space needed for free thinking and creativity.

Process of Building a Habit ( time -------> ) Problem Phase Cue - triggers the brain to initiate a behaviour, predict reward. Craving - motivational force behind the habit, without it we have no reason to act. Solution Phase Response - the actual habit you perform, can take form of thought / action. Reward - end goal of every habit → Cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward which satisfies the craving and ultimately becomes associated with the cue.

4 laws of behaviour change : Make it Obvious (cue) Make it Attractive (craving) Make it Easy (response) Make it Satisfying (reward)

Whenever you experience something repeatedly your brain begins noticing the important stuff and sorts through the details and highlights relevant cues, and catalogs the info for future use. With enough practice, you can pick up on these cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it. This is the foundation for every habit you have.

So before you build new habits you need to control your current ones. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

Pointing-and-calling → helps reduce error margin since you become aware of the tasks. Habit scorecard → Make a list of habits, assign them +/-/= based on if they are good/bad/neutral respectively. Categorize the habits by how they will benefit you in the long run

Implementation intention → how you intend to implement a particular habit. It leverages 2 most common cues - time and location. “ When X happens, i will perform response Y” . If you have a specific plan you are more likely to follow through. When your dreams are vague, it’s easy to rationalize little exceptions all day long and never get around to the specific things you need to do to succeed. The goal is to make the time and location so obvious that with enough repetition you get an urge to the right thing at the right time even if you can’t say why.

Diderot effect → obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases. Use this to your benefit by habit stacking. Habit Stacking → identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behaviour on top. After {current_habit}, i will {new_habit} . The specificity is important, the more tightly bound your new habit is to a specific cue, the better the odds that you will notice when the time comes to act.

Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behaviour. Out of 11 million sensory receptors in humans, 10 million are dedicated to sight. So a small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do. The most persistent behaviours usually have multiple cues. The same strategy can be applied for good habits by redesigning your environment. One Space One Use → dedicated spot for a habit and restrict it to that place. It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cues.

People with high self control tend to spend less time in tempting situations that may cause them to break their good habits or resort to old bah habits. It’s easier to avoid temptation than to resist it. Once a habit is encoded the urge to act follows whenever the environmental cues reappear. If you’re not careful about the cues, you can cause the very behaviour you want to stop. Eg. Shaming obese people can make them stressed and hence they return to coping mechanism : overeating.

Cue induced wanting ( feedback loop of hell ) : external trigger causes a compulsive craving to repeat a bad habit. You can break a habit but you’re unlikely to forget it. Hence simply resisting temptation is an ineffective strategy. In the long run we become a product of the environment we live in.

The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit forming. Habits are a dopamine driven feedback loop. Dopamine plays a central role in many neurological processes - motivation, learning, memory, punishment etc. Dopamine is relieved not only when you experience pleasure but also when you anticipate it. It is the anticipation of reward not the fulfillment of it that gets us to take action. Your brain has far more neural circuitry allocated for wanting rewards than for liking them. Desire is the engine that drives behaviour, every action is taken due to the anticipation that precedes it.

Make your habits more attractive. You are more likely to find a behaviour attractive if you get to do one of your favourite things at the same time.

Combine habits stacking with temptation building : After CURRENT_HABIT, I will do HABIT_I_NEED After HABIT_I_NEED, i will do HABIT_I_WANT

One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behaviour is the normal behaviour, even better if you already have something in common with the group.

Every behaviour has a surface level craving and a deeper underlying motive. Some of the motives include : Conserve energy Obtain food and water Find love and reproduce Connect and bond with others Win social acceptance and approval Reduce uncertainty Achieve status and prestige

Motion vs Action : motion is just planning, strategizing and learning but will produce no results without actions. The key is to start with repetition, not perfection. You don’t need to map out every feature of a new habit. You just need to practice it

Long Term Potentiation - strengthening of connections between neurons in the brain based on recent patterns of activity. With each repetition, cell-to-cell signalling improves and neural connection tightens.Regions of brauns adapt as they are used and atrophy as they are abandoned.

Conventional wisdom holds that motivation is the key to habit change, but our real motivation is to be lazy and do what is convenient. Energy is precious and our brain is wired to conserve it wherever possible.

Addition by subtraction : remove everything that causes friction. Prime your environment so that it is ready for immediate use, hence reducing the friction when you actually use it. Conversely increase the friction for bad habits.

Make gateway habits that are very easy and they should in turn lead to tougher and tougher habits that you want to follow. Master the skill of showing up, else you will never be able to master the finer details.