Atomic Habits
“ Tiny changes, remarkable results.
AND ALSO: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones ”
by James Clear
- Goodreads
- Rating: 3 / 5
An applied method on leveraging the power of habit.
Summary
Habits free the mind for productive thoughts.
The habit cycle is 4 steps: cue, craving, response, reward. To build better habits or break bad habits, act on those four steps:
- make it visible (or invisible): put things where you see them
- make it attractive (or unattractve): stack on good habits you already have, associate to positive thoughts
- make it easy (or hard): put into routing, reset your environment, avoid hard situations
- make it rewarding: stack a “need” to a “want”, shorten the gratification cycle.
Keep the chain
Reading notes
- Marginal improvements compound interests
- Focus on the system rather than the goal
- Survivor bias - people see the outcome, not the process
- Change the identity first (“I’m not smoking” rather than “I’m trying to quit”)
- Habits are freeing you to do more by leveraging automated response to a problem
- Habits are behaviors done because of a craving triggered by a cue
- Habit loop: Cue, craving, response, reward
- Response gets associated with the reward
- Building habits is acting on these 4 steps: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it rewarding
- Breaking bad habits is the opposite
- Make it visible
- Stack habits together
- Put things you want to do in visible places / in the middle of your routine
- Put things you don’t want as habits away
- People with more will are just more organized
- Make it attractive
- Stack what you want with what you need
- Make it something in your circles: the close to you, the many, the powerful
- We follow those close, the general advice, or those who stand out.
- Make it easy
- Reduce the friction
- Put it into your routine
- Preload/reset the environment
- Avoid the situations where it’s hard to resist / favor those where its hard to say no
- Start small, the first step is usually easy
- Automate / commit
- Make it pleasurable
- This is what makes that you will repeat the habit
- Need ≠ want
- Stack a need with a want
- Good habits usually have delayed gratification. Bad habits usually have immediate gratification.
- To create good habit try to shorten the gratification cycle
- How to keep habits
- Track
- Measure the right metric
- Commit with someone
- “Don’t break the chain”
- Find a partner
- Don’t log 0, do even the smallest to confirm your identity
- Never miss twice in a row
- Choose habits that fit your capacity
- Fall in love with the boredom and have variable results
- Doing the same thing over and over again isn’t enough
- You need to get better
- Keep records of decisions
- Calculate a score and improve it
- Reflect on core values and write integrity report
- Don’t tie everything to a single identity (“I’m an athlete”), tie to the underlying qualities (“I’m persistent, like the effort, train relentlessly”)
- How to apply to parenting