Atomic Habits
Most important take away’s
Winners and Losers have the same goal, the only thing that separates them is their systems.
Small actions are what compound to create big results.
Establishing a habit takes four steps, so does breaking it.
Book Summary + Notes
Atomic Habits explores how tiny changes in behavior can lead to remarkable results through the power of compound growth. The book provides practical strategies for building good habits and breaking bad ones by focusing on small improvements that add up to significant transformations over time.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement - small changes accumulate into remarkable results
Focus on systems and processes rather than goals to achieve lasting change
The four laws of behavior change: make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying
Identity-based habits are more effective than outcome-based habits
“Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years”.
“With the same habits, you’ll end up with the same results but with better habits anything is possible”.
Change doesn't have to be noticeable, it doesn’t have to be this big thing instead, improving 1% each day is better. By changing slowly every day, we can reach our goal slowly instead of falling back into our old ways for not making a breakthrough change. We often think that big changes require big actions but that isn’t true. Most change occurs through repeated actions that compound over time and that leads to big results.
The reason we struggle to build good habits is because we leave them too quickly. It takes approximately 21 days for an action to become a habit. If we leave it before then, it won’t change into a habit. Good habits take time to build and even longer to see results.
“We often expect progress to be linear. At the very least, we hope it will come quickly. In reality, the results of our efforts are often delayed”.
Unless we pass the plateau of latent potential, the results of our actions will not be visible. The repeated actions you put in will be stored and once they are compounded, the results will be visible. If results are not visible, we often experience the the valley of disappointment.
The Plateau of Latent Potential
“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots entrench themselves and branches grow. The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.”
In order to change that action into a habit, we need systems that will get us there. Most of us are so immersed by the end goal that we ignore or don’t pay attention to how we get there. The system we build to get there is just as important as the goal, if not more important. We spend so much time thinking about our goals that we don’t design our systems and that leads us to catastrophic failure.
Winners and loser have the same goal. For example, If your goal is to be the valedictorian of your graduating class, the systems you should put in place to achieve those goals could look like:
Getting A’s in all your classes
Participating in extracurricular activities
Building up your application…
If you have the same goal but
Do the bare minimum in all your classes
Don’t participate in extracurriculars
Don’t have systems in place to help you succeed.
Those two students have the same goals but it’s so obvious who is going to get that trophy. Your systems will either make you or break you, there is no in between.
"You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems"
“It doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful you are right now. What matters is whether your habits are putting you on the path toward success.”
Another thing is to not place limitations on yourself. Don’t say things like, “I’ll be happy when.” If you don’t make the journey enjoyable, the destination is not going to be any different. Create joy in your everyday life so that once you reach that end goal, you won’t be saying the words, “What now?”.
The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. So make sure that the systems you have in place will support the current goal you are trying to achieve because at the end of the day, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Your habits shape your identity. The more you repeat a certain action, the more you are programming it into your subconscious mind. So when you want to change it, it won’t be that easy.
There are two types of change.
Outcome-based change. This is essentially when you change a habit based on what you want to achieve. An example is - I want to be skinny (Outcome), so I will stick to a diet and I’ll be skinny (Process).
Identity-based change. This is when the change happens from the root. An example is - I want to be a healthy person (Identity), so I’ll moves daily, eats nourishing food, and sleeps well (Process).
They set goals and determine the actions they should take to achieve those goals without considering the beliefs that drive their actions. To change your habit, you need to change the belief system you have associated with it because of you don’t, it’s going to come and sabotage your progress.
The Three Layers of Behavior Change
The difference between Identity and Outcome based change.
“The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity.”
The more a habit is rooted in your identity, the easier it is for you to practice it. You might start a habit because of motivation but the only way it is going to stick is if it become part of your identity. They need to become who you are.
The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader.
The goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner.
The goal is not to learn an instrument, the goal is to become a musician.
When a habit is rooted into your identity, it’s more likely to stick.
Many people walk through life in a cognitive slumber, blindly following the norms attached to their identity.
“I’m terrible with directions.”
“I’m not a morning person.”
“I’m bad at remembering people’s names.”
“I’m always late.”
“I’m not good with technology.”
“I’m horrible at math.” … and a thousand other variations.
When you have repeated a story to yourself for years, it’s easy to slide into these mental grooves and accept them as a fact.
However, when you start to change your identity and take a step towards the direction you want to go. “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it actually is big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements.”
New identities require new evidence. If you keep casting the same votes you’ve always cast, you’re going to get the same results you’ve always had. If nothing changes, nothing is going to change. It is a simple two-step process:
Decide the type of person you want to be.
Prove it to yourself with small wins.
Habits free up your mental space. Once you have developed them, they become a routine, automatic in your brain which makes more space in your brain to do the things you want. Habits don’t make your life dull, in fact the more habits you have, the more exciting and spontaneous your life is going to be. This is because your brain doesn’t have to think about basic routines like, when do I work, exercise, write, pray and other stuff. Once you have habits, your mind is freed up to think about other stuff.
A single habit is made of a cue, craving, response, and reward. And these components are formed according to the 4 laws of behaviour change:
Habits are actions that are repeated enough times to become automatic. The process of forming a habit has a trial and error process. The process of building a habit can be divided into 4 simple steps - The Feedback Loop
Cue - What triggers that action
Craving - The process of wanting that certain thing (Motivation)
Response - The action that follows the craving meaning you do the thing
Reward - The end goal
This is the habit loop and without all four, the behavior will not be repeated and will not become a habit.
In order to form good habits, we first need to know the difference between our good and bad habits. Most of our habits are automatic so they usually slip under the radar without us noticing them. After learning about your bad habits, study what triggers them (cue) so that you can change it.
As you start to build your good habits, the triggers of your old habit might come back and when that happens, a very effective way for you to be conscious of it is by using the pointing and scoring method. This is essentially when you say what you are going to do out loud, so it makes the consequences feel real. An example: If you notice you always binge eat when you are stressed and that is a habit you want to break, every time you get triggered, say "Ok, I'm stressed right now and I want to binge eat but if I do that, I will only be harming my health and making myself more stressed in the long run." By calling yourself out, you take your unconscious behaviors to conscious one's.
To build habits that will last, you need to give them a specific time and place. This is called the implementation intention. This will trigger (cue) you to preform that habit in that specific place.
Another one is the habit-stacking method. This is essentially when you take your existing habit and place your new habit on top of it. For example: If your goal is to drink more water in the morning but you already drink a cup of coffee, every morning when you are about to pour your coffee, drink a cup of water. This method is effective because it reduces the friction between the habits making it easier for you to complete the action.
The environment you're also very important. If you want to make a habit a bigger part of your life, make the cue part of your environment. If your cue stands out, it will be easier for you to practice your good habits instead of falling into your bad ones.
If your goal is to drink more water, place your water bottle in your eyesight line.
If your goal is to raise your self-esteem, place small reminders of positivity across your home.
Your old habits have a relationship with the environment you practiced them in. So, don’t try to build new habits in environments that trigger your old habits. Create new spaces for new habits so that your brain will be associated with it and it will trigger it to complete the task.
Associate each space/environment with certain habits and activities and don’t do anything else with it. This will sharpen the cue.
Bed for sleeping
Desk for working
Kitchen for cooking
Living room sofa for watching Tv
Mat for working out…….
When we do that, our brain will automatically adapt to what we are supposed to do in that environment, so it will do it.
The opposite of making it obvious is making it invisible. Eliminate the cues that trigger your old habit. When you put yourself in a position where temptation is high, it is most likely you will fall back so make the cues invisible.
The second law is to make it attractive. When a habit is attractive, we are more likely to get motivated because of it, so we'll do it. The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely we are to do it.
Habits are a dopamine driven feedback loop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act. Dopamine doesn’t only come after the act is completed. It comes before, when we anticipate it and get excited over it and getting excited motivates us to take action.
When we are going to slip, we have to tempt ourselves with a reward we will give ourselves later. This is called the tempting bundling method. After I [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED] or After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT]. This will get us motivated to do the task because we know that we have a reward waiting for us when we finish.
When you highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits, it makes them seem more unattractive. Also, associate them with a negative feeling and you will avoid it.
Associate/Link your habits to positive feelings.
Working out with feeling strong
Studying with gaining knowledge and becoming smarter
Reading with increasing your vocabulary
Do the same thing with your bad habits. Associate them with negative feelings
Doom scrolling with killing brain cells
Not studying with failing
Overthinking with wasting energy and potential.
Forming a habit takes forever. It is not something you do in a month or two months. You keep practicing and practicing. It became automatic through repetition. Focus on taking action, not being in motion.
Habits are not formed magically, they require repetition. The more you practice, the more the neurons in your brain will be linked making you do the task automatically and with little conscious mind.
The opposite of making it attractive is to make it unattractive. Like I said above, associate your bad habits with negative feeling and the consequences they will bring.
The third law of forming habits is to make it easy.
There is a difference between doing something (motion) and actually doing something. The motion phase is the planning phase, you need planning in order to do something but after that is done you have to actually do the work. “I brainstormed some ideas for my next blog”, that is the planning/motion phase, you are not actually doing the main work like writing the actual blog post. The reason we avoid doing the main work is to delay failure. We can keep lying to ourselves and tell ourselves that we are making progress but in reality, we are just stuck in the same place and doing nothing to move forward. IN SHORT, WE ARE PROCRASTINATING!!!
Humans in general want tasks that require the least effort to complete. If we have a 90 page essay to write in one sitting, we are most likely to procrastinate and put it off, that is because our brain likes the comfort zone. That is why we should design our environment in a way that will work in our favor. Create an environment where doing the right thing is easy. Set out your book on your desk, your workout clothes on the bed etc,......
Friction (how easy or hard are the steps to get there) decides whether you do a habit or not. When the friction for a habit is high, we tend to avoid it. If we make the transition is easy, we have no problem doing it because it doesn’t require any friction.
If you find building good habits to be difficult, use the 2-minute rule. Just practice the habit for 2 minutes and stop. Overtime, without you purposely doing or noticing it, the time will increase. That is the power of small actions.
The opposite of making a habit easy is to make it difficult. So, to break a bad habit, make it harder for you to do it or simply increase the friction.
Want to break your social media addiction, get someone to reset your password every week so you only have access to it on the weekends.
Want to stop hitting snooze in the morning? Put your alarm across the room so you have to physically get out of bed to turn it off.
The fourth law of behavior change is to make it satisfying.
What causes your brain to repeat a behavior or avoid it is the Cardinal rule of behavior change. What is immediately rewarded is repeated and what is immediately punished is avoided.
The human brain prioritizes instant gratification over delayed gratification. "You value the present more than the future."
The first 3 laws of behavior change - make it obvious, attractive and easy ensure a habit is preformed, the 4th behavior - make it satisfying will ensure the habit is repeated.
To keep repeating a habit, you need to track it. Use visually appealing trackers so you can see your progress and that will motivate you to keep going (but know what habits you can't track). But remember, sometimes we fall, but we cannot stay there. When you fall, try to get up as quickly as possible. Keep the habit chain alive because once it’s broken, it becomes very hard to repair. You missed today, it's okay but DON'T miss it tomorrow. because missing one day is a mistake but missing twice is the beginning of a new habit.
Having an audience is a powerful way to stay on track. When someone else is watching, it can be a huge motivator because the thought of failing in front of them pushes you to keep going. You don’t want to be seen as a failure, so you work harder.
Choosing the right field of competition will maximize your odds of success. If you pick something that you don’t like or find attractive enough. You are not going to work. It needs to be easy and satisfying. It also needs to align with your natural inclinations.
Your personality also influences your habits. If you are an introvert, learning to speak in public is going to be a harder habit to learn, but if you are an extrovert, it will be something that comes to you naturally, or let’s say that you are a person that prefers walking over running. If someone tells you to run a marathon, it is going to be a dreadful day for you. That is why we should pick habits that match with our personality. That doesn’t mean pick bad habits, just pick the ones that align with you.
Pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle.
When you start a new habit, try to make it as easy as possible so that when we are faced with life's problems, it will be easy to stick to them. If it’s hard, your brain will not comply. But just because we start out easy doesn’t mean that we should stay there and not progress.
The opposite of making a habit satisfying is to make it unsatisfying. Make you bad habits have consequences, so they are not repeated, just like the Cardinal rule.
The secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition and where the odds of winning are in your favor. Play the games that favor your strengths. To find them, some questions you could ask yourself are:
What feels fun to me but work for other?
What makes me lose track of time?
Where do I get greater returns than the average person?
What comes naturally to me?
The human brain loves a challenge but within limits. If it’s too easy, we will get bored, if it's too hard, we will give up. That is when the Goldilocks Rule comes in. The rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are on the peak of their current abilities. Not too hard, not too easy, just right.
In order to be “in the zone”, we need to work on tasks that motivate us and challenge us.
The greatest villain in the quest of self-improvement is not failure. It’s boredom. At the end of the day, what separates the best and the average is their ability to do the same thing again and again without quitting. It’s their consistency and that no matter how boring the task maybe, they still put the work in. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. When we expect the same thing after the end of every task, we stop being excited. That is when our habits end. Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way. Professionals know what is important to them and work toward it with purpose; amateurs get pulled off course by the urgencies of life. So, in order to be successful, we need to fall in love with boredom because if you are only willing to work when you are in the mood or feeling like it, you will never be consistent enough to achieve remarkable results.
Habits create the foundation for mastery. Habits + Deliberate practice = Mastery
The down sides of habits are that we stop paying attention to errors and that slows our progress or eliminates it completely. We need to check ourselves regularly to see if we are doing it correctly and making progress. Journaling is a great way to do this. You become aware of your patterns and how your progressing so you know what to improve and what to leave behind.
Behaviors are effortless here. Behaviors are difficult here.
Obvious --------------------------- Invisible
Attractive -------------------- Unattractive
Easy ----------------------------------- Hard
Satisfying -------------------- Unsatisfying
You want to push your good habits toward the left side of the spectrum by making them obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. Meanwhile, you want to cluster your bad habits toward the right side by making them invisible, unattractive, hard, and unsatisfying.
This is a continuous process. There is no finish line. There is no permanent solution. Whenever you’re looking to improve, you can rotate through the Four Laws of Behavior Change until you find the next bottleneck. Make it obvious. Make it attractive. Make it easy. Make it satisfying. Round and round. Always looking for the next way to get 1 percent better.
The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements. It’s remarkable what you can build if you just don’t stop. It’s remarkable the business you can build if you don’t stop working. It’s remarkable the body you can build if you don’t stop training. It’s remarkable the knowledge you can build if you don’t stop learning. It’s remarkable the fortune you can build if you don’t stop saving. It’s remarkable the friendships you can build if you don’t stop caring. Small habits don’t add up. They compound.
That’s the power of atomic habits. Tiny changes. Remarkable results.