Atomic Habits, Clear
How to start habits and stick to them.
Clippings
changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.
Sunday, 26 December 2021 22:35:56
habit is a routine or behavior that is performed regularly—and, in many cases, automatically.
Sunday, 26 December 2021 22:36:05
Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action.
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Meanwhile, improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable—sometimes it isn’t even noticeable—but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run.
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if you can get just 1 percent better each day, you’ll end up with results that are nearly 37 times better after one year.
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We make a few changes, but the results never seem to come quickly and so we slide back into our previous routines.
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But when we repeat 1 percent errors, day after day, by replicating poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalizing little excuses, our small choices compound into toxic results. It’s the accumulation of many missteps—a 1 percent decline here and there—that eventually leads to a problem.
Sunday, 26 December 2021 22:42:56
Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. You get what you repeat.
Sunday, 26 December 2021 22:44:09
Relationships compound. People reflect your behavior back to you.
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In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment.
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habits need to persist long enough to break through this plateau—what I call the Plateau of Latent Potential.
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We often expect progress to be linear.
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Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
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Now for the interesting question: If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still succeed?
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Nate Soares, goal hacking.
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Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.
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Goal setting suffers from a serious case of survivorship bias.
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Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment.
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The implicit assumption behind any goal is this: “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy.”
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When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.
Sunday, 26 December 2021 22:53:39
Many runners work hard for months, but as soon as they cross the finish line, they stop training. The race is no longer there to motivate them.
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The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.
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Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results.
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Habits like exercise, meditation, journaling, and cooking are reasonable for a day or two and then become a hassle.
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The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.
Sunday, 26 December 2021 23:22:20
The second person declines by saying, “No thanks. I’m not a smoker.” It’s a small difference, but this statement signals a shift in identity. Smoking was part of their former life, not their current one. They no longer identify as someone who smokes.
Sunday, 26 December 2021 23:23:18
They never shift the way they look at themselves, and they don’t realize that their old identity can sabotage their new plans for change.
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Identity assertions, The Scout Mindset
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Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last. You may want more money, but if your identity is someone who consumes rather than creates, then you’ll continue to be pulled toward spending rather than earning.
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You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven’t changed who you are.
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The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it.
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Once your pride gets involved, you’ll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits.
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You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity.
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After all, when your behavior and your identity are fully aligned, you are no longer pursuing behavior change. You are simply acting like the type of person you already believe yourself to be.
Sunday, 26 December 2021 23:31:51
Many people walk through life in a cognitive slumber, blindly following the norms attached to their identity. “I’m terrible with directions.”
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There is internal pressure to maintain your self-image and behave in a way that is consistent with your beliefs.
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Good habits can make rational sense, but if they conflict with your identity, you will fail to put them into action.
Monday, 27 December 2021 10:21:01
Your identity emerges out of your habits.
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The more evidence you have for a belief, the more strongly you will believe it.
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Each habit is like a suggestion: “Hey, maybe this is who I am.”
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It is a simple two-step process: Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.
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“Who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want?” Who is the type of person that could lose forty pounds? Who is the type of person that could learn a new language? Who is the type of person that could run a successful start-up?
Monday, 27 December 2021 10:26:23
I have a friend who lost over 100 pounds by asking herself, “What would a healthy person do?” All day long, she would use this question as a guide.
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Would a healthy person walk or take a cab? Would a healthy person order a burrito or a salad? She figured if she acted like a healthy person long enough, eventually she would become that person. She was right.
Monday, 27 December 2021 10:27:03
Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
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Occasionally, like a cat pressing on a lever, you stumble across a solution. You’re feeling anxious, and you discover that going for a run calms you down.
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You’re mentally exhausted from a long day of work, and you learn that playing video games relaxes you. You’re exploring, exploring, exploring, and then—BAM—a reward. After you stumble upon
Monday, 27 December 2021 10:30:13
You’re exploring, exploring, exploring, and then—BAM—a reward.
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The process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.
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What you crave is not the habit itself but the change in state it delivers. You do not crave smoking a cigarette, you crave the feeling of relief it provides. You are not motivated by brushing your teeth but rather by the feeling of a clean mouth.
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The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward. We chase rewards because they serve two purposes: (1) they satisfy us and (2) they teach us.
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This cycle is known as the habit loop.
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- Cue: You hit a stumbling block on a project at work. 2. Craving: You feel stuck and want to relieve your frustration. Solution phase 3. Response: You pull out your phone and check social media. 4. Reward: You satisfy your craving to feel relieved. Checking social media becomes associated with feeling stalled at work.
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The 1st law (Cue): Make it obvious. The 2nd law (Craving): Make it attractive. The 3rd law (Response): Make it easy. The 4th law (Reward): Make it satisfying.
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Inversion of the 1st law (Cue): Make it invisible. Inversion of the 2nd law (Craving): Make it unattractive. Inversion of the 3rd law (Response): Make it difficult. Inversion of the 4th law (Reward): Make it unsatisfying.
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How can I make it obvious? How can I make it attractive? How can I make it easy? How can I make it satisfying?
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Unless someone points it out, you may not notice that you cover your mouth with your hand whenever you laugh, that you apologize before asking a question, or that you have a habit of finishing other people’s sentences.
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Habits Scorecard, which is a simple exercise you can use to become more aware of your behavior. To create your own, make a list of your daily habits. Here’s a sample of where your list might start: Wake up Turn off alarm Check my phone
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Once you have a full list, look at each behavior, and ask yourself, “Is this a good habit, a bad habit, or a neutral habit?” If it is a good habit, write “+” next to it. If it is a bad habit, write “–”. If it is a neutral habit,
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Once you have a full list, look at each behavior, and ask yourself, “Is this a good habit, a bad habit, or a neutral habit?” If it is a good habit, write “+” next to it. If it is a bad habit, write “–”. If it is a neutral habit, write “=”.
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“Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?” Habits
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If you feel like you need extra help, then you can try Pointing-and-Calling in your own life.
Monday, 27 December 2021 16:00:11
If you want to cut back on your junk food habit but notice yourself grabbing another cookie, say out loud, “I’m about to eat this cookie, but I don’t need it. Eating it will cause me to gain weight and hurt my health.”
Monday, 27 December 2021 16:00:16
The sentence they filled out is what researchers refer to as an implementation intention, which is a plan you make beforehand about when and where to act.
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Broadly speaking, the format for creating an implementation intention is: “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.”
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We tell ourselves, “I’m going to eat healthier” or “I’m going to write more,” but we never say when and where these habits are going to happen.
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When the moment of action occurs, there is no need to make a decision. Simply follow your predetermined plan.
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fill out this sentence: I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].
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The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases.
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One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking.
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The habit stacking formula is: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”
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Exercise. After I take off my work shoes, I will immediately change into my workout clothes.
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Your morning routine habit stack might look like this: After I pour my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for sixty seconds. After I meditate for sixty seconds, I will write my to-do list for the day. After I write my to-do list for the day, I will immediately begin my first task.
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Social skills. When I walk into a party, I will introduce myself to someone I don’t know yet.
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Consider when you are most likely to be successful.
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Habit stacking works best when the cue is highly specific and immediately actionable.
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Many people select cues that are too vague.
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“When I close my laptop for lunch, I will do ten push-ups next to my desk.”
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The 1st Law of Behavior Change is to make it obvious. Strategies like implementation intentions and habit stacking are among the most practical ways to create obvious cues for your habits and design a clear plan for when and where to take action.
Monday, 27 December 2021 17:03:36
If the communal table at the office is always filled with doughnuts and bagels, it’s going to be hard not to grab one every now and then.
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Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.
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As a result, you can imagine how important it is to live and work in environments that are filled with productive cues and devoid of unproductive ones.
Monday, 27 December 2021 17:06:55
It’s easy not to practice the guitar when it’s tucked away in the closet. It’s easy not to read a book when the bookshelf is in the corner of the guest room. It’s easy not to take your vitamins when they are out of sight in the pantry.
Monday, 27 December 2021 17:07:46
If you want to remember to take your medication each night, put your pill bottle directly next to the faucet on the bathroom counter.
Monday, 27 December 2021 17:08:34
We mentally assign our habits to the locations in which they occur: the home, the office, the gym. Each location develops a connection to certain habits and routines.
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For one person, her couch is the place where she reads for an hour each night. For someone else, the couch is where he watches television and eats a bowl of ice cream after work.
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It can be difficult to go to bed early if you watch television in your bedroom each night.
Monday, 27 December 2021 17:11:15
Trying to eat healthier? It is likely that you shop on autopilot at your regular supermarket. Try a new grocery store. You may find it easier to avoid unhealthy food when your brain doesn’t automatically know where it is located in the store.
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Create a separate space for work, study, exercise, entertainment, and cooking. The mantra I find useful is “One space, one use.”
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your space is limited, divide your room into activity zones: a chair for reading, a desk for writing, a table for eating.
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It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cues.
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Someone becomes addicted at home or with friends, goes to a clinic to get clean—which is devoid of all the environmental stimuli that prompt their habit—then returns to their old neighborhood with all of their previous cues that caused them to get addicted in the first place.
Monday, 27 December 2021 17:15:12
When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, “disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.
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not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment.
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They foster the feelings they try to numb. You feel bad, so you eat junk food.
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Here’s the punch line: You can break a habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it. Once the mental grooves of habit have been carved into your brain, they are nearly impossible to remove entirely—even
Monday, 27 December 2021 17:17:31
A more reliable approach is to cut bad habits off at the source. One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.
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This practice is an inversion of the 1st Law of Behavior Change. Rather than make it obvious, you can make it invisible.
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Instead of summoning a new dose of willpower whenever you want to do the right thing, your energy would be better spent optimizing your environment.
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HOW TO CREATE A GOOD HABIT The 1st Law: Make It Obvious 1.1: Fill out the Habits Scorecard. Write down your current habits to become aware of them. 1.2: Use implementation intentions: “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].” 1.3: Use habit stacking: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].” 1.4: Design your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible. The 2nd Law:
Monday, 27 December 2021 17:19:47
HOW TO BREAK A BAD HABIT Inversion of the 1st Law: Make It Invisible 1.5: Reduce exposure. Remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment. Inversion of the 2nd Law:
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Scientists refer to these exaggerated cues as supernormal stimuli.
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Humans are also prone to fall for exaggerated versions of reality. Junk food, for example, drives our reward systems into a frenzy. After spending hundreds of thousands of years hunting and foraging for food in the wild, the human brain has evolved to place a high value on salt, sugar, and fat. Such foods are often calorie-dense and they were quite rare when our ancient ancestors were roaming the savannah. When you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, eating as much as possible is an excellent strategy for survival.
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A primary goal of food science is to create products that are more attractive to consumers.
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Companies spend millions of dollars to discover the most satisfying level of crunch in a potato chip or the perfect amount of fizz in a soda.
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Other processed foods enhance dynamic contrast, which refers to items with a combination of sensations, like crunchy and creamy.
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We have the brains of our ancestors but temptations they never had to face.
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While it is not possible to transform every habit into a supernormal stimulus, we can make any habit more enticing.
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When it comes to habits, the key takeaway is this: dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it. Gambling addicts have a dopamine spike right before
Monday, 27 December 2021 17:25:35
When it comes to habits, the key takeaway is this: dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate
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This is one reason the anticipation of an experience can often feel better than the attainment of it.
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As an adult, daydreaming about an upcoming vacation can be more enjoyable than actually being on vacation.
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We need to make our habits attractive because it is the expectation of a rewarding experience that motivates us to act in the first place. This is where a strategy known as temptation bundling comes into play.
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If he slowed down for too long, whatever show he was watching would pause until he started pedaling again.
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He was also employing temptation bundling to make his exercise habit more attractive.
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You’re more likely to find a behavior attractive if you get to do one of your favorite things at the same time.
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After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED]. After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].
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After I get my morning coffee, I will say one thing I’m grateful for that happened yesterday (need). After I say one thing I’m grateful for, I will read the news (want).
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If you want to check Facebook, but you need to exercise more:
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We imitate the habits of three groups in particular: The close. The many. The powerful.
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Similarly, one study found that the higher your best friend’s IQ at age eleven or twelve, the higher your IQ would be at age fifteen, even after controlling for natural levels of intelligence.
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One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
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Join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal behavior and (2) you already have something in common with the group.
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The shared identity begins to reinforce your personal identity.
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We want to be the one in the gym who can do muscle-ups or the musician who can play the hardest chord progressions or the parent with the most accomplished children
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We are continually wondering “What will others think of me?” and altering our behavior based on the answer.
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A craving is just a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive. Your brain did not evolve with a desire to smoke cigarettes or to check Instagram or to play video games. At a deep level, you simply want to reduce uncertainty and relieve anxiety, to win social acceptance and approval, or to achieve status. Look at nearly any product that is habit-forming and you’ll see that it does not create a new motivation, but rather latches onto the underlying motives of human nature. Find love and reproduce = using Tinder Connect and bond
Monday, 27 December 2021 17:46:35
craving is just a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive. Your brain did not evolve with a desire to smoke cigarettes or to check Instagram or to play video games.
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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
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Find love and reproduce = using Tinder Connect and bond with others = browsing Facebook
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When you binge-eat or light up or browse social media, what you really want is not a potato chip or a cigarette or a bunch of likes. What you really want is to feel different.
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In time, you learn to predict that checking social media will help you feel loved or that watching YouTube will allow you to forget your fears.
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Reframing your habits to highlight their benefits rather than their drawbacks is a fast and lightweight way to reprogram your mind and make a habit seem more attractive.
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We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action.
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Sometimes motion is useful, but it will never produce an outcome by itself. It doesn’t matter how many times you go talk to the personal trainer, that motion will never get you in shape.
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Mathematicians, meanwhile, have increased gray matter in the inferior parietal lobule, which plays a key role in computation and calculation. Its size is directly correlated with the amount of time spent in the field; the older and more experienced the mathematician, the greater the increase in gray matter.
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All habits follow a similar trajectory from effortful practice to automatic behavior, a process known as automaticity.
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The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.
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our real motivation is to be lazy and to do what is convenient. And despite what the latest productivity best seller will tell you, this is a smart strategy, not a dumb one.
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Every action requires a certain amount of energy. The more energy required, the less likely it is to occur.
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Meanwhile, sticking to the habit of doing one push-up per day requires almost no energy to get started.
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Habits like scrolling on our phones, checking email, and watching television steal so much of our time because they can be performed almost without effort. They are remarkably convenient.
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This is why it is crucial to make your habits so easy that you’ll do them even when you don’t feel like it. If you can make your good habits more convenient, you’ll be more likely to follow through on them.
Monday, 27 December 2021 18:05:20
Trying to pump up your motivation to stick with a hard habit is like trying to force water through a bent hose. You can do it, but it requires a lot of effort and increases the tension in your life. Meanwhile, making your habits simple and easy is like removing the bend in the hose. Rather than trying to overcome the friction in your life, you reduce it.
Monday, 27 December 2021 18:06:27
One of the most effective ways to reduce the friction associated with your habits is to practice environment design.
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We try to concentrate while using a smartphone filled with distractions.
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“Japanese firms emphasized what came to be known as ‘lean production,’ relentlessly looking to remove waste of all kinds from the production process, down to redesigning workspaces, so workers didn’t have to waste time twisting and turning to reach their tools.
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Business is a never-ending quest to deliver the same result in an easier fashion.
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Want to improve your diet? Chop up a ton of fruits and vegetables on weekends and pack them in containers, so you have easy access to healthy, ready-to-eat options during the week.
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Imagine the cumulative impact of making dozens of these changes and living in an environment designed to make the good behaviors easier and the bad behaviors harder.
Monday, 27 December 2021 18:14:23
You can also invert this principle and prime the environment to make bad behaviors difficult. If you find yourself watching too much television, for example, then unplug it after each use.
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Every day, there are a handful of moments that deliver an outsized impact. I refer to these little choices as decisive moments.
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Even when you know you should start small, it’s easy to start too big. When you dream about making a change, excitement inevitably takes over and you end up trying to do too much too soon.
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Two-Minute Rule, which states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”
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“Read before bed each night” becomes “Read one page.”
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“Study for class” becomes “Open my notes.”
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“Run three miles” becomes “Tie my running shoes.”
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What you want is a “gateway habit” that naturally leads you down a more productive path.
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Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. You have to standardize before you can optimize.
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designed a habit journal specifically to make journaling easier. It includes a “One Line Per Day” section where you simply write one sentence about your day. You can learn more at atomichabits.com/journal.
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Start by mastering the first two minutes of the smallest version of the behavior. Then, advance to an intermediate step and repeat the process—focusing on just the first two minutes and mastering that stage before moving on to the next level.
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Phase 1: Be home by 10 p.m. every night. Phase 2: Have all devices (TV, phone, etc.) turned off by 10 p.m. every night. Phase 3: Be in bed by 10 p.m. every night (reading a book, talking with your partner). Phase 4: Lights off by 10 p.m. every night. Phase 5: Wake up at 6 a.m. every day.
Monday, 27 December 2021 18:23:46
Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard.
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commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future. It is a way to lock in future behavior, bind you to good habits, and restrict you from bad ones.
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Whenever I’m looking to cut calories, for example, I will ask the waiter to split my meal and box half of it to go before the meal is served.
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The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do.
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Buy a water filter to clean your drinking water. Use smaller plates to reduce caloric intake. Sleep Buy a good mattress. Get blackout curtains. Remove your television from your bedroom. Productivity Unsubscribe from emails. Turn off notifications and mute group chats. Set your phone to silent. Use email filters to clear up your inbox. Delete games and social media apps on your phone. Happiness Get a dog. Move to a friendly, social neighborhood. General Health Get vaccinated. Buy good shoes to avoid back pain. Buy a supportive chair or standing desk. Finance Enroll in an automatic savings plan. Set up automatic bill pay. Cut cable service. Ask service providers to lower your bills.
Monday, 27 December 2021 18:29:26
At the mere suggestion of hunger, you can have food delivered to your door. At the slightest hint of boredom, you can get lost in the vast expanse of social media.
Monday, 27 December 2021 18:30:36
Every Monday, my assistant would reset the passwords on all my social media accounts, which logged me out on each device. All week I worked without distraction. On Friday, she would send me the new passwords. I had the entire weekend to enjoy what social media had to offer until Monday morning when she would do it again.
Monday, 27 December 2021 18:31:29
After I removed the mental candy from my environment, it became much easier to eat the healthy stuff. When working in your favor, automation can make
Monday, 27 December 2021 18:31:44
After I removed the mental candy from my environment, it became much easier to eat the healthy stuff.
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We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying.
Tuesday, 28 December 2021 09:38:22
“It is a lot easier for people to adopt a product that provides a strong positive sensory signal, for example the mint taste of toothpaste, than it is to adopt a habit that does not provide pleasurable sensory feedback, like flossing one’s teeth.
Tuesday, 28 December 2021 09:38:59
Stories like these are evidence of the Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided.
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Positive emotions cultivate habits. Negative emotions destroy them.
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You live in what scientists call an immediate-return environment because your actions instantly deliver clear and immediate outcomes.
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It is only recently—during the last five hundred years or so—that society has shifted to a predominantly delayed-return environment.
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And after thousands of generations in an immediate-return environment, our brains evolved to prefer quick payoffs to long-term ones.
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Every habit produces multiple outcomes across time. Unfortunately, these outcomes are often misaligned. With our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. With good habits, it is the reverse: the immediate outcome is unenjoyable, but the ultimate outcome feels good.
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As a general rule, the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.
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let’s update the Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.
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In the beginning, you need a reason to stay on track. This is why immediate rewards are essential. They keep you excited while the delayed rewards accumulate in the background.
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It can be challenging to stick with habits like “no frivolous purchases” or “no alcohol this month” because nothing happens when you skip happy hour drinks or don’t buy that pair of shoes.
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All you’re doing is resisting temptation, and there isn’t much satisfying about that.
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One solution is to turn the situation on its head. You want to make avoidance visible. Open a savings account and label it for something you want—maybe “Leather Jacket.” Whenever you pass on a purchase, put the same amount of money in the account. Skip your morning latte? Transfer $5. Pass on another month of Netflix? Move $10 over.
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It is worth noting that it is important to select short-term rewards that reinforce your identity rather than ones that conflict with it. Buying a new jacket is fine if you’re trying to lose weight or read more books, but it doesn’t work if you’re trying to budget and save money.
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Similarly, if your reward for exercising is eating a bowl of ice cream, then you’re casting votes for conflicting identities, and it ends up being a wash.
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To get a habit to stick you need to feel immediately successful—even if it’s in a small way.
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I like to refer to this technique as the Paper Clip Strategy and, over the years, I’ve heard from readers who have employed it in a variety of ways. One woman shifted a hairpin from one container to another whenever she wrote a page of her book. Another man moved a marble from one bin to the next after each set of push-ups.
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But perhaps the best way to measure your progress is with a habit tracker.
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The most basic format is to get a calendar and cross off each day you stick with your routine. For example, if you meditate on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, each of those dates gets an X. As time rolls by, the calendar becomes a record of your habit streak.
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Habit tracking naturally builds a series of visual cues like the streak of X’s on your calendar or the list of meals in your food log.
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Habit tracking provides visual proof of your hard work—a subtle reminder of how far you’ve come.
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In summary, habit tracking (1) creates a visual cue that can remind you to act, (2) is inherently motivating because you see the progress you are making and don’t want to lose it, and (3) feels satisfying whenever you record another successful instance of your habit.
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First, whenever possible, measurement should be automated.
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Once you know where to get the data, add a note to your calendar to review it each week or each month, which is more practical than tracking it every day.
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Finally, record each measurement immediately after the habit occurs.
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After I put my plate in the dishwasher, I will write down what
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No matter how consistent you are with your habits, it is inevitable that life will interrupt you at some
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Whenever this happens to me, I try to remind myself of a simple rule: never miss twice.
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The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows.
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Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits.
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As Charlie Munger says, “The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.”
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Simply doing something—ten squats, five sprints, a push-up, anything really—is huge. Don’t put up a zero. Don’t let losses eat into your compounding.
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It’s about being the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts.
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The dark side of tracking a particular behavior is that we become driven by the number rather than the purpose behind it.
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The human mind wants to “win” whatever game is being played.
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When we choose the wrong measurement, we get the wrong behavior. This is sometimes referred to as Goodhart’s Law. Named after the economist Charles Goodhart, the principle states, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
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Any sitting president would have access to launch codes that could kill millions of people but would never actually see anyone die because he would always be thousands of miles away.
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If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being.
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The best way I know to overcome this predicament is to increase the speed of the punishment associated with the behavior.
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To be healthy, the cost of laziness must be greater than the cost of exercise.
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In general, the more local, tangible, concrete, and immediate the consequence, the more likely it is to influence individual behavior. The more global, intangible, vague, and delayed the consequence, the less likely it is to influence individual behavior.
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create a habit contract.
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To make bad habits unsatisfying, your best option is to make them painful in the moment. Creating a habit contract is a straightforward way to do exactly that.
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Harris realized he wanted to shed a few pounds. He wrote up a habit contract between himself, his wife, and his personal trainer. The first version read, “Bryan’s #1 objective for Q1 of 2017 is to start eating correctly again so he feels better, looks better, and is able to hit his long-term goal of 200 pounds at 10% body fat.”
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Below that statement, Harris laid out a road map for achieving his ideal outcome: Phase #1: Get back to a strict “slow-carb” diet in Q1. Phase #2: Start a strict macronutrient tracking program in Q2. Phase #3: Refine and maintain the details of his diet and workout program in Q3.
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Finally, he wrote out each of the daily habits that would get him to his goal.
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And then he listed the punishment if he failed: “If Bryan doesn’t do these two items then the following consequence will be enforced:
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Knowing that someone is watching can be a powerful motivator.
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The secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition.
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phrases like biological determinism makes it sound like certain individuals are destined for success and others doomed to failure. But this is a shortsighted view of the influence of genes on behavior.
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The Parable of the Talents, Scott Alexander
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In short: genes do not determine your destiny. They determine your areas of opportunity.
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Openness to experience: from curious and inventive on one end to cautious and consistent on the other. Conscientiousness: organized and efficient to easygoing and spontaneous. Extroversion: outgoing and energetic to solitary and reserved (you likely know them as extroverts vs. introverts). Agreeableness: friendly and compassionate to challenging and detached. Neuroticism: anxious and sensitive to confident, calm, and stable.
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All five characteristics have biological underpinnings.
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The takeaway is that you should build habits that work for your personality.
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Pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle.
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Thankfully, there is an effective way to manage this conundrum, and it is known as the explore/exploit trade-off. In the beginning of a new activity, there should be a period of exploration. In relationships, it’s called dating. In college, it’s called the liberal arts. In business, it’s called split testing. The goal is to try out many possibilities, research a broad range of ideas, and cast a wide net.
Tuesday, 28 December 2021 10:13:37
What feels like fun to me, but work to others? The mark of whether you are made for a task is not whether you love it but whether you can handle the pain of the task easier than most people.
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What makes me lose track of time? Flow is the mental state you enter when you are so focused on the task at hand that the rest of the world fades away. This
Tuesday, 28 December 2021 10:14:49
What makes me lose track of time? Flow is the mental state you enter when you are so focused on the task at hand that the rest of the world fades away.
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Where do I get greater returns than the average person? We are continually comparing ourselves to those around us, and a behavior is more likely to be satisfying when the comparison is in our favor.
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What comes naturally to me? For just a moment, ignore what you have been taught. Ignore what society has told you.
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“Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my case, I can draw better than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people. The magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes.
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By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it easier to stand out.
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Yes, it’s possible that the ripped trainer at the gym has better genes, but if you haven’t put in the same reps, it’s impossible to say if you have been dealt a better or worse genetic hand. Until you work as hard as those you admire, don’t explain away their success as luck.
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In summary, one of the best ways to ensure your habits remain satisfying over the long-run is to pick behaviors that align with your personality and skills.
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Goldilocks Rule. The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.
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working on challenges of just manageable difficulty—something on the perimeter of your ability—seems crucial for maintaining motivation.
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“At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over.”
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Things are going well. It’s easy to rationalize taking a day off because you’re in a good place.
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The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting
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Variable rewards or not, no habit will stay interesting forever. At some point, everyone faces the same challenge on the journey of self-improvement: you have to fall in love with boredom.
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But stepping up when it’s annoying or painful or draining to do so, that’s what makes the difference between a professional and an amateur.
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David Cain, an author and meditation teacher, encourages his students to avoid being “fair-weather meditators.” Similarly, you don’t want to be a fair-weather athlete or a fair-weather writer or a fair-weather anything. When a habit is truly important to you, you have to be willing to stick to it in any mood.
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You can’t repeat the same things blindly and expect to become exceptional.
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Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
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The solution? Establish a system for reflection and review.
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Improvement is not just about learning habits, it’s also about fine-tuning them.
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Annual Review,
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What went well this year? What didn’t go so well this year? What did I learn?
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Six months later, when summer rolls around, I conduct an Integrity Report. Like everyone, I make a lot of mistakes. My Integrity Report helps me realize where I went wrong and motivates me to get back on course. I use it as a time to revisit my core values and consider whether I have been living in accordance with them. This is when I reflect on my identity and how I can work toward being the type of person I wish to become.
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What are the core values that drive my life and work? How am I living and working with integrity right now?
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What are the core values that drive my life and work? How am I living and working with integrity right now? How can I set a higher standard in the future?
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rut. The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond
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“I’m an athlete” becomes “I’m the type of person who is mentally tough and loves a physical challenge.” “I’m a great soldier” transforms into “I’m the type of person who is disciplined, reliable, and great on a team.”
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The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1 percent improvement, but a thousand of them. It’s a bunch of atomic habits stacking up, each one a fundamental unit of the overall system.
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Sometimes a habit will be hard to remember and you’ll need to make it obvious. Other times you won’t feel like starting and you’ll need to make it attractive. In many cases, you may find that a habit will be too difficult and you’ll need to make it easy. And sometimes, you won’t feel like sticking with it and you’ll need to make it satisfying.
Tuesday, 28 December 2021 10:38:40
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.
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act. It is desire, not intelligence, that prompts behavior.
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