Atomic Habits - James Clear

Tiny changes, remarkable results. Atomic Habits - An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear was my 15th of 2021.

Habits are about becoming something. It helps you become the type of person you wish to be. Quite literally, you become your habits. Word meaning of Habit is a routine or practice performed regularly, an automatic response to a specific situation.  A habit is a behaviour that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. Atomic is an extremely small amount of a thing; the single irreducible unit of a larger system. It is the source of immense energy or power. 

First know 'who' you want to be, and then work towards is. When you know the who, the how and why becomes easy.  The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become. 

The Fundamentals - Why Tiny changes make a big difference

1. The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits - The impact created by a change in your habits is similar to the effect of shifting the route of an airplane by just a few degrees. When flying from LA to NY, if heading is adjusted 3.5 degree south, it will land in Washington DC. A small change, over time, such a huge impact. +ve are compounding of Productivity, knowledge and relationships. -ve are Stress, Negative thoughts and Outrage. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Getting 1% better everyday, counts a lot in the long run. Forget about goals, focus on systems instead. Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress. A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your system:
1. Winners and losers have the same goals - We speak only of achievers eg. all participate in Olympics to win gold, and the actual winners implement a system of continuous small improvements that they achieved a different outcome
2. Achieving a goal is only a momentary change
3. Goals restrict your happiness
4. Goals are at odds with long-tern progress - it creates a yo-you effect. 
1. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. 
2. How your habits shape your identity  (and vice versa) - Changing our habits is challenging for two reasons: (1) We try to change the wrong thing and (2) We try to change our habits in the wrong way. 
   
   
   In this session the discussion is on layers of behaviour change, i.e. the first part on what should we change .  There are three layers of behaviour change, the outermost is the change in the outcome, the big circle, the middle is the change in the process and the smallest inner one is the change in the identity. Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity. Habits matter because they can change your beliefs about yourself, in due process they can get you better result. 
3. How to Build better habits in 4 simple steps -Four step model for human behavior: 
   
   
   Problem Phase                                                        Solution Phase
   1. Cue                                                               3. Response
   2. Craving                                                         4. Reward

   
   

   • Awareness comes before desire,
   • Happiness is the absence of desire
   • It is the idea of pleasure that we chase
   • Peace occurs when you don't turn your observations into problems
   • With a big enough why you can overcome any how - Great Craving(motivation/desire) can power great action- even when friction is high
   • Being curious is better than being smart
   • Emotion drives behaviour
   • We can only be rational and logical after we have been emotional
   • Your response tends to follow your emotions
   • Suffering drives progress
   • Actions reveal how badly you want something
   • Reward is on the other side of sacrifice
   • Self-control is difficult because it is not satisfying
   • Our expectations determine our satisfaction. Satisfaction = Liking-Wanting
   • The pain of failure correlates to the height of expectation
   • Feelings come both before and after the behavior. - Before acting, there is a feeling that motivates you to act - the craving. After acting, there is a feeling that teaches you to repeat the action in the future - the reward. 
   • How we feel influence how we act, and how we act influence how we feel. 
   • Desire initiates. Pleasure sustains.
   • Hope declines with experience and is replaced by acceptance.  - In the beginning hope is all that you have. 

   Cue>Craving(feeling)>Respons>Reward(feeling)   - The four stages of habit are best described as a feedback loop. They form an endless cycle that is running every moment you are alive. This 'habit loop' is continually scanning the environment, predicting what will happen next, trying out different responses and  learning from the results. We chase rewards because they satisfy us and they teach us. You can think of each law as a lever that influences human behavior. When the levers are in the right positions, creating good habits is effortless. When they are in the wrong position, it is nearly impossible. 
1. The First law - Make it Obvious - Cue
4. The Man who didn't look right
• With enough practice, your brain will pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it.
• Once our habits become automatic, we stop paying attention to what we are doing
• The process of behaviour change always starts with awareness. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them.
• Pointing and calling raises your level of awareness from a non conscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalizing your action
• The Habit scorecard is a simple exercise you can use to become more aware of your behavior. 
5. The Best Way to Start a New habit
• The 1st Law of Behavior change is make it obvious.
• The two most common cues are time and location
• Creating an implementation intention is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a specific time and location
• The implementation intention formula is: I will {BEHAVIOR} at {TIME} in {LOCATION}.
• Habit stacking is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a current habit.
• The Habit stacking formula is : After {CURRENT HABIT}, I will {NEW HABIT]
6. Motivation is overrated; Environment Often Matters More
• Small change in context can lead to large changes in behavior over time. 
• Every habit is initiated by a cue. We are more likely to notice cues that stand out.
• Make the cues of good habits obvious in your environment
• Gradually, your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behavior. The context become the cue. 
• It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cues. 
7. The Secret to Self-Control - short term strategy, not a long-term one. 
• One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it. 
• Inversion to 1st law is make it invisible. 
• Once a habit is formed, it is unlikely to be forgotten. 
• It's easier to avoid temptation than resist it. 
1. The Second Law - Make it Attractive - Craving
8. How to Make a Habit Irresistible - One of the important role player in habit formation is a neurotransmitter called dopamine. It provided a window to biological underpinnings of desire, craving and motivation that are behind every habit. Without dopamine, desire die, and without desire action stop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act. 
• It is the anticipation of a reward - not the fulfilment of it - that gets us to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike. 
• Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do. 
• The habit stacking +temptation bundling formula is:
• After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED]
• After [HABIT I NEED], I WILL [HABIT I WANT]
9. The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits - We imitate the habits of three groups in particular - 
• The close (family & friends), the many(the tribe) and the powerful (those with status and prestige).
• The culture we live in determines which behaviours are attractive to us.
•  We tend to adopt habits that are praised and approved of by our culture because we have a strong desire to fit in and belong to the tribe. 
• 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 and 
• You already have something in common with the group
• The normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual. Most days, we'd rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves. 
• If a behavior can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it attractive. 
10. How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits
• Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires.
• Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper underlying motive
• The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them. The prediction leads to a feeling.
• Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings. Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit. 
1. The Third Law - Make it Easy- Response
11. Walk Slowly, but Never backward - 
• In the beginning a habit requires a good deal of effort and concentration to perform. After a few repetitions, it gets easier, but still requires some conscious attention. With enough practice, the habit becomes more automatic than conscious. Beyond this threshold - the habit line - the behaviour can be done more or less without thinking. A new habit has been formed. With repetition, it becomes automatic. Habit formation is a process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition. 
• The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning
• Focus on taking action, not being in motion.
• String together enough successful attempts until behavior is firmly embedded in your mind and your cross habit line. 
• The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it. 
12. The Law of Least Effort - is what human behavior tend to follow. 
•  Create environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible.
• Reduce the friction associated with good behaviors. When friction is low, habits are easy. 
• Prime your environment to make future actions easier. 
13. How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule - 
• The difference between a good day and a bad day is often a few productive and healthy choices made at decisive moments. Each one is like a fork in the road, and these choices stack up throughout the day and can ultimately lead to very different outcomes. 
• When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do. - Write one sentence/write one para/write 1000 words/5000 words/Book.
• The more you ritualize the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things.
• Standardize before your optimize. You can't improve a habit that doesn't exist. 
14. How to Make Good Habits Inevitable (easy) and Bad Habits Impossible (hard) - Automate your habits. 
• A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that locks in better behavior in the future.
• The ultimate way to lock in future behavior is to automate your habits.
• Onetime choices - like buying a better mattress or enrolling in an automatic savings plan- are single actions that automate your future habits and deliver increasing returns overtime.
• using technology to automate your habits is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right behavior. 
1. The Fourth Law - Make it Satisfying - Reward
15. The Cardinal Rule of Behaviour Change
• What is immediately rewarded is repeated, what is immediately punished is avoided. 
16. How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day
• Track your habits - its obvious, attractive and satisfying. It's a simple way to measure whether you did a habit - - eg. Mark X in calender. 
• Dont break the chain, keep habit steak alive. 
• Never miss twice, get back to track ASAP.
• Just because you can measure something doesn't mean it's the most important thing.
• One of the most satisfying feeling is the feeling of making progress. 
17. How an accountability Partner Can Change Everything
• We are less likely to repeat a bad habit if it is painful or unsatisfying. 
• An accountability partner can create an immediate cost to inaction. We care deeply about what others think of us, and we do not want others to have a lesser opinion of us. 
• A habit contract can be used to add a social cost to any behavior. It makes the costs of violating your promises public and painful. 
• Knowing that someone else is watching you can become a powerful motivator. 
  
  
  
1. Advanced Tactics: How to Go from being Merely Good to being Truly Great
18. The Truth about Talent (When Genes Matter and When they don't)
• The secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition
• Pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle
• Genes cannot be easily changed, which means they provide a powerful advantage in favourable circumstances and a serious disadvantage in unfavourable circumstance.  
• Habits are easier when they align with your natural abilities. Choose the habits that best suit you. 
• Play a game, that favors your strengths. If you can't find a game that favours you, create one. 
• Genes do not eliminate the need for hardwork. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on. 
• The most proven scientific analysis of personality traits is known as the 'Big Five', which breaks them down to five spectrum of behaviour.
1. Openess to experience: from curious and inventive on one end to cautious and consistent on the other
2. Conscientiousness: Organized and efficient to easy-going and spontaneous
3. Extroversion: Outgoing and energetic to solitary and reserved (you likely know them as extroverts vs. introverts)
4. Agreeableness: Friendly and compassionate to challenging and detached
5. Neuroticism: anxious and sensitive to confident, calm and stable. 
19. The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work - 
• It states that human 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. In psychology research this is known as the Yerkes - Dodson law, which describes the optimal level of arousal as the midpoint between boredom and anxiety. You need to regularly search for challenges that push you to your edge while continuing to make enough progress to stay motivated. 
• Behaviors need to remain novel in order for them to stay attractive and satisfying. Without variety, we get bored. 
• And boredom is perhaps the greatest villain on the quest for self-improvement. The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. Habits that don't delight us makes us bored.
•  The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom. 
• Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It's the ability to keep going when work isn't exciting that makes the difference. 
• 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 courses by the urgencies of life. 
20. The Downside of Creating Good Habits 
• The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors. Feedbacks are important. 
• Habit+Deliberate Practice= Mastery. The process of mastery requires that you progressively layer improvements on top of one another, each habit building upon the last until a new level of performance has been reached and a higher range of skills has been internalized. 
• Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time. Ask - 1) what went well 2) what did not go well 3) what did you learn.  Have an integrity report to check - 1) What are the core values that drive my life and work 2) How am I living and working with integrity right now. 3) How can I set a higher standard in the future.
• A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote. 
• The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it. 

Men are born soft and supple;

dead, they are stiff and hard.

Plants are born tender and pliant;

dead, they are brittle and dry. 

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible 

is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding

is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.

The soft and supple will prevail. 

- Lao Tzu 

The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible. Any habit can be broken down into feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response and reward. The four laws of behavior change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are to make your good habits obvious, make it attractive, make it easy and make it satisfying. Make your bad habits invisible, unattractive, hard and unsatisfying.  It is inside out and not outside in with strong system/process. It applies to nearly every field and can be used no matter what challenges you are facing. Never stop making improvements. That's the power of atomic habits. Tiny changes. Remarkable results. 

Finally glad that I read the book.  Then there are tips on how to apply these in business, parenting and to know more visit www.atomichabits.com

A perfect Valentine's day gift read.