Atomic Habits

Author: James Clear

• changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.

• The backbone of this book is my four-step model of habits—cue, craving, response, and reward—and the four laws of behavior change that evolve out of these steps.

• Human behavior is always changing: situation to situation, moment to moment, second to second. But this book is about what doesn’t change.

• What made him different from previous coaches was his relentless commitment

• Brailsford had been hired to put British Cycling on a new trajectory. What made him different from previous coaches was his relentless commitment to a strategy that he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains,” which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do.

• Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, writing a book, winning a championship, or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about.

• Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action.

• 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.

• Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.

• This can be a difficult concept to appreciate in daily life. We often dismiss small changes because they don’t seem to matter very much in the moment.

• Unfortunately, the slow pace of transformation also makes it easy to let a bad habit

• Unfortunately, the slow pace of transformation also makes it easy to let a bad habit slide.

• 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.

• Conversely, if you’re broke, but you save a little bit every month, then you’re on the path toward financial freedom—even if you’re moving slower than you’d like.

• Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits

• 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.

• 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.

• Your net worth is a lagging measure of

• 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.

• If you want to predict where you’ll end up in life, all you have to do is follow the curve of tiny gains or tiny losses, and see how your daily choices will compound ten or twenty years down the line. Are you spending less than you earn each month? Are you making it into the gym each week? Are you reading books and learning something new each day? Tiny battles like these are the ones that will define your future self.

• Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change.

• Similarly, habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance.

• In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment.

• You think, “I’ve been running every day for a month, so why can’t I see any change in my body?” Once this kind of thinking takes over, it’s easy to let good habits fall by the wayside.

• If you find yourself struggling to build a good habit or break a bad one, it is not because you have lost your ability to improve. It is often because you have not yet crossed the Plateau of Latent Potential.

• When you finally break through the Plateau of Latent Potential, people will call it an overnight success.

• The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us.

• But what determines whether we stick with a habit long enough to survive the Plateau of Latent Potential

• Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.

• Now for the interesting question: If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still succeed?

• If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.

• A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems.

• Winners and losers have the same goals.

• Problem #1: Winners and losers have the same goals.

• Goal setting suffers from a serious case of survivorship bias. We concentrate on the people who end up winning—the survivors—and mistakenly assume that ambitious goals led to their success while overlooking all of the people who had the same objective but didn’t succeed.

• We concentrate on the people who end up winning—the survivors—and mistakenly assume that ambitious goals led to their success while overlooking all of the people who had the same objective but didn’t succeed.

• Problem #2: Achieving a goal is only a momentary change.

• You’re left chasing the same outcome because you never changed the system behind it.

• You’re left chasing the same outcome because you never changed the system behind it. You treated a symptom without addressing the cause.

• When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level.

• In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level.

• Problem #3: Goals restrict your happiness.

• The implicit assumption behind any goal is this: “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy.” The problem with a goals-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone

• Problem #4: Goals are at odds with long-term progress.

• 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.

• The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.

• If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system.

• You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

• WHY IS IT so easy to repeat bad habits and so hard to form good ones?

• It often feels difficult to keep good habits going for more than a few days, even with sincere effort and the occasional burst of motivation. Habits like exercise, meditation, journaling, and cooking are reasonable for a day or two and then become a hassle.

• However, once your habits are established, they seem to stick around forever—especially the unwanted ones.

• 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.

• Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe.

• Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.

• The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.

• Like all aspects of habit formation, this, too, is a double-edged sword. When working for you, identity change can be a powerful force for self-improvement. When working against you, though, identity change can be a curse.

• The more deeply a thought or action is tied to your identity, the more difficult it is to change it.

• The biggest barrier to positive change at any level—individual, team, society—is identity conflict.

• Your identity emerges out of your habits. You are not born with preset beliefs. Every belief, including those about yourself, is learned and conditioned through experience.

• Of course, your habits are not the only actions that influence your identity, but by virtue of their frequency they are usually the most important ones.

• The effect of one-off experiences tends to fade away while the effect of habits gets reinforced with time, which means your habits contribute most of the evidence that shapes your identity.

• Of course, it works the opposite way, too. Every time you choose to perform a bad habit, it’s a vote for that identity. The good news is that you don’t need to be perfect. In any election, there are going to be votes for both sides. You don’t need a unanimous vote to win an election; you just need a majority

• For example, “Who is the type of person who could write a book?” It’s probably someone who is consistent and reliable. Now your focus shifts from writing a book (outcome-based) to being the type of person who is consistent and reliable (identity-based).

• Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits. It’s a two-way street. The formation of all habits is a feedback loop

• But the true question is: “Are you becoming the type of person you want to become?” The first step is not what or how, but who. You need to know who you want to be. Otherwise, your quest for change is like a boat without a rudder. And that’s why we are starting here.

• A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.

• This is the feedback loop behind all human behavior: try, fail, learn, try differently. With practice, the useless movements fade away and the useful actions get reinforced. That’s a habit forming.

• Whenever you face a problem repeatedly, your brain begins to automate the process of solving it. Your habits are just a series of automatic solutions that solve the problems and stresses you face regularly.

• Despite their efficiency, some people still wonder about the benefits of habits. The argument goes like this: “Will habits make my life dull? I don’t want to pigeonhole myself into a lifestyle I don’t enjoy. Doesn’t so much routine take away the vibrancy and spontaneity of life?”

• Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it. In fact, the people who don’t have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom.

• The process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.

• First, there is the cue. The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior. It is a bit of information that predicts a reward.

• Cravings are the second step, and they are the motivational force behind every habit.

• What you crave is not the habit itself but the change in state it delivers. You do not crave smoking a cigarette, you crave

• 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.

• The third step is the response. The response is the actual habit you perform, which can take the form of a thought or an action. Whether a response occurs depends on how motivated you are and how much friction is associated with the behavior.

• Finally, the response delivers a reward. Rewards are the end goal of every habit. The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward.

• Rewards are the end goal of every habit. The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward.

• The first purpose of rewards is to satisfy your craving.

• Second, rewards teach us which actions are worth remembering in the future.

• Feelings of pleasure and disappointment are part of the feedback mechanism that helps your brain distinguish useful actions from useless ones. Rewards close the feedback loop and complete the habit cycle.

• If a behavior is insufficient in any of the four stages, it will not become a habit.

• In summary, the cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop—cue, craving, response, reward; cue, craving, response, reward—that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits. This cycle is known as the habit loop.

• We can split these four steps into two phases: the problem phase and the solution phase. The problem phase includes the cue and the craving, and it is when you realize that something needs to change. The solution phase includes the response and the reward, and it is when you take action and achieve the change you desire.

• As the psychologist Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

• Pointing-and-Calling, is a safety system designed to reduce mistakes. It seems silly, but it works incredibly well. Pointing-and-Calling reduces errors by up to 85 percent and cuts accidents by 30 percent.

• Pointing-and-Calling reduces errors by up to 85 percent and cuts accidents by 30 percent.