Atomic Habit

An Easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones - James Clear

A habit is a routine or behavior that is performed regularly, and in many cases, automatically.

Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years. We all deal with setbacks but in the long run, the quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits. With the same habits, you’ll end up with the same results. But with better habits, anything is possible.

“The aggregation of marginal gains”, which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do. “The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.

If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for a year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.

1% Better every day

1% worse every day for one year 0.99*365 = 00.03

1% better every day for one year 1.01*365 = 37.78

The effect of small habits compound over time. For example, if you can just 1 percent better each day, you’ll end up with results that are nearly 37 times better after one year.

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effect of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.

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.

Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seem insignificant in the moment, but over that span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. Success is the product of daily habits, not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.

Positive compounding

Productivity compounds: Accomplishing one extra task is a small feat on any given day, but it counts for a lot over an entire career. The effect of automating an old task or mastering a new skill can be even greater. The more tasks you can handle without thinking the more your brain is free to focus on other areas.

Knowledge compounds: Learning one new idea won’t make you a genius, but a commitment to lifelong learning can be transformative. Furthermore, each book you read not only teaches you something new but also opens up different ways of thinking about old ideas. As Warren Buffett stays, “That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.”

Relationship compound: People reflect your behavior back to you. The more you help others, the more others want to help you. Being a little bit nicer in each interaction can result in a network of broad and strong connections over time.

Negative Compounding

Stress compounds: The frustration of a traffic jam. The weight of parenting responsibilities. The worry of making ends meet. The strain of slightly high blood pressure. By themselves, these common causes of stress are manageable. But when they persist for years, little stress compound into serious health issues.

Negative thoughts compound:  The more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a thought loop. The same is true for how you think about others. Once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry, unjust, or selfish, you see those kind of people everywhere.

Outrage compounds: Riots, protests, and mass movements are rarely the result of single event. Instead, a long series of microaggressions and daily aggravations slowly multiply until one event tips the scales and outrage spread like wildfire.

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. Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from 25 to 30 degrees. Your work was not wasted. it is just being stored. All the action happens at 32 degrees.

When you finally break through the Plateau of latent potential, people will call it an overnight success. The outside world only sees the most dramatic event rather than all the preceded it. But you know that it’s the work you did long ago, when it seemed that you weren’t making any progress, that makes the jump today possible.

The plateau of latent potential

We often expect progress to be linear. At the very least, we hope it will come quickly. In reality, the result of our efforts are often delayed. It is not until months or years later that we realize the true value of the previous work we have done. This can result in a “Valley of disappointment” where people feel discouraged after putting in weeks or months of hard work without experiencing any results. However, this work was not wasted. It was simply being stored. it is not until much later that the full value of previous efforts is revealed.

• Problem #1 : Winners and losers have the same goals.
• Problem #2: Achieving a goal is only a momentary change - Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. That’s the counterintuitive thing about improvement. We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results. When you solve problems at the result level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the system level. Fix the input and output will fix themselves.
• Problem #3: Goals restrict you happiness - A system-first mentality provides the antidote. 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. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running. And a system can be successful in many different forms, not just the one you first envision.
• Problem #4: Goals are at odds with long term progress - The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long term thinking is goalless thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine you progress.

Habits are like the atoms of our lives. Each one is a fundamental unit that contributes to your overall improvement unit that contributes to your overall improvement. At first, these tiny routines seem insignificant, but soon they build on each other and fuel bigger wins that multiply to a degree that far outweighs the cost of their initial investment. They are both small and mighty.

Three layers of behavior change

There are three layers of behavior change, a change in your outcomes, a change in your processes, or a change in your identity.

• The first layer is changing your outcomes - this level is concerned with changing your results: losing weight, publishing a book, winning a championship.
• The second layer is changing your process - this level is concerned with changing your habits and systems; implementing new a routine at the gym, decluttering your desk for better workflow, developing a meditation practice.
• The third and deepest layer is changing your identity - This level is concerned with changing your beliefs: your worldview, your self-image, your judgements about yourself and others. Most of the beliefs, assumptions, and biases you hold are associated with this level. Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you. When it comes to building habits that last, when it comes to building a system of 1 percent improvements, the problem is not that one level is “better” or “worse” than another. All levels of change are useful int heir own way. The problem is the direction of change.

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.

Improvements are only temporary until they become part of 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.

Your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity. What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are, either consciously or nonconsciously.

Progress requires unlearning. Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.

The more you repeat a behavior, the more reinforce the identity associated with that behavior. In fact, the word identity was originally derived from the latin word essentitas, which means being, and identidem, which mean repeatedly. Your identity is litterally your “repeated beingness.”

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 always had. If nothing changes, nothing is going to change. 1) decide the type of person you want to be. 2) Prove it to yourself with small winds.

A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. The process of habit formation begins with trial and error.

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 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. As behavioral scientist writes “Habits are, simply, reliable solutions to recurring problems in our environment”

As habits are created, the level of activity in the brain decreases. You learn to lock in on the cues that predict success and tune out everything else. When a similar situation arises in the future, you know exactly what to look for. There is no longer a need to analyze every angle of a situation. Your brain skips the process of trial and error and create a mental rule: if this, then that. These cognitive scripts can be followed automatically whenever the situation is appropriate. Now, whenever you feel stressed, you get the itch to run. As soon as you walk in the door from work, you grab the video game controller. A choice that once required effort is now automatic. A habit has been created.

Habits are mental shortcuts learned from experience.  In a sense, a habit is just a memory of the steps you previously followed to solve a problem in the past. Whenever the conditions are right, you can draw on this memory and automatically apply the same solution. The primary reason the brain remembers the past is to better predict what will work int he future.

Habit formation is incredibly useful because the conscious mind is the bottleneck of the brain. It can only pay attention to one problem at a time. As a result, your brain is always working to preserve your conscious attention for whatever task is most essential. Whenever possible, the conscious mind likes to pawn off tasks to the nonconscious mind to do automatically. This is precisely what happens when a habit is formed. Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks.

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. Without good financial habits, you will always be struggling for the next dollar. Without good health habits, you will always seem to be short on energy. Without good learning habits, you will always feel like you’re behind the curve. If you’re always being forced to make decisions about simple tasks.

The process of building habit can be divided into 4 simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. Breaking it down into these fundamental parts can help us understand what a habit is, how it works and how to improve.

This 4 step pattern is the backbone of every habit, and your brain runs through theses steps in the same order each time.

The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior. It is a bit of information that predicts a rewards.

Your mind is continuously analyzing your internal and external environment for hints of where rewards are located. Because the cue is the first indication that we’re close to a reward, it naturally leads to a craving.

Cravings are the second step and they are the motivational force behind every habit. Without some level of motivation or desire, without craving a change, we have no reason to act. 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.

Cues are meaningless until they are interpreted. The thoughts, feelings, and emotions of the observer are what transform a cue into a craving.

The response is the actual habit you perform, which can take the form of a thought or and action. Whether a response occurs depends on how motivated you are and how much friction is associated with the behavior. If a particular action requires more physical or mental effort than you are willing to expend, then you won’t do it. Your response also depends on your ability. It sounds simple, but a habit can occur only if you are capable of doing it.

Rewards are the end goald of every habit. 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 2 purposes: 1) they satisfy us and 2) they teach us.

The first purpose of rewards is to satisfy your craving. Yes, rewards provide benefits on their own.

Second, rewards teach us which actions are worth remembering in the future. Your brain is a reward detector. As you go about your life, your sensory nervous system is continuously monitoring which actions satisfy your desires and deliver pleasure. 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. Eliminate the cue and your habit will never start. Reduce the craving and you won’t experience enough motivation to act. Make the behavior difficult and you won’t be able to do it. And if the reward fails to satisfy your desire, then you’ll have no reason to do it again in the future. Without the first 3 steps, a behavior will not occur. Without all 4, a behavior will not repeated.

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, theses 4 steps form a neurological feedback loop, cue, craving, response, reward, that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits. This cycle is known as the habit loop.

This 4 step process is not something that happens occasionally, but rather it is an endless feedback loop that is running and active during every moment you are alive, even now. The brain is continually scanning the environment, predicting what will happen next, trying out different responses, and learning from the results. The entire process is completed in a split second, and we use it again and again without realizing everything that has been packed into the previous moment.

We can split these 4 steps into 2 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 reward, and it is when you take action and achieve the change you desire.

All behavior is driven by the desire to solve a problem. Sometimes the problem is that you notice something good and you want to obtain it. Sometimes the problem is that you are experiencing pain and you want to relieve it. Either way, the purpose of every habit is to solve the problems you face.

Whenever you want to change your behavior, you can simply ask yourself : how can i make it obvious, attractive, easy., satisfying.

Pointing-and-calling is so effective because it raises the level of awareness from nonconscious habit to a more  conscious level.

Hearing your bad habits spoken aloud makes the consequences seem more real. It adds weight to the action rather than letting yourself mindlessly slip into an old routine.

Broadly speaking, the format for creating an implementation intention is : “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.

People who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through. Too many people try to change their habits without these basic details figured out.

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.

Habit stacking is a special form of an implementation intention. Rather than pairing your new habit with a particular time and location, you pair it with a current habit.

The habit stacking formula is : “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]”

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.

When you can’t manage to get to an entirely new environment, redefine or rearrange your current one. Create a separate space for work, study, exercise, entertainment, and cooking. The mantra I find useful is “One space, one use”

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 if they go unused for quite a while. And that means that simply resisting temptation is an ineffective strategy. It is hard to maintain a Zen attitude in a life filled with interruptions. It takes too much energy. In the short-run, you can choose to overpower temptation. In the long-run we become a product of the environment that we live in.

This practice is an inversion of the 1st law of behavior change. Rather than make it obvious, you can make it invisible. I’m often surprised by how effective simple changes like these can be. Remove a single cue and the entire habit often fades awah.

Self-control is short-term strategy, not a long-term one. You may be able to resist temptation once or twice, but it’s unlikely you can muster the willpower to override your desires every time. 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. This is the secret to self-control. Make the cues of your good habits obvious and the cues of your bad habits invisible.

Dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it. Gambling addicts have a dopamine spike right before they place a bet, not after they win.

We imitate the habits of 3 groups in particular : The close, the many, the powerful.

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. New habits seem achievable when you see others doing them every day. If you are surrounded by fit people, you’re more likely to consider working out to be a common habit.

Join culture where 1) your desired behavior is the normal behavior and 2) you already have something in common with the group.

There is tremendous internal pressure to comply with the norms of the group. The reward of being accepted is often greater than the reward of winning an argument, looking smart, or finding truth. Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves.

The human mind knows how to get along with others. It wants to get along with others. This is our natural mode. You can override it, you can choose to ignore the group or to stop caring what other people think, but it takes work. Running against the grain of your culture requires extra effort.

When changing your habits means challenging the tribe, change is unattractive. When changing your habits means fitting in with the tribe, change is very attractive.

The key to finding and fixing the causes of your bad habits is to reframe the associations you have about them. It’s not easy, but if you can reprogram your predictions, you can transform a hard habit into an attractive one.

Motion makes you feel like you’re getting things done. But really, you’re just preparing to get something done. When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing.

If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection. You don’t need to map out every feature of a new habit. You just need to practice it. This is the first takeaway of the 3rd law: you just need to get your reps in.

Habits form based on frequency, not time.

In practice, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes for a habit to become automatic. What matters is that you take the actions you need to take to make progress. Whether an action is fully automatic is of less importance.

To build a habit, you need to practice it. And the most effective way to make practice happen is to adhere to the 3rd law of behavior change: make it easy.

Whenever you organize a space for its intended purpose, you are priming it to make the next action easy.

Decisive moments - 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.

A 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.

The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do. Increase the friction until you don’t even have the option to act.

When you automate as much of your life as possible, you can spend your effort on the tasks machines cannot do yet. Each habit that we hand over to the authority of technology frees up time and energy to pour into the next stage of growth.

When working in your favor, automation can make your good habits inevitable and your bad habits impossible. It is the ultimate way to lock in future behavior rather than relying on willpower in the moment. By utilizing commitment devices, strategic one decisions, and technology, you can create an environment of inevitability, a space where good habits are not just an outcome you hope for but an outcome that is virtually guaranteed.

1. Habit tracking is obvious - Measurement offers one way to overcome our blindness to our own behavior and notice what’s really going on each day.
2. Habit tracking is attractive - the most effective form of motivation is progress. when we get a signal that we are moving forward, we become more motivated to continue down that path. In this way, habit tracking can have an addictive effect on motivation. Each small win feeds your desire.
3. Habit tracking is satisfying - Habit tracking also helps keep your eye on the ball: you’re focused on the process rather than the result.

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. Furthermore, habit tracking provides visual proof that you are casting votes for the type of person you wish to become, which is a delightful form of immediate and intrinsic gratification.

The habit stacking + habit tracking formula is : After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [TRACK MY HABIT]

If you’re going to rely on punishment to change behavior, then the strength of the punishment must match the relative strength of the behavior it is trying to correct. To by productive, the cost of procrastination must be greater than the cost of action. To be healthy, the cost of laziness must be greater than the cost of exercise.

A habit contract is a verbal or written agreement in which you state your commitment to a particular habit and the punishment that will occur if you don’t follow through. Then you find one or two people to act as your accountability partners and sign off on the contract with you.

Genes do not determine your destiny. They determine your areas of opportunity. “Genes can predispose, but they don’t predetermine.” The areas where you are genetically predisposed to success are the areas where habits are more likely to be satisfying. The key is to direct your effort toward areas that both excite you and match your natural skills, to align your ambition with your ability.

Specialization is a powerful way to overcome the “accident” of bad genetics. The more you master a specific skill, the harder it becomes for others to compete with you.

Our genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on. once we realize our strengths, we know where to spend our time and energy. We know which types of opportunities to look for and which types of challenges to avoid. The better we understand our nature, the better our strategy can be.

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

Maximum motivation occurs when facing a challenge of just manageable difficulty. 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.

When you’re starting a new habit, it’s important to keep the behavior as easy as possible so you can stick with it even when conditions aren’t perfect. This is an idea we covered in detail while discussing the 3rd law of behavior change.

Once a habit has been established, however, it’s important to continue to advance in small ways. These little improvements and new challenges keep you engaged. And if you hit the Goldilocks Zone just right, you can achieve a flow state.

A flow state is the experience of being “in the zone” and fully immersed in an activity. Scientists have tried to quantify this feeling. They found that to achieve a state of flow, a task must be roughly 4 percent beyond your current ability. In real life it’s typically not feasible to quantify the difficulty of an action in this way, but the core idea of the Goldilocks Rule remains: working on challenges of just manageable difficulty, something on the perimeter of your ability, seems crucial for maintaining motivation.

Mastery requires practice. But the more you practice something, the more boring and routine it becomes. Once the beginner gains have been made and we learn what to expect, our interest starts to fade. Sometimes it happens even faster than that.

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.

When you want to maximize your potential and achieve elite levels of performance, you need a more nuanced approach. You can’t repeat the same things blindly and expect to become exceptional. Habits necessary, but not sufficient for mastery. What you need is a combination of automatic habis and deliberate practice.

Habits + deliberate practice = Mastery

To become great, certain skills do need to become automatic.

Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development. Old tasks become easier the second time around, but it doesn’t get easier overall because now you’re pouring your energy into the next challenge. Each habit unlock the next level of performance. It’s an endless cycle.

Mastering one habit

Mastering a field

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.

Although habits are powerful, what you need is a way to remain conscious of your performance over time, so you can continue to refined and improve. It is precisely at the moment when you begin to feel like you have mastered a skill, right when things are starting to feel automatic and you are becoming comfortable, that you must avoid slipping into the trap of complacency.

The solution? Establish a system for reflection and review.

Reflection and review enables the long-term improvement of all habits because it makes you aware of your mistakes and helps you consider possible paths for improvement. without reflection, we can make excuses, create rationalizations, and lie to ourselves. We have no process for determining whether we are performing better or worse compared to yesterday.

Improvement is not just about learning habits, it’s also about fine-tuning them. Reflection and review ensures that you spend your time on the right things and make course corrections whenever necessary.

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

Habits deliver numerous benefits, but the downside is that the can lock us into our previous patterns of thinking and acting, even when the world is shifting around us. Everything is impermanent. Life is constantly changing, so you need to periodically check in to see if your old habits and beliefs are still serving you. A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review are the antidote.

Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine.