Disclaimer: These are notes from the book, intended for those who have already read the original work. If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend doing so to fully understand and appreciate the concepts discussed. These notes are meant to refresh, not replace, the insights from “Atomic Habits” by James Clear.

Table of Contents

• The Fundamentals: Why tiny changes make a big difference
  • 1. Surprising power of atomic habits
  • 2. How your Habits shape your identity (and vice versa)
  • 3. How to build better habits in 4 simple steps
• The 1st Law: Make it Obvious
  • 4. The Man Who Didn’t look right
  • 5. The Best way to Start a New Habit
  • 6. Motivation is overrated; Environment often matters more
  • 7. The Secret to Self-Control
• The 2nd Law: Make it Attractive
  • 8. How to Make a Habit Irresistible
  • 9. The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits
  • 10. How to find and fix the cause of your bad habits
• The 3rd Law: Make It Easy
  • 11. Walk Slowly, but Never Backward
  • 12. The Law of Least Effort
  • 13. How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule
  • 14. How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible
• The 4th Law: Make it satisfying
  • 15. The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change
  • 16. How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day
  • 17. How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything
• 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)
  • 19. The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work
  • 20. The Downside of Creating good habits
• Conclusion

The Fundamentals: Why tiny changes make a big difference

1. Surprising power of atomic habits

• The aggregation of marginal gains.
  • Why small habits make a big difference ?
    • If you get 1% better each day for one year you’ll be 37 times better at the end of the year.
    • This goes for being worse as well - accumulation of many missteps that leads to the problem ( Habits are a double edge sword )
    • Shifting the direction a plane by just a little can lead to meaningful change in destination.
    • You should be far more concerned about your current trajectory than with your current results.
    • You get what you repeat.
    • Example of positive compounding -
      • Productivity Compounding - accomplishing one extra task, learning new skills.
      • Knowledge Compound - compounding ideas.
      • Relationship Compound - the more you help others the more others want to help you.
    • Example of negative compounding -
      • Stress compound
      • Negative thoughts compound - worthless, stupid, ugly for self and others
      • Outraged Compounds
• What progress is really like ?
  • Habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold.
  • The most powerful outcomes are delayed
  • Work is not wasted it’s just being stored
• What determines whether we stick to the habit long enough to survive plateau of latent potential and break through to the other side.
  • Set specific actionable goals
  • Systems vs Goals
    • Goals are the result you want to achieve. ( Ex- Become a millionaire )
    • Systems are the processes that leads to those results. ( Ex- How you test product ideas, hire employees and run marketing campaigns )
    • If you ignored your goals and focus only on the system would you still succeed ?
      • Yes
    • If you want better results forget about setting goals focus on the system instead.
    • Are goals unless ?
      • No, goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are good for making progress.
    • Long term thinking is goalless.
  • Problem which arise when you spent too much time thinking about your goal and not designing the system
    • #1 Winners and losers set the same goals therefore it cannot be what differentiates them.
    • #2 Achieving a goal results only in a momentarily change. Temporary solution.
    • #3 Goals make you less happy until you achieve that goal. And if you fail you are disappointed.
    • #4 Goals are at odds with long term progress - what will push you forward after you’ve achieved it ?
  • Fall in love with the system
    • None of this is to say that goals are useless. However, I’ve found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.
    • Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.

2. How your Habits shape your identity (and vice versa)

• Changing habits (bad ones) is challenging because of two reason
  1. We try to change the wrong thing
  2. We try to change our habits in wrong way.
• We try to change the wrong thing
  • Three layer of behaviour change
    • Outcome - what you get (outermost layer)
    • Process - what you do
    • Identity - what you believe (Inner layer) / who we wish to become
  • True habit change is identity change
    • “Most people don’t even consider identity change when they set out to improve. They just think, “I want to be skinny (outcome) and if I stick to this diet, then I’ll be skinny (process).”
    • Behind every system of action there are system of beliefs.
      • “The system of a democracy is founded on beliefs like freedom, majority rule, and social equality. The system of dictatorship has very different set of beliefs like absolute authority and strict obedience ”
    • It is hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying belief that lead to your past behaviour.
      • The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader.
    • When working against us though, identity change cane be a curse.
  • Over the long run the reason you fail to stick with habits is that your self-image gets in the way. This is why you can’t get too attached to one version of your identity. Progress requires unlearning. Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.
• If your belief and world-view play such an important role in your behaviour, where do they come from in the first place ?
• The Two-Step process to change your identity
  • “The more evidence you have for a belief, the more strongly you will believe it.”
  • “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
  • “No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
    • Each time you write a page, you are a writer.
  • And of course, it works the opposite way too. Each time you choose to perform a bad habit, it vote for that identity but the good thing is that we don’t need to be perfect just like in an election there are going to be voter for both sides, you don’t need all the votes, you just need the majority to win.
  • But things are not going to change if you keep casting the same votes, you can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results
  • Two step process
    1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
       • “Who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want?”
         • “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).”
         • ”What would a <type of person I wan’t to be> do ?”
    2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.
• Feedback loop - Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shape your habits.
• 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.” Building habits are not abut having something. They are about becoming someone, changing your belief about yourself.

3. How to build better habits in 4 simple steps

• Behaviours followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated
• Feedback loop behind all human behaviour: try, fail, learn, try-different
• Why your brain builds habits ?
  • A habit is a behaviour that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.
  • Habits are, simple, reliable solutions to recurring problems in our environment
  • 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 prevent your conscious attention for whatever task is most essential. Whenever possible, the conscious mind likes to pawn off task to the non-conscious mind to doe 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.
• Doesn’t routine take away the vibrancy and spontaneity of life ? / Will I become a robot ? / Does habits restrict my freedom of thought and action ?
  • Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it. Ex- People with without good financial habit have less financial freedom compared people who do.
  • Habits make fundamental of life easier allowing you to create mental space need for free thinking and creativity.
  • “Conversely, when you have your habits dialled in and the basics of life are handled and done, your mind is free to focus on new challenges and master the next set of problems. Building habits in the present allows you to do more of what you want in the future”
• The science of how habits work
  • Process of building habits can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.
  • The cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately becomes associated with the cue.
  • Cue - the trigger to some Behavior, information that predicts reward (noticing the reward)
    • Mind is continuously analysing your internal and external environment for hints of where rewards are.
    • Ex - We learns cues that produce rewards such as money and fame, power and status, praise and approval, love and friendship, or sense of personal satisfaction.
    • Because the cue is the first indication that we’re close to reward, it naturally leads to craving.
  • Craving - motivation or desire for the change in internal state (wanting the reward)
    • Ex - “You do not crave smoking a cigarette, you crave the feeling of relief it provides. ”
    • Cravings differ from person to person. Different people are motivated by different things. The thoughts, feelings, and emotions of the observers are what transforms a cue into a craving.
  • Response - the actual habit you perform, which can be a thought or action. (obtaining the reward)
    • Occurrence depends on how motivated you are and how much friction is associated with the Behavior.
    • Habits only occurs if you are capable of doing it.
  • Reward - the end goal of every habit.
    • Reward serve two purposes
      • They satisfy us (satisfy our craving Ex- Eating, gaining status or wining approval (immediate benefit))
      • They teach us which action are worth remembering in the future (reinforcement) by feeling of pleasure/ disappointment.
      • Rewards closes the feedback loop and complete the habit cycle.
  • Without the first three steps the behaviour will not occur. Without all four, a behaviour will not be repeated.
  • Together, the four steps form a neurological feedback loop, the cycle is known as habit loop.
  • We can split these four steps into two phases:
    • The problem phase - realising something needs to change. Cue and Craving
    • The Solution phase - taking the action and achieving the desired change. Response and Reward
    Example

    • cue - phone buzzed with a new text message
    • craving - you want to learn the content of the message and by whom it is.
    • response - you grab the phone and read the text.
    • reward - you satisfy your craving to real the message, Grabbing your phone becomes associated with phone buzzing.
• The four laws of behaviour change
  • How to make good habits
    • Make it obvious (cue)
    • Make it attractive (craving)
    • Make it easy (response)
    • Make it satisfying (reward)
  • How to break bad habits
    • Make it invisible
    • Make it unattractive
    • Make it difficult
    • Make it unsatisfying
  • “The key to creating good habits and breaking bad ones is to understand these fundamental laws and how to alter them to your specifications. Every goal is doomed to fail if it goes against the grain of human nature.”

The 1st Law: Make it Obvious

4. The Man Who Didn’t look right

• “you don’t need to be aware of the cue for a habit to begin. You can notice an opportunity and take action without dedicating conscious attention to it. This is what makes habits useful.”
  • “The human brain is a prediction machine. It is continuously taking in your surroundings and analysing the information it comes across. Whenever you experience something repeatedly—like a paramedic seeing the face of a heart attack patient or a military analyst seeing a missile on a radar screen—your brain begins noticing what is important, sorting through the details and highlighting the relevant cues, and cataloging that information for future use. With enough practice, you can pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it.”
• It’s also what makes them dangerous.
  • You fall into old patterns before you realise what’s happening. Unless someone points it out, you may not notice that you cover your mouth with your hand whenever you laugh, you are sitting at a bad posture whenever you are using laptop/reading in bed. And the more you repeat the less likely you become to question what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
  • Over time, the cues that spark out habits become so common that they are essentially invisible, like an automatic action we don’t think about it and we are not aware of it.
• To get a handle on our current bad habits, we first need to become aware that we are doing it. If a habit remains mindless, you can’t expect to improve it.
• The Habits Scoreboard - an exercise you can use to become more aware of your behaviour
  • Make a list of daily habits, once you have a full list, look at each behaviour, and ask yourself, “Is this habit, a good habit, a bad habit, or a neutral habit” use signs +, -, = for each type respectively.
  • “ Categorise your habits by how they will benefit you in the long run. Generally speaking, good habits will have net positive outcomes. Bad habits have net negative outcomes. Smoking a cigarette may reduce stress right now (that’s how it’s serving you), but it’s not a healthy long-term Behavior.”
  • “Does this behaviour help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity”
• “The first step to changing bad habits is to be on the lookout for them. If you feel like you need extra help, then you can try Pointing-and-Calling in your own life”
  • “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.”
  • 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.
• The process of behaviour change always start with awareness.

The Habit Scorecard

“Does this behaviour help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?”

5. The Best way to Start a New Habit

• Implementation intention: plan you make beforehand about when and where to act. How you intend to implement a particular habit.

  • Implementation intention leverages two most common cues - time and location
  • Broadly speaking, the format for creating an implementation intention is: “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.”

  I will {Behaviour} at {Time} in {Location}
  

  Example -"I will meditate for ten minutes at 7 a.m. cross-legged on the chair in my room", "I will read a book for one hour at 11 p.m. sitting on the bed in my room"

• Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.

  • We tell ourselves “I’m going to eat healthier” or “I’m going start running or exercising” but we never say when and where these habit are going to happen. we leave it up to chance and hope that we will “just remember to do it” or feel motivated at the right time.
  • When your dreams are vague, it’s easy to rationalise little exceptions all day long and never get around to the specific things you need to do to succeed.
  • An implementation intention sweeps away foggy notions like above and transforms them into a concrete plan of action, The goal is to make the time and location so obvious that with enough repetition, you get urge to do the right thing at the right time, even if you can’t say why.

• Habit Stacking: A simple plan to overhaul your habits

  • The Diderot Effect: it states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases.
    Example - you buy some new clothes and you have to get new shoes to go with it, you get a new phone/ laptop and find yourself chasing all of the accessories that go with it like new cable, dongle, case etc.
    - It's a chain reaction of purchases.
  • Many human behaviour follow this cycle . You often decide what to do next based on what you have just finished doing. Hence one of the best way to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behaviour on top. This is called habit stacking.
  • The habit stacking formula:

  After {Current habit}, I will {New Habit}.
  

  Example: "After I brush my teeth each morning, I will meditate for ten minutes", "After I brush my teeth each evening, I will read a book for one hour"
  • The key is to tie your desired behaviour into something you already do each day.
  • Habit stacking implicitly has the time and location built into it.
  • Once you mastered this basic structure, you can begin to create larger stacks by chaining small habits together. This allows us to take advantage of the natural momentum that comes from one behaviour leading into the next - a positive version of Diderot Effect.
    Example: "After I brush my teeth in the morning, I will meditate for ten minutes", "After I meditate for ten minutes, I will write don my to-do list for the day", "After I write my to-do list for the day, I will immediately begin my first task."
  • Examples of some general habit stacks to guide you whenever the situation is appropriate.
    • When I see a set of stairs, I will take them instead of using the elevator.
    • Social skills. When I walk into a party, I will introduce myself to anyone I don’t know yet.
    • When I want to buy something over $100, I will wait 24 hours before purchasing.
    • Healthy eating. When I serve myself a meal, I will always put veggies on my plate first.
    • When I buy a new item, I will give something away. (“One in, one out.”)

• When and where you should inset a habit ? ( where they are likely to be successful)

  • Consider when you are most likely to be successful. Don’t ask yourself to do a habit when you’re likely to be occupied with something else.
  • Also your cue should also have the same frequency as your desired habit.

• How to find the right trigger for the habit stack ? ( list all the habits that you do without fail)

  • One way to do it to brainstorm a list of your current habits. Can use habit scorecard as a starting point.
  • Alternatively, you can create a list with two columns.
    • In first column, write down the habits you do each day without fail
    • In the second column write down all of the things that happen to you each day without fail.
  • Habit stacking works best when the cue is highly specific and immediately actionable.
    • Unclear trigger “When I take a break for lunch, I will do ten push-ups” many questions remain un answered.
    • Clear tigger “When I close my laptop for lunch, I will do ten push-ups next to my desk.”
    • Other examples like “After I close the door”. “After I brush my teeth”. “After I sit down at the table”. The specificity is important. The more tightly bound your new habit is to a specific cue, the better the odds are that you will notice when the time comes to act.

• “The 1st Law of Behaviour 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”

6. Motivation is overrated; Environment often matters more

• Your habits change depending on the environment you are in i.e. behaviour is a function of the Person in their environment

B = f(P,E)

• Many of the actions we take each day are shaped not by purposeful drive and choice but by the most obvious option.
  • Example: Impulse Buying
    • triggered when a shopper sees a product for the first time and visualises a need for it.
    • Example: Ice cream at the exit of a shoping center.
• Why is that ? - Visual Cues
  • “Given that we are more dependent on vision than on any other sense, it should come as no surprise that visual cues are the greatest catalyst of our behaviour. For this reason, a small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do.”
• How to design your environment for success
  • Make it easier to notice cue ( make it obvious ) by placing appropriate objects ( habit initiators) at easy to see/pickup places .
  • Make sure the best choice is the most obvious one. Making a better decision is easy and natural when the cues for good habits are right in front of you.
  • Environment design allows you to take back control and become the architect of your life. Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it.
• The context is the cue - gradually, your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behaviour. The context becomes the cue.
  • The cue that trigger a habit can start out very specific, but over time your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behaviour.
    • “For example, many people drink more in social situations than they would ever drink alone. The trigger is rarely a single cue, but rather the whole situation: watching your friends order drinks, hearing the music at the bar, seeing the beers on tap.”
    • Our behaviour is not defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them.
  • You can train yourself to link a particular habit with a particular context.
    • Example - going to bed only when you are tired can help with insomnia.
    • Habits can be easier to change in a new environment. It helps to escape the subtle trigger and cues that nudge you towards your current habits.
    • 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.
    • ”One space, one use”
      • If your space is limited, divide your room into activity zones.
    • Avoid mixing the context of one habit with another because when you start mixing context then you’ll start mixing habits and the easier one will usually win. - like playing games and working on same desk.

7. The Secret to Self-Control

• Studie/s show that addictions could spontaneously dissolve if there was a radical change in the environment. When the context change so does the habit.

• What makes a person more disciplined

  • 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.
  • Creating a more disciplined environment.

• Bad habits are autocatalytic and nearly impossible to remove entirely ( you can break it but you’re unlikely to forget it. )

  • the process of feeds itself. They foster the feeling they try to numb.
  Example - You feel bad, so you eat junk food. Because you eat junk food, you feel bad. It's a downward spiral of bad habits.

• Researchers refer to this phenomenon as “cue-induced wanting” : an external trigger causes a compulsive craving to repeat a bad habit. Once you notice something, you begin to want it.

  • “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.”

• One of the most practical way to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.

  Examples "If you spend too much money on electronics stop watching review of the latest tech gadgets.", "If you are playing too many video games unplug the console and put it in a closet after each use."

• Conclusion: Instead of summoning a new dose of willpower whenever you want to do the right thing, your energy would be better spent optimising your environment. This is the secret to self-control. Make the cue of your good habits obvious and the cues of your bad habits invisible.

The 2nd Law: Make it Attractive

8. How to Make a Habit Irresistible

• Supernormal stimuli - heightened version of reality.
  • Our brain ( brain of each animal ) is pre-loaded with certain rules for behaviour, and when it comes across an exaggerated version of that rule, it lights up like a Christmas tree. 🎄
  Example - We love junk food because of their higher content of sugar, salt, fat, and their unique texture ( enhanced dynamic contrast ) . which used to be rare in old times that's why we it's idea.
• If you want to increase the odd that a behaviour will occur, then you need to make it attractive. To do this we first need to understand what a craving is and how it works.
• The Dopamine-Driven feedback loop
  • Whenever you predict that an opportunity will be rewarding, your levels of dopamine spike in anticipation. And whenever dopamine rises, so does the motivation to act. Anticipation of a reward not the fulfilment of it that gets us to take action.
  • Brain has far more neural circuitry allocated for wanting reward than for liking them.
  • We need to make our habits attractive because it is the expectation of a rewarding experience that motivates us to act in first place.
• How to use temptation bundling to make your habits more attractive
  • Temptation bundling works by linking an action you WANT to do with an action you NEED to do. It is one way to create a heightened version of any habit by connecting it with something you already want.
    • You’re more likely to find a behaviour attractive if you get to do one of your favourite things at the same time.
    • Premack’s Principle- “more probable behaviour will reinforce less probable behaviour”
• Habit stacking + temptation bundling

After [CURRENT HABIT/FIXED HABIT],  I will [HABIT I NEED].

After/While [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].

9. The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits

• Behaviour are attractive when they help us fit in. We imitate the habits of three group in particular.
  • The close - The closer we are to someone, the more likely we are to imitate some of their habits.
  • The many - Whenever we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide our behaviour. ( looking at user reviews at amazon )
    • Downside - The normal behaviour of the tribe often overpowers the desired behaviour of the individual.
  • The powerful - We intimate people we envy.
    • We are also motivated to avoid behaviours that would lower our status.
    • We worry about our social status.
• One of the most effective thing you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where
  1. Your desired behaviour is normal behaviour, and
  2. You already have something in common with the group.

10. How to find and fix the cause of your bad habits

• Carving is jut a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive
  • Example -
    • Find love and reproduce = using Tinder
    • Connect and bond with people = browsing Facebook/Instagram
    • Achieve status and prestige = playing video games
  • Your habits are moderns-day solutions to ancient desires.
• The good thing is - there are many different ways to address the same underlying motive.
  • Your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problem you face; they are just the methods you learned to use.
  • What you really want is to feel different
  • Whenever a habit successfully addresses a motive, you develop a craving to do it again.
  • Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings, and we can use this insight to our advantage.
• How to reprogram your brain to enjoy hard habits

  • ”I have to wake up early” → “I get to wake up early”

  • 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.

    • “Exercise. Many people associate exercise with being a challenging task that drains energy and wears you down. You can just as easily view it as a way to develop skills and build you up. Instead of telling yourself “I need to go run in the morning,” say “It’s time to build endurance and get fast.”
    “Meditation. Anyone who has tried meditation for more than three seconds knows how frustrating it can be when the next distraction inevitably pops into your mind. You can transform frustration into delight when you realise that each interruption gives you a chance to practice returning to your breath. Distraction is a good thing because you need distractions to practice meditation”
• Motivation ritual - associating your habits with something you enjoy.
  • Example - putting headphones on and listening to music before studying.
  • Doing a stretching routine before starting a workout.

The 3rd Law: Make It Easy

11. Walk Slowly, but Never Backward

• Being in motion vs Taking action
  • When you are in motion, you’re planning and strategising and learning, which makes us feel like that we are getting things done and making progress. But in reality you’re just preparing to get something done.
  • Action on the other hand, is the type of behaviour that will deliver an outcome. 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.
• Habits form based on frequency not time.
  • Hebb’s Law: “Neurons that fire together wire together”, Repeating a habit leads to clear physical changes in the brain.
• 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 Behaviour Change: make it easy.

12. The Law of Least Effort

• Law of Least Effort: when deciding between tow similar options, people will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.
  • So, the less energy a habit requires, the more likely it is to occur.
  • The more difficult the habit the more friction there is between you and your desired end state. That’s why it’s important to make your habit feel so easy that you’ll do them even when you don’t feel like it.
• How to achieve more with less effort
  • Addition by Subtraction
    • When we remove the points of friction that sap our time and energy, we can achieve more with less effort.
    • This is why most habit forming products remove little bits of friction from our life.
    • "Business is a never-ending quest to deliver the same result in a easier fashion."
  • The central idea is to create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. Much of the battle of building better habits comes down to finding ways to reduce the friction associated with our good habits and increase the friction associated with our bad ones.
• Prime the environment for future use
  • Whenever you organise a space for its intended purpose, you are priming it to make the next action easy.
    • Want to exercise? Set out your workout clothes, shoes, gym bag, and water bottle ahead of time.
  • You can also invert this principle and prime the environment to make bad behaviour difficult.
    • If you find yourself watching too much television, for example, then unplug it after each use. Only plug it back in if you can say out loud the name of the show you want to watch.

13. How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule

• Habit’s are automatic choices that influence the conscious decisions that follow.

  • Habits can be completed in just a few seconds, but it can also shape the actions that you take for minutes or hours afterward.
  • Example -You check your phone for “just a second” and soon you have spent twenty minutes staring at the screen. Because it’s easier to continue what you are already doing than to start doing something different.

• Decisive moment: Every day, there are a handful of moment that deliver an outsized impact. These choices are fork in the road. They set options available for future self.

• The two-minute rule - “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minute to do.”

  • The idea is to make habit easy as possible to start. Once you started doing the right thing, it is much easier to continue doing it.
  • The point is to master the habit of showing up. The truth is, a habit must be established before it can be improved. As you master the art of showing up, the first two minute simply becomes a ritual at the beginning of a large routine.
  • You can figure out the gateway habits that will lead to your desired out-come by mapping out your goals on a scale from ‘very easy’ to ‘very hard’
  • Example
    • Very Easy: Put on your running shoes, Writing one sentence
    • Easy: Walk ten minutes, Writing one paragraph
    • Moderate: Walk ten thousand step, Writing one thousand words
    • Hard: Runa a 5k, Writing five thousand word article
    • Very Hard: Run a marathon, Write a book.
  • The secret is to stop before it starts feeling like work.

• Habit shaping

  • “Start by mastering the first two minutes of the smallest version of the behaviour. 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. Eventually, you’ll end up with the habit you had originally hoped to build while still keeping your focus where it should be: on he first two minutes of the behaviour”
  • Example ( Starting to Exercise)
    • phase1: Change into workout clothes
    • phase2: Step out the door (try taking a walk).
    • phase3: Drive to the gym, exercise for five minutes, and leave.
    • phase4: Exercise for fifteen minutes at least once per week.
    • phase5: Exercise three times per week.

The difference between a good day and a bad day is often a few productive and healthy choices made at decisive moment.

14. How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible.

• Making bad habits difficult using commitment device.
  • 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.
  • Example:
    • Cut off the Internet at night
    • Ask waiter to split meal and box half of it.
    • Pay for a gym membership
• Automate a habit and never think about it again ( One time choices )
  • The best was 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.
  • Example
    • Nutrition: Use smaller plates
    • Productivity: Delete games and social media apps from the phone, get rid of gaming console, turn off subscriptions to streaming apps, block social media websites
    • Use technology to automate your habits is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right behavior.

The 4th Law: Make it satisfying

15. The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change

• The first three laws of behavior change make it obvious, make it attractive and make it easy- increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change- make it satisfying- increases the odd that behavior will be repeated next time
• We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying, conversely, if an experience is not satisfying, we have little reason to repeat it.
• We live in a delayed-return environment, but human brain did not evolve for life with a delayed-return environment.
  • We value present more than the future.
    • we eat junk food despite knowing that it is bad for health
    • we sit in bad posture despite knowing that it will be problematic in long term
  • Every habit produces multiple outcome across time. with our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad.
  • When the moment of decision arrives, instant gratification usually wins. -If you’re willing to wait for the reward, you’ll face less competition and often get a bigger payoff. As the saying goes, the last mile is always the least crowded. This is true for nearly every field.
  Example: Advantage of buying ps5 later instead of now

  • More available games at lower price
  • Easy availability
  • Will save me time until then which could be spent in side projects or finishing steam and ps3 backlog.
• Using Instant gratification: *adding immediate pleasure to the habits that pay off in the long-run and a little bit of immediate pain to ones that don’t.
  • The vital thing in getting a habit to stick is to feel successful even if it’s in a small way.
  • Immediate reward when ? - the ending of a behaviour
  • Use reinforcement, make avoidance visible.
    • Example: Open savings account for things you wan't or want to do like going on a trip, whenever you save some money, skipping subscription for some app transfer it into that savings account., play an hour of video game, after saving.
    • This immediate reward feels a lot better than being deprived.
    • It is worth noting that it is important to select short-term rewards that reinforce your identity rather than ones that conflict with it.
      • Like if I am trying to spend less, than my goal should not be to save so enough to buy something else that would defeat the purpose.
  • Eventually the identity itself becomes a reinforcer. Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.

16. How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day

• Paper clip strategy: visual measure provides clear evidence of your progress.
  • As a result they reinforce your behaviour and add little bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity.
• How to keep your habits on track
  • A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit.
    • It simultaneously makes a behavior obvious, attractive, and satisfying.
      1. Habit tracking is obvious: Habit tracing naturally builds a series of visual cues like the streak of X’s. It also keeps us honest to ourselves as measurement offers one way to overcome our blindness to our own behaviour.
      2. Habit tracking is attractive: we get a signal that we are moving forward, which is particularly powerful on a bad day. Habit tracking is a visual proof of how far you’ve come.
      3. Habit tracking is satisfying: it’s satisfying to cross an item off your to-do list.
  • ”Don’t break the chain” is a powerful mantra.
• Habit tracking should be automated, manual tracking should be limited to your most important habits.
• Record each measurement immediately after the habit occurs. The completion of the behavior is the cue to write it down.
  • Habit stacking + habit tracking

    After [current habit], I will [track my habit]

• How to recover quickly when your habits break down

  • Never miss twice, Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.
  • The breaking of a habit doesn’t matter if the reclaiming of it is fast.
  • It is important because lost days hurt you more than successful days help you.
  Ex- if you start with 100bucks, then a 50% gain will take you to 150, but you only need 33% loss to take you back to 100bucks.

• Knowing when (and when not) to track a habit: Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing.

  • dark side of tracing a particular behavior is that we become driven by the number rather than the purpose behind it.
    • If your success is measured by a lower number on the scale, you will Optimise for a lower number on the scale, even if it means embracing crash diets, juice cleanses, and fat-loss pills.
  • we optimise for what we measure. When we choose the wrong measurement, we get the wrong behavior.
  • Goodhart’s Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
    • Measurement is only useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you. Each number is simply one piece of feedback in the overall system.
    • We mistakenly think the factor we measure are the only factor that exist. But just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing.
  • If you’re not feeling motivated by the number on the scale, perhaps it’s time to focus on a different measure- one that gives you more signal of progress.

17. How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything

• Behavior only shifts if the punishment is painful enough and reliably enforced.
  • To be productive, the cost of procrastination must be greater than the cost of action.
• The habit contract
  • 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’f follow through. Then you find one or two people to act as your accountability partner and sign off on the contract with you.
  • The contract can change as you make more progress.
  • It effective because we care what other people think about us.

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)

• Habits are easier to perform, and more satisfying to stick with, when they align with your natural inclinations and abilities.
• Play the game where odds are in your favour. Genes cannot be easily changed, which means they provide a powerful advantage in favourable circumstances and a serious disadvantage in unfavourable circumstances.
  • Genes do not determine your destiny. They determine your area of opportunity.
• The key is to direct your effort toward areas that both excite you and match your natural skills.
• There is a version of every habit that can bring you joy and satisfaction. Find it. Habits need to be enjoyable if they are going to stick.
• How to find a game where the odds are in your favour
  • The most common approach is trial and error, but the problem is life is short, you don’t have time to try every career.
  • Explore/Exploit trade-off
    • In the beginning of a new activity, there should be a period of exploration. The goal is to try out many possibilities, research a broad range of ideas, and cast a wide net.
    • After initial period of exploration, shift your focus to the best solution you’ve found- but keep experimenting occasionally.
    • Balance depends upon weather you are winning or losing
    • If you are currently winning, you exploit, exploit.
    • If you are currently losing, you continue to explore, explore, explore.
    • Work on the strategy that seems to deliver the best result about 80-90% of time and keep exploring with the remaining 10-20%
    • It also depends on how much time you have. If you have a lot of time like someone at the beginning of their career- it makes more sense to explore because once you find the right thing, you still have a good amount of time to exploit it.
  • Questions you can ask yourself to continually narrow in on the habits and areas that will be most satisfying to you:
    • What feels like fun to me, but work to others?
      • Designing/Frontend
    • What makes me lose track of time?
      • Making something, specially in a hackathon.
    • Where do I get greater returns than the average person?
      • In making things look impressive
    • What comes naturally to me?
      • Taste in desing
• If you can’t find a game where the odds are stacked in your favour, create one.
  • “When you can’t win by being better, you can win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it easier to stand out”
  • “Specialisation 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”
• Finally, genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on. Genes can’t make you successful if you are not doing the work.
• People get so caught up in the fact that they have limits that they rarely exert the effort required to get close.

19. The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work

• Why is it that some people, stick with their habits ?
  • Work on task with just manageable difficulty
  • 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.
• The goldilocks rule
  • Working on challenges of just manageable difficulty- something on the perimeter of your ability- seems crucial for maintaining motivation.
  • 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.
    • Balance between victories to keep you motivated and mistakes to keep you working hard.
  • If you hit the goldilocks zone just right you achieve a flow state.
    • A flow state is the experience of being “in the zone” and fully immersed in an activity.
    • Scientist found that to achieve a state of flow, a task must be roughly 4 percent beyond your current ability. But it’s typically not feasible to quantify the difficulty of an action in this way.
• At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same thing over and over.
  • Successful people feel the same lack of motivation as everyone else. The different is that they still find a way to show up despite the feeling of boredom.
  • We get bored with habits, because the outcome becomes expected. (no dopamine in that) We start derailing our progress to seek novelty.
  • Many habit building products are those that produce variable reward.
    • Variable reward amplifies a craving
    • Example gambling, Anticipation of reward >> reward it'self
  • The sweet spot of desire occurs at a 50/50 split between success and failure. You need just enough “winning” to experience satisfaction and just enough “wanting” to experience desire.
  • When a habit is truly important to you, you have to be willing to stick to it in any mood. Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.

20. The Downside of Creating good habirs

• The upside of habits is that we ca do things without thinking. The downside of habits is that you get used to doing things a certain way and stop paying attention to little errors
• Whenever you start to feel comfortable and the habits feel automatic is when you should review your habits and make adjustments
  • Reflection and review enables the long-term improvement of all habits because it makes you aware of your mistakes and help you consider possible paths for improvement. Without reflection, we can make excuses, create rationalisation, and lie to ourselves.
  • Decision Journal- record the major decisions that you make each week, why you made them, and what is the expected outcome of it. And the review the choices at the end of each month or year to see where you were correct and where you were wrong.
  • Worrying too much about every daily choices is like looking at yourself in the mirror from inches away. You can see every imperfection and lose sight of the big picture.
  • Conversely, never reviewing your habits is like never looking in the mirror, you won’t be aware of the easily fixable flaws.
• The more sacred and idea is to us- that is, the more deeply it is tied to our identity- the more strongly we will defend it against criticism.
  • One solution is to avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of who you are. “Keep your identity small”
  • "I'am the Entrepreneur" translates to "I'm the type of person who builds and creates things"
• 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.

Conclusion

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