Atomic Habits is a book by James Clear that outlines some clear steps to follow and rules to abide by in the quest to change habits. James calls the book atomic habits because it's focused on the tiniest changes that one can make that have a big impact.

I really enjoyed the book. Due to my reading in several psychology books, this one really connected all the vertices of knowledge in my head. I really loved James' call to action with focusing on one's identity as the root of habits. This really put change of mind first to then change of physical habits.

I really enjoyed how James' put his own story into the book, how he started off with a tragedy, pushed through that to become a baseball player, and finally, accepting that he was not the athlete he once was and had to find a new identity.

Overall, I think the book is packed full of some ideas and resources that one can use to kick off deeper dives into the concepts and ideas. At a high level, this book comes with all the ideas one would need if one read all of the other books referenced. It leaves you with enough to know what to do, with the desire to go and learn more.

I completed the book on Februrary 9th, 2020.

What I liked

  • Some simple rules outlined for habit change. The chapters are short and to the point. The author really drives home the ideas of the book consistently thoroughout the book.
  • Doing yearly retrospections to check your processes and progress.

What I didn't like

  • For a stretch: very high level, but effective lessons. Seemed to copy a few of the other books i've read recently. Had I not read a big portion of the books in the references, I would have gotten more of a book for kick off points to read the others. Coming in reverse, I felt there were a short of lessons learned from this book.

Key Learnings

The surprising power of atomic habits

  • Little changes day to day to add up. They make little difference in the short term. In the long term, they have huge compounding changes.
  • When you look back a few years, the value of good and bad habits becomes strikingly apparent.
  • Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits become your ally, bad habits make time your enemy.
  • "Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change. Cancer spends 80 percent of its life undetectable, then takes over the body in months. Bamboo can barely be seen for the first five years as it builds extensive root systems underground before exploding ninety feet into the air within six weeks."
  • There exists a plateau of habits - James calls this the Plateau of Latent Potential. This is the same thing that Seth Godin calls 'The Dip'.
  • Others will only see your breakthroughs, but only you will know the true work that went into the product from years and years of habits.
  • If you focus more on the goals instead of the systems, you will incur a handful of problems.
  • If you focus on the goals, once you reach it, you risk the possibility of just falling off. Focus on the systems.
  • Fall in love with the process rather than the product.
  • 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 goal-less 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 your progress.

How your habits shape your identity

  • Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe.
  • Most people focus on the outcomes rather than the identity. This is why they get so stuck and not achieving what they set out to achieve. They sabotage themselves and don't realize that their old identity can 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 this is.
  • Be careful of your pride - it will get in the way of your habit changes.
  • Good habits can make rational sense, but if they conflict with your identity, you will fail to put them into action.
  • Whatever your identity is right now, you only believe it when you have proof of it. You are constantly collecting evidence you have for a belief, the more evidence you have, the more you believe it.
  • Ask yourself 'who is the type of person that could get the outcome that I want?'
  • It's important to start with your values to drive any feedback loops you desire.

How to build better habits in 4 simple steps

  • When you have your habits dialed 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.
  • Without the desire to change, we have no reason to act. Start with desire. Start with why.
  • 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. Every action is linked to a desire to change your internal state.
  • James' introduces the four laws of behavior change:
  • Make it obvious
  • Make it attractive
  • Make it easy
  • Make it satisfying
  • Whenever you want to change your behavior, you can simply ask yourself: How can I make it obvious? How can I make it attractive? How can I make it easy? How can I make it satisfying?
  • The key to making and breaking habits is understanding these fundamental laws.

4 The man who didn't look right

  • Cues are the triggers of habits.
  • Our responses to these cues are so deeply encoded that it may feel like the urge to act comes from nowhere. For this reason, we must begin the process of behavior change with awareness.
  • Many of our failures in performance are largely attributable to a lack of self-awareness.
  • There are only effective habits. That is, effective at solving problems. All habits serve you in some way - even the bad ones - which is why you repeat them.
  • A simply way to judge habits: "Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?"

The best way to start a new habit

  • Many people think they lack motivation when they really lack clarity. It's not always obvious when and where to take action. Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.
  • 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.
  • Don't ask yourself to do a habit when you're likely to be occupied with something else.

Motivation is overrated; Environment oftens matters more

  • The easier your environment caters to your habit change, the easier the habit will change.
  • If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment.
  • The most persistent behaviors usually have multiple cues. Think of the smoker who has cues in the car, at work, feeling stressed at work, etc.
  • Think in terms of how you interact with the spaces around you - for one person, her couch is the place where she reads for an hour each night. For someone else, the couch is where they eat ice cream. Design for what you want in results.

The secret to self-control

  • The difference between people with self-control and those without - the disciplined people are better about structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. They spend less time in tempting situations.
  • Perseverance, grit, and willpower are essential to success, but the way to improve these qualitites is not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment.
  • "cue-induced wanting" - the external triggers causing you to repeat a bad habit. Once you notice something, you begin to want it.
  • James has never seen someone consistently stick to positive habits in a negative environment.
  • You may be able to resist temptation once or twice, but it's unlikely that you can muster the willpower to override your desires every time. Instead of summoning a new dose of willpower when you want to do the right thing, your energy would be better spent optimizing your environment.

How to make a habit irresistable

  • The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.
  • We can make any habit more enticing by understanding what a craving is and how it works.
  • The reward system that is activated in the brain when you receive a reward is the same system that is activated when you anticipate a reward.
  • Just by stating the time and activity, you are more likely to do the thing. Example: "After [current habit], I will [habit I need]. After [habit I need], I will [habit I want]."

The role of family and friends in shaping your habits

  • We still carry the old tribal mentality to society - the fear of being separated from the tribe could also help guide our habits.
  • The closer we are to someone, the more likely we are to imitate some of their habits.
  • 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.
  • If you are surrounded by fit people, you're more likely to consider working out to be a common habit.
  • Growth and change is no longer an individual pursuit. The identities begin to stack. "We are readers." - the identity is now shared by a group.
  • Whenever we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide our behavior.
  • Most days, we'd rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves. James points out the psychological study of people who were surrounded by people giving the wrong answer on purpose. The group influence was greater than the individuals correct answer. The individual would agree with the group.
  • We tend to imitate the habits of three social groups: the close (family and friends), the many (the tribe), and the powerful (those with status and prestige).

How to find and fix the causes of your bad habits

  • The inversion of the 2nd law of behavior change: make it unattractive.
  • Your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face; they are just the methods you learned to use. Once you associate a solution with the problem you need to sole, you keep coming back to it.
  • Our behavior is heavily dependent on how we intrepret the events, not the objective reality. These cues from the interpretations can trigger a habit.
  • Most times when you act on a cue, it's from the desire to feel different.
  • 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.
  • Regarding meditations - distraction is a good thing because you need distractions to practice meditations.
  • Create habits to put you in the moods you want - smile and breath before a phone call to get a good perspective on the call.

Walk slowly, but never backward

  • The difference between motion and action - they sound the same but they are fundamentally different. Motion is planning and strategy, action is doing things.
  • Focus more on practicing rather than just planning. You can learn more that way.
  • There was the study with photography students - ones that planned to make 1 picture, others who were focused on quantity. The students with quantity produced better results.
  • The more you repeat an action, you activate neural circuit associated with a habit.

The Law of least effort

  • Our inner motivation is to be as lazy as possible.
  • How can you design things to make it easier to be done? Consider that - packing gym bad in the night before, getting things laid out for the morning, etc.

The cardinal rule of behavior change

  • You will value the present more than the future. This tendency can serve us well, however, we may bias toward instant gratification. This will cause problems.
  • The cost of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.
  • A greater understanding in why you repeat behaviors - what is immediately rewarded is repeated. Whats immediately punished is avoided.

How to stick with good habits every day

  • Mention of Benjamin Franklin's journaling where he focused on virtues, then reviewed his progress on them.
  • When you get on a roll for your habits, make sure you only miss one day. The better you are about avoiding a second lapse, the easier you'll get back on track.
  • "This is a distinguishing feature between winners and losers. Anyone can have a bad performance, a bad workout, or a bad day at work. But when successful people fail, they rebound quickly. The breaking of a habit doesn't matter if the reclaiming of it is fast."
  • You can get more obsessed with tracking of a habit than the purpose of the habit is in serving you. Be aware of that.
  • Be aware of premature optimization when dealing with habit tracking.

How an accountability partner can change

  • Fisher's proposal is an inversion of the 4th law: Make it immediately unsatisfying.
  • Set up some systems that penalize you for not doing the habit. Include others in a contract. This way, you are having to work more when 'not' doing the thing you want.
  • There cannot be a gap between the action and the consequences. We repeat bad habits because they serve us in some way, and that makes them hard to abandon.

The truth about talent (when genes make a difference)

  • Genes do not determine your destiny, rather, they determine your areas of opportunity. "Genes can predispose, but they don't predetermine."
  • Ask yourself what comes natural. Lean into that.
  • "If you can't find a game where the odds are stacked in your favor, create one."
  • When you cannot win by being better, you can win by being different. Innovation here.
  • I loved this idea: "a good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses."
  • Genes cannot make you successful if you are not putting in the work. If you haven't put in the reps, you cannot learn the skills.

The goldilocks rule: how to stay motivated

  • Factors you might expect to play a big role in success: "genetics, luck, talent. But then he said something i wasn't expecting: 'at some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over."
  • The coach was trying to state that successful people feel the same 'drudge' feeling, they just do it when they don't want to.
  • Overcoming boredom may be your biggest obstacle in achieving your goals. You will get bored. How you face that boredom will decide your level of success.
  • We may get bored because our habits stop delighting us.
  • We seek new strategies when we get bored. That's why we want more novel solutions. You must fall in love with boredom if you want to succeed. Professionals take action even when the mood isn't right. They may not enjoy it, but they find a way to put the reps in.

The downsides to creating good habits

  • Keeping a decision journal help us keep record of what was made, why it was made, and what they expect to be in the outcome. Later, they will review those and capture what really occurred.
  • The idea that life is constantly changing, so we need to periodically check in to see if the old habits are still serving you.
  • The focus of identity based change for habits. Who you identify as will help you in the path to adjust your habits.
  • The idea that when you cling too tightly to one identity, you become brittle. If you lose that identity, you might lose yourself.
  • Reframe the stories we tell ourselves in order to change our identities. If they are not serving us, we need to change the story. "I'm an athlete" becomes "I'm the type of person who is mentally tough and loves a physical challenge."

The secret to results that last

  • Small habits don't add up, they compound. By doing a little bit every day, you get closer and closer to the goal.

Little lessons from the four laws

  • Awareness comes before desire.
  • Happiness is sipmly the absense of desire.
  • "The trick to doing anything is first cultivating a desire for it"
  • The idea that it is easier to be rational about decisions once we've gone through the feeling for it.
  • "Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope" - the idea that hope sometimes guides our habits.