Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones – – James Clear
About Book
Do you have some bad habits that you want to change? If yes then this book is for you. James Clear will tell you step by step how to turn your bad habits into good ones. It will teach you to develop qualities like willpower and enthusiasm within yourself, you will learn to believe in yourself. Atomic Habits says that everyday you can get 1% better than before. If you really want to change your life, then the time has come to read this book.
About Author
James Clear is a writer, motivational speaker and author. He keeps on helping people through his website and newspaper.
# The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits
One day in 2003 the fate of British cycling changed. Since 1908, British riders had won only one gold medal in the Olympic Games. No British cyclist had won the Tour de France in 110 years. The British riders’ performance was so poor that none of the top bike manufacturers wanted to sell bikes to the team lest their reputation be tarnished. But when the organization – the governing body for professional cycling in Britain – hired Dave Brailsford, something unprecedented happened. What set him apart from other coaches was his commitment to his strategy. Which he used to call “The Aggregation of Marginal Gains”.
That is, to see the scope of improvement even in every little thing. He started his strategy by making small adjustments in his team. The changes were not huge but small like redesigning the seat of the bike to make it more comfortable, asking riders to wear electrically heated overshorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature, rubbing alcohol on tires for better grip, etc. -etc ! Because of these small changes, there was improvement and the result was also getting better. And then at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the team performed and buried the flag. But how did this happen? How did a team of ordinary athletes become world champions and that too with small changes? No one could have imagined that these small efforts can make such a big difference.
Often we never notice these small improvements, even if it is 1%, but if you notice, they are very effective and their effect is not visible immediately but after a few years. Let’s see how it works in maths: If you improve by 1% every day in a year, then at the end of the year you will have become a better 37 times. Habits are like compound interest for self-improvement. Their effect is not visible in a day, but after several months of practice, you will definitely see that effect.
Although its sad part is that it affects in such a slow pace that sometimes it takes a lot of time to get rid of bed habits. If you eat unhealthy meal today, then your weight on the scale will not change at all, but if you repeat the same thing again and again, you will get toxic results. As it is said, today whether you are successful or unsuccessful, it does not matter that much, what matters is your habits whether they take you in the right direction or not.
# How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)
Why is it so difficult to give up bad habits while good habits are not easily adopted? No matter how well we walk with good intentions, once bad habits are formed, they do not leave us. We try a lot to change them but often we fail and this is because 1) we try to change wrong things and 2) our method is not right. Many people start focusing on the thing they have to achieve in order to start the process of change. This brings us to out come based habits but if we start building identity based habits then we focus on this thing. Will start doing what we want to become. Suppose people want to quit smoking.
When cigarette is offered to the first person, he says “No thank you, I am trying to quit cigarette” Now it sounds very reasonable, but if seen, this man believes that he is basically a smoker. Who now wants to be something else. He wants a change in his behavior while his beliefs are still the same.
When a cigarette is offered to the other person, he also refuses but his way of speaking is different “No, thank you, but I do not smoke cigarettes”. So you see, there is a small difference but only because of this both . The identity of the person changes. Most of the people do not even think about identity change while improving. The more proud you feel about one aspect of yourself, the more motivated you will be to adopt new habits. You just have to decide what you want to become, and you can prove it by making small changes in your habits.
# How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps?
In 1898, a psychologist Edward Thorndike (Edward Thorndike,) conducted an experiment in which it was found that how we understand current habits and rules which later become our behavior. Edward was very fond of studying the behavior of animals, so he started with cats. They put each cat inside a device puzzle box. A door was made inside the box so that the cat could easily get out. This door was opened by pressing a lever or pulling a cord loop. Most of the cats tried to get out as soon as they went inside the box.
Cats would look into the corners of their noses, beat their paws, then after a few minutes they would see the lever and then open the door and come out. After observing their behavior after 20-30 trials, it was found that the cats found it habitual to go into the box again and again and as soon as they went inside, they used to come out after pressing the level. With repeated practice, CATS reduced mistakes and focused on the solution. From these studies, Thorndike (Edward Thorndike,) describes the learning process in such a way that “the behaviors which give satisfactory results, we repeat them and whose results are not in our favor, we do not include those behaviors in our habits”.
We can divide the process of creating habits into four easy steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. The cue triggers our brain to start the behavior. . Reward is predicted by kind of information. And because the cue is the first sign of rewards, it often leads to cravings. Cravings are a kind of motivational force; without any desire, we don’t take any action. You get cigarette smoking It is not the cravings but the relief that comes from smoking cigarettes.
Response comes on third place. This is the actual habit that you create, which can be in the form of any thought or action. Whether there is an actual response or not depends on how motivated you are. And it is the final response that brings the reward. This is basically the goal of any habit. Cue notices the reward, cravings desire that reward, and responding is linked to achieving the reward. If a behavior is not sufficient for any one of these four stages, then assume that it can never become a habit.
# The Man Who Didn’t Look Right
I once heard the story of a lady who used to work as a paramedic for many years, who once went to a family gathering. When he saw his father in law there, he became very concerned. He told his father-in-law that he was not feeling well about his condition, so he should immediately go to the hospital. And a few hours later, he underwent surgery in the hospital, from which it was found that a major artery was blocked, due to which he could have a heart attack anytime. Due to the alertness of that lady, the old man’s life was saved. Human brain is like a prediction machine.
It observes every small detail, it observes all the time what is going on around you – the work which is included in your habit, like a paramedic seeing the face of a heart attack patient, understands that there is an attack It is going to come – in the same way your brain also starts noticing what is important to you. And as your practice increases, you yourself will start noticing those cues which predict certain results. The reasons that make our habits so common that we do not even notice them. But before building new habits, we have to pay attention to our current habits.
By the way, it is a bit difficult because it is so old that it becomes automatic habits. The biggest challenge in this is to be aware of what you actually do. And to do this, you have to make a list of your daily habits. When you have a full list, scan each and every behavior, then ask yourself whether this habit is good or bad or neutral? Just score your habits but there is no need to change anything. You just have to acknowledge what you do. Don’t blame yourself for faults and don’t praise yourself for success. The process of behavior change always starts with awareness.
# The Best Way to Start a New Habit
In 2001 some researchers in Great Britain conducted a research on 248 people for two weeks to build better exercise habits. The first group was a control group who just had to keep track of how many times they exercised. The second group was the “motivation” group, they were asked to track their exercise and also read some books on exercise. Apart from this, the researchers told him that working out reduces the risk of coronary heart disease and improves heart health.
In the last, the third group was presented with the same data as the second group, which meant that they also got equal level of motivation. However, he was also asked to make a plan as to when and where he had to exercise. Now to do this in a more specific way, each member of the third group wrote “Within the next week, I will do at least 20 minutes of hard exercise on this day and at this time and at this place. In the first and second group, 35-38% worked out at least once a week. In actual, there was no special impact of the motivational presentation on these people.
But 91% of the third group worked out at least once a week and the sentences they wrote are what researchers call implementation intentions, a plan that you make in advance that when and where you will take action. Many researchers have proved that implementation intentions help us stay connected to our goals. Many people think that they do not have any motivation, but the truth is that they are not clear about their goals. It is not obvious when and where to act, but the first law of behavior is to make it obvious. Being Obvious is a practical way to get clear cues for your habits and design a plan of when and where to act.
# Motivation is Overrated: Environment of Matters More
Anne Thorndike, a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, had a crazy idea. She felt that she could make the eating habits of hospital staff and visitors better, that too without changing their motivation or without any discussion with them. He, along with his colleague, conducted a six-month study to change the “choice architecture” of the hospital cafeteria. First of all, he changed the arrangement of drinks. Refrigerators were kept near the cash register and only soda was kept in them. They put water bottles instead of soda, not only in the refrigerator but also in the food station of the room.
Soda was still in the main refrigerator but water was now available everywhere. In the next three months, the sale of soda declined by 11.4% while the sale of bottled water increased by 25.8%. Similar changes were also made in the cafeteria food and here also they got the same results. But nobody took any notice. Often people do not take or eat things because they want that thing, rather their taking or eating depends on where that thing is kept. Suppose you go to the kitchen, there you get a plate of cookies, then you immediately sit down to eat cookies, you are not eating because you are hungry, but when you see cookies, you feel like eating them.
Your habits also change in the same way, depending on where you are and what are the reasons in front of you. Environment is considered to be an invisible hand in shaping human behavior. No matter how different our personalities are, some behaviors are automatically created due to our environmental conditions. Unfortunately, the environment in which we live and work prevents us from taking certain specific actions because there needs to be an obvious cue to trigger the behavior. If you want to make a habit a main part of your life, then why make it a main part of your environment.
# The Secret to Self Control: The Secret to Self-Control)
In 1971, when the Vietnam War was in its sixteenth year, Congressman Robert Steele from Connecticut and Morgan Murphy from Illinois made a discovery that shocked the American public. When he visited the troop, he learned that all the U.S. Almost 15% of the soldiers sent there were drug addicts. Its follow up research revealed that 35% of service members sent to Vietnam had tried heroin and 20% were addicted to the drug.
This discovery led to the creation of a Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention so that when these service members return to the United States, they can be weaned or placed in rehab. Lee Robbins was a research in charge and he proved that addictions can also disappear immediately if there is a radical change in the environment. Soldiers who went to Vietnam spent all their time between cues that triggered them to take heroin. One was that it was easily accessible, on top of the stress of war, and then their comrades were also heroin users (fellow soldiers ) And the tension of staying away from family used to create anxiety. But when these soldiers came back to America, they found such an environment in which there were no such cues which forced them to take drugs, so their habits also changed.
This Vietnam study proves many of our cultural beliefs about bed habits wrong. Our culture teaches that the solution to all our problems lies in just a little discipline, but recent research has proved otherwise. When the scientist observed such people whose self-control was very strong, they came to know that these people are also not much different from those people who are struggling. Rather, “displaced” people are better in their life because these people keep themselves away from tempting situations.
The people who have the most self control use the least control. If you do not have to control every time, then it is easier to practice self control. In other words, our self control does not remove our bad habits. Your energy should be directed into something more powerful like optimizing your environment. Make the obvious cues of your good habits and make the cues of bad habits invisible.
# How to Make a Habit Irresistible
Ronan Byrne, an electrical engineering student from Dublin, Ireland, loves watching Netflix, but he also knows he needs to exercise. So he gets an idea, he connects his stationary bike to his laptop and TV. Then he creates such a computer program that Netflix starts working when the cycle is run at a particular speed.
He used the temptation in such a way that now he found exercising even more fun. So how did this thing work? It is simple. Connect the action you need to take to the action you want to take. The Temptation Bundling Method is an application of a psychological theory called Premack’s Principle. This principle basically tells that even if you do not want to do something, you are forced to do it, that is because you are getting something that you really want to achieve. This means making habits attractive or favourable, without giving up anything in return.
# The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits
We don’t choose our first habits, we copy them. Because we follow our family and friends, our church, our school, our local community and society. Every culture and group has its own standards which affect our habits. We unknowingly imitate our close people, pick up their habits, copy our parents, try to handle arguments and fights like them. Not only this, we also copy our co-workers.
This is a well known rule if you are close to someone then it is possible that you copy them. A study revealed that if we have a fat friend, then our chances of becoming fat also increase by 57% or vice versa. In a way, our friends and family are invisible peer pressure, in which direction they go, we also go there. Off course peer pressure is bad only when it brings bad influence. So the best thing is to join a culture where your good habits are welcomed and encouraged.
# How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits
You can make any hard habit easy if you link it with a positive mind set. As we always say that we have to do this, we have to do that. But what if we change just one word? Instead of “I have to get up to go to work”, if we say “I get up to go to work”. By simply changing the words, you change your whole perspective.
In this way you highlight the benefits of your habit and not the setbacks and disadvantages. The secret to finding and fixing what triggers your bed habits is to reframe the associations you think about them. In this way you can turn any hard habit into a fun habit.
# Walk Slowly, But Never Backward
Habit forming is a process in which a behavior becomes an automatic reflex after repetition. Habit repetition brings about clear physical changes in the brain. For example, the cerebellum part of the brain of musicians is larger than that of non-musicians. Every time you repeat an action, you actually activate a specific neural circuit that is associated with that habit.
It doesn’t matter how much time was taken in habit formation. Time was never a problem. Matters the rate at which you perform certain behavior. Like you do something two times in 40 days or 200 times. It is not a matter of time but of frequency. To create any habit, you have to practice it.
# The Law of Least Effort
Energy is valuable and the brain is built in such a way that it can conserve it whenever it wants. It is human nature that we follow the Law of Least Effort which says that when people are given two same choices, people will naturally choose the one which does not require much effort. Every action takes a certain amount of energy. And the higher the demand for energy, the less we want to do it. In some sense, every habit is just an obstacle in the middle of what you want. Diet is an obstacle to being fit. Meditation is an obstacle to peace of mind.
You don’t actually fall in love with the habit, but with the outcome it delivers. But if we are all so lazy then how come some people achieve even the toughest goals? The solution is to create an environment where it is always easy to do the right things, thus reducing the friction of obstacles. Like meal delivery service decreases the friction of grocery shopping. For example, due to dating apps, the friction of social introduction has reduced. Likewise many other things. In the struggle to create better habits, explore ways to reduce the friction associated with good habits and increase the friction associated with our bad habits.
# How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule
If you want to start something big and you find it easy by taking big steps, then you should start with baby steps. We all try to do too much too soon because we are so excited about change. But one tendency prevents you from doing this and that is the two minute rule which says “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do it.” You will see that almost every habit is learned in two minutes. It can go like “read a book before bed every night” becomes “sleep reading a page every night” becomes “do 30 minutes of yoga” becomes “take out my yoga mate”.
The point is to start in an easy way to adopt a particular habit. Meditate for a minute, read a page, fold a cloth, do whatever it takes, but start: doing what feels right is a powerful strategy. People think that reading one page of a daily book is a big task but the point is not that how much you read or how much you do but that you are doing at least. And when you start doing it, the first two minutes will become a ritual of your larger routine. Actually this is an ideal way to become an expert in any difficult skill.
Once it becomes a habit, such a point will also come that you will start doing that action in a perfect way routinely. You can mix this two minute rule with habit shaping technique so that your habit can give you your ultimate goal. After establishing any habit, take it to intermediate steps and repeat the process until you become expert in it, only then go to the next level. Then you will see that the habit you once wanted to build has become a part of your personality today.
# How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible
It is about the summer of 1830. Victor Hugo, a French writer was troubled by an impossible deadline. He had promised to write a new book to his publisher 12 months ago but could not write it. Instead, he started working on other projects and kept delaying his promise. Hugo’s publisher got frustrated so he set a deadline of six months.
Hugo was told that he had to complete the book by February 1831. Now how can he concentrate and write a great book before the deadline? But Hugo did a strange thing. He gave all his clothes to an assistant and told him to keep them locked. In this way, now he had no clothes left to go out, so he had no other option but to sit at home and write a book. Throughout the fall and winter seasons of 1830, he continued to write diligently. His book “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” was published two weeks before January 14, 1831. So making good habits easy is not success but making bad habits hard.
# The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change
When an experience satisfies us, we tend to repeat that behavior more and it is completely logical. Pleasure, even if it is for small things, sends a single message to our brain that “this thing is good, try it again”. Now take the example of chewing gum. Early chewing gums had no taste, just bland resins – not tasty at all. But in 1891, flavors were added to it. So this thing is also logical that if there is no fun in an experience then there is no point in repeating it.
This is what the cardinal rule says”: that which is rewarded is repeated and that which is punished is avoided. But this rule is a bit tricky; We don’t just look for any kind of satisfaction, but we look for immediate satisfaction. All habits get different results with time and these results are often strange. Now as the outcome of bad habits is often fun but the ultimate outcome is bad while good habits seem difficult initially but its long term outcome gives us benefits.
A reward which is going to be received now is often more liked by us than the future reward. In the desire for instant gratification, people spend all their time getting immediate pleasure. But what we want to say is that when we talk about immediate reward, it is the end of any behavior. You want to end any bed habit and want it to be satisfying. Because if change is enjoyable then it becomes easy.
# How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day
When Benjamin Franklin was in his twenties, he always kept a small booklet with him every day. So that he can keep track of his 13 personal good behaviors. These types of goals were in this list “Lose no time” means do not waste time. Always keep doing something useful. At the end of every day, he used to open his list and record his progress. We can also call it Habit Tracker.: An easy way to check your habits. Habit tracking is very powerful because it uses multiple laws of behavior change.
This makes any behavior obvious because every time you open the list, it is written in front of you, then one action is linked to another. Habit tracking makes any habit fun because the most effective form of motivation is progress. And this makes the habit satisfying. Now everyone knows how satisfying it is to cross off an item from your to-do list. There is no doubt that we all love to get results. And this is the reason why habit trekking is very important to stay motivated so that your eyes are always on your goals.
# How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything
Just like we repeat an experience after enjoying it, similarly if the experience is painful, we would like to avoid it. Pain is an effective teacher, if the failure is painful then we fix it. But if a failure does not have any effect on us, then we ignore it. The more immediate and costly the mistake, the more we learn. Like the fear of bed review forces the employee to do good work. If the consequences are extreme then people learn quickly.
So sometimes having an accountable partner helps. Because then you know that someone is watching you so that you become motivating and powerful. If you have to face the result immediately, then you will never delay the work. And if you delay your work, then in the eyes of your boss, you are a lazy and untrustworthy person. And it is known to all that how much we care about the opinion of the people around us who help us to reach the top, so having such a partner will be very helpful for you.
# Advanced Tactics: How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great
When you get a good practice of any habit, then it seems a bit boring and part of routine. If you got what you wanted, it is obvious that now you will not have that much interest. And this boringness is the greatest challenge. We get bored with our habits because now they are not giving us satisfaction as before and we always expect the outcome. But the truth is that this thing does not matter in which thing you want to become better if you do it only when it excites you.
Because then you will not be consistent at all to get any great result. Yes, there will be days when you will feel like quitting, but even after being painful, boring and exhausting, if you remain firm then it is a big deal. This is the difference between an amateur and a professional. So the only way is to do whatever you do with your heart, enjoy it. The only down side of habits is that we often do not notice small mistakes. Because you do something repeatedly out of habit, you do not improve it. By the way, there is no need to worry about this because some habits do not require constant improvement.
Like how do you tie your shoes for example) But when you want to become a master in some work, only habits will not work, you will have to do hard practice for that until you get certain skills. All you have to do is to be alarmed about your performance so that you can improve yourself. Do not lock yourself in old thinking and acting patterns – Life is changing every moment, so you also change your habits and beliefs and never let yourself lack self-awareness.
Finally, if you have reached the end of this summary, then Congratulations, there are very few people who invest time on knowledge, otherwise you could have wasted time elsewhere.
Thanks………