Atomic Habits Summary PDF

Summary of Atomic Habits Original book by James Clear Do you struggle with bad habits? Do you try to create good habits that will bring positive changes to your life, but have trouble making them stick? In Atomic Habits, James Clear argues that adopting the right habits will drastically improve you...

Summary of Atomic Habits Original book by James Clear Do you struggle with bad habits? Do you try to create good habits that will bring positive changes to your life, but have trouble making them stick? In Atomic Habits, James Clear argues that adopting the right habits will drastically improve your life—but to do so, you must understand how habits work and how you can change yours. In this guide, you’ll discover why habits matter and the three mindsets you can use to create them. You’ll then learn how habits form and the four keys to changing yours. Finally, you’ll learn how to continue improving habits you've implemented. Along the way, we’ll examine how other psychologists and experts approach habit formation, and we’ll explore how Clear’s theories either align with or differ from theirs. This document is restricted to the personal use of the individual owner of the email account [email protected] (the "Subscriber"). No part of this document may be reproduced or distributed by any means other than for personal use of the Subscriber, nor shared with individuals other than the Subscriber, without prior written permission of Shortform Inc. Summary: Atomic Habits 1-Page Summary How can you change your life? In Atomic Habits, James Clear argues that the key lies in your habits: the automatic behaviors that make up more than half of what you do every day. Clear contends that implementing the right habits will drastically improve your life—but to do so, you must understand how habits work and how to change yours. In this guide, you’ll discover why habits matter and the three mindsets you can use to create them. You’ll then learn how habits form and the four keys to changing yours. Finally, you’ll learn how to continue improving habits you've implemented. Along the way, we’ll examine how other psychologists and experts approach habit formation, and we’ll explore how Clear’s theories either align with or differ from theirs. Small Adjustments Lead to Massive Transformations Clear explains that implementing “atomic habits,” or small improvements in behavior, changes your life because behaviors compound—that is, they build on each other to create more and more changes. Performing one good behavior leads to another, then another—and soon, you’ve transformed your life. (Shortform note: Clear focuses on how continuing the same behavior compounds: Saying one nice thing to your spouse won’t massively impact your relationship, but doing so every day will. In The Power of Habit, productivity expert Charles Duhigg adds that different habits can likewise compound upon each other: Changing one core habit can trigger a chain reaction that encourages you to change other habits.) Clear identifies three levels of habits: goal-driven, system-driven, and identity-driven habits. Goal-Driven Habits Clear explains that a goal-driven habit is a behavior you do in order to achieve a specific goal. This is the most common way people try to change their behavior: For example, you might choose to study two extra hours each day in order to ace a specific test. (Shortform note: What kinds of goals should you shoot for? In Principles: Life and Work, billionaire Ray Dalio recommends that you be audacious: If you know with certainty you can achieve a goal, then you’re not aiming high enough.) System-Driven Habits Clear contends that system-driven habits are those that focus on the systems, or processes, that will get you to your goal, instead of focusing on the goal itself. For example, developing a study routine is a system- driven habit because it focuses on the process of studying rather than the goal of acing a specific test or course. (Shortform note: Like Clear, Indistractable author Nir Eyal suggests that some people fail to develop habits because they fail to focus on the processes. Eyal adds to the idea by arguing that you can only form a mindless habit by repeating processes that require effort—but that some people don’t put in this effort because they mistakenly think habits should be easy from the beginning.) Identity-Driven Habits Clear explains that identity-driven habits are behaviors we perform because they match our beliefs about who we are—in other words, our identity. For example, if you believe you’re a good student, you have a Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 2 Summary: Atomic Habits study routine because that’s what good students do. (Shortform note: Like Clear, motivational speaker Tony Robbins also argues in Awaken the Giant Within that your identity dictates your behavior. But Robbins’ definition of identity is broader than Clear’s: He argues that your identity also depends on factors like whether you define yourself by your past, present, or future.) How to Change Your Habits: Start With Your Identity Now that you know the types of habits, which ones should you try to implement? For long-lasting behavior change, Clear recommends that you create identity-driven habits. Clear explains that this strategy is unique because most of us try to change our behavior by building goal- driven habits. However, goal-driven habits don’t create long-term change because once you meet your goal, you stop performing the behavior. As Clear explains, if you adapt your actions to serve one finite purpose, your actions also become finite. For example, say you ace the test for which you’ve spent two extra hours every day studying. Since you’ve achieved your goal, you’ll stop this behavior because there’s no reason to keep studying. But since you stop studying, you never develop the long-term habits you need to improve your overall academic performance. (Shortform note: Letting goals drive your habits may also leave you vulnerable to the “arrival fallacy,” where you mistakenly think you’ll be happy as long as you achieve your goals. In reality, achieving the goal may bring temporary happiness—but that happiness will quickly fade, driving you to chase a different goal that you think will bring you happiness in a never-ending cycle. Further, if you constantly change your goals, you'll constantly stop and start different habits to support them, too, and therefore won’t develop long-term habits that can truly enhance your life.) Instead of focusing on goal-driven habits, Clear recommends creating identity-driven habits because these, in turn, will dictate the system- and goal-driven habits you choose. Clear contends that the beliefs of the person you want to be dictate what systems you implement: Identity-driven habits help you decide what game to play, process-driven habits teach you how to play the game, and goal-driven habits help you win the game. So you need to start with the desired identity to find the right habits that lead to the right results. In other words, you need to create identity-driven habits. According to Clear, creating identity-driven habits works because by behaving like the person you want to be, you gather evidence that you are that person—and eventually, you believe that you are that person. Once you believe you’re that person, you’ll perform the habits of that person because it’s who you are. You no longer have to convince yourself to do the habit; you do the habit easily because it’s an expression of your identity. For example, you might determine that someone who aces their next test must be conscientious. You decide that a conscientious person doesn’t just develop a good study routine, but they also get 8 hours of sleep so they’re alert in class—so you do too. Over time, these habits lead to acing your tests—but you continue them even after you meet your goal. This is because you’ve gathered enough evidence to believe that you’re a conscientious person: You now perform these habits because you identify as a conscientious person, not because you want to ace your tests. Why Believing You Can Change Is Essential to Building Habits In order to build identity-driven habits that will determine your system- and goal-driven habits in turn, you must believe that it’s possible to change your identity—otherwise, you won’t see the point in Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 3 Summary: Atomic Habits embodying the behaviors of your desired identity. But what if you don’t believe you can change? In Mindset, psychology researcher Carol Dweck explains that people who don’t believe they can change have a fixed mindset: They believe their abilities are unchangeable. The solution is to develop a growth mindset, or a belief that you can change and improve your abilities. Clear contends that you can develop a growth mindset by developing identity-driven habits: By repeatedly behaving like the person you want to be, you prove to yourself that it’s possible to change. But there are several other ways to develop a growth mindset, too, like assessing what triggers your fixed mindset so you can reframe your thoughts appropriately. How Habits Form: The Four Stages You now know how powerful habits can be—but how do they form? Clear explains that your brain understands behaviors as four separate stages that combine to form habits. The cue is what triggers the brain to notice an opportunity for a reward. A cue can be a smell, a sound, an event, an interaction, or anything else that triggers a desire. This desire is known as the craving. The craving is the emotional relevance attached to a certain cue. When you notice the cue, the brain anticipates an opportunity for a change in your physical or emotional state. You crave the satisfaction that change will elicit, and this craving is what prompts you to act. The response is the behavior or habit you perform to elicit the change you desire. Your brain prompts you to take a certain action it believes will create the feeling of satisfaction you want. The reward is the satisfaction you gain from the action you take. You have successfully satisfied your craving and changed your physical or emotional state. The brain builds a pathway from the cue to this state of pleasure. Every time you experience the same cue, the brain will be triggered to desire that pleasure again. You’ll be prompted to perform the same action, thereby creating a habit. The process works like this: Cue: You come home stressed from a long day of work. Craving: You want to feel more relaxed. Response: You drink a beer. Reward: Your stress levels reduce and you feel more relaxed. Coming home from work becomes associated with drinking a beer. How Habits Form: Comparing Experts’ Models As Clear notes, his habit formation stages expand upon productivity expert Charles Duhigg’s habit model from The Power of Habit—but Clear doesn’t specify how his approach differs. Clear presents a four-stage model of habit formation, but Duhigg’s model has only three stages: First, there’s the cue, or the trigger that tells your brain which habit to use. Second, there’s the routine, in which you act out the habit, and third, there’s the reward, which is the result of the routine and reinforces the habit. Duhigg’s model doesn’t include Clear’s cravings stage—although Duhigg does discuss how cravings drive behavior. Clear isn’t the first person to expand upon Duhigg’s ideas—nor to use his language to describe how habits are formed. In 2014’s A Mind for Numbers, educator Barbara Oakley also contends that habits consist of a cue, a routine, and a reward. Her definitions of these terms match Duhigg’s—but she adds a fourth piece: the belief, or the idea that your habits are grounded in your perception of reality Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 4 Summary: Atomic Habits and of your own identity. This is similar to Clear’s argument that your habits support your identity. But there are other models that describe the makeup of a habit, too—like the one behavioral scientist BJ Fogg presents in Tiny Habits. Unlike Clear, Fogg focuses on the elements necessary for a habit instead of the sequential stages by which a habit forms. Fogg contends that all behavior (both habitual and non-habitual) occurs if three elements exist: First, a prompt reminds you to execute the behavior—this is similar to Clear’s cue. Then, you must have motivation to do the behavior—this is similar to Clear’s craving. You must also have the ability to do the behavior—this relates to Clear’s response. Most crucially, you only do the behavior if both your motivation and ability are above the threshold required to prompt action. The key difference between habits and non-habits, Fogg argues, is that habits are self- perpetuating. The more often you do something, the better you get at doing it, so your ability to do it increases. Further, the habit reward (which Fogg discusses but doesn’t present as an element of his habit model) provides motivation to keep doing it. This combination of increasing ability and increasing motivation makes a behavior more likely to exceed the threshold the next time you receive the prompt—thus making you more likely to engage in the habit again. Four Keys to Creating Habits Now that you know how habits form, you can alter each stage to your advantage to create new, beneficial habits. Clear presents four keys for doing so—one for each stage. Key 1: Cues: Identify and Use Them to Your Advantage Clear explains that since habits are automatic behaviors, you likely don’t notice every cue triggering you to act. Therefore, the first step in creating cues that lead to good behaviors is to become aware of them. To develop awareness of your behavior, Clear recommends listing all your current daily habits. Because behaviors influence each other, the end of one habit often serves as a cue for another. When you list your habits, you’ll notice which actions precede them and which follow. By listing your cues and rewards in this way, you’ll discover which current behaviors could cue new desired behaviors. For example, say you want to drink more water. You could drink a glass of water immediately after you turn off your alarm each morning. (Shortform note: Many authors have argued that to change an unwanted behavior, you must first consciously identify it. When following Clear’s advice to do so, consider creating a time log: Spend a week tracking what you do every half hour. Knowing exactly how you spend time might help you notice habits you weren’t aware of—like if you play an online game after every meal.) Use Awareness to Your Advantage Clear recommends exploiting your newfound awareness of your habits in two ways to form better habits. The first technique Clear recommends is to plan in advance when and where you’ll perform a new behavior: Use the formula, “When X occurs, I will do Y.” This strategy makes the cue noticeable by attributing a specific time and place to the behavior. Plus, research suggests that you’re more likely to do activities you pre- schedule. For example, if your list of habits has a gap between 5 pm and 7 pm, consider scheduling a new behavior during that time. For example, you might choose to study for an hour every day at 6 pm. Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 5 Summary: Atomic Habits (Shortform note: Psychologists agree that planning a habit in advance works partly because it makes you more aware of the cue—but there are other reasons, too. Notably, failing to honor a clear if-then goal makes you uncomfortable. Telling others amplifies this discomfort, because then failing your goal also causes embarrassment. So consider sharing your intention, too.) The second technique Clear recommends is habit chaining, which he calls “habit stacking.” With this technique, instead of linking a desired behavior to an event (like a time of day), you link the behavior to an existing habit you do every day. Use the formula: “After I do X, I will do Y”—for example, “After I put my dinner dishes in the sink, I will study for one hour.” This strategy makes the cue noticeable by connecting a desired habit to a fully-formed habit. (Shortform note: Clear argues that single habits compound into massive changes that improve your life. Similarly, in The 5AM Club, leadership expert Robin Sharma contends that developing the right morning routine—the right habit chain—will compound into massive changes that improve your life. Sharma recommends waking at 5 am, then exercising for 20 minutes, reflecting for 20 minutes, and learning for 20 minutes. This morning ritual sets a foundation of focus and productivity that you continue throughout each day—and by repeating it daily, you lead a more focused and productive life.) Clear adds that to make a cue obvious, you must be as specific as possible in the behavior that will follow. Knowing exactly where, when, and how you’ll do an action makes doing it easier. You must also ensure the cue is realistic: If the logistics surrounding a new behavior don’t support its implementation, it won’t get done. For example, saying “I’ll study at my desk [specific location] after putting dishes in the sink [specific cue] for one hour [specific intention] is better than saying “I’ll study after dinner.” But if the hour after dinner is the only time you socialize with your roommate, it’s unrealistic to plan a study session then. (Shortform note: Research suggests that being specific about your behavior helps partly because pre- planning good behavior makes you less likely to put off doing it. However, being too specific can backfire if you have unrealistic expectations—like if you only want to study when your kids are asleep. Consider lowering your expectations and settling for “good enough." For example, if you have kids, study when the kids are quieter—not just when they’re asleep.) Key 2: Craving: Increase the Appeal of a New Habit You can also make creating habits easier with techniques that affect the second stage of habit formation— the craving. Clear contends that cravings lead to action because you want a reward—not because you enjoy the reward itself. Say you eat chocolate for the first time. Your brain will release a neurotransmitter called dopamine after you experience the pleasure of eating chocolate. Now, whenever you see chocolate, your brain will release dopamine because you anticipate the pleasure of eating it. It’s this anticipatory surge of dopamine that drives you to act—not the dopamine you feel after you feel pleasure. (Shortform note: In The Willpower Instinct, health psychologist Kelly McGonigal demonstrates how much power anticipation can have by describing how desire and dopamine drive action even if you don’t enjoy the reward. If you’re hooked on chocolate, you’ll continue to eat a chocolate bar even if it’s stale. This is due to dopamine: Your brain expects chocolate to be delicious—so your dopamine transmitters try to convince you that the next bite will be more delicious. It’s wanting—not experiencing—the reward that drives the behavior.) If anticipation drives action, Clear hypothesizes, you should maximize the appeal of a desired behavior so Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 6 Summary: Atomic Habits that you anticipate it more. Clear outlines several ways you can do this, two of which are: (1) associating the new habit with other, positive behaviors and (2) reframing the struggle of a new habit in a positive light. 1) Connect Habits You Should Do to Things You Want to Do Clear’s first strategy for increasing the appeal of a new habit is to sandwich a desired behavior between something you already do and something you want to do. Use the formula: “After X [current habit], I will do Y [new habit]. After I do Y, I get to do Z [craved habit].” For example, say you struggle to study after dinner because you’d rather play video games. Try saying to yourself, “After I eat dinner, I will study for an hour. After I study for an hour, I get to play video games for an hour.” Soon, you’ll crave the study session because you’ll start to associate it with the more pleasurable activities. (Shortform note: Only doing something you want to do after something you should do requires a lot of willpower. You might think to yourself, “Why not just play video games without studying?” In The Willpower Instinct, McGonigal explains that you can combat temptations like this by adjusting your physiology with techniques like slowing your breathing. This turns on your pause-and-plan response, which protects you from making decisions that are bad for you.) 2) Redefine Behaviors as Opportunities Instead of Obligations Clear’s second strategy for increasing the appeal of a new habit is to redefine your behaviors: Reframe obligations as opportunities. This small change in perspective leads you to focus on the positive elements of the behavior: If you have the opportunity to study, you start to appreciate how lucky you are to be able to work towards your dream job. Focusing on the reward (the dream job) helps you view your struggles as steps to your goal, which increases your motivation to do the behavior (study). (Shortform note: Focusing on the reward of a behavior you view as an obligation to make yourself do it is a form of extrinsic motivation: You’re doing the behavior because you want the extrinsic, external reward. In Drive, author Daniel Pink argues that extrinsic motivation works for routine tasks—but can actually decrease creativity. So if you’re trying to implement a creative habit, like painting every day, you may want to skip this strategy.) Key 3: Response: Decrease the Difficulty Another way to improve your habits is to focus on the third stage of habit formation: the response, or the behavior itself. Clear argues that it’s human nature to only follow through on behaviors that are easy to perform—so, to stay motivated, he recommends making behavior as effortless as possible. Clear clarifies that making behaviors easy doesn’t mean only doing easy things. The idea is to make it easy for you to keep showing up for the behavior you want to perform. By showing up, you maintain your desired identity, which gives you pride and confidence to keep making progress. (Shortform note: Contrary to Clear, some research suggests that, paradoxically, it’s easier to make a dramatic change than a small one. Dr. Dean Ornish designed a program that successfully helped 77% of people with heart disease change their lifestyles. This is impressive because, without the program, 90% of heart patients who undergo severe surgery don’t improve their lifestyles even if doing so would save their lives. Dr. Ornish attributes his results partly to the dramatic changes his program requires: By making dramatic changes, heart patients saw fast, dramatic results that motivated them to continue.) Make Behaviors Easier Clear recommends reducing the effort an action requires by removing any obstacles between you and Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 7 Summary: Atomic Habits the behavior. The more obstacles there are, the less likely you are to act. For example, if you want to read more before bed, remove the obstacle of needing to get a book by placing a book on your pillow after waking up each morning. (Shortform note: Removing an obstacle only makes performing an action easier if you remove the right obstacle. To identify what that is, examine how compatible the behavior is with existing routines as well as the time, money, physical effort, and mental effort involved. For example, placing a book on your pillow won’t help you read before bed if you’re too tired to concentrate on the book—in that case, the obstacle you really need to address is your energy level.) Clear suggests another way to make a behavior easier: Break it down into steps that only take two minutes (or less), then do just the first two-minute step. This doesn’t mean you do a two-minute version of the habit: If you want to cook dinner every night, the first step is opening the refrigerator, not microwaving a frozen meal. Most of us try to make dramatic changes when building new habits—but dramatic changes are difficult to maintain over time. When you focus on tiny increments instead, each small success motivates you to achieve other successes. So committing to two-minute actions at a time makes it easier to perform each required step until you’ve achieved the full habit. For example, say you decide to start cooking dinner every day. You’re successful for a few days, but on the fourth day, you’re too tired, so you order takeout. Suddenly, the behavior has stopped. Instead, break down “cook dinner every day” into easy steps that only take two minutes to do, like “open the refrigerator at dinnertime.” You can do that even when you’re tired. Once you’ve mastered that habit, the next two-minute step is to pull out one vegetable you could eat raw. The next step is to pull out a knife and cutting board. Each of these two-minute actions connect to get you to the point of being ready to make some food. The obstacles to overcome are small compared with the overwhelming idea of cooking all the time. (Shortform note: In Tiny Habits, Fogg also recommends shrinking desired behaviors down to make them easier because small successes keep you motivated. But Fogg presents two strategies for doing so. His first strategy mimics Clear’s: Do the first step of the desired behavior to maximize your chances of repeating it. But Fogg’s second strategy is something Clear doesn’t explicitly discuss: Do a scaled-back version of your desired behavior. For example, if you want to cook dinner every night, both Fogg and Clear would recommend the first step of opening the refrigerator every night—but only Fogg would recommend the scaled-back version of microwaving a frozen meal.) Key 4: Reward: Make It Fulfilling Finally, Clear recommends habit formation techniques that focus on the final stage of habit formation—the reward. Clear contends that rewards must be fulfilling for habits to form because if you don’t enjoy the results of your efforts, you won’t keep trying. Many rewards you receive are delayed—for example, you only receive a degree after years of studying. But we’re wired to want instant gratification, and most good behaviors need time before the positive results accumulate: You sacrifice now to benefit later. So to stay motivated to continue good habits, Clear recommends finding ways to create rewards that are instantly fulfilling. (Shortform note: In Switch, authors Chip and Dan Heath recommend one technique for providing instantly fulfilling rewards when working on a long-term goal: Build small, frequent milestones into your plan and celebrate them. This ensures a regular supply of instant gratification opportunities. Consider adopting this technique when building habits: For example, if you want to run regularly, celebrate when you’ve run a total Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 8 Summary: Atomic Habits of 5, 10, then 20 miles.) End New Habits With Rewards One way to create fulfilling rewards is to add positive reinforcement at the end of the desired behavior. Clear explains that we remember the end of a behavior more than any other part. So doing something immediately satisfying at the end of the behavior will keep you motivated in a way that delayed rewards can’t. For example, the reward of a better grade next month may not elicit enough pleasure to keep you motivated to study an extra hour every day. But if you end each study session by eating a cookie, you’ll increase your motivation to study. (Shortform note: Having trouble thinking of appropriate reinforcement? In Tiny Habits, Fogg suggests that whenever you successfully perform a habit, you celebrate in a way that makes you feel accomplished and happy: Think doing a little jig or congratulating yourself.) Record Your Habits Another way you can create fulfilling rewards is by consciously keeping track of your habits. Clear recommends creating a visual representation of your progress—like by marking a day on a calendar. When you can visually see your accomplishments, you’ll be motivated to continue acting. The act of tracking can feel rewarding in itself. It’s satisfying to mark each successful completion of an action in some way. The pleasure experienced through that act becomes a cue to want to feel that satisfaction again. (Shortform note: If you’re a perfectionist, consider tracking your habit less often than you’d like at first. For example, do a habit you want to perform every day but only track it twice a week. You’ll see enough progress to motivate you but reduce the likelihood that you’ll miss a day on your tracker—and the chances you’ll grow so discouraged by imperfection that you give up.) Only track one major habit at a time to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the act. (Shortform note: In a separate forum, Clear adds that you should only develop one habit at a time: Many habits are actually combinations of behaviors, so taking on too many could overwhelm you.) Breaking Bad Habits You likely have habits you wish you didn’t. Since a behavior must go through all four stages of habit formation to become a habit, disrupting one of those stages can break a bad habit. To do so, invert the keys from positive to negative in the following way: 1. Cue—Make it unnoticeable. 2. Craving—Decrease the appeal. 3. Response—Increase the effort. 4. Reward—Make it unfulfilling. For example, if you want to break your habit of shopping at the mall on your way home from work, you could make the cue less noticeable by taking a different route home. You could decrease the appeal of the habit by attaching a paper to your rearview mirror that shows how much money you could save if you stopped shopping daily. You could increase the effort of shopping by parking on the bottom floor of the garage and making yourself climb the stairs to reach your desired store. Finally, since paying by cash rather than card makes you more aware of your spending, you could pay exclusively in cash: That way, shopping Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 9 Summary: Atomic Habits won’t give you the reward of stress relief but rather add to your stress by making you worry about your finances. (Shortform note: In The Power of Habit, Duhigg presents an alternative model for breaking bad habits: Uncover the main cue and reward, then change the response in between. For example, if you learn that on your way home from work (cue), you go to the mall (response) for stress release (reward), find another response that reduces stress—like calling a friend during your commute instead.) Finding the Right Habits You now know how to create habits—but which habits should you develop? Clear explains that the habits you gravitate toward and are able to maintain are influenced by your genetic make-up, predispositions, and natural talents. So he recommends choosing behaviors that highlight your strengths and interests—they’ll be more enjoyable and easier to stick with. The Big Five Personality Traits One way to figure out your optimal behaviors is to learn what personality traits you possess. There are five main personality traits, each with a spectrum of behavior that highlights who you are. All five are rooted in biology and typically remain unchanged throughout your life. Openness to experience: People high on this spectrum are more daring; people low on the spectrum are more careful. Conscientiousness: People high on this spectrum are more methodical; people low on this spectrum are more relaxed. Extroversion: People high on this spectrum are more sociable; people low on this spectrum are more reclusive. Agreeableness: People high on this spectrum are affable; people low on this spectrum are more withdrawn. Neuroticism: People high on this spectrum are more fretful; people low on this spectrum are more assured. Why the Big Five May Not Be Useful Assessing your personality using the Big Five traits may not be as useful as Clear contends. Psychologists use questionnaires to assess the Big Five traits—but the year after Atomic Habits was published, researchers found that these questionnaires may not accurately assess the personality traits of people from non-Westernized countries. For example, researchers found that people from non-Westernized countries tended to give different answers to different interviewers instead of answering the same way each time. Moreover, these traits can fluctuate throughout your life. For example, people tend to become less open and extroverted as they become teenagers, then more conscientious and agreeable as they grow from younger to middle-aged adults. These traits also fluctuate because they’re not just rooted in biology—environmental factors affect them, too. For example, trauma tends to trigger changes on the neuroticism spectrum. So while the Big Five may be a useful framework for understanding your personality, it has limitations—which means you shouldn’t choose which habits to create based on that framework alone. Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 10 Summary: Atomic Habits Clear explains that your personality doesn’t dictate which behaviors you’re capable of performing. However, your personality does suggest which behaviors you’ll most likely be successful with. For example, an extrovert may have a harder time staying off of social media than an introvert. Clear states that there is a version of every habit that works with your personality. He recommends choosing the version that fits your natural personality—not the version that worked for others. Doing so increases the chance you’ll succeed. For example, your friend may have lost weight by working out at a gym. But if you hate crowds, skip the gym and take daily walks instead. (Shortform note: In The Four Tendencies, Gretchen Rubin also contends that you should consider your personality when choosing what habits to develop, but her argument hinges on how your personality drives you to respond to expectations. For example, if you respond well to your own expectations, you’ll go to the gym simply because you’ve committed to doing so. But if you respond to others’ expectations better than your own, build external expectations into your habit to make sure you do it—like by hiring a personal trainer who’s expecting you.) Continuing to Show Up Once you successfully develop a habit, how do you ensure that it continues working for you long-term? In this section, we’ll discuss the three major potential downsides of creating habits—and the strategies Clear recommends for combating these downsides. How to Prevent Boredom: Make Behaviors Harder Clear contends that one potential downside with creating a habit is that you may grow bored. This is because boredom is inevitable with any repeated activity; at some point, your motivation for your new habit may wane. When this happens, it’s easy to abandon new behaviors that are still working to find more exciting behaviors. (Shortform note: If you can push through the boredom of doing a habit you’ve grown accustomed to, you might experience some unexpected benefits: Letting your mind wander during boring tasks has several benefits, like boosting creativity.) Clear contends that making behaviors harder can help curb boredom. This is because your brain remains engaged and motivated to improve when it feels challenged. But the level of challenge is crucial: You should make the behavior just hard enough to be interesting, but easy enough that you can still do it. If the challenge is too easy, you’ll lose interest; if it's too hard, you’ll grow frustrated and give up. (Shortform note: What if you’re bored by a behavior you can’t reasonably make harder? Keep things exciting by introducing a fun, new element: For example, make your healthy breakfast habit more fun by cooking your eggs in a humorously-shaped pan.) How difficult should it be? Clear suggests ensuring you succeed half the time. This way, you’ll experience enough success to warrant continued action and enough failure to make you work harder. Rewards experienced in this intermittent way make every attempt novel, which reduces boredom. (Shortform note: If you’ve ever struggled to not look at your phone, you’ve already experienced how intermittent rewards can create powerful habits. In Digital Minimalism, productivity expert Cal Newport describes how many technological products—like our phones— are designed to provide intermittent rewards so that we continue using them.) How to Keep Progressing: Build on Momentum Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 11 Summary: Atomic Habits Clear contends that a second potential downside with creating habits is that you may stop progressing. This becomes an issue when you’re using habits to automate certain behaviors you need to reach a long-term goal—like if you’re mastering scales because you eventually want to master the piano. Habits can prevent you from progressing, Clear explains, because once you automate a behavior, you stop paying close attention to it and start to miss small mistakes. You still think you’re making progress because you’re putting in the reps, but you’re only reinforcing your bad habit. For example, once you’ve learned your scales, you might play them at the beginning of every piano practice and assume you’re making progress. But since you’re no longer focused on your scales, you don’t realize that you’re playing them at an inconsistent volume—so each time you run scales, you reinforce the habit of playing them at an inconsistent volume. Unless your actions change, you won’t grow how you want. (Shortform note: The popularity of New York Times bestseller Outliers may partially explain why people believe that repeating a behavior is enough to progress in it. In his book, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the 10,000 hour rule, which stated that anybody who practices a skill for 10,000 hours can become an expert in it. But in Peak, author and psychologist Anders Ericsson, who wrote the study Gladwell based his rule on, refuted this rule, noting that how you practice is much more important than how much you practice.) You can ensure you keep progressing by building momentum into your system. Once a behavior becomes automated, Clear recommends building on it with 1% improvements. This keeps your behavior novel and your progress continuous—and thus prevents you from getting stuck. For example, if you’re trying to master the piano, don’t just run scales once you’re comfortable playing them—improve this ability by adjusting your volume as you play the scale. (Shortform note: In The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy also recommends shaking up your routine if your habits aren’t leading to progress. But he contends that changing your routine is enough to liven things up and help you recapture your passions—you don’t necessarily have to improve it.) How to Continue Evolving: Craft an Adaptable Identity Clear contends that a third potential downside with creating habits is that you can grow too attached to the identity they represent. This can make evolving past that identity difficult because if you lose that identity for any reason, you’ll lose both yourself and motivation. For example, if you have a habit of studying every day and thus identify as a “good student,” who are you when you graduate? (Shortform note: In The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, author Mark Manson elaborates on how growing attached to a particular identity prevents you from evolving. He contends that people avoid changes that could improve their lives because these changes challenge their identity and push them out of their comfort zone.) To avoid losing yourself, Clear recommends, think of yourself in terms of characteristics instead of labels. When you identify with multiple characteristics instead of one label, your identity remains adaptable. For example, “I’m a good student” becomes “I’m someone who invests in learning.” You can still be that after graduation. In this way, an adaptable identity allows you to continue beneficial habits even as the circumstances of your life inevitably change. For example, “someone who invests in learning” still reads regularly about their field, but a “good student” stops reading after graduation. An adaptable identity goes with the flow of life; a label-based identity fights against it. (Shortform note: Just be careful what characteristics you use to define yourself. In Awaken the Giant Within, Robbins warns that tying your identity to anything likely to change will likely trigger an identity crisis in the Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 12 Summary: Atomic Habits future. So “I’m friendly” is a better characteristic to define yourself by than “I’m popular,” since popularity often fluctuates.) Looking Forward: Continue to Reflect and Adjust Clear contends that habit formation does not end once you build the habit. Your brain is constantly scanning your environment for cues and ways to automate behavior. Therefore, you need to continually check in with your identity and behaviors to ensure they’re still working for you. So, Clear recommends, reflect on your habits and progress, and look for areas that promote growth and areas that require refinement. The more small adjustments in behavior you make, the more likely you will end up on the path of your choosing. You can become anyone you want and reach any goal you desire if you work hard and remain aware of the life you’re leading. (Shortform note: You can only effectively reflect on your habits and progress if you’re able to admit when you’re failing and take that failure into stride. In Make Your Bed, retired Navy SEAL Admiral William H. McRaven shows how to do so: Instead of giving up when you fail, use failure to push yourself harder and grow stronger. For example, during SEAL training, McRaven continually performed poorly on a swimming test and had to endure extra training as a result. But this training made him stronger, and McRaven eventually became the fastest swimmer in his cohort.) Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 13 Summary: Atomic Habits Part I | Introduction: The History of Tiny Habits There was no way James Clear could have known that an accident as a teenager would lead to his future career. But after learning the power of tiny habits in his life, he decided to share his insights and help others do the same, and it all started with a bat. When Clear was a sophomore in high school, he dreamed of playing professional baseball. Then, one day, a teammate lost control of a bat he was swinging, and it hit Clear in the face. Clear suffered skull fractures as a result and was placed in an induced coma at the hospital. After waking up, Clear found that the damage from his injuries had hindered his ability to see and perform certain motor functions. After a year of rehabilitation, Clear was back on the field, but his ability to play baseball was diminished. Still, he wanted to reclaim his dream. Clear went to a small college, where he was able to walk onto the baseball team. He still wasn’t back to his previous skill level, but instead of partying with his teammates, he started making small changes to help build his strength and confidence. He went to bed early, kept his dorm room tidy, created a daily study routine, and lifted weights several times each week. As his habits grew, so did his grade point average. He increased his muscle mass and, over the next four years, became one of the top athletes at the school, receiving national attention for his prowess on the field and in the classroom. There was nothing extraordinary about Clear’s recovery or training that led to his success. Rather, a series of small choices built up over time and allowed him to reach his potential. He became motivated to learn more about the power of habits and studied both cognitive and behavioral sciences. Through this research, he developed a system to guide others in changing their lives and reaching their potential. This system is at the heart of Atomic Habits. Shortform Note The original book contains 6 parts with 17 chapters. We’ve condensed the text for efficiency of learning: Part I follows the book’s organization with the introduction and first 3 chapters. We cover Clear’s catalytic experiences and the overall framework of atomic habits. Part II groups the 4 stages of habit formation into 4 chapters (corresponding to Chapters 4-17 in the book). Each chapter provides a combined overview of how to understand and approach the individual stages of cue, craving, response, and reward. Part III groups the information from the final section and Appendix in the book to deliver additional tips about creating lasting changes in your life through habits. Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 14 Summary: Atomic Habits Chapter 1: It’s More Important to Play the Game Than Win The concept behind Atomic Habits relates to 1% improvements in behavior that lead to significant, lasting behavioral transformations. Often, when we want to change our lives, we get caught up in the belief that major change requires a massive expenditure of time and energy. However, by focusing on the system of behaviors, rather than the outcome of those behaviors, major shifts in who we are and what we do become easy and more sustainable. Systems vs. Goals In every facet of life, there are winners and losers. Whether it’s a game, a job, an award, or an achievement, there are always going to be those who succeed and those who fail. But both winners and losers start with the same goal, so what makes the difference between the two? The answer lies in the priority put on goals and systems. A goal is the end result you desire. If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal may be to make the Fortune 500 list one day. Systems, on the other hand, are the processes that lead to the result. As an entrepreneur, your system might be to hire a competent staff, launch a major marketing campaign, and form high-profile partnerships. If your processes are successful, you will eventually attain your desired result. If you place your priority on systems, you can avoid the problems associated with prioritizing goals that follow. Problem #1: Attaining a goal is a momentary action. Doing what is necessary only to achieve a temporary goal is like treating symptoms without addressing the cause of the illness. But goals have expiration dates. When you focus on achieving a goal, what happens when that goal is achieved? Do you set a new goal and go back to square one? Do you lack the motivation to put forth the energy to attain another goal? Goals are about winning the game. Once the game is won, there is nothing left to do. Systems are about learning how to play the game so that even after you’ve won, you can keep playing and succeeding. For example, you may be tired of living in a messy home. Your goal becomes cleaning your house. You get motivated one day and clean each room until there is no more mess. Your goal is achieved. However, after a week, the mess starts to accumulate and stays that way until you find the same burst of motivation as before, and the cycle continues. If your goal is to live in a cleaner environment, a 1% change in behavior, such as folding discarded clothes on the ground or placing them in the hamper at the end of each day, would slowly become a habit that would lead to the same end result—a less messy home—and be sustainable over time. Problem #2: Goals can delay happiness or feelings of satisfaction. Goals promote a feeling of failure because it may take a long time to reach them. And if your only path to changing your life is attaining your ultimate goal, you’re delaying personal gratification. It’s like putting all your eggs in one basket. If that goal is never accomplished, you never feel happy. Changes in systems, Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 15 Summary: Atomic Habits however, are immediate and reinforce feelings of achievement. For example, if you want to publish a novel and focus only on that action, you will only be satisfied when your book is published. The act of writing a book, which requires time and energy, is performed solely for the end result. However, if your goal is to create a writer’s life or find a better balance between work and writing, the sheer act of changing your behaviors to write each day will feel rewarding. Over time, those daily pages will accumulate into a book, which will serve as proof of your accomplishment in forming better writing habits. You may still want to get published, but the act of finishing a novel will be satisfying, even before submitting it for publication. Problem #3: A focus on goals narrows the possible paths to achieve them. Think of prioritizing a goal as placing a finish line at the end of a long tunnel. You only see one way forward, or one way to achieve your goal. But if you focus on the systems, the number of possible paths to success becomes immeasurable. You may find that certain processes work better than others and lead to better processes. There are several paths that lead to your desired destination, but if you have tunnel-vision, you’ll miss seeing them. Using the same example, change your mindset from “I have to write this book to get published” to “I want to spend more time writing.” This shift in perspective opens up the possibilities for how your goal can be achieved. The first assumes there is only one path to success; the latter finds success in creating a path that works for you. When you fail to achieve a goal, the problem does not lie within you. The problem lies within your system. When it comes to habits, no habit is too big to change as long as you have a good system in place. Changing your system leads to inherent, continual, and positive behaviors that remain even after the goal is achieved. The Compounding Effect of Atomic Habits Small changes in behavior won’t seem significant at first. You must give them time to compound into the notable life changes you want to see. It’s easy to become frustrated if you look at the immediate results of a new habit as a measure of success. When you’re frustrated, it’s easier to give up or revert back to what’s comfortable or familiar. If you accept that time is required for any small change to reach an effectual point, you will not only be able to see the compound effect but also have formed a lasting positive habit that can lead to more improvement and happiness in the future. For instance, if you want to save money for a vacation to Hawaii, saving a dollar a day may be the habit you initiate. However, after a week, an increase of $7 saved will seem insignificant, the goal will seem too big, and your efforts will feel futile. At that point, you give up. But after a year of saving a dollar a day, your savings account grows to $365, then $730 after two years, plus all the interest you’ve earned over the two years. You can now afford your trip and have also created a lasting system that will help you continue to save money. Time becomes a measure of your habits. With good habits, time works to support your actions and Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 16 Summary: Atomic Habits helps you become the person you want to be. With bad habits, time works against you by keeping you on a bad life trajectory. Let’s look at some examples of habits that compound positively, and some that compound negatively. Positive Habits Productivity—Adding one extra task to your day can lead to big changes in your productivity. As the task is continually performed, it becomes a habit, and habits become automatic. Automatic habits require little thought, thereby opening up mental space to consider new tasks or behaviors and increasing your daily productivity. Deciding to make the next day’s to-do list before going to bed might be a small change in your normal routine. But adding this small task to the previous day helps you start your day already organized and clears up time and mental space for something else in the morning. Knowledge—Learning one new piece of information one day will not make you a more-informed person overall, at least not in an obvious way. But deciding to learn one new thing each day will build up over time into a wealth of knowledge. Not only are you broadening your scope of knowledge, but new information blends with old information to provide greater insight, thereby continuing to enhance your knowledge base. You want to learn more about investing. If you read one article, you’ll learn more about one small aspect. But if you learn one new piece of knowledge regarding stocks and market prices a day, those pieces will compound into a larger understanding of how investments work. With this knowledge, you’ll have a better grasp how other factors relate to the overall economic system, such as retirement accounts, real estate, and international relations. Relationships—Getting to know one new person will not change your social landscape dramatically. But if you make a point of getting to know one new person each week, you will slowly build a network of new friends and connections. If you decide to become better acquainted with one co-worker each week, after a year, you’ll have amassed a network of business connections. Negative Habits Stress—One moment of stress every now and then is common and harmless. But if you remain in a continued state of stress, it will compound over time and have a negative impact on your overall health. Also, as you dwell in this negative state, your overall outlook on life will shift until multiple aspects of your day become stress-inducing. If you leave the house late each morning, rush hour traffic becomes that much more stressful as you panic about getting to work on time. Starting each day with this frustration sets you on a negative trajectory from the beginning. From there, other little grievances will begin to frustrate you, and after a while, your entire day is one long frustration. This type of compounded stress five days a week for a whole year can equate to reduced mental and physical health and have lasting consequences. Self-Esteem—Feeling low or bad about yourself one day won’t change your general opinion about who you are. But frequent thoughts about your lack of worth can build to a point of self-recrimination and poor self-esteem, which can stifle future self-improvement attempts. If you do poorly on a test, you may feel bad about not taking more time to study properly. Over time, Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 17 Summary: Atomic Habits if your study habits don’t change, your continual poor grades will make you feel unintelligent or lacking in the skills required to perform at a high level, which will bleed into other aspects of life. Outrage—One moment of agitation won’t lead you down a path of constant discontent or rage. But if you fail to find better ways of dealing with anger, you will continue to spiral into a volatile state in which any disturbance sends you over the edge. Feeling outraged when you experience discrimination is a natural reaction. But if you allow that outrage to sully your perspective on life or expectations for how you will be treated, your outrage can build to a point where you are quick to argue or, worse, engage in violence. (Shortform note: We created the preceding examples to illustrate the author’s points.) Reaching Your Full Potential When you understand how compounding habits work and stay committed to change, you can achieve your full potential. A breakthrough moment is when that potential is reached and your goal achieved. From the outside, this breakthrough may seem like an “overnight success.” But your success did not happen overnight. Breakthroughs are only possible if you make it through the valley of disappointment and push through the plateau of latent potential. The valley of disappointment is the space between what you expect to happen when you change a habit and what actually happens. Prevailing wisdom deems that progress should be linear—one thing happens that builds to another and another until you reach the top. Therefore, you expect the trajectory of success to move in a straight line at a steady incline. However, because time is required for small changes to have an effect, there will be a period at the beginning where the line of progress moves horizontally. This horizontal movement is the plateau of latent potential. Disappointment occurs in the gap, or valley, created between the assumed trajectory and the realistic plateau because you haven’t seen any signs of improvement yet. But if a small behavior change is successfully continued, the plateau will eventually curve sharply up and continue to ascend. All the benefits of your hard work to change your behavior wait on the other side of the plateau of latent potential. Every habit is a seed that must first be planted for the tree to grow, but the tree will not begin to sprout immediately after being planted. Each day that you continue the new habit and improve by 1% is like adding water to the seed, which nurtures the roots and allows them to embed into the earth. There must be a foundation created underground before the sapling can burst through to the outside. The period in which you are on the plateau of latent potential is similar to the time needed for the roots to create that foundation. You must stick with a new behavior long enough to get past the plateau and begin your ascent upward. Exercise: Have You Checked Your Systems Lately? An atomic habit requires fortitude, patience, and a good process for it to grow into a significant and permanent change in your life. Now that you know how small behaviors lead to big habits, how can this information help you achieve your goals? Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 18 Summary: Atomic Habits What are one or two habits you have tried to develop or break recently? Were you successful? Were the changes you made system-based or goal-oriented? In what way? What is a new habit you’d like to start? What small (1%) improvements in behavior can you make that will compound to allow you to reach the end result desired? Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 19 Summary: Atomic Habits Chapter 2: You Are What You Do The process of changing habits is really the process of changing who you are or becoming who you want to be. Your behaviors must match your sense of self for them to be lasting, but understanding who you are can be tricky and knowing which behaviors to change even trickier. Once you understand the connection between identity and habits, you’ll find the right path for your life and stick to it. The Layers of Change There are three ways, or layers, in which we think about change. The direction in which we think about them makes all the difference in our success. The outer layer consists of outcomes. As stated, focusing on outcomes to prompt change is the most common approach. You have an end result in sight, so you adjust your behaviors to reach that goal. The middle layer consists of processes. The behaviors involved in your system become the focus of your change. Most habits are associated with this layer. The inner layer consists of your identity. This layer encompasses your opinions, beliefs, and assumptions about yourself and the world. Changes in behavior are motivated by the type of person you are or want to be. Working from the outside in when striving to change behavior, or outcome-based habits (OBH), focuses your motivation on doing whatever it takes to reach a goal. But those behaviors may not be the most beneficial or capable of being repeated long-term. Further, once the goal is achieved, there is no reason to continue those specific behaviors. If you adapt your actions to serve one finite purpose, your actions also become finite. For example, you may decide you want to have six-pack abs. You decide that doing crunches will lead to that outcome. You do 100 crunches a day until you have six-pack abs. Now that you have the abs you want, 100 crunches start to seem like a burden, and you lose motivation to do them because they are not connected with a goal. The problem with the OBH direction is that it removes the power of beliefs from the equation. Behind every system of behaviors is a set of beliefs. You focused on one action to create your desired outcome, not a system of behavior change that changed who you are as a person. You believe you are someone who can do 100 crunches, but beyond that, who are you? Are you a more fit person? A healthier person? If your behaviors don’t match the beliefs you feel inside, you will never be able to stick to them. That is where identity-based habits (IBH) come into play. The IBH direction means working from the inside out when striving to change behavior. The focus becomes wanting to be a certain type of person, so you behave in a way that type of person likely behaves. Using the six-pack abs example, you determine that someone with six-pack abs must have a healthy lifestyle. Therefore, you desire to become someone with a healthy lifestyle. You decide that a combination of 10 crunches before bed, a low-calorie diet, and riding a bike instead of driving to work equals a healthy lifestyle. Over time, continuing to perform these actions leads to an overall healthier body that includes six-pack abs. Now, you have the abs you wanted and the habit of living more healthily. Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 20 Summary: Atomic Habits One of the best motivators for sticking with new habits is when they are helping you become the person you want to be. You become motivated not by “I want this result,” but by “I am this person.” You must be clear about who you are as much as about who you want to be. If you’re not sure who you are, look at your current habits and determine what beliefs support them. There are two major aspects of IBH that support positive behavior change—identity evidence and the feedback loop. Evidence of Identity and the Feedback Loop Identity is not something you’re born with. Your experiences condition your beliefs about your identity. The more you act a certain way, the more you become conditioned to believe that’s who you are. Think of it this way: every action you make is a vote for the type of person you are. As those votes begin to accumulate, you gain a larger picture of your actions and the associated identity. If your house is always messy, you will believe you are a messy person. Your actions become the evidence of your identity, and that can work for you or against you. When the evidence suggests a positive view of yourself, you’ll be thrust forward toward positive behaviors. If you write one page a day for 30 days, the evidence suggests you are a writer. You will continue to write because that’s who you are. When the evidence suggests you are someone with bad habits, you will have a hard time believing you are someone who can form good habits. If you only have two written pages after 30 days because you always watch TV, you will not believe you are a writer and will stop trying. You must unlearn your long-held beliefs, despite the evidence, to open yourself up to change. Identity change doesn’t happen overnight. It may take days or weeks for you to start believing you are a different person. But the more you cast votes for a particular identity through tiny habits, the more you will be motivated to keep casting votes, which will continue to strengthen your identity, and so forth. This is the feedback loop and one of the most significant aspects of habit formation. Put another way, the feedback loop signifies the following process: You want to be a certain type of person → that type of person acts in this way → the more you act in this way, the more you become that type of person → the more you feel like that type of person, the more you will act in the appropriate way. This feedback loop acts like a flywheel, gathering momentum as it keeps spinning. The feedback loop occurs as your habits change to match your chosen identity. But if you behave in a manner opposite to your chosen identity, you will never become that person. Two-Steps to Identity Change You now know that habits represent who you are, but how do you become that person or make sure you are behaving in the right way? Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 21 Summary: Atomic Habits First, you must decide who you want to be. What’s important to you? What do you believe in? What do you wish to represent in life? Who would you rather be if not who you are currently? If you don’t have the answers, look at the outer layer—outcomes—and work backwards. For example, you may say, “I want a cleaner home.” Ask, “What sort of things does a person with a clean home do?” Then ask, “If I do these things, what kind of person does that make me?” For instance, a person with a clean home is someone who puts clothes away and does dirty dishes immediately. Someone who does these things is conscientious and vigilant. Therefore, I want to become a conscientious, vigilant person who doesn’t procrastinate. Second, prove that you are this new identity with atomic behaviors. Now that you have your identity in focus, let the aspects of it drive the feedback loop, not the results. You may not feel like a conscientious, vigilant person, but the more you act in this way, the more you will start to feel like that person. If you start by simply washing each dish when you’re done with it, your sink will always be clean. When you see your clean sink, you will feel proud of your new habit and look for ways to keep acting. You may want to take the recycling out daily to maintain a clean kitchen. If you’re taking the recycling out, you may see the benefit of taking the garbage out at the same time. You do a sweep of the house for all garbage, which further declutters your space. The longer you live in this new clean space, the more you’ll be motivated to keep it clean. You can always change who you are if you can discover who you want to be and allow that identity to guide you. Exercise: Are You Happy with You? The relationship between identity and habits illuminates many factors that may be getting in the way of change in your life. How can this information help you to create better habits? Look at three of your current habits. What do they say about the type of person you are? Who do you wish to become, and what are two characteristics of that type of person? What sort of behaviors does a person with those characteristics perform? Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 22 Summary: Atomic Habits What is an atomic behavior change you can make today to support the type of person you want to become? Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 23 Summary: Atomic Habits Chapter 3: How Habits Are Formed Habits form when the brain processes the four stages of behavior: cue, craving, response, and reward. The brain is always actively taking in information from the outside world. When you are presented with a situation, the brain runs through a list of options to decide how best to respond. Through a process of trial and error, the brain deciphers which response elicits the best results. The response that delivers the most satisfaction is the one that will stick. Each time you come across a similar situation, you will remember the satisfaction gained from that particular response and repeat it. Therefore, habits are nothing more than solutions found to manage life’s problems. The Great Cat Escape In an experiment, cats were placed in boxes and had to press a lever to be let out. This experiment exemplifies how the mind becomes conditioned to a certain response once doing it leads to a positive result. At first, the cats sniffed each corner of the box and clawed at the walls. Finally, either by accident or persistence, they found the lever, and one side of the box slid open. The test was repeated with each cat, and each time, the cat found the lever more easily than before. Eventually, most cats were able to push the lever immediately after being placed in the box. Four Stages of Habit Formation Once you understand what each stage means and how they link together to create habits, changing your behavior becomes a simpler task. 1. Cue—The cue triggers the brain to recognize an opportunity for a possible reward. 2. Craving—The craving occurs once the cue indicates this opportunity. The craving is the desire to achieve the reward and becomes the motivation to act. Your desire to achieve the reward stems from your brain’s desire to change some part of your physical or emotional state. 3. Response—The response is the actual action taken. Whether you choose to respond relies on the strength of the craving and how much effort is required to act. If the action is easy to do, you will do it. If the action is too difficult or requires too much effort, you won’t do it. 4. Reward—The reward is the resulting benefit or satisfaction gained from the response. All of the other three stages revolve around the reward. The cue notices it, the craving desires it, and the response obtains it. This process is endless and loops round and round, which is why changing behavior is so difficult. Here’s an example of the stages in action: Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 24 Summary: Atomic Habits Cue: You sit down to respond to work emails. Craving: You begin to feel stressed by the number of emails and want to feel some relief. Response: You chew on your nails to relieve the stress. Reward: You feel less stressed. Habit: You now chew your nails while checking work emails. These stages can be broken down into the problem phase and solution phase when looking at any habit. The cue and craving create the problem, and the response and reward provide the solution. Problem phase—Cue: You walk past a coffee shop on the way to work and smell fresh roasted coffee. Craving: Coffee gives you energy, and you want to feel energized. Solution phase— Response: You buy a cup of coffee. Reward: By the time you reach work, you are raring to go. Habit: You buy a cup of coffee each day you walk to work. To develop a habit, all four stages need to occur. If any one of the stages fails, the habit will not be formed. If you remove the cue, your brain is not activated. If you remove the craving, you have no need to act. If the response is too hard, you won’t be able to do it or won’t try. If the reward is not satisfying, you have no reason to want to attain it again. Cues can be anything in life and often don’t differentiate from person to person. What does differ is the craving. Two people might hear the sound of a slot machine. This is the cue. One is a compulsive gambler and is triggered to crave the rush of gambling. They will find a way to gamble so their emotional craving is appeased, which is the reward. The other person might never gamble, so the cue of slot machines does nothing for them. They crave nothing, so they don’t respond. In a world full of cues, learning how to change your cravings or responses to more positive rewards is the first step in gaining control over your behavior. The Four Laws of Habit Formation Creating new habits is easier when you understand how to approach the different stages of habit formation. Each stage has an accompanying law that, when followed, promotes positive changes in your life. 1. Cue—Make it obvious. 2. Craving—Make it attractive. 3. Response—Make it easy. 4. Reward—Make it satisfying. The inverse of these laws help break your bad habits. 1. Cue—Make it invisible. 2. Craving—Make it unattractive. 3. Response—Make it difficult. 4. Reward—Make it unsatisfying. With these principles, you can tackle any habit you wish to create or break by making the stages Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 25 Summary: Atomic Habits work for you. The following section will walk you through each law to give you the knowledge needed to do so. Exercise: How Were Your Habits Formed? Now that you know the stages through which habits are formed, let’s look at some of your current habits to determine how you got them. What is a bad habit you currently have? What is the cue that triggers you to perform this habit? What do you crave when you experience this cue? What is the reward you gain when you perform this habit? What other behavior might similarly satisfy this particular craving? Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 26 Summary: Atomic Habits Part II: Applying the Framework Chapter 4: Making Cues More Obvious Habits can form from cues you aren’t even aware of. You are taking in information even when you don’t realize it. In the world of habits, this means you are reacting to cues and forming habits often without your knowledge. To be able to form a good habit or break a bad one, you must start with awareness of the habit and the cues that create them. Therefore, you need to find ways to make your cues and habits obvious. The Habit Scorecard Making a list of your daily activities helps bring your habits out of the unconscious to the surface. A habit scorecard is one way to keep track of the things you do regularly. Create a list of all the actions you make on a daily basis so your habits are brought into view. Your scorecard might include the following list: 1. Wake up. 2. Get out of bed. 3. Use the bathroom. 4. Brush teeth. 5. Make coffee. 6. Etc. Once you’ve filled out your scorecard, determine which habits serve you, hurt you, or neither in the long run. All habits are formed to address some issue or problem in your life, and only you can be the judge of which ones contribute to the person you want to be. There should be no judgments or criticisms about any particular habit. You are simply mapping the ones that serve you and the ones that don’t. One way to determine which habits serve you is to think of their net outcomes. If a habit will compound into a behavior that fits your identity, it is effective. If a habit will compound into a behavior that betrays your identity, it is ineffective. Place a “+” next to effective habits, a “-” next to ineffective habits, and a “=” next to neutral habits. These steps not only expose your current habits but also see the cues that trigger them. Forming New Habits There are two effective methods that can help you implement better habits into your life using the habit scorecard: implementation intention and habit stacking. Implementation Intention Implementation intention simply means making an advanced plan for what you will do and when you will do it. Research shows that scheduling an action or activity increases the likelihood that it will get done. Therefore, the two most common cues are time and place. Implementation intention harnesses the power of both for your benefit. The formula is simple: “When X occurs, I will do Y” or “At X time, I will do Y.” Trying to create a new behavior arbitrarily requires too much effort. You have to remember what you want to do and become motivated to do it. For instance, you may say, “I will exercise more each day,” and leave it at that. But what sort of exercise will you do? When will it happen? For how long will you do it? When faced Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 27 Summary: Atomic Habits with these questions, it is easy to become overwhelmed or indecisive. When you experience these feelings, you are more likely to lose motivation. Be as specific as possible to help you stay on track. Rather than saying, “I will exercise more each day,” describe in detail what that means. Even stating, “I will walk each day,” is too vague. Keep narrowing the action down until it’s clear. Change the statement to, “I will walk for 20 minutes around my block/office building/park at 2 pm.” When 2 pm arrives, your brain will be triggered for the action. Specificity removes the need for inspiration or motivation to kick in. All the decisions have already been made. You just need to perform the intended action. The point of implementation intention is to address the first law of behavior change. When you make time and place obvious, you are training your brain to create an association with those cues. After enough time, the actions will become automatic, thereby forming a new habit. Some habits are not meant to be daily habits. For desired behavior changes that occur infrequently, try setting the first day of each week, month, or year as your cue. The first day of these time markers tend to feel like a blank slate and inspire optimism, which may help motivate you to act. Habit Stacking Habit stacking exploits the phenomenon of accumulating behaviors, known as the Diderot Effect, to help create new habits. This effect describes the tendency for one major purchase to lead to another and another. Behaviors follow a similar tendency because no behavior exists in a vacuum. One action triggers another and so on. Understanding this fact helps you use current habits to build new ones. The Diderot Effect The Diderot Effect was named after French philosopher Denis Diderot who lived in poverty. One day, Diderot came into a large sum of money after selling his immense library of books. After using the money for some essentials, like paying for his daughter’s wedding, Diderot bought a silk robe. The robe stood out among his shabby home, so he started purchasing other fine items to match, which led to more fine purchases until his money was gone. Rather than planning a new time and location for a new habit, habit stacking links a new behavior to a current one. The reward of the current habit becomes the cue for the new behavior. The formula is, “After I do X, I will do Y.” Using the walking example, rather than using 2 pm as the cue, you might use lunch as the cue. “After I finish lunch, I will walk around the block for 20 minutes.” You’re still creating a plan for future action, but this time, you’re linking the new behavior with an obvious behavior. Habit stacking can also work with routines. Say you have a nightly routine as follows: You finish dinner, wash the dishes, wipe down the counters, and set the coffeemaker for the morning. If your desired identity is someone who eats healthier foods, you might implement a habit that supports that identity. Your routine might become: You finish dinner, wash the dishes, wipe down the counters, place a bowl, spoon, and box of Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 28 Summary: Atomic Habits cereal next to the coffeemaker, and set the coffeemaker for the morning. The example of laying out the bowl, spoon, and cereal highlights an important aspect of habit stacking. The cues you wish to create must make sense for the habit to be triggered and the follow-through to be successful. You must take into account which habits fit into which routines and when. If you lay out your bowl and spoon before you wipe down the counters, you will be forced to move them, which may become an annoyance and hinder the action. If you decide to walk for 20 minutes after you finish lunch but only have a 30-minute lunch break, you’ll never successfully perform the behavior, and the habit will not form. If you want to start a daily habit but pair it with an infrequent habit, you will not create a proper cue for the behavior. As with implementation intention, make the behavior you will stack and the behavior upon which it will be stacked as specific as possible to create the highest level of success. “Write more” and “eat healthy” are goals with ambiguous systems. Likewise, “before dinner” is an ambiguous cue. Instead, say “After changing out of my work clothes, I will write for 30 minutes.” This attention to detail makes the cue and plan for action obvious. Habits and Your Environment The way your environment is designed and utilized has a major impact on your behaviors. We are constantly influenced by environmental factors without realizing it. For instance, when we walk into a quiet room, like a church, we automatically whisper. Environment shapes behavior, which makes habits more dependent on context than we know. The previous example of setting out items for cereal signifies another important aspect in behavior change —the power of sight. Of the nearly eleven million receptors in the body, sight uses 90% of them. Therefore, visual cues are the biggest instigators for action. For example, at the grocery store, you are more likely to buy items at eye level than those on the bottom shelf. These types of choices are not due to thought or motivation but because they are more convenient. In your own life, your habits center around what you see and what appears convenient. To form and maintain good habits, ensure that the right visual cues exist in your environment. You become the architect of your behavior when you design your environment to support obvious cues. One way to organize your environment for success is to learn the context embedded in a cue. Objects in and of themselves are not cues alone. Your relationship with the object—the context by which you understand the object—is the trigger. At first, all cues will be specific, but over time, the associated behavior will become linked to the general context of the cue. You may have a glass of wine when you go out to dinner with friends. Over time, being with your friends becomes the trigger, not the specific action of eating at a restaurant. Now, anytime you are with friends, you will crave a glass of wine, even if you’re at home. Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 29 Summary: Atomic Habits Different cues develop different contexts for every person. You might associate your couch with relaxing and watching movies, whereas someone else sees their couch as a place to read. If you want to form the habit of reading more, make the cue obvious by mixing a visual cue with a new context. (Shortform example: Before you leave for work, place a book on the couch cushion. When you come home from work, the book will be waiting, and over time, the context of the couch will become associated with reading.) Your unique relationship with objects is useful in training your brain to view a particular part of your environment in a particular context. To create better habits, ensure that each object or space is only associated with one context. When contexts overlap, it’s easier for the easiest action to win out. If you have trouble sleeping but always look at your phone while lying in bed, remove the context of checking social media or texting in bed. Use the bed only when it’s time to sleep. By removing all other activities from the bed, you will create a relationship between the bed and sleep. When you lay down each night, your brain will be triggered to respond with sleep. It’s always easier to form a new habit in a new environment because you’re not fighting old cues. However, if you are not able to change environments, redefine or rearrange yours to create different associations. Create zones for different behaviors, such as only eating at the table or only working at your desk. The more you can create a stable and predictable environment with clear contextual cues, the more stable and predictable your behaviors will be. Remove the Cue to Break Habits The inverse of the first law—make it obvious—is make it invisible. If you want to quit a bad habit, you must remove the cues. Despite what you’ve been conditioned to believe, discipline and self-control are not the most important aspects of habit formation. You can break bad habits, but you won’t forget them or their cues. Once a habit is ingrained in the brain, the craving that triggers it will automatically kick in whenever the cue resurfaces. Willpower is a temporary solution; changing your environment is a long-term solution. When you create a predictable and stable environment, the need for discipline or willpower is reduced. For instance, if you stay up too late watching TV in bed, remove the TV from the bedroom. Reducing exposure to a bad cue is like cutting off the fuel supply to the engine driving the habit. You’ll always remember how to drive, but you won’t be able to start the car. Bad Habits Can Be Cues Bad habits often create the cues that trigger behavior. The habit creates a new sensation that triggers the same craving. This trap is known as “cue-induced wanting.” When you feel anxious, you smoke a cigarette. Smoking makes you concerned about your health, which makes you anxious, so you reach for another smoke. You feel lethargic, so you watch television. Watching television makes you feel unproductive, which makes you more lethargic, so you watch more television. Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 30 Summary: Atomic Habits Create a more positive environment to reduce your vulnerability to this detrimental cycle. Exercise: Timing Is Everything Now that you understand how to make cues more obvious, how can you use this knowledge to start new behaviors in your life? What is one daily new habit you wish to form? When would this new habit best fit into your day? To practice implementation intention, what is the specific formula you can create to cue this new behavior (“When X occurs, I will do Y” or “At X time, I will do Y”)? What are one to three current behaviors that relate to this new behavior? What are the rewards of these behaviors? To practice habit stacking, how can one of these rewards become a cue for your new behavior? Exercise: Shaping Your Visual Environment You’ve learned that sight is the most powerful cue, so how can this information help you create and break habits? Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 31 Summary: Atomic Habits Using the new daily habit from the previous exercise, what is a visual object that relates to this habit? How can you use this object to create a visual cue for the habit? Now, think of a habit you wish to break. What is the visual cue that triggers that behavior? What can you do to make that cue invisible? Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 32 Summary: Atomic Habits Chapter 5: Making Cravings More Attractive Cravings are the brain’s way of signifying that something is missing inside. Your habits are the time-tested strategies used to create shifts in your physical or emotional state to fill the void. There are many ways to address satisfying either of these states, but you will use the one that satisfies them in the most pleasurable way. To ensure you are motivated to act in a positive way, you must make the right behavior a more attractive option for satisfying your craving. But first, you must understand where cravings come from and why they are so powerful. Historical Relevance Many of your current cravings are grounded in your ancestry. Humans have evolved significantly since the time of hunters and gatherers. Science and technology have increased your ability to live more efficiently and find a wealth of resources to address your needs. However, what hasn't changed are the underlying motivations that influence behaviors. Every behavior stems from some type of underlying motive. Your habits are contemporary solutions to address ancient motivations, which include the following: The need to survive, reserve or build strength, find companionship, be accepted by the tribe, belong, or achieve prestige and admiration. The Motivation for Overeating Our ancestors lived in a time where food was not plentiful, and calorie- and nutrient-rich food sources were scarce. The practical strategy was to find whatever food they could forage and eat as much as possible to survive. In modern times, food is abundant in many regions of the world. Foods that are high in calories are no longer scarce. We no longer have to gorge ourselves to survive, and we have the added benefit of knowing that high-calorie foods are not good for us. Still, because of this ingrained motivation, we crave unhealthy foods and consume them in mass quantities. Businesses monopolize on these ancient motivations to sell more products or make more money. For example, the food industry capitalizes on your motivation to survive by making food more attractive and habit forming. Natural, unprocessed food varies little from bite to bite. When the novelty of the sensation these foods provide wears off, the brain becomes bored and determines the body is full. Processed food can be manipulated to ensure that boredom is never reached. Chemicals enhance flavors and textures, creating dynamic combinations that are pleasing to the mouth and make each bite pleasurable, which excites the brain and keeps you eating. Other examples include how social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, capitalize on your inherent need for community and recognition, and dating apps capitalize on your need for companionship. You are always looking for ways to satiate these inherent motivations, and the more attractive and Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 33 Summary: Atomic Habits stimulating the experience is, the more you will crave it. Scientific Relevance All habits create a dopamine spike in the brain. Dopamine is a brain chemical produced when you anticipate pleasure and creates the sensation of desire. Dopamine is also released when you experience pleasure. These two experiences can be considered as wanting versus liking. The anticipation of pleasure—the process of wanting—is triggered when the brain notices a cue and perceives a reward. At this moment, dopamine spikes and motivates you to act. A similar thing happens when you receive a reward. When something happens that is pleasurable—the act of liking—dopamine spikes to indicate your satisfaction. The only difference is that the system involved in both wanting and liking is wired to be ten times stronger for wanting. Consider how much more exciting the days leading up to Christmas were than actual Christmas morning as a child. Consider the butterflies felt before a date compared with how it feels to be on the date. In relation to the stages of habit formation, your body releases dopamine in the following way: Reward—The first time you receive a reward, dopamine spikes, indicating your pleasure. Cue and Craving—When the same cue is noticed again, dopamine spikes and initiates a craving in anticipation of the reward. Response—The anticipation urges you to act, and dopamine remains at a neutral level. Reward—When you receive the reward the second time, dopamine does not spike, but stays neutral. This is because the reward was expected and the pleasure experienced less satisfying than anticipated. If the reward is not received, dopamine drops from the disappointment. If the reward comes later than expected, dopamine drops from the disappointment, then spikes at the relief of finally receiving the reward again. (Shortform example: The habit formation stages can be seen clearly in drug addiction. The phrase “chasing the dragon” characterizes the difference between wanting and liking. The first time the drug is used and elicits a pleasing sensation, a connection is formed between the drug and pleasure. Each time you are cued to want the same type of pleasure, you will crave the drug. Dopamine spikes in anticipation of the same high as before, but because anticipation now overrides actual pleasure, the result will be less than before. Continuing to chase this high is the essence of habit formation.) Social Relevance Your underlying motivation to belong affects your behaviors. Group mentality is strong in society. You want to feel connected to others and a part of something larger than yourself. Therefore, what you see others do around you shapes what you do. Your earliest habits are formed by imitating how parents, friends, and teachers behave. When certain behaviors help you fit in and belong, they are more attractive. There are three groups of people that greatly influence your choices in behavior. The Close Prepared for [email protected] for restricted individual use 34 Summary: Atomic Habits You often pick up habits from those you are close to without realizing it. Like the physical environment, your social environments are riddled with various cues. The manner in which your loved ones respond to a cue acts as a sort of subconscious peer pressure. You imitate their behavior so you will be seen as one of them. This type of imitation is only negative when you’re surrounded by bad influences. If your best friends smoke cigarettes, you will be more likely to start smoking. If your family members overeat, you become more susceptible to overeating. Surrounding yourself with positive influences helps surround you with good behaviors. When you see others behaving in a way that is in line with the habits you want to create, forming those habits becomes easier. To use your social environment to its full potential, seek out specific social groups where your desired behaviors are the norm and with which you already share something in common. If you want to read more, join a book club. Even better, join a book club made up of similar people, such as those with similar careers or who are at similar stages in life. If you have a young child and want to exercise more, join a mommy/daddy and me yoga club. The shared identity promotes your personal identity, and the sense of belonging fuels your motivation to maintain good habits and provides allies for the journey. The Many Group mentality is a powerful influencer because it is easier to go along with bad or incorrect behaviors than be good or right on your own. When you don’t know how to respond in certain situations, you scan the people around you to see what everyone else is doing. When you want to buy a new appliance or piece of technology, you check Amazon reviews. When you want to see a movie, you look at Rotten Tomatoes to see what the critics thought. When you want to go to a restaurant, you check Yelp to see which establishments others liked. You want to imitate the best behaviors, so you seek out the most popular options chosen by the public. Your natural instinct is to get along with others, but when the actions of the group cause you to disregard your own feelings or behaviors that fit your desired identity, this influence becomes negative. Following a different path than the group is unattractive, but with effort, you can learn to stick to your guns and seek out groups who support your identity. The Powerful Your underlying motivation to gain status and admiration for who you are causes you to imitate the behaviors of successful people. You imitate those you envy and become motivated to act in a way that generates the praise and respect you perceive them to have. You believe doing what powerful people do will garner the same results in your life. You also avoid behaviors that may reduce your status in society. The reward you seek is acknowledgement for who you are and what you do, and you will continue to bounce between behaviors until you find the right one that works. Find the right role models with positive attributes and actions to help motivate you to form good habit