I’ve just finished reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, and holy wow this is one of the most powerful books I’ve read in a while. Its lessons are so influential in everything in our lives, from our everyday habits to developing our skills in any field. I would highly recommend this book to literally anyone!
Below are the raw notes I’ve taken while reading this book, organized by chapter. Emphasis on raw, so pardon any typos! It’s quite a bit but I hope people find at least a little of it helpful!
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40121378-atomic-habits
Chapter 1: The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits
“Improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable–sometimes it isn’t even noticeable–but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. Here’s how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more ”
Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.
In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment. You expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days, weeks, and even months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere. It’s a Hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes are delayed.
If you find yourself struggling to build a good habits or break a bad one, it is not because you have lost your ability to improve. It is often because you have not yet crossed the Plateau of Latent Potential. Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees. Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at thirty-two degrees.
Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. That’s the counterintuitive thing about improvement. We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results. When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.
A goal-oriented mind-set can create a “yo-yo” effect. Many runners work hard for months, but as soon as they cross the finish line, they stop training. The race is no longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it? This is why many people find themselves reverting to their old habits after accomplishing a goal.
Problems with goal-oriented:
– winners/losers have the same goals
– Achieving a goal is only a momentary change
– goals restrict your happiness
– goals are at odds with long-term progress
The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
Chapter 2: How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)
On any given day, you may struggle with your habits because you’re too busy or too tired or too overwhelmed or hundreds of other reasons. Over the long run, however, the real reason you fail to stick with habits is that your self-image gets in the way. This is why you can’t get too attached to one version of your identity. Progress requires unlearning. Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.
2-step process to changing your identity:
– Decide the type of person you want to be
– Prove it to yourself with small wins
The first step is not what or how, but who. You need to know who you want to be.
Habits can help you achieve all of these things, but fundamentally they are not about having something. They are about becoming someone.
Ultimately, your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally, you become your habits.
Chapter 3: How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps
How to Create a Good Habit
– Cue: Make it obvious
– Craving: Make it attractive
– Response: Make it easy
– Reward: Make it satisfying
How to Break a Bad Habit
– Cue: Make it invisible
– Craving: Make it unattractive
– Response: Make it difficult
– Reward: Make it unsatisfying
First Law: Make It Obvious
Chapter 4: The Man Who Didn’t Look Right
Habit Scoreboard
– List habits, rate them as +, -, or = (good, bad, or neutral)
– Just be on the lookout for habits; don’t judge them.
Pointing-and-Calling
– Raises your level of awareness from nonconscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalizing your actions
– Hearing your bad habits spoken aloud makes the consequences seem more real
Chapter 5: The Best Way to Start a New Habit
“When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.”
People who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through. Too many people try to change their habits without these basic details figured out.
Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.
Once an implemention intention has been sent, you don’t have to wait for inspiration to strike.
“I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]”
– Give your habits a time and space to live in the world.
Habit Stacking
– No behavior happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior.
– One of the best ways to build a new habit us to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top.
“After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”
The 1st Law of Behavior Change is to make it obvious.
The specificity is important. The more tightly bound your new habit is to a specific cue, the better the odds are that you will notice when the time comes to act.
Chapter 6: Motivation Is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More
The most powerful of all human sensory abilities is vision. The human body has about eleven million sensory receptors. Approximately ten million of the hose are dedicated to sight. Some experts estimate that half of the brain’s resources are used on vision. Given that we are more dependent on vision than any other sense, it should come as no surprise that visual cues are the greatest catalyst of our behavior.
You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.
Stop thinking about your environment as filled with objects. Start thinking about it as filled with relationships. Think in terms of how you interact with the spaces around you.
When you can’t manage to get to an entirely new environment, redefine or rearrange your current one. Create a separate space for work, study, exercise, entertainment, and cooking. “One space, one use.”
Whenever possible, avoid mixing the context of one habit with another. When you start mixing contexts, you’ll start mixing habits — and the easier ones will usually win out.
Chapter 7: The Secret to Self-Control
– “cue-induced wanting”: an external trigger causes a compulsive craving to repeat a bad habit.
– You can break a habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it.
– it is hard to maintain a Zen attitude in a life filled with interruptions. It takes too much energy.
– Cut bad habits off at the source. One if the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.
– Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.
– Make the cues of your good habits obvious and the cues of your bad habits invisible.
Second Law: Make It Attractive
Chapter 8: How to Make a Habit Irresistible
– Supernormal Stimuli: heightened version of reality, eliciting a stronger response than usual.
– Orosensation: How a product feels in your mouth
– Dynamic Contrast: items with a combination of sensations
– Examples of supernormal stimuli: mannequins, social media, porn, ads, Photoshop
Dopamine-Driven Feedback Loop
– Dopamine causes cravings
– Dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it
– Reward system that is activated in the brain for receiving a reward is the same system that is activated when you’re anticipating a reward.
– Our brain’s have more neural circuitry allocated for wanting rewards than for liking them. Wanting centers in the brain are physically much larger than liking centers of the brain.
– Desire is the engine that drives behavior. Every action is taken because of the anticipation that precedes it. It is the craving that leads to the response.
Temptation Bundling
– Linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do
– Premack’s Principle: More probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors (eg you can condition yourself to process overdue work emails if it means you get to do something you really want to do along the way)
– Combine habit stacking + temptation Bundling:
1) After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED]
2) After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].
Chapter 9: The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits
Imitating the Close
– Shared identity reinforces your personal identity
– Find a group you already have something in common with
Imitating the Many
– When in doubt, we look to the group to guide our behavior
– Normal behavior of the group often overpowers desired behavior of the individual
– Reward of being accepted is often greater than reward if winning an argument or finding truth
– “When changing your habits means challenging the tribe, change is unattractive. When changing your habits means fitting in with the tribe, change is very attractive.”
Imitating the Powerful
– Once we fit in, we start looking for ways to stand out
– If a behavior can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it attractive
– We’re also motivated to avoid behaviors that would lower our status
Chapter 10: How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits
Where Cravings Come From
– Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper, underlying motive (eg posting on Instagram = gaining social acceptance)
– There are many different ways to address the same underlying motive
– Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires
How to Reprogram Your Brain to Enjoy Hard Habits
– Associate hard habits with a positive experience to make them more attractive
– e.g.: “I have to…” -> “I get to…”
Third Law: Make it Easy
Chapter 11: Walk Slowly, but Never Backward
“If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection. You don’t need to map out every feature of a new habit. You just need to practice it.”
Long-term potentiation: strengthening of connections between neurons in the brain based on recent patterns of activity.
Hebb’s Law: Neurons that fire together wire together.
Automaticity: the ability to perform a behavior without thinking about each step, which occurs when the nonconscious mind takes over
Chapter 12: The Law of Least Effort
The idea behind make it easy is not only to do east things. The idea is to make it as easy as possible in the moment to do things that pay off in the long run.
Addition by Subtraction: Removing points of friction that sap our time and energy, so we can achieve more with less effort.
Create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible.
Reduce the friction associated with good behaviors (prepare gym clothes early), and increase the friction associated with bad behaviors (move phone to another room).
Prime your environment to make future actions easier.
Chapter 13: How to Stop Procrastinating by using the Two-Minute Rule
Habits are the entry point, not the end point. They are the cab, not the gym.
“When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”
A new habit should not feel like a challenge. The actions that follow can be challenging, but the first two minutes should be easy.
What you want is a “gateway habit” that naturally leads you down a more productive path.
The point is not to do one thing. The point is to master the habit of showing up.
“The best way is to always stop when you are going good.” -Ernest Hemingway
Standardize before you optimized. You can’t improve a habit that doesn’t exist.
Chapter 14: How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible
“The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do. Increase the friction until you don’t even have the option to act.”
Commitment device: a choice you make in the present that locks in better behavior in the future
Use technology to automate habits
Fourth Law: Make It Satisfying
Chapter 15: The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change
We’re more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying
The human brain has evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards
Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.
To get a habit to stick, you need to feel immediately successful–even if it’s in a small way.
This 4th law increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time, forming a habit loop. The other 3 laws increase the odds that a behavior will be performed in the present.
Chapter 16: How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day
Making progress is satisfying, and visual measures provide clear evidence of your progress. As a result, they reinforce your behavior and add a little bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity
Benefits of Habit Tracking
– Obvious (reminders to act again)
– Attractive (motivation via a signal that we are moving forward)
– Satisfying (keeping the streak up)
How to make habit tracking easier:
– Measurement should be automated
– Manual tracking should be limited to your most important habits
– Record each measurement immediately after the habit occurs
Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.
The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.
The dark side of tracking a particular behaviors r is that we become driven by the number rather than the purpose behind it.
We often optimize for what we measure. When we choose the wrong measurement, we get the wrong behavior.
Goodhart’s Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing.
Chapter 17: How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything
Inversion of 4th Law: Make it Unsatisfying
We are less likely to repeat a bad habit if it is painful or unsatisfying
An accountability partner can create an immediate cost to inaction
Habit contracts can be used to add a social cost to any behavior (e.g. if I do x, I must pay friend $y)
Knowing that someone else is watching you can be a powerful motivator.
Chapter 18: The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don’t)
The “Big Five” spectrums of behavior
– Openness to Experience
– Conscientiousness
– Extroversion
– Agreeableness
– Neuroticism
Build habits that work for YOUR personality
You don’t have to build the habits that everyone tells you to build. Choose the habit that best suits you, not the one that is most popular.
Explore/Exploit trade-off:
– When playing trial and error in discovering your skill set, exploit the area you excel at, and keep exploring if you’re losing.
Questions to ask as you explore different options:
– What feels like fun to me, but work to others?
– What makes me lose track of time?
– Where do I get greater returns than the average person?
– What comes naturally to me?
When you can’t win by being better, you can win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it easier to stand out. You can shortcut the need for a generic advantage (or for years of practice) by rewriting the rules. A good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses.
Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work on.
Chapter 19: The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work
Goldilocks Rule: Humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.
Once a habit has been established, it’s important to continue to advance in small ways. These little improvements and new challenges keep you engaged. And if you hit the Goldilocks Zone just right, you can achieve a flow state.
Without variety, we get bored. And boredom is perhaps the greatest villain on the quest for self-improvement.
“At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over.”
The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.
The sweet spot of desire occurs at a 50/50 split between success and failure. You need just enough “winning” to experience satisfaction and just enough “wanting” to experience desire.
At some point, everyone faces the same challenge on the journey of self-improvement: you have to fall in love with boredom.
Chapter 20: The Downside of Creating Good Habits
You can’t repeat the same things blindly and expect to become exceptional. Habits are necessary, but not sufficient for mastery. What you need is a combination of automatic habits and deliberate practice.
Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development. Old tasks become easier the second time around, but it doesn’t get easier overall because now you’re pouring your energy into the next challenge. Each habit unlocks the next level of performance. It’s an endless cycle.
Improvement is not just about learning habits, it’s also about fine-tuning them. Reflection and review ensures that you spend your time on the right things and make course corrections whenever necessary. You don’t want to keep practicing a habit if it becomes ineffective.
The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you.
Habits deliver numerous benefits, but the downside is that they can lock us into our previous patterns of thinking and acting–even when the world is shifting around us. Everything is impermanent. Life is constantly changing, so you need to periodically check in to see if your old habits and beliefs are still serving to you.
A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.
Conclusion
Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, and endless process to refine.
Kevin Who 