Key Takeaways from James Clear's Atomic Habits

It's Personal:

The author, James Clear narrates his personal story on his path to becoming relentless with incremental positive changes. It all starts with how an on-field baseball incident during his school days leaves him in a medically induced coma gasping for breath. It puts his life's goal of becoming a major league baseball player in jeopardy. However, he comes back stronger and builds habits by achieving his small accomplishments every single day. He was not only selected as team captain in college but also became one of the thirty-three players in the country to be selected in the minor league. The author shares the steps he took and the habits he built along the years that helped him to transition from a hopeless situation to becoming relentless.

Why do Tiny changes make big difference?

In this chapter, the author starts by narrating the inspiring story about British cycling and how they ended their medal drought of 107 years by incorporating tiny improvements. In 2003, Britain decided to appoint a new cycling coach for their national team with the hope of reviving their cycling glory. He addressed the areas where he could squeeze out small improvements which other teams ignored. For instance, setting the room temperature and acquiring body-specific mattresses for cyclists to have a good sleep, applying muscle-relaxing sprays for faster recovery, and improving the aerodynamics of the suit to name a few. All these improvements compounded over time but it still took them five years of hard work and constant improvements before they become an unstoppable force in cycling.

James Clear explains in every aspect of life how positive changes compounded daily can leave you thirty-seven times better while negative changes leave you close to zero.

The shift in identity:

"I am a type of person who wants this to say I'm the type of person who is this."

Incorporate your behavior as your identity, then you are already behaving like the person you aspire to be.

The 4 simple steps to build better habits:

The author describes the habit loop as a four-step process: cue, craving, response, and reward.

For instance,

cue: you wake up

craving: you want to stay alert

response/ action: you drink a cup of coffee

reward: you satisfy your craving by drinking coffee and staying alert. so for you, drinking coffee becomes associated with staying awake.

cue → Make it obvious.

If a person wants to follow a habit or remove a bad habit from his lifestyle, he/she needs to make the habit obvious to him. By that I mean, making a conscious effort either by taking notes or calling out loud. This applies to small as well as big habits. Hence, the process of habit change always starts with awareness.

Pointing-and-calling: It was a technique devised by metro conductors in Tokyo to signal changes and directions which proved effective by reducing accidents and mishaps by 85%. The author also describes a similar practice at his home where his wife calls out loud the names of essential things like car keys, credit cards, lunch, etc. before leaving the house every day. This not only helps to develop a habit of not forgetting important things but also after some point becomes involuntary which eases our effort.

Habit scorecard: A habit scorecard to keep track of our daily habits; both small and big and how much we invest in each. This is a conscious effort of knowing how our time is spent throughout the day. Let's take our morning routine as an example:

When we get up, we can make a habit scorecard to know the positives and negatives of our life. The positive or negative that you provide to the habits is completely subjective. '+' means good habit, '-' means a bad habit while '=' means ok

Morning Routine:

1. wake up =

2. make bed +

3. cell phone - -

4. Bathroom =

5. Brush Teeth =

6. Meditate ++

7. Take shower +

8. checking Mails +

9. Blogging writing (30 mins) ++

10. Making breakfast & coffee +

11. Watching Youtube -

These are some of the practices that we perform on waking up and depending on the daily + and -, we can decide the net positive or negative habits in our life and then plan to stick to the positive ones and weed out the negative habits.

The best way to start a new habit:

The best way to start a new habit is to make it obvious. The author again addresses his audience by narrating a story. There was a French philosopher, Denis Diderot who wanted to get his daughter married but he was very poor and faced difficulties. Hearing that, the czarina of Russia Catherine offered her help and in return, Diderot presented her with his life's work on writing an encyclopedia. But, the encyclopedia was never the point. The monumental monetary help that he received helped him get his daughter married. However, Diderot decided to spend the remaining money to renovate his house. He would buy one exquisite item after another and after the last item, he would buy one more to match the previous one. This particular effect was called the "Diderot effect" where the person subconsciously does one thing after another. But, imagine if we could conjure the positive potential of the Diderot effect. The author describes the act as " habit stacking".

In Habit stacking rather than deciding a time and task to do, we add a new habit to our existing habits. For instance, if I say, I would write my research paper at 8 in the evening without fail. So, the task is [research paper] and time [8 PM] which helps to build a perception of doing the task in the brain before doing it and has been scientifically proven to be effective. However, the downside can be if you do not start at that particular time, you will lose interest to continue afterward. Hence, the author, James introduces the concept of "habit stacking". Rather than defining a place, task and time what if we add one more habit to our existing habit. For instance, what if I change the narration and say " no matter what I will start working on my paper just after my evening shower". This ensures without failure that no matter the time just after my shower, I will definitely accomplish my task. Although for this to work, the previous habit should be a routine one.

Why Environment or Surrounding Matters?

" Context is the cue."

By that, the author means to make the context obvious to you to start practicing your positive habits. He emphasizes his claim by showing how a small addition of water counters near a soda place increased the overall consumption of water among hospital workers or how expensive items in a store are placed at eye level and near accessible areas to make their presence obvious. All these changes show that more than the will, sometimes the change in context/surrounding can influence our decisions heavily. Therefore, it is necessary to have as many triggers around to make us perform our positive habit involuntarily, once we are in the area. For instance, if we have a small room, we can assign one area for our office work, one designated area for cooking and eating, a well-made bed for sleeping at night, or a book near the pillow if we want to devise a habit of reading before going to sleep.

On Self-control:

On self-control, the author suggests doing the inverse of the first law. The idea behind getting rid of bad habits is to make the cue "unattractive" or make it invisible. People with high self-control avoid tempting situations than resisting them. I will dictate the things that work for me personally. For instance, when I am too much distracted and squander time on social media or YouTube, I put a blocker to block my access to such sites that can be accessed for a specific period of time. Similarly, when I expend a lot of time on my mobile phone, I hid that inside my bag and keep it away from being accessible to me.

Summary (1st Law):

1. Make the cue more attractive → For the habit you want to practice.

2. Fill out Habit scorecards to track the daily habits consciously for a net positive output.

3. Implementation intention → Decide a [Behavior] for a [Time] and [location].

4. Habit Stacking → Stack new habits after an existing habit.

5. Make it visible → Design your environment to make cues obvious and visible.

6. Bad Habits → Reduce the temptation by making the cue less obvious or invisible.

How to make Habit Irresistible:

In this chapter, the author explains how "Temptation building" coupled with "habit Stacking" can do wonders in the long run for sticking to a habit. Temptation building relates to the reward feedback loop. By that I mean, it's not the final reward that we receive but the temptation of it is what drives our motivation. The author emphasizes his claim by highlighting experiments on the rat conducted where the temptation of food (sugar) as a reward at the end made them perform an activity more than 200 times within an hour with the hope of receiving the reward. Similarly, often thinking about the end goal or reward in mind along with habit stacking can help us persevere.

For instance, you might consider playing video games after coming from the office as a means of reward to release the pressure of the entire day but at the same time, you need to cook food rather than relying on the easy-made junk food that is bad for your health. So, you can do a habit stacking followed by temptation building to sustain the habit of cooking. You can say something like," Every day when I come from the office, after my evening bath, I will make sure to prepare my dinner and eat a good meal, after that I will play video games for half an hour."

Sometimes you can be creative too and couple habit stacking with temptation building. As the author narrates about an engineer from Nordic countries who liked to watch Netflix but also was interested in maintaining a good Physique. So, he modified his gym cycle and attached a video streaming feed to the bicycle screen and every time he cycled below a stipulated speed, the feed would automatically stop. In this way, he not only ensured his good health but also fulfilled his temptation to watch Netflix simultaneously.

How the people around you can shape your habits?

The author enunciates the importance of influence of people and surrounding in life through the example of Polgar sisters. How their father, Laszlo Polgar was determined and convinced that it's not the innate talent rather the conscious improvements by incorporating good habits that enables a person to master a skill. Indeed, he was right and the Polgar sisters went on to become some of the greatest chess players of all time. The human brain tends to follow three types of people and incorporate their influence:

1. The close: James Clear highlights the importance of people who are close to us and the environment in which we are brought himself or how the up. He provides many examples like how a person surrounded by obese people tend to grow obese and how a child raised by musicians is more inclined towards becoming a musician himself. It is often necessary to be surrounded by like minded people because nothing sustains motivation more than being surrounded by people who share your common interests.

2. The many: Often, we have heard the phrase " Following the herd", and that's what the author means when he says following the many. The author provides an example at university setting where a group of students were asked to find similar length lines between two figures. Although, the students could easily find a match, some other students were advised to deliberately advised to say it's wrong. Deep down the outnumbered first group of students knew that two lines matched, however they changed their answer after listening into the crowd. It is a classic example of how our practices like praying , marriage and career are heavily influenced by the many surrounding us.

3. The powerful: The final group that shapes our habits are the powerful. We often fantasize to become successful by following an already successful personality.

Find and Fix causes for your Bad habits:

The author claims most of our bad habits born out of craving. We feel anxious and we light a cigarette thinking it calms our nerves. Similarly, if we feel hungry, we eat junk food to calm the sudden temptation like our foraging ancestors. However, the long-term effects are detrimental and the author advises to practice the inversion of second law to make our bad habits unattractive. One of the key aspects to changing bad habits and start practicing hard habits is "to change our mindset". For instance, you can say, " I need to stop smoking" assertively to yourself every time you pick up a cigarette rather than thinking " I should stop smoking". More importantly, if we keep the end goal in mind and prefer the hard habit like running over smoking to reduce stress and anxiety, then we, can rephrase and say " I need to build my endurance so, I have to stop smoking and start running". The realization of the non-attractiveness of bad habits and incorporation of end goal who you want to be is quintessential in converting your bad habits into positive one.

Secondly, the author claims about practicing a "motivation ritual". Every time you perform a hard task, there might be some anxiety or you need to be in a particular mindset to perform that task calmly. The author suggests to perform a " motivation ritual " which simply means to perform a task before you start practicing your habit. It can be listening to your favorite music before writing your book or screaming out loud in front of a mirror to reduce the stress before a presentation.

Third Law: Make it Easy

Work Slowly, But Never Backward

James Clear elucidates the difference between action and "being in motion" and stresses the importance of practice rather than planning. He narrates a case study by a professor who compared the performance of two group of students in a photography task. One group was advised to take as many photos as you can and the other group was advised to get one perfect photo. At the end of the semester, he found the group that was asked to collect as many random photos as they can not only collected a lot of photos but also all the photos were really good because they edited, improved quality with repetitions while the group that was planning to get a perfect picture. Hence, action always supersedes planning, it may be wrong but still you move forward.

How much time is necessary to perfect a habit?

The author stresses on repetition rather than time spent. For instance, you can repeat a task 100 times a month or just three times and the more you repeat the task, the more it gets imbibed inside our neural circuitry. The time is irrelevant in many cases.

The Law of Least Effort

The law of least effort suggests the importance of priming our environment to make our tasks easier and faster. Human behavior most of the times gravitate towards a task that requires less effort. Hence, the author emphasizes to start small initially and modify the environment to suit that habit. For instance, doing a 100 pushups daily can be tough but doing one pushup every day for 100 days feels like no effort. Similarly, priming our environment i.e. reducing the friction to our good habits matters too. Let's suppose you want to draw more, then, you can keep pencils, notebooks and drawing box on the table and if you want to read more, you can put a book inside the bag when you move out. Meanwhile, to eliminate the craving for bad habits, we can increase the resistance to it. We can block the unwanted sites in the phone or hide the phone away in our closet till we study. When we do that we basically increase our effort to the task and human brain refrains to perform hard tasks.

The two-minute rule to tackle procrastination:

An important aspect behind breaking the cycle of procrastination is to start by taking small steps. The author James clear calls it a "two-minute" technique. He advises to start a good habit and endure it just begin by doing it for only two-minutes and reduce the effort altogether. For instance, writing 1000 words everyday might be difficult but writing five sentences is no effort. Similarly, reading 20 pages can be daunting at the beginning but reading one page before going to sleep can break the chain of procrastination. The objective is not to complete the task or become master at it from the start but to show up everyday and increase the repetitions because of least effort. Especially, the author stresses on ritualizing the process at the beginning. Rather, than saying I want to work out four times a week. start with a simple ritual like changing into work out clothes or wearing running shoe. The author divided the gradual progress into a formula called habit shaping:

Phase 1: change into workout clothes

Phase 2: step out of the door.

phase 3: work out for 2 minutes

phase 4: Exercise for 15 minutes

phase 5: Exercise 4 times a week

Gene vs Hardwork:

The author explains the potential benefits of gene by explaining the positive effect of genes. For instance, Michael Phelps, all time Olympics record holder, has a large torso compared to his legs while star runners have the opposite construction. This biological advantage helps Michael Phelps to be a world class swimmer and Ussain Bolt, the fastest runner. So, it is necessary to play the game that favors your genes and skill-set or that comes naturally to you. But, having said that genes alone cannot dictate your success but your actions on the right habits do. Pick the right habit, the progress is easy.

Goldiluck's Rule:

The Goldiluck's rule states that humans attain peak performance when they perform tasks right at the edge of their current abilities. It is a sweet-spot between boredom and failure. For instance, imagine you are an amateur tennis player and you are allowed to pick your opponent. Then, if you pick a 10 year old kid who has just started to play, you will easily win and the game becomes boring but imagine you start to play professional tennis against Roger Federer or Serena Williams, in that case you will not be able to match their skills and fail at enjoying the process and stop playing. Therefore, the rule states that if you find an opponent or a game just at the edge of your current ability, you might win some or lose some but eventually with the rewards your habits would sustain.

But, eventually, with the habit formation too, everyone will get bored at sometime and try to quit. Then what separates the truly great from the average persons? The author claims the difference lies in our attitude towards boredom. He narrates a story about Steve martin, the great comedian. Often, Steve Martin would perform in bars and nightclubs before doing his own shows. He would experiment with his jokes and would pick the absolute best ones for his tour that made the audience laugh in those bars and clubs. But, at the beginning, there were times when he had to perform to an empty auditorium or a club. Most of the people will get disheartened and stop there. But, Steve Martin never missed a chance to show up. And, this is what separates the best from the rest, no matter what the situation is and how bored you get, if you can just show up to the work, you already won half the battle. So, it's our ability to keep going even when the work is not exciting makes the difference.