Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

Chapter One

Good habits produce results that multiply rapidly, just like money that grows through compound interest.

Whether good or bad, habits accumulate. Positive fusion occurs in terms of productivity, knowledge, and relationships. Negative aggregation appears in times of stress, negative thoughts, and outrage. You can apply compounding to many things, such as productivity. It seems small when you accomplish one extra task on any given day, but it counts when you implement it in your career. As you automate some tasks, your brain gains the freedom to think about more important things.

“By becoming a lifelong learner, you leverage on the compounding ability of knowledge” 

There are several ways to practice aggregation. For example, reading challenges you to think differently and introduces new ideas. Growing in kindness also produces compound interest in terms of your relationships. People are predisposed to helping others who have been kind to them. Negative things are also prone to accumulation. Minor stressors may seem isolated at first, but over time, they fuse into serious health issues. 

Parenting, traffic jams, a slight increase in blood pressure, etc., are common sources of worry. Feeling stressed then compounds into more significant problems. Negative thoughts can also aggregate. Accumulating thoughts that don’t enhance life will create a negative reality for you. Be mindful of how you think of yourself and others. The same goes for outrage. Often, it is a combination of  microaggressions that burst into protests and civil unrest. But we like to pin it on a single event as if it was isolated. Small changes appear insignificant until they reach a tipping point or threshold. This threshold is known as the “Plateau of Latent Potential.” 

To get the results you seek, you need patience. Did you know? According to James Clear, a daily improvement or regression of 1% will leave you 37 times better or worse at the end of a year.

Chapter Two

Breaking a bad habit is an arduous task.

It is complicated to build good habits and perhaps more challenging to break bad ones. However, it is possible. There is a hack. Instead of focusing on the outcome you seek to achieve, which may seem so far off, spend time creating an effective structure that allows you to progress toward the goal. Goals tell you where you want to go, and systems show you how to get there. Anyone can set aims, but those who achieve these ambitions have created a good strategy for reaching their objectives.

“What separates winners from losers is the system of continuous small improvements that the winners implement which help them to achieve their goal.” 

Aims are transient; everyone wants results, but problems often resurface with this mindset. Lasting change comes from creating the proper process and automating procedures. The excitement that comes from achieving goals is usually short-lived. Besides, people who focus on goals tend to put off being happy. With a systems-first mentality, you enjoy every step that leads up to the aim. 

If the things you do please you, you will want to do them again. A systems-first mentality frees you from a straight-jacket approach to reaching your ambitions. Sometimes, life happens, and you must make a detour on your road to success. A good system adjusts readily to new situations while keeping the destination in mind.

“Goals often get in the way of creating sustainable processes.” 

Old habits return when nothing can sustain you beyond reaching your target. For example, if you aim to lose 20 pounds there are some ways to accomplish what you want. However, you may revert to old habits after hitting the 20-pound mark because you still need to create an effective system that helps you manage your weight. You’re not playing to win one game but to become a champion. Atomic habits create true champions. When compiled together, small atoms form molecules, while atomic habits generate entire functioning systems.

Chapter 3

Changing who you are is more important than focusing on your goal because it makes the change sustainable.

There are two reasons for the difficulties we face in changing our habits: 

• We try to change the wrong things. 

• We try to change in the wrong way. 

There are three layers of behavioral development: outcome, process, and identity: 

1. Outcomes are the result of the change. 

2. Processes are actions that you take to implement the change. 

3. Identity is your beliefs. The issue that arises when developing lasting habits is the direction of change.

Character change should be your focus, not achievement

Altering belief must precede the modification of behavior. Who you are is more important than what you do. If a habit becomes a part of your personality, the chances of you maintaining it are much higher. Take some time to think about who you want to be. Then ask yourself what you must do to become that person. Behavior is often a response or an outward manifestation of identity. Cognitive slumber is when you follow the norms you grew up to know without challenging these narratives. You will change as you become aware of the scripts you are acting out in your life. 

For example, you are average at math, and your experience has conditioned you to think math is not for you. Over time, you gather evidence from your grades that reinforce the belief that you’re bad at math. Shifting your thinking or belief about math creates a new reality; after all, you’re average, not bad. Your beliefs form throughout your life. 

You don’t have much power over your values in childhood and adolescence. Your environment determines them, including your parents, school, friends, and the media you consume daily. This influence can be beneficial, providing helpful and insightful beliefs, or detrimental, damaging your worldview and overall attitude. Once an adult, you can consciously dismantle those beliefs and leave those that benefit you.

 

Your activities can help you change your identity for the better

Chapter 4

Understanding the concept of identitiy-based habits and using the habit loop

Habits and identity feed into each other; it is a two-way street. However, spending more time on identity than the results of your goals is essential. If you put your values in the driver’s seat, your results will align with your beliefs.

“The most significant benefit of habits is that they may alter one's self-perception.” 

If a habit makes you feel good, make it a part of your routine. But if the habit and its results upset you, you’ll likely avoid repeating it. The brain automates habits because it finds them satisfying. They exist as leverage to help you conserve energy.

 

Habits are mental shortcuts learned from experience. As habits are created, the level of activity in the brain decreases. You learn to lock in on the cues that predict success and tune out everything else.

By automating the essential things in life, you create mental space for yourself. Creativity comes from creating mental space for thinking. When there is room for new thoughts, you can develop plans and ideas with better reach and substance. 

Chapter 5

The Habit Loop explains that all habits are formed in a four-stage procedure: cue, craving, response, and reward.

It is a cue when something urges the brain to elicit a behavior. Once triggered, you begin to crave the behavior. Until you 

respond to this need, your emotions will continue to be all over the place. Responding to desires gets you a reward. You repeat your actions and create a habit loop when you receive the benefit.

Each habit has an aim represented by the reward it gives

The cue shows you the reward. Then you desire the prize. By responding, you put in the work to get it. Rewards serve us in two ways: 

• Satisfaction 

• Teaching For behavior to form, all four stages — cue, craving, response, and reward — must be present. 

There are two groups for stages: 

• Problem Phase: cue and the craving 

• Solution Phase: response and the reward To create good habits, you can adopt these four principles of behavior change: •  Make it clear. 

•  Make it enticing. 

•  Make it simple. 

•  Make it enjoyable. Inverting these laws also serves to            eliminate bad habits. 

•   Make it disappear. 

• Make it unattractive. 

• Make it difficult. 

• Make it unrewarding.

Chapter 6

You need to become aware of your habits because behavior change starts with awareness

Practice trains your brain to identify the cues effortlessly. Many of us are unaware of how many activities our brains already automate. Hair growth, blood flow, breathing, digestion, etc., are automatic commands from the brain to the appropriate body parts.

There is more to you than your conscious self

You can train your brain to automate good  habits so that you don’t have to pay attention to what you’re doing. After a while, the cue becomes unnecessary, and your brain has learned to make the habit automatic. 

When something is a habit you do it without conscious attention

Awareness is the first step to behavior change. Consider learning how to drive. At first, you are conscious of every little detail and find it difficult to multitask. But with practice, driving becomes automatic, and you can execute multiple commands simultaneously. “Pointing and Calling” is a strategy the Japanese railway system employs to minimize errors that can lead to accidents. Operators point at objects and call out commands as they do so.

They call out every item and state what should be done with it. This seemingly mundane activity lowers risk by bringing things you were formerly unconscious of into your consciousness. Another critical step to behavior change is to keep a habit scorecard. This scorecard contains a list of patterns you practice daily, whether good, neutral, or bad. Neutral habits get the = sign, good ones get a + sign, and bad ones get a – sign. 

You have positive tendencies if you get a positive score from adding all your habits. A negative net score indicates a negative pattern. Take your time changing your habits initially. Observe and learn from the consequences of your choices before deciding what to do about them. Did you know? The strategy of pointing-and-calling decreases the number of mistakes by up to 85% and reduces accidents by 30%.

Chapter 7

Implementation intention and habit stacking are efficient techniques for creating and maintaining wanted habits.

An implementation intention is a strategy that requires you to state the time and location of the activity you want to perform. The formula is simple, and it goes like this: “I will (behavior) at (time) in (location).” While there are many cues for your actions, the two most common prompts are time and location. Implementation intentions leverage both of these reminders. Habit stacking is a technique that encourages you to combine routines. You can attach your morning coffee to reading the news.

It's easier to learn a new habit when you attach it to an existing one.

A whole chain of patterns can form from nailing down the fundamentals of habit stacking. You won’t be overwhelmed doing something completely different and figuring your way from scratch. Instead, your existing routines will provide you with the necessary comfort, and you’ll complement them with minor changes. The effectiveness of routine stacking depends on the foundational cue that begins the chain. 

You don’t have to worry about time and location with this technique. The existing pattern has built in those details. These strategies are effective ways to apply the first law of behavior change. The cues they create are vivid, and the correct application makes it easy to elicit new behavior. Your environment often leads you to make certain choices that betray your identity. 

Subtly, your environment can make you behave in specific ways. Kurt Lewin suggested that behavior is a function performed by a person under the conditions of their environment. You should be more aware of that and know when not to succumb to the impulses the outside world creates for you. For example, if you want to quit smoking and your friends smoke frequently, you should note when your urge to smoke appears just because you don’t want to miss out. Less than 20 years later, an economist, Hawkins Stern, found that the same principle applies to advertising. Stern found that seeing a product for the first time can make shoppers create a need in their minds for the product. He called the phenomenon “suggestion impulse buying.

Chapter 8

Each living thing understands the world in its way and loves undelayed rewards.

Humans’ primary means of perception is their sensory nervous system. Out of 11 million receptors, sight takes up the most — 11 million. The good thing is that you can create an environment where you see what you want to see.

A habit can become enticing if it has the right visual cues attached to it.

You can use strategies that encourage bad habits to promote good ones. You are more likely to form a habit when there are multiple triggers in your surroundings. Scientists have found that people with high self-control have designed their lives to 

avoid cues that may make them lose control. Rearrange your environment to produce the results you seek in your life.

Self-control works when you find yourself in a compromising situation unexpectedly.

When you have to muster strength daily to resist temptations, it is only a matter of time before you fall into it. Optimize your environment to save your willpower for when it is needed. That environment includes the online world. We want to repeat activities that bring us joy. The human brain appreciates immediate rewards. An accountability partner can help demand penalties for habits you want to stop. Humans tend to seek the approval of others. 

Thus, we want to keep the social contacts we make. It is easier to progress when the habit you’re forming aligns with your values and does not require you to do things you know nothing about. This challenge is important because we tend to lose interest in boring and routine things. Satisfaction comes from surmounting some form of obstacle. Deliberate practice keeps you sharp and opens your eyes to errors that a routine may not see. For example, a person who has learned to drive may find it difficult to continue to see aspects of their driving that need improvement after a while. But intent makes you constantly push yourself to have a sense of awareness that points you to possible blind spots. You can achieve finesse through habits and intentional actions.

Chapter 9

The brain’s response to enticing opportunities is immediate.

The change in dopamine levels indicates the second a longing appears. Dopamine is vital to habit formation. Most addictive substances release a high dose of dopamine. Hence, they are challenging to break. Regular activities like drinking water, having sex, and eating also release dopamine. The anticipation of a reward has a stronger hold on the brain than the reward itself. It is this feeling that elicits every action. Doing something you love, along with the right behavior, makes it more attractive and is a process known as temptation bundling. Temptation bundling is an application of Premack’s Principle, which states that behaviors more likely to occur can encourage less plausible ones.

Our cultural contexts determine the behaviors we like

Our innate desire to belong to a group or a tribe makes us embrace behaviors that the group praises. This group can be people we admire, people who share the same background as us, or our close relations. Group behavior often trumps individual behavior. If a person who isn’t a bully keeps bullies as friends, they may become bullies themselves to appear cool to the group. You need to be aware of how outside behavior influences you. It’s also a good idea to surround yourself with people who make you feel good and don’t force you into doing something that makes you uncomfortable.

Frequency is more important than duration when it comes to habit formation.

Repeated practice is better than elaborate planning and implementation when you want to develop a habit. Keeping it simple is the third principle of behavioral change. Doing something many times means you should do a little at a time. Remove as many obstacles as possible to ensure you continue forming a new habit. Ensure you can complete it within a short time. Apply the two-minute rule: each new habit shouldn’t take more than two minutes. The time should increase after you’ve mastered it. Do the opposite for habits you want to stop. Make the practice hard. If you restrict your access to habit-forming cues, you will eventually remove them from your life.

Conclusion 

Habits change when you commit to making a 1% improvement daily over an extended time. Like atoms, these improvements stack up to form a whole organism. Thus, focus on creating systems that enable you to stack up these atoms. Focusing on systems ensures that you continue to improve after reaching specific goals or milestones you have set for yourself. Before something becomes a cue, it needs to be assigned a meaning. If you do not become aware of a cue, it will be impossible to crave it. Contentment with your current situation is the key to happiness. 

Happiness disappears the moment a new desire comes along. We long for the representation of pleasure created in our minds. The driving force of behavior is desire. If you nurture a desire for the needed habit, you will maintain it. Emotions drive action. Logical reasons are not as powerful as emotions when doing something, and craving comes before a response. It is our feelings that determine what we do. 

We evaluate actions only after we have carried them out. When these actions are satisfying to our brains, we get reminders at a later time to repeat these actions. Be mindful of what gives you satisfaction. Try this Create a habit scorecard to see whether you have a net positive or negative pattern. Identify one routine you want to stop and one you want to develop. Apply the appropriate methods to the habits.