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This is the book summary for James Clear’s Atomic Habits. These are my notes from the Notion database as it is. My favorite books can be found on this page.
🕐 Book Summary in One Line
Habits in isolation might seem small but if done consistently, compound exponentially over a long period of time.
⭐ 3 Important Lessons
- You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Goals are important to give you direction in life but it’s the system that inculcates daily growth. Build strong systems, strong habits. I have written an entire article on this which you can read it here.
- The last mile is always the least crowded. It is important to stick to your good habits and do them consistently. They compound. People tend to give up rather quickly. Give your habits a good amount of time to grow and it will show – aggregate of marginal gains. A good example will be podcasts. Most new podcasters quit within the first month. However, the podcast that sticks to creating content for a period of over 2 years, sees tremendous growth.
- Make good habits – obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. Make bad habits – invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying.
📒 QUOTES
- To write a great book, you become the book – Naval Ravikant
- If you can get 1% better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.
- Success is the product of daily habits — not once in a lifetime transformation
- Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits
- When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow, it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it — but all that had gone before – Jacob Riis
- True long term thinking is goal-less thinking
- You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems
- Quite literally, you become your habits
- Behaviors followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated
- Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate – Carl Jung
- 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
- what is immediately rewards is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.
- The last mile is always the least crowded
- 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 first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily- Charlie Munger
- when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure – Charles Goodhart
- 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.
- Small habits don’t add up. They compound.
✍🏼LESSONS
P6 – a habit is a routine or behaviour that is performed regularly- and, in many cases, automatically
P13 – the aggregation of marginal gains which means searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do – if you break a task into smaller tasks, example cycling, and improve marginally in all the smaller tasks – you will improve when aggregated together
P15 – improving by 1% isn’t particularly notable – sometimes it isn’t even noticeable- but can be far from meaningful, especially in the long run.
P18 – a lot of things are a lagging measure of your associated habits. Networth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Why the lag? Because it takes time to compound and digest
[CBU] p19 – learning one new idea won’t make you a genius, but a commitment to lifelong learning can be transformative
[CBU] p20 – a lot of details about compounding – a lot of powerful outcomes are delayed
P22 – plateau of latent potential is where you are working towards something but don’t see results but that doesn’t mean no progress is being made
[CBU] p23 – goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results
[CBU survivorship bias] p24 – goalsetting suffers from a serious case of survivorship bias. We look at winners and their goals and assume the losers didn’t have the same goals
[CBU] p23 – forget about goals and focus on systems
- If you focus on the system, you will still achieve the goal- you don’t stare the scoreboard while playing the game – goal only gives you a path but don’t focus on it
- Winners and losers might have same goals (Survivorship bias that we look at winners goals only) but winners are survivors because of their systems
- Achieving goals are momentary
- Goals restrict happiness- you have the desire which keeps you unhappy till you reach the milestone. Why? Do away with the desire
P30 – changing a habit is difficult because we try to change the wrong thing. Habits are at three levels – outcomes which is what you get (results), processes which is what do you (habits), and identity which is what you believe in (worldview)
Changing habits means focusing on who you want to become I.e changing your identity on level 1 rather than outcome
P34- to make improvements, you need to become the habit you want inculcate- the goal is not read books, the goal is to become a reader
But in order to become a reader, you need to read more books – small improvements— hence, it’s a paradox
P48, 49- all your habits have a cue, craving, response, reward pattern
Cue is the trigger for the reward, craving is the Change in your internal state, response is the habit you perform, reward is reward.
The cue is about noticing the reward, the craving is about wanting the reward, the response is about obtaining the reward
P49— if a behavioral is insufficient in any other the four stages, it will not become a habit.
- Eliminate the cue and your habit will never start.
- Reduce the craving and you won’t experience enough motivation to act
- Make the response difficult and you won’t be able to get a reward
- If the reward fails to satisfy, you won’t have a reason to do it again
P54 – four laws of behavior – habit formation and breaking habits
CUES – MAKE IT OBVIOUS
P61 – one insight about habits which is dangerous and useful – we don’t need to be aware of the cue for a habit to begin
P64 – many of our habits are so ingrained that we are not aware while performing them. Many of our failures in performance are largely attributable to a lack of self-awareness.
Point and call system in life will create awareness.
P66 – awareness (point and call) and scorecard create awareness about the cues to recognise a habit
P72 — a good way to form habits is implementation intention. You specify the date and time and location as part of the behaviour you’re trying to implement. It becomes the cue.
I will meditate for 20 mins at 8am in the living room.
Now that you have marked your intention to implement your habit and made it obvious, the chance of getting distracted are low. In fact with repetition, you will get an urge to perform the habit at the time and location like a dog salivating on hearing the bell
[CBU Fallacy] P73 – Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases
P78 – habit stacking allows you to stack habits on your existing habits or cues.
Example- I wake up. I brush teeth. I leave the bathroom. Insert habit here. I start work
So you’re basically stacking on habit on another
Stacked habits need to be specific. The more obvious the cues for the habit, the better.
Example- I will meditate every day for 10 mins I am done brushing my teeth in my bedroom near the window.
Instead of I will meditate daily
[CBU Fallacy] P83 – suggestion impulse buying – is triggered when a shopper sees a product for the first time and visualizes the need. Meaning, they buy the product not because they want it but because how it was presented
Behavior is dependent on the surrounding environment. Kurt Lewins equation is b=f(p,E) behavior is a function of person in their environment.
People buying easy to reach items in shops is another example
P85 – visual cues are really powerful. Your environment should make it obvious for you to build a good habit cue.
P86 – if you want to make a habit big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment
P90 – if you want behaviours that are stable and predictable, you need an environment that is stable and predictable.
One environment, one habit. Have separate environment for different work you do.
Sleeping – if you use your bed only for sleep and nothing else, sleep will be easy to come on your bed
P93 – it’s easy to use self-restraint when you don’t have to use it very often. Disciplined people are better at structuring lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. They spend less time in tempting situations
P94 – cue induced wanting – an external trigger causes a compulsive craving to repeat a bad habit; TV makes you sluggish, you feel sluggish so you watch more TV
P95 – to break a bad habit, change the cue i.e. the environment. If forming a good habit is making the cue obvious, this is the inverse law — to make a bad habit break, make it invisible. You can break a habit but you can’t forget it. So just remove the cue.
If you’re watching a lot of news making you anxious, plug off the TV.
P95- It is easier to avoid/eliminate temptation than to resist it
CRAVING – MAKE IT ATTRACTIVE
P104 – supernormal stimuli is exaggerated stimuli of the real world for our brain to feel good – online Photoshop models, porn, food with sugar all are examples
P106 – habits are dopamine driven feedback loops; dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it
P108 – desire drives behaviour
P109 – temptation bundling – it’s a way to make cravings attractive. You bundle things you have to do with things you need to do; watching Netflix while working out is an example
P116- we pick habits from our surrounding. Groups of people in our environment have an effect. We can use them to make our craving attractive
- The close group- group you are really close with (family, gf, wife). Join a culture where –
- Your desired behaviour is common with the group
- You already have something in common with the group
- [CBU Fallacy] p120 The many- herd mentality example for Asch. Whenever we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide our behaviour.
- The normal behaviour of the tribe often overpowers the desired behaviour of the invidividual
- [CBU Fallacy] When changing your habit means challenging the tribe, change is unattractive. When changing your habits means fitting in with the tribe, change is very attractive.
- P121 – the POWERFUL – we crave praises, medals, status. Once we fit in [imitate the many], we want to stand out. We want to feel powerful or not get judged by the powerful. If you surround yourself with such [toxic] culture, there is a possibility to make your craving attractive – just for the validation, for the praise, respect, approval.
- P130 – for all are desire, we have primitive motives (not stay hungry, feel loved, connect). When a habit addresses a motive, we have a craving to do it again. The craving comes from our prediction of how we will feel after the implement the habit. Habits are attractive when we predict them to associate with a good feeling.
- P133 – mental associations is the cause how we feel about a habit. If we reprogram the prediction, we can make a hard habit easy to perform
RESPONSE – MAKE IT EASY
*P142— motion vs action – motion is planning and strategizing. Action delivers outcome.
- We tend to plan for the perfect solution. The planning bogs us down from performing behaviours that will actually produce results.
- Motion makes us think that we are making progress without risk of being criticized or failure. We delay our failure. Moving in the right direction just by planning is motion
- Action is working on it, failing, and improving
- Motion is a form of procastination. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing.
P145— If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection.
P146 – habits are formed by repetition, you need to perform a behavior certain number of times to make it a habit. The frequency makes the difference. It’s called automaticity. And in order to make it repetitive, make it easy to do!
P151 – law of least effort – when deciding between two similar options, people will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work
P156- reduce as much friction as you can. More friction means more difficult it is to perform a habit.
- If you’re trying to exercise every morning, keep the clothes next to your table
- If you’re trying to quit social media, delete the app
P161 – difference between good and bad day; habits are entry points, not the end points
P163 – two minute rule – anything you do, you should have a scaled down version. For new habits it is very important. Start small to avoid procrastination. I ll read one page today, I ll write one paragraph, I ll engage on Twitter for 2 minutes. This makes habits really easy to start
P166 – apply two minute rule and then habit shaping
P170 – commitment device- a choice that you make in the present that controls your actions in the future e.g. paying upfront for gym so you have to show up
RESPONSE – MAKE IT REWARDING
[CBU Fallacy] P188 – hyperbolic Discounting- also called time inconsistency where the way your brain evaluates rewards is inconsistent across time. We basically have a very similar brain to our ancestors 200,000 years ago. They lived in an immediate return world where they didn’t know where their next meal will come from. Today we live in a delayed-Return world. We have to wait. However, our brain is still wired to prefer things that bring a quick payoff, instantly gratify us.
P189- brain overestimate current threat and underestimate distant threats. Hence, diabetes is a slow killer
Usually habits that enjoyable at the start are dangerous in the long term. Habits that are not fun initially, provide delayed gratification
P189- what is immediately rewards is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.
P192 – reinforce rewards for habits that don’t have an immediate reward I.e. no drink this month has no immediate reward so you can create something that will provide gratification
P196 – visual cues are satisfying rewards to perform your habits. Something as simple as moving a paper clip from one jar to another could help you visualise progress. My personal habit tracker was in the book
P200 – make habit tracking automated wherever you can with only monthly or weekly reviews
Manual tracking should be done only for the most important habit; it is better to consistently track one habit than to sporadically track ten
P201 — avoiding a 33% loss is as valuable as achieving a 50% initial gain
P203– Goodharts Law- when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
You should what to measure yourself with and what not. Follower count is not a good measure; if people follow you doesn’t mean they like what you post, engagement is a better measure
P212 – book summary
Advanced Tactics
P231 – goldilocks rule – human experiences peak motivation when working on tasks that aee right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy.
P236– professionals stick to the schedule. Amateurs let life get in the way.
P240- habits + deliberate practice = mastery
Enjoyed the notes? You can purchase the book here.
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