The Book in 3 Sentences

1. Atomic habits are tiny behaviour changes that add up to massive improvements.
2. Habits compound - A 1% improvement over 365 days leads to a 37x overall improvement.
3. To make a behaviour effortless: make it obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying.

Impressions

Really good book. Lots of actionable tips. Opened my eyes to the amazing effects that compunding habits can have. This is great for anyone who wants to gain a little more control over their life and holistically improve themselves. The content of this book is applicable to anyone, no matter their age. The earlier you can read this book, the more it will benefit you.

My Top 3 Quotes

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine.

The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.

Summary, Notes & Quotes

Chapter 1

Habits compound over time. A consistent 1% improvement constitutes to large results in the long term. Bad habits compound into toxic results.

It doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful you are right now. What matters is whether your habits are putting you on the path toward success.

Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits.

Small habits appear to have no impact over a short period of time, however once you cross a critical threshold you start to reap the benefits. Improvement does not happen in a linear fashion. You need to have patience.

Your systems are what dictate your results, not your goals. There area 4 problems with goals:

1. Winners and losers have the same goal, therefore, a goal cannot differentiate who succeeds and who doesn't.
2. Achieving a goal is only a momentary change. After a while you revert back to your previous state.
3. Goals restrict your happiness. If you continue to set your sights higher then you never get satisfaction from what you have. Furthermore, goals create and "either-or" conflict: either you achieve your goal and are a winner or you don't and you're a failure. It makes no sense to restrict your happines to one outcome when there are so many paths.
4. Goals are at odds with long term progress. Once you achieve your goal you likely lack the motivation to continue with your habits.

Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.

You are not the reason for having trouble changing habits, it's your system.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Chapter 2

There are 3 levels of behaviour change:

1. Changing your outcomes (eg. Losing weight, writing a book)
2. Changing your process (eg. Changing your habits or systems)
3. Changing your identity (eg. Changing beliefs, world-view, self-image)

The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become. ("I won't smoke this cigarette because I'm trying to quit" vs. "I won't smoke this cigarette because I am not a smoker").

The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it.

Your habits create your identity. This can be a double-edged sword.

Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.

Your habits are not the only influence on your identity but they are probably the biggest.

Developing a habits is a simple two-step process:

1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.

Chapter 3

Behaviors followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated.

A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.

The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible.

The process of building a habit can be divided into four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.

1. The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior.
2. Cravings are the motivation/desire to act.
3. The response is the actual habit you perform.
4. Rewards are the end goal of the habit. They deliver contentment and teach us what actions are worth remembering in the future.

The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.

Chapter 4

With practice, your brain will pick up on minute cues and predict outcomes without conscious thought. You don't need to be aware of the cue for the habit to begin.

We stop paying attention to what we are doing when habits become automatic.

You need to become aware of your habits to change them.

Pointing and Calling is an excercise where you point at stuff and call out every detail. This raises your awareness from a nonconscious habit to a more conscous one by verbalising your actions.

The Habits Scorecard is a simple exercise you can use to become more aware of your behavior. It involves writing a list of your daily habits, followed by whether the individual habit is good, bad or neutral.

Chapter 5

The 1st Law of Behavior Change is make it obvious.

The two most common cues are time and location.

Creating an implementation intention is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a specific time and location. The formula is: "I will [behaviour] at [time] in [location]".

You often decide what to do next based on what you have just finished doing.

Habit stacking is another technique to make your habit obvious. It's formula is: "After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]".

The cue needs to be specific and actionable if you want to create a habit.

Chapter 6

People often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are. Environment has a massive impact on your behaviour.

Lewin's Equation: Behavior is a function of the Person in their Environment, or B = f (P,E).

We are more likely to notice cues that stand out. Small changes to your environment can lead to large changes over time.

Make the cues of good habits obvious in your environment.

Gradually, your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behavior. The context becomes the cue.

Stop thinking about your environment as filled with objects. Start thinking about it as filled with relationships.

It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cues.

Chapter 7

The inversion of the 1st Law of Behavior Change is make it invisible. If you want to quit a bad habit, change your environment to remove all cues.

Once a habit is formed, it is unlikely to be forgotten.

Bad habits are autocatalytic: the process feeds itself. You feel bad, so you eat junk food. Because you eat junk food, you feel bad. Researchers refer to this phenomenon as "cue-induced wanting".

People with high self-control tend to spend less time in tempting situations. It’s easier to avoid temptation than resist it.

One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.

For example: leaving your phone in another room to increase focus, unfollowing instagram accounts that trigger envy, unplugging your console to reduce playing games.

Self-control will only work in the short term so rather than using your willpower each time a cue arises, make the cues invisible instead.

2 - Make it Attractive

Chapter 8

The more attractive that an opportunity is, the more likely it will become a habit.

Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act.

We take action because of the anticipation for a reward, not the fulfilment of it.

Temptation bundling is a strategy to make your habits more attractive. To do it, pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED]. After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].

Chapter 9

The things that we find attractive are directly influenced by our culture. If something that we do is praised by our culture then we are more likely to form a habit around it.

Humans have a strong desire to fit in.

We tend to imitate the habits of three social groups: the close (family and friends), the many (the tribe), and the powerful (those with status and prestige).

One of the best things you can do to build better habits is to surround yourself with a culture where:

1. Your desired behaviour is the normal behaviour,
2. You already have something in common with the group

The normal behavior of the 'tribe' often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual. Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves.

If a behavior can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it attractive.

Chapter 10

To break a bad habit you can invert the second law of behaviour change and make it unnatractive.

Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper underlying motive. For example, instead of just wanting to eat a taco, you also want to obtain food to survive. A craving is just a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive.

Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires. The underlying motives behind human behavior remain the same.

The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them. The prediction leads to a feeling.

Highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit to make it seem unattractive.

Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings. Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.

3 - Make it Easy

Chapter 11

The 3rd Law of Behavior Change is make it easy.

The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning.

Focus on taking action, not being in motion.

Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition.

The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.

Chapter 12

Human behavior follows the Law of Least Effort. We will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.

Create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. See chapter 6.

Reduce the friction associated with good behaviors. When friction is low, habits are easy. Increase the friction associated with bad behaviors. When friction is high, habits are difficult.

Prime your environment to make future actions easier.

Chapter 13

Habits can be completed in a few seconds but continue to impact your behavior for minutes or hours afterward.

40-50% of our actions on any given day are done by habit.

Many habits occur at decisive moments—choices that are like a fork in the road—and either send you in the direction of a productive day or an unproductive one.

The Two-Minute Rule states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”

The more you ritualise the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things.

A habit must be established before it can be improved.

Chapter 14

The inversion of the 3rd Law of Behavior Change is make it difficult.

A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that locks in better behavior in the future.

The ultimate way to lock in future behavior is to automate your habits.

Onetime choices—like buying a better mattress or enrolling in an automatic savings plan—are single actions that automate your future habits and deliver increasing returns over time.

Using technology to automate your habits is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right behavior.

4 - Make it Satisfying

Chapter 15

The 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it satisfying.

The more satisfying a behaviour is, the more likely we are to repeat it.

The human brain evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards.

The 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.

The first three laws of behavior change—make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time.

Chapter 16

One of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of making progress.

A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit—like marking an X on a calendar.

The habit stacking + habit tracking formula is: After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [TRACK MY HABIT].

Habit trackers and other visual forms of measurement can make your habits satisfying by providing clear evidence of your progress.

Don’t break the chain. Try to keep your habit streak alive.

Never miss twice. If you miss one day, try to get back on track as quickly as possible.

The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.

Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing. Goodhart's law states: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” In our data-driven world, we tend to overvalue numbers and undervalue anything ephemeral, soft, and difficult to quantify.

Chapter 17

The inversion of the 4th Law of Behavior Change is 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. We care deeply about what others think of us, and we do not want others to have a lesser opinion of us.

A habit contract can be used to add a social cost to any behavior. It makes the costs of violating your promises public and painful.

If you’re going to rely on punishment to change behavior, then the strength of the punishment must match the relative strength of the behavior it is trying to correct.

Knowing that someone else is watching you can be a powerful motivator.

Advanced Tactics

The secret to maximising your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition.

Pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle.

Genes cannot be easily changed, which means they provide a powerful advantage in favorable circumstances and a serious disadvantage in unfavorable circumstances.

There are five main personality traits:

1. Openness to experience: from curious and inventive on one end to cautious and consistent on the other.
2. Conscientiousness: organized and efficient to easygoing and spontaneous.
3. Extroversion: outgoing and energetic to solitary and reserved (you likely know them as extroverts vs. introverts).
4. Agreeableness: friendly and compassionate to challenging and detached.
5. Neuroticism: anxious and sensitive to confident, calm, and stable.

When a habit is easy, you are more likely to be successful. When you are successful, you are more likely to feel satisfied.

Habits are easier when they align with your natural abilities. Choose the habits that best suit you.

Ask these questions to continually narrow in on the habits and areas that will be most satisfying to you:

1. What feels fun to me, but work to others?
2. What makes me lose track of time?
3. Where do I get greater returns than the average person?
4. What comes naturally to me?

Play a game that favors your strengths. If you can’t find a game that favors you, create one. 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.

Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on.

Chapter 19

The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. It can put you in the flow state.

A flow state is the experience of being “in the zone” and fully immersed in an activity.

The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.

As habits become routine, they become less interesting and less satisfying. We get bored.

Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It’s the ability to keep going when work isn’t exciting that makes the difference.

Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.

The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.

Chapter 20

The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors.

Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery

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.

Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time. James clear uses an annual report and mid-year integrity report. In his annual report he tallies his habits and more and then reflects on his year by asking:

1. What went well this year?
2. What didn't go so well this year?
3. What did I learn?

In his integrity report he asks himself:

1. What are the core values that drive my life and work?
2. How am I living and working with integrity right now?
3. How can I set a higher standard in the future?

The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it. One solution is to avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of who you are. The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you.

Redifine yourself: "I'm an athlete" becomes "I'm the type of person who is mentally tough and loves a physical challenge".

When chosen effectively, an identity can be flexible rather than brittle. Like water flowing around an obstacle, your identity works with the changing circumstances rather than against them.

Chapter 21 - Conclusion

The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1 percent improvement, but a thousand of them.

Gradually, though, as you continue to layer small changes on top of one another, the scale tips and your habit becomes easy.

Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine.

To make a behaviour effortless: make it obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying. To make a behaviour difficult: make it invisible, unattractive, hard and unsatisfying.

This is a continuous process. The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements. That’s the power of atomic habits. Tiny changes. Remarkable results.

Habit Cheatsheet

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