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• atomic habits mind maps

Main Takeaways

• “Small habits don’t add up. They compound.” – James Clear

• Habits are really about identity change. Behaviour change is simply the means to get there (feedback loop).

• The reward that closes the habit loop is often the satisfaction of the craving. We don’t desire external behaviour. We want the sensations that come with it.

• Stop trying to be a hero. (“Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behaviour.” – James Clear)

• The goal is not to fill your day with meaningless lifehacks. Focus on the big rocks and learn to embody your values/identity with small wins. “Standardize before you optimize” – James Clear

• “Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard.” – James Clear

• Focus on the decisive moments. Which habit/decision has a domino effect on the rest of your day?

• Track process metrics over outcome metrics. We can’t control the outcomes. Identify with showing up.

• Commitment devices are a powerful tool when combined with social accountability. Design your social environment.

• “Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work on.” – James Clear

• Why, then, do we struggle to make lasting change? The problem, according to Fogg, is threefold.

  • First, we judge ourselves far too harshly when we fail.
  • Second, we mistake aspirations for behaviors. A behavior, according to Fogg, is something you can do right now or at another specific point in time. For instance, you can put your phone on airplane mode before you got to bed to get a better night’s sleep. An aspiration, by contrast, is impossible to achieve at any given moment. You cannot suddenly get better sleep.
  • Third, we set big, loft goals and rely on motivation to achieve them.

• Building Tiny Habits, Fogg explains, is a simple three-step formula:

  • Find an Anchor Moment. An Anchor Moment is (1) an existing routine (like brushing your teeth) or (2) an event that happens (like a phone ringing). The Anchor Moment reminds you to do the new Tiny Behavior.
  • Make the Behavior You Want Tiny. Focus on small actions that you can do in less than thirty seconds, such as flossing one tooth or doing two push-ups. You need to do the Tiny Behavior immediately after the Anchor Moment.
  • Celebrate Instantly. Something you do to create positive emotions, such as saying I did a good job! or Awesome! You need to celebrate immediately after doing the new Tiny Behavior to wire the new behavior into your brain.

• Pearl Habits:

  • BJ calls these habits Pearl Habits because they use prompts that start out as irritants then turn into something beautiful.
  • Step 1: List at least ten things that often happen to you that irritate you (a long line, a noisy motorcycle, a barking dog next door).
  • Step 2: Select the most frequent and annoying thing on your list.
  • Step 3: Explore new, beneficial habits you could do after the annoyance. Come up with at least five options.

Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference

The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits

• Small deviations expand with time.
  • A plane off by 3.5 degrees when it takes flight results in hundreds of miles of error.
• “Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits.” – James Clear
• Progress is like an ice cube sitting in a warming cold room.
  • The overnight success takes 10 years of build-up.
  • Cancer spends 80% of its life undetectable, then takes over the body in months.
  • Bamboo can barely be seen for the first five years (roots) before exploding 90 feet into the air within six weeks.
  • “Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored.” – James Clear
  • San Antonio Spurs locker room quote
    • stonecutter hammering 100 times with nothing. Yet at the 101 blow, it will split in two.
• The Plateau of Latent Potential & Valley of Disappointment
  • Plateau of Latent Potential
• Systems > Goals
  • Problem #1: Winners and losers have the same goals.
  • Problem #2: Achieving a goal is only a momentary change.
  • Problem #3: Goals restrict your happiness.
    • “Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.” – Naval Ravikant
  • Problem #4: 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.” – James Clear
  • You do not need to choose between the two. Systems need a goal as a direction/compass.
  • “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear
  • Be more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current result

How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)

• Changing our habits is challenging for two reasons: (1) we try to change the wrong thing and (2) we try to change our habits in the wrong way.

• Three Layers of Behavior Change

  • Change your results/outcomes.
  • Change your process/habits/systems.
  • Change your identity/beliefs about yourself.

• The Onion of change

  • Try starting from the core and move outwards
    • Identity ==> Processes ==> Outcomes

• Identity = “repeated beingness” = (essentitas = being) + (identidem = repeatedly)

  • “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
  • “The process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself.” – James Clear

• The Identity-Habits Feedback Loop

  • “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” – James Clear
  • Have a flexible identity.
    • Need to be able to drop and add parts of our identity to change our habits long term.
    • Bayesian Updating of our identity and beliefs

• The Two-Step Process to Changing your Identity

  • Decide the type of person you want to be.

    • Begin with the end in mind
    • “Identity change is the North Star of habit change.” – James Clear
    • “Are you becoming the type of person you want to become?” – James Clear
    • Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

  • Prove it to yourself with small wins.

    • Tiny Habits – BJ Fogg

• Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last.

• Improvement are only temporary until they become part of who you are.

• how to quit smoking

  • “No thanks. I’m not a smoker.” > “No thanks. I’m trying to quit.”
  • It’s a small difference, but this statement signals a shift in identity. Smoking was part of their former life, not their current one. They no longer identify as someone who smokes.

How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps

• We are like cats in a puzzle box (Edward Thorndike)

  • Our brain is a prediction machine that attempts to minimize surprise (Karl Friston)
  • Habits are programs/functions/solutions to reoccurring problems.
    • “The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible.”
  • Correlation does not equal causation. Conditioning is correlational by definition.
    • We can pick up faulty habits without noticing them.

• “Discipline = Freedom” – Jocko Willink

  • Being on the fence is what hurts, not necessarily being on either side.
    • Decision fatigue
  • You can do and enjoy more things if your big pillars are taken care of.
    • The goal is not to fill your day with habits. It is to make room for the good stuff.

• Cue ==> Craving ==> Response ==> Reward

  • Problem Phase = (Cue + Craving)
  • Solution Phase = (Response + Reward)
  • The Buddhists saw craving (pulled towards) or aversion (pushed away) as the default reaction to any sensation.
    • The reward can simply be satisfying the craving.

The 1st Law – Make It Obvious

The Man Who Didn’t Look Right

• We can pick up habits subconsciously.

  • Our brain associates cues with conditioning.
  • Once the habit becomes automatic, it can become invisible.

• You need to be aware of your habits before you can consciously change them.

  • The process of behaviour change always starts with awareness.
  • Pointing-and-Calling raises awareness by verbalizing. It helps prevent train accidents caused by habituation.
  • You can point-and-call when you are about to run a habit.
    • The written and spoken word bring abstract concepts into reality.

• The Habit Scorecard (Tracking) is a simple tool to raise your awareness.

  • “There are no good habits or habits. There are only effective habits.” – James Clear
  • “Does this behaviour help me become the type of person I wish to be?”
  • “Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?”
  • Make a list of your daily habits.
  • As yourself if each habit is positive, negative, or neutral (this will depend on your goals).
  • A helpful question is, “Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be?”
  • The purpose the Habits Scorecard is to simply recognize your habits and acknowledge the cues that trigger them, which makes it possible to respond in a way that benefits you.

• Simply observe.

  • The goal of tracking is not to change your behaviour. Track without judgement.
  • It is analogous to the non-judgement aspect of meditation. Try to observe yourself as a third person.

The Best Way to Start a New Habit

• Implementation Intention

  • The two most common cues are time and location.
  • When situation X arises, I will perform Y.
  • “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].”
  • Be specific. “I want to eat healthier.” ==> “I will [drink a green smoothie] at [my alarm at 7 am] in [the kitchen].

• If you aren’t sure when to start your habit, try the first day of the week, month, or year.

• Habit Stacking

  • The Diderot Effect: The tendency for one purchase to lead to another.
  • “No behaviour happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behaviour.” – James Clear
  • “After I [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”
  • You can use a behaviour you already do each day as the cue for a new habit.
    • Wake up ==> Make my bed ==> Place a book on my pillow ==> Take a shower
    • Make sure your established cue occurs at the same frequency as the desired habit.
    • Brainstorm two lists for potential cues.
      • Habits you perform without fail (brush teeth, get out of bed, do dishes,…).
      • Things that happen to you without fail (you get a notification, you eat a meal, go to the washroom,…).
  • The cue needs to be immediately actionable.

“Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behaviour.” – James Clear

• Behaviour is a function of the Person in their Environment. B = f(P, E)

  • Fogg Behaviour Model: Behaviour = f(Motivation, Ability, Prompt): B = MAP
    • A behavior happens when motivation, ability, and a prompt converge simultaneously.
    • You can disrupt a behavior you don’t want by removing the prompt. This isn’t always easy, but removing the prompt is your best first move to stop a behavior from happening.

• The most powerful human sense is vision when it comes to cues/triggers/prompts.

  • “A small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do.” – James Clear
  • Suggestion Impulse Buying: When a shopper sees a product for the first time and visualizes a need for it. In other words, customers occasionally buy products not because the want them but because of how they are presented to them. For example, items placed on the shelf at eye level tend to be purchased more than those down near the floor

• Design your environment.

  • “If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make your cue a big part of your environment.” – James Clear
  • Design in more cues for desired habits. Eliminate cues for the habits you are trying to break.
    • Apples on the counter (obvious). Junk in the bottom of the closet (invisible).
    • Put the odds in your favour.

• Eventually, the context (time, location, people, … ) will become the cue.

  • “Our behaviour is not defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them.” – James Clear
  • Couch = reading spot | couch = Netflix & Snacks, bed = sleep | bed = social media + emails
  • Habits can be easier to change in a new environment.
    • I quit Instagram on my first trip.
  • One space one use.
    • Reading chair, writing desk, eating table
    • Work laptop, reading Kindle, Netflix TV, social media tablet, phone for messages and calls.

The Secret to Self-Control

• “Disciplined people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control.”
  • “The people with the best self-control are the people who need to use it the least.”
• Cue-induced wanting
  • Your brain can pick up on cues subconsciously and you’ll begin to crave something.
• “You can break a bad habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it.”
  • Strong neural pathways are like a bush road. After years of no usage, trees and weeds will start to grow back and slowly swallow the road. Despite that, it would still be easier to walk on the half-swallowed road than the forest.
• Environment >= Willpower
  • Short-term: Willpower can be used to avoid acute temptation.
  • Long-term: The environment we are in will have a bigger impact than our willpower does.
• “Make the cues of your good habits obvious and the cues of your bad habits invisible.”
  • Stop trying to be a hero and resist temptations. Eliminate and limit cues at their source.

The 2nd Law – Make It Attractive

How to Make a Habit Irresistible

• Supernormal Stimuli

  • Calorie-dense foods, photoshopped models, social media likes, porn, ads, online shopping, drugs, video games,…
  • How many of those stimuli are you exposed to on a daily basis?
  • No amount of willpower can modulate behaviour when constantly exposed to supernormal stimuli.

• “Desire is the engine that drives behaviour.”

  • Craving == > Response
  • Rats died of thirst (plenty of water available) when their dopamine was inhibited.
  • You release dopamine when you anticipate pleasure and a little when you actually experience it.
    • “It is the anticipation of a reward – not the fulfillment of it – that gets us to take action.”
    • The same system in the brain is responsible for experiencing a reward and anticipating it.
  • The Molecule of More – Daniel Z. Lieberman
  • it is the expectation of reward that drives our behavior

• Temptation Bundling

  • Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
  • Habit Stacking + Temptation Bundling Formula
    • After I [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED].
    • After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].

The Role of Familiy and Friends in Shaping Your Habits

• We are social animals

  • “The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.” – Game of Thrones
  • Our culture determines which behaviours are attractive to us because we want to fit in.

• The three groups we imitate

  • The close (friends & family)
    • “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn
  • The many (the tribe)
    • Chimps who found a better way to crack nuts will revert to less effective techniques to fit in.
    • “When changing your habits means fitting in with the tribe, change is very attractive.”
  • The powerful (the few with status & prestige)
    • We try to copy the habits of highly effective people.
    • “Once we fit in, we start looking for ways to stand out.”
    • Who do you look up to? Are they living the lifestyle you are trying to live?

• Join a culture where

  • your desired behaviour is the norm
  • you already have something in common with the group

• Singular Identity ==> group Identity

  • I am a reader ==> We are readers.

How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits

• Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings.

• Reframing your habits to highlight their benefits rather than their drawbacks is a fast and lightweight way to reprogram your mind and make a habit seem more attractive.

• Make it unattractive

  • You can reframe a concept in a way that makes it unattractive.
  • Allen Carr’s Easy Way To Stop Smoking – Allen Carr
  • “I have to” ==> “I get to” | Burdens ==> Opportunities

• “A craving is just a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive.”

  • Find love and reproduce = Tinder, connect & bond = Facebook, reduce uncertainty = Google
  • You can satisfy the underlying motives in healthier ways. Your brain just associated quick-fix strategies.

• “Life feels reactive, but it is actually predictive.”

  • “The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them.”

• A craving/aversion is to change your internal state; not your external environment.

  • We don’t want/crave external behaviour. We want the sensations that come with it.
  • “What you really want is to feel different.”
  • We can’t make decisions without emotions since nothing is good or bad.
    • Our value systems are mostly built upon shared emotional responses to stimuli.

• Create a motivation ritual.

  • Do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.

The 3rd Law – Make It Easy

Walk Slowly, but Never Backward

• The most effective form of learning is practice (deliberate), not planning.

  • Group 1: graded on the number of pictures >>> Group 2: graded on the quality of one picture.

• Action > Motion

  • Motion: planning, strategizing, learning. It has a role, but we often default to it.
  • We want to limit and delay failure. It is a form of procrastination.
  • actual work > Not actual work

• Long-term Potentiation

  • Each rep is reinforcing the neural pathway.
  • Hebb’s Law: “Neurons that fire together wire together.”
  • Walking through the woods makes the path more efficient.

• Learning Curves

  • Repetitions lead to Automaticity.
  • The habit line is crossed when an activity requires little effort.
  • There are diminishing returns. Stopping the reps will lower automaticity.
  • “How long does it take to build a new habit?” ==> ” How many repetitions are required to make a habit automatic?”
  • habit line

The Law of Least Effort

• Physics Principle of the Path of Least Resistance

  • Things naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.

• Reduce friction associated with good behaviours.

  • Limbic friction by Andrew Huberman.
  • Elephant and the rider analogy. The Happiness Hypothesis – Jonathan Haidt
  • Connect this to B (behaviour) = MAP (motion, ability, prompt). We want the ability to be as low as possible to start.
  • Making it easy does not mean doing easy things. The idea is to build up to things that pay off in the long run.

• Increase friction associated with bad behaviours.

• Prime your environment.

  • Prepare healthy food in advance so it is ready. Hide or don’t hold unhealthy food.
  • Make fitness equipment readily available, but keep the TV in the closet or unplug it each time.
  • Leave your phone in a drawer before going to bed.

How to Stop Procrastinating using the Two-Minute Rule

• Master the Decisive Moments

  • The first thing you do when you get home after work can determine the rest of your evening.
  • Early decisions have a disproportionate effect on your day. Own the morning. Make your bed.

• The Two-Minute Rule

  • When you start a new habit, it should take less than 2 minutes to do.
  • The focus should be on reps, no matter how easy. The outcome will take care of itself.

• Habit Shaping

  • Almost every habit can be scaled down or up (very easy to hard).
  • Master the habit of showing up before mastering the habit itself.
    • Standardize before you optimize.

• which decisions have a disproportionate impact on your day

• Examples of Habit Shaping using the Two-Minute Rule.

How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible

• Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard.

• Commitment Device / Ulysses Contract

  • create a system where it is harder to get out of a good habit than to stick with it.
  • Marc Adams TED Talk

• The power of one-time choices

  • Stop paying for Netflix. Delete an app from your phone.
    • The average person spends 2 hours per day on social media.
    • What would you do with an extra 600 hours per year?

• Automate your habits

  • Take advantage of technology. Robots working for you for very cheap.
  • Automatic contributions to savings and investments.
  • Set reminders on your phone for infrequent events.
    • Communicate with your future self.

The 4th Law – Make It Satisfying

The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change

• The Cardinal Rule of Behaviour Change

  • What is immediately rewarded is repeated.
  • What is immediately punished is avoided.

• Set the odds in your favour.

  • The first three laws increase the odds of performing a behaviour for the first time.

    • Make it obvious.
    • Make it attractive.
    • Make it easy.

  • The fourth law increases your odds of repeating the behaviour.

    • Make it satisfying.

  • A small increase in your odds can have a large effect at scale.

• Beware of Time Inconsistency (hyperbolic discounting)

  • We value the present more than the future.
  • It used to make sense in an immediate-return environment.
  • We currently live in a delayed-return environment.
  • Good habits tend to have immediate unpleasurable outcomes with long-term pleasure.
  • Bad habits tend to have immediate pleasurable outcomes associated with long-term pain.
  • We think of our future selves as a stranger. – Hal Hershfield
  • “All self-help boils down to “choose long-term over short-term.” – Naval Ravikant
  • “The road less travelled is the road of delayed gratification.” – James Clear

• “The last mile is the least crowded”

  • Paradoxically, your competition decreases when you delay gratification.
  • Marshmellow longitudinal study

• Design your habits to be immediately successful.

  • You need a form of reinforcement.
  • “I am awesome.” – BJ Fogg
  • Set the bar low. Two-Minute Rule.

• Reward your habits of avoidance.

  • Reward yourself whenever you don’t do what you’re trying to avoid.
  • Create a loyalty program for yourself.
    • Transfer a dollar towards something pleasurable every time you show up or skip on a bad habit.
  • Try to allow those short-term rewards with your desired identity.
    • It doesn’t make sense to reward going to the gym all week with ice cream.
  • “Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.” – James Clear

How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day

• The most effective form of motivation is progress.

• Habit trackers are great for the most part.

  • Trackers make habits obvious, attractive, and satisfying.
  • They keep your focus on the process (the reps) rather than the goal (the abs).
  • Tracking can be temporary.
    • What is the minimal effective dose (MED) of tracking for your habit?
  • You can automate most tracking.
  • Only track your most important habits.
    • “It is better to track one habit than sporadically track ten consistently.” – James Clear
  • Track immediately after the habits to provide reinforcement.
    • Habit stacking to build the habit of tracking.
  • The Paper Clip Strategy. Start the morning with 120 paper clips in one jar and keep dialing the phone until I have moved them all to the second jar.”
    • it creates a visual trigger that can help motivate you to perform a habit consistently.
      • Visual cues remind you to start a behaviour.
      • Visual cues display your progress on a behaviour.
      • Visual cues can have an additive effect on motivation
      • Visual cues can be used to drive short-term and long-term motivation

• The Darkside of tracking

  • We often track the wrong things.
    • work hours < productivity, 10,000 steps < overall health, weight on a scale < reps at the gym
  • Track process before outcomes.
  • Goodhart’s Law
    • We often start to cheat the system to achieve our short-term goals.
    • Only measure the bare minimum (unless you’re into it)

• Don’t break the chain.

  • 2000-day Snapchat streaks.

• Never miss twice.

• The bad reps are the most important ones.

  • Vote for the identity of never skipping reps.
  • “The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.” – Charlie Munger
  • Habits are not all-or-nothing.
  • Regular contributions outperform sporadic lump sums.

How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything

• Make it unsatisfying.

  • “Pain is an effective teacher.” – James Clear

• Write down a habit contract.

  • Make it as formal as you can. Signing in is important.
  • You can automate the punishment if possible.
  • Habit Contract template and example

• Get an accountability partner.

  • I have found that a punishment of 1$ is enough when I have accountability partners.
  • We care what people think about us.

• Be careful not to rub your elephant the wrong way.

  • Only bind yourself to contracts you are willing to pay the cost.
  • Being punished too often can result in a net negative in the long term.

Advanced Tactics – How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great

The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don’t)

• Habits are easier when they align with your natural abilities.

  • “Pick the right habit, and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit, and life is a struggle.” – James Clear
  • Why try to swim against the current?
    • Go with the flow and practice non-action (Tao Te Ching).
  • “Find something that looks like work to others, but it feels like play to you.” – Naval Ravikant
  • “The work that hurts you less than it hurts others is the work you were made to do.” – James Clear

• The smart way of doing trial and error.

  • Explore/Exploit Trade-Off
    • Explore more when you have more time.
    • The better you are at something and the more satisfying it feels, the less time you should spend exploring.

• Spend 80% of your time exploiting and the rest exploring.

  • Google asked their employees to work 80% of the time of their official jobs and the other 20% on projects of their choice.

• If you can’t find a game that favours your strength, create one.

  • John Holland’s Theory of Career Choice (RIASEC)
    • Interests + Abilities + Values
    • Are there too many things that fit your interests, abilities, and values?
    • “Don’t be a donkey.” – Derek Sivers

• Who are you?

  • Figure out who you were (Self-Authoring Program).

• Figure out who you are.

  • https://www.16personalities.com/
  • https://principlesyou.com/

• Figure out who you want to be (yearly).

  • Begin with the end in mind (Habit 2). 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey
  • Designing Your Life – Bill Burnett & Dave Evans
  • Design your system and habits according to the previous three steps.

• Questions to ask yourself:

  • 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?
  • What is making this behaviour hard to do? Fogg has found in his research that our answer will involve at least one of five factors, which he calls the Ability Factors:
    • Do you have enough time to do the behaviour?
    • Do you have enough money to do the behaviour?
    • Are you physically capable of doing the behaviour?
    • Does the behaviour require a lot of creative or mental energy?
    • Does the behaviour fit your current routine, or does it require you to adjust?

• There are two ways to be a world-class performer.

  • Train until you reach the top 1% of people in your field.
  • Create a unique combination of things you excel at (say 80th percentile).
  • The more narrow this becomes, the less competition you have.
  • Living examples are Scott Adams and Joe Rogan
  • Publicly documenting your life is an easy way to become the best in the world at being you.

• “Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work on.” – James Clear

  • Almost every trait has a genetic component (Robert Plomin).
  • “Work hard on things that come easy.” – James Clear
  • Boiling water will soften a potato but harden an egg. You can’t control whether you’re a potato or an egg, but you can play a game where it’s better to be soft or hard.

The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated

• The Goldilocks Rule / Yerkes-Dodson Law

  • Peak motivation occurs when the difficulty of a task matches

• State of Flow

  • an average of 4% above our current ability to achieve flow.

• Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

• Fogg Behaviour Model

  • Behaviour = Motivation * Ability * Prompt

• “The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.” – James Clear

  • Use a variable reward.
    • The ideal distribution is a randomized 50/50 split.
      • Don’t get discouraged by early failure streaks. Randomness is always at play.
    • This does not apply to every habit.
  • “You have to fall in love with boredom.” – James Clear

The Downside of Creating Good Habits

• Pros and cons of habits

  • Pro: We do things without thinking.
  • Con: We stop paying attention to the small errors.
  • Con: Our established habits inflate our egos.

• Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery

  • Mastering a field versus Mastering a habit (figure)
  • Peak – Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool

• Reflection is a good practice to avoid complacency.

  • Tracking can help with checking our assumptions
  • Types of practices
    • annual reviews
      • Tally all your habits for the year (if the results are measurable).
      • Reflect on progress by answering three questions:
        • What went well this year?
        • What didn’t go so well this year?
        • What did I learn?
    • integrity reports.
      • Answer these questions halfway through the year:
        • What are the core values that drive my life and work?
        • How am I living and working with integrity right now?
        • How can I set a higher standard in the future?
    • Daily three questions for success?
    • Weekly planning
    • Mission Statement update
    • Getting Things Done (GTD) – David Allen
    • Journaling
    • Meditation

• “The tighter we cling to our identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.” – James Clear

  • “Diversify your identity like you diversify your portfolio.” – me
  • Define your identity on deeper transferable values instead of the specifics.
  • Athlete ==> mentally tough, healthy, competitive, disciplined, team player, etc…

• Ego Is the Enemy – Ryan Holiday

• “Be water, my friend.” – Bruce Lee

Conclusion – The Secret to Results That Last

• Sorites Paradox

  • One small action won’t change your life.
  • Eventually, if you maintain a habit, one small action will be the “tipping point.”

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

• Feeling ==> Design

• How do I know which rule to apply?

  • Hard to remember ==> Make it obvious
  • Don’t feel like starting ==> Make it attractive
  • Too difficult ==> Make it easy
  • Doesn’t stick ==> Make it satisfying
  • “Small habits don’t add up. They compound.” – James Clear

small habits, large impacts

health

• recharged throughout the day to stay energized
• wind down well tonight so I can sleep well
• hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Water your brain. If you water level is low, your brain cells shrink, and you also get brain fog. Coffee doesn’t count.
• add more whole foods, fiber and vegetables to your diet. Prioritize your health;
• the next 10 or 20 years of your life depend on it.
• spend more time in nature. It’s a simple habit that improves your mood and mental clarity.
• try sprinting yourself for a few minutes a day to de-clutter your brain. It can reduce stress, improves flood circulation and helps you think better
• early to bed, early to rise. Your days will feel longer if you can get to bed earlier than usual.
• cut back alcohol and caffeine in the evening; a good sleep depends on it.
• create a motivational playlist for your exercise routine: something to look forward to can help sustain the habit. “The right playlist can transform your experience of exercise,”
• don’t aim for 10000 steps a day; it’s not sustainable. Aim for a consistent walking habit; the goal is to make it to do it every day.
• Sleep with your phone in another room

learning

• I can’t stress life long learning enough. Read for at least 15 minutes (at least 10 pages) every morning: your life will be 37x better in a year
• learn to question common sense - we don’t question our beliefs, assumptions and beliefs enough. To find better answers, ask why
• start a new day as if you have something new to learn, and chances are you will keep an open mind for growth purposes.
• audit your content sources once every month. It saves time and improves knowledge acquisition.
• don’t speed read or skim every book or insightful article. If your aim is knowledge retention, read slowly.
• start a lifelong learning habit: tune into relevant essays, documentaries, videos, books and courses.
• spend a few minutes every night to write down your worries or thoughts as they appear.

investing

• saving is good but investing is better. Invest a percentage (you choose) of what you earn in a less risky index fund. Put compound growth to work
• a side hustle can help you figure out what you want to do with your life. Spend sometime explore your curiosities.

morning routines

• morning routine references/research
• design a morning routine that works for your mind and body. Start your day on a good note.
  • start your day on purpose:
    • identify your MIT’s (most important tasks) the night before and start ticking them off first thing in the morning
    • I knew the feelings I wanted to generate today
    • knew my “why” today and worked for it
    • set intentions before each major activity today

productivity

• limit the news: focus on few credible sources and turn off news notifications.
• design a staring ritual for your work; it reduces your decision-making process and saves cognitive energy for important things.
• worked on things that matter the most (toward dream, long term goals, etc…)

tackle high-value tasks before 12 pm

• try the one-tab work habit to improve your focus: don’t open another tab when working until that specific task is complete
• de-clutter your personal workspace before you call it a day.
• distractions are everywhere. Record them to block them and watch your productivity soar.
• cap your daily most important tasks: 3 at most

self-management

• emotionally committed to excellence today
• stay focus as much as I wanted to
• managed my self-talk and stay on my A-game
• fully engaged and enjoyed my efforts
• deal well with fear or unknown well
• tried to stay confident
• took action despite risk
• I chose to bring joy to this day
• responded well and quickly to life’s challenges
• group your worries into two: those you can control and those you can’t. Do something about what you can change and stop stressing about things you have no control over.
• don’t sweat the small, unimportant details. For everything you worry about, ask yourself: will it matter tomorrow, next month or year.
• appreciate the even smallest everyday experiences: they can improve your mood. - Be more present and observant.
• stop spending too much time in your head. it robs you the present and increases stress and anxiety.
• “what you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.”

relationship

• care about serving others
• was a role model today
• guided others to thinking well today
• demonstrated caring for others today
• shared my real-self with others well today
• nurture meaningful and strong social connections; your happiness depends on it.
• challenged someone to grow today
• repressing your emotions makes you worry more; talk about them, speak to someone about them or tell your loved ones how you feel.
• spend quality time with people who empower and bring out the best in you; your happiness depends on it.
• change things up once a month; use a different route, read a book you usually ignore, talk to a stranger, or surprise someone you love. It puts your brain to work and makes you think.
• hit my deadlines and finished my duties today

Quotes

Building better habits isn’t about littering your day with life hacks. It’s not about flossing one tooth each night or taking a cold shower each morning or wearing the same outfit each day. It’s not about achieving external measures of success like earning more money, losing weight, or reducing stress. Habits can help you achieve all of these things, but fundamentally they are not about having something. They are about becoming someone. - JAMES CLEAR

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate

References

• https://www.thunknotes.com/blog/a-visual-book-summary-of-atomic-habits-by-james-clear
• https://srinathramakrishnan.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/brief-summary-of-atomic-habits.pdf
• https://aprabaswara.medium.com/book-summary-atomic-habits-by-james-clear-c627a1552e38
• https://www.nateliason.com/notes/atomic-habits-james-clear
• https://dansilvestre.com/summaries/atomic-habits-james-clear/
• https://theprocesshacker.com/blog/atomic-habits-james-clear-book-summary/
• https://tylerdevries.com/book-summaries/atomic-habits/
• https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/book-summaries/self-help/atomic-habits/
• https://duddhawork.com/blog/atomic-habits/