Atomic Habits - James Clear - Michael D. McGill

Atomic Habits – James Clear

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Main Take-Aways

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.
If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity.
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become.
All behavior is driven by a desire to solve a problem.
The process of behavior change always starts with awareness.
Implementation Incentive – A plan you make beforehand about when and where to act. That is, how you intend to implement a a particular habit.
The simple way to apply Incentive Implementation to your habits is to fill out this sentence:
- I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].
Give your habits a time and space to live in the world. The goal is to make the time and location so obvious that, with enough repetition, you get an urge to do the right thing at the right time, even if you can’t say why.
If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment.
Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.
The habit stacking + temptation bundling formula is:
1. After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED].
2. After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].
Most days, we’ed rather be wrong with the crowd than right by ourselves.
Imagine changing just one word: You don’t “have” to. You get to.
When preparation comes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing.
Habits are easier to build when they fit into the flow of your life.
You have to standardize before you can optimize.
Cardinal Rule of behavior change: What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided.
As a general rule, the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.
Never miss twice. If I miss one day, I try to get back into it as quickly as possible.
You don’t realize how valuable it is to just show up on your bad (or busy) days.
We optimize for what we measure. we choose the wrong measurement, we get the wrong behavior.
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.
Until You work as hard as those you admire, don’t explain away their success as luck.
Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
Happiness is the state you enter when you no longer want to change your state.

The Fundamentals

It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
When we repeat 1% errors, day after day, by replicating poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalizing little excuses, our small choices compound into toxic results.
Success is the product of daily habits–not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.
You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.
You get what you repeat.
Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change.
In order to make a meaningful difference, habits need to persist long enough to break through the Plateau of Latent Potential.
Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.
In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.
When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.
The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of systems is to continue playing the game.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
Atomic Habits-a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do, but also the source of incredible power; a component of the system of compound growth.
Changing our habits is challenging for two reasons:
- We try to change the wrong thing.
- We try to change our habits in the wrong way.
Three levels at which change can occur:
- Layer 1 – Changing Your Outcomes – This level is concerned with changing your results.
- Layer 2 – Changing Your Process – This layer is concerned with changing your habits and systems.
- Layer 3 – Changing Your Identity – This level is concerned with changing your beliefs.
Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach we start by focusing on who we want to become.

Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last.
The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes a part of your identity. It’s one ting to say I am the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I am the type of person who is this.
True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity.
- The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader.
- The goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner.
- The goal is not to learn an instrument, the goal is to become a musician.
When your behavior and your identity are fully aligned, you are no longer pursuing behavior change. You are simply acting like the type of person you already believe yourself to be.
The more deeply a thought or action is tied to your identity, the more difficult is it to change it.
Progress requires unlearning.
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become.
You can see that habits are the path to changing your identity. The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do.
Each habit not only gets results but also teaches you something far more important: to trust yourself.
It’s a simple two-step process:
- 1) Decide the type of person you want to be.
- 2) Prove it to yourself with small wins.
Feedback Loops-Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits. It’s a two-way street.
Identity change is the North Star of habit change.
But the true question is: Are you becoming the type of person you want to become? The first step is not What or How, but Who.
Ultimately your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally, you become your habits.
A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough to become automatic.
This is the feedback loop behind all human behavior: try, fail, learn, try differently.
The process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving response, and reward.
- The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior.
- Cravings are the second step, and they are the motivational force behind every habit. Without some level of motivation or desire-without craving a change-we have no reason to act.
  - Every craving is linked to a desire to change your internal state.
- The third step is response. The response is the actual habit you perform, which can take the form of a thought or action.
- Finally, the response delivers a reward. Rewards are the end goal of every habit.
  - We crave rewards because they serve two purposes: They satisfy us and they teach us.
  - Rewards close the feedback loop and complete the habit cycle.
- In summary, the cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue.
  - This cycle is known as the habit loop.

We can split these four steps into two phases: the problem phase and the solution phase. The problem phase includes the cue and the craving, and it is when you realize something needs to change. The solution phase includes the response and the reward, and it is when you take action and achieve the change you desire.
All behavior is driven by a desire to solve a problem.
The Four Laws of Behavior Change: Provides a simple set of rules for creating good habits and breaking bad ones.

Whenever you want to change your behavior, you can simply ask yourself:
- How can I make it obvious?
- How can I make it attractive?
- How can I make it easy?
- How can I make it satisfying?

The First Law – Make it Obvious

This is one of the most surprising insights about our habits: you don’t need to be aware of the cue for a habit to begin.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung
We’re so used to doing what we have always done that we don’t stop to question whether it’s the right thing to do at all. Many of our failures in performance are largely attributable to a lack of self-awareness.
Habits Scorecard-A list of your daily habits.
The first step in changing bad habits is to be on the lookout for them. If you feel you need extra help, then you can try pointing-and-calling in your own life. Say out loud the action you are thinking of taking and what the outcome will be.
- Hearing your bad habits spoken aloud makes the consequences seem more real.
The process of behavior change always starts with awareness.
Implementation Incentive – A plan you make beforehand about when and where to act. That is, how you intend to implement a a particular habit.
The cues that can trigger a habit come in a wide range of forms. The two most common cues are time and location.
Broadly speaking, the format for creating an implementation intention is:
- When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.
People who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through.
May people think they lack motivation when they really lack clarity.
The simple way to apply Incentive Implementation to your habits is to fill out this sentence:
- I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].
If you aren’t sure when to start your habit, try the first day of the week, month, or year.
Give your habits a time and space to live in the world. The goal is to make the time and location so obvious that, with enough repetition, you get an urge to do the right thing at the right time, even if you can’t say why.
You often decide what to do next based on what you have just finished doing.
No behavior happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior.
Habit Stacking – Identify a habit you do each day and then stack your new behavior on top.
- After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]
The key is to tie your desired behavior into something you already do each day.
Once you get comfortable with this approach, you can develop general habit stacks to guide you whenever the situation is appropriate.
- When I walk into a party, I will introduce myself to someone I don’t know yet.
One way to find the right trigger for your habit stack is by brainstorming a list of your current habits.
- First columns, write down habits you do each day without fail.
- Second column write down the things that happen to you each day without fail.
- Armed with the two lists, you can begin searching for the best place to layer your new habit into your lifestyle.
Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.
Many of the actions we take each day are shaped not by purposeful drive and choice but by the most obvious option.
A small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do.
You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.
Creating obvious visual cues can draw your attention toward a desired habit.
If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment.
Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it.
Stop thinking about your environment as being filled with objects. Start thinking about it as filled with relationships.
Habits can be easier to change in a new environment.
It is easier to associate a new habit with a new context than to build a new habit in the face of competing cues.
Disciplined people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic will power and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.
The people with the most self-control are typically the ones who need to use it the least.
One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.
Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.
This is the secret to self-control. Make the cues of your good habits obvious and the cues of your bad habits invisible.

The Second Law – Make it Attractive

Supernatural Stimuli – A heightened version of reality that elicits a stronger response than usual.
The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to be habit forming.
Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop.
When it comes to habits, the key take-away is this: dopamine is not only released when you experience pleasure, but when you anticipate it.
It is the anticipation of a reward-not the fulfillment of it-that gets us to take action.
Desire is the engine that drives behavior. Every action is taken because of the anticipation that precedes it. It is the craving that leads to response.
We need to make our habits attractive because it is the expectation of a rewarding experience that motivates us to act in the first place. This is where a strategy known as temptation bundling comes into play.
Temptation bundling works by linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
You’re more likely to find a behavior attractive if you get to do one of your favorite things at the same time.
The habit stacking + temptation bundling formula is:
1. After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED].
2. After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].
We imitate the habits of three groups in particular:
- The close
- The many
- The powerful
Proximity has a powerful effect on our behavior.
One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
Whenever we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide our behavior.
Most days, we’ed rather be wrong with the crowd than right by ourselves.
When changing your habits means challenging the tribe, change is unattractive. When changing your habits means fitting in with the tribe, change is very attractive.
Once we fit in, we start looking for ways to stand out.
Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper, underlying motive.
Your habits are modern day solutions to ancient desires.
Your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face; they are just the methods you learned to use.
You see a cue, categorize it based on past experience, and determine the appropriate response.
our behavior is heavily dependent on how we internret the events that happen to us, not necessarily the objective reality of the events themselves.
cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes th.em„
Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings, and we can use this insight to ouw advar tage rather than to our detriment.
Imagine changing just one word: You don’t “have” to. You get to.
Refraining 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.
You can transform frustration into delight when You realize that each interruption gives You a chance to practice returning to your breath. Distraction is a good thing because You need distractions to practice meditation.
You can reframe “I am nervous” to “I am excited and I am getting an adrenaline rush to help me concentrate.”
Motivation ritual. You simply practice associating Your habits with something You enjoy, then you can use that cue whenever you need a bit of motivation.

The Third Law – Make it Easy

As Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.”
When re in motion, You re planning and strategizing and learning
Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will deliver an outcome.
that’s the biggest reason why You slip into motion rather than taking action: you to delay failure.
Motion makes you feel like you’re getting things done. But really, You re just preparing to get something done. When preparation comes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing.
This is the first takeaway of the 3rd Law: you just need to get your reps in.
Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition.
Long-term potentiation, which refers to the strengthening of connections between neurons in the based on recent patterns of activity.
Both common sense scientific evidence agree: repetition is a form of change.
Habits follow a similar trajectory from effortful practice to auto behavior, a process known as automaticity.
learning curves reveals an important truth about behavior change: habits based on frequency, not time.
It doesn’t really matter how long it takes for a habit to become automatic. What matters is that you take the actions you need take to make progress.
Energy is precious, and the brain is wired to conserve it whenever possible. It is human nature to follow the Law of Least Effort, which. states that when deciding between two similar options, people will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.
We are motivated to do what is easy.
The less energy a habit requires, the more likely it is to occur.
We don’t actually want the habit itself. What you really want is the outcome the habit delivers.
It is crucial to make your habits so easy that you’ll do even when you don’t feel like it.
The idea behind make easy is not to only do easy things. The idea is to make it as easy as possible in the moment to do things that payoff in the long run
One of the most effective ways to reduce the friction associated with habits is to practice environment design.
Habits are easier to build when they fit into the flow of your life.
Business is a never-ending quest to deliver the same result in an easier fashion.
Much of the battle of building better habits comes down to finding ways to reduce the friction associated with our good habits and increase the friction associated with our bad ones.
Whenever you organize a space for its intended purpose, you are priming it to make the next action easy.
can also invert this principle and prime the environment to make bad behaviors difficult.
The greater the friction, the less likely the habit.
Whenever possible, I leave my phone in a different room until lunch.
Redesign your life so the actions that matter most are also the actions that are easiest to do.
Habits are automatic choices that influence the conscious decisions that follow.
Every day, there are a handful of moments that deliver an outsized impact. I refer to these little choices as decisive moments.
- What is my first good choice of the day?
- What is my last good choice of the day?
We are limited by where our habits lead us. This is why maste ing the decisive moments throughout your day is so important. Each is made up of many moments, but it is really a few habitual hoices that determine the path you take.
Two -Minute rule, which states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”
The idea is to make your habits as easy as possible to start.
What you want is a “gateway habit” that naturally leads you a more productive path.
The point is to master the habit of showing up.
You have to standardize before you can optimize.
It’s better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all.
Habit shaping to scale your habit backup toward your ultimate goal.
Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard.
Make your bad habits more difficult by creating what psychologists call a commitment device.
A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future. It is a way to lock in future behavior, bind you to good habits, and restrict you from bad ones.
Commitment devices are useful because they enable you to take advantage of good intentions before you can fall victim to temptation.
The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do.
When you automate as much of your life as possible, you can spend effort on the tasks machines cannot do yet. Each habit that we hand to the authority of technology frees up time and energy to pour into next stage of growth.

The Fourth Law – Make it Satisfying

We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying
Pleasure teaches your brain that a behavior is worth remembering and repeating.
Conversely, if an experience is not satisfying, we have little reason to repeat it.
Cardinal Rule of behavior change: What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided.
Time inconsistency, the way your brain evaluates rewards is inconsistent across time. You value the present more than the future.
A reward that is certain right now is typically worth more than one that is merely possible in the future.
The consequences of bad habits are delayed while the rewards are immediate.
Every habit produces multiple outcomes across time. Unfortunately these outcomes are often misaligned. With our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. With good habits, it is the reverse: the immediate outcome is unenjoyable, but the ultimate outcome feels good.
Put another way, the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.
As a general rule, the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.
The road less traveled is the road delayed gratification. If you’re willing to wait for the rewards, you’ll less competition and often get a bigger payoff. As the saying goes, last mile is always the least crowded.
The vital thing in getting a habit to stick is to feel successful—even if in a small way.
You want the ending of your habit to be satisfying. The best approach is to use reinforcement, which refers to the process of using an immediate reward to increase the rate of a behavior.
Habits of avoidance, which are behaviors you want to stop doing.
Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.
The best way to measure your progress is with a habit tracker.
A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit. The basic format is to get a calendar and cross off each day you stick your routine.
“Don’t break the chain” is a powerful mantra.
Recording your last action creates a trigger that can initiate your next one.
The mere act of tracking a behavior can spark the to change it.
The most effective form of motivation is progress.
Tracking can become its own of reward. It is satisfying to cross an item off Your to-do list>
In summary, habit tracking (1) creates a visual cue that can remind you to act, (2) is inherently motivating because you see the progress are making and don’t want to lose it, and (3) feels satisfying when you record another successful instance of your habit
Never miss twice. If I miss one day, I try to get back into it as quickly as possible.
I can’t be perfect, but I can avoid a second lapse. As soon as one streak ends, I get started on the next one.
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
You don’t realize how valuable it is to just show up on your bad (or busy) days.
Charlie Munger says, “The first rule of compounding: interrupt it unnecessarily.
Don’t put up a zero, Don’t let losses eat into your compounding.
It’s easy to train when you feel good, but it’s crucial to show up when you don’t feel like it—even if you do less than you hope.
The dark side of tracking a particular behavior is that we become by the number rather than the purpose behind it.
We optimize for what we measure. we choose the wrong measurement, we get the wrong behavior.
Just as we are more likely to repeat an experience when the ending is satisfying, we are also more likely to avoid an experience when the ending is painful.
When the consequences are severe, people learn quickly.
if you want to prevent bad habits and eliminate unhealthy behaviors, then adding an instant cost to the action is a great way to reduce their odds.
We’ll jump through a lot of hoops to avoid a little bit of immediate pain.
In general, the more local, tangible, concrete, and immediate the consequence, the more likely it is to influence individual behavior.
A habit contract is verbal or written agreement in which you state your commitment to a particular habit and the punishment that will occur if You don’t follow through. Then you find one or two people to act as your accountability partners and sign off on the contract with you.

Advanced Tactics

The secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition.
Habits are easier to perform, and more satisfying stick with, when they align with your natural inclinations and abilities.
Our environment determines the suitability of our genes and the utility of our natural talents. When our environment changes, so do the qualities that determine success.
Competence is highly dependent on context.
If you want to be truly great, selecting the right place to focus is crucial.
don’t have to apologize for these differences or feel guilty about them, but you do have to work with them.
You should build habits that work for your personality.
pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle.
In the long-run it is probably most effective to work on the strategy that seems to deliver the best results about 80 to 90 percent of the time and keep exploring with the remaining 10 to 20 percent.
We all have limited time on this planet, and the truly great among us are the ones who not only work hard but also have the good fortune to be exposed to opportunities that favor us.
If you can’t find a game where the odds are stacked in your favor, create one.
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.
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.
Specialization is a powerful way to overcome the “accident” of bad genetics.
Even if You’re not the most naturally gifted, you can often win by being best in a very narrow category
It’s more productive to focus whether you are fulfilling your own potential than comparing Yourself to someone else.
Until You work as hard as those you admire, don’t explain away their success as luck.
The way to maintain motivation and achieve peak levels of desire is to work on tasks of “just manageable difficulty.
The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.
Once a habit has been established, however, it’s important to continue to advance in small ways.
A flow state is the experience of being “in the zone” and fully immersed in an activity.
really successful people feel the same lack of motivation as everyone else. The difference is that still find a way to show up despite the feelings of boredom.
The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom
As Machiavelli noted, “Men desire novelty to such an extent that those who are doing well wish for a change much as those who are doing badly.”
Variable reward-The pace of rewards varies. This variance leads to the greatest spike of dopamine, enhances memory recall, and accelerates habit formation.
At some point, everyone faces the same challenge on the journey of self-improvement: you have to fall in love with boredom.
stepping up when it’s annoying or painful or draining to do so, that’s what makes the difference between a professional and an amateur.
Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way. Professionals know what is important to them and work toward it purpose; amateurs get pulled off course by the urgencies of life.
have been a lot of days I’ve felt like relaxing, but I’ve never regretted showing up and working on something that was important to me.
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 the boredom.
The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside of habits is that you get used to doing things a certain way and stop paying attention to little errors.
Habits are necessary, but not sufficient for mastery. What you need is a combination of automatic habits and deliberate practice.
Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
Reflection and review enables the long-term improvement of all habits because it makes you aware of your mistakes and helps you consider possible paths for improvement.
I know of executives and investors who keep a “decision journal” in they record the major decisions they make each week, why they them, and what they expect the outcome to be.
My yearly Integrity Report answers three questions:
- 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?
Periodic reflection and review is like viewing yourself in the mirror from a conversational distance.
more sacred an idea is to us—that is, the more deeply it is tied our identity—the more strongly we will defend it against criticism.
The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.
Chosen effectively, an identity can be flexible rather than brittle.
Life is constantly changing, so you need to periodically check in to see if your habits and beliefs are still serving you.
The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1 percent improvement, but a thousand of them. It’s a bunch of atomic habits stacking each one a fundamental unit of the overall system.
Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine.
- Success is a process, not a destination.
That’s the power of atomic habits. Tiny changes. Remarkable results.

Appendix

Happiness is simply the absence of desire.
Happiness is the state you enter when you no longer want to change your state.
Peace occurs when you don’t turn Your observations into problems.
With a big enough why you can overcome any how.
Being curious is better than being smart.
Emotions drive behavior. Every decision is an emotional decision some level.
We can only be rational and logical after we have been emotional.
If a topic makes someone feel emotional, they will rarely be interested in the data. This is why emotions can be such a threat to wise decision making.
Suffering drives progress.
Actions reveal how badly you want something.
Self-control requires you to release a desire rather than satisfy it.
When liking and wanting are approximately the same, you feel satisfied.
New plans offer hope because we don’t any experiences to ground our expectations.

To-Do

List daily habits (p. 64)
Identify Habit Stacking candidates (p. 77)

Atomic Habits – James Clear

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