BEST BOOK FOR HABIT MAKING

Atomic Habits is a self-help book written by James Clear that provides a step-by-step guide to building good habits and breaking bad ones. The book emphasizes the importance of making small changes in behavior that can lead to significant improvements in life.

The Fundamentals

Why Tiny Changes Make A Big Difference

CHAPTER 1 The Surprising Power Of Atomic Habit

Improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable sometimes it isn’t even noticeable but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run.

💡 If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven fames better by the time you’re done Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero.

Habit are the compound Interest of Self-Improvement. Choice determine the difference between who are you and who you could be. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy. “Habits are a double-edged sword.” “All big things come from small beginnings.”

💡 Chapter Summary➖

• Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run.
• Habits are a double-edged sword. They can work for you or against you, which is why understanding the details is essential.
• Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any com- pounding process are delayed. You need to be patient
• An atomic habit is a little habit that is part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable 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.

CHAPTER 2 How Your Habit Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)

You may want more money, but if your identity is someone who consumes rather than creates, then you’ll continue to be pulled toward spending rather than earning. It’s hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior. You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven’t changed who you are. when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.

Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are.

• 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.

💡 Chapter Summary

• There are three levels of change: outcome change, process change, and identity change.
• 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.
• Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
• Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.
• 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 How To Build Better Habit in 4 Simple Steps

The Science of how habit work

💡 Chapter Summary

• 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.
• Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.
• 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.

The 1st Law

CHAPTER 4 The Man Who Didn’t look Right

Don’t blame yourself for your faults. Don’t praise yourself for your successes.

💡 Chapter Summary

• With enough practice, your brain will pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it.
• Once our habits become automatic, we stop paying attention to what we are doing.
• The process of behavior change always starts with awareness. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them.
• Pointing-and-Calling raises your level of awareness from a non- conscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalizing your actions.
• The Habits Scorecard is a simple exercise you can use to become more aware of your behavior.

CHAPTER 5 The Best Way To Start a New Habit

Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity. Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.

The simple way to apply this strategy to your habits is to fill out this sentence:

💡 “I will (BEHAVIOR) at (TIME) in [LOCATION]”

The habit stacking formula is:

💡 “After [CURRENT HABIT), I will [NEW HABIT).”

• Meditation. After I pour my cup of coffee each morning, I will meditate for one minute.
• Exercise. After I take off my work shoes, I will immediately change into my workout clothes.
• Gratitude. After I sit down to dinner, I will say one thing I’m grateful for that happened today.
• Marriage. After I get into bed at night, I will give my partner a kiss.
• Safety. After I put on my running shoes, I will text a friend or family member where I am running and how long it will take.

💡 Chapter Summary

• 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.
• pair a new habit with a specific time and location.
• The implementation intention formula is: I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].
• Habit stacking is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a current habit.
• The habit stacking formula is: After (CURRENT HABIT), I will [NEW HABIT].

CHAPTER 6 Motivation is overrated ; Environment Often Matters More

Your habits change depending on the room you are in and the cues in front of you. Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior. In 1936, psychologist Kurt Lewin wrote a simple equation that makes a powerful statement: Behavior is a function of the Person in their Environment, or B = f(PE). The most powerful of all human sensory abilities, however, is vision. The human body has about eleven million sensory receptors. Ap proximately ten million of those are dedicated to sight.

The Context is the cue➖

1. We mentally assign our habits to the locations in which they occur:
2. Our behavior is not defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them.
3. Create a separate space for work, study, exercise, entertainment, and cooking. The mantra I find useful is “One space, one use.”
4. When you start mixing contexts, you’ll start mixing habits and the easier ones will usually win out. This is one reason why the versatility of modern technology is both a strength and a weakness.
5. A stable environment where everything has a place and a purpose is an environment where habits can easily form.

💡 Chapter Summary

• Small changes in context can lead to large changes in behavior over time.
• Every habit is initiated by a cue. We are more likely to notice cues that stand out.
• 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.
• It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cues.

CHAPTER 7 The Secret To Self Control

A little bit of discipline would solve all our problems is deeply embedded in our culture. “Disciplined“➖ people are better at structuring their fives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control, IN other words, they spend less time in tempting situations. Bad habits are autocatalytic. In the long-run, we become a product of the environment that we live in. To put it bluntly, I have never seen someone consistently stick to positive habits in a negative environment.

💡 Chapter Summary

• The inversion of the 1st Law of Behavior Change is make it invisible.
• Once a habit is formed, it is unlikely to be forgotten.
• 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.
• Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.

The 2nd Law

CHAPTER 8 How To Make a Habit Irresistible

The bigger the object, the greater their response.

THE DOPAMIN-DRIVEN FEEDBACK LOOP

• The Ability to experience pleasure remind, but without dopamine, desire died. And “without Desire action Stop”
• Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. Every behavior that highly habit forming-taking drugs, eating junk food, playing video games, browsing social media-is associated with higher levels of dopamine.
• Dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you an tic pate it.
• The reward system that is activated in the brain when you receive a reward is the same system that is activated when you an experience tic pate a reward.
• This is one reason the anticipation of an experience can often feel better than the attainment of it.

The habit stacking+ temptation bundling formula is:

💡 After [CURRENT HABIT), I will [HABIT I NEED].

💡 After [HABIT I NEED), I will [HABIT I WANT).

💡 Chapter Summary

• The 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it attractive.
• The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to be- come habit-forming.
• Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act.
• It is the anticipation of a reward-not the fulfillment of it-that gets us to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike.
• Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an ac- tion you need to do.

CHAPTER 9 The Role Of Family And Friends In Shaping Your Habits

“A Genius is not born , but is educated and trained”.

We imitate the habits of the three Groups in particular➖

1 Imitating the close

• As a general rule, the closer we are to someone, the more likely we are to imitate some of their habits.
• If your goal was to make it into space, then that room was about the best culture you could ask for.
• Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You’ll rise together.

2 Imitating the Many

• Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be 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.

3 Imitating The Powerful

• Humans everywhere pursue power, prestige, and status.
• High-status people enjoy the approval, respect, and praise of others.

💡 Chapter Summary

• The culture we live in determines which behaviors are attractive to us.
• We tend to adopt habits that are praised and approved of by our culture because we have a strong desire to fit in and belong to the tribe.
• 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 most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal behavior and (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 How To Fix the Cause of Your Bad Habit

“Make It Unattractive”

HOW TO REPROGRAM YOUR BRAIN TO ENJOY HARD HABITS

Imagine changing just one word: You don’t “have” to. You “get” to.

💡 Exercise ➖ Instead of telling yourself “I need to go run in the morning,” say “It’s time to build endurance and get fast.”

💡 Finance ➖ The money you save this month increases your purchasing power next month.

💡 Meditation ➖ Distraction is a good thing because you need distractions to practice meditation.

💡 Chapter Summary

• The inversion of the 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it unattractive.
• Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper under lying motive.
• Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires.
• 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.

The 3rd Law

CHAPTER 11 Walk Slow , But Never Backward

“The Best is the enemy of the Good” If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection. First takeaway of the 3rd Law: you just need to get your reps in.

HOW LONG DOES IT ACTUALLY TAKE TO FORM A NEW HABIT?

• Hebb’s Law: “Neurons that fire together wire together.” ➖Repeating a habit leads to clear physical changes in the brain.
• Repetition is a form of change.
• Automaticity is the ability to perform a behaviour without thinking about each step, which occurs when the nonconsious mind take over.
• It doesn’t matter if it’s been twenty-one days or thirty day or three hundred days. What matters is the rate at which you perform the behavior.

💡 Chapter Summary:

• 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 The Law Of Less Effort

HOW TO ACHIEVE MORE WITH LESS EFFORT

When deciding where to practice a new habit, it is best to choose a place that is already along the path of your daily rou tine. Habits are easier to build when they fit into the flow of your life.

💡 We try to concentrate while using a smartphone filled with distractions. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can remove the points of friction that hold us back.

Addition by subtraction.

1. Subtracted wasted effort, they added customers and revenue.
2. We Remove the points of friction that sap our time and energy, we can achieve more with less effort.

💡 If you look at the most habit-forming products, you’ll notice that one of the things these goods and services do best is remove little bits of friction from your life. Meal delivery services reduce the friction of shopping for groceries. Dating apps reduce the friction of making social introductions. Ride-sharing services reduce the friction of getting across town. Text messaging reduces the friction of sending a letter in the mail.

💡 When the first voice-activated speakers were released-products like Google Home, Amazon Echo, and Apple HomePod-I asked a friend what he liked about the product he had purchased. He said it was just easier to say “Play some country music” than to pull out his phone, open the music app, and pick a playlist. Of course, just a few years earlier, having unlimited access to music in your pocket was a remarkably frictionless behavior compared to driving to the store and buying a CD. Business is a never-ending quest to deliver the same result in an easier fashion.

The central idea is to create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. 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.

PRIME THE ENVIRTONMENT FOR FUTURE USE➖

• The purpose of resetting each room is not simply to clean up after the last action, but to prepare for the next action.
• “When I walk into a room everything is in its right place,” Nuckols wrote. “Because I do this every day in every room, stuff always stays in good shape…. People think I work hard but I’m actually really lazy. I’m just proactively lazy. It gives you so much time back.”
• Whenever you organize a space for its intended purpose, you are priming it to make the next action easy.
• The greater the friction, the less likely the habit.
• It is remarkable how little friction is required to prevent unwanted behavior.
• When I hide beer in the back of the fridge where I can’t see it, I drink less. When I delete social media apps from my phone, it can be weeks before I download them again and log in.

💡 CHAPTER SUMMARY➖

• 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.
• 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 How To Stop Procrastination By Using Two-Minutes Rule

The Two-Minute Rule

• Even when you know you should start small, it’s easy to start too big.
• “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”

“Read before bed each night” becomes “Read one page “

“Do thirty minutes of yoga” becomes “Take out my yoga ma

“Study for class” becomes “Open my notes.”

“Fold the laundry” becomes “Fold one pair of socks.”

“Run three miles” becomes “Tie my running shoes.”

💡 Chapter Summary

• Habits can be completed in a few seconds but continue to impact your behavior for minutes or hours afterward.
• Many habits occur at decisive moments-choices that are like a fork in the road-and either send you in the direction of a pro- ductive 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 ritualize 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.
• Standardize before you optimize. You can’t improve a habit that doesn’t exist.

CHAPTER 14 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. This is an inversion of the 3rd Law of Behavior Change: make it difficult.

HOW TOP AUTOMATE A HABIT AND NEVER THINK IT AGAIN

• The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do Increase the friction until you don’t even have the option to act.
• When you automate as much of your life as possible, you can spend your effort on the tasks machines cannot do yet. Each habit that we hand over to the authority of technology frees up time and energy to pour into the next stage of growth.
• As mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “Civilization advances by extending the num ber of operations we can perform without thinking about them.”
• Once my bad habit became impossible. I discovered that I did actually have the motivation to work on more meaningful tasks. After I removed the mental candy from my environment, it became much easier to eat the healthy stuff.

💡 Chapter Summary

• 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 fu true 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.

CHAPTER 15 Cardinal Rule Of Behavioral Change

The problem wasn’t knowledge . The problem was Consistency. “It is a lot easier for people to adopt a product that provide a strong positive signal.” “Make it Satisfying”. ➖We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying. This is entirely logical Felling’s of pleasure — even minor ones. Signal that tell the brain: “This feels good , do this again , next time .

THE MISMATCH BETWEEN IMMEDIATE AND DELAYED REWARDS

• Immediate-return environment because your actions instantly deliver clear and immediate outcomes.
• Delayed-return environment because you can work for years before your actions deliver the intended payoff.

💡 Chapter Summary

• The 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it satisfying.
• We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying
• The human brain evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards.
• The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately re- warded 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 re- peated next time.

CHAPTER 16 How to Stick with Good Habit Every Day

• Making progress is satisfying, and visual measures-like moving paper clips or hairpins or marbles-
• Provide clear evidence of your progress. As a result, they reinforce your behavior and add a little bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity.
• The best way to measure your progress is with a habit tracker.

HOW TO KEEP YOUR HABITS ON TRACK

• A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit. The most basic format is to get a calendar and cross off each day you stick with your routine.
• Don’t break the chain” is a powerful mantra.
• Habit tracking is powerful because it leverages mutule Laws of Behavior Change. It simultaneously makes a behavior obvious, attractive, and satisfying.

Chapter Summary

• 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.
• 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.
• Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing.

CHAPTER 17 How an Accountability Partner Can Everything

Chapter Summary

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

CHAPTER 18 The Truth About Talent(When Genes Matter and When They Don’t)

How Your personality Influences Your Habits

1. Openness to experience: from curious and inventive to cautious and consistent on the other.
2. Conscientiousness: organized and efficient to easygoing and son one end 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.

💡 Chapter Summary

• The secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field 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 dis- advantage in unfavorable circumstances.
• Habits are easier when they align with your natural abilities.
• Choose the habits that best suit you.
• Play a game that favors your strengths. If you can’t find a game that favors you, create one.
• 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: How To Stay Motivated in Life and Work

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. When you’re starting a new habit, it’s important to keep the behavior’s as easy as possible so you can stick with it even when conditions aren’t perfect. Once a habit has been established, however, it’s important to continue to advance in small ways. Working on challenges of just manage- able difficulty-something on the perimeter of your ability-seems crucial for maintaining motivation. Improvement requires a delicate balance.

💡 Chapter Summary

• The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities.
• 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.

CHAPTER 20 The Downside Of Creating Good Habit

HOW TO BREAK THE BELIEFS THAT HOLD YOU BACK

• When working against you, your identity creates a kind of “pride” that encourages you to deny your weak spots and prevents you from truly growing.
• The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow be yond it.
• “Keep Your identity Small”
• When you cling too tightly to one identity, you become brittle.
• lose that one thing and you lose yourself.

💡 Chapter Summary

• 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
• Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time.
• The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.

Conclusion

The Secret To Results That Last

• The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1 percent improve ment, but a thousand of them.
• It’s a bunch of atomic habits stacking up, each one a fundamental unit of the overall system.
• A commitment to tiny. sustainable, unrelenting improvements
• Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine.

• This is a continuous process. There is no finish line. There is no permanent solution.

The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements. It’s remarkable what you can build if you just don’t stop. It’s remarkable the business you can build if you don’t stop working. It’s remarkable the body you can build if you don’t stop training. It’s remarkable the knowledge you can build if you don’t stop learning. It’s remarkable the fortune you can build if you don’t stop saving. It’s re- markable the friendships you can build if you don’t stop caring. Small habits don’t add up. They compound.