James Clear’s - Atomic Habits
Principles for how to cultivate habits and stick to them
“Your outcomes in life are the lagging measure of your habits” James Clear
Understanding our habits is so critical to how we can live our lives with more joy and more energy. The International best-seller book, “Atomic Habits” by James Clear has some really amazing wisdom nuggets for learning more about how to cultivate habits and stick to them. For those of you curious to learn more or with no time to read the book, here are his principles broken down in an easy to read 10min summary.
Quotes
“Results in your life are determined by your habits” “We don’t rise to our goals, we fall to the level of our systems” “There are no high performance people just high performance habits”
Principle #1: Habits and our sense of identity
Habit = Behaviour done so much it becomes automatic
Identity and sense of self is rolled up in your habits
We come to believe things about ourselves through repetition of experiences which result from the story we tell ourselves
Habits create experiences that reinforce the repetition
Every action we take is a vote for the type of person we want to be/become
This is why smaller habits matter. Small actions don’t create an immediate transformation but they cast a vote. Doing one push up every day might not transform your body but you can now say you’re the type of person who does a push up every day. You’re changing your identity/story
Daily behavioural choices really do add up
Build Identity based habits first
The real goal is not to write a book but to become a writer, or not to run a marathon but to become a marathon runner
When you adopt a new identity you just act in alignment with who you are. It’s much easier to show up as you want to because this is who you are now
Principle #2: Habit, energy & the brain
Energy is needed to survive, getting energy requires energy and using energy is expensive — because the more energy you use the less you have available for whatever life throws at you
The brain is always looking for ways to conserve energy and habits are a great way of conserving energy (habits — e.g tying a shoelace or brushing your teeth — by their automatic definition require less energy, thought & attention)
The first time you do something it takes energy but once it becomes a habit you free up energy and waste less energy
Principle #3: Where do bad habits come from?
Modern society asks us to practise delayed outcomes & gratification (e.g getting paid at the end of the month…) which runs counter to our biological process which is for instant gratification
We are in a mismatched environment and so we look for other forms of instant gratification — bad habits are formed so easily because they offer immediate rewards. There are no immediate rewards with good habits
There are two types of rewards. “Immediate” and “Ultimate”. Bad habits bring us immediate reward and good habits bring us the ultimate reward
The cost of your good habits is in the present and the cost of your bad habits is in the future
Ways to counter this: Work out how to introduce an element of surprise and delight (instant gratification) to form a new counter habit. The instant gratification keeps you motivated to stick with the behaviour whilst the ultimate reward is on the way
Principle #4: Habits & belief
You can’t believe something about yourself without evidence
Delusion = Belief without evidence
To create a new story or identity let your behaviour lead the way because that creates new evidence and proof
This evidence and proof compiles to make your story/belief stronger
To create new beliefs and a new identity you have to create strong behaviour, evidence and proof of this
Principle #5: Habits & control
Many people believe they don’t have control over their habits
We can structure our habits to become the architect of our habits and not the victim of them
The Internal (cognitive) & external (behavioural) world influence our behaviours which create habits
Principles #6: Habits and environmental design
1st Law — Cues
Cues are obvious, visible and easy to see and they influence your behaviour
Make the cues for bad habits invisible and inverse this for good habits (e.g put the fruit in a bowl as the first thing you see in the kitchen, or put the fizzy drinks right to the back of the fridge out of sight)
You can do this with your digital environment too e.g by arranging your apps, changing the colour of them (research says that by changing app colours to black and white they are less enticing) or setting up habit automation (e.g automatic money-saving plans)
If you want a habit to be a big part of your life make it a big part of your environment have the cues in a prevalent place and if you want to reduce the impact a habit makes it a smaller part of your environment