#5: A Summary of Atomic Habits
Key Takeaways and Learnings
One of the most impactful books I’ve read in the last year is Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s the book I most strongly recommend to my friends who are looking to improve their lives. In this post, I will walk through my key takeaways from the book, and I’ll share how you can get started on applying some of these learnings.
Key Takeaways
The Habit Loop
Clear outlines the four stages of habits as the cue, the craving, the response, and the reward. These four stages form a feedback loop. The cue sparks a craving, which motivates a response. This yields a reward, which fulfills the craving and, ultimately, becomes linked with the cue. This is best visualized by the following diagram from the book
Creating Good Habits
There are four steps to creating good habits: Make it obvious, Make it attractive, Make it easy, and Make it satisfying. Let’s walk through each of these in more detail.
1) Make it Obvious
How do you make a habit obvious? Use what Clear calls implementation intentions, which means specifying when, where, and how you will do the habit. Why? Because you are two to three times more likely to follow through with a habit if you make a specific plan for when, where, and how you are going to implement it. So instead of saying: I will work out today, I instead say I will work out today at 7 am downstairs.
Another effective strategy once you’ve done this is what Clear calls “habit stacking”. Take an already existing habit and build a new habit on top of it. This way, your current habit becomes a trigger for your new one. I’ve done this effectively in the mornings. I always made my bed, but I wanted to start meditating. I added meditation on top of the first habit so that it looks something like this: After I wake up, I will make my bed. After I make my bed, I will meditate in my room for 10 minutes.
2) Make it Attractive
The most effective way to make a habit attractive is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do. A good way to do this is by joining an organization or culture where your desired behavior is the norm. For example, I wanted to start writing, so I joined On Deck Writer’s Fellowship. My friends often don’t write, so I changed the environment and made it more attractive to write.
3) Make it Easy
Use the two-minute rule here, which means downscaling habits until they can be done in two minutes or less. Often you’ll find they’re much easier to complete. In fact, even for habits that do take longer than two minutes you naturally start to build those into habits just by having a mindset of doing it for two minutes. Instead of thinking I will write for an hour, I challenge myself to write for two minutes. Once I begin writing, it’s easy to keep writing, and I’ll do it for longer given I have the time. Additionally, try and automate your habits as much as possible for things that you don’t enjoy using technology and one-time purchases. Things such as autopay can save you time and save you mental stress from cognitive overload.
4) Make it Satisfying
This is where you want to try and reward and reinforce yourself for good habits. Thinking about it is good, but writing it down is even better. Clear advocates tracking habits in a habit tracker so that you don’t break the streak. He says missing a day is okay, but the key is to never miss twice, because two straight misses is the start of a new habit in the opposite direction. I have been trying to meditate consistently, and while there have been days I haven’t meditated, I have been careful not to miss two straight days.
Breaking Bad Habits
Interestingly, Clear’s advice on how to break bad habits has been even more powerful for me. The advice is essentially the opposite of the laws outlined above: Make it invisible, Make it unattractive, Make it difficult, and Make it unsatisfying.
One of the habits I wanted to break was my social media use, specifically my use of Instagram and Facebook. I was using Instagram and Facebook for hours a week, and I found it would often distract me from productive work. By following these four laws, I have been able to essentially eliminate my usage of Facebook and Instagram, and I even significantly reduced my time on Twitter (though, admittedly, my time spent on the app is still mildly concerning). I’ll walk through how it’s helped.
1) Make it Invisible
I removed the Facebook and Instagram apps from the home screen from my phone. By reducing exposure to it, I noticed I was opening the app significantly less. It was eye-opening how often I would open those apps just out of habit or because I was mindlessly clicking the apps with nothing better to do. I also turned off all notifications on the apps.
2) Make it Unattractive
The benefits of a reduction of time on these apps started to become clear because, for me, it would free up many hours during the week. I imagined having close to 5-10 hours a week back. Even if that wasn’t time that was spent being purely productive, that was time I could spend talking directly with friends or family, reading, watching sports, learning more about investing — doing things I enjoyed. Time is precious, and I realized I really wasn’t getting that much value out of those apps. I then set time limits on the iPhone for these apps.
3) Make it Difficult
Increasing friction is the key here. So even when I did open the apps out of habit, I started logging out of the app after using it. Now every time I would use Instagram, for example, I would need to search and find the app on my iPhone, and then I would need to login with my username and password. This made me think twice about using the app versus doing checking the news or just putting down my phone and doing something else. Just creating this friction makes visiting the app go from pleasurable to painful, which leads to…
4) Make it Unsatisfying
It started to feel less satisfying going to these apps, and as time went on, it got much easier. But admittedly, at first, it was hard.
The absolutely best thing you can do to make bad habits unsatisfying is to make a social contract. This can be with an individual or a community of people. The idea is by sharing the contract and making it public, if you fail to keep up your end of the bargain, it will be painful. By announcing on Twitter that I am writing for thirty days straight, I am making my own social contract, and I would feel guilty by failing to deliver to my readers.
Additionally, getting an accountability partner is a powerful tool. This can be mutually beneficial as you hold each other accountable. My friend, Radhika, has been that person on my journey to write thus far, and it has worked really well. We are pushing each other to keep writing. On Deck was the community that held me accountable to get started. These types of partners and contracts work really well, particularly if you are extrinsically motivated.
Change Your Identity
If you are intrinsically motivated, Clear says changing your habits starts with changing your identity.
The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is 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…Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity
One of the biggest blockers to changing your identity is self-image. But remember, the focus is on what you want to become, so you shouldn’t be too attached to who you are right now. As you start to identify with what you want to be, you will become more proud of it, and that pride will motivate you:
If you’re proud of how your hair looks, you’ll develop all sorts of habits to care for and maintain it. If you’re proud of the size of your biceps, you’ll make sure you never skip an upper-body workout. If you’re proud of the scarves you knit, you’ll be more likely to spend hours knitting each week. Once your pride gets involved, you’ll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits.
Focus on Systems, Not Goals
Finally, Clear claims a big mistake that we make is that we set far-reaching goals. Instead, he argues, focus on your systems:
The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress…You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
Start small, and create systems that compound over time. Just showing up is a critical first step to consistency.
How To Get Started
If you’re wondering how you can start applying some of these learnings, a good place to start is by making a list of your daily habits and marking which ones are positive, negative, and neutral. You can track this in a habits scorecard.
Clear says, you’ll want to ask yourself:
Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?
If the habit reinforces your desired identity, then it’s generally good. If the habit conflicts with your desired identity, then it’s generally bad. From here, you can begin to see what habits you want to focus on creating, and what habits (if any) you want to start breaking.
We can all strive to make improvements in our lives. James Clear’s brilliant book makes it easier to get started today.