Atomic Habits, by James Clear
My detailed takeaways from Clear's thought-provoking book on how to create systems that support success.
Reading Atomic Habits made a large impact on my life in 2022. The trick: I read it with a small group of people and we all set and explored our own intentions for new habits. It’s useful to experiment with new ways of engaging with your life. (No need to wait until New Years Resolutions to start evolving your own systems).
Here are a few of Clear’s perspectives that still stand out:
Allow yourself to miss a day here and there. Just don’t miss two days in a row. (Chapter 16)
Embrace the little innovations which help you become just a bit better today than yesterday. The importance is the trajectory of improvement. (Chapter 1)
Take time to think critically about how you can design your environment to be more successful. (Chapter 6).
If you enjoy my full summary below, I highly recommend you buy your own copy of the full book: Amazon or Bookshop.
Introduction
[Story of the author's long recovery from a devastating baseball injury to being named to the ESPN Academic All-America Team.] Coming back from his injury taught him a critical lesson: "changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you're willing to stick with them for years."
THE FUNDAMENTALS - Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference)
Chapter 1: The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits
Take your habits seriously, because over time they act as a kind of "compound interest of self-improvement." [Story of the British Cycling team pursuing the strategy of "the aggregation of marginal gains," where they sought out hundreds of tiny improvements that added up to gold medals.] Cultivate a trajectory of improvement by establishing systems - the processes that lead to results.
"...the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous."
We tend to undervalue positive habits because they seem to make little difference on any given day. We expect linear progress, and may give up when we don't immediately see results.
Most outcomes you seek will be lagging measures of your habits. "You get what you repeat."
Powerful visual analogy: Ice cube in a 20 degree room, and each positive action you take makes the room imperceptibly warmer, though the ice cube doesn’t yet start to melt. All of your progress toward the melting point is within the "plateau of latent potential," and only if you persevere until that point will you see the resulting transformation.
Goals help you set a direction, but systems help you make progress. Remember: "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."
Chapter 2: How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)
Habits are a powerful way to change your beliefs about yourself. Instead of thinking about what you want to achieve, start with the question: "Whom do I wish to become?" Then create evidence for that new identity with small wins. Some tips:
Imagine the difference between "I'm trying to quit smoking" versus "I'm not a smoker."
"Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last."
Every time you take an action in support of an identity you wish to cultivate (being a writer, athlete, etc.), you are "casting a vote for the type of person you wish to become."
Chapter 3: How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps
[Establishes the cue, craving, response, reward loop of behaviorism, which leads to the 4 laws to be explored further] Summary:
Step: To Create a Good Habit (To Break a Bad Habit)
Cue: Make it obvious (Make it invisible)
Craving: Make it attractive (Make it unattractive)
Response: Make it easy (Make it difficult)
Reward: Make it satisfying (Make it unsatisfying)
THE 1ST LAW - Make It Obvious
Chapter 4: The Man Who Didn't Look Right
"With enough practice, [our brains] can pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it." [E.g. a paramedic was able to save their father by seeing his subtle change in skin color.] We are often unaware of these cues, which can be dangerous. Some tips:
Make a scorecard to draw conscious attention to what you're doing. [Japanese train operators point and call out details out loud, which reduces error rates significantly.]
Write down all of your habits (e.g. for your morning routine) and label each as a good, bad, or neutral, where good means "this helps me become the type of person I want to be." Draw awareness to your own behavior.
"Once our habits become automatic, we stop paying attention to what we are doing."
Chapter 5: The Best Way to Start a New Habit
Write down an explicit implementation intention where you plan out when and where you will do the new habit. When you make it obvious in this way, you increase the likelihood you will follow-through. Use the simple formula: "Given situation X, I will do Y." Some tips:
This is a good way to anticipate - rather than just react to - the reality of your future situation: "When I see the sweets table tonight, I'm going to go drink a glass of water."
Use habit stacking to get new (useful) habits to piggyback on existing established habits. E.g. "After I take off my work shoes, I will immediately change into my workout clothes." Be specific. There are dozens of things that we do every day.
Chapter 6: Motivation is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More
All decisions are context dependent - e.g. "people often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are." Architect your environment to more naturally shift your own behavior in ways you want to. Some tips:
Make cues obvious. Place the apples in a big bowl in the middle of the kitchen counter. Place the guitar on a stand in your living room.
Make the best decisions more obvious than others.
Often the (interrelated parts of the) context is the cue itself. E.g. "This desk is only for working."
Chapter 7: 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." [Many Vietnam Vets abandoned heroin when returning home because it was simply not part of their home environment.] Some tips:
Bad habits etch grooves into our brains and trigger cue-induced wanting. Find ways to make the cues invisible: put your phone in a different room, move the TV out of the bedroom, etc.
“Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one. [...] Instead of summoning a new dose of willpower whenever you want to do the right thing, your energy would be better spent optimizing your environment.”
Remember: failure is not from moral weakness, but is heavily influenced by the environment.
THE 2ND LAW - Make It Attractive
Chapter 8: How to Make a Habit Irresistible
Our dopamine system is not just about experiencing pleasure, but a larger part of our brain is dedicated to anticipation of pleasure. Anticipation, not pleasure itself, spurs us to action. Some tips:
History shows that "rewards will become more concentrated and stimuli will become more enticing" for them to continue to capture our attention. Adapt your own habits over time.
Try “temptation bundling,” where you link habits you want to do with those you need to do.
Chapter 9: The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits
Our earliest habits (formed as we grow up) are most natural and rarely feel like burdens. Habits naturally feel more attractive when they resemble habits of people who are …
… close to us. Reflect on what you might be imitating from your direct community. Consider joining a culture where "your desired behavior is the normal behavior."
… the “many,” especially if we are unsure how to act. It is hard to challenge the tribe.
… the powerful, since we naturally seek power, prestige, and status.
Chapter 10: How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits
When you want to stop something, find a way to make it unattractive. Remember that "your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face; they are just the methods you learned to use." Some tips:
Often a bad habit is driven by wanting to feel different in some way, not by actually wanting the cigarette, potato chip, or cookie.
Consider reframing a difficult habit not as "I have to..." but rather "I get to ... wake up early."
Creating a motivation ritual "by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit" may begin to associate the difficult habit with the emotional experience of the thing you enjoy.
THE 3RD LAW - Make It Easy
Chapter 11: Walk Slowly, but Never Backward
Sometimes the most important thing is getting your repetitions in. [Example of a photography class where the students graded on quantity produced better photos than those graded on quality.] Aim to be practicing, not just planning (which is a form of procrastination). Some tips:
Habits become more ingrained as we get more repetitions in. Especially if you maintain a consistent and frequent rate of the desired behavior. Make it easy to get reps in.
"Focus on taking action, not being in motion."
Chapter 12: The Law of Least Effort
We all aim to conserve energy whenever possible, so "make it as easy as possible in the moment to do things that payoff in the long run." Reduce friction for the habits you want to cultivate (and make bad habits difficult). Finding a way to remove friction is like removing the bend in a hose. Some tips:
Design your environment to reduce friction (from Chapter 6). E.g. place the guitar on a stand in your living room.
Prime your environment for future use. E.g. leave out your workout clothes for the next morning; store greeting cards sorted by occasion to make it easy to send one to a friend.
Chapter 13: How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two Minute Rule
"~50% of our actions on any given day are done out of habit." Some of our choices are decisive in that making the right or wrong choice sets us on a path toward having a good or bad day respectively.
Aim for "new good habits to take less than 2 minutes to do." Some tips:
Try establishing an entry point - e.g. hailing a cab to go to the gym - as your habit. "Once you start doing the right thing, it's easier to continue doing it."
Aim to "standardize [the new habit] before you optimize. You can't improve a habit that doesn't exist."
Note: you can also set a rule that “you can do nothing but write for the next hour. You don’t need to write, but you can’t do anything else.” Eventually you’ll get bored and start writing.
Chapter 14: How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible
When making bad habits difficult, consider using a commitment device, which blocks you from doing something. [The cash register was invented to lock cash and receipts inside after each transaction, making theft harder.]
Examples: boxing up half of your meal to go before the meal is served; installing an outlet timer to automatically turn off the internet at 10pm.
Some one-time decisions (buying a better mattress for quality of sleep, automatically setting aside a portion of your income to go into savings) can make good habits automatic.
THE 4TH LAW - Make It Satisfying
Chapter 15: The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change
Behaviors which are inherently satisfying are easier to maintain. [E.g. making handwashing a pleasant experience makes the habit easier to maintain.] "Pleasure teaches your brain that a behavior is worth remembering and repeating." Some tips:
Good habits often include delayed gratification. "The costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future."
Time inconsistency - the delay between doing an action and seeing the pleasurable results - leads us to favor actions with quicker payoffs. Consider developing your own skill of delaying gratification.
Seek ways to feel successful, even in a small way, when you stick to a habit. For example, if you want to save up for a trip to Europe, then name your savings account, "Trip to Europe," and move money into it whenever you defer an expense. Choosing to skip your morning latte and immediately transferring $5 instead can feel satisfying and redirect you from disappointment.
Chapter 16: How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day
Habit trackers are powerful ways to feel a sense of accomplishment in the moment and maintain momentum over time. These can take any number of forms: e.g. one junior stock broker started each day with a jar of 120 paper clips; with each call he made, he would move one paper clip into the empty jar.] Habit tracking works because: a) it makes your next move obvious; b) it makes your progress visible; and c) it feels satisfying in the moment to mark it as done. Some tips:
Aim to make tracking automatic when possible. Only track the most important habits manually.
"Record each measurement immediately after the habit occurs." This reinforces feelings of satisfaction.
Rule when you (inevitably) miss a day: Never miss twice. "Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit."
Remember that the difficult days or bad workouts are the ones which "maintain the compound gains you accrued from previous good days." (It’s most important not to skip.)
Be thoughtful about measuring what matters. E.g. a restaurant may find it better to "track how many customers finish their meal" rather than overall revenue.
Chapter 17: How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything
Immediate and compelling consequences for doing something you don't want to do can be an effective deterrent. "Make it unpleasant." [Example of gruesome thought experiment where the president could only access the nuclear launch codes if he murders someone directly. Effective deterrent.] Some tips:
Sign an actual contract - with consequences for breaking it - with an accountability partner.
Find someone whose opinion you care about; use that to create momentum with your habits.
ADVANCED TACTICS - How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great
Chapter 18: The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don't)
Find the "right field of competition" - where you have good alignment with your natural inclinations and abilities - and you’ll find a lot of things easier. Genetics will influence this, but are not sufficient to predetermine success. Some tips:
Build habits that work for your personality. Especially openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (the 5 characteristics with biological underpinnings).
"Find a game where the odds are in your favor" and create a virtuous cycle of wanting to continue playing. When you’re unsure and/or currently “losing,” focus on exploration; when you’re sure and/or currently winning, focus on exploiting.
Questions to ask yourself: a) What feels like fun to me, but work to others? b) What makes me lose track of time? c) Where do I get greater returns than the average person? d) What comes naturally to me?
Don't get "so caught up in the fact [you] have limits that [you] rarely exert the effort required to get close to them."
"Work hard on the things that come easy."
Awesome quoted passage: If you can’t find a game where the odds are stacked in your favor, create one. Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind Dilbert, says, “Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my case, I can draw better than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people. The magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes. It’s the combination of the two that makes what I do so rare. And when you add in my business background, suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to understand without living it.”
Chapter 19: The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Live and Work
You’ll find the perfect balance between boredom (when things are too easy) and failure (when things are too hard) by finding activities at the "just manageable" level of difficulty.
That said, sometimes the most successful people are those who stick to their schedule despite feeling bored. Some tips:
"Mastery requires practice. But the more you practice something, the more boring and routine it becomes." Boredom, not failure, is the biggest threat to success.
Avoid becoming a "fair-weather anything" where you only do something when feeling in the mood. "Fall in love with boredom."
Chapter 20: The Downside of Creating Good Habits
Repeating things over and over again leads to fluency, speed, and skill. If we stop thinking about how to improve, we fall into a "good enough" trap. Pair your habits with deliberate practice - a system for reflection and review - to avoid falling into ruts and instead achieve real mastery. Some tips:
[Example story of the LA Lakers who implemented a comprehensive system for scoring the effort each player made during each game. They then asked each player to improve their average score by 1% each season.]
Don’t just learn new habits; fine-tune them as you go.
Example systems: a) keep a decision journal where you later review whether you were right or not; b) reflect on what went well or not each week; c) annual review of how well you’ve stuck to desired habits; d) annual integrity report to reexamine your core values driving your life and work and where you might be going astray or might set a higher standard for the future.
Reflect too often and you’ll become overwhelmed. Too infrequently and you’ll have no opportunity to get better. Find the right cadence.
"The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it." So also reflect periodically on your identity and how it evolves over time.
Conclusion: The Secret to Results That Last
This is a continuous process, and whenever you hit a bottleneck find a way to make it more obvious, attractive, easy or satisfying. Never stop making improvements.