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Key insights from
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way
to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
By
James Clear
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1. By harnessing
the power of one percent gains, British Cycling went from joke to
juggernaut in less than a decade.
British Cycling was a joke
for almost a century. From its founding in 1908 until the early 2000s, the
Brits won just one Olympic gold and never won the Tour de France. They were
so bad that one cycling brand refused to export its products to Great
Britain, fearing that Great Britain’s reputation would tarnish the brand’s
reputation.
In 2003, British Cycling
brought on a new performance director, David Brailsford. Cycling enthusiasts
in Britain hoped Brailsford would be able to reverse Britain’s abysmal
record. He adopted a style utterly different than that of his
predecessors—one he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal
gains.”
Brailsford identified
hundreds of factors that, in isolation, would be dismissed as having no
serious impact on cyclist performance. He had more comfortable seats
developed, swapped out old outdoor cyclist wear for the more aerodynamic
indoor outfits, and outfitted athletes with electrically heated shorts that
would maintain the ideal temperature for optimal muscular output. He had
the insides of transport trucks painted white, so that the dust (which
might disrupt the bikes’ precise modifications and settings) would be
readily noticeable and easily eliminated. He took athletes to labs to test
their sleep patterns and determine which mattresses and pillows would
maximize each cyclist’s rest. He had tests run on everything. Even most
obsessive compulsives would have been satisfied by Brailsford’s rigor and
attention to seemingly superfluous details.
These minor improvements
seemed absurd, but within five years of Brailsford’s leadership, something
strange happened: British Cycling started winning. A lot. At the 2008
Beijing Olympics, they won more than half of the indoor and outdoor cycling
events in which they competed. At the 2012 London Olympics, the Brits broke
nine Olympic records and seven world records for cycling. Not long after, a
British man won the coveted Tour de France title for the first time in the
competition’s history. Another Brit won the Tour de France in 2013—and in
2015, 2016, and 2017. In the space of a decade, British Cycling took home
almost 180 world championships and 66 Olympic golds. Many consider British
Cycling’s recent success the most notable win streak in the sport’s
history.
Something remarkable
happened in Great Britain’s cycling program. The coach implemented hundreds
of changes that, in isolation, would deliver negligible payoffs. But all
these one percent changes began to add up. We are under the mistaken
impression that a major success requires major action. The pressure to do
so is soul-crushing and leaves us stymied. Attempting something monumental
in one gargantuan effort, getting exhausted and overwhelmed, and then
quitting: that’s one option. Most people take this path. But another option
is accruing one percent wins that yield shockingly significant improvements
over time. David Brailsford’s “aggregation of marginal gains” doesn’t just
work wonders for floundering cyclists—it’s applicable to you and every
aspect of your life.
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2. You won’t get
breakthroughs without first traversing the Plateau of Latent Potential.
If you have an ice cube in
a room set to 26 degrees Fahrenheit, and then slowly raise the temperature,
nothing happens for a while: 27…28…29…30…31…still nothing. But once it hits
32, something starts to happen. As the temperature continues to increase, a
puddle forms around the cube, and grows as the change becomes even more
dramatic.
When we begin to develop
new habits or try to kick bad ones, there is usually a dormant period,
where nothing appears to be happening. This is the Plateau of Latent
Potential. It can be discouraging traversing this Plateau because it
“feels” like you don’t have much to show for your efforts. Don’t worry. You
haven’t stopped improving. One percent changes don’t seem significant, but
time reveals the power of habits. The more time that passes, the clearer
the impact of habitual actions becomes—for better or worse. Atomic habits
is a fitting concept. Any object is comprised of much smaller parts—atoms.
They’re small, but they can unleash incredible power.
The difference between
eating a burger and eating a salad today may not be that significant, but
what about 30 years of opting for burgers over salads? That’s a different
story—and a sadder, fatter one. Or think of a transcontinental flight from
Los Angeles to New York. If the pilot bears just three degrees to the right
at the start of the flight, the plane will touch down in Washington D.C.,
instead of New York. Habits are like existential compound interest. Just as
your money grows exponentially in a retirement account if you just leave it
in the vaults, so habits can help you grow without getting completely
exhausted.
The reason most people
don’t cultivate habits is because change in their lives isn’t immediately
apparent. They throw in the towel too soon. They expect their
self-improvement to be linear, but at the beginning and middle of a new
endeavor, there’s often a Valley of Disappointment for a time, where
expectations and reality clash and get you down.
The term “overnight
success” is a misnomer. Breakthrough is simply the moment when the
temperature rose to 32 degrees, but the habit was gaining momentum well
before the results became apparent. Getting the temperature from 27 to 31
degrees was no less significant than getting it from 31 to 32. For a while,
you’re crossing the Plateau of Latent Potential, a period where you feel
like you have nothing to show for your efforts. Far from wasted, it’s
potential energy that builds for that 32-degree moment.
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3. Results have
nothing to do with goals and everything to do with systems.
A common theme in
conventional self-improvement wisdom is clear, actionable goals. Forget
about goals. Systems are what will change your life. Goals can provide a
destination, which is important, but systems are the vehicles that get you
there. When you forget systems and emphasize goals, problems start creeping
in.
One problem with goals is that
everyone, in a broad sense, is going for the same things—including those
who fail. We suffer from survivorship bias: we look at life’s winners and
forget that there are far more people who set the same ambitious goals and
didn’t make it. Obviously, British Cycling wanted to win for the entire
twentieth century, but they failed. They didn’t get better results until
they had a better system full of atomic improvements.
Another problem with goals
is that the change goals bring is short-lived. How many people who get in
shape for a marathon or a triathlon continue to train after the race? Very
few. If you don’t have a system, you’ll return to whatever your habits were
before the momentary mountaintop accomplishment. We impulsively try to
effect immediate results, but we don’t sustain the high of a goal
accomplished. The outputs take care of themselves when we pay more
attention to the system of inputs.
Goals also minimize
opportunities for happiness. When you make goals, you postpone happiness
until you’ve reached a certain level. You’re super disappointed if you
don’t get there, and the rush of excitement is brief even if you do. You
play a high-stakes game and there’s not much happiness with either outcome,
because the preoccupation is with product rather than process.
You’ll never climb to the
level of your goals. You’ll always sink to the level of your systems. Get
your systems right, and everything else will begin to fall into place.
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4. Habits are more
about becoming someone than having something.
In Latin, the word for
identity came from a combination of two words: being and repeatedly.
Identity was understood as “beingness” on loop. Habits are the embodiment
of your identity. They form the conduit through which your beliefs about
yourself flow. If you study French half an hour every day, you are a
studious person. If you volunteer several times a week and give regularly
to organizations that care for the poor, you are a generous person. There’s
a painfully wide chasm between wishing you were something and being
something, but it’s habits that, slowly, often imperceptibly, bridge the
gap.
If you think of your life
as three concentric circles (like a target), your identity is at the
center, your systems are the second ring, and your behaviors are the third
ring. People usually start with the outermost ring, hoping their behaviors
will be different and somehow stay different. Don’t think in terms of what
you want to achieve. Think in terms of who you want to be.
Self-improvement comes less
from enormous, life-changing moments and more to do with tiny improvements
over time. Worry less about current outcomes than current trajectory.
It’s a two-step process to
settle what you’re going for:
First, choose the kind of
person you want to be.
Then, prove to yourself
that you are that person with one percent wins.
I am the kind of person who shows genuine interest in
others.
I am the kind of person who responds thoughtfully instead of
reacting immediately.
I am the kind of teacher who builds up her students.
I am the kind of boss who cares about his employees’
passions.
These statements establish
a baseline for changing your identity. Finding ways to add one percent wins
starts a system to get you there. Keep the system going for a period of
time, and your behavior will begin to match your identity statements.
Starting a new habit may begin with motivation, but motivation won’t make
it stick. Make it part of your identity, however, and you’ll fiercely guard
it and want to maintain it.
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5. All your habits
run on loops; understand the loops and you will start to make sense of your
habits.
Do you tie your right shoe
first or your left? Do you stir your drink clockwise or counterclockwise?
You may not know. Habits relieve us of the stress of consciously responding
to the millions of stimuli we encounter on a daily basis. If none of our
problem-solving strategies were reflexive, we’d go insane trying to keep
all the plates spinning. All the habits we do form, from typing to tying
our shoes to looking both ways before crossing streets, preserve the
brain’s processing power and are contained in the brain’s neural networks
in the form of loops.
These habit loops are made
up of four parts: a cue, a craving, a response, and a reward. They always
begin and proceed in the same order. They’re all attempts to solve
problems. Cue and craving are the problem phase and response and reward are
the solution phase.
Here are some examples of
the habit loop at work:
You enter a dark room
(cue); you want to see where you’re going (craving); you flip on a light
switch (response); you can see (reward). Being in a dark room and turning
on the lights become linked in your brain.
You feel sleepy (cue); you
want to feel energized (craving); you drink some coffee (response); your
feel more awake (reward). Feeling tired and drinking coffee become
associated.
These are perfectly fine
habits. Here’s another less constructive one:
You get stuck in a work
project (cue); you want to distract yourself from the frustration of being
stuck (craving); you start browsing your social media and texts—again
(response); you take the edge off the feelings (reward). Mental blocks at
work and pulling out your phone become linked.
This is the structure of
habits, both good and bad. This is how we’re wired. It’s good to know, so
we fight our bad habits instead of fighting our biology.
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6. If you want to
develop a new habit, make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.
To make an atomic habit
stick,
Make it obvious.
Make it attractive.
Make it easy.
Make it satisfying.
Each of these steps
corresponds to a component of the habit loop: making it obvious relates to
the cue; making it attractive relates to the craving; making it easy
relates to the response; making it satisfying relates to the reward.
Getting rid of bad habits
is just the inverse of these steps. To drop a bad habit,
Make the cue invisible.
Make the craving unattractive.
Make the response difficult.
Make the reward unsatisfying.
Make it obvious. Become
aware of your daily habits. Write them down. Reduce exposure to the cues
that trigger bad habits. Create an environment that exposes you to positive
cues. To start new habits, use intentional agenda setting: I will do action
a at time b in location c. Most people don’t
suffer from lack of motivation, but lack of clarity. People who set up
their intentions in this way are far more likely to stick with it. Once you
get one habit down, you can begin habit stacking: make the reward of one
habit the cue for the next habit. If having a cup of coffee in the morning
is the cue for meditating for two minutes, then meditating for two minutes
can become the cue for writing out the plan for the day. Writing out the
plan for the day can become the cue for getting to work on the first item
of business.
Make it attractive. The
more attractive something is, the more likely you are going to want to
integrate it. Get your dopamine involved in atomic habits you’re building.
Dopamine doesn’t get tripped once you perform a habitual activity—the mere
anticipation of an activity gets the dopamine flowing. Make the new habit
something you crave. Try grouping an action you want to do with an action
you need to do. Surround yourself with people and cultures that are already
doing the things you hope to make part of your life. Our deep desires to
fit in and belong to a tribe will bend us into the mold we see around us.
We imitate friends and family, social norms, and society’s powerful and
influential.
Make it easy. The natural
human proclivity is to drift towards the least demanding option. This is
why attempting to change too much too soon won’t stick. Respect the Law of
Least Effort by creating an environment that makes executing positive
behaviors as effortless as possible. Each new habit should be doable in
under two minutes. Reduce the excess friction that makes it difficult to
perform the desired action. The reason we gravitate toward social media and
Netflix is because there is minimal friction involved in making it happen:
just press a few buttons and you’re there. It’s the reason we spend so much
time on low-level activities of which we aren’t especially proud. On the
tough days where you’re tired and stressed, too many obstacles between you
and that desired behavior will keep you from sticking with it. It’s an
uphill battle. Make it so easy that you don’t have to draw from head space
you don’t have when life throws curveballs. It’s not about doing easy
things, but greasing the rails so that important things come naturally.
Remember that it’s more
important to show up and perform a good behavior consistently than doing it
for a long time every once in a while. So if you’re hoping to form a habit
of journaling, keep your notebook and pen next to the coffee machine so you
can write while your coffee brews. Commit to writing three lines rather
than three pages. This removes many of the obstacles that would block you
from forming that habit, and makes it a ritual.
Make it satisfying. Making
a behavior obvious, attractive, and easy increases the odds that you’ll do
that behavior. Making it satisfying increases the chance that you’ll do
that behavior again in the future. We are more likely to repeat something
when the association is positive. Rule Number One of behavior change is
that, “What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately
punished is avoided.” Create a chain of positive behavior and refuse to
break the chain. If you miss something once, get back on the horse
immediately. Get an accountability partner to add some social pressure.
Consider making your failures public. One entrepreneur had his Twitter
account configured in such a way that, if he didn’t get up at 5:55 AM, his
account would automatically send a tweet saying, “It’s 6:10 and I’m not up
because I’m lazy! Respond to this for $5 via PayPal (limit 5), assuming my
alarm didn’t malfunction.” Accountability helps. So does tracking habits.
Putting a chart on your fridge and marking Xs for everyday you perform your
habits delivers a feeling of satisfaction and progress.
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