How to become 37.

78 times better at anything | Atomic Habits summary (by James Clear)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ7lDrwYdZc&t=6s
(Joanna 老师整理)

Do you ever feel like you're just floating through life, but not actually getting closer to the person that
you want to be? It usually happens around nNew years, you imagine all the bad habits you're going to
break free from, and all the good habits you will begin. "This time will be different" you say to
yourself, this time I am going to do the things that I say I will, only to end up back where you began
shortly after and no closer to what you had envisaged. So the question is, how do you break free from
bad habits and make the habits you desire easier and automatic? Atomic Habits by James Clear
answers all these questions. We're going to be doing a fast-paced, detailed summary of the book and
dive deep into topics like Habit loops, Dopamine spikes, priming your environment, plus heaps more.
And make sure you stick around until the end of the video, where I go through step by step how I'm
personally using this book to improve my own habits. I hope this summary inspires you to go out and
grab a copy of the book for yourself, because this book deserves a space on everyone's bookshelf.
Let's jump into it.

Escaping Ordinary

Imagine a plane taking off and travelling from New York to Los Angeles. Jjust before takeoff,. yYou
adjust the plane just slightly by three degrees, or around 80 inches. If you were to keep flying in a
straight line, you would end up closer to Tijuana in Mexico than toin your intended destination of Los
Angeles. And the same goes for our habits. Tiny changes in our habits can change the trajectory of our
lives in ways that we can't even notice until many years into the future l. Looking back. Iin both good
ways and bad, you are your habits.

The Power of Atomic Habits. - "A slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a very
different destination".

Massive Action Versus 1% Improvements.

Far too often we convince ourselves that massive success is only possible through massive action in
any goal we are pursuing. We expect ourselves to make some quantum leap or momentous
improvement that will gain others' attention. However, it is the tiny improvements that aren't even
noticeable at first that create incredible change. Let's look deeper into the math. 1% better every day
for a year will compound to 37 times better. But 1% worse every day over a year will bring you close
to zero. Your habits can compound against you in the form of things like stress or negative self-talk, or
they can compound for you in the form of things like knowledge, productivity, skills and relationships.
Success is the product of daily habits, not once in a lifetime transformations.

The Truth About Progress

When you start any endeavour in your life, here is what you think should happen : . lLinear pProgress.
Bbut here is what actually happens. Notice this section here in the beginning - , small changes in our
progress are not even noticeable. James Clear refers to this part of the graph as the “valley of
disappointment.” YouWe've done so much, . You've put in so much effort and you can barely see any
results. This is where most people fail and slip back into their old routines. The most powerful
outcomes of any compounding process are delayed, so patience is required.

Goals versus systems.

“Forget about goals, f. Focus on systems instead.” A goal is a result you want to accomplish. Systems
deal with processes that lead to the results. The conventional wisdom suggests that the best way to
achieve anything we want in life - be it getting into better shape, building a successful business, or
spending more time with family is to set specific, realistic goals. But if you completely ignored your
goals and focused only on your systems, would you still succeed? The author of this book argues that
you would. Here are some problems with only having goals. Ssuccessful and unsuccessful people
share the same goals, so therefore the goal cannot be what differentiates winners from losers.
Achieving a goal only changes your life for that moment in time. Goals can create an either- or
conflict. Either you achieve the goal and succeed, or you don't a. And you're a failure even if you are
making progress in the right direction. When you achieve a goal, what do you do after? If your goal
was running the local marathon, chances are after completing it, your motivation will quickly fade and
you will just slip back into your old routines. Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are
best for making progress.

A System of Atomic Habits

The problem with changing your habits is not you. The reason why you repeat the same bad habits for
so long isn't because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.

Atomic habits are small routines and behaviours that accumulate to produce incremental positive
outcomes . Oover time. B, big breakthroughs tend to get more attention than small improvements.
But what really matters are the little daily decisions and actions we take. Just as atoms are the
building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results. There are
three layers to behaviour change. The first layer is changing outcomes - . Tthe result?. Losing that
weight, writing that book, or winning the season. The outcomes are what you get. The second layer is
changing your process - . Wwhat you do. T, the new workout routine or developing a daily reading
habit. And the third layer is changing your identity - , what you believe. Y, your world views and how
you think about yourself and others. Most people focus on the outcomes. But the best way to change
your habits is by focusing on the person you want to become instead of the results that you want. The
goal isn't to learn an instrument, it's to become a musician. The goal isn't to run a marathon it's to
become a runner. When something you want in your life becomes part of your identity, that is when
your behaviours will start to naturally change. When you tell yourself and others “, I'm a runner”, you
want to live up to that identity. Remind yourself every time you do a workout, you are an athlete.
Every time you write a line of code, you are a programmer. And each time you instruct your team, you
are a leader.

The Habit Loop.

A habit is when something becomes repeated enough times that it becomes automatic. Ultimately,
we want our habits to solve problems in our lives with the least amount of effort. A habit is formed
and reinforced by means of a continuous feedback loop: . Cue+Ccraving+Rresponse+Rreward. The key
to creating habits that stick is to create feedback loops that are continuously being improved.

Cue-. Phone buzz; . Craving-. Want to know who messaged;. Response. -Pick up the phone; . Reward. -
Solve the problem of who messaged.

Cue-. Mind goes blank at work; . Craving. -Want to alleviate the frustration; . Response-. Check social
media.; Reward-. Satisfy the need to feel less frustrated.

Over time, rewards become associated with cues. So in this example, checking social media becomes
tied to your mind going blank at work. And then checking Facebook may be the cue to check
Instagram, which becomes the cuequeue to watch YouTube. And before you know it, "your mind
going blank" cue has led to 20 minutes of wasted time. And the more you repeat these habit loops,
the stronger and more automatic they become. Cues can really be anything. A smell, a sound, a sight,
a person, a location etc. Try to think of any cues in your daily life that are initiating your good or bad
habit loops. So how can we influence the habit loop to work for us? This book shows us the four laws
that will guide us to do just that.

Law 1 - make it obvious

. Most of your current habits are so automatic that you don't even realise them. You must first
become aware of your habits before you can change them. You can achieve that with your habit
scorecard. Write down all your daily behaviours on a habit scorecard from the moment you wake up
until the moment you go to bed. Your scorecard may look something like this. Bbased on whether it
helps you become the person you aspire to be. , Ccategorise each habit as positive, negative or
neutral. At this stage, we aren't trying to change anything, but just observe what is actually going on
in our daily lives.

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." - Carl Yung.

Vagueness is a real problem when it comes to habit formation. And studies have shown that quite
often , the reason people fail to stick to a habit is not because of a lack of motivation, but because of a
lack of clarity. “One day I will or get into shape” is easy to say to yourself, but too vague to get any
momentum. What you need is a time and a place.

The most common cues, time and location will help you achieve your goals. Clearly state your
intention to act using the following formula: “I will [behaviour] at [time] in this [location].” Here is a
bad example, “I will read more this month”. Here is a good example, “I will read a book for 15 minutes
daily at 06:00 a.m. in the spare bedroom.”

Another good way to get a habit started is by habit stacking. To stack habits, tie a desired habit to an
existing habit according to the following formula: “ Aafter [current habit] I will [new habit].” For
example, “Aafter I brush my teeth, I will stretch for five minutes.” You can stack habits together. For
example, after you finish brushing your teeth, you will meditate for ten minutes and then plan the
rest of your day before checking social media. The chain of habits is more likely to be sustained if you
practice this consistently.

Choosing the correct trigger is essential. You need a trigger cue. Your trigger should be something that
you do automatically without fail during your day, such as waking up, turning off your alarm or
brushing your teeth. James Clear tells us in the book that motivation is highly overrated. You can
better shape your behavior by designing your environment. We are more influenced by our
environment than our willpower or motivation. It's hard to stick with positive habits in a negative
environment. Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior. Creating a habit
requires you to redesign the space around you to one, make it easier to see the cues for the desired
habits and two, avert bad habits by making them invisible. If you want to drink more water, make the
cues visible and obvious. Place water bottles around the house in places you are likely to see them.
Want to read more? Place the book somewhere where you'll see it. And if you want to get better on
guitar, don't leave it out of sight in the closet. Context is the cue. Objects in the environment do not
determine our behaviour. Rather, it is our relationship to them that does. Stop seeing your
environment as a place simply filled with objects. Imagine it as a place filled with relationships. The
couch in the living room is a place where one person reads an hour a night. For another, the couch is
where they watch Netflix and eat pizza and relax after work. If your relationship with a couch is a
place to relax, then trying to get a work-related task done in that environment may be difficult. Try to
make separate zones in your house for different activities. The author likes to use the mantra. One
space, one use. If you're trying to eliminate a bad habit, you can only rely on self control in the short
term. Cutting off bad habits of the source is a more reliable solution and one of the most practical
ways to eliminate a bad habit is to make it invisible. Eliminate it from your environment. For example,
put your phone in another room for a few hours if you have trouble getting work done. Or put junk
food out of sight, or remove it from your house if you're trying to lose weight.

Law 2 - make it attractive. When we expect to be rewarded, we take action. The more rewarding an
action is, the more likely we are to repeat it until it becomes a habit. Hence, the first step to forming
good habits is to make them more attractive. Understanding how dopamine affect your body will help
you. Dopamine. Our motivation levels are affected by dopamine, a hormone and neurotransmitter.
We are more motivated to act when our dopamine levels rise. By measuring dopamine, scientists can
pinpoint the exact moment at which craving occurs. It was once assumed that dopamine was just
about pleasure, but now we know it's vital to many neurological functions, including motivation,
memory, learning, punishment, as well as voluntary movement. The hormone dopamine is released
not only when we experience pleasure, but also when we anticipate it. Gambling addicts have a
dopamine spike right before they place a bet, not after they win.
Let's dive deeper into dopamine spikes. Using social media, eating junk food, and taking drugs are all
associated with high levels of dopamine and are highly habit forming. Think about before going on a
vacation. Sometimes the thinking and anticipation of a vacation is better than the actual vacation.
Seeing the junk food you desire surges dopamine, not after eating it. Drug addicts increase dopamine
when they see the drugs, not after taking them. The craving is what causes us to take action in the
first place. Making our habits attractive is vital because it is the expectation of a rewarding experience
that drives us to act. Here you can use a strategy known as temptation bundling. The temptation
bundling process makes a habit more attractive by combining an action we need to do with one that
we want to do. For example, you could bundle watching Netflix. Something you want to do with
working out. Something you need to do. Temptation bundling applies a psychology principle known as
premack principle, developed by Professor David Premack. The Premack principle states "More
probable behaviours will reinforce less probable behaviours". In other words, even if you're not
looking forward to doing some exercise, you'll become conditioned to do it because you get to do
something else you really enjoy. Group Influence we are continually wondering, what will others think
of me? And altering our behaviour based on the answer.

We are influenced by the people closest to us and the groups that we belong to. If you're trying to
build a good habit, one of the best ways to reinforce the habit is to find and become part of a culture
where that habit is the norm. If you want to get into better shape, surround yourself with fit people. If
you want to read more, join a Book Club. primal Motivators The Source of Cravings in your normal
everyday life, you wouldn't say something to yourself like I want to eat pizza because I need to
consume this food to survive. Surface level cravings are merely manifestations of our deeper
underlying motives, and these underlying motives guide our behaviour. Here are some examples from
the book of underlying motives. Conserving energy, obtaining food and water, finding love and
reproducing, connecting and bonding with others, winning social acceptance and approval. Reducing
uncertainty, achieving status and prestige. Your brain did not evolve with a desire to smoke cigarettes,
check Instagram every five minutes, or to play video games. Online platforms and products do not
invent new motivations, but rather appeal to the underlying motives of human nature that we already
have to gain our attention. Your habits are modern day solutions to ancient desires new versions of
old vices. The underlying motives behind human behaviour remain the same. People who have the
underlying motive of connecting with others may jump onto Facebook. Others seeking the underlying
motive of finding love and reproducing may sign up for Tinder. If you want to reduce uncertainty,
there's Google for that. And seeking social acceptance, there's Instagram. Reprogramming your brain
to enjoy hard Habits You can make hard habits more attractive if you can learn to associate them with
a positive experience. By highlighting the benefits of a habit rather than its downsides, you can quickly
reprogram your mind and make it seem more appealing. For example, fitness equals health and well
being and not fatigue. Cleaning the house and environment conducive to peace of mind and not
wasted time. Saving money, future financial freedom and not sacrifice make it unattractive to break a
bad habit. Do the same, but highlight the benefits of not doing that habit to make it as unattractive to
keep doing as possible.

Law 3 - make it easy. How long does it actually take to form a new habit? During habit formation, a
behaviour becomes increasingly automatic as it is repeated. As you repeat an activity, your brain
changes in order to become more efficient at doing it. Long before neuroscientists dug into the
process of forming habits, repetition was known as a powerful tool for establishing habits. You
activate particularly neural circuits associated with habits every time you repeat them. So framing
habit formation in terms of time is flawed. It should be framed in terms of number of repetitions.
Reducing friction, the law of Least Effort the more energy required, the less likely it is to happen. It
takes almost no energy to get into the habit of reading one page of a book each day. Habits are more
likely to occur when they require less energy. The bigger the obstacle, the more friction there is
between you and the desired outcome. If you need to travel 20 minutes out of your way to go to your
gym, chances are you will not. But if your gym is located on your commute to work, you will greatly
decrease the friction. By making your good habits more convenient, you're more likely to stick to
them. Your life will be easier if you find ways to reduce friction rather than trying to solve it. In order
to build better habits, we have to find ways to reduce friction associated with our good habits and
increase friction associated with our bad habits. Priming the environment for use by automating or
setting up your environment, you can reduce the friction for future action. For example, I will lay out
my workout clothes the night before so when I get up, I can get moving in the morning. Or to prepare
a healthier breakfast, place a pan on the stove, cooking spray on the counter and gather the
ingredients the night before again to reduce any friction. Using the two minute rule to stop
procrastinating. Using the two minute rule can help you establish small habits that will lead to success
in bigger ones. Find a simple two minute version of your desired habit. You want to scale down your
desired outcome. Running a marathon becomes putting on your shoes and stretching for two
minutes. Reading an hour per day becomes reading one page. You need to get the routine anchored
in place and then slowly build up the difficulty. After you've mastered the two minute habit, you can
progress to the next phase to make something more difficult. Think about ways you can create
barriers of friction between yourself and the bad habit. Make it as impractical as possible. If you want
to watch less TV, unplug the TV after each use and put the remote in an inconvenient location. When
you go shopping, leave your credit cards under the seat of the car. If you have a bad habit of
spontaneous spending. Do anything you can to make your bad habits less likely to occur.

Law 4 - make it satisfying. The most important rule of behaviour change. A feeling of pleasure is a
message to the brain: This feels good. Let's repeat this next time. When you experience pleasure, your
brain learns that behaviour is worth remembering and repeating. What is immediately rewarded is
repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided. The first three laws increase your chances of
doing the habit this time. The last law increases your chances of repeating the habit next time. The
Mismatch between Immediate and Delayed Returns it is common for us to feel good about our
immediate results, but bad about our long-term outcomes. When we practice bad habits, it is the
opposite. With good habits, the immediate result is unpleasant, but the ultimate outcome is
satisfying. A certain amount of success in just about every field involves ignoring an immediate
reward. For the long-term one, it is best to add a little immediate pleasure to the habits that will pay
off in the long run and a little pain to those that don't. The final thing in getting a habit to stick is to
feel successful, even if it's in a small way. The feeling of success is a signal that your habit paid off and
the work was worth the effort. It is satisfying to make progress, and you can monitor your progress
using visual measures such as moving paperclips, hair pins, or marbles. These little wins can go a long
way. For example, for each sales call you make today, move a marble from one jar to the complete
jar. For each 25 minutes of writing, move a paperclip. Visual measurements can take many forms diet
journals, workout logs, download progress bars, or even page numbers in a book. Keeping a habit
tracker may be the best method to monitor your progress. Using a habit tracker is a simple way to
determine whether you did a particular habit. Tracking becomes a reward in and of itself. Crossing a
task off your to do list, completing an entry in your exercise log, or writing an X on the calendar is
satisfying. In spite of your best efforts, it is inevitable that life will interrupt you at some point. A bad
day at work, a bad performance, or a bad workout can happen to anyone. When you're having a bad
day, you don't realise how valuable it is to just show up. Lost days hurt you more than successful days
help you. Don't break the chain. Every time you cross a day off your calendar. For a given habit, you
are creating a chain. Showing up is so important. Missing two days or links in a row is the start of a
bad habit. Even if you usually do 50 push ups, just do ten on that given day if that means not breaking
the chain. Breaking a bad habit make it unsatisfying. A behaviour is less likely to occur when pain is
immediate. Being held accountable by a partner is a good way to keep your desired habits in check.
We all want to be liked and respected, so we would rather just avoid the punishment that we will be
held accountable to. For example, I owe you $10 every time I miss a workout, plus the respect I lose
for failing to do what I said I would. Your behaviour is more likely to be influenced by concrete and
immediate consequences. The Habit contract. You can create a habit contract to hold yourself
accountable, just as governments use laws to hold citizens accountable. You can create a habit
contract either verbally or in writing, which makes it clear that you will honour a particular habit and
there will be punishments if you do not. You can then use your accountability partners to enforce this
contract.

Okay, so it's one thing to read a book, but another to actually apply it to your life. So I'm going to try
and visually represent how I've personally been using this book to build systems around my habits the
past few months. After you guys read the book, maybe your approach will be different than mine or
much better. Or maybe there are some parts that I completely missed or could improve upon. So do
let me know in the comments below. The good habits I wanted to develop were more consistent
workout and reading routines. The bad habit I wanted to eliminate was becoming distracted and over-
consuming social media. First, I completed the habit scorecard. This gave me a good idea of habits I
could try to eliminate, but more importantly, it gave me an idea of daily habits I was already doing
that I could stack my new habits with. Ultimately, when you find habits you want to work on, you
want to be pushing the desired good habits towards this side of the spectrum and the bad habits
towards this side. For the working out habit, the first step was to make the cues more obvious and I
had a few tools that I could use from the book. In this case I used what James Clear calls the
implementation strategy. So I will work out at 06:00 a.m. in the living room. Next, I tried as best I
could to design my environment conducive to this new habit. I took my dumbbell set out of the closet
and I put them in the living room. I also found a few pictures of healthy physiques on the internet and
put them in places around the house as cues that would remind me of the habit. Next, I moved on to
the craving phase. So to increase dopamine and motivation, I bundled the workout with listening to
some of my favourite podcasts and I also implement reprogramming of the brain. So I tell myself
repeatedly I don't have to do a workout, but I get to build strength and a healthier body. And that
subtle shift in mindset has gone a long way. Ideally, joining a gym or finding a group of people to work
out with would be even better to strengthen this habit. But unfortunately all the gyms are closed
where I live so I'm kind of on my own and these two tools will have to suffice for the moment. Next,
making it easy using the two minute rule to make sure that I don't end up like most people starting a
new habit that try to do too much too soon. I want my habit to not feel like a challenge at all. So my
two minute rule was putting on my workout clothes and stretching and if that was the only thing that
I accomplished then that was fine because I showed up. But you will quickly find that once you are
there, you are now motivated to get the workout done. So it is weird, but the motivation seems to
come after you get the habit started. My mindset is focused on small 1% changes compounding into
meaningful results and that my systems will get me the results and not vague goals. Remembering
that my main focus at this point is just making sure that I show up and start anchoring this habit in
place. Once you are consistently showing up, you can increase the progression to decrease friction. I
made the rule that I'm not allowed to check my phone until the workout was complete. If I get
distracted by emails or social media, it is one excuse and one step of friction between myself and the
workout getting completed. Lastly, this was a game changer for me priming the environment. When I
place my shoes, yoga mat and dumbbells out the night before, I Skyrocket my show up and workout
percentage. As soon as I place these items out the night before, I feel like the ritual has begun and the
workout is already complete because I have zero excuses. So with those three phases of the loop
systemized to get me to show up, I only had the last phase of the loop left, which was to make sure I
keep repeating the habit. I use both of these tools somewhat together. To close out the loop, I use a
habit tracker. Crossing the day off the calendar becomes the reward and it also forces me to not want
to break the chain. I also take a picture of my calories that I burnt and I send that picture to my
partner and that also increases the satisfaction. Mindset wise, I begin with identity and I remind
myself after each workout that I want to become the kind of person that enjoys fitness and doesn't
miss workouts. I don't put all my focus on outcomes such as I want to be 10 kg latter by such and such
a date, and I also remind myself that I need to be patient for the results and that I'm probably still
somewhere in this valley of disappointment before I will see those results. I went through the same
process with the reading habit with a few minor changes, so I used the habit stack. After making a
coffee, I will read for 90 minutes, so making a coffee was my trigger cue for reading. My one space,
one use rule was reading on the balcony of the apartment. One of the best parts of my day is a nice
cup of coffee in the morning. So this was the perfect thing for me to bundle my reading habit with.
Remembering how dopamine raises in anticipation of a reward and not the reward itself. I wanted
this dopamine spike for wanting coffee to start becoming associated with reading. My two minute
rule was to read one page of The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. Super simple again. In the beginning, all
I was concerned with was showing up and getting this habit anchored. Then I slowly built up the habit
to 90 minutes for the bad habit I was trying to eliminate. To make the habit invisible, I started by
making my phone as boring as I possibly could, which required deleting a lot of apps. I used the
reprogramming tool to highlight the unattractive side of over-consuming social media, telling myself
things like consuming is the easy and lazy option of the masses, and do I want to be a consumer or a
producer? Random scrolling through feeds is for losers. So you want to try and paint your bad habit in
a light that makes it super unattractive to keep doing. To increase friction, I left my phone in a drawer
in another room, so completely out of sight. And to make it unsatisfying, I have an accountability
partner. I get my partner to enforce this habit. The punishment is, if she sees me using social media
during work time, I owe her $10.

So that is how I've been using this fantastic book, guys, to get great results so far. Go out and grab a
copy of this book for yourself, if you haven't already. You're going to take in the knowledge at a much
deeper level from all the stories and examples that James Clear gives you in the book, as well as some
advanced techniques which we didn't cover in the summary, that will help you strengthen your
habits. Good luck in your journey. Thank you for watching and see you in the next video.

Vocabularies

Focus on words you do not know yourself,

good verbs, verb phrases, adjectives and adverbs, nouns