An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits

& Break Bad Ones

Book Written by James Clear

SHORT SUMMARY
BY SUSHANT DAYAL
 Introduction

 In Atomic Habits, James Clear argues that big goals shouldn’t

be your main focus in life. Instead, you should be utilizing
frequent, repetitive actions and systems to help develop habits
that stick.

 The significant changes you want to make in your life depend

more on creating small habits than sizable shifts. For example,
suppose you want to get in shape. In that case, your best bet is
eating slightly better, exercising regularly, and getting enough
sleep. Instead of wasting your time setting unachievable goals
with drastic changes, all you have to do is make one minor
change daily. This theme runs throughout Atomic Habits.

 The quality of your life depends on the quality of your habits.

Some habits are small like an atom. As these atomic habits
accumulate, they can make a significant impact in your life.
 The Fundamentals – Why Tiny
Changes Make a Big Difference

What Are Habits?

 Habits are small, everyday behaviors that we perform

automatically, with little or no thought. Habits are also
powerful. We are what we do every day. In this way, habits
form our identity. So, when repeated daily, even the smallest
actions have a considerable effect.

 That said, positive change requires patience. But you can be

confident that good habits keep you on the right trajectory,
even if you don’t see results right away. Making significant
changes in your life through habits doesn’t require significant
upheaval. Tiny changes to your behavior are often enough to
lead to the desired results.
 Why Is It Hard to Build Good Habits?

Conditioning

 Habits are built through conditioning. In effect, we tend to

repeat satisfying behaviors until they become automatic. For
example, when you were a baby, you would have sucked your
thumb to calm yourself. This calming feeling was the satisfying
consequence that encouraged you to repeat the behavior. This
is why bad habits can be so hard to break and replace with
good habits.

 Fortunately, you can also use conditioning to help build good

habits. As adults, we can engage with habits like going on a
morning run because we get an endorphin buzz and feel more
productive.
 Minor Improvements

 We fail to create good habits because humans tend to convince

themselves that massive success requires massive action. It is
easy to underestimate the value of making minor
improvements, like going on a morning run each day. But the
benefits will accumulate since the habit is repeated daily.

 Incremental changes can have a big impact, 1% of personal

improvement each day means you’ll be 37 times better by the
same time next year. Here’s the math: 1.01 to the power of
365 days is 37.78 (in other words, 37 times better). That’s how
small, everyday improvements become atomic habits that help
you reach your goals.

 The downside is that bad habits can function this way too. 1%
worse each day results in terrible outcomes over the course of
a year, as 0.99 to the power of 365 is 0.03 (near 0).
 Compound Interest

 Atomic habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.

Just like money multiplies to produce compound interest, the
effect of your habits multiplies as you repeat them. But this
also means that habits may appear to make little or even no
difference on any given day. Still, the impact they deliver over
months or years can be enormous.

 Our goal is to develop compound interest in healthy habits. But

bad habits compound too.

 Putting off a project until tomorrow may seem to make no

difference at the time. But if you repeat this 1% error day after
day, these tiny errors can compound into toxic results.
Get Better by 37 times by getting
1% Better Everyday
 Success with Daily Habits

 Success is the product of daily habits, not once in a lifetime

transformations. You will not identify immediate positive
outcomes from daily habits, as outcomes will always lag
behind habits. In fact, habits often appear to make no
difference until you cross a threshold and unlock a new
performance level.

 This threshold is the plateau of latent potential. Because habits

do not provide us with the immediate gratification that
humans crave, we often give up. This moment marks our
plateau of latent potential.

 The plateau of latent potential shows us why it can be hard to

build habits. You simply must persist long enough to break
through this plateau. Habit gratification will take time, so you
must learn to be patient and have faith.
The Plateau of Latent Potential

“When you finally break through the Plateau of Latent

Potential, people will call it an overnight success.”
 Forget About Goals, Concentrate
on Systems
 Goals are the results you want to achieve. Systems are the
processes that lead to those outcomes.

 Your focus should be on the systems. If you adopt this mindset,

the goal will take care of itself. Clear provides a few reasons
why systems manage goals:

 Winners and losers have the same goals. For example, every
Olympian wants to win a gold medal, and every entrepreneur
wants to be successful. Merely creating this goal does not
guarantee success. Otherwise, we would have millions of gold
medalists, and every entrepreneur would achieve their dream.
So, it’s the winners’ systems that help them achieve success
and get results.
 Concentrate on Systems

 Achieving a goal is only a momentary change, so goals can

actually restrict your happiness. We assume that reaching
goals will bring immediate happiness. But this approach to life
sets us up to fail. For example, we may still feel unfulfilled even
after achieving our goal. And if we fail, we feel cheated out of a
chance at happiness.

 Goals do not create long-term progress, but systems do.

 If you have trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t

you. The problem is your system. So, aim to focus on the
overall system rather than your individual goals.

 A core theme of Atomic Habits is that you do not rise to the

level of your goals. Instead, you fall back on the level of your
system. It’s all about the system, not goals.
 Habit Loops

 Habits are self-reinforcing. This means that doing the habit and
receiving the reward strengthens your desire to do it again. You
can use this to your advantage when you want to change your
behavior.

 There is a clear step-by-step process that actions travel

through to become a habit:
 The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior because it
predicts a reward.
 After receiving this initial reward, you will start to develop
cravings. You are not craving the habit itself but the internal
change it delivered.
 Based on these cravings, this behavior becomes part of your
identity and becomes a habit you perform in your life.
 Finally, this habitual behavior starts to deliver long-term rewards.
 Morning coffee example in the
formation of a habit loop:

 Cue = waking up
 Craving = feeling alert
 Action = drinking coffee
 Reward = feeling alert
 The four steps of the habit loop combine to form a
neurological feedback loop. This loop is:

 cue –> craving –> response –> reward

 Ultimately, this loop allows you to create and reinforce

automatic habits. The more you practice this habit loop with
any particular habit, the more it will become automatic. Clear
provides four laws that describe the way you can start building
habit loops.
The habit loop:
 1st Law – Make It Obvious

 To take advantage of habit loops to build good habits, you want

to make the cues obvious. For bad habits, you want to make
the cues invisible or remove them.

 Suppose you want to get better at playing the guitar. In this

case, you need an obvious cue that acts as a reminder to play
the guitar. For example, you could put the guitar in the middle
of the living room so that your brain is triggered more often.

 Another excellent way to introduce new cues is by creating a

habit stack. Habit stacking is simply the act of adding habits
before and after each other. Remember that your brain creates
strong neurological connections to support regular habits. You
can use those connections by tying a new habit to an
established one. This could mean putting on workout clothes
directly after taking off your work shoes, or meditating for a
minute right after pouring your first cup of coffee.
 How to Form Good Habits

 Certain stimuli can trigger habitual behavior. Once you

understand that, you can use this knowledge to form good
habits.

 Encourage better habits by changing your environment. Create

cues that are as obvious as possible, and you’ll be more likely
to respond to them. For example, suppose you want to eat
healthier snacks. You could leave these healthy snacks out on
the shelf rather than hiding them in the salad drawer.
 Use implementation intentions. Implementation intentions are
specific plans about the time and place you will perform your
new habit. Don’t make vague statements like “I will eat better.”
Instead, create a clear plan of action, and set out when and
where you will carry out the habit you want to cultivate.

 Build temptation. Humans are motivated by the anticipation of

reward
 How to Form Good Habits

 Our brain releases dopamine (the feel-good hormone) not only

when we do pleasurable things but also when we anticipate
them. Note that establishing attractive habits will help you
stick to them. Link the habit you want to form (but are not
enjoying) with a behavior that you’re drawn to. For example,
allow yourself to watch episodes of your favorite show while
you’re cycling at the gym.
 Make the habit as easy to adopt as possible. Reduce friction for
good habits and increase friction for bad habits.
 Use the two-minute rule. Make any new activity feel
manageable by only committing to two-minutes of it. This is a
way to build easily achievable habits, leading you on to more
extraordinary achievements. Getting started is the most critical
step.
 Establish habits that are immediately satisfying. When you’re
pursuing habits with a delayed return, try to attach immediate
gratification to them.
 How to Keep Your Habits on Track

Option 1: Habit Tracker

 Habit trackers help ensure you maintain the daily behaviors
required to feed a habit. For example, use a calendar or diary
to create a habit tracker. Cross off every day that you manage
to stick to your good habit. What’s more, habit tracking itself is
an attractive and satisfying habit. This is why habit tracking is
so effective.

Option 2: Contract
 Develop a habit contract that imposes negative consequences
if you fail to stay on track. Try to involve other people. Simply
knowing that someone is watching can be a powerful incentive
to keep going.
 2nd Law – Make It Attractive

 Next, to make a habit stick, you must get regular positive

feedback from this habit. An efficient way to develop this
positive feedback is to use temptation bundling. Temptation
bundling relies on unenjoyable activities becoming enjoyable
through their connection with your favorite things, such as
watching TV and exercising. You are more likely to find a
behavior attractive if you get to do one of your favorite things
simultaneously.

 The second method to make the craving more attractive is

joining a culture where your desired behavior is normalized.
For example, if you want to become well-read, you could join a
book club. Joining this club will hold you accountable, and you
will likely find reading more fun than doing it alone.

 Similarly, if you want to break bad habits, you will want to join
a culture that doesn’t endorse your bad habits.
 3rd Law – Make It Easy

 Conventional wisdom holds that motivation is the key to

changing a habit. If we want to change badly enough, we will
change. Yet the relationship between motivation and changing
habits is a bit more complicated than this.

 Human behavior follows the law of the least effort. We

naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least
amount of work. You can use this to your advantage by
creating an environment where doing the right thing is as easy
as possible.

 To create this environment, you should reduce the friction

associated with positive behaviors. For example, if you want to
get fit, you could join a gym that’s on your route to work. You
can also get your gym bag organized and ready the night
before.
 4th Law – Make It Satisfying

 Habits don’t often provide the instant gratification of results.

That’s why it can be hard for us to pick up new habits. We
characterize the beginning of a new habit as sacrifice without
any rewards.

 If you start going to the gym a few times a week, nothing will
change physically at first. Instead, it takes months to discover
genuine results. So, to make your new habit stick, figure out a
way to give yourself an immediate reward.

 One technique you can use when the reward is long-term is to

set up a loyalty system for yourself. For example, imagine you
want to give up alcohol. On its own, there is no satisfaction in
merely abstaining. But suppose you transfer $25 to your
holiday bank account every week you go without alcohol. In
that case, you’ll be immediately rewarding yourself for your
new habit.
 The Three Layers of Behavior
Change
 In order to understand how to change our behavior, Clear
introduces the three layers of behavior change: outcomes,
processes and identity.

 Outcomes, the outer layer, are the results of an action or group

of actions.
 Processes are what you do to achieve those results.
 Finally, your identity, the innermost layer, is about what you
believe. When people set out to improve themselves, they first
think about the outcome they want and then think about the
process.

 But it’s hard to change your habits if you don’t change the
underlying beliefs (or identity) that led to your previous
behaviors. You might create a habit as a result of increased
motivation. In the end you won’t maintain this habit unless it
becomes part of your identity.
 The Three Layers of Behavior
Change

 Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish
to become. No individual action will transform your beliefs
overnight. The evidence of your new identity grows as your
positive actions build up.

Here’s a simple two-step process for change:

 Be the type of person you want to be.

 Prove your identity to yourself with little wins and small atomic
habits.
 Simple System to get 1% better:

 Breaking your bad habits and sticking to good ones.

 Avoiding the common mistakes most people make when

changing habits.

 Overcoming a lack of motivation and willpower.

 Developing a stronger identity and believing in yourself.

 Making time for new habits.

 Designing your environment to make success easier.

 Making tiny, easy changes that deliver big results.

 Getting back on track when you get off course.

 Learning how to put these ideas into practice in real life.

For More Details…Plz buy the book
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Link Below:

https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-
Break/dp/0735211299