Atomic Habits

Metadata

• Author: Clear, James

Highlights

swelling — location: 117

seizures — location: 118

-traumatic — location: 118

the surprising power of small habits for the first time. — location: 150

I focused on getting my life in order. While my peers stayed up late and played video games, I built good sleep habits and went to bed early each night. — location: 153

In the messy world of a college dorm, I made a point to keep my room neat and tidy. These improvements were minor, but they gave me a sense of control over my life. — location: 154

A habit is a routine or behavior that is performed regularly—and, in many cases, automatically. As each semester passed, I accumulated small but consistent habits that ultimately led to results that were unimaginable to me when I started — location: 157

We all face challenges in life. This injury was one of mine, and the experience taught me 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 — location: 169

We all deal with setbacks but in the long run, the quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits. With the same habits, you’ll end up with the same results. But with better habits, anything is possible. — location: 172

There wasn’t one defining moment on my journey from medically induced coma to Academic All-American; there were many. It was a gradual evolution, a long series of small wins and tiny breakthroughs. — location: 174

The only way I made progress—the only choice I had—was to start small. — location: 176

The backbone of this book is my four-step model of habits—cue, craving, response, and reward— — location: 209

Why do small improvements accumulate into such remarkable results, and how can you replicate this approach in your own life? — location: 273

is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis — location: 275

Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action — location: 276

1% worse every day for one year. 0.99365 = 00.03 1% better every day for one year. 1.01365 = 37.78 FIGURE 1: The effects of small habits compound over time. For example, if you can get just 1 percent better each day, you’ll end up with results that are nearly 37 times better after one year. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. — location: 283

Unfortunately, the slow pace of transformation also makes it easy to let a bad habit slide. — location: 296

If you eat an unhealthy meal today, the scale doesn’t move much. If you work late tonight and ignore your family, they will forgive you. If you procrastinate and put your project off until tomorrow, there will usually be time to finish it later. A single decision is easy to dismiss. — location: 296

But when we repeat 1 percent errors, day after day, by replicating poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalizing little excuses, our small choices compound into toxic results. It’s the accumulation of many missteps—a 1 percent decline here and there—that eventually leads to a problem. — location: 299

That said, it doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful you are right now. What matters is whether your habits are putting you on the path toward success. — location: 309

You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results. — location: 310

Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. — location: 313

If you want to predict where you’ll end up in life, all you have to do is follow the curve of tiny gains or tiny losses, and see how your daily choices will compound ten or twenty years down the line. — location: 316

Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy. — location: 319

Productivity compounds. Accomplishing one extra task is a small feat on any given day, but it counts for a lot over an entire career. The effect of automating an old task or mastering a new skill can be even greater. The more tasks you can handle without thinking, the more your brain is free to focus on other areas. — location: 324

As Warren Buffett says, “That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. — location: 330

Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change. — location: 348

In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment. You expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days, weeks, and even months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere. — location: 353

It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes are delayed. — location: 354

This is one of the core reasons why it is so hard to build habits that last. People make a few small changes, fail to see a tangible result, and decide to stop. You think, “I’ve been running every day for a month, so why can’t I see any change in my body?” Once this kind of thinking takes over, it’s easy to let good habits fall by the wayside. But in order to make a meaningful difference, habits need to persist long enough to break through this plateau—what I call the Plateau of Latent Potential — location: 355

If you find yourself struggling to build a good habit or break a bad one, it is not because you have lost your ability to improve. It is often because you have not yet crossed the Plateau of Latent Potential — location: 360

Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees. Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at thirty-two degrees. — location: 361

When you finally break through the Plateau of Latent Potential, people will call it an overnight success. The outside world only sees the most dramatic event rather than all that preceded it. But you know that it’s the work you did long ago—when it seemed that you weren’t making any progress—that makes the jump today possible — location: 363

quote from social reformer Jacob Riis hanging in their locker room: “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it—but all that had gone before.” — location: 369

THE PLATEAU OF LATENT POTENTIAL FIGURE 2: We often expect progress to be linear. At the very least, we hope it will come quickly. In reality, the results of our efforts are often delayed. It is not until months or years later that we realize the true value of the previous work we have done. This can result in a “valley of disappointment” where people feel discouraged after putting in weeks or months of hard work without experiencing any results. However, this work was not wasted. It was simply being stored. It is not until much later that the full value of previous efforts is revealed. — location: 372

But what determines whether we stick with a habit long enough to survive the Plateau of Latent Potential and break through to the other side? What is it that causes some people to slide into unwanted habits and enables others to enjoy the compounding effects of good ones? — location: 382

Eventually, I began to realize that my results had very little to do with the goals I set and nearly everything to do with the systems I followed. — location: 389

Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results. — location: 391

Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress. A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems. — location: 405

Problem #2: Achieving a goal is only a momentary change. — location: 415

Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment — location: 419

We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results. — location: 420

When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. — location: 421

Problem #3: Goals restrict your happiness. The implicit assumption behind any goal is this: “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy.” The problem with a goals-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone. — location: 423

Furthermore, goals create an “either-or” conflict: either you achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and you are a disappointment. You mentally box yourself into a narrow version of happiness. This is misguided. It is unlikely that your actual path through life will match the exact journey you had in mind when you set out. It makes no sense to restrict your satisfaction to one scenario when there are many paths to success. — location: 427

When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running. And a system can be successful in many different forms, not just the one you first envision. — location: 431

When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it? This is why many people find themselves reverting to their old habits after accomplishing a goal. — location: 435

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 . — location: 437

Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. — location: 441

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. — location: 442

atomic habits are not just any old habits, however small. They are little habits that are part of a larger system. — location: 446

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run. — location: 453

Chapter Summary Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run. — location: 452

Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient. — location: 456

An atomic habit is a little habit that is part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. — location: 458

THREE LAYERS OF BEHAVIOR CHANGE FIGURE 3: There are three layers of behavior change: a change in your outcomes, a change in your processes, or a change in your identity. — location: 478

The first layer is changing your outcomes. This level is concerned with changing your results: losing weight, publishing a book, winning a championship. Most of the goals you set are associated with this level of change. — location: 482

The second layer is changing your process. This level is concerned with changing your habits and systems: implementing a new routine at the gym, decluttering your desk for better workflow, developing a meditation practice. Most of the habits you build are associated with this level. The third and deepest layer is changing your identity. This level is concerned with changing your beliefs: your worldview, your self-image, your judgments about yourself and others. Most of the beliefs, assumptions, and biases you hold are associated with this level — location: 484

Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe. When it comes to building habits that last—when it comes to building a system of 1 percent improvements—the problem is not that one level is “better” or “worse” than another. All levels of change are useful in their own way. The problem is the direction of change. — location: 488

Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become — location: 492

Behind every system of actions are a system of beliefs. — location: 507

You may want better health, but if you continue to prioritize comfort over accomplishment, you’ll be drawn to relaxing rather than training — location: 514

It’s hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior. You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven’t changed who you are. — location: 516

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. — location: 526

True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity — location: 532

Anyone can convince themselves to visit the gym or eat healthy once or twice, but if you don’t shift the belief behind the behavior, then it is hard to stick with long-term changes. Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are. — location: 533

The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader. The goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner. The goal is not to learn an instrument, the goal is to become a musician — location: 536

Research has shown that once a person believes in a particular aspect of their identity, they are more likely to act in alignment with that belief. — location: 542

On any given day, you may struggle with your habits because you’re too busy or too tired or too overwhelmed or hundreds of other reasons. Over the long run, however, the real reason you fail to stick with habits is that your self-image gets in the way. — location: 563

your habits are how you embody your identity — location: 572

Your identity emerges out of your habits. You are not born with preset beliefs. Every belief, including those about yourself, is learned and conditioned through experience. — location: 570

the process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself. — location: 590

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become — location: 596

It is a simple two-step process: Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins — location: 613

an individual, as a team, as a community, as a nation. What do you want to stand for? What are your principles and values? Who do you wish to become? — location: 616

For example, “Who is the type of person who could write a book?” It’s probably someone who is consistent and reliable. Now your focus shifts from writing a book (outcome-based) to being the type of person who is consistent and reliable (identity-based) — location: 621

I have a friend who lost over 100 pounds by asking herself, “What would a healthy person do?” All day long, she would use this question as a guide. Would a healthy person walk or take a cab? Would a healthy person order a burrito or a salad? She figured if she acted like a healthy person long enough, eventually she would become that person. She was right. — location: 629

The concept of identity-based habits is our first introduction to another key theme in this book: feedback loops. Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits. — location: 631

The formation of all habits is a feedback loop (a concept we will explore in depth in the next chapter), but it’s important to let your values, principles, and identity drive the loop rather than your results. The focus should always be on becoming that type of person, not getting a particular outcome — location: 633

the true question is: “Are you becoming the type of person you want to become?” — location: 637

The first step is not what or how , but who . You need to know who you want to be. — location: 638

The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become. Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. — location: 650

Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity. — location: 653