Author: James Clear

Topics: Habits

All information is attributed to the author. Except in the case where we may have misunderstood a concept and summarized incorrectly. These notes are only for reference and we always suggest reading from the original source.

Contents

The Fundamentals: Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference
1. The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits
2. How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and vice versa)
3. How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps

The 1st Law: Make It Obvious
4. The Man Who Didn’t Look Right
5. The Best Way to Start a New Habit
6. Motivation Is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More
7. The Secret to Self-Control

The 2nd Law: Make It Attractive
8. How to Make a Habit Irresistible
9. The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits
10. How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits

The 3rd Law: Make It Easy
11. Walk Slowly, but Never Backward
12. The Law of Least Effort
13. How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule
14. How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible

The 4th Law: Make It Satisfying
15. The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change
16. How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day
17. How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything

Advanced Tactics: How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great
18. The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don’t)
19. The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work
20. The Downside of Creating Good Habits

Conclusion: The Secret to Results That Last

Appendix

Notes

Habit cheat sheet

The Fundamentals: Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference

1: The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits

WHY SMALL HABITS MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE

1% better every day. Not noticeable at first, but especially meaningful in the long run. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. This is true of good habits, bad habits, and errors.

Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. Follow the curve of tiny gains or losses and see how your daily choices will compound ten or twenty years later.

Positive Compounding

• 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.
• Knowledge compounds: Learning one new idea won’t make you a genius, but a commitment to lifelong learning can be transformative. Furthermore, each book you read not only teaches you something new but also opens up different ways of thinking about old ideas. As Warren Buffett says, “That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.”
• Relationships compound: People reflect your behavior back to you. The more you help others, the more others want to help you. Being a little bit nicer in each interaction can result in a network of broad and strong connections over time.

Negative Compounding

• Stress compounds: The frustration of a traffic jam. The weight of parenting responsibilities. The worry of making ends meet. The strain of slightly high blood pressure. By themselves, these common causes of stress are manageable. But when they persist for years, little stresses compound into serious health issues.
• Negative thoughts compound: The more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a thought loop. The same is true for how you think about others. Once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry, unjust, or selfish, you see those kind of people everywhere.
• Outrage compounds: Riots, protests, and mass movements are rarely the result of a single event. Instead, a long series of microaggressions and daily aggravations slowly multiply until one event tips the scales and outrage spreads like wildfire.

WHAT PROGRESS IS REALLY LIKE

Habits often appear to have no perceivable difference until a breakthrough moment after a critical threshold has been reached. Detectable as a new achievement or level in performance. Progress is rarely linear. You need to commit to a habit until you reach The Plateau of Latent Potential. This is the point that looks like overnight success when the reality is you’ve been slowly working at it consistently.

FORGET ABOUT GOALS, FOCUS ON SYSTEMS INSTEAD

Results have little to do with the goals you set and more to do with the systems you follow.

• If you’re a coach, your goal might be to win a championship. Your system is the way you recruit players, manage your assistant coaches, and conduct practice.
• If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal might be to build a million dollar business. Your system is how you test product ideas, hire employees, and run marketing campaigns.
• If you’re a musician, your goal might be to play a new piece. Your system is how often you practice, how you break down and tackle difficult measures, and your method for receiving feedback from your instructor.

Goals are good for setting a direction, but there is no point in concerning yourself with them once you’ve set your course. All that does is use up energy better spent implementing and following the systems.

Problem 1: Winners and losers have the same goals.

Goal setting suffers from survivorship bias. We concentrate on the people who end up winning and mistakenly assume that ambitious goals led to their success while overlooking those who had the same objective but didn’t succeed.

It is only when a system of continuous small improvements is implemented that achievements are made.

Problem 2: Achieving a goal is only a momentary change.

If you haven’t changed the system, everything will revert back to the way it was after you complete your goal. Achieving your goal only changes your life in the moment. In order to improve for good, you need to solve the problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.

Problem 3: Goals restrict your happiness.

A goals first mentality always puts off happiness until the next milestone. Either you achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and are a disappointment.

Fall in love with the process rather than the product so you don’t need to wait for permission to be happy.

Problem 4: Goals are at odds with long-term progress.

If your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left after you achieve it? The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. Endless refinement and continuous improvement.

A SYSTEM OF ATOMIC HABITS

If you have trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves until you change the system. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

An atomic habit is a tiny change, marginal gain, or a 1% improvement that are part of a larger system. Habits are the atoms of our lives. Each one is a fundamental unit that contributes to your overall improvement.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Getting 1% better every day counts for a lot in the long-run.
• Habits are a double-edged sword. They can work for you or against you, which is why understanding the details is essential.
• 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.
• 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.

2: How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)

Changing our habits is challenging for two reasons: we try the wrong thing and we try to change our habits in the wrong way.

THREE LAYERS OF BEHAVIORAL CHANGE

• The first layer is changing your outcomes. This level is concerned with changing your results: losing weight, publishing a book, winning a championship. Most goals are at this level.
• 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 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.

Outcomes are about what you get, processes are what you do, and identity is what you believe.

OUTCOME-BASED HABITS VS. IDENTITY-BASED HABITS

Outcome-based is what you want to achieve and identity-based is who you want to be. Are you a smoker trying to quit or somebody who is no longer a smoker. If you want more money, but your identity is of somebody who consumes rather than creates, you’ll be pulled towards spending rather than earning. If you want better health, but continue to prioritize comfort over accomplishment, you’ll be drawn into relaxing rather than training. Change yourself first and the accomplishments will follow.

The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it. This makes me think of those who are always proud of their ability to handle pain and confront those who are “victimizing” them.

Your behaviors are a refection of your identity. What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are (consciously or unconsciously). This becomes apparent when people say things like: “I’m always late”, “I’m horrible at math”, or “I’m not a morning person”. We always find the easiest way to avoid contradicting ourselves. It becomes more comfortable believing what your culture believes (group identity) or to do what upholds your self-image (personal identity), even if it’s wrong. The biggest barrier to positive change is identity conflict.

THE TWO-STEP PROCESS TO CHANGING YOUR IDENTITY

Every belief is learned and conditioned through experience. When you make your bed every day, you embody the identity of an organized person. When you write every day, you embody the identity of a creative person. Identity = Repeated beingness.

Whatever your identity is right now, you only believe it because you have proof of it. The more evidence you have for a belief, the more strongly you believe it. Write until you become a writer. Up the frequency until evidence accumulates enough to shape your identity. A continuous microevolution of self. Each action is a vote towards the person you would like to become. You begin to trust the story you tell yourself more and more.

1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

What do you want to stand for? What are your principles and values? Who do you wish to become? Take small steps to reinforce that identity, e.g. what would a healthy person do? Create a positive feedback loop.

THE REAL REASON HABITS MATTER

You need to know the person you want to become, otherwise you will have no direction (sounds like a goal to me).

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• There are three levels of change: outcome change, process change, and identity change.
• 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.
• Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.
• The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.

3: How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps

WHY YOUR BRAIN BUILDS HABITS

A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough to become automatic. You use trial and error, analyze the situation, and making conscious decisions on how to act. The brain does its best to find the easiest method that gets results. When you stumble upon an unexpected reward, you change your strategy for the next time. Building connections and feedback loops to repeat rewarded behavior.

Jason Hreha writes “Habits are, simply, reliable solutions to recurring problems in our environment.” Habits decrease the level of brain activity required and lower anxiety around unexpected results. Trial and error is skipped once a cognitive script is developed. Mental shortcuts learned from experience.

The conscious mind is the bottleneck of the brain. You can only focus on one thing at a time. So, making habits and mental models frees the brain up to work on new or more essential tasks. Reducing cognitive load and freeing up mental capacity. Habits don’t restrict freedom, they create it.

THE SCIENCE OF HOW HABITS WORK

Your brain runs through the same pattern, to create habits, in this order: Cue, craving, response, and reward.

The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior. It is a bit of information that predicts a reward. Our ancestors looked for rewards like food, water, and sex. Now we have secondary rewards like money, fame, power and status, praise and approval, love and friendship, or a sense of personal satisfaction. Rewards that lead to improving odds of survival and reproduction, but secondarily.

Cravings are the motivational force behind every habit. You crave the feeling something provides or the relief from an unpleasant feeling. A desire to change your internal state. The thoughts, feelings, and emotions of the observer are what transform the cue into a craving.

The response is the actual habit you perform, which can take the form of a thought or action. Whether a response occurs depends on how motivated you are and how much friction is associated with the behavior. Your response also depends on your ability to carry out the action.

The response delivers a reward, the end goal of a habit. Rewards satisfy us and teach us. They satisfy us by delivering contentment and relief from craving. They teach us by learning what actions provide these useful or pleasurable experiences. Rewards close the feedback loop and complete the habit cycle.

A behavior must be sufficient in all four stages for a habit to develop. A cue to start, a craving to increase motivation, a behavior that is not too difficult, and a reward to satisfy the desire. Together they result in a neurological habit feedback loop. All behavior is driven by the desire to solve a problem. The solution is the response and reward.

THE FOUR LAWS OF BEHAVIOR CHANGE

How to create a good habit:

• 1st Law (Cue): Make it obvious
• 2nd Law (Craving): Make it attractive
• 3rd Law (Response): Make it easy
• 4th Law (Reward): Make it satisfying

How to break a bad habit:

• 1st Law (Cue): Make it invisible
• 2nd Law (Craving): Make it unattractive
• 3rd Law (Response): Make it difficult
• 4th Law (Reward): Make it unsatisfying

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.
• The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible.
• Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.
• The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.

The 1st Law: Make It Obvious

4: The Man Who Didn’t Look Right

Your brain is a prediction machine. It continuously takes in its surroundings and analyzing information. Whenever it experiences something repeatedly, it begins to notice what it important by sorting through the details and highlighting the relevant cues, cataloging the information for future use. Our brain carries out this function constantly without our conscious input. Cravings can arise with hormonal and chemicals circulating throughout the body when cues trigger their activation. These lead to automated behaviors/habits, regardless of your intentions or awareness.

Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

THE HABITS SCORECARD

Pointing-and-Calling is a safety system used to reduce mistakes in the Japanese subway system. It raises the level of awareness from a nonconscious habit to a more conscious level. Operators must use their eyes, hands, mouth, and ears, and are more likely to notice something wrong. Just like a leaving house habit of phone, wallet, keys.

A Point-and-Call example for a morning ritual:

• Wake up =
• Turn off alarm =
• Check phone –
• Go to bathroom =
• Weigh +
• Take a shower +
• Brush teeth +
• Floss teeth +
• Deodorant +
• Hang towel =
• Get dressed =
• Make a cup of tea +

Once you have a full list you can look at each behavior and ask yourself if which ones are good, bad, or neutral behaviors. The +, -, and = beside the previous behaviors represent this. These marks depend on your goals and situation. Good and bad are subjective, as they are all effective at serving some specific role. Good habits have net positive outcomes (exercise may be painful/exhausting but will have a beneficial response later) and bad habits will have a net negative effect (smoking for stress relief will harm you in the long run).

Assess the behaviors by whether they serve the purpose of helping you to become the person you would like to be. If they conflict with your desired identity, you should mark them as negative. This exercise is just making a scorecard without judgement or blame. No need for action yet, just attention.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• With enough practice, your brain will pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it.
• Once our habits become automatic, we stop paying attention to what we are doing.
• The process of behavior change always starts with awareness. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them.
• Pointing-and-Calling raises your level of awareness from a nonconscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalizing your actions.
• The Habits Scorecard is a simple exercise you can use to become more aware of your behavior.

5: The Best Way to Start a New Habit

Implementation intention is a plan that you make beforehand about when and where to act. How you intend to implement a particular habit. Implementation intentions leverage time and location cues.

• “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.”

Instead of planning when and where we will carry out our desired habits or actions, we tend to hope we will just remember to do them or feel motivated to do so at the time. Many people think they lack the motivation to achieve their goals when they actually lack clarity. No motivation or inspiration. Just follow a predetermined plan.

I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]

• I will meditate for one minute at 7am in my kitchen.
• I will study Spanish for 20 minutes at 6pm in my bedroom.
• I will exercise for one hour at 5pm in my local gym.
• I will make my partner a cup of tea at 8am in the kitchen.

If you are unsure when to start a new habit, try the first day of the week, month, or year. People are more likely to take action because hope is usually higher. Hope gives reason to take action, and a fresh start is motivating.

Being specific about what you want to achieve helps you to say no to things that derail progress, distract attention, and pull you off course. We often say yes to requests when we aren’t clear enough about what we should be doing instead. When dreams are vague, it is easy to rationalize little exceptions all day long.

HABIT STACKING: A SIMPLE PLAN TO OVERHAUL YOUR HABITS

The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases. Many human behaviors also follow this pattern. You often decide on what to do next based on what you just finished doing. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior.

Habit stacking is a special form of an implementation intention that pairs a new behavior to a current one. A method created by BJ Fogg, which is part of his Tiny Habits program.

• “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”
• After I pour my cup of coffee each morning, I will meditate for one minute.
• After I take off my work shoes, I will immediately change into my workout clothes.
• After I sit down to dinner, I will say one thing I’m grateful for that happened today.
• After I get into bed at night, I will give my partner a kiss.
• After I put on my running shoes, I will text a friend or family member where I am running and how long it will take.

HABIT STACKING

Habit 1 (cue, craving, response, reward) -> Habit 2 (cue, craving, response, reward) -> etc.

Habit stacking increases the likelihood that you’ll stick with a habit by stacking your new behavior on top of an old one.

A morning example may be:

• After I pour my morning coffee, I will mediate for 60s.
• After I meditate for 60s, I will write my to-do list for the day.
• After I write my to-do list for the day, I will immediately begin my first task.

An evening example:

• After I finish eating dinner, I will put my plate directly into the dishwasher.
• After I put my dishes away, I will immediately wipe down the counter.
• After I wipe down the counter, I will set out my coffee mug for tomorrow morning.

You can also insert new behaviors into the middle of your current routines. Such as Wake up->Make my bed -> [Place a book on my pillow]->Take a shower. That way, a book will be waiting for you later, removing activation energy, decision making, and memory reliance.

A set of general habit stacks:

• When I see a set of stairs, I will take them instead of the elevator.
• When I walk into a party, I will introduce myself to someone I don’t know yet.
• When I want to buy something over $100, I will wait 24 hours before purchasing.
• When I serve myself a meal, I will always put veggies on my plate first.
• When I buy a new item, I will give something away.
• When the phone rings, I will take one deep breath and smile before answering.
• When I leave a public place, I will check the table and chairs to make sure I don’t leave anything behind.

Habit stacking implicitly has the time and location built into it. If you would like a new habit to be successful, pick a time and place where you will actually be likely to stick to the routine and not be preoccupied. Your cue should also have the same frequency as the desired habit. Use your habit scorecard as a starting point or create a list with two columns. In the first column, write down the habits you do without fail (get out of bed, take a shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, eat breakfast), and in the second, write down things that happen to you each day without fail (sun rises, you get a text message, a song ends, the sun sets).

Using these lists you can search for the best place to stack a new habit. The habit works best if the cue is highly specific and immediately actionable. Remove all ambiguity. Specific and clear instruction on when to implement action is required. Make it obvious.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The 1st Law of Behavior Change is make it obvious.
• The two most common cues are time and location.
• Creating an implementation intention is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a specific time and location.
• The implementation intention formula is: I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].
• Habit stacking is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a current habit.
• The habit stacking formula is: After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].

6: Motivation Is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More

People often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are. Your habits change depending on what room your are in and what cues are in front of you. Every habit is context dependent.

Kurt Lewin: Behavior is a function of the Person in their Environment, or B = f (P, E). Items presented at eye level tend to be purchased more than those on the floor. The same goes for “end caps”, the products at the end of aisles.

In humans, perception is directed by the sensory nervous system. We perceive the world through sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. We also have nonconscious senses, such as “noticing” a temperature drop before a storm, the pain in the gut rising during a stomachache, or when you are falling off balance on rocky ground. Receptors also pick up internal stimuli, such as salt levels in the blood driving the need to drink when thirsty. However, vision is our most dominant sense.

HOW TO DESIGN YOUR ENVIRONMENT FOR SUCCESS

A few ways to make preferred habits more obvious:

• Place medication next to the faucet on the bathroom counter.
• Place your guitar stand in the middle of the living room.
• If you want to send more thank-you notes, keep a stack of stationary on your desk.
• Fill up a few water bottles each morning and place them in common locations around the house.

The most persistent habits have multiple cues. Make sure the best choice is the most obvious one.

THE CONTEXT IS THE CUE

Start thinking about your environment as being filled with relationships rather than cues. You associate each item and environment with memories and habits. Habits become easier to create in a different environment by associating new habits to a new context devoid of previous relationships/competing cues.

Want to be more creative? Move to a bigger room, a rooftop patio, or a building with expansive architecture. Take a break from the space where you do your daily work that is linked to your current thought patterns.

Want to eat healthier? Shop somewhere new.

If you are struggling to find a new place, create a separate space for work, study, exercise, entertainment, and cooking. One space, one use. When you mix contexts, the easier habits usually win out. Using a phone to do everything (entertainment, work, socializing) leads to it being used mostly for the easiest and most rewarding task. Focus and relaxation can become automatic when they have designated stable spaces.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Small changes in context can lead to large changes in behavior over time.
• Every habit is initiated by a cue. We are more likely to notice cues that stand out.
• Make the cues of good habits obvious in your environment.
• Gradually, your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behavior. The context becomes the cue.
• It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cues.

7: The Secret to Self-Control

Addictions can spontaneously dissolve if there is radical change in the environment. Vietnam soldiers were surrounded by cues that triggered heroin use, such as the stress of war, easy access, friendships with other users, and they were away from home. Once they returned home they were devoid of these triggers, which led to most of the soldiers’ heroin addictions going away. This is why somebody may get clean in rehab and then relapse when back in their old environment. “Disciplined” people are better at building structures that remove the need for willpower rather than being particularly mentally strong. They spend less time in tempting situations. Create a more disciplined environment so you don’t need willpower.

Shaming obese people with weight-loss presentations can backfire by making them feel more stressed, which results in them eating to cope. Showing smokers blackened lungs can make them reach for a cigarette. Bad habits are autocatalytic. They foster the feelings they try to numb. Worrying about your health makes you anxious, which causes you to smoke to ease the anxiety, making your health worse, making the anxiety worse.

Cue-induced wanting: An external trigger causes a compulsive craving to repeat a bad habit. Once you notice something, you begin to want it.

You can break a habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it. This means that resisting temptation is an ineffective strategy. One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.

• If you can’t get work done, leave your phone in another room for a few hours.
• If you’re continually feeling like you’re not enough, stop following social media accounts that trigger jealousy and envy.
• If you’re wasting too much time watching television, move the tv out of the bedroom.
• If you’re spending too much on electronics, quit reading reviews of the latest tech gear.
• If you’re playing too many video games, unplug the console and put it in a closet after each use.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The inversion of the 1st Law of Behavior Change is make it invisible.
• Once a habit is formed, it is unlikely to be forgotten.
• People with high self-control tend to spend less time in tempting situations. It’s easier to avoid temptation than resist it.
• One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.
• Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.
• The 2nd Law: Make It Attractive

8: How to Make a Habit Irresistible

A supernormal stimulus is a heightened version of reality that elicits a stronger response than usual, such as junk food being a hunting-free, high sugar, high fat, and high salt alternative that is calorically dense. Our reward systems are still conditioned to believe resources are scarce and will react accordingly.

Orosensation is the term for how a product feels in your mouth. Dynamic contrast is a term for how a food item may have a combination of sensations, such as creamy and crunchy. Foods with high dynamic contrast hold your interest for longer, encouraging you to eat more.

Society is filled with highly engineered versions of reality that are more attractive than the world of our ancestors. Social media with their instant “likes” and praise, mannequins and models with exaggerated bodies, porn with stimulating scenes that are almost impossible to recreate in real life, advertisement with lighting and photoshopping that are nothing like the real image, etc. These exaggerated features result in excessive shopping habits, social media habits, porn habits, eating habits, and many others. Junk food is concentrated calories, hard liquor is concentrated alcohol, video games are concentrated play.

THE DOPAMINE-DRIVEN FEEDBACK LOOP

Without dopamine, desire dies. Without desire, action stops. Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. Every behavior that is highly habit-forming – taking drugs, eating junk food, playing video games, browsing social media, etc. – is associated with higher levels of dopamine. The same can be said of our most basic habitual behaviors, such as eating food, drinking water, having sex, and interacting socially.

Dopamine is involved in motivation, learning and memory, punishment and aversion, and voluntary movement. It is released both when you anticipate and experience pleasure. Gambling addicts have a dopamine spike before they place a bet, not after it. When you predict that an opportunity will be rewarding, dopamine spikes in anticipation, increasing the motivation to act. Anticipation can often feel better than the actual reward. The difference between wanting and liking.

THE DOPAMINE SPIKE

• (A) Before a habit is learned, dopamine is released when the reward is experienced for the first time.
• (B) The next time, dopamine rises before taking action, immediately after the cue is recognized. This leads to desire and a craving to take action whenever the cue is spotted. Once a habit is learned, dopamine will not rise when a reward is experienced because you already expect the reward.
• (C) If you see a cue and expect a reward, but do not get one, dopamine will drop in disappointment.
• (D) If a cue is identified, dopamine rises as expectation builds. If a response is taken but the reward does not come quick enough, dopamine begins to drop. If the reward comes a bit later than you had hoped, dopamine spikes again. Integrating the behavior even further.

We have more neural circuitry for “wanting” rewards than for “liking” rewards. The “wanting” centers are large: the brain stem, the nucleus accumbens, the ventral tegmental area, the dorsal striatum, the amygdala, and portions of the PFC. The “liking” areas are limited to “hedonic hot spots” and are distributed in tiny areas around the brain. Only 10% of the nucleus accumbens is activated during “liking” vs. 100% during “wanting”.

We need to make our habits attractive because it is the expectation of a rewarding experience that motivates us to act in the first place.

HOW TO USE TEMPTATION BUNDLING TO MAKE YOUR HABITS MORE ATTRACTIVE

Temptation bundling involves linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do. Premack’s Principle: “More probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors.”

Habit stacking + temptation building

• After [CURRENT HABIT]. I will [HABIT I NEED].
• After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].

Examples:

• After I get my morning coffee, I will say one thing I’m grateful for something that happened yesterday (need). After I say one thing I’m grateful for, I will read the news (want).
• After I pull out my phone, I will do ten burpees (need). After I do ten burpees, I will check Facebook (want).

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it attractive.
• The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.
• Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act.
• It is the anticipation of a reward—not the fulfillment of it—that gets us to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike.
• Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

9: The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits

THE SEDUCTIVE PULL OF SOCIAL NORMS

Humans are herd animals. Becoming separated from the tribe, or being cast out, was a death sentence. “The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.” Those who collaborated and bonded with others enjoyed increased safety, mating opportunities, and access to resources.

We don’t choose our earliest habits, we imitate them. We follow the script handed down by our friends, family, church, school, local community, and society. Each group comes with its own expectations and social norms (invisible rules that guide your behavior). Often you follow these rules without thinking about them or questioning them.

Behaviors are attractive when they help us fit in.

We imitate the behaviors of three groups in particular:

1. The close.
2. The many.
3. The powerful.

1. Imitating the Close:

We pick up habits from peers, family, and coworkers without even realizing it. In conversations, we even imitate the body language of people. The closer we are to someone, the more likely we are to imitate their behavior.

New habits become achievable when you spend time with others who are achieving them. Your culture sets your expectation for what is “normal.”

Join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior and you already have something in common with the group. Nothing sustains motivation better than belonging to a tribe. It transforms a personal quest into a shared one. Shared identities reinforce personal identity.

2. Imitating the Many:

Whenever we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide our behavior. The downside to this is that normal behavior of a tribe can often overpower the desired behavior of the individual. The reward of being accepted is often greater than the reward of winning an argument, looking smart, or finding truth.

When changing your habits means challenging the tribe, change is unattractive. When changing your habits means fitting in with the tribe, change is very attractive.

3. Imitating the Powerful:

A person with greater power and status has access to more resources, worries less about survival, and proves to be a more attractive mate. We are drawn to behaviors that earn us respect, approval, admiration, and status. Once we fit in, we look for ways to stand out.

We imitate the people we envy and avoid the behaviors that would lower our status.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The culture we live in determines which behaviors are attractive to us.
• We tend to adopt habits that are praised and approved of by our culture because we have a strong desire to fit in and belong to the tribe.
• We tend to imitate the habits of three social groups: the close (family and friends), the many (the tribe), and the powerful (those with status and prestige).
• One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal behavior and (2) you already have something in common with the group.
• The normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual. Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves.
• If a behavior can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it attractive.

10: How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits

WHERE CRAVINGS COME FROM

Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper, underlying motive.

Some of our underlying motives include:

• Conserve energy
• Obtain food and water
• Find love and reproduce
• Connect and bond with others
• Win social acceptance and approval
• Reduce uncertainty
• Achieve status and prestige

A craving is a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive. At a deep level, you simply want to reduce uncertainty and relieve anxiety, to win social acceptance and approval, or to achieve status.

• Find love and reproduce = using Tinder
• Connect and bond with others = browsing Facebook
• Win social acceptance and approval = posting on Instagram
• Reduce uncertainty = searching on Google
• Achieve status and prestige = playing video games

Your habits are modern day solutions to ancient desires. The underlying motives behind human behavior remain the same. There are many different ways to address the same underlying motive. Your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face; they are just the methods you learned to use.

Habits are all about associations. These associations determine whether a habit is repeated or not. You see a cue, categorize it based on past experience, and determine the appropriate response. Life feels reactive, but is actually predictive. Our behavior is heavily dependent on these predictions, which is how we interpret the world around us rather than the reality of the events themselves.

Predictions lead to feelings, which is how we describe cravings. Feelings and emotions transform the cues we perceive and the predictions we make into a signal that we can apply. They help explain what we are currently sensing.

A craving is the sense that something is missing. It is the desire to change your internal state. When there is a change in what your body wants to be feeling and what it is actually perceiving, there will be a desire to act. A “want” is the desire to feel different.

When emotions and feelings are impaired, we lose the ability to make decisions. We have no signal of what to pursue or what to avoid. Antonio Damasio said, “It is emotion that allows you to mark things as good, bad, or indifferent.”

HOW TO REPROGRAM YOUR BRAIN TO ENJOY HARD HABITS

Changing your mindset to be more positive can reframe them.

• For example, you get to cook for your family, rather than having to cook for them.
• Exercise is a way to develop skills and build you up. Instead of “needing” to go for a run in the morning, say “It’s time to build endurance and get fast.”
• Saving money is often associated with sacrifice. If you associate it with freedom instead of limitation, you will want to save more. Living below your means increases your future freedom.
• Meditation can be challenging when distracted. If you take distraction as an opportunity to practice returning to your breath, it will be less frustrating. You need distractions to practice meditation.
• Pregame jitters can be transformed from anxiousness to excitement. Using the adrenaline rush as a way to concentrate rather than feeling threatened.

You can train yourself to enjoy something by linking an enjoyable activity with the habit you would like to train. Some athletes can trigger a performance mindset this way. An example was playing music to get focused. After putting headphones on about 20 times, the act of putting them on will train the mind to become focused without the music. Meaning putting headphones on is enough. Create a short routine that you perform before you do things that you love – like petting your dog or having a bubble bath. You could take 3 deep breaths and smile to reappraise the world and reset your mindset.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The inversion of the 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it unattractive.
• Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper underlying motive.
• Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires.
• The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them. The prediction leads to a feeling.
• Highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit to make it seem unattractive.
• Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings. Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.

The 3rd Law: Make It Easy

11: Walk Slowly, but Never Backward

Voltaire said “The best is the enemy of the good.” When you’re in motion, you’re planning and strategizing and learning. When you’re taking action, you will get results. Brainstorming for ideas is motion. Writing the articles is action. Being in motion doesn’t produce results by itself, but sometimes we do it because it makes us feel like we are getting progress without the risk of failure and to avoid criticism.

• “I’ve got conversations going with four potential clients right now. This is good. We’re moving in the right direction.”
• “I’ve brainstormed some ideas for that book I want to write. This is coming together.”

When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection. Get your reps in.

HOW LONG DOES IT ACTUALLY TAKE TO FORM A NEW HABIT?

Long-term potentiation (LTP) refers to strengthening connections between neurons based on recent patterns of activity. With each repetition, cell-to-cell signaling improves and the neural connections tighten.

In musicians, their cerebellum is larger. In mathematicians, they have increased gray matter in the inferior parietal lobule, which plays a crucial role in computation and calculation. London taxi drivers have larger hippocampi while they are practicing, which decreases with retirement.

All habits follow a similar trajectory from effortful practice to automatic behavior, known as automaticity. Once the Habit Line has been crossed, the behavior can be executed with less thinking.

Frequency is what makes the difference. You need to string together enough successful attempts until a behavior is embedded in your mind to cross the Habit Line.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The 3rd Law of Behavior Change is make it easy.
• The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning.
• Focus on taking action, not being in motion.
• Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition.
• The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.

12: The Law of Least Effort

If motivation was enough, we would do everything we planned on doing. Our real motivation is to be lazy and do what is convenient. A smart strategy for survival. The more energy required, the less likely it is to occur. The convenience of using a cellphone requires very little energy, and therefore consumes a lot of our time.

Habits are obstacles to getting what we want. Dieting is an obstacle to getting fit, meditation is an obstacle to feeling calm, journaling is an obstacle to thinking clearly. We are capable of doing great things but we require reduced friction to get there.

HOW TO ACHIEVE MORE WITH LESS EFFORT

Trying to pump up your motivation to stick with a hard habit is like trying to force water through a bent hose. You can do it, but it requires a lot of effort and increases the tension in your life. Meanwhile, making habits easier is like removing the bend.

Habits are easier to build when they already fit in with your daily routine or path. Go to a closer gym so you don’t have to go out of your way. Also, you can remove points of friction by tidying up or working in a stress-free environment. Automate, eliminate, or simplify.

PRIME THE ENVIRONMENT FOR FUTURE USE

Reset each room before you finish with it, to be proactively lazy. Put drawing tools within easy reach if you want to draw more, set out workout clothes ahead of time to increase exercise likelihood, do meal prep to improve healthy eating. Make the good habit the path of least resistance.

Make bad behaviors more difficult. Unplug the tv after use, leave your phone in a different room, hide alcohol or bad foods so you can’t see them, etc.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Human behavior follows the Law of Least Effort. We will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.
• Create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible.
• Reduce the friction associated with good behaviors. When friction is low, habits are easy.
• Increase the friction associated with bad behaviors. When friction is high, habits are difficult.
• Prime your environment to make future actions easier.

13: How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule

Once you begin a ritual/habit there is no more questioning the process and it becomes automated. These are known as decisive moments. They are forks in the road that determine how you will spend your time. Each “good choice” over a “bad choice” will take you closer to a “good day”. These decisive options set the options available for your future self. Your options are constrained by what’s available. Master these “entry point” decisive moments in your day and you will progressively become more productive.

THE TWO-MINUTE RULE

When you start a habit, it should take less than 2 minutes to do.

• Read before bed each night = Read one page
• 30 minutes of yoga = Take out the yoga mat
• Study for class = Open your notes
• Fold the laundry = Fold a pair of socks
• Run 3 miles = Tie your running shoes

Make them easy to start. The following actions can be challenging, but the first two minutes should be easy. A “gateway habit.”

Map your goals from “Very easy” to “Very hard”.

• An example would be put on your running shoes -> Walk 10 minutes -> Walk 10,000 steps -> Run a 5K -> Run a marathon.

Master the habit of showing up. A habit must be established before it can be improved. Standardize before you optimize. The more you can ritualize the beginning, the more likely it will be that you can slip into deep focus or flow. Allowing peak performance and creation. A consistent powering down habit will also make it easier to fall asleep.

The trick is to stay below the point of making the habit feel like a chore. Always work, write, or exercise less than you feel will be difficult. Stop when you are going good. Each repetition is a vote for a new identity. You don’t need to worry about the quality as much seeing as that will occur as a response from increased quantity.

Examples of habit shaping

Becoming an early riser:

• Phase 1: Be home by 10pm every night.
• Phase 2: Have all devices off by 10pm every night.
• Phase 3: Be in bed by 10pm every night (reading a book, talking with your partner).
• Phase 4: Lights off by 10pm every night.
• Phase 5: Wake up at 6am every day.

Veganism:

• Phase 1: Start eating vegetables at every meal.
• Phase 2: Stop eating animals with 4 legs (cow, pig, lamb, etc.).
• Phase 3: Stop eating animals with 2 legs (chicken, turkey, etc.).
• Phase 4: Stop eating animals with no legs (fish, clams, scallops, etc.).
• Phase 5: Stop eating all animal products (eggs, milk, cheese).

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• Habits can be completed in a few seconds but continue to impact your behavior for minutes or hours afterward.
• Many habits occur at decisive moments—choices that are like a fork in the road—and either send you in the direction of a productive day or an unproductive one.
• The Two-Minute Rule states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”
• The more you ritualize the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things.
• Standardize before you optimize. You can’t improve a habit that doesn’t exist.

14: How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible

A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future. A way to lock in future behavior, bind you to good habits, and restrict you from bad ones. Have a timer shut off your power at a certain time, leave your wallet at home, lock distractions away and give the key to somebody you can trust, pay for classes ahead of time, etc. They enable you to take advantage of good intentions before you fall victim to temptation. Make bailing difficult and costly.

HOW TO AUTOMATE A HABIT AND NEVER THINK ABOUT IT AGAIN

The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do so. Increase the friction until you don’t even have the option to act.

Onetime actions that lock in good habits:

• Buy a water filter to clean drinking water.
• Use smaller plates to reduce caloric intake.
• Buy a good mattress.
• Get blackout curtains.
• Remove your television from your bedroom.
• Unsubscribe from emails.
• Turn off notifications and mute group chats.
• Set your phone to silent.
• Use email filters to clear up your inbox.
• Delete games and social media apps from your phone.
• Get a dog.
• Move to a friendly, social neighborhood.
• Get vaccinated.
• Buy good shoes to avoid back pain.
• Buy a supportive chair or standing desk.
• Enroll in an automatic savings plan.
• Set up automatic bill pay.
• Cut cable service.
• Ask service providers to lower your bills.

Automate things where you can, such as medical prescriptions, retirement funds, meal delivery services, and cutting social media browsing with a website blocker and turning off autoplay.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The inversion of the 3rd Law of Behavior Change is make it difficult.
• A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that locks in better behavior in the future.
• The ultimate way to lock in future behavior is to automate your habits.
• Onetime choices—like buying a better mattress or enrolling in an automatic savings plan—are single actions that automate your future habits and deliver increasing returns over time.
• Using technology to automate your habits is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right behavior.

The 4th Law: Make It Satisfying

15: The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change

Feelings of pleasure – even minor sensations like washing your hands with soap that smells nice and lathers well – are signals that tell the brain: “This feels good. Do this again, next time.” Pleasure teaches your brain that a behavior is worth remembering and repeating. Toothpaste and gum sell because of the “clean mouth feel”, rather than the effectiveness. What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided.

THE MISMATCH BETWEEN IMMEDIATE AND DELAYED REWARDS

In an immediate-return environment, your actions instantly deliver clear and immediate outcomes. In modern society, many of our choices will not benefit you immediately. We live in a delayed-return environment. The issue here is that our brains did not evolve for these delayed-return conditions. We still have essentially the same hardware as our 200,000 year old paleolithic ancestors. It is only in the last 500 years or so that we have created this delayed-return environment for ourselves.

Behavioral economists refer to our bias for instant gratification as time inconsistency. The consequences of bad habits are delayed while the rewards are immediate. “The cost of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.” The brain’s tendency to prioritize the present moment means you can’t rely on good intentions. As a general rule, the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.

People who are better at delaying gratification often have higher SAT scores, lower substance abuse, lower levels of obesity, better responses to stress, and superior social skills. Luckily, it is possible to train yourself to delay gratification by adding a little bit of immediate pleasure to the habits that pay off in the long-run and a little bit of pain to the ones that don’t.

HOW TO TURN INSTANR GRATIFICATION TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

The ending of any experience is the part we tend to remember the most. Make it more satisfying to reinforce the behavior.

In situations where not completing an action is the desired outcome (such as not spending money), make the avoidance unavoidable by doing things like setting up a bank account where every dollar you don’t spend gets put towards some purchase that you have the goal of saving for. Like a loyalty program for yourself. Like paying yourself instead of depriving yourself momentarily. Making it satisfying doing nothing. If money is not the objective, you can reward yourself with something pleasurable, like a bubble bath or a leisurely walk. Just don’t reward yourself with conflicting identities, such as rewarding exercise with ice cream.

Eventually the reward becomes less necessary as the vote for an action that aligns with your identity will become the reward that sustains the habit.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it satisfying.
• We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying.
• The human brain evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards.
• The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.
• To get a habit to stick you need to feel immediately successful— even if it’s in a small way.
• The first three laws of behavior change—make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time.

16: How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day

Making progress is satisfying and visual measures, such as moving paperclips or marbles from one jar to another whenever you complete a small task, can provide clear evidence of progress and immediate satisfaction. Visual measurement comes in the form of food journals, workout logs, loyalty punch cards, the progress bar on a download, and page numbers in a book.

HOW TO KEEP YOUR HABITS ON TRACK

Benjamin Franklin said, “Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful” and “Avoid trifling conversation.” He would use a book and record his progress. Start habit chains and record progress in a habit tracker. Habit tracking leverages several Laws of Behavioral Change, makes a behavior obvious, attractive, and satisfying.

Benefit 1: Habit tracking is obvious.

Recording your last action can trigger the next one. Habit tracking builds a series of visual cues like the streak of X’s on your calendar or the list of meals in your food log. When you see this progress you’ll be reminded to act again. It makes you more likely to keep going and keeps you honest. This is because our view of our behavior is usually quite distorted, believing ourselves to be performing better than we actually are. Visual evidence means we can’t lie to ourselves.

Benefit 2: Habit tracking is attractive.

The most effective form of motivation is progress. Each small win feeds your desire. It is often hard to remember how far you’ve come during a bad day. Tracking helps to remind you, and the pain of breaking a streak is a good prompt to do the task anyway.

Benefit 3: Habit tracking is satisfying.

It is satisfying to cross an item off your to-do list, complete an entry, or to mark an X on the calendar. It feels good to watch your investment portfolio grow or the length of a manuscript increase. It also helps you to focus on the process rather than the end goal.

In summary, habit tracking creates a visual cue that can remind you to act, is inherently motivating because you can see your progress and don’t want to lose the streak, and it feels satisfying whenever you record another instance of success. It also shows you visual proof of you voting for the person you would like to become.

The problem is that many people resist the idea of tracking and measuring because it adds another habit on top of the desired one. To make it easier you can automate it. Credit cards record purchases, Fitbits record steps and sleep, your calendar records where you’ve been, etc. Manual tracking should be limited to the most important habits. It is better to consistently track one habit than sporadically tracking ten. Also, record each measurement immediately after the habit occurs. The completion is the cue to write it down, utilizing the habit stacking method.

The habit stacking + habit tracking formula is:

After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [TRACK MY HABIT].

• After I hang up the phone from a sales call, I will move one paperclip over.
• After I finish each set at the gym, I will record it in my workout journal.
• After I put my plate in the dishwasher, I will write down what I ate.

HOW TO RECOVER QUICKLY WHEN YOUR HABITS BREAK DOWN

Whenever life interrupts your streak, try to remind yourself to never miss twice. Get back on the wagon as quickly as possible afterwards. Missing once is an accident, missing twice is the beginning of a new habit. When successful people fail, they rebound quickly.

The problem isn’t with slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all. Charlie Munger said, “The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.”

KNOWING WHEN (AND WHEN NOT) TO TRACK A HABIT

The dark side of tracking a particular behavior is that we become driven by the number rather than the purpose behind it. The human mind will want to “win” the game and will often try to do so, whatever the cost. An example is how we teach for standardized tests rather than emphasizing learning, curiosity, and critical thinking. We optimize for what we measure. When we choose the wrong measurement, we produce the wrong behavior (Goodhart’s Law).

Subjective measurements, like how you feel, or measurements that are side effects of the behavior are also useful. Nonscale victories.

CHAPTER SUMARY

• One of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of making progress.
• A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit—like marking an X on a calendar.
• Habit trackers and other visual forms of measurement can make your habits satisfying by providing clear evidence of your progress.
• Don’t break the chain. Try to keep your habit streak alive.
• Never miss twice. If you miss one day, try to get back on track as quickly as possible.
• Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing.

17: How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything

If a failure is painful, it gets fixed. If it is painless, it gets ignored. When the consequences are severe, people learn quickly. The more immediate the pain, the less likely the behavior. We repeat bad habits because they serve us in some way. The best way to overcome this is to increase the speed of the punishment associated with the behavior.

The strength of the punishment must match the relative strength of the behavior it is trying to correct.

THE HABIT CONTRACT

Governments can often pass laws that lead to social contracts, such as wearing seatbelts and not smoking indoors. A personal habit contract is a verbal or written agreement in which you state your commitment to a particular habit and the punishment that will occur if you don’t follow through. Then you find one or two people to be accountability partners to sign the contract off for you.

To make bad habits unsatisfying, your best option is to make them painful in the moment. Knowing that someone is watching can be a powerful motivator. You are less likely to procrastinate or give up because there is an immediate cost. If you don’t follow through, you’ll be perceived as untrustworthy or lazy.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The inversion of the 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it unsatisfying.
• We are less likely to repeat a bad habit if it is painful or unsatisfying.
• An accountability partner can create an immediate cost to inaction. We care deeply about what others think of us, and we do not want others to have a lesser opinion of us.
• A habit contract can be used to add a social cost to any behavior. It makes the costs of violating your promises public and painful.
• Knowing that someone else is watching you can be a powerful motivator.

Advanced Tactics: How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great

18: The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don’t)

The secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the field of competition. Habits are easier to perform and more satisfying to stick to when they align with your natural inclinations and abilities. Competence is highly dependent on context. Gabor Mate said, “Genes can predispose, but they don’t predetermine.” Direct your effort towards areas that excite you and match your natural skills, to align your ambition with your ability.

HOW YOUR PERSONALITY INFLUENCES YOUR HABITS

The “Big Five” personality traits:

• Openness to experience: from curious and inventive on one end to cautious and consistent on the other.
• Conscientiousness: organized and efficient to easygoing and spontaneous.
• Extroversion: outgoing and energetic to solitary and reserved.
• Agreeableness: friendly and compassionate to challenging and detached.
• Neuroticism: anxious and sensitive to confident, calm, and stable.

Extroversion can be tracked from birth. If scientists play a loud noise in the nursing ward, they found that babies who turned towards the noise were more likely to be extroverts. People who are high in agreeableness tend to have higher natural oxytocin levels. People high in neuroticism tend to be more anxious than others, which has been linked to hypersensitivity of the amygdala. These traits make you more predisposed to act a certain way but you can design habits that align with your personality to change your outcome. Choose the habits that suit you and bring you satisfaction.

HOW TO FIND A GAME WHERE THE ODDS ARE IN YOUR FAVOR

In theory, you can enjoy almost anything. In practice, you are more likely to enjoy the things that come easily to you. People who are talented in an area tend to be more competent and receive more praise. This energizes them because they are making progress, getting rewarded and receiving more opportunities, making them happier and propelling them to make more high quality work. Pick the right habit and progress will become easy.

In the beginning of a new activity, there should be a period of exploration. Try out many possibilities, research a broad range of ideas, and cast a wide net. After exploring your options, shift your focus to the best solution you’ve found, but keep experimenting occasionally. If you are currently winning, exploit more. If you are losing, explore more. In the long-run, choose the strategy that yields the best results about 80-90% of the time. Then explore with the other 10-20%. If you have more time on your hands it also makes more sense to explore more too.

• What feels like fun to me, but work to others?
• What makes me lose track of time (flow or in the zone)?
• Where do I get greater returns than the average person?
• What comes naturally to me (authenticity)?

If you can’t win by being better, win by being different. Combine your skills to reduce the level of competition and stand out. Rewrite the rules to eliminate genetic advantage. Specializing in a specific area can help to narrow down the competition too.

HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR GENES

Once we realize our strengths, we know where to spend our time and energy. We know which types of opportunities to look for and what challenges to avoid. People often get so caught up in the fact that they have limits that they rarely ever reach them.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition.
• Pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle.
• Genes cannot be easily changed, which means they provide a powerful advantage in favorable circumstances and a serious disadvantage in unfavorable circumstances.
• Habits are easier when they align with your natural abilities. Choose the habits that best suit you.
• Play a game that favors your strengths. If you can’t find a game that favors you, create one.
• Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on.

19: The Goldilocks Rule; How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work

The human brain loves a challenge, but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty. Focus narrows, distractions fade away, and you find yourself fully invested in the task at hand. The Goldilocks Rule (Yerkes-Dodson law) states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities.

Once a behavior has been established it is important to continue to advance in small ways to keep you engaged. If you hit the Goldilocks Zone just right, you can achieve a flow state. Scientists have defined it as being 4% beyond your current ability. Behaviors need to remain novel in order for them to stay attractive and satisfying.

HOW TO STAY FOCUSED WHEN YOU GET BORED WORKING ON YOUR GOALS

The more you practice something, the more boring and routine it becomes. Once beginner gains are gone, it is those that can handle the boredom that succeed. Others derail their progress to seek novelty (variable reward). Varied pace of reward provides the greatest spike in dopamine, enhances memory recall, and accelerates habit formation. Variable rewards won’t create a craving, but they are powerful at amplifying cravings we already experience because they reduce boredom.

The sweet spot of desire is a 50/50 split of success and failure. Enough winning to experience satisfaction and and wanting to experience desire. If you already have a habit established it can help to work on challenges of manageable difficulty. Variable rewards will not always be available though, so it pays to fall in love with boredom. Professionals stick to their schedule, amateurs let life get in the way.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities.
• The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. As habits become routine, they become less interesting and less satisfying. We get bored.
• Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It’s the ability to keep going when work isn’t exciting that makes the difference.
• Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.

20: The Downside of Creating Good Habits

As habits become automatic you become less sensitive to feedback and it is easier to let mistakes slide. Sometimes you believe you are getting better when you are really just reinforcing your current habits. Automating hygiene tasks or other things that don’t require a challenge are fine, but in areas where you want to continuously improve, you require deliberate practice.

Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery

Once a habit has been mastered, you have to return to the effortful part of the work and begin building the next habit. Mastery is the process of of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier. You need a way to remain conscious of your performance over time, so you can continue to refine and improve. Once you begin to automate and be comfortable is when you become complacent.

HOW TO REVIEW YOUR HABITS AND MAKE ADJUSTMENTS

Reflection and review enables the long-term progress of all habits because it makes you aware of your mistakes and helps you consider paths for improvement. Without reflection, we can make excuses, create rationalizations, and lie to ourselves. By reflecting and reviewing you can spend your time on the right things and make course corrections wherever necessary.

Every year, the author tallies his articles, how many workouts he did, how many new places he visited, and more. Then he asks himself what went well that year, what didn’t go so well, and what he learned.

Six months later he does an Integrity report. This helps him to see where things have gone wrong and to boost motivation to get back on track. He uses it as a time to revisit his core values and to see if he has been living in accordance to them. The questions he asks are: “What are the core values that drive my life and work?”, “How am I living and working with integrity right now?” and “How can I set a higher standard in the future?”

Reflection can bring about a sense of perspective and to revisit your identity. However, reflecting too often leads to worrying too much and overanalyzing results without waiting for a trend to appear.

HOW TO BREAK THE BELIEFS THAT HOLD YOU BACK

In the beginning, repeating a habit is essential to build up evidence of your desired identity. As you latch on to that new identity, those same beliefs may hold you back from the next level of growth. Your identity can create a sense of pride that encourages you to deny your weak spots and prevents you from truly growing. The more sacred an idea is to us, the more deeply it is tied to our identity, and the stronger we will defend it against criticism.

Keep your identity small. The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you will be of adapting when life challenges you and the bigger of an identity crises you’ll have if you are confronted with unignorably conflicting ideas.

Redefine yourself by personality traits rather than professions if you want to become more adaptable. An identity can be flexible.

Men are born soft and supple;

dead, they are stiff and hard.

Plants are born tender and pliant;

dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible

is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding

is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.

The soft and supple will prevail.

—LAO TZU

CHAPTER SUMMARY

• The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking.
• The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors.
• Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
• Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time.
• The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.

Conclusion

The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1% improvement, but a thousand of them. Eventually you hit a tipping point and the accumulation of good habits becomes much easier to manage and new habits become easier to build. If you are having trouble changing, it is because of your system, not you.

Appendix

• Awareness comes before desire. A craving is created when you assign meaning to a cue. Your brain constructs an emotion or feeling to describe your current situation, and that means a craving can only occur after you have noticed an opportunity.
• Happiness is simply the absence of desire. When you observe a cue, but do not desire to change your state, you are content with the current situation. Happiness is not about the achievement of pleasure, but about the lack of desire. Happiness is the state you enter when you no longer want to change your state. However, happiness is fleeting because a new desire always comes along. As Caed Budris says, “Happiness is the space between one desire being fulfilled and a new desire forming.” Likewise, suffering is the space between craving a change in state and getting it.
• It is the idea of pleasure that we chase. We seek the image of pleasure that we generate in our minds. At the time of action, we do not know what it will be like to attain that image (or even if it will satisfy us). The feeling of satisfaction only comes afterward. This is what the Austrian neurologist Victor Frankl meant when he said that happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue. Desire is pursued. Pleasure ensues from action.
• Peace occurs when you don’t turn your observations into problems. The first step in any behavior is observation. You notice a cue, a bit of information, an event. If you do not desire to act on what you observe, then you are at peace. Craving is about wanting to fix everything. Observation without craving is the realization that you do not need to fix anything. Your desires are not running rampant. You do not crave a change in state. Your mind does not generate a problem for you to solve. You’re simply observing and existing.
• With a big enough why, you can overcome any how. Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher and poet, famously wrote, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” If your motivation and desire are great enough, you’ll take action even when it is quite difficult. Great craving can power great action—even when friction is high.
• Being curious is better than being smart. Being motivated and curious counts for more than being smart because it leads to action. Being smart will never deliver results on its own because it doesn’t get you to act. It is desire, not intelligence, that prompts behavior. As Naval Ravikant says, “The trick to doing anything is first cultivating a desire for it.”
• Emotions drive behavior. Whatever your logical reasons are for taking action, you only feel compelled to act on them because of emotion. In fact, people with damage to emotional centers of the brain can list many reasons for taking action but still will not act because they do not have emotions to drive them. This is why craving comes before response. The feeling comes first, and then the behavior.
• We can only be rational and logical after we have been emotional. The primary mode of the brain is to feel; the secondary mode is to think. Our first response—the fast, nonconscious portion of the brain—is optimized for feeling and anticipating. Our second response—the slow, conscious portion of the brain—is the part that does the “thinking.” Psychologists refer to this as System 1 (feelings and rapid judgments) versus System 2 (rational analysis). The feeling comes first (System 1); the rationality only intervenes later (System 2). This works great when the two are aligned, but it results in illogical and emotional thinking when they are not.
• Your response tends to follow your emotions. Our thoughts and actions are rooted in what we find attractive, not necessarily in what is logical. Two people can notice the same set of facts and respond very differently because they run those facts through their unique emotional filter. This is one reason why appealing to emotion is typically more powerful than appealing to reason. If a topic makes someone feel emotional, they will rarely be interested in the data. This is why emotions can be such a threat to wise decision making. Put another way: most people believe that the reasonable response is the one that benefits them: the one that satisfies their desires. To approach a situation from a more neutral emotional position allows you to base your response on the data rather than the emotion.
• Suffering drives progress. The source of all suffering is the desire for a change in state. This is also the source of all progress. The desire to change your state is what powers you to take action. It is wanting more that pushes humanity to seek improvements, develop new technologies, and reach for a higher level. With craving, we are dissatisfied but driven. Without craving, we are satisfied but lack ambition.
• Your actions reveal how badly you want something. If you keep saying something is a priority but you never act on it, then you don’t really want it. It’s time to have an honest conversation with yourself. Your actions reveal your true motivations.
• Reward is on the other side of sacrifice. Response (sacrifice of energy) always precedes reward (the collection of resources). The “runner’s high” only comes after the hard run. The reward only comes after the energy is spent.
• Self-control is difficult because it is not satisfying. A reward is an outcome that satisfies your craving. This makes self control ineffective because inhibiting our desires does not usually resolve them. Resisting temptation does not satisfy your craving; it just ignores it. It creates space for the craving to pass. Self-control requires you to release a desire rather than satisfy it.
• Our expectations determine our satisfaction. The gap between our cravings and our rewards determines how satisfied we feel after taking action. If the mismatch between expectations and outcomes is positive (surprise and delight), then we are more likely to repeat a behavior in the future. If the mismatch is negative (disappointment and frustration), then we are less likely to do so. For example, if you expect to get $10 and get $100, you feel great. If you expect to get $100 and get $10, you feel disappointed. Your expectation changes your satisfaction. An average experience preceded by high expectations is a disappointment. An average experience preceded by low expectations is a delight. When liking and wanting are approximately the same, you feel satisfied.
  • Satisfaction = Liking – Wanting
  • This is the wisdom behind Seneca’s famous quote, “Being poor is not having too little, it is wanting more.” If your wants outpace your likes, you’ll always be unsatisfied. You’re perpetually putting more weight on the problem than the solution. Happiness is relative. 
• The pain of failure correlates to the height of expectation. When desire is high, it hurts to not like the outcome. Failing to attain something you want hurts more than failing to attain something you didn’t think much about in the first place. This is why people say, “I don’t want to get my hopes up.”
• Feelings come both before and after the behavior. Before acting, there is a feeling that motivates you to act—the craving. After acting, there is a feeling that teaches you to repeat the action in the future—the reward.
  • Cue > Craving (Feeling) > Response > Reward (Feeling)
  • How we feel influences how we act, and how we act influences how we feel.
• Desire initiates. Pleasure sustains. Wanting and liking are the two drivers of behavior. If it’s not desirable, you have no reason to do it. Desire and craving are what initiate a behavior. But if it’s not enjoyable, you have no reason to repeat it. Pleasure and satisfaction are what sustain a behavior. Feeling motivated gets you to act. Feeling successful gets you to repeat.
• Hope declines with experience and is replaced by acceptance. The first time an opportunity arises, there is hope of what could be. Your expectation (cravings) is based solely on promise. The second time around, your expectation is grounded in reality. You begin to understand how the process works and your hope is gradually traded for a more accurate prediction and acceptance of the likely outcome. This is one reason why we continually grasp for the latest get-rich quick or weight-loss scheme. New plans offer hope because we don’t have any experiences to ground our expectations. New strategies seem more appealing than old ones because they can have unbounded hope. As Aristotle noted, “Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.” Perhaps this can be revised to “Youth is easily deceived because it only hopes.” There is no experience to root the expectation in. In the beginning, hope is all you have.

How to Create a Good Habit

The 1st Law: Make It Obvious

1.1: Fill out the Habits Scorecard. Write down your current behaviors to become aware of them. 

1.2: Use Implementation Intentions: “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].”

1.3: Use Habit Stacking: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”

1.4: Design your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible. 

The 2nd Law: Make It Attractive

2.1: Use Temptation Bundling. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

2.2: Join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.

2.3: Create a motivational ritual. Do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.

The 3rd Law: Make It Easy

3.1: Reduce friction. Decrease the number of steps between you and your good habits. 

3.2: Prime the environment. Prepare your environment to make future actions easier. 

3.3: Master the decisive moment. Optimize the small choices that deliver outsized impact.

3.4: Use the two-minute rule. Downscale your habits until they can be done in two-minutes or less.

3.5: Automate your habits. Invest in technology and onetime purchases that lock in future behavior.

The 4th Law: Make It Satisfying

4.1: Use reinforcement. Give yourself an immediate reward when you complete your habit.

4.2: Make “doing nothing” enjoyable. When avoiding a bad habit, design a way to see the benefits. 

4.3: Use a habit tracker. Keep track of your habit streak and don’t “break the chain.”

4.4: Never miss twice. When you forget to do a habit, make sure you get back on track immediately. 

How to Break a Bad Habit

Inversion of the 1st Law: Make It Invisible

1.5: Reduce exposure. Remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment.

Inversion of the 2nd Law: Make It Unattractive

2.4: Reframe your mindset. Highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits.

Inversion of the 3rd Law: Make It Difficult

3.6: Increase friction. Increase the number of steps between you and your bad habits.

3.7: Use a commitment device. Restrict your future choices to the ones that benefit you.

Inversion of the 4th Law: Make It Unsatisfying

4.5: Get an accountability partner. Ask someone to watch your behavior.

4.6: Create a habit contract. Make the costs of your bad habits public and painful.