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.
The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements. It’s remarkable what you can build if you just don’t stop. It’s remarkable the business you can build if you don’t stop working. It’s remarkable the body you can build if you don’t stop training. It’s remarkable the knowledge you can build if you don’t stop learning. It’s remarkable the fortune you can build if you don’t stop saving. It’s remarkable the friendships you can build if you don’t stop caring. Small habits don’t add up. They compound. That’s the power of atomic habits. Tiny changes. Remarkable results. Appendix
Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine.
slowly tilting things in your favor. Eventually, if you stick with it, you hit a tipping point. Suddenly, it feels easier to stick with good habits. The weight of the system is working for you rather than against you.
Each of the people, teams, and companies we have covered has faced different circumstances, but ultimately progressed in the same way: through a commitment to tiny, sustainable, unrelenting improvements.
A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.
For most of my young life, being an athlete was a major part of my identity. After my baseball career ended, I struggled to find myself. When you spend your whole life defining yourself in one way and that disappears, who are you now?
Six months later, when summer rolls around, I conduct an Integrity Report.
I employ two primary modes of reflection and review. Each December, I perform an Annual Review,
Improvement is not just about learning habits, it’s also about fine-tuning them.
where they went wrong.* Improvement is not just about learning habits, it’s also about fine-tuning them.
Reflection and review enables the long-term improvement of all habits because it makes you aware of your mistakes and helps you consider possible paths for improvement.
improved rather than declined. Reflection and review enables the long-term improvement of all habits because it makes you aware of your mistakes and helps you consider possible paths for improvement.
Mastery is the process 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 of your development.
The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.
In psychology, this is known as a variable reward.* Slot machines are the most common real-world example. A gambler hits the jackpot every now and then but not at any predictable interval. The pace of rewards varies. This variance leads to the greatest spike of dopamine, enhances memory recall, and accelerates habit formation.
The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected.
Play a game that favors your strengths. If you can’t find a game that favors you, create one.
one of the best ways to ensure your habits remain satisfying over the long-run is to pick behaviors that align with your personality and skills. Work hard on the things that come easy.
Even if you’re not the most naturally gifted, you can often win by being the best in a very narrow category.
A good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses.
Whenever you feel authentic and genuine, you are headed in the right direction.
Where do I get greater returns than the average person?
It is nearly impossible to experience a flow state and not find the task satisfying at least to some degree.
What feels like fun to me, but work to others? The
The goal is to try out many possibilities, research a broad range of ideas, and cast a wide net.
Choose the habit that best suits you, not the one that is most popular.
In short: genes do not determine your destiny. They determine your areas of opportunity.
The people at the top of any competitive field are not only well trained, they are also well suited to the task. And this is why, if you want to be truly great, selecting the right place to focus is crucial.
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.
He wrote up a habit contract between himself, his wife, and his personal trainer. The first version read, “Bryan’s ş objective for Q1 of 2017 is to start eating correctly again so he feels better, looks better, and is able to hit his long-term goal of 200 pounds at 10% body fat.”
Goodhart’s Law. Named after the economist Charles Goodhart, the principle states, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Measurement is only useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you. Each number is simply one piece of feedback in the overall system.
Going to the gym for five minutes may not improve your performance, but it reaffirms your identity.
you start with $100, then a 50 percent gain will take you to $150. But you only need a 33 percent loss to take you back to $100. In other words, avoiding a 33 percent loss is just as valuable as achieving a 50 percent gain. As Charlie Munger says, “The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.”
The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.
never miss twice. If I miss one day, I try to get back into it as quickly as possible. Missing one workout happens, but I’m not going to miss two in a row.
It can feel like a burden because it forces you into two habits: the habit you’re trying to build and the habit of tracking it.
In summary, habit tracking (1) creates a visual cue that can remind you to act, (2) is inherently motivating because you see the progress you are making and don’t want to lose it, and (3) feels satisfying whenever you record another successful instance of your habit.
This is the most crucial benefit of all. Tracking can become its own form of reward. It is satisfying to cross an item off your to-do list, to complete an entry in your workout log, or to mark an X on the calendar. It feels good to watch your results grow—the size of your investment portfolio, the length of your book manuscript—and if it feels good, then you’re more likely to endure.
This is the most crucial benefit of all. Tracking can become its own form of reward.
The most effective form of motivation is progress.
The mere act of tracking a behavior can spark the urge to change it.
Thankfully, it’s possible to train yourself to delay gratification—but you need to work with the grain of human nature, not against it. The best way to do this is to add a little bit of immediate pleasure to the habits that pay off in the long-run and a little bit of immediate pain to ones that don’t.
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. It completes the habit loop.
Stories like these are evidence of the Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided. You learn what to do in the future based on what you were rewarded for doing (or punished for doing) in the past. Positive emotions cultivate habits. Negative emotions destroy them.
Once my bad habit became impossible, I discovered that I did actually have the motivation to work on more meaningful tasks. After I removed the mental candy from my environment, it became much easier to eat the healthy stuff. When working in your favor, automation
I often find myself gravitating toward social media during any downtime. If I feel bored for just a fraction of a second, I reach for my phone. It’s easy to write off these minor distractions as “just taking a break,” but over time they can accumulate into a serious issue. The constant tug of “just one more minute” can prevent me from doing anything of consequence. (I’m not the only one. The average person spends over two hours per day on social media. What could you do with an extra six hundred hours per year?)
Commitment devices increase the odds that you’ll do the right thing in the future by making bad habits difficult in the present. However, we
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.
Each day is made up of many moments, but it is really a few habitual choices that determine the path you take. These little choices stack up, each one setting the trajectory for how you spend the next chunk of time.
Reduce the friction associated with good behaviors. When friction is low, habits are easy.
finding ways to reduce the friction associated with our good habits and increase the friction associated with our bad ones.
what people really should be asking is, “How many does it take to form a new habit?” That is, how many repetitions are required to make a habit automatic?
Automaticity is the ability to perform a behavior without thinking about each step, which occurs when the nonconscious mind takes over.
This is the first takeaway of the 3rd Law: you just need to get your reps in.
It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change: the fastest way to lose weight, the best program to build muscle, the perfect idea for a side hustle. We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action. As Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.”
Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires.
If we interpret these feelings positively, then we can respond with fluidity and grace. You can reframe “I am nervous” to “I am excited and I’m getting an adrenaline rush to help me concentrate.”
Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings, and we can use this insight to our advantage rather than to our detriment.
a behavior can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it attractive.
Once we fit in, we start looking for ways to stand out. This is one reason we care so much about
The human mind knows how to get along with others. It wants to get along with others. This is our natural mode. You can override it—you can choose to ignore the group or to stop caring what other people think—but it takes work. Running against the grain of your culture requires extra effort.
The shared identity begins to reinforce your personal identity. This is why remaining part of a group after achieving a goal is crucial to maintaining your habits. It’s friendship and community that embed a new identity and help behaviors last over the long run.
Our friends and family provide a sort of invisible peer pressure that pulls us in their direction.
We imitate the habits of three groups in particular: The close. The many. The powerful.
one of the deepest human desires is to belong. And this ancient preference exerts a powerful influence on our modern behavior.
Temptation bundling works by linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
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.
Your brain has far more neural circuitry allocated for wanting rewards than for liking them. The
In the long-run, we become a product of the environment that we live in. To put it bluntly, I have never seen someone consistently stick to positive habits in a negative environment.
You can break a habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it. Once the mental grooves of habit have been carved into your brain, they are nearly impossible to remove entirely—even if they go unused for quite a while.
When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, “disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.
is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cues.
If you can manage to stick with this strategy, each context will become associated with a particular habit and mode of thought.
Create a separate space for work, study, exercise, entertainment, and cooking. The mantra I find useful is “One space, one use.”
If you want to drink more water, fill up a few water bottles each morning and place them in common locations around the house.
Habit stacking is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a current habit.
Gratitude. After I sit down to dinner, I will say one thing I’m grateful for that happened today.
We often say yes to little requests because we are not clear enough about what we need to be doing instead.
Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.
the two most common cues are time and location. Implementation intentions leverage both of these cues.
The Habits Scorecard is a simple exercise you can use to become more aware of your behavior.
Generally speaking, good habits will have net positive outcomes.
The 1st law (Cue): Make it obvious. The 2nd law (Craving): Make it attractive. The 3rd law (Response): Make it easy. The 4th law (Reward): Make it satisfying. We can invert these laws to learn how to break a bad habit. How to Break a Bad Habit Inversion of the 1st law (Cue): Make it invisible. Inversion of the 2nd law (Craving): Make it unattractive. Inversion of the 3rd law (Response): Make it difficult. Inversion of the 4th law (Reward): Make it
The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward. We chase rewards because they serve two purposes: (1) they satisfy us and (2) they teach us.
If you’re always being forced to make decisions about simple tasks—when should I work out, where do I go to write, when do I pay the bills—then you have less time for freedom.
take away the vibrancy and spontaneity of life?” Hardly. Such questions set up a false dichotomy. They make you think that you have to choose between building habits and attaining freedom. In reality, the two complement each other. Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it. In fact, the people who don’t have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom. Without good financial habits, you will always be struggling for the next dollar. Without good health habits, you will always seem to be short on energy. Without good learning habits, you will always feel like you’re behind the curve. If
Habits are mental shortcuts learned from experience.
Now, whenever you feel stressed, you get the itch to run. As soon as you walk in the door from work, you grab the video game controller. A choice that once required effort is now automatic. A habit has been created.
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.
decide who you want to be. This holds at any level—as 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?
Good habits can make rational sense, but if they conflict with your identity, you will fail to put them into action.
There is internal pressure to maintain your self-image and behave in a way that is consistent with your beliefs. You find whatever way you can to avoid contradicting yourself.
The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader.
Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe. When
The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.
Changing our habits is challenging for two reasons: (1) we try to change the wrong thing and (2) we try to change our habits in the wrong way.
If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
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. You get what you repeat.
The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them.
The backbone of this book is my four-step model of habits—cue, craving, response, and reward—and the four laws of behavior change that evolve out of these steps.
changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.
