Atomic Habits

by James Clear

The Habit Cycle

Cue, craving, response, repeat.

Each of the steps in the cycle can be leveraged to develop new habits. To create habits, make them: Obvious (through environmental design), attractive, make it easy, and satisfying.

The cycle can also be leveraged in product design to funnel people into the “habit” of using your product.

It is a lot easier for people to adopt a product that provides a strong positive sensory signal, for example the mint taste of toothpate, than it is to adopt a habit that does not provide pleasurable sensory feedback, like flossing one’s teeth.

Perhaps this is why many of the most habit-forming products are those that provide continuous forms of novelty.

Craving for reward is stronger than the reward itself: we respond to anticipation rather than fulfilment.

Incremental Habits

Habits compound, good or bad. A 1% improvement every day for a year compounds to a total improvement of 3,700% for the year. Consistent (attemts at) improvement is key to progress, in habit building or otherwise.

The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.

Consistent improvement is helped when you start small, make it easy and practice environmental design. People often go too hard when starting a new habit. Downsize the goal to make it easier to do consistently.

Even when you know you should start small, it’s easy to start too big. When you dream about making a change, excitement inevitably takes over and you end up trying to do too much too soon.

Standardize before you optimize. You can’t improve a habit that doesn’t exist.

The Two-Minute Rule which states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do”.

Systems not goals: Incremental improvements don’t stack up well against a lofty goal, but are more likely to last. In addition to the compounding effects, [[Actions have intertia]]. Linking new habits to existing good habits can pull the direction of improvement in the same direction.

Make It Easy

The truth, however, is that many of the actions we take each day are shaped not by purposeful drive and choice but by the most obvious option.

Conventional wisdom holds that motivation is the key habit to change. Maybe if you really wanted it, you’d actually do it. But the truth is, our real motivation is to be lazy and do what is convenient. And despite the latest productivity best seller will tell you, this is a smart strategy, not a dumb one.

The same goes for end caps, which are the units at the end of aisles. End caps are moneymaking machines for reatilers because they are obvious locations that encounter a lot of foot traffic. For example, 45 percent of Coca-Cola sales come specifically from end-of-the-aisle racks.

Humans evolved for immediate decision-making - we are biased against long-term consequences. Immediate satisfaction helps habits stick long enough that you can reap the rewards.

You live in what scientists call a delayed-return environment because you can work for years before your actions deliver the intended payoff.

The opposite is also true: make bad habits hard.

We repeat bad habits because they serve us in some way, and that makes it hard to abandon. The best way I know to overcome this predicament is to increase the speed of the punishment associated with the behaviour. There can’t be a gap between the action and the consequences.

You can design your environmental to help remove distractions.

Environmental Design

A well-constructed environment reduces the need for self-control. Hide cues for negative habits. Promote cues for positive habits.

Create a separate space for work, study, exercise, entertainment and cooking. The mantra I find useful is “One space, one use”.

Environment design is powerful not only because it influences how we engage with the world but also because we rarely do it. Most people live in a world others have created for them. But you can alter the spaces where you live and work to increase your exposure to positive design cues and reduce your exposure to negative ones.

Your environment also includes your social circle. The culture and company we keep affects our habits. We copy the close, the many, and the powerful (high-status people). Join a group where the desired behaviour is the normal behaviour.

Whenever we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide our behaviour. We are constantly scanning our environment and wondering, “What is everyone else doing?”