Atomic Habits Summary

Atomic Habits Summary

Atomic Habits Summary by James Clear

Habits are behaviors that we perform automatically, with little or no thought. Atomic Habits by James Clear, helps people learn why modern life makes our brains’ natural wiring somewhat inconvenient or how a cat in a box advanced scientific understanding of habit formation. These atomic habits include:

1. Small habits can have a surprisingly powerful impact on your life. We do not notice tiny changes, because their immediate impact is negligible. However, if we repeat small behaviors day after day, our choices compound into major results. If you want to make a positive change in your life, you should recognize that change requires patience, as well as confidence that your habits are keeping you on the right course, even if you are not seeing immediate results.
2. Habits are automated behaviors that we have learned from experience. Our brain figures out how to respond to new situations through a process of trial and error. We also stumble across satisfying solutions to life’s difficulties and predicaments. Thankfully, we now understand a little more about how habits work. Habits begin with a cue, or a trigger to act.
3. Building new habits requires hard-to-miss cues and a plan of action. All of us have cues that trigger certain habits. Once you understand that certain stimuli can prompt habitual behavior, you can use this knowledge to change your habits. Simple changes to our environment can make a big difference. Make your cues as obvious as possible, and you will be more likely to respond to them.
4. Humans are motivated by the anticipation of reward, so making habits attractive will help you stick to them. The human brain releases dopamine, a hormone that makes us feel good when we do pleasurable things such as eating. However, we also get a hit of feel-good dopamine when we simply anticipate those pleasurable activities. It is the brain’s way of driving us onward and encouraging us to actually do things. So, in the brain’s reward system, desiring something is at par with getting something. If we make a habit of something we look forward to, we will be much more likely to follow through and actually do it.
5. If you want to build a new habit, make that habit as easy to adopt as possible. We often spend a lot of time on behaviors that are easy. So making behaviors as easy as possible is key to turning them into habits. Luckily, there are a few tricks we can embrace to make anything seem easier. The first is to focus on reducing friction. The second trick for making a habit easier in the long term is the two-minute rule, a way to make any new activity feel manageable. The principle is that any activity can be distilled into a habit that is doable within two minutes.
6. Making your habits immediately satisfying is essential to effective behavior change. This can be difficult, for evolutionary reasons. Our brains, though, evolved to cope with the immediate-return environment of earlier humans, who weren’t thinking about long-term returns like saving for retirement or sticking to a diet. They were focused on immediate concerns like finding their next meal, seeking shelter, and staying alert enough to escape any nearby lions. Immediate returns can encourage bad habits, too. So when you are pursuing habits with a delayed return, try to attach some immediate gratification to them.
7. Create a framework to keep your habits on track, using trackers and contracts. You can develop a habit tracker, using a simple calendar or diary, and crossing off every day that you stick with your chosen behaviors. You will find it effective because habit tracking itself is an attractive, and satisfying, habit. The anticipation and action of crossing off each day will feel good and keep you motivated.