Atomic Habits

• Basically, focus on the process, or the direction, not the destination.
• You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.
• Pointing and calling as a way to explicitly name habits, good or bad.
• 1st law of behaviour change: make it obvious
  • Can schedule a time and a place. Or you can stack the habit on another habit if that habit is consistent.
  • Environment matters. Make the cues of good habits obvious in your environment.
  • Easier to build new habits in a new environment.
  • The secret to self-control is to not be in tempting situations in the first place.
• 2nd law of behaviour change: make it attractive
  • Habits are dopamine driven
  • Anticipating a reward causes the dopamine spike, not the getting of it.
  • Try temptation bundling. Combine a needed task with a wanted task.
  • We emulate habits of family, friends, the powerful.
  • Join a culture where the normal behaviour is your desired behaviour. You'll want to do the right thing just to fit in.
  • Habits are modern day solution to ancient desires (Facebook isn't about likes, it's about social acceptance).
  • Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.
• 3rd law of behaviour change is make it easy.
  • Practice not planning
  • Number of repetitions is more important than length of time (which is possibly why my Spanish is still really bad, despite the DuoLingo)
  • We naturally to the option that requires the least effort
  • Create environment where the right thing is the easy thing (unplug TV when you don't want to watch it, sprinkle books around your house so you can read without effort
  • Small habits (decisions) shape your day.
  • Two minute rule: when you start a new habit it should take less than two minutes, and you should ritualize the start of it (i.e. putting on exercise clothes to work out). Start by just reading a single page a day if you want to be a good reader.
  • Inversion: make bad habits difficult
  • Use commitment devices, which lock in your future behaviour (Victor Hugo told his maid to hide all his clothes so he couldn't go out, only write)
  • Automating habits is the best way (automatic savings plan)
• 4th law of behaviour change: make it satisfying
  • Make it immediately satisfying, since this is how our brains work.
  • Use habit tracking, maybe by marking an X on a calendar each time you exercise.
  • Don't break the chain. Keep your streak alive.
    • Desmond: As an aside, not sure how effective this is at learning Spanish on DuoLingo.
  • Be very careful of letting the number become the goal.
  • Inversion: make bad habit unsatisfying.
  • Use an accountability to shame you into keeping you on track.
  • Use a habit contract, signed by people you know, to add a social cost to breaking the habit.
  • Knowing that someone is watching you can motivate.