The summery of the Atomic Habits book.

Are you looking to make positive changes in your life but not sure where to start? Here is the summery of the Atomic Habits book.

“Atomic Habits” by James Clear may be just the book you need. This bestselling self-help guide explores the power of small, incremental changes in habits to lead to significant improvements in a person’s life. Through research and personal experience, Clear argues that success is not the result of one-time, big decisions or events, but rather the accumulation of many small, consistent actions. In “Atomic Habits,” Clear provides practical strategies for creating and maintaining good habits, as well as for breaking bad ones.

Goal vs System

Just having a goal is not enough. You have to do the little things necessary to reach the goal. Love the system and what you do more than the goal.

Level 1

Cue / Trigger to act

Motivation should be created from the external environment to break or break a habit. Reasons for that motivation:

1. Smell
2. View
3. Person
4. Moment
5. Sound
6. Feeling
7. Place

For example:

• If you enter a dark room, you will want to turn on the light.
• If you have your phone in your hand, you want to go to Facebook.

There are 4 things that can control the external environment.

1. Visibility

For example:

• If you want to learn to play the guitar, there is no point in keeping the guitar in a place where you can see it.
• A person who wants to stop eating sugar should put away sugary foods as much as possible without showing them.

2. Objectives surround you

See the objectives around us not as objects, but with relationships.
For example:

• See the sofa at home as a place to watch Netflix or read a book.
• See the balcony at home not just as a balcony but as a place to get up in the morning and stretch.

3. Habits stacking method

Create a new habit using an existing habit.
For example:

• We wash our hands with soap because we go to the washroom and wash our hands with soap. Even after playing in the evening, we can assume that we are dirty and create a new habit of cleaning our bodies. When you follow this for a long time, it becomes a routine habit.

3. Practical promise

Make a practical habit.
For example:

• If you want to learn something, instead of just making a promise that I will remember it, I will spend 3 hours in my room every night at 10 o’clock to learn it.

Level 2

Craving / Internal desire

There should be a desire to create the habit from within. There is a dopamine hormone produced inside the body that helps with this. Temptation bundling, which hacks this dopamine hormone to develop this habit from within, means bundling the pattern to be formed with a routine that has already been created. This is different from the habits stacking that we talked about before.

For example:

• Someone who likes to watch cricket matches at the same time you want to take sales calls at work. If you plan to see the results of the match after taking the 10 sales calls, the necessary work will be done to get the sales calls because you want to get the dopamine hit. Even if you can’t get 10 sales calls, it will be good because the dopamine hormone is produced not only after reaching the goals but the hormone is produced right from the beginning. This is why we love to plan this trip rather than go on a trip.

Level 3

Response

If any habit is easy to implement, we actively do it. There are 2 ways to do this.

1. Reduce the friction

👉 Reduce friction to develop good habits.
👉 Increase friction to eliminate bad habits.

For example:

• If you want to reduce the habit of watching TV, cover the TV with stones and remove the battery from the remote.

2. Time vs Results graph

Results over time are not linear. It means that the results are not visible in the initial period (disappointment curve). As soon as you get rid of it in the beginning, you will see incredible results. People who don’t know this give up.

Level 4

Reward

To create or break any habit, you need to get a reward. Rewards can be broken into two parts.

1. Immediate rewards (The instant reward is received as soon as it is done.)
2. Ultimate rewards (The reward that comes after some time.)

👉 If you want to create a good habit, you need to create an immediate reward.
👉 If you want to break a bad habit, you need to have an immediate consequence.

In many things we do today, the return comes later. We are in a delayed return environment.
For example: if you go to work today, the salary will come at the end of the month, and if you get the degree, it will take time to settle. Because of this, it isn’t easy to make instant rewards.
A couple had a habit of eating out, and they made an immediate reward for stopping this habit. They created a separate bank account called Europe trip and credited the money spent on eating out. 50 dollars was put into this account every time I ate at home without going outside. Because of this, they could immediately see how the money in the fund increased.