Atomic Habits Detailed Notes

This is an awesome little book that summarizes strategies of changing habits in easy digestible chunks. It reads really well and fast. Has some good stories to underscore some of the points that the author is making. While I learnt a lot from the book and was able to pick up some interesting strategies, I felt that the book could have gone deeper into human psychology and provide the scientific background of the suggestions. But, overall I think this is well worth a read. I will apply a lot of the strategies from this book on my own habits.


Detailed Notes:


Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compout into remarkable results if you are willing to stick with them for years. 


There wasn’t one defining moment on my journey from medically induced coma to Academic All-American; there were many. It was a gradual evolution, a long series of small wins and tiny breakthroughs.


The Four-step model of Habits - cue, cravind, response, and reward


Example of the British cycling team - strategy referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains”. 


It is easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis


Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement


But, unfortunately, the slow pace of transformation also makes it easy to let a bad habit slide. If you eat an unhealthy meal today, the scale doesn’t move much.


What matters is whether your habits are putting you on a path towards success. You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results


Ice example. From 0 to 31 deg nothing happens to the ice. Then, 32deg the ice begins to melt. A one-degree shift seemingly no different from the temperature increase before it unlocks a huge change


People make a few small changes, fail to see tangible results, and decide to stop. - Plateau of Latent potential. When you finally break through the Plateau - people will call it an overnight success


Forget about goals, focus on systems instead. Goals area about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the process that leads to those results. <insert great video from MS Dhoni - talking about success of India cricket team>

Winners and losers have the same goals. 


Goals restrict your happiness. The implicit assumption is “once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy”. The problem with Goal-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone.


Goals are at odds with long-term progress. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?


You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems


Habits are defined by your identity. No thanks, I’m not a smoker

The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it.


Many people walk through life in a cognitive slumber, blindly following the norms attached to their identity.


Two-step process of changing your identity.


Habits can help you achieve all things, but fundamentally they are not about having something, they are about becoming someone (identity)


Habit: A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic

With practice - the useless movements fade away and the useful actions get reinforced. That’s a habit forming


In other words - habits are, simply, reliable solutions to recurring problems in our environment


Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks


If you’re always being forced to make decisions about simple tasks - Where do I go to write, when do I pay the bills - then you have less time for freedom. It’s only by making the fundamentals of life easier that you create the mental space needed for free thinking and creativity.


What you crave is not the habit itself but the change in state it delivers. You do not crave smoking a cigarette, you crave the feeling of relief it provides.


Your brain is a reward detector. As you go about your life, your sensory nervous system is continuously monitoring which actions satisfy your desires and deliver pleasures.


4 laws of habit forming

1st - make it obvious 

2nd - make it attractive

3rd - make it easy

4th - make it satisfying


Inverse to break bad habits

1st - make it invisible

2nd - make it unattractive

3rd - make it difficult

4th - make it unsatisfying


Every goal is doomed to fail if it goes against the grain of human nature


Make it obvious - Pointing and calling, train safety system in Japan


One of our greatest challenges in changing habits is maintaining awareness of what we are actually doing


Make a list of your daily habits - and then score them: +ve or -ve


The first step of changing bad habits is to be on the lookout for them. If you feel like you need extra help - you can use pointing and calling in your own life.


Best way to start a new habit - implementation invention. (Incantation - that tony robbins talks about) - “when situation X arises, I will perform response Y”


The simply way: 

I will [Behaviour] at [time] in [location]


Stanford professor - BJ Fogg strategy of habit stacking


The Diderot Effect - states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases.


When it comes to building new habits, you can use the connectedness of behavior to your advantage

“After [current habit], I will [new habit”



The secret to creating a successful habit stack is selecting the right cue to kick things off


Motivation is overrated - environment often matters more

Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior

Psychologist Kurt Lewin wrote a simple equation - Behavior is a function of the person in their Environment 


The human body has about eleven million sensor receptors. Approximately then million of those are dedicated to sight (so visual cues are important)


If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment.

It can be difficult to go to bed early if you watch television in your bedroom each night


I know a writer who uses his computer only for writing, his tablet only for reading, and his phone only for social media and texting. Every habit has a home. A stable environment where everything has a place and a purpose is an environment where habits can easily form


Don’t wish to be more disciplined person, but create a more disciplined environment


Bad habits are autocatalytic: the process feeds itself. They foster the feelings they try to numb. You feel bad, so you eat junk food. Because you eat junk food you feel bad. Watching television makes you feel sluggish, so you watch more television because you don’t have energy to do anything else


Cue is really powerful: Scientists have found that showing adicts a picture of cocaine for just thirty-three milliseconds stimulates the reward pathway in the brain and sparks desire


To break a bad habit - rather than make it obvious - make it invisible.

Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a  long-term one.


Scientists refer to these exaggerated cues as supernormal stimuli. Just like the red dot for on the beak of a goose. 


Habits are a dopamine-driver feedback loop. Every behaviour that is highly habit-forming - taking drugs, eating junk food, playing video games - is associated with higher levels of dopamine. 


Dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it.


Desire is the engine that drives behaviour. Every action is taken because of the anticipation that precedes it. It is the craving that leads to the response.


Temptation bundling works by linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.


Humans are herd animals. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers.

We soak up the qualities and practices of those around us. One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior


When changing your habits means challenging the tribe, change is unattractive. When changing your habits means fitting in with the tribe, change is attractive.


It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change: the faster way to lose weight, the perfect idea for a side hustle. We need to really take action. The BEST is the enemy of the good


When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing. 

If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection. You don’t need to map out every feature of a new habit. You just need to practice it. You just need to get in those reps


The more you repeat an activity , the more the structure of your brain changes to become efficient at that activity. Neuroscientists call this long-term potentiation.


Similarly, when learning a new instrument, or a language, great difficulty is felt because the neuro channels are not accustomed. But, no sooner the frequent repetition cuts a pathway, the difficulty vanishes. Process know as automaticity


Energy is precious, and the brain is wired to conserve it whenever possible. It is human nature to follow the law of least effort


In a sense, every habit is just an obstacle to getting what you really want. Dieting is an obstacle to getting fit. Meditation is an obstacle to feeling calm. Journaling is an obstacle to thinking clearly.


One of the most effective ways to reduce friction associated with your habits is to practice environment design.


2-minute rule - when you start a new habit it should take less than two minutes to do. (reduce the friction to do the habit - then you can improve on the quality of work) The idea is to master the habit of showing up


Make it hard for bad habits: at 10pm each night the power to the router cuts off - so everyone has to go to bed


Setup meetings with someone to make sure you do the work

Pg 173 - research and review onetime actions that lock in good habits



When the effort required to act on your desires becomes effectively zero, you can find yourself slipping into whatever impulse arises at the moment. The downside of automation is that we can find ourselves jumping from easy task to easy task without making time for more difficult, but ultimately rewarding work.


“This feels good - do it again” Pleasure teaches your brain that a behavior is worth remembering and repeating. We are not looking for immediate type of satisfaction, we are looking for immediate satisfaction.


We all work in a delayed-return environment because you can work for years before your actions deliver the intended payoff.


Time inconsistency - our brain prefers short-term success over long term payoff. Behavioral economists refer to this tendency as time inconsistency. You value the present more than the future. A reward that is certain right now is typically worth more than one that is merely possible in the future.


Habit forming has a simple rule - never miss twice. 


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


Identify: it is all about being the type of person who doesn’t miss a workout. 


To be productive, the cost of procrastination must be greater than the cost of action. To be healthy the cost of laziness must be greater than the cost of exercise.


Habit contract - is an effective tool to form new habits. 


The secret of maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition. This is just as true with habit change as with sports and business. Selecting the right place to focus is crucial. In short: genes do not determine your destiny. They determine your areas of opportunity.


How to choose the right game to play. If you are currently winning - exploit, exploit, exploit. If you are currently losing - explore, explore, explore. Whenever you feel authentic and genuine, you are headed in the right direction.


When you can’t win by being better, you can win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it easier to stand out.


Goldilocks rule - states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard, not too easy, just right.


Professionals stick to the schedule: amatures let life get in the way. 


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


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.


Improvement is not just about learning habits, it's also about fine tuning them. Reflecting and reviewing ensures that you spend time on the right things and make course corrections whenever necessary.

Annual reviews and Integrity reports


Sorites paradox - can one coin make a person rich? If you give a person a pile of ten coines, you wouldn’t claim that he or she is rich. But what if you add another? Then another? At some point, you will have to admit that he she is rich


The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1% improvement, but a thousand of them. 


Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, and endless process to refine 


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