Atomic Habits

by James Clear

Published date: 2018

Category: Self-help

Reference: BJ Fogg - uses the term "anchoring" to link new habits to old ones
Insight: Old habits can keep new ones in place by anchoring them to previously established behaviours.

Reference: Thonrdike study Study of product placement in hospitals relating to water vs soda. By providing water as an option at all places where drinks were available "the number of soda sales at the hospital dropped by 11.4 percent. Meanwhile, sales of bottled water increased by 25.8 percent."

Insight: Repeat a story to yourself and its easy to accept things as absolute truths.
Insight: We act or do not act in certain ways over time because of the mental picture we build about who we are as a person: there is internal pressure to maintain self-image and behave according to beliefs.
Insight: Cultural beliefs (group identity) and self image (personal identify) can be comforting to uphold, even if they are wrong.
Insight: A huge barrier to positive change is identity conflict: "its not who I am".

Insight: Habits reduce cognitive load as habits are the act of the non-conscious mind doing something automatically, freeing up mental capacity to allocate to other tasks.

Definition: The tendency of one purchase to lead to another. Obtaining a new possession often creates a cycle consumption.
Example: New dress --> new shoes and earrings.
Example: New sofa --> new furniture to match.
Insight: Actions cue other behaviour. We often decide what to do based on what we have just finished doing (routine).
Insight: We can use the connectedness of behaviour to our advantage to build new habits, by habit stacking - linking new habits to other already embedded habits.
Reference: The Effect is named about French Philosopher Denis Diderot. Diderot lived a lot of his life in poverty. He was the writer of Encyclopédie. Catherine the Great loved the book, and heard about is financial troubles, she offered to buy his personal books. Diderot suddenly had wealth. He bought a scarlet robe. The robe was beautiful. This led to other purchases as Diderot sought equal beauty in the other material items in his life. Diderot quickly fell back into having no money.

Definition: Neurons that fire together, wire together.
Insight: The more you repeat an activity, the structure of your brain changes so that you become more efficient at that activity.
Insight: Habits are formed when a behaviour becomes more automatic, through repetition.
Insight: Repetition is key to encoding new habits.
Reference: Donald Hebb, 1949.

Insight: We evaluate the value of rewards relative to when then are received.
Insight: We value the present more than the future.
Insight: The consequences of bad habits are delayed, but the rewards are immediate.

Example: The backbone of Atomic habits is the four step model - cue, craving, response, reward - an example of a model of operant conditioning.
Insight: If you offer the right reward or punishment you can get people to act in a certain way.
Reference: B.F Skinner: "stimulus, response, reward" as a operant conditioning model of behaviour change.
Reference: B.F Skinner's model explained how external stimuli influence habits, but lacked a good explanation for how internal factors - thoughts, feelings, and beliefs - influence behaviour.
Reference: Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: "cue, routine, reward" as a operant conditioning model of behaviour change.

Insight: When setting goals we concentrate on successful individuals and organisations. The problem with this is that this does not account for those that didn't succeed - we have a survivorship bias.
Insight: Goals set direction, but systems are more important for making progress.

Insight: Locking your future actions while your mind is in the right place rather than waiting to see where your desires take you in the moment has many benefits.
Insight: A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future.
Insight: Ulysses pacts are effective for binding you to good habits and restricting bad ones.
Example: Victor Hugo locking away his clothes so that he could focus on writing.

Definition: The Yerkes-Dodson Law states that maximum motivation occurs when challenges are manageable in difficulty.
Insight: The optimal level of arousal for performance is a midpoint between boredom and anxiety.