Atomic Habits

• -A habit is a routine or behavior that is performed regularly and in many cases automatically.
• -Meanwhile improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable, sometime it isn’t even noticeable but it can be far more meaningful especially in long run.
• -The impact created by a change in your habits is similar to the effect of shifting the route of an airplane by jut few degrees , similarly a slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a very different destination
• -Success is the product of daily habits not once in a lifetime transformations
• -Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits, you get what you repeat
• -Time magnifies the margin between success and failure
• -Habits are double-edged sword. Bad habits can cut you down just as easily as good habits can build you up
• -Cancer spends 80 percent of its life undetectable, and then takes over the body in months.
• -Bamboo can barely be seen for first five years as it builds extensive root system under ground before exploding ninety feet into the air within six -weeks.
• -Mastery requires patience.
• -All big things come from small beginnings
• -Forget about goals focus on system instead.
• -Goals are about the results you want to achieve systems are about the process that leads to those results.
• -Goals are good for setting a direction, but system are best for making progress
• -If you wants better results, then forget about setting goals, focus on your system instead
• -A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your system
• -If successful and unsuccessful people shares the same goals then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winner form the losers
• -Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment
• -When you solve problem at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good you need to solve problem at the system level
• -Fix the inputs and the output will fix themselves
• -A system first mentality provides the antidote.
• -When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.
• -The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building system is to continue playing the game.
• -It is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.
• -If you’re having trouble changing your habits the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system
• -You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems
• -Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results.
• -At first these tiny routines seem insignificant, but soon they build on each other and fuel bigger wins that multiply to a degree that outweighs the costs of their initial investments
• -Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This lead us to outcome based habits. The alternate is to build identity based habits with this approach we focus on who we wish to become
• -Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last.
• -Its hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior
• -The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity
• -You might start a habit because of motivation but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity
• -Improvements are only temporary until they becomes part of who you are
• -Your behavior are usually a reflection of your identity
• -The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader
• -The goal is not to learn an instrument, the goal is to become a musician
• -Research has shown that once  a person believes in a particular aspect of their identity, they are more likely to act in alignment with that beliefs
• -Many people walk through life in a cognitive slumber blindly following the norms attached to their identity
• -Becoming the best version of yourself require you to continuously edit your beliefs and to upgrade and expand your identity
• -Every beliefs including those about yourself, is learned and conditioned through experience
• -The more you repeat a behavior the more time you reinforce the identity associated with that behavior
• -You identity is literally your repeated beingness
• -The more evidence you have for a belief, the more strongly you will believe it
• -Of course, your habits are not only actions that influence your identity but by virtue of their frequency they are usually the most important ones
• -We do not change by snapping our fingers and deciding to be someone entirely new, we change bit by bit, day by day, habit by habit
• -Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become
• -The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do.
• -Simple two step process:-
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• -Decide the type of person you want to be
• -Prove it yourself  with small win
• -Once you have handle on the type of person you want to be, you can begin taking small steps to reinforce your desired identity
• -The focus should always be on becoming that type of person, not getting a particular outcome
• -You have the power to change your beliefs about yourself
• -Fundamentally habits are not about having something,they are about becoming someone
• -From the Throndike experiment, he described the learning process by stating, “behavior followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated”
• -A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. The process of habit formation begins with trial and error.
• -Whenever you face a problem repeatedly your brains begin to automate the process of solving it
• -Habits are mental shortcut learned from experience
• -In fact, the people who don’t have their habit handled are often the ones with least amount of freedom
• -If you are always being forced to make decision about simple tasks, when should I workout, where do I go to write, when do I pay the bills, then you have less time for freedom.
• -Conversely, when you have your habits dialed in and the basics of life are handled and done, your mind is free to focus on new challenges and master the next set of problems
• -Building habits in the presents allows you to do more of what you want in the future
• -The process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps. Cue, craving, response & reward
• -Reward are of two types:-
• -Primary reward:- food, water, sex
• -Secondary reward:- money & time, power & status, praise & approval, love and friendship or sense of personal satisfaction
• -Cues are meaningless until they are interpreted. The thought, feeling and emotion of the observer are what transform a cue into a craving.
• -Craving are the second step, and they are the motivational force behind every habit without some level of motivation or desire- without craving a change we have no reason to act.
• -Craving differ from person to person. In theory any piece of information could trigger that sparks an intense wave of desire
• -The thoughts, feeling and emotions of the observer are what transform a cue into a craving
• -We chase rewards because they serve two purpose
• -They satisfies us
• -They teaches us
• -Reward teaches us which actions are worth remembering in the future
• -Feeling of pleasure and disappointment are part of the feedback mechanism that help your brain distinguish useful action from useless ones
• -Either way the purpose of every habit I to solve the problems you face
• -Every goal is doomed to fail of it goes against the grain of human nature
• -Your habits are shaped by the system in your life
• -When major arteries are obstructed, the body focus on sending blood to critical organs and away from peripheral locations near the surface of the skin
• -The human brain is a prediction machine. It Is continuously taking in your surroundings and analyzing the information it comes across
• -With enough practice, you can pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it
• -We underestimate how much our brains and bodies can do without thinking. You do not tell your hair to grow, your heart  to pump, your lungs to breathe
• -You are much more than you conscious self
• -Paramedic story & retail clerk story are the example of habit as useful and habit as dangerous
• -For dangerous reason we must begin the process of behavior change with awareness
• -Before we can effectively build new habit, we need to get a handle on our current ones
• -If a habit remains mindless, you can’t expect to improve it. As the psychologist Carl Jung said “until you make the conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”.
• -Pointing and calling reduces error by up to 85 percent and cuts accidents by 30 percent
• -Pointing and calling is so effective because it raises the level of awareness from a nonconcious habit to a more conscious level.
• -One of our greatest challenge in changing habit is maintaining awareness of what we are actually doing
• -The labels ‘good_habits” and “bad_habits” are slightly inaccurate. There are no goods habits or bad habits. There are only effective habits.
• -If you’re still having trouble determining how to rate a particular habit, here is a question I like to use. Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be?
• -Habits that reinforce your desired identity are usually good. Habits that conflict with your desired identity are usually bad.
• -The first step to changing bad habits is to be on the outlook for them.
• -If you feel like you need extra help then you can try pointing and calling in your own life
• -The process of behavior change always starts with awareness
• -The most common cues are time and location
• -Broadly speaking, the format for creating and implementation intention is when situation x rises, I will perform response y.