Atomic Habits- Audiobook (with subtitles)

introduction my story oh and the final day of my sophomore year of high school I was hit in the face with a baseball bat as my classmate took a full swing the bat slipped out of his hands and came flying toward me before striking me directly between the eyes I have no memory of the moment of impact the bat smashed into my face with such force that it crushed my nose into a distorted u-shape the Collision sent the soft tissue of my brain slamming into the inside of my skull immediately a wave of swelling surged throughout my head in a fraction of a second I had a broken nose multiple skull fractures and two shattered eye sockets when I opened my eyes I saw people staring at me and running over to help I looked down and noticed spots of red on my clothes one of my classmates took the shirt off his back and handed it to me I used it to plug the stream of blood rushing for my broken nose shocked and confused I was unaware of how seriously I had been injured my teacher looped his arm around my shoulder and we began a long walk to the nurse's office across the field down the hill and back into school random hands touched my sides holding me upright we took our time and walked slowly nobody realized that every minute mattered when we arrived at the nurse's office she asked me a series of questions what year is it 1998 I answered it was actually 2002. who is the president of the United States Bill Clinton I said the correct answer was George W bush what is your mom's name uh um I stalled ten seconds passed Patty I said casually ignoring the fact that it had taken me 10 seconds to remember my own mother's name that is the last question I remember my body was unable to handle the rapid swelling in my brain and I lost Consciousness before the ambulance arrived minutes later I was carried out of school and taken to the local hospital shortly after arriving my body began shutting down I struggled with basic functions like swallowing and breathing I had my first seizure of the day then I stopped breathing entirely as the doctors hurry to supply me with oxygen they also decided the local hospital was unequipped to handle the situation and ordered a helicopter to fly me to a larger Hospital in Cincinnati I was rolled out of the emergency room doors and poured the helipad across the street the stretcher rattled on a bumpy sidewalk as one nurse pushed me along while another pumped each breath into me by hand my mother who had arrived at the hospital a few moments before climbed into the helicopter beside me I remained unconscious and unable to breathe on my own as she held my hand during the flight while my mother wrote with me in the helicopter my father went home to check on my brother and sister and break the news to them he choked back tears as he explained to my sister that he would miss her eighth grade graduation ceremony that night after passing my siblings off to family and friends he drove to Cincinnati to meet my mother when my mom and I landed on the roof of the hospital a team of nearly 20 doctors and nurses sprinted onto the helipad and wheeled me into the trauma unit by this time the swelling in my brain had become so severe that I was having repeated post-traumatic seizures my broken bones needed to be fixed but I was in no condition to undergo surgery after yet another seizure my third of the day I was put into a medically induced coma and placed on a ventilator my parents were no strangers to this Hospital ten years earlier they had entered the same building on the ground floor after my sister was diagnosed with leukemia at age three I was five at the time my brother was just six months old after two and a half years of chemotherapy treatments spinal taps and bone marrow biopsies my little sister finally walked out of the hospital happy healthy and cancer-free and now after 10 years of normal life my parents found themselves back in the same place with a different child while I slipped into a coma the hospital sent a priest and the social worker to comfort my parents it was the same priest who had met with them a decade earlier on the evening they found out my sister had cancer as they faded into night a series of machines kept me alive my parents slept restlessly on a hospital mattress one moment they would collapse from fatigue the next day would be wide awake with worry my mother would tell me later it was one of the worst nights I've ever had my recovery mercifully by the next morning my breathing had rebounded to the point where the doctors felt comfortable releasing me from the coma when I finally regained Consciousness I discovered that I had lost my ability to smell as a test a nurse asked me to blow my nose and sniff an apple juice box my sense of smell returned but to everyone's surprise the act of blowing my nose forced air through the fractures in my eye socket and pushed my left eye outward my eyeball bulged out of the socket held precariously in place by my eyelid and the optic nerve attaching my eye to my brain the ophthalmologist said Maya would gradually slide back into place as the air seeped out but it was hard to tell how long this would take I was scheduled for surgery one week later which would allow me some additional time to heal I looked like I had been on the wrong end of a boxing match but I was cleared to leave the hospital I returned home with a broken nose half a dozen facial fractures and a bulging left eye the following months were hard it felt like everything in my life was on pause I had double vision for weeks I literally couldn't see straight it took more than a month but my eyeball did eventually return to its normal location between the seizures and my vision problems it was eight months before I could drive a car again at physical therapy I practiced basic motor patterns like walking in a straight line I was determined not to let my injury get me down but there were more than a few moments when I felt depressed and overwhelmed I became painfully aware of how far I had to go when I returned to the baseball field one year later baseball had always been a major part of my life my dad had played minor league baseball for the St Louis Cardinals and I had a dream of playing professionally too after months of Rehabilitation what I wanted more than anything was to get back on the field but my return to baseball was not smooth when the season rolled around I was the only Junior to be cut from the varsity baseball team I was sent down to play with the sophomores on junior varsity I had been playing since age four and for someone who had spent so much time and effort on the sport getting cut was humiliating I vividly remember the day it happened I sat in my car and cried as I flipped through the radio desperately searching for a song that would make me feel better after a year of self-doubt I managed to make the varsity team as a senior but I rarely made it on the field in total I played 11 Innings of High School varsity baseball barely more than a single game despite my lackluster High School career I still believed I could become a great player and I knew that if things were going to improve I was the one responsible for making it happen the Turning Point came two years after my injury when I began college at Denison University it was a new beginning and it was the place where I would discover the surprising power of small habits for the first time how I learned about habits attending Denison was one of the best decisions of my life I earned a spot on a baseball team and although I was at the bottom of the roster as a freshman I was thrilled despite the chaos of my high school years I had managed to become a college athlete I wasn't going to be starting on the baseball team anytime soon so I focused on getting my life in order while my peers stayed up late and played video games I built good sleep habits and went to bed early each night in the messy world of a college dorm I made a point to keep my room neat and tidy these improvements were minor but they gave me a sense of control over my life I started to feel confident again and this growing belief in myself rippled into the classroom as I improved my study habits and managed to earn Straight A's during my first year a habit is a routine or behavior that is performed regularly and in many cases automatically as each semester passed I accumulated small but consistent habits that ultimately led to results that were unimaginable to me when I started for example for the first time in my life I made it a habit to lift weights multiple times per week and in the years that followed my six foot four inch frame bulked up from a featherweight 170 to a lean 200 pounds when my sophomore season arrived I earned a starting role on the pitching staff by my junior year I was voted team captain and at the end of the season I was selected for the all-conference team but it was not until my senior season that my sleep habits study habits and strength training habits really began to pay off six years after I had been hit in the face with a baseball bat flown to the hospital and placed into a coma I was selected as the top male athlete at Denison University and named to the ESPN academic al-america team an honor given to just 33 players across the country by the time I graduated I was listed in the school record books in eight different categories that same year I was awarded the University's highest academic honor the president's medal I hope you'll forgive me if this sounds boastful to be honest there was nothing legendary or historic about my athletic career I never ended up playing professionally however looking back on those years I believe I accomplished something just as rare I fulfilled my potential and I believe the concepts in this book can help you fulfill your potential as well we all face challenges in life this injury was one of mine and the experience taught me a critical lesson changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you're willing to stick with them for years we all deal with setbacks but in the long run the quality of Our Lives often depends on the quality of our habits with the same habits you'll end up with the same results but with better habits Anything is Possible maybe there are people who can achieve incredible success overnight I don't know any of them and I'm certainly not one of them there wasn't one defining Moment On my journey for 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 only way I made progress the only choice I had was to start small and I employed the same strategy a few years later when I started my own business and began working on this book how and why I wrote this book in November 2012 I began publishing articles that for years I had been keeping notes about my personal experiments with habits and I was finally ready to share some of them publicly I began by publishing a new article every Monday and Thursday within a few months this simple writing habit led to my first 1000 email subscribers and by the end of 2013 that number had grown to more than 30 000 people in 2014 my email list expanded to over 100 000 subscribers which made it one of the fastest growing newsletters on the internet I had felt like an imposter when I began writing two years earlier but now I was becoming known as an expert on habits a new label that excited me but also felt uncomfortable I had never considered myself a master of the topic but rather someone who was experimenting alongside my readers in 2015 I reached 200 000 email subscribers and signed a book deal with penguin Random House to begin writing the book you are reading now as my audience grew so did my business opportunities I was increasingly asked to speak at top companies about the science of habit formation Behavior change and continuous Improvement I found myself delivering keynote speeches at conferences in the United States in Europe in 2016 my articles began to appear regularly in major Publications like time entrepreneur and Forbes incredibly my writing was read by over 8 million people that year coaches in the NFL NBA and MLB began reading my work and sharing it with their teams at the start of 2017 I launched the habits Academy which became the premier training platform for organizations and individuals interested in building better habits in life and work Fortune 500 companies and growing startups began to enroll their leaders and train their staff in total over ten thousand leaders managers coaches and teachers have graduated from the habits Academy and my work with them has taught me an incredible amount about what it takes to make habits work in the real world as I put the finishing touches on this book in 2018 is receiving millions of visitors per month and nearly 500 000 people subscribed to my weekly email newsletter a number that is so far beyond my expectations when I began and I'm not even sure what to think of it how this book will benefit you the entrepreneur and investor Naval ravikant has said to write a great book you must first become the book I originally learned about the ideas mentioned here because I had to live them I had to rely on small habits to rebound for my injury to get stronger in the gym to perform at a high level on the field to become a writer to build a successful business and simply to develop into a responsible adult small habits helped me fulfill my potential and since you picked up this book I'm guessing you'd like to fulfill yours as well in the pages that follow I will share a step-by-step plan for building better habits not for days or weeks but for a lifetime while science supports everything I've written this book is not an academic research paper it's an operating manual you'll find wisdom and practical advice front and center as I explain the science of how to create and change your habits in a way that is easy to understand and apply the fields I draw on biology Neuroscience philosophy psychology and more have been around for many years what I offer you is a synthesis of the best ideas smart people figured out a long time ago as well as the most compelling Discovery scientists have made recently my contribution I hope is to find the ideas that matter most and connect them in a way that is highly actionable anything wise in these Pages you should credit to the many experts who preceded me anything foolish assume it is my error the backbone of this book is my four-step model of habits Q craving response and reward and the four laws of behavior change that evolve out of these steps readers with a psychology background May recognize some of these terms from operant conditioning which was first proposed as stimulus response reward by the F Skinner in the 1930s and has been popularized more recently as Q routine reward in The Power of Habit by Charles dewig behavioral scientists like Skinner realize that if you offer the right reward or punishment you could get people to act in a certain way but while Skinner's model did an excellent job of explaining how external stimuli influenced our habits it lacked a good explanation for how our thoughts feelings and beliefs impact our Behavior internal states are moods and emotions matter too in recent decades scientists have begun to determine the connection between our thoughts feelings and behavior This research will also be covered in these pages in total the framework I offer is an integrated model of the cognitive and Behavioral Sciences I believe it is one of the first models of human behavior to accurately account for both the influence of external stimuli and internal emotions on our habits while some of the language may be familiar I am confident that the details and the applications of the four laws of behavior change will offer a new way to think about your habits human behavior is always changing situation to situation moment to moment second to second but this book is about what doesn't change it's about the fundamentals of human behavior the lasting principles you can rely on year after year the ideas you can build a business around build a family around build a life around there is no one right way to create better habits but this book describes the best way I know an approach that will be effective regardless of where you start or what you're trying to change the strategies I cover will be relevant to anyone looking for a step-by-step system for improvement whether your goals Center on health money productivity relationships or all of the above as long as human behavior is involved this book will be your guide the fundamentals why tiny changes make a big difference one the surprising power of atomic habits tihi fate of British cycling changed one day in 2003. the organization which was the governing body for professional cycling in Great Britain had recently hired Dave brailsford as its new performance director at the time professional cyclists in Great Britain had endured nearly 100 Years of mediocrity since 1908 British writers had won just a single gold medal at the Olympic Games and they had fared even worse in cycling's biggest raise the Tour de France in 110 years no British cyclist had ever won the event in fact the performance of British writers have been so underwhelming that one of the top bike manufacturers in Europe refused to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the Brits using their gear brailsford had been hired to put British cycling on a new trajectory what made him different from previous coaches was his Relentless commitment to a strategy that he referred to as the aggregation of marginal gains which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do brailsford said the whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike and then improve it by one percent you will get a significant increase when you put them all together brailsford and his coaches began by making small adjustments you might expect from a professional cycling team they redesigned the bike seats to make them more comfortable and rubbed alcohol on the tires for a better grip they asked Riders to wear electrically heated over shorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature while riding and used biofeedback sensors to monitor how each athlete responded to a particular workout the team tested various Fabrics in a wind tunnel and had their outdoor Rider switch to indoor racing suits which proved to be lighter and more aerodynamic but they didn't stop there brailsford and his team continue to find one percent improvements in overlooked and unexpected areas they tested different types of massage gels to see which one led to the fastest Muscle Recovery they hired a surgeon to teach each Rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the chances of catching a cold they determined the type of pillow and Mattress that led to the best night's sleep for each Rider they even painted the inside of the team truck white which helped them spot little bits of dust that would normally slip by unnoticed but could degrade the performance of the finely tuned bikes as these and hundreds of other small improvements accumulated the results came faster than anyone could have imagined just five years after brailsford took over the British cycling team dominated the road and track cycling events at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing where they won an astounding 60 of the gold medals available for years later when the Olympic Games came to London the Brits raised the bar as they set nine Olympic records and seven World Records that same year Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France the next year his teammate Chris from won the race and he would go on to win again in 2015 2016 and 2017 giving the British team five Tour de France victories in six years during the 10-year span from 2007 to 2017 British cyclists won 178 World Championships and 66 Olympic or paralympic gold medals and captured five Tour de France victories in what is widely regarded as the most successful run in cycling history how does this happen how does a team of previously ordinary athletes transform into world champions with tiny changes that at first glance would seem to make a modest difference at best why do small improvements accumulate into such remarkable results and how can you replicate this approach in your own life why small habits make a big difference it is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis too often we convince ourselves that massive success requires Massive Action whether it is losing weight building a business writing a book winning a championship or achieving any other goal we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about meanwhile improving by one percent isn't particularly notable sometimes it isn't even noticeable but it can be far more meaningful especially in the long run the difference a tiny Improvement can make over time is astounding here's how the math works out if you can get one percent better each day for one year you'll end up 37 times better by the time you're done conversely if you get one percent worse each day for one year you'll decline nearly down to zero what starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more one percent better every day one percent worse every day for one year 0.99365 is equal to 0.031 better every day for one year 1.01365 is equal to 37.78 Figure 1 the effects of small habits compound over time for example if you can get just one percent better each day you'll end up with results that are nearly 37 times better after one year habits of the compound interest of self-improvement the same way that money multiplies through compound interest the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them they seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous it is only when looking back to five or perhaps 10 years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones become strikingly apparent this can be a difficult concept to appreciate in daily life we often dismiss small changes because they don't seem to matter very much in the moment if you save a little money now you're still not a millionaire if you go to the gym three days in a row you're still out of shape if you study Mandarin for an hour tonight you still haven't learned the language we make a few changes but the results never seem to come quickly and so we slide back into our previous routines 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 if you work late tonight and ignore your family they will forgive you if you procrastinate and put your project off until tomorrow there will usually be time to finish it later a single decision is easy to dismiss but when we repeat one percent errors day after day by replicating poor decisions duplicating tiny mistakes and rationalizing little excuses are small choices compound into toxic results it's the accumulation of many missteps a one percent decline here and there that eventually leads to a problem the impact created by a change in your habits is similar to the effect of Shifting the root of an airplane by just a few degrees imagine you are flying from Los Angeles to New York City if a pilot leaving from LAX adjusts The Heading just 3.5 degrees south you will land in Washington DC instead of New York such a small change is barely noticeable at takeoff the nose of the airplane moves just a few feet but when magnified across the entire United States you end up hundreds of miles apart similarly a slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a very different destination making a choice that is one percent better or one percent worse seems insignificant in the moment but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be success is the product of daily habits not once in a lifetime transformations that said it doesn't matter how successful or unsuccessful you are right now what matters is whether your habits are putting you on the path towards success you should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results if you're a millionaire but you spend more than you earn each month then you're on a bad trajectory if your spending habits don't change it's not going to end well conversely if you're broke but you save a little bit every month then you're on the path toward Financial Freedom even if you're moving slower than you'd like your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits you get what you repeat if you want to predict where you'll end up in life all you have to do is follow the curve of tiny gains or tiny losses and see how your daily choices will compound 10 or 20 years down the line are you spending less than you earn each month are you making it into the gym each week are you reading books and learning something new each day tiny battles like these are the ones that will Define your future self time magnifies the margin between success and failure it will multiply whatever you feed it good habits make time your ally bad habits make time your enemy habits are a double-edged sword bad habits can cut you down just as easily as good habits Can Build You Up which is why understanding the details is crucial you need to know how habits work and how to design them to your liking so you can avoid the dangerous half of the blade your habits can compound for you or against you positive compounding productivity compounds accomplishing one extra task is a small feat on any given day but accounts for a lot over an entire career the effect of automating an old task or mastering a new skill can be even greater the more tasks you can handle without thinking the more your brain is free to focus on other areas knowledge compounds learning one new idea won't make you a genius but a commitment to lifelong learning can be transformative furthermore each book you read not only teaches you something new but also opens up different ways of thinking about old ideas as Warren Buffett says that's how knowledge works it builds up like compound interest relationships compound people reflect your behavior back to you the more you help others the more others want to help you being a little bit nicer in each interaction can result in a network abroad and strong connections over time negative compounding stress compounds the frustration of a traffic jam the weight of parenting responsibilities the worry of making ends meet the strain of slightly high blood pressure by themselves these common causes of stress are manageable but when they persist for years little stresses compound into serious health issues negative thoughts compound the more you think of yourself as worthless stupid or ugly the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way you get trapped in a thought Loop the same is true for how you think about others once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry unjust or selfish you see those kind of people everywhere outrage compounds riots protests and mass movements are rarely the result of a single event instead a long series of microaggressions and daily aggravations slowly multiply until one event tips the scales and outrage spreads like wildfire what progress is really like imagine that you have an ice cube sitting on the table in front of you the room is cold and you can see your breath it is currently 25 degrees ever so slowly the room begins to heat up 26 degrees 27. 28. the Ice Cube is still sitting on the table in front of you 29 degrees 30. 31. still nothing has happened then 32 degrees the ice begins to melt a one degree shift seemingly no different from the temperature increases before it has unlocked a huge change breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions which build up the potential required to unleash a major change this pattern shows up everywhere cancer spends eighty percent of its life undetectable then takes over the body in months bamboo can barely be seen for the first five years as it builds extensive root systems underground before exploding 90 feet into the air within six weeks similarly habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance in the early and middle stages of any Quest there is often a valley of disappointment you expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it's frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days weeks and even months it doesn't feel like you are going anywhere it's a Hallmark of any compounding process the most powerful outcomes are delayed this is one of the core reasons why it is so hard to build habits that last people make a few small changes fail to see a tangible result and decide to stop you think I've been running every day for a month so why can't I see any change in my body once this kind of thinking takes over it's easy to let good habits Fall by the wayside but in order to make a meaningful difference habits need to persist long enough to break through this Plateau what I call the plateau of latent potential if you find yourself struggling to build a good habit or break a bad one it is not because you have lost your ability to improve it is often because you have not yet crossed the plateau of latent potential complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from 25 to 31 degrees your work was not wasted it is just being stored all the action happens at 32 degrees when you finally break through the plateau of latent potential people will call it an overnight success the outside world only sees the most dramatic event rather than all that preceded it but you know that it's the work you did long ago when it seemed that you weren't making any progress that makes the jump today possible it is the human equivalent of geological pressure two tectonic blades can grind against one another for millions of years the tension slowly building all the while then one day they rub each other once again in the same fashion they have for ages but this time the tension is too great and earthquake erupts change can take years before it happens all at once Mastery requires patience the San Antonio Spurs one of the most successful teams in NBA history have a quote from social reformer Jacob Reese hanging in their locker room when nothing seems to help I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his Rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it yet at the 101st below it will split in two and I know it was not that last blow that did it but all that had gone before the plateau of latent potential figure two we often expect progress to be linear at the very least we hope it will come quickly in reality the results of our efforts are often delayed it is not until months or years later that we realize the true value of the previous work we have done this can result in a valley of disappointment where people feel discouraged after putting in weeks or months of hard work without experiencing any results however this work was not wasted it was simply being stored it is not until much later that the full value of previous efforts is revealed all big things come from Small Beginnings the seed of every habit is a single tiny decision but as the decision is repeated a habit sprouts and grows stronger Roots entrench themselves and branches grow the task of breaking a bad habit is like approving a powerful Oak within us and the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time but what determines whether we stick with a habit long enough to survive the plateau of latent potential and breakthrough to the other side what is it that causes some people to slide into unwanted habits and enables others to enjoy the compounding effects of good ones forget about goals focus on systems instead prevailing wisdom claims that the best way to achieve what we want in life getting into better shape building a successful business relaxing more and worrying less spending more time with friends and family is to set specific actionable goals for many years this was how I approached my habits too each one was a goal to be reached I set goals for the grades I wanted to get in school for the weights I wanted to lift in the gym for the profits I wanted to earn in business I succeeded at a few but I failed at a lot of them eventually I began to realize that my results had very little to do with the goals I set and nearly everything to do with the systems I followed what's the difference between systems and goals it's a distinction I first learned from Scott Adams the cartoonist behind the Dilbert comic goals are about the results you want to achieve systems are about the processes that lead to those results if you're a coach your goal might be to win a championship your system is the way you recruit players manage your assistant coaches and conduct practice if you're an entrepreneur your goal might be to build a million dollar business your system is how you test product ideas hire employees and run marketing campaigns if you're a musician your goal might be to play a new piece your system is how often you practice how you break down and Tackle difficult measures and your method for receiving feedback from your instructor now for the interesting question if you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system would you still succeed for example if you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal to win a championship and focus only on what your team does at practice each day would you still get results I think you would the goal in any sport is to finish with the best score but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard the only way to actually win is to get better each day in the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh the score takes care of itself the same is true for other areas of life if you want better results then forget about setting goals focus on your system instead what do I mean by this our goal is completely useless of course not goals are good for setting a Direction but systems are best for making progress a handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems problem number one winners and losers have the same goals goal setting suffers from a serious case of survivorship bias we concentrate on the people who end up winning the survivors and mistakenly assume that ambitious goals led to their success while overlooking all of the people who had the same objective but didn't succeed every Olympian wants to win a gold medal every candidate wants to get the job and if successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers it wasn't the goal of winning the Tour de France that propelled the British cyclists to the top of the sport presumably they had wanted to win a race every year before just like every other professional team the goal had always been there it was only when they implemented a system of continuous small improvements that they achieved a different outcome problem number two achieving a goal is only a momentary change imagine you have a messy room and you set a goal to clean it if you summon the energy to tidy up then you will have a clean room for now but if you maintain the same sloppy pack rat habits that led to a messy room in the first place soon you'll be looking at a new pile of clutter and hoping for another burst of motivation you're left chasing the same outcome because you never changed the system behind it you treated a symptom without addressing the cause achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment that's the counter-intuitive thing about Improvement we think we need to change our results but the results are not the problem what we really need to change are the systems that cause those results when you solve problems at the results level you only solve them temporarily in order to improve for good you need to solve problems at the system's level fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves problem number three goals restrict your happiness the implicit assumption behind any goal is this once I reach my goal then I'll be happy the problem with the goals first mentality is that you're continually putting happiness off until the next milestone I've slipped into the strap so many times I've lost count for years happiness was always something for my future self to enjoy I promised myself that once I gained 20 pounds of muscle or after my business was featured in The New York Times then I could finally relax furthermore goals create an either or conflict either you achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and you are a disappointment you mentally box yourself into a narrow version of happiness this is misguided it is unlikely that your actual path through life will match the exact Journey you had in mind when you set out it makes no sense to restrict your satisfaction to one scenario when there are many paths to success A System's 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 you can be satisfied anytime your system is running and a system can be successful in many different forms not just the one you first envision problem number four goals are at odds with long-term progress finally a goal-oriented mindset can create a yo-yo effect many Runners work hard for months but as soon as they cross the finish line they stop training the race is no longer there to motivate them when all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal what is left to push you forward after you achieve it this is why many people find themselves reverting to their old habits after accomplishing a goal the purpose of setting goals is to win the game the purpose of Building Systems is to continue playing the game true long-term thinking is goal as thinking it's not about any single accomplishment it is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous Improvement ultimately it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress a system of atomic habits if you're having trouble changing your habits the problem isn't you the problem is your system bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change but because you have the wrong system for change you do not rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems focusing on the overall system rather than a single goal is one of the core themes of this book it is also one of the deeper meanings behind the word atomic by now you probably realize that an atomic habit refers to a tiny change a marginal gain a one percent Improvement but Atomic habits are not just any old habits however small they're little habits that are part of a larger system just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules Atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results habits are like the atoms of Our Lives each one is a fundamental unit that contributes to your overall Improvement at first these tiny routines seem insignificant but soon they build on each other and fuel bigger wins that multiply to a degree that far outweighs the cost of their initial investment they are both small and mighty this is the meaning of the phrase Atomic habits a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do but also the source of incredible power a component of the system of compound growth chapter summary habits are the compound interest of self-improvement getting one percent better every day counts for a lot in the long run habits are a double-edged sword they can work for you or against you which is why understanding the details is essential small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold the most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed you need to be patient an atomic habit is a little habit that is part of a larger system just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules Atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results if you want better results then forget about setting goals focus on your system instead you do not rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems two how your habits shape your identity and vice versa why is it so easy to repeat bad habits and so hard to form good ones few things can have a more powerful impact on your life than improving your daily habits and yet it is likely that this time next year you'll be doing the same thing rather than something better it often feels difficult to keep good habits going for more than a few days even with sincere effort and the occasional burst of motivation Habits Like exercise meditation journaling and cooking are reasonable for a day or two and then become a hassle however once your habits are established they seem to stick around forever especially The Unwanted ones despite our best intentions unhealthy habits like eating junk food watching too much television procrastinating and smoking can feel impossible to break changing our habits is challenging for two reasons one we try to change the wrong thing and two we try to change our habits in the wrong way in this chapter I'll address the first point in the chapters that follow I'll answer the second our first mistake is that we try to change the wrong thing to understand what I mean consider that there are three levels at which change can occur you can imagine them like the layers of an onion three layers of behavior change figure three there are three layers of behavior change a change in your outcomes a change in your processes or a change in your identity the first layer is changing your outcomes this level is concerned with changing your results losing weight publishing a book winning a championship most of the goals you set are associated with this level of change the second layer is changing your process this level is concerned with changing your habits and systems implementing a new routine at the gym decluttering your desk for better workflow developing a meditation practice most of the habits you build are associated with this level the third and deepest layer is changing your identity this level is concerned with changing your beliefs your worldview your self-image your judgments about yourself and others most of the beliefs assumptions and biases you hold are associated with this level outcomes are about what you get processes are about what you do identity is about what you believe when it comes to building habits that last when it comes to building a system of one percent improvements the problem is not that one level is better or worse than another all levels of change are useful in their own way the problem is the direction of change many people begin the process of changing their Habits by focusing on what they want to achieve this leads us to outcome-based habits the alternative is to build identity based habits with this approach we start by focusing on who we wish to become outcome-based habits identity-based habits figure four with outcome based habits the focus is on what you want to achieve with identity based habits the focus is on who you wish to become imagine two people resisting a cigarette when offered a smoke the first person says no thanks I'm trying to quit it sounds like a reasonable response but this person still believes they're a smoker who is trying to be something else they are hoping their behavior will change while carrying around the same beliefs the second person declines by saying no thanks I'm not a smoker it's a small difference but the statement signals a shift in identity smoking was part of their former life not their current one they no longer identify as someone who smokes most people don't even consider identity change when they set out to improve they just think I want to be skinny outcome and if I stick to this diet then I'll be skinny process they set goals and determine the actions they should take to achieve those goals without considering the beliefs that drive their actions they never shift the way they look at themselves and they don't realize that their old identity can sabotage their new plans for change behind every system of actions are a system of beliefs the system of a democracy is founded on beliefs like Freedom majority rule and social equality the system of a dictatorship has a very different set of beliefs like absolute Authority and strict obedience you can imagine many ways to try to get more people to vote in a democracy but such Behavior change would never get off the ground in a dictatorship that's not the identity of the system voting is a behavior that is impossible under a certain set of beliefs a similar pattern exists whether we are discussing individuals organizations or societies there are a set of beliefs and assumptions that shape the system and identity behind the habits behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last you may want more money but if your identity is someone who consumes rather than creates then you'll continue to be pulled towards spending rather than earning you may want better health but if you continue to prioritize Comfort over accomplishment you'll be drawn to relaxing rather than training it's hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past Behavior you have a new goal and a new plan but you haven't changed Who You Are the story of Brian Clark an entrepreneur from Boulder Colorado provides a good example for as long as I can remember I've chewed my fingernails Clark told me it started as a nervous habit when I was young and then morphed into an undesirable grooming ritual one day I resolved to stop chewing my nails until they grew out a bit through mindful willpower alone I managed to do it then Clark did something surprising I asked my wife to schedule my first ever manicure he said my thought was that if I started paying to maintain my nails I wouldn't chew them and it worked but not for the monetary reason what happened was the manicure made my fingers look really nice for the first time the manicurist even said that other than the chewing I had really healthy Attractive Nails suddenly I was proud of my fingernails and even though that's something I had never aspired to it made all the difference I've never chewed my nails since not even a single close call and it's because I now take pride in properly caring for them the ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity it's one thing to say I'm the type of person who wants this it's something very different to say I'm the type of person who is this 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 if you're proud of how your hair looks you'll develop all sorts of habits to care for and maintain it if you're proud of the size of your biceps you'll make sure you never skip an upper body workout if you're proud of the scarves unit you'll be more likely to spend hours knitting each week once your pride gets involved you'll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits true Behavior change is identity change 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 anyone can convince themselves to visit the gym or eat healthy once or twice but if you don't shift the belief behind the behavior then it is hard to stick with long-term changes improvements are only temporary until they become part of Who You Are the goal is not to read a book the goal is to become a reader the goal is not to run a marathon the goal is to become a runner the goal is not to learn an instrument the goal is to become a musician your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity what you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are either consciously or unconsciously 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 belief for example people who identified as being a voter were more likely to vote than those who simply claimed voting was an action they wanted to perform similarly the person who incorporates exercise into their identity doesn't have to convince themselves to train doing the right thing is easy after all when your behavior and your identity are fully aligned you are no longer pursuing Behavior change you are simply acting like the type of person you already believe yourself to be like all aspects of habit formation this too is a double-edged sword when working for you identity change can be a powerful force for self-improvement when working against you though identity change can be a curse once you have adopted an identity it can be easy to let your allegiance to it impact your ability to change many people walk through life in a cognitive Slumber blindly following the Norms attached to their identity I'm terrible with directions I'm not a morning person I'm bad at remembering people's names I'm always late I'm not good with technology I'm horrible at math and a thousand other variations when you have repeated a story to yourself for years it is easy to slide into these mental grooves and accept them as a fact in time you begin to resist certain actions because that's not who I am there is internal pressure to maintain your self-image and behave in a way that is consistent with your beliefs you find whatever way you can to avoid contradicting yourself the more deeply a thought or action is tied to your identity the more difficult it is to change it it can feel comfortable to believe what your culture believes group Identity or to do what upholds your self-image personal identity even if it's wrong the biggest barrier to positive change at any level individual team Society is identity conflict good habits can make rational sense but if they conflict with your identity you will fail to put them into action on any given day you may struggle with your habits because you're too busy or too tired or too overwhelmed or hundreds of other reasons over the long run however the real reason you fail to stick with habits is that your self-image gets in the way this is why you can't get too attached to one version of your identity progress requires unlearning becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs and to upgrade and expand your identity this brings us to an important question if your beliefs in worldview play such an important role in your behavior where do they come from in the first place how exactly is your identity formed and how can you emphasize new aspects of your identity that serve you and gradually erase the pieces that hinder you the two-step process to changing your identity your identity emerges out of your habits you are not born with preset beliefs every belief including those about yourself is learned and conditioned through experience more precisely your habits are how you embody your identity when you make your bed each day you embody the identity of an organized person when you write each day you embody the identity of a creative person when you train each day you embody the identity of an athletic person the more you repeat a behavior the more you reinforce the identity associated with that behavior in fact the word identity was originally derived from the Latin words ascentitas which means being an idened item which means repeatedly your identity is literally your repeated beingness whatever your identity is right now you only believe it because you have proof of it if you go to church every Sunday for 20 years you have evidence that you are religious if you study biology for one hour every night you have evidence that you are studious if you go to the gym even when it's snowing you have evidence that you are committed to Fitness the more evidence you have for a belief the more strongly you will believe it for most of my early life I didn't consider myself a writer if you were to ask any of my high school teachers or college professors they would tell you I was an average writer at best certainly not a standout when I began my writing career I published a new article every Monday and Thursday for the first few years as the evidence grew so did my identity as a writer I didn't start out as a writer I became one through my habits of course your habits are not the only actions that influence your identity but by virtue of their frequency they are usually the most important ones each experience in life modifies your self-image but it's unlikely you would consider yourself a soccer player because you kicked a ball once or an artist because you scribbled a picture as you repeat these actions however the evidence accumulates and your self-image begins to change the effect of one-off experiences tends to fade away while the effective habits gets reinforced with time which means your habits contribute most of the evidence that shapes your identity in this way the process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself this is a gradual evolution 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 we are continually undergoing microevolutions of the self each habit is like a suggestion hey maybe this is who I am if you finish a book then perhaps you are the type of person who likes reading if you go to the gym then perhaps you were the type of person who likes exercise if you practice playing the guitar perhaps you are the type of person who likes music every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become no single instance will transform your beliefs but as the votes build up so does the evidence of your new identity this is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change small habits can make a meaningful Difference by providing evidence of a new identity and if a change is Meaningful it actually is big that's the Paradox of making small improvements putting this all together you can see that habits are the path to changing your identity the most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do each time you write a page you are a writer each time you practice the violin you are a musician each time you start a workout you are an athlete each time you encourage your employees you are a leader each habit not only gets results but also teaches you something far more important to trust yourself you start to believe you can actually accomplish these things when the votes Mount up and the evidence begins to change the story you tell yourself begins to change as well of course it works the opposite way too every time you choose to perform a bad habit it's a vote for that identity the good news is that you don't need to be perfect in any election there are going to be votes for both sides you don't need a unanimous vote to win an election you just need a majority it doesn't matter if you cast a few votes for a bad behavior or an unproductive habit your goal is simply to win the majority of the time new identities require new evidence if you keep casting the same votes you've always cast you're going to get the same results you've always had if nothing changes nothing is going to change it is a simple two-step process one decide the type of person you want to be two prove it to yourself with small wins first decide who you want to be this holds at any level as an individual as a team as a community as a nation what do you want to stand for what are your principles and values who do you wish to become these are Big questions and many people aren't sure where to begin but they do know what kind of results they want to get six-pack abs or to feel less anxious or to double their salary that's fine start there and work backward from the results you want to the type of person who could get those results ask yourself who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want who is the type of person that could lose 40 pounds who is the type of person that could learn a new language who is the type of person that could run a successful startup for example who is the type of person who could write a book it's probably someone who is consistent and reliable now your focus shifts from writing a book outcome based to being the type of person who is consistent and reliable identity based this process can lead to beliefs like I'm the kind of teacher who stands up for her students I'm the kind of doctor who gives each patient the time and empathy they need I'm the kind of manager who advocates for her employees once you have a handle on the type of person you want to be you can begin taking small steps to reinforce your desired identity I have a friend who lost over 100 pounds by asking herself what would a healthy person do all day long she would use this question as a guide would a healthy person walk or take a cab would a healthy person order a burrito or a salad she figured if she acted like a healthy person long enough eventually she would become that person she was right the concept of identity based habits is our first introduction to another key theme in this book feedback loops your habits shape your identity and your identity shapes your habits it's a two-way street the formation of all habits is a feedback loop a concept we will explore in depth in the next chapter but it's important to let your values principles and identity Drive the loop rather than your results the focus should always be on becoming the type of person not getting a particular outcome the real reason habits matter identity change is the North Star of how to change the remainder of this book will provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to build better habits in yourself your family your team your company and anywhere else you wish but the true question is are you becoming the type of person you want to become the first step is not what or how but who you need to know who you want to be otherwise your quest for change is like a boat without a rudder and that's why we are starting here you have the power to change your beliefs about yourself your identity is not set in stone you have a choice in every moment you can choose the identity you want to reinforce today with the habits you choose today and this brings us to the deeper purpose of this book and the real reason habits matter building better habits isn't about littering your day with life hacks it's not about flossing one tooth each night or taking a cold shower each morning or wearing the same outfit each day it's not about achieving external measures of success like earning more money losing weight or reducing stress habits can help you achieve all of these things but fundamentally they are not about having something they are about becoming someone ultimately your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be they're the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself quite literally you become your habits chapter summary there are three levels of change outcome change process change and identity change the most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve but on who you wish to become your identity emerges out of your habits every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs and to upgrade and expand your identity the real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results although they can do that but because they can change your beliefs about yourself three how to build better habits in four simple steps in 1898 a psychologist named Edward Bondi conducted an experiment that would lay the foundation for our understanding of how habits form in the rules that guide our Behavior Thorndike was interested in studying the behavior of animals and he started by working with cats he would Place each cat inside a device known as a puzzle box the box was designed so that the cat could Escape through a door by some simple act such as pulling at a loop of cord pressing a lever or stepping on a platform for example one box contained a lever that when pressed would open a door on the side of the box once the door had been opened the cat could dart out and run over to a bowl of food most cats wanted to escape as soon as they were placed Inside the Box they would poke their nose into the corners stick their paws through openings and Claw at loose objects after a few minutes of exploration the cats would happen to press the magical lever the door would open and they would Escape Thorndike tracked the behavior of each cat across many trials in the beginning the animals moved around the box at random but as soon as the lever had been pressed and the door opened the process of learning began gradually each cat learned to associate the action of pressing the lever with the reward of Escaping The Box and getting to the food after 20 to 30 trials this Behavior became so automatic and habitual that the cat could Escape within a few seconds for example Thorndike noted cat 12 took the following times to perform the ACT 160 seconds 30 seconds 90 seconds 60 15 28 20 30 22 11 15 20 12 10 14 10 8 8 5 10 8 6 6 7. during the first three trials the cat escaped in an average of 1.5 minutes during the last three trials it escaped in an average of 6.3 seconds with practice each Cat made fewer errors and their actions became quicker and more automatic rather than repeat the same mistakes the cat began to cut straight to the solution from his studies Thorndike described the learning process by stating behaviors followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated his work provides the perfect starting point for discussing how habits form in our own lives it also provides answers to some fundamental questions like what are habits and why does the brain bother building them at all why your brain builds habits 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 encounter a new situation in life your brain has to make a decision how do I respond to this the first time you come across a problem you're not sure how to solve it like thorndike's cat you're just trying things out to see what works neurological activity in the brain is high during this period you are carefully analyzing the situation and making conscious decisions about how to act you're taking in tons of new information and trying to make sense of it all the brain is busy learning the most effective course of action occasionally like a cat pressing on a lever you stumble across a solution you're feeling anxious and you discover that going for a run calms you down you're mentally exhausted from a long day of work and you learn that playing video games relaxes you you're exploring exploring exploring and then bam a reward after you stumble upon an unexpected reward you alter your strategy for next time your brain immediately begins to catalog the events that preceded the reward wait a minute that felt good what did I do right before that this is the feedback loop behind all human behavior try fail learn try differently with practice the useless movements fade away and the useful actions get reinforced that's a habit forming whenever you face a problem repeatedly your brain begins to automate the process of solving it your habits are just a series of automatic solutions that solve the problems and stresses you face regularly as behavioral scientist Jason Raya writes habits are simply reliable solutions to recurring problems in our environment as habits are created the level of activity in the brain decreases you learn to lock in on the cues that predict success and tune out everything else when a similar situation arises in the future you know exactly what to look for there is no longer a need to analyze every angle of a situation your brain skips the process of trial and error and creates a mental rule if this then that these cognitive scripts can be followed automatically whenever the situation is appropriate now whenever you feel stressed you get the itch to run as soon as you walk in the door from work you grab the video game controller a choice that once required effort is now automatic a habit has been created habits are mental shortcuts learned from experience in a sense a habit is just a memory of the steps you previously followed to solve a problem in the past whenever the conditions are right you can draw on this memory and automatically apply the same solution the primary reason the brain remembers the past is to better predict what will work in the future habit formation is incredibly useful because the conscious mind is the bottleneck of the brain it can only pay attention to one problem at a time as a result your brain is always working to preserve your conscious attention for whatever task is most essential whenever possible the conscious mind likes to Pawn off tasks to the non-conscious mind to do automatically this is precisely what happens when a habit is formed habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity so you can allocate your attention to other tasks despite their efficiency some people still wonder about the benefits of habits the argument goes like this we'll have it to make my life dull I don't want to pigeonhole myself into a lifestyle I don't enjoy doesn't so much routine take away the vibrancy and spontaneity of life hardly such questions set up a false dichotomy they make you think that you have to choose between building habits and attaining freedom in reality the two complement each other habits do not restrict freedom they created in fact the people who don't have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom without good financial habits you will always be struggling for the next dollar without good health habits you will always seem to be short on energy without good learning habits you will always feel like you're behind the curve if you're always being forced to make decisions about simple tasks when should I work out 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 can create the mental space needed for free thinking and creativity 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 present allows you to do more of what you want in the future the science of how habits work the process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps two craving response and reward breaking it down into these fundamental Parts can help us understand what a habit is how it works and how to improve it figure five all habits proceed through four stages in the same order Q craving response and reward this four-step pattern is the backbone of every habit and your brain runs through these steps in the same Order each time first there is the cue the queue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior it is a bit of information that predicts a reward our prehistoric ancestors were paying attention to cues that signaled the location of primary rewards like food water and sex today we spend most of our time learning cues that predict secondary rewards like money and fame power and Status praise and approval love and friendship or a sense of personal satisfaction of course these Pursuits also indirectly improve our odds of survival and reproduction which is the deeper motive behind everything we do your mind is continuously analyzing your internal and external environment for hints of where rewards are located because the queue is the first indication that we're close to a reward it naturally leads to a craving Cravings 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 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 you are not motivated by brushing your teeth but rather by the feeling of a clean mouth you do not want to turn on the television you want to be entertained every craving is linked to a desire to change your internal state this is an important point that we will discuss in detail later Cravings differ from person to person in theory any piece of information could trigger a craving but in practice people are not motivated by the same cues for a gambler the sound of slot machines can be a potent trigger that Sparks an intense wave of Desire for someone who rarely gambles the jingles and Chimes of the casino are just background noise cues are meaningless until they are interpreted the thoughts feelings and emotions of the Observer are what transform a cue into a craving the third step is the response the response is the actual habit you perform which can take the form of a thought or an action whether a response occurs depends on how motivated you are and how much friction is associated with the behavior if a particular action requires more physical or mental effort than you are willing to expend then you won't do it your response also depends on your ability it sounds simple but a habit can occur only if you are capable of doing it if you want to dunk a basketball but can't jump high enough to reach the hoop well you're out of luck finally the response delivers a reward rewards are the end goal of every habit the cue is about noticing the reward the craving is about wanting the reward the response is about obtaining the reward we Chase rewards because they serve two purposes one they satisfy us and two they teach us the first purpose of rewards is to satisfy your craving yes rewards provide benefits on their own food and water deliver the energy you need to survive getting a promotion brings more money and respect getting in shape improves your health and your dating prospects but the more immediate benefit is that rewards satisfy your craving to eat or to gain status or to win approval at least for a moment rewards deliver contentment and relief from craving second rewards teach us which actions are worth remembering in the future 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 pleasure feelings of pleasure and disappointment are part of the feedback mechanism that helps your brain distinguish useful actions from useless ones rewards close the feedback loop and complete the Habit cycle if a behavior is insufficient in any of the four stages it will not become a habit eliminate the cue when your habit will never start reduce the craving and you won't experience enough motivation to act make the behavior difficult and you won't be able to do it and if the reward fails to satisfy your desire then you'll have no reason to do it again in the future without the first three steps a behavior will not occur without all four a behavior will not be repeated The Habit Loop Figure 6 the four stages of habit are best described as a feedback loop they form an endless cycle that is running every moment you are alive this habit Loop is continually scanning the environment predicting what will happen next trying out different responses and learning from the results in summary the cube triggers a craving which motivates a response which provides a reward which satisfies the craving and ultimately becomes associated with the cue together these four steps form a neurological feedback loop Q craving response reward Q craving response reward that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits this cycle is known as The Habit Loop this four-step process is not something that happens occasionally but rather it is an endless feedback loop that is running and active during every moment you are alive even now the brain is continually scanning the environment predicting what will happen next trying out different responses and learning from the results the entire process is completed in a split second and we use it again and again without realizing everything that has been packed into the previous moment we can split these four steps into two phases the problem phase and the solution phase the problem phase includes the Q and the craving and it is when you realize that something needs to change the solution phase includes the response and the reward and it is when you take action and achieve the change you desire problem phase one Q2 craving solution phase three response for reward all behavior is driven by the desire to solve a problem sometimes the problem is that you notice something good and you want to obtain it sometimes the problem is that you are experiencing pain and you want to relieve it either way the purpose of every habit is to solve the problems you face in the table on the following page you can see a few examples of what this looks like in real life imagine walking into a dark room and flipping on the light switch you have performed the simple habit so many times that it occurs without thinking you proceed through all four stages in the fraction of a second the urge to act strikes you without thinking problem phase one cue your phone buzzes with a new text message two craving you want to learn the contents of the message solution phase three response you grab your phone and read the text four reward you satisfy your craving to read the message grabbing your phone becomes associated with your phone buzzing problem phase one cue you are answering emails two craving you begin to feel stressed and overwhelmed by work you want to feel in control solution phase three response you bite your nails four reward you satisfy your craving to reduce stress biting your nails becomes associated with answering email problem phase one Q you wake up two craving you want to feel alert solution phase three response you drink a cup of coffee four reward you satisfy your craving to feel alert drinking coffee becomes associated with waking up problem phase one Q you smell a donut shop as you walk down the street near your office 2. craving you begin to crave a donut solution phase three response you buy a donut and eat it four reward you satisfy your craving to eat a donut buying a donut becomes associated with walking down the street near your office problem phase one cue you hit a stumbling block on a project at work two craving you feel stuck and want to relieve your frustration solution phase three response you pull out your phone and check social media 4. reward you satisfy your craving to feel relieved checking social media becomes associated with feeling stalled at work problem phase one cue you walk into a dark room two craving you want to be able to see solution phase three response you flip the light switch four reward you satisfy your craving to see turning on the light switch becomes associated with being in a dark room by the time we become adults we rarely notice the habits that are running our lives most of us never give a second thought to the fact that we tie the same shoe first each morning or unplug the toaster after each use or always change into comfortable clothes after getting home from work after Decades of mental programming we automatically slip into these patterns of thinking and acting the four laws of behavior change in the following chapters we will see time and again how the four stages of Q craving response and reward influence nearly everything we do each day but before we do that we need to transform these four steps into a practical framework that we can use to design good habits and eliminate bad ones I refer to this framework as the four laws of behavior change and it provides a simple set of rules for creating good habits and Breaking Bad Ones you can think of each law as a lever that influences human behavior when the levers are in the right positions creating good habits is effortless when they are in the wrong positions it is nearly impossible how to create a good habit the first law can make it obvious the second law craving make it attractive the third law response make it easy the fourth law reward make it satisfying we can invert these laws to learn how to break a bad habit how to break a bad habit in version of the first law Q make it invisible inversion of the second law craving make it unattractive inversion of the third law response make it difficult in version of the fourth law reward make it unsatisfying it would be irresponsible for me to claim that these four laws are an exhaustive framework for changing any human behavior but I think they're close as you will soon see the four laws of behavior change apply to nearly every field from Sports to politics art to Medicine comedy to management these laws can be used no matter what challenge you are facing there is no need for completely different strategies for each habit whenever you want to change your behavior you can simply ask yourself One how can I make it obvious two how can I make it attractive three how can I make it easy four how can I make it satisfying if you have ever wondered why don't I do what I say I'm going to do why don't I lose the weight or stop smoking or save for retirement or start that side business why do I say something is important but never seem to make time for it the answers to those questions can be found somewhere in these four laws the key to creating good habits and Breaking Bad Ones is to understand these fundamental laws and how to alter them to your specifications every goal is doomed to fail if it goes against the grain of human nature your habits are shaped by the systems in your life in the chapters that follow we will discuss these laws one by one and show how you can use them to create a system in which good habits emerge naturally and bad habits with or away chapter summary a habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic the ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps cue craving response and reward the four laws of behavior change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits they are one make it obvious two make it attractive three make it easy and four make it satisfying the first law make it obvious four the man who didn't look right the psychologist Gary Klein once told me a story about a woman who attended a family gathering she had spent years working as a paramedic and upon arriving at the event took one look at her father-in-law and got very concerned I don't like the way you look she said her father-in-law who was feeling perfectly fine jokingly replied well I don't like your looks either no she insisted you need to go to the hospital now a few hours later the man was undergoing life-saving surgery after an examination had revealed that he had a blockage to a major artery and was at immediate risk of a heart attack without his daughter-in-law's intuition he could have died what did the paramedic see how did she predict his impending heart attack when major arteries are obstructed the body focuses on sending blood to critical organs and away from peripheral locations near the surface of the skin the result is a change in the pattern of distribution of blood in the face after many years of working with people with heart failure the woman had unknowingly developed the ability to recognize this pattern on site she couldn't explain what it was that she noticed in her father-in-law's face but she knew something was wrong similar stories exist in other fields for example military analysts can identify which blip on a radar screen is an enemy missile land which one is a plane from their own Fleet even though they are traveling at the same speed flying at the same altitude and look identical on radar in nearly every respect during the Gulf War Lieutenant Commander Michael Riley saved an entire Battleship when he ordered a missile shot down despite the fact that it looked exactly like the battleship's own planes on radar he made the right call but even his Superior officers couldn't explain how he did it Museum curators have been known to discern the difference between an authentic piece of art and an expertly produced counterfeit even though they can't tell you precisely which details tip them off experienced Radiologists can look at a brain scan and predict the area where a stroke will develop before any obvious signs are visible to the untrained eye I've even heard of hairdressers noticing whether a client is pregnant based only on the feel of her hair the human brain is a prediction machine it is continuously taking in your surroundings and analyzing the information it comes across whenever you experience something repeatedly like a paramedic seeing the face of a heart attack patient or a military analyst seeing a missile on a radar screen your brain begins noticing what is important sorting through the details and highlighting the relevant cues and cataloging that information for future use with enough practice you can pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it automatically your brain encodes the lessons learned through experience we can't always explain what it is we are learning but learning is happening all along the way and your ability to notice the relevant cues in a given situation is the foundation for every habit you have we underestimate how much our brains and bodies can do without thinking you do not tell your hair to grow you're hard to pump your lungs to breathe or your stomach to digest and yet your body handles all this and more on autopilot you are much more than your conscious self consider hunger how do you know when you're hungry you don't necessarily have to see a cookie on the counter to realize that it is time to eat appetite and hunger are governed non-consciously your body has a variety of feedback loops that gradually alert you when it is time to eat again and attract what is going on around you and within you Cravings can arise thanks to hormones and chemicals circulating through your body suddenly you're hungry even though you're not quite sure what tipped you off this is one of the most surprising insights about our habits you don't need to be aware of the cue for a habit to begin you can notice an opportunity and take action without dedicating conscious attention to it this is what makes habits useful it's also what makes them dangerous as habits form your actions come under the direction of your automatic and unconscious mind you fall into Old patterns before you realize what's happening unless someone points it out you may not notice that you cover your mouth with your hand whenever you laugh that you apologize before asking a question or that you have a habit of finishing other people's sentences and the more you repeat these patterns the less likely you become to question what you're doing and why you're doing it I once heard of a retail clerk who was instructed to cut up empty gift cards after customers had used up the balance on the card one day the clerk cashed out a few customers in a row who purchased with gift cards when the next person walked up the clerk swiped the customer's actual credit card picked up the scissors and then cut it in half entirely on autopilot before looking up at the stunt customer and realizing what had just happened another woman I came across in my research was a former preschool teacher who had switched to a corporate job even though she was now working with adults her old habits would kick in and she kept asking co-workers if they had washed their hands after going to the bathroom I also found the story of a man who had spent years working as a lifeguard and would occasionally yell walk whenever he saw a child running over time the cues that sparked our habits become so common that they are essentially invisible the treats on the kitchen counter the remote control next to the couch the phone in our pocket our responses to these cues are so deeply encoded that it may feel like the urge to act comes from nowhere for this reason we must begin the process of behavior change with awareness before we can effectively build new habits we need to get a handle on our current ones this can be more challenging than it sounds because once a habit is firmly rooted in your life it is mostly unconscious and automatic if a habit remains mindless you can't expect to improve it as the psychologist Carl Jung said until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate The Habit scorecard the Japanese Railway system is regarded as one of the best in the world if you ever find yourself riding a train in Tokyo you'll notice that the conductors have a peculiar habit as each operator runs the train they proceed through a ritual of pointing at different objects and calling out commands when the train approaches a signal the operator will point at it and say signal is green as the train pulls into and out of each station the operator will point at the speedometer and call out the exact speed when it's time to leave the operator will point at the timetable and state the time out on the platform other employees are performing similar actions before each train departs staff members will point along the edge of the platform and declare all clear every detail is identified pointed at and named aloud this process known as pointing and calling is a safety system designed to reduce mistakes it seems silly but it works incredibly well pointing and calling reduces Errors By up to 85 and cuts accidents by 30 the MTA subway system in New York City adopted a modified version that is point only and within two years of implementation incidents of incorrectly birth Subways fell 57 percent pointing and calling is so effective because it raises the level of awareness from an unconscious Habit to a more conscious level because the train operators must use their eyes hands mouth and ears they are more likely to notice problems before something goes wrong my wife does something similar whenever we are preparing to walk out the door for a trip she verbally calls out the most essential items in her packing list I've got my keys I've got my wallet I've got my glasses I've got my husband the more automatic a behavior becomes the less likely we are to consciously think about it and when we've done something a thousand times before we begin to overlook things we assume that the next time will be just like the last we're so used to doing what we've always done that we don't stop to question whether it's the right thing to do it all many of our failures and performance are largely attributable to a lack of self-awareness one of our greatest challenges in changing habits is maintaining awareness of what we are actually doing this helps explain why the consequences of bad habits can sneak up on us we need a point and call system for our personal lives that's the origin of the Habit scorecard which is a simple exercise you can use to become more aware of your behavior to create your own make a list of your daily habits here's a sample of where your list might start wake up turn off alarm check my phone go to the bathroom weigh myself take a shower brush my teeth floss my teeth put on deodorant hang up towel to drag a dress make a cup of tea and so on CE you have a full list look at each behavior and ask yourself is this a good habit a bad habit or a neutral habit if it is a good habit write plus next to it if it is a bad habit write comma if it is a neutral habit write equal sign for example the list above might look like this wake up equals turn off alarm equals check my phone go to the bathroom equals way myself plus take a shower plus brush my teeth plus floss my teeth plus put on deodorant plus hang up towel to dry equals get dressed equals make a cup of tea Plus the marks you give to a particular habit will depend on your situation and your goals for someone who is trying to lose weight eating a bagel with peanut butter every morning might be a bad habit for someone who is trying to bulk up a net muscle the same behavior might be a good habit it all depends on what you're working toward scoring your habits can be a bit more complex for another reason as well the labels good habit and bad habit are slightly inaccurate there are no good habits or bad habits there are only effective habits that is effective at solving problems all habits serve you in some way even the bad ones which is why you repeat them for this exercise categorize your habits by how they will benefit you in the long run generally speaking good habits will have net positive outcomes bad habits have net negative outcomes smoking a cigarette May reduce stress right now that's how it's serving you but it's not a healthy long-term Behavior 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 does this Habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity habits that reinforce your desired identity are usually good habits that conflict with your desired identity are usually bad as you create your habit scorecard there is no need to change anything at first the goal is to Simply notice what is actually going on observe your thoughts and actions without judgment or internal criticism don't blame yourself for your faults don't praise yourself for your successes if you eat a chocolate bar every morning acknowledge it almost as if you were watching someone else oh how interesting that they would do such a thing if you binge eat simply notice that you are eating more calories than you should if you waste time online notice that you are spending your life in a way that you do not want to the first step to changing bad habits is to be on the lookout for them if you feel like you need extra help then you can try pointing and calling in your own life say out loud the action that you are thinking of taking and what the outcome will be if you want to cut back on your junk food habit but notice yourself grabbing another cookie say out loud I'm about to eat this cookie but I don't need it eating it will cause me to gain weight and hurt my health hearing your bad habits spoken aloud makes the consequences seem more real it adds weight to the action rather than letting yourself mindlessly slip into an old routine this approach is useful even if you're simply trying to remember a task on your to-do list just saying out loud tomorrow I need to go to the post office after lunch increases the odds that you'll actually do it you're getting yourself to acknowledge the need for action and that can make all the difference the process of behavior change always starts with awareness strategies like pointing and calling in a habit scorecard are focused on getting you to recognize your habits and acknowledge the cues that trigger them which makes it possible to respond in a way that benefits you chapter summary with enough practice your brain will pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it once our habits become automatic we stop paying attention to what we are doing the process of behavior change always starts with awareness you need to be aware of your habits before you can change them pointing and calling raises your level of awareness from a non-conscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalizing your actions The Habit scorecard is a simple exercise you can use to become more aware of your behavior five the best way to start a new habit in 2001 researchers in Great Britain began working with 248 people to build better exercise habits over the course of two weeks the subjects were divided into three groups the first group was the control group they were simply asked to track how often they exercised the second group was the motivation group they were asked not only to track their workouts but also to read some material on the benefits of exercise the researchers also explained to the group how exercise could reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and improve heart health finally there was the third group these subjects received the same presentation as the second group which ensured that they had equal levels of motivation however they were also asked to formulate a plan for when and where they would exercise over the following week specifically each member of the third group completed the following sentence during the next week I will partake in at least 20 minutes of vigorous exercise on day at time in place in the first and second groups 35 to 38 of people exercised at least once per week interestingly the motivational presentation given to the second group seemed to have no meaningful impact on Behavior but 91 of the third group exercised at least once per week more than double the normal rate the sentence they filled out is what researchers refer to as an implementation intention which is a plan you make beforehand about when and where to act that is how you intend to implement a particular habit the cues that can trigger a habit come in a wide range of forms the feel of your phone buzzing in your pocket the smell of chocolate chip cookies the sound of ambulance sirens but the two most common cues are time and location implementation intentions leverage both of these cues broadly speaking the format for creating an implementation intention is when situation X arises I will perform response y hundreds of Studies have shown that implementation intentions are effective for sticking to our goals whether it's writing down the exact time and date of when you will get a flu shot or recording the time of your colonoscopy appointment they increase the odds that people will stick with Habits Like recycling studying going to sleep early and stopping smoking researchers have even found that voter turnout increases when people are forced to create implementation Intentions by answering questions like what route are you taking to the polling station at what time are you planning to go what bus will get you there other successful government programs have prompted citizens to make a clear plan to send taxes in on time or provided directions on when and where to pay late traffic bills the punch line is clear people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through too many people try to change their habits without these basic details figured out we tell ourselves I'm going to eat healthier or I'm going to write more but we never say when and where these habits are going to happen we leave it up to chance and hope that we will just remember to do it or feel motivated at the right time an implementation in tension sweeps away foggy Notions like I want to work out more or I want to be more productive or I should vote and transforms them into a concrete plan of action many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity it is not always obvious when and where to take action some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement once an implementation intention has been set you don't have to wait for inspiration to strike do I write a chapter today or not do I meditate this morning or at lunch when a moment of action occurs there is no need to make a decision simply follow your predetermined plan the simple way to apply this strategy to your habits is to fill out the sentence I will Behavior at time in location meditation I will meditate for one minute at 7am in my kitchen studying I will study Spanish for 20 minutes at 6 PM in my bedroom exercise I will exercise for one hour at 5 PM in my local gym marriage I will make my partner a cup of tea at 8am in the kitchen if you aren't sure when to start your habit try the first day of the week month or year people are more likely to take action at those times because hope is usually higher if we have hope we have a reason to take action a fresh start feels motivating there is another benefit to implementation intentions being specific about what you want and how you will achieve it helps you say no to things that derail progress distract your attention and pull you off course we often say yes to little requests because we are not clear enough about what we need to be doing instead when your dreams are vague it's easy to rationalize little exceptions all day long and never get around to the specific things you need to do to succeed give your habits a time and a space to live in the world the goal is to make the time and location so obvious that with enough repetition you get an urge to do the right thing at the right time even if you can't say why as the writer Jason zweig noted obviously you're never going to just work out without conscious thought but like a dog salivating at a bell maybe you start to get antsy around the time of day you normally work out there are many ways to use implementation intentions in your life and work my favorite approach is one I learned from Stanford Professor BJ Fogg and it is a strategy one referred to as habit stacking habit stacking a simple plan to overhaul your habits the French philosopher Dennis deidaro lived nearly his entire life in poverty but that all changed one day in 1765. didero's daughter was about to be married and he could not afford to pay for the wedding despite his lack of wealth dietero was well known for his role as the co-founder and writer of Encyclopedia one of the most comprehensive encyclopedias of the time when Catherine the Great the Empress of Russia heard of dietero's financial troubles her heart went out to him she was a book lover and greatly enjoyed his encyclopedia she offered to buy dietero's Personal library for one thousand pounds more than 150 000 today suddenly didero had money to spare with his new wealth he not only paid for the wedding but also acquired a Scarlet robe for himself Tita Rose Scarlet robe was beautiful so beautiful in fact that he immediately noticed how out of place it seemed when surrounded by his more common possessions he wrote that there was no more coordination no more Unity no more Beauty between his elegant robe and the rest of his stuff dietero soon felt the urge to upgrade his possessions he replaced his rug with one from Damascus he decorated his home with expensive sculptures he bought a mirror to place above the mantle and a better kitchen table he tossed aside his old straw chair for a leather one like falling dominoes one purchase led to the next titero's behavior is not uncommon in fact the tendency for one purchase to lead to another one has a name the detero effect the didero effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases you can spot this pattern everywhere you buy a dress and have to get new shoes and earrings to match you buy a couch and suddenly question the layout of your entire living room you buy a toy for your child and soon find yourself purchasing all of the accessories that go with it it's a chain reaction of purchases many human behaviors follow this cycle you often decide what to do next based on what you have just finished doing to the bathroom leads to washing and drying your hands which reminds you that you need to put the dirty towels in the laundry so you add laundry detergent to the shopping list and so on no Behavior happens in isolation each action becomes a cue that triggers the next Behavior why is this important when it comes to building new habits you can use the connectedness of behavior to your advantage one of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top this is called habit stacking habit stacking is a special form of an implementation intention rather than pairing your new habit with a particular time and location you pair it with a current habit this method which was created by BJ fog as part of his tiny habits program can be used to design an obvious cue for nearly any habit The Habit stacking formula is after current habit I will new habit for example meditation after I pour my cup of coffee each morning I will meditate for one minute exercise after I take off my work shoes I will immediately change into my workout clothes gratitude after I sit down to dinner I will say one thing I'm grateful for that happen today marriage after I get into bed at night I will give my partner a kiss safety after I put on my running shoes I will text a friend or family member where I'm running and how long it will take the key is to tie your desired Behavior into something you already do each day once you have mastered this basic structure you can begin to create larger Stacks by chaining small habits together this allows you to take advantage of the natural momentum that comes from one Behavior leading into the next a positive version of the detero effect have it stacking figure 7 Habit stacking increases the likelihood that you'll stick with a habit by stacking your new behavior on top of an old one this process can be repeated to chain numerous habits together each one acting as the cue for the next your morning routine habit stack might look like this one after I pour my morning cup of coffee I will meditate for 60 seconds two after I meditate for 60 seconds I will write my to-do list for the day three after I write my to-do list for the day I will immediately begin my first task or consider this habit stack in the evening one after I finish eating dinner I will put my plate directly into the dishwasher two after I put my dishes away I will immediately wipe down the counter three after I wipe down the counter I will set out my coffee mug for tomorrow morning you can also insert new behaviors into the middle of your current routines for example you may already have a morning routine that looks like this wake up make my bed take a shower let's say you want to develop the habit of reading more each night you can expand your habit stack and try something like wake up make my bed place a book on my pillow take a shower now when you climb into bed each night a book will be sitting there waiting for you to enjoy overall habit stacking allows you to create a set of simple rules that guide your future Behavior it's like you always have a game plan for which action should come next once you get comfortable with this approach you can develop General habit Stacks to guide you whenever the situation is appropriate exercise when I see a set of stairs I will take them instead of using the elevator social skills when I walk into a party I will introduce myself to someone I don't know yet finances when I want to buy something over 100 I Will Wait 24 hours before purchasing healthy eating when I serve myself a meal I will always put veggies on my plate first minimalism when I buy a new item I will give something away one in one out mood when the phone rings I will take one deep breath and smile before answering forgetfulness when I leave a public place I will check the table and chairs to make sure I don't leave anything behind no matter how you use the strategy the secret to creating a successful habit stack is selecting the right cue to kick things off unlike an implementation intention which specifically States the time and location for a given Behavior habit stacking implicitly has the time and location built into it when and where you choose to insert a habit into your daily routine can make a big difference if you're trying to add meditation into your morning routine but mornings are chaotic and your kids keep running into the room then that may be the wrong place in time consider when you are most likely to be successful don't ask yourself to do a habit when you're likely to be occupied with something else your cue should also have the same frequency as your desired habit if you want to do a habit every day but you stack it on top of a habit that only happens on Mondays that's not a good choice one way to find the right trigger for your habit stack is by brainstorming a list of your current habits you can use your habit scorecard from the last chapter as a starting point alternatively you can create a list with two columns in the First Column write down the habits you do each day without fail for example get out of bed take a shower brush your teeth get dressed brew a cup of coffee eat breakfast take the kids to school start the work day eat lunch end the work day change out of work clothes sit down for dinner turn off the lights get into bed your list can be much longer but you get the idea in the second column write down all of the things that happen to you each day without fail for example the Sun rises you get a text message the song you are listening to ends the sun sets armed with these two lists you can begin searching for the best place to layer your new habit into your lifestyle habit stacking works best when the queue is highly specific and immediately actionable many people select cues that are too vague I made this mistake myself when I wanted to start a push-up habit my habit stack was when I take a break for lunch I will do 10 push-ups at first glance this sounded reasonable but soon I realized the trigger was unclear would I do my push-ups before I ate lunch after I ate lunch where would I do them after a few inconsistent days I changed my habit stack to When I close my laptop for lunch I will do 10 push-ups next to my desk ambiguity gone Habits Like read more or eat better are worthy causes but these goals do not provide instruction on how and when to act be specific and clear after I close the door after I brush my teeth after I sit down at the table the specificity is important the more tightly bound your new habit is to a specific cue the better the odds are that you will notice when the time comes to act the first law of behavior change is to make it obvious strategies like implementation intentions and habit stacking are among the most practical ways to create obvious cues for your habits and design a clear plan for when and where to take action chapter summary the first law of behavior changes make it obvious the two most common cues are time and location creating an implementation intention is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a specific time and location the implementation intention formula is I will Behavior at time in location habit stacking is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a current habit The Habit stacking formula is after current habit I will new habit 6. motivation is overrated environment often matters more and Thorndike a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston had a crazy idea she believed she could improve the eating habits of thousands of hospital staff and visitors without changing their willpower or motivation in the slightest way in fact she didn't plan on talking to them at all Thorndike and her colleagues designed a six-month study to alter the choice architecture of the hospital cafeteria they started by changing how drinks were arranged in the room originally the refrigerator is located next to the cash registers in the cafeteria were filled with only soda the researchers added water as an option to each one additionally they placed baskets of bottled water next to the food stations throughout the room soda was still in the primary refrigerators but water was now available at all drink locations over the next three months the number of soda sales at the hospital dropped by 11.4 percent meanwhile sales of bottled water increased by 25.8 they made similar adjustments and saw similar results with the food in the cafeteria nobody had said a word to anyone eating there after before figure eight here is a representation of what the cafeteria looked like before the environment design changes were made left and after right the Shaded boxes indicate areas where bottled water was available in each instance because the amount of water in the environment was increased Behavior shifted naturally and without additional motivation people often choose products not because of what they are but because of where they are if I walk into the kitchen and see a plate of cookies on the counter I'll pick up half a dozen and start eating even if I hadn't been thinking about them beforehand and didn't necessarily feel hungry if the communal table at the office is always filled with donuts and bagels it's going to be hard not to grab one every now and then your habits change depending on the room you are in and the queues in front of you environment is the Invisible Hand That shapes human behavior despite our unique personalities certain behaviors tend to arise again and again under certain environmental conditions in church people tend to talk in Whispers on a dark Street people act wary and guarded in this way the most common form of change is not internal but external we are changed by the world around us every habit is context dependent in 1936 psychologist Kurt Lewin wrote a simple equation that makes a powerful statement behavior is a function of the person in their environment or b equals f p e it didn't take long for lewin's equation to be tested in business in 1952 The Economist Hawkins Stern described a phenomenon he called suggestion impulse buying which is triggered when a shopper sees a product for the first time and visualizes a need for it in other words customers will occasionally buy products not because they want them but because of how they are presented to them for example items that I level tend to be purchased more than those down near the floor for this reason you'll find expensive brand names featured in easy to reach locations on store shelves because they drive the most profit while cheaper alternatives are tucked away in harder to reach spots the same goes for end caps which are the units at the end of aisles end caps are money making machines for retailers because they are obvious locations that encounter a lot of foot traffic for example 45 percent of Coca-Cola sales come specifically from end of vial racks the more obviously available a product or Services the more likely you are to try it people drink Bud Light because it is in every bar and visit Starbucks because it is on every corner we like to think that we are in control if we choose water over soda we assume it is because we wanted to do so the truth however is that many of the actions we take each day are shaped not by purposeful drive and choice but by the most obvious option every living being has its own methods for sensing and understanding the world Eagles have remarkable long distance vision snakes can smell by tasting the air with their highly sensitive tongues sharks can detect small amounts of electricity and vibrations in the water caused by nearby fish even bacteria have chemoreceptors tiny sensory cells that allow them to detect toxic chemicals in their environment in humans perception is directed by the sensory nervous system we perceive the world through sight sound smell touch and taste but we also have other ways of sensing stimuli some are conscious but many are unconscious for instance you can notice when the temperature drops before a storm or when the pain in your gut Rises during a stomach ache or when you fall off balance while walking on Rocky ground receptors in your body pick up on a wide range of internal stimuli such as the amount of salt in your blood or the need to drink when thirsty the most powerful of all human sensory abilities however is vision the human body has about 11 million sensory receptors approximately 10 million of those are dedicated to site some experts estimate that half of the brain's resources are used on vision given that we are more dependent on Vision than on any other sense it should come as no surprise that visual cues are the greatest Catalyst of our Behavior for this reason a small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do as a result you can imagine how important it is to live and work in environments that are filled with productive cues and devoid of unproductive ones thankfully there is good news in this respect you don't have to be the victim of your environment you can also be the architect of it how to design your environment for success during the energy crisis and Oil Embargo of the 1970s Dutch researchers began to pay close attention to the country's energy usage in one suburb near Amsterdam they found that some homeowners use 30 less energy than their neighbors despite the homes being of similar size and getting electricity for the same price it turned out the houses in this neighborhood were nearly identical except for one feature the location of the electrical meter some had one in the basement others had the electrical meter upstairs in the main hallway as you may guess the homes with the meters located in the main hallway used less electricity when their energy use was obvious and easy to track people changed their behavior every habit is initiated by a queue and we are more likely to notice cues that stand out unfortunately the environments where we live and work often make it easy not to do certain actions because there is no obvious cue to trigger the behavior it's easy not to practice the guitar when it's tucked away in the closet it's easy not to read a book when the bookshelf is in the corner of the guest room it's easy not to take your vitamins when they're out of sight in the pantry when the cues that spark a habit are subtle or hidden they are easy to ignore by comparison creating obvious visual cues can draw your attention toward a desired habit in the early 1990s the cleaning staff at Skip Hall airport in Amsterdam installed a small sticker that looked like a fly near the center of each urinal apparently when men stepped up to the urinals they aimed for what they thought was a bug the stickers improved their aim and significantly reduced spillage around the urinals further analysis determined that the stickers cut bathroom cleaning costs by 8 per year I've experienced the power of obvious cues in my own life I used to buy apples from the store put them in the crisper in the bottom of the refrigerator and forget all about them by the time I remembered the apples would have gone bad I never saw them so I never ate them eventually I took my own advice and redesigned my environment I bought a large display bowl and placed it in the middle of the kitchen counter the next time I bought apples that was where they went out in the open where I could see them almost like magic I began eating a few apples each day simply because they were obvious rather than out of sight here are a few ways you can redesign your environment and make the cues for your preferred habits more obvious if you want to remember to take your medication each night put your pill bottle directly next to the faucet on the bathroom counter if you want to practice guitar more frequently place your guitar stand in the middle of the living room if you want to remember to send more thank you notes keep a stack of stationery on your desk if you want to drink more water fill up a few water bottles each morning and place them in common locations around the house if you want to make a habit a big part of your life make the queue a big part of your environment the most persistent behaviors usually have multiple cues consider how many different ways a smoker could be prompted to pull out a cigarette driving in the car seeing a friend smoke feeling stressed at work and so on the same strategy can be employed for good habits by sprinkling triggers throughout your surroundings you increase the odds that you'll think about your habit throughout the day make sure the best choice is the most obvious one making a better decision is easy and natural when the queues for good habits are right in front of you environment design is powerful not only because it influences how we engage with the world but also because we rarely do it most people live in a world others have created for them but you can alter the spaces where you live and work to increase your exposure to positive cues and reduce your exposure to negative ones environment design allows you to take back control and become the architect of your life be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it the context is the queue the cues that trigger a habit can start out very specific but over time your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behavior for example many people drink more in social situations than they would ever drink alone the trigger is rarely a single cue but rather the whole situation watching your friends order drinks hearing the music at the bar seeing the beers on tap we mentally assign our habits to the locations in which they occur the home the office the gym each location develops a connection to certain habits and routines you establish a particular relationship with the objects on your desk the items on your kitchen counter the things in your bedroom our behavior is not defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them in fact this is a useful way to think about the influence of the environment on your behavior stop thinking about your environment as filled with objects start thinking about it as filled with relationships think in terms of how you interact with the spaces around you for one person her couch is the place where she reads for an hour each night for someone else the couch is where he watches television and eats a bowl of ice cream after work different people can have different memories and thus different habits associated with the same place the good news you can train yourself to link a particular habit with a particular context in one study scientists instructed insomniacs to get into bed only when they retired if they couldn't fall asleep they were told to sit in a different room until they became sleepy over time subjects began to associate the context of their bed with the action of sleeping and it became easier to quickly fall asleep when they climbed in bed their brains learned that sleeping not browsing on their phones not watching television not staring at the clock was the only action that happened in that room the power of context also reveals an important strategy habits can be easier to change in a new environment it helps to escape the subtle triggers and cues that nudge you toward your current habits go to a new place a different coffee shop a bench in the park a corner of your room you sell them use and create a new routine there it is easier to associate a new habit with a new context than to build a new habit in the face of competing cues it can be difficult to go to bed early if you watch television in your bedroom each night it can be hard to study in the living room without getting distracted if that's where you always play video games but when you step outside your normal environment you leave your behavioral biases behind you aren't battling old environmental cues which allows new habits to form without interruption want to think more creatively move to a bigger room a rooftop patio or a building with expansive architecture take a break from the space where you do your daily work which is also linked to your current thought patterns trying to eat healthier it is likely that you shop on autopilot at your regular supermarket try a new grocery store you may find it easier to avoid unhealthy food when your brain doesn't automatically know where it is located in the store when you can't manage to get to an entirely new environment redefine or rearrange your current one create a separate space for work study exercise entertainment and cooking the Mantra I find useful is one space one use when I started my career as an entrepreneur I would often work for my couch or at the kitchen table in the evenings I found it very difficult to stop working there was no clear division between the end of work time and the beginning of personal time was the kitchen table my office or the space where I ate meals was the couch where I relaxed or where I sent emails everything happened in the same place a few years later I could finally afford to move to a home with a separate room for my office suddenly work was something that happened in here and personal life was something that happened out there it was easier for me to turn off the professional side of my brain when there was a clear dividing line between work life and home life each room had one primary use the kitchen was for cooking the office was for working whenever possible avoid mixing the context of one habit with another when you start mixing contexts you'll start mixing habits and the easier ones will usually win out this is one reason why the versatility of modern technology is both a strength and a weakness you can use your phone for all sorts of tasks which makes it a powerful device but when you can use your phone to do nearly anything it becomes hard to associate it with one task you want to be productive but you're also conditioned to browse social media check email and play video games whenever you open your phone it's a mishmash of cues you may be thinking you don't understand I live in New York City my apartment is the size of a smartphone I need each room to play multiple roles fair enough if your space is limited divide your room into activity zones a chair for reading a desk for writing a table for eating you can do the same with your digital spaces I know a writer who uses his computer only for writing is tablet only for reading and his phone only for social media and texting every habit should have a home if you can manage to stick with this strategy each context will become associated with a particular habit and mode of thought habits Thrive under predictable circumstances like these Focus comes automatically when you are sitting at your work desk relaxation is easier when you are in a space design for that purpose sleep comes quickly when it is the only thing that happens in your bedroom if you want behaviors that are stable and predictable you need an environment that is stable and predictable a stable environment where everything has a place and a purpose is an environment where habits can easily form chapter summary small changes in context can lead to large changes in Behavior over time every habit is initiated by a cue we are more likely to notice cues that stand out make the cues of good habits obvious in your environment gradually your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behavior the context becomes the queue it is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cues seven the secret to self-control in 1971 as the Vietnam War was heading into its 16th year Congressman Robert Steele from Connecticut and Morgan Murphy from Illinois made a discovery that stunned the American public while visiting the troops they had learned that over 15 percent of U.S soldiers stationed there were heroin addicts follow-up research revealed that 35 of service members in Vietnam had tried heroin and as many as 20 were addicted the problem was even worse than they had initially thought the discovery led to a flurry of activity in Washington including the creation of the special action office of drug abuse prevention under President Nixon to promote prevention and Rehabilitation and to track addicted service members when they returned home Lee Robbins was one of the researchers in charge in a finding that completely appended the accepted beliefs about addiction Robbins found that when soldiers who have been heroin users returned home only five percent of them became re-addicted within a year and just 12 percent relapsed within three years in other words approximately 9 out of 10 soldiers who used heroin and Vietnam eliminated their addiction nearly overnight this finding contradicted the prevailing View at the time which considered heroin addiction to be a permanent and irreversible condition instead Robbins revealed that addictions could spontaneously dissolve if there was a radical change in the environment in Vietnam soldiers spent all day surrounded by cues triggering heroin use it was easy to access they were engulfed by the constant stress of War they build friendships with fellow soldiers who were also heroin users and they were thousands of miles from home once a soldier returned to the United States though he found himself in an environment devoid of those triggers when the context changed so did the habit compare the situation to that of a typical drug user someone becomes addicted at home or with friends goes to a clinic to get clean which is devoid of all the environmental stimuli that prompt their habit then returns to their old neighborhood with all of their previous cues that caused them to get addicted in the first place it's no wonder that usually you see numbers that are the exact opposite of those in the Vietnam study typically ninety percent of heroin users become re-dicked once they return home from rehab the Vietnam studies ran counter to many of our cultural beliefs about bad habits because it challenged the conventional Association of unhealthy Behavior as a moral weakness if you're overweight a smoker or an addict you've been told your entire life that it is because you lack self-control maybe even that you're a bad person the idea that a little bit of discipline would solve all our problems is deeply embedded in our culture Recent research however shows something different when scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control it turns out those individuals aren't all that different from those who are struggling instead disciplined people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control in other words they spend less time in tempting situations the people with the best self-control are typically the ones who need to use it the least it's easier to practice self-restraint when you don't have to use it very often so yes perseverance grit and willpower are essential to success but the way to improve these qualities is not by wishing you were a more disciplined person but by creating a more disciplined environment this counter-intuitive idea makes even more sense once you understand what happens when a habit is formed in the brain a habit that has been encoded in the mind is ready to be used whenever the relevant situation arises when Patty Orwell a therapist from Austin Texas started smoking she would often light up while riding horses with a friend eventually she quit smoking and avoided it for years she had also stopped writing decades later she hopped on a horse again and found herself craving a cigarette For The First Time in Forever the cues were still internalized she just hadn't been exposed to them in a long time once a habit has been encoded the urge to act follows whenever the environmental cues reappear this is one reason Behavior change techniques can backfire shaming obese people with weight loss presentations can make them feel stressed and as a result many people return to their favorite coping strategy overeating showing pictures of blackened lungs to smokers leads to higher levels of anxiety which drives many people to reach for a cigarette if you're not careful about cues you can cause the very Behavior you want to stop 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 the energy to do anything else worrying about your health makes you feel anxious which causes you to smoke to ease your anxiety which makes your health even worse and soon you're feeling more anxious it's a downward spiral a runaway train of bad habits researchers refer to this phenomenon as Q induced wanting an external trigger causes a compulsive craving to repeat a bad habit once you notice something you begin to want it this process is happening all the time often without us realizing it scientists have found that showing addicts a picture of cocaine for just 33 milliseconds stimulates the reward pathway in the brain and Sparks desire this speed is too fast for the brain to consciously register the addicts couldn't even tell you what they had seen but they craved the drug all the same here's the punch line you can break a habit but you're unlikely to forget it once the mental grooves of habit have been carved into your brain they are nearly impossible to remove entirely even if they go unused for quite a while and that means that simply resisting temptation is an ineffective strategy it is hard to maintain a Zen attitude in a life filled with interruptions it takes too much energy in the short run you can choose to overpower temptation in the long run we become a product of the environment that we live in to put it bluntly I have never seen someone consistently stick to positive habits in a negative environment a more reliable approach is to cut bad habits off at the source one of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it if you can't seem to get any work done leave your phone in another room for a few hours if you're continually feeling like you're not enough stop following social media accounts that trigger jealousy and envy if you're wasting too much time watching television move the TV out of the bedroom if you're spending too much money on electronics quit reading reviews of the latest tech gear if you're playing too many video games unplug the console and put it in a closet after each use this practice is an inversion of the first law of behavior change rather than make it obvious you can make it invisible I'm often surprised by how effective simple changes like these can be remove a single cue and the entire habit often Fades away self-control is a short-term strategy not a long-term one you may be able to resist temptation once or twice but it's unlikely you can muster The Willpower to override your desires every time instead of summoning a new dose of willpower whenever you want to do the right thing your energy would be better spent optimizing your environment this is the secret to self-control make the cues of your good habits obvious and the cues of your bad habits invisible chapter summary the inversion of the first law of behavior change is make it invisible once a habit is formed it is unlikely to be forgotten people with high self-control tend to spend less time in tempting situations it's easier to avoid Temptation than resist it one of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it self-control is a short-term strategy not a long-term one how to create a good habit the first law make it obvious 1.1 fill out the Habit scorecard write down your current habits to become aware of them 1.2 use implementation intentions I will Behavior at time in location 1.3 use habit stacking after current habit I will new habit 1.4 design your environment make the cues of good habits obvious and visible the second law make it attractive the third law make it easy the fourth law make it satisfying how to break a bad habit in version of the first law make it invisible 1.5 reduce exposure remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment in version of the second law make it unattractive inversion of the third law make it difficult in version of the fourth law make it unsatisfying you can download a printable version of this habits cheat sheet at the second law make it attractive eight how to make a habit irresistible I in the 1940s a Dutch scientist named Nico tinbergen performed a series of experiments that transformed our understanding of what motivates us timbergan who eventually won a Nobel Prize for his work was investigating Herring goals the gray and white birds often seen flying along the seashores of North America adult Herring goals have a small red dot on their beak and timbergan noticed that newly hatched chicks would pick this spot whenever they wanted food to begin one experiment he created a collection of fake cardboard beaks just a head without a body when the parents had flown away he went over to the nest and offered these dummy beaks to the chicks the beaks were obvious fakes and he assumed the baby birds would reject them all together however when the tiny Gull saw the red spot on the cardboard beak they pecked away just as if it were attached to their own mother they had a clear preference for those red spots as if they had been genetically programmed at Birth soon timbergan discovered that the bigger the red spot the faster the chicks packed eventually he created a beak with three large red dots on it when he placed it over the nest the baby birds went crazy with the light they pecked at the little red patches as if it was the greatest beat they had ever seen timbergan and his colleagues discovered similar behavior in other animals for example the gray light goose is a ground nesting bird occasionally as the mother moves around on the nest one of the eggs will roll out and settle on the grass nearby whenever this happens the goose will waddle over to the egg and use its Beacon neck to pull it back into the nest timbregan discovered that the goose will pull any nearby round object such as a billiard ball or a light bulb back into the nest the bigger the object the greater their response one Goose even made a tremendous effort to roll a volleyball back and sit on top like the baby girls automatically pecking at red dots the gray lag Goose was following an instinctive rule when I see a round object nearby I must roll it back into the nest the bigger the round object the harder I should try to get it it's like the brain of each animal is preloaded with certain rules for behavior and when it comes across an exaggerated version of that rule it lights up like a Christmas tree scientists refer to these exaggerated cues as supernormal stimuli a supernormal stimulus is a heightened version of reality like a beak with three red dots or an egg the size of a volleyball and it elicits a stronger response than usual humans are also prone to fall for exaggerated versions of reality junk food for example drives our reward systems into a frenzy after spending hundreds of thousands of years hunting and foraging for food in the wild the human brain has evolved to place a high value on salt sugar and fat such foods are often calorie dense and they were quite rare when our ancient ancestors were roaming the Savannah when you don't know where your next meal is coming from eating as much as possible is an excellent strategy for survival today however we live in a calorie-rich environment food is abundant but your brain continues to Crave it like it is scarce placing a high value on salt sugar and fat is no longer advantageous to our health but the craving persists because the brain's reward centers have not changed for approximately 50 000 years the modern food industry relies on stretching our Paleolithic instincts beyond their evolutionary purpose a primary goal of Food Science is to create products that are more attractive to Consumers nearly every food in a bag box or jar has been enhanced in some way if only with additional flavoring companies spend millions of dollars to discover the most satisfying level of crunch in a potato chip or the perfect amount of Fizz in a soda entire departments are dedicated to optimizing how a product feels in your mouth a quality known as a raw sensation french fries for example are a potent combination golden brown and crunchy on the outside light and smooth on the inside other processed foods enhance Dynamic contrast which refers to items with a combination of Sensations like crunchy and creamy imagine the gooeyness of melted cheese on top of a crispy pizza crust or the crunch of an Oreo cookie combined with its smooth Center with natural unprocessed Foods you tend to experience the same Sensations over and over how's the 17th bite of kale taste after a few minutes your brain loses interest and you begin to feel full but foods that are high in Dynamic contrast keep the experience novel and interesting encouraging you to eat more ultimately such strategies enable food scientists to find the Bliss point for each product the precise combination of salt sugar and fat that excites your brain and keeps you coming back for more the result of course is that you overeat because hyperpalatable foods are more attractive to the human brain as Stefan guy in it a neuroscientist who specializes in eating behavior and obesity says we've gotten too good at pushing our own buttons the modern food industry any overeating habits it has spawned is just one example of the second law of behavior change make it attractive the more attractive an opportunity is the more likely it is to become habit forming look around Society is filled with highly engineered versions of reality that are more attractive than the world our ancestors evolved in stores feature mannequins with exaggerated hips and breasts to sell clothes social media delivers more likes and prays in a few minutes than we could ever get in the office or at home online porn splices together stimulating scenes at a rate that would be impossible to replicate in real life advertisements are created with a combination of Ideal lighting professional makeup and Photoshop edits even the model doesn't look like the person in the final image these are the supernormal stimuli of our modern world they exaggerate features that are naturally attractive to us and our instincts go wild as a result driving us into excessive shopping habits social media habits porn habits eating habits and many others if history serves as a guide the opportunities of the future will be more attractive than those of today the trend is for rewards to become more concentrated and stimuli to become more enticing junk food is a more concentrated form of calories than Natural Foods hard liquor is a more concentrated form of alcohol than beer video games are a more concentrated form of play than board games compared to Nature these pleasure-packed experiences are hard to resist we have the brains of our ancestors but Temptations they never had to face if you want to increase the odds that a behavior will occur then you need to make it attractive throughout our discussion of the second law our goal is to learn how to make our habits irresistible while it is not possible to transform every habit into a supernormal stimulus we can make any habit more enticing to do this we must start by understanding what a craving is and how it works We Begin by examining a biological signature that all habits share the dopamine Spike the dopamine driven feedback loop scientists can track the precise moment a craving occurs by measuring a neurotransmitter called dopamine the importance of dopamine became apparent in 1954 when the neuroscientist James olds and Peter Milner ran an experiment that revealed the neurological processes behind craving and desire by implanting electrodes in the brains of rats the researchers block the release of dopamine to the surprise of the scientists the rats lost all will to live they wouldn't eat they wouldn't have sex they didn't crave anything within a few days the animals died of thirst in follow-up studies other scientists also inhibited the dopamine releasing parts of the brain but this time they squirted little droplets of sugar into the mouths of the dopamine depleted rats their little rat faces lit up with pleasurable grins from the tasty substance even though dopamine was blocked they liked the sugar just as much as before they just didn't want it anymore the ability to experience pleasure remained but without dopamine desire died and without desire action stopped when other researchers reversed this process and flooded the reward system of the brain with dopamine animals performed habits at Breakneck speed in one study mice received a powerful hit of dopamine each time they poke their nose in a box within minutes the mice developed a craving so strong they began poking their nose into the box 800 times per hour humans are not so different the average slot machine player will spin the wheel 600 times per hour habits are a dopamine driven feedback loop every behavior that is highly habit forming taking drugs eating junk food playing video games browsing social media is associated with higher levels of dopamine the same can be said for our most basic habitual behaviors like eating food drinking water having sex and interacting socially for years scientists assumed dopamine was all about pleasure but now we know it plays a central role in many neurological processes including motivation learning and memory punishment and aversion and voluntary movement when it comes to habits the key takeaway is this dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure but also when you anticipate it gambling addicts have a dopamine Spike right before they place a bet not after they win cocaine addicts get a surge of dopamine when they see the powder not after they take it whenever you predict that an opportunity will be rewarding your levels of dopamine spike in anticipation and whenever dopamine Rises so does your motivation to act it is the anticipation of a reward not the Fulfillment of it that gets us to take action interestingly the reward system that is activated in the brain when you receive a reward is the same system that is activated when you anticipate a reward this is one reason the anticipation of an experience can often feel better than the attainment of it as a child thinking about Christmas morning can be better than opening the gifts as an adult daydreaming about an upcoming vacation can be more enjoyable than actually being on vacation scientists refer to this as the difference between wanting and liking the dopamine Spike figure 9 before a habit is learned a dopamine is released when the reward is experienced for the first time the next time around B dopamine Rises before taking action immediately after a queue is recognized this Spike leads to a feeling of desire and a craving to take action whenever the queue is spotted once a habit is learned dopamine will not rise when a reward is experienced because you already expect the reward however if you see a queue and expect a reward but do not get one then dopamine will drop in disappointment C the sensitivity of the dopamine response can clearly be seen when a reward is provided late fee first the queue is identified and dopamine Rises as a craving builds next a response is taken but the reward does not come as quickly as expected and dopamine begins to drop finally when the reward comes a little later than you had hoped dopamine spikes again it is as if the brain is saying see I knew I was right don't forget to repeat this action next time your brain has far more neural circuitry allocated for wanting rewards than for liking them the wanting centers in the brain are large the brain stem the nucleus accumbens the ventral tegmental area the dorsal spray atom the amygdala and portions of the prefrontal cortex by comparison the liking centers of the brain are much smaller they are often referred to as hedonic hot spots and are distributed like tiny Islands throughout the brain for instance researchers have found that 100 of the nucleus accumbens is activated during wanting meanwhile only 10 of the structure is activated during liking the fact that the brain allocates so much precious space to the regions responsible for craving and desire provides further evidence of the crucial role these processes play desire is the engine that drives Behavior every action is taken because of the anticipation that precedes it it is the craving that leads to the response these insights reveal the importance of the second law of behavior change we need to make our habits attractive because it is the expectation of a rewarding experience that motivates us to act in the first place this is where a strategy known as Temptation bundling comes into play how to use Temptation bundling to make your habits more attractive ronenburn an electrical engineering student in Dublin Ireland enjoyed watching Netflix but he also knew that he should exercise more often than he did putting his engineering skills to use burn hacked his stationary bike and connected it to his laptop and television then he wrote a computer program that would allow Netflix to run only if he was cycling at a certain speed if he slowed down for too long whatever show he was watching would pause until he started peddling again he was in the words of one fan eliminating obesity one Netflix binge at a time he was also employing Temptation bundling to make his exercise habit more attractive Temptation bundling works by linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do in Burns case he bundled watching Netflix the thing he wanted to do with writing his stationary bike the thing he needed to do businesses are masters of Temptation bundling for instance when the American Broadcasting Company more commonly known as ABC launched its Thursday night television lineup for the 2014-2015 season they promoted Temptation bundling on a massive scale every Thursday the company would air three shows created by screenwriter Shonda Rhimes Gray's Anatomy Scandal and how to get away with murder they branded it as tgit on ABC tgit stands for thank God it's Thursday in addition to promoting the shows ABC encouraged viewers to make popcorn drink red wine and enjoy the evening Andrew kubitz head of scheduling for ABC described the idea behind the campaign we see Thursday night as a viewership opportunity with either couples or women by themselves who want to sit down and escape and have fun and drink their red wine and have some popcorn the Brilliance of this strategy is that ABC was associating the thing they needed viewers to do watch their shows with activities their viewers already wanted to do relax drink wine and eat popcorn over time people began to connect watching ABC with feeling relaxed and entertained if you drink red wine and eat popcorn at 8 pm every Thursday then eventually 8 pm on Thursday means relaxation and entertainment the reward gets associated with the queue and a habit of turning on the television becomes more attractive you're more likely to find a behavior attractive if you get to do one of your favorite things at the same time perhaps you want to hear about the latest celebrity gossip but you need to get in shape using Temptation bundling you could only read the tabloids and watch reality shows at the gym maybe you want to get a pedicure but you need to clean out your email inbox solution only get a pedicure while processing overdue work emails Temptation bundling is one way to apply a psychology Theory known as pre-max principle named after the work of Professor David primac the principal states that more probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors in other words even if you don't really want to process overdue work emails you'll become conditioned to do it if it means you get to do something you really want to do along the way you can even combine Temptation bundling with the Habit stacking strategy we discussed in chapter 5 to create a set of rules to guide your behavior The Habit stacking plus Temptation bundling formula is 1. after current habit I will have it I need two after habit I need I will have it I want if you want to read the news but you need to express more gratitude one after I get my morning coffee I will say one thing I'm grateful for that happened yesterday need two after I say one thing I'm grateful for I will read the news want if you want to watch sports but you need to make sales calls one after I get back from my lunch break I will call three potential clients need two after I call three potential clients I will check ESPN want if you want to check Facebook but you need to exercise more one after I pull out my phone I will do 10 Rupees need two after I do 10 burpees I will check Facebook want the hope is that eventually you'll look forward to calling three clients or doing 10 burpees because it means you get to read the latest sports news or check Facebook doing the thing you need to do means you get to do the thing you want to do we began this chapter by discussing supernormal stimuli which are heightened versions of reality that increase our desire to take action Temptation bundling is one way to create a heightened version of any habit by connecting it with something you already want engineering a truly irresistible habit is a hard task but the simple strategy can be employed to make nearly any habit more attractive than it would be otherwise chapter summary the second law of behavior changes make it attractive the more attractive an opportunity is the more likely it is to become habit forming habits are a dopamine driven feedback loop when dopamine Rises so does our motivation to act it is the anticipation of a reward not the Fulfillment of it that gets us to take action the greater the anticipation the greater the dopamine Spike Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive the strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do 9. the role of family and friends in shaping your habits in 1965 a Hungarian man named Laszlo Polgar wrote a series of strange letters to a woman named Clara Laszlo was a firm believer in hard work in fact it was all he believed in he completely rejected the idea of innate Talent he claimed that with deliberate practice and the development of good habits a child could become a genius in any field his Mantra was a genius is not born but is educated and trained Laszlo believed in this idea so strongly that he wanted to test it with his own children and he was writing to Clara because he needed a wife willing to jump on board Clara was a teacher and although she may not have been as adamant as Laszlo she also believed that with proper instruction anyone could Advance their skills Laszlo decided chess would be a suitable field for the experiment and he laid out a plan to raise his children to become chess prodigies the kids would be homeschooled a rarity and hungry at the time the house would be filled with chess books and pictures of famous chess players the children would play against each other constantly and compete in the best tournaments they could find the family would keep a meticulous file system of the tournament history of every competitor the children faced their lives would be dedicated to chess Laszlo successfully courted Clara and within a few years the polgars were parents to three young girls Susan Sophia and Judith Susan the oldest began playing chess when she was four years old within six months she was defeating adults Sophia the middle child did even better by 14 she was a world champion and a few years later she became a Grandmaster Judith the youngest was the best of all by age five she could beat her father at 12 she was the youngest player ever listed among the top 100 chess players in the world at 15 years and four months old she became the youngest Grandmaster of all time younger than Bobby Fisher the previous record holder for 27 years she was the number one ranked female chess player in the world the childhood of the Polgar sisters was atypical to say the least and yet if you ask them about it they claim their lifestyle was attractive even enjoyable in interviews the sisters talk about their childhood as entertaining rather than grueling they loved playing chess they couldn't get enough of it once Laszlo reportedly found Sophia playing chess in the bathroom in the middle of the night encouraging her to go back to sleep he said Sophia Leave the Pieces alone to which he replied Daddy they won't leave me alone the Polgar sisters grew up in a culture that prioritized chess Above All Else praised them for it rewarded them for it inner World an obsession with chess was normal and as we are about to see whatever habits are normal in your culture are among the most attractive behaviors you'll find the seductive pull of social norms humans are hurt animals we want to fit in to bond with others and to earn the respect and approval of our peers such inclinations are essential to our survival for most of our evolutionary history our ancestors lived in tribes becoming separated from the tribe or Worse being cast out was a death sentence the Lone Wolf dies but the pack survives meanwhile those who collaborated and bonded with others enjoyed increased safety mating opportunities and access to resources as Charles Darwin noted in a long history of humankind those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed as a result one of the deepest human desires is to belong and this ancient preference exerts a powerful influence on our modern behavior we don't choose our earliest habits we imitate them we follow the script handed down by our friends and family our church or School our local community and Society at Large each of these cultures and groups comes with its own set of expectations and standards when and whether to get married how many children to have which holidays to celebrate how much money to spend on your child's birthday party in many ways these social norms are the invisible rules that guide your behavior each day you're always keeping them in mind even if they are at the not top of your mind often you follow the habits of your culture without thinking without questioning and sometimes without remembering as the French philosopher Michelle de montaigne wrote the customs and practices of life and Society sweep us along most of the time going along with the group does not feel like a burden everyone wants to belong if you grow up in a family that rewards you for your chess skills playing chess will seem like a very attractive thing to do if you work in a job where everyone wears expensive suits then you'll be inclined to splurge on one as well if all of your friends are sharing an inside joke or using a new phrase you'll want to do it too so they know that you get it behaviors are attractive when they help us fit in we imitate the habits of three groups in particular one the clothes two the many three the powerful each group offers an opportunity to leverage the second law of behavior change and make our habits more attractive one imitating the close proximity has a powerful effect on our Behavior this is true of the physical environment as we discussed in chapter six but it is also true of the social environment we pick up habits from the people around us we copy the way our parents handle arguments the way our peers flirt with one another the way our co-workers get results when your friends smoke pot you give it a try two when your wife has a habit of double checking that the door is locked before going to bed you pick it up as well I find that I often imitate the behavior of those around me without realizing it in conversation I'll automatically assume the body posture of the other person in college I began to talk like my roommates when traveling to other countries I unconsciously imitate the local accent despite reminding myself to stop as a general rule the closer we are to someone the more likely we are to imitate some of their habits one groundbreaking study tracked 12 000 people for 32 years and found that a person's chances of becoming obese increased by 57 if he or she had a friend who became obese it works the other way too another study found that if one person in a relationship lost weight the other partner would also slim down about one-third of the time our friends and family provide a sort of invisible peer pressure that pulls us in their Direction of course peer pressure is bad only if you're surrounded by bad influences when astronaut Mike massimino was a graduate student at MIT he took a small robotics class of the 10 people in the class four became astronauts if your goal was to make it into space then that room was about the best culture you could ask for similarly one study found that the higher your best friend's IQ at age 11 or 12 the higher your IQ would be at age 15 even after controlling for natural levels of intelligence 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 new habits seem achievable when you see others doing them every day if you are surrounded by fit people you're more likely to consider working out to be a common habit if you're surrounded by Jazz lovers you're more likely to believe it's reasonable to play jazz every day your culture sets your expectation for what is normal surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself you'll rise together to make your habits even more attractive you can take the strategy one step further join a culture where one your desired behavior is the normal behavior and two you already have something in common with the group Steve Kim an entrepreneur in New York City runs a company called nerdfitness which helps nerds Misfits and mutants lose weight get strong and get healthy his clients include video game lovers movie Fanatics and Average Joe's who want to get in shape many people feel out of place the first time they go to the gym or try to change their diet but if you are already similar to the other members of the group in some way say your mutual love of Star Wars change becomes more appealing because it feels like something people like you already do nothing sustains motivation better than belonging to the tribe it transforms a personal Quest into a shared one previously you were on your own your identity was singular you are a reader you are a musician you are an athlete when you join a book club or a band or a Cycling group your identity becomes linked to those around you growth and change is no longer an individual Pursuit we are readers we are musicians we are cyclists the shared identity begins to reinforce your personal identity this is why remaining part of a group after achieving a goal is crucial to maintaining your habits its friendship and community that embed a new identity and health behaviors last over the long run two imitating the many in the 1950s psychologist Solomon Ash conducted a series of experiments that are now taught to Legions of undergrads each year to begin each experiment the subject entered the room with a group of strangers unbeknownst to them the other participants were actors planted by the researcher and instructed to deliver scripted answers to certain questions the group would be shown one card with a line on it and then a second card with a series of lines each person was asked to select the line on the second card that was similar in length to the line on the first card it was a very simple task here is an example of two cards used in the experiment conforming to social norms figure 10 this is a representation of two cards used by Solomon Ash in his famous social Conformity experiments the length of the line on the first card left is obviously the same as line C but when a group of actors claimed it was a different length the research subjects would often change their minds and go with the crowd rather than believe their own eyes the experiment always began the same first there would be some easy trials where everyone agreed on the correct line after a few rounds the participants were shown a test that was just as obvious as the previous ones except the actors in the room would select an intentionally incorrect answer for example they would respond a to the comparison shown in figure 10. everyone would agree that the lines were the same even though they were clearly different the subject who was unaware of the ruse would immediately become bewildered their eyes would open wide they would laugh nervously to themselves they would double check the reactions of other participants their agitation would grow as one person after another delivered the same incorrect response soon the subject began to doubt their own eyes eventually they delivered the answer they knew in their heart to be incorrect Ash ran this experiment many times and in many different ways what he discovered was that as the number of actors increased so did the Conformity of the subject if it was just the subject in one actor then there was no effect on the person's choice they just assumed they were in the room with a dummy when two actors were in the room with the subject there was still little impact but as the number of people increased to three actors and four and all the way to eight the subject became more likely to second-guess themselves by the end of the experiment nearly 75 percent of the subjects had agreed with the group answer even though it was obviously incorrect whenever we are unsure how to act we look to the group to guide our Behavior we are constantly scanning our environment and wondering what is everyone else doing we check reviews on Amazon or Yelp or TripAdvisor because we want to imitate the best buying eating and travel habits it's usually a smart strategy there is evidence in numbers but there can be a downside the normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual for example one study found that when a chimpanzee learns an effective way to crack nuts open as a member of One group and then switches to a new group that uses a less effective strategy it will avoid using the superior nutcracking method just to blend in with the rest of the chimps humans are similar there is tremendous internal pressure to comply with the Norms of the group the reward of being accepted is often greater than the reward of winning an argument looking smart or finding truth most days we'd rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves the human mind knows how to get along with others it wants to get along with others this is our natural mode you can override it you can choose to ignore the group or to stop caring what other people think but it takes work running against the grain of your culture requires extra effort when changing your habits means challenging the tribe change is unattractive when changing your habits means fitting in with the tribe change is very attractive three imitating the powerful humans everywhere pursue power Prestige and status we want pins and medallions on our jackets we want president or partner in our titles we want to be acknowledged recognized and praised this tendency can seem vain but overall it's a smart move historically a person with greater power and status has access to more resources worries less about survival and proves to be a more attractive mate we are drawn to behaviors that earn us respect approval admiration and status we want to be the one in the gym who can do muscle ups or the musician who can play the hardest chord progressions or the parent with the most accomplished children because these things separate us from the crowd once we fit in we start looking for ways to stand out this is one reason we care so much about the habits of highly effective people we try to copy the behavior of successful people because we desire success ourselves many of our daily habits are imitations of people we admire you replicate the marketing strategies of the most successful firms in your industry you make a recipe from your favorite Baker you borrow the storytelling strategies of your favorite writer you mimic the communication style of your boss we imitate people we Envy High status people enjoy the approval respect and praise of others and that means if a behavior can get us approval respect and praise we find it attractive we are also motivated to avoid behaviors that would lower our status we trim our Hedges and mow our lawn because we don't want to be the slob of the neighborhood when our mother comes to visit we clean up the house because we don't want to be judged we are continually wondering what will others think of me and altering our Behavior based on the answer the Polgar sisters the chess prodigies mentioned at the beginning of this chapter are evidence of the powerful and lasting impact social influences can have on our Behavior the sisters practice chess for many hours each day and continued this remarkable effort for decades but these habits and behaviors maintain their attractiveness in part because they were valued by their culture from the praise of their parents to the achievement of different status markers like becoming a Grandmaster they had many reasons to continue their effort chapter summary the culture we live in determines which behaviors are attractive to us we tend to adopt habits that are praised and approved of buyer culture because we have a strong desire to fit in and belong to the tribe we tend to imitate the habits of three social groups the clothes family and friends the many the tribe and the powerful those with status and prestige one of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where one your desired behavior is the normal behavior and two you already have something in common with the group the normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual most days we'd rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves if a behavior can get us approval respect and praise we find it attractive 10. how to find and fix the causes of your bad habits I end late 2012 I was sitting in an old apartment just a few blocks from Istanbul's most famous street is the clock adisi I was in the middle of a four-day trip to Turkey in my guide Mike was relaxing in a worn out armchair a few feet away Mike wasn't really a guide he was just a guy from Maine who had been living in Turkey for five years but he offered to show me around while I was visiting the country and I took him up on it on this particular night I had been invited to dinner with him and a handful of his Turkish friends there were seven of us and I was the only one who hadn't at some point smoked at least one pack of cigarettes per day I asked one of the turds how he got started friends he said it always starts with your friends one friend smokes then you try it what was truly fascinating was that half of the people in the room had managed to quit smoking Mike had been smoke-free for a few years at that point and he swore up and down that he broke the habit because of a book called Alan Carr's easy way to stop smoking it frees you from the mental burden of smoking he said it tells you stop lying to yourself you know you don't actually want to smoke you know you don't really enjoy this it helps you feel like you're not the victim anymore you start to realize that you don't need to smoke I had never tried a cigarette but I took a look at the book afterward out of curiosity the author employs an interesting strategy to help smokers eliminate their cravings he systematically reframes each queue associated with smoking and gives it a new meaning he says things like you think you are quitting something but you're not quitting anything because cigarettes do nothing for you you think smoking is something you need to do to be social but it's not you can be social without smoking at all you think smoking is about relieving stress but it's not smoking does not relieve your nerves it destroys them over and over he repeats these phrases and others like them get it clearly into your mind he says you are losing nothing and you are making marvelous positive gains not only in health energy and money but also in confidence self-respect freedom and most important of all in the length and quality of your future life by the time you get to the end of the book smoking seems like the most ridiculous thing in the world to do and if you no longer expect smoking to bring you any benefits you have no reason to smoke it is an inversion of the second law of behavior change make it unattractive now I know this idea might sound overly simplistic just change your mind and you can quit smoking but stick with me for a minute where Cravings come from every Behavior has a surface level craving in a deeper underlying motive I often have a craving that goes something like this I want to eat tacos if you were to ask me why I want to eat tacos I wouldn't say because I need food to survive but the truth is somewhere deep down I am motivated to eat tacos because I have to eat to survive the underlying motive is to obtain food and water even if my specific craving is for a taco some of our underlying motives include conserve energy obtain food and water find love and reproduce connect and bond with others when social acceptance and approval reduce uncertainty achieve status and prestige a craving is just a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive your brain did not evolve with a desire to smoke cigarettes or to check Instagram or to play video games at a deep level you simply want to reduce uncertainty and relieve anxiety to win social acceptance and approval or to achieve status look at nearly any product that is habit forming and you'll see that it does not create a new motivation but rather latches onto the underlying motives of human nature find love and reproduce equals using tinderconnect and bond with others equals browsing Facebook when social acceptance and approval equals posting on Instagram reduce uncertainty equals searching on Google achieve status and Prestige equals playing video games your habits are modern day solutions to ancient desires new versions of old vices the underlying motives behind human behavior remain the same the specific habits we perform differ based on a period of History here's the powerful part there are many different ways to address the same underlying motive one person might learn to reduce stress by smoking a cigarette another person learns to ease their anxiety by going for a run your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face they are just the methods you learn to use once you associate a solution with the problem you need to solve you keep coming back to it habits are all about associations these associations determine whether we predict a habit to be worth repeating or not as we covered in our discussion of the first law your brain is continually absorbing information and noticing cues in the environment every time you perceive a cue your brain runs a simulation and makes a prediction about what to do in the next moment Q you notice that the stove is hot prediction if I touch it I'll get burned so I should avoid touching it Q you see that the traffic light turned green prediction if I step on the gas I'll make it safely through the intersection and get closer to my destination so I should step on the gas you see a cue categorize it based on past experience and determine the appropriate response this all happens in an instant but it plays a crucial role in your habits because every action is preceded by a prediction life feels reactive but it is actually predictive all day long you are making your best guess of how to act given what you've just seen and what has worked for you in the past you are endlessly predicting what will happen in the next moment our behavior is heavily dependent on these predictions put another way our behavior is heavily dependent on how we interpret the events that happen to us not necessarily the objective reality of the events themselves two people can look at the same cigarette and one feels the urge to smoke while the other is repulsed by the smell the same cue can spark a good habit or a bad habit depending on your prediction the cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them these predictions lead to feelings which is how we typically describe a craving a feeling a desire an urge feelings and emotions transform the cues we perceive in the predictions we make into a signal that we can apply they help explain what we are currently sensing for instance whether or not you realize it you are noticing how warm or cold you feel right now if the temperature drops by one degree you probably won't do anything if the temperature drops 10 degrees however you'll feel cold and put on another layer of clothing feeling cold was the signal that prompted you to act you have been sensing the cues the entire time but it is only when you predict that you would be better off in a different state that you take action a craving is the sense that something is missing it is the desire to change your internal state when a temperature Falls there is a gap between what your body is currently sensing and what it wants to be sensing this gap between your current state and your desired state provides a reason to act desire is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be in the future even the tiniest action is tinged with the motivation to feel differently than you do in the moment when you binge eat or light up or browse social media what you really want is not a potato chip or a cigarette or a bunch of likes what you really want is to feel different our feelings and emotions tell us whether to Hold Steady in our current state or to make a change they help us decide the best course of action neurologists have discovered that when emotions and feelings are impaired we actually lose the ability to make decisions we have no signal of what to pursue and what to avoid as the neuroscientist Antonio demacio explains it is a motion that allows you to Mark things as good bad or indifferent to summarize the specific Cravings you feel and habits you perform are really an attempt to address your fundamental underlying motives whenever a habit successfully addresses a motive you develop a craving to do it again in time you learn to predict that checking social media will help you feel loved or that watching YouTube will allow you to forget your fears habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and we can use this insight to our advantage rather than to our detriment how to reprogram your brain to enjoy hard habits you can make hard habits more attractive if you can learn to associate them with a positive experience sometimes all you need is a slight mindset shift for instance we often talk about everything we have to do in a given day you have to wake up early for work you have to make another sales call for your business you have to cook dinner for your family now imagine changing just one word you don't have to you get two you get to wake up early for work you get to make another sales call for your business you get to cook dinner for your family by simply changing one word you shift the way you view each event you transition from seeing these behaviors as burdens and turn them into opportunities the key point is that both versions of reality are true you have to do those things and you also get to do them we can find evidence for whatever mindset we choose I once heard a story about a man who uses a wheelchair when asked if it was difficult being confined he responded I'm not confined to my wheelchair I am liberated by it if it wasn't for my wheelchair I would be bed bound and never able to leave my house this shift in perspective completely transformed how you lived each day reframing your habits to highlight their benefits rather than their drawbacks is a fast and lightweight way to reprogram your mind and make a habit seem more attractive exercise many people associate exercise with being a challenging task that drains energy and wears you down you can just as easily view it as a way to develop skills and Build You Up instead of telling yourself I need to go run in the morning say it's time to build endurance and get fast Finance saving money is often associated with sacrifice however you can associate it with freedom rather than limitation if you realize one simple truth living below your current means increases your future means the money you save this month increases your purchasing power next month meditation anyone who has tried meditation for more than three seconds knows how frustrating it can be when the next distraction inevitably pops into your mind you can transform frustration into Delight when you realize that each Interruption gives you a chance to practice returning to your breath distraction is a good thing because you need distractions to practice meditation pregame jitters many people feel anxious before delivering a big presentation or competing in an important event they experience quicker breathing a faster heart rate heightened arousal if we interpret these feelings negatively then we feel threatened and tense up if we interpret these feelings positively then we can respond with fluidity and Grace you can reframe I am nervous too I am excited and I'm getting an adrenaline rush to help me concentrate these little mindset shifts aren't magic but they can help change the feelings you associate with a particular habit or situation if you want to take it a step further you can create a motivation ritual you simply practice associating your habits with something you enjoy then you can use the queue whenever you need a bit of motivation for instance if you always play the same song before having sex then you'll begin to link the music with the ACT whenever you want to get in a mood just press play Ed Latimore a boxer and writer from Pittsburgh benefited from a similar strategy without knowing it odd realization he wrote my focus and concentration goes up just by putting my headphones on while writing I don't even have to play any music without realizing it he was conditioning himself in the beginning he put his headphones on played some music he enjoyed and did focused work after doing it 5 10 20 times putting his headphones on became a cue that he automatically associated with increased Focus the craving followed naturally athletes use similar strategies to get themselves in the mindset to perform during my baseball career I developed a specific ritual of stretching and throwing before each game the whole sequence took about 10 minutes and I did it the same way every single time while it physically warned me up to play more importantly it put me in the right mental state I began to associate my pre-game ritual with feeling competitive and focused even if I wasn't motivated beforehand by the time I was done with my ritual I was in game mode you can adapt this strategy for nearly any purpose say you want to feel happier in general find something that makes you truly happy like petting your dog or taking a bubble bath and then create a short routine that you perform every time before you do the thing you love maybe you take three deep breaths and smile three deep breaths smile pet the dog repeat eventually you'll begin to associate this breedance mile routine with being in a good mood it becomes a cue that means feeling happy once established you can break it out anytime you need to change your emotional state stressed at work take three deep breaths and smile sad about life three deep breaths and smile once a habit has been built the queue can prompt a craving even if it has little to do with the original situation the key to finding and fixing the causes of your bad habits is to reframe the associations you have about them it's not easy but if you can reprogram your predictions you can transform a hard habit into an attractive one chapter summary the inversion of the second law of behavior changes make it unattractive every Behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper underlying motive your habits are modern day solutions to ancient desires the cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them the prediction leads to a Feeling highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit to make it seem unattractive habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit how to create a good habit the first law make it obvious 1.1 fill out the Habit scorecard write down your current habits to become aware of them 1.2 use implementation intentions I will Behavior at time in location 1.3 use habit stacking after current habit I will new habit 1.4 design your environment make the cues of good habits obvious and visible the second law make it attractive 2.1 use Temptation bundling parent action you want to do with an action you need to do 2.2 join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior 2.3 create a motivation ritual do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit the third law make it easy the fourth law make it satisfying how to break a bad habit in version of the first law make it invisible 1.5 reduce exposure remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment in version of the second law make it unattractive 2.4 reframe your mindset highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits in version of the third law make a difficult inversion of the fourth law make it unsatisfying you can download a printable version of this habits cheat sheet at the third law make it easy 11. walk slowly but never backward oh in the first day of class Jerry ul's man a professor at the University of Florida divided his film photography students into two groups everyone on the left side of the classroom he explained would be in the quantity group they would be graded solely on the amount of work they produced on the final day of class he would tally the number of photos submitted by each student 100 photos would rate an a 90 photos a b 80 photos AC and so on meanwhile everyone on the right side of the room would be in the Quality Group they would be graded only on the Excellence of their work they would only need to produce one photo during the semester but to get an A it had to be a nearly perfect image at the end of the term he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group during the semester these students were busy taking photos experimenting with composition and lighting testing out various methods in the dark room and learning from their mistakes in the process of creating hundreds of photos they honed their skills meanwhile the Quality Group sat around speculating about perfection in the end they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo it is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change the fastest way to lose weight the best program to build muscle the perfect idea for a side Hustle we are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action as Voltaire once wrote the best is the enemy of the good I refer to this as the difference between being in motion and taking action the two ideas sound similar but they're not the same when you're in motion you're planning and strategizing and learning those are all good things but they don't produce a result action on the other hand is the type of behavior that will deliver an outcome if I outline 20 ideas for articles I want to write that's motion if I actually sit down and write an article that's actually if I search for a better diet plan and read a few books on the topic that's motion if I actually eat a healthy meal that's action sometimes motion is useful but it will never produce an outcome by itself it doesn't matter how many times you go talk to the personal trainer that motion will never get you in shape only the action of working out will get the result you're looking to achieve if motion doesn't lead to results why do we do it sometimes we do it because we actually need to plan or learn more but more often than not we do it because motion allows us to feel like we're making progress without running the risk of failure most of us are experts at avoiding criticism it doesn't feel good to fail or to be judged publicly so we tend to avoid situations where that might happen and that's the biggest reason why you slip into motion rather than taking action you want to delay failure it's easy to be in motion and convince yourself that you're still making progress you think I've got conversations going with four potential clients right now this is good we're moving in the right direction or I brainstormed some ideas for the book I want to write this is coming together Motion makes you feel like you're getting things done but really you're just preparing to get something done 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 this is the first takeaway of the third law you just need to get your reps in how long does it actually take to form a new habit habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition 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 which refers to the strengthening of connections between neurons in the brain based on recent patterns of activity with each repetition cell to cell signaling improves and the neural connections tighten first described by neuropsychologist Donald Heaven 1949 this phenomenon is commonly known as heb's law neurons that fire together wire together repeating a habit leads to clear physical changes in the brain in musicians the cerebellum critical for physical movements like plucking a guitar string or pulling a violin bow is larger than it is in non-musicians mathematicians meanwhile have increased gray matter in the inferior parietal lobule which plays a key role in computation and calculation its size is directly correlated with the amount of time spent in the field the older and more experience the mathematician the greater the increase in Gray matter when scientists analyze the brains of taxi drivers in London they found that the hippocampus a region of the brain involved in spatial memory was significantly larger in their subjects than in non-taxi drivers even more fascinating the hippocampus decreased in size when a driver retired like the muscles of the body responding to regular weight training particular regions of the brain adapt as they are used in atrophy as they are abandoned of course the importance of repetition in establishing habits was recognized long before neuroscientists began poking around in 1860 the English philosopher George H Lewis noted in learning to speak a new language to play on a musical instrument or to perform unaccustomed movements great difficulties felt because the channels through which each sensation has to pass have not become established but no sooner has frequent repetition cut a pathway then this difficulty vanishes the actions become so automatic that they can be performed while the mind is otherwise engaged both common sense and scientific evidence agree repetition is a form of change each time you repeat an action you are activating a particular neural circuit associated with that habit this means that simply putting in your reps is one of the most critical steps you can take too encoding a new habit it is why the students who took tons of photos improve their skills while those who merely theorized about perfect photos did not one group engaged in active practice the other in passive learning one in action the other in motion all habits follow a similar trajectory from effortful practice to automatic Behavior a process known as automaticity automaticity is the ability to perform a behavior without thinking about each step which occurs when an unconscious mind takes over it looks something like this The Habit line figure 11 in the beginning point a a habit requires a good deal of effort and concentration to perform after a few repetitions point B it gets easier but still requires some conscious attention with enough practice Point C The Habit becomes more automatic than conscious Beyond this threshold The Habit line the behavior can be done more or less without thinking a new habit has been formed on the following page you'll see what it looks like when researchers track the level of automaticity for an actual habit like walking for 10 minutes each day the shape of these charts which scientists call learning curves reveals an important truth about Behavior change habits form based on frequency not time walking 10 minutes per day figure 12 this graph shows someone who built the habit of walking for 10 minutes after breakfast each day notice that as the repetitions increase so does automaticity until the behavior is as easy and automatic as it can be one of the most common questions I hear is how long does it take to build a new habit but what people really should be asking is how many does it take to form a new habit that is how many repetitions are required to make a habit automatic there is nothing magical about time passing with regard to Habit formation it doesn't matter if it's been 21 days or 30 days or 300 days what matters is the rate at which you perform the behavior you could do something twice in 30 days or 200 times it's the frequency that makes the difference your current habits have been internalized over the course of hundreds if not thousands of repetitions new habits require the same level of frequency you need to string together enough successful attempts until the behavior is firmly embedded in your mind and you cross the Habit line in practice it doesn't really matter how long it takes for a habit to become automatic what matters is that you take the actions you need to take to make progress whether an action is fully automatic is of less importance to build a habit you need to practice it and the most effective way to make practice happen is to adhere to the Third Law of behavior change make it easy the chapters that follow will show you how to do exactly that chapter summary the Third Law of behavior change is make it easy the most effective form of learning is practice not planning focus on taking action not being in motion habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition the amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it 12. the law of least effort I end his award-winning book Guns Germs and Steel anthropologists and biologist Jared Diamond points out a simple fact different continents have different shapes at first glance this statement seems rather obvious and unimportant but it turns out to have a profound impact on human behavior the primary axis of the Americas runs from north to south that is the landmass of North and South America tends to be tall and thin rather than wide and fat the same is generally true for Africa meanwhile the landmass that makes up Europe Asia and the Middle East is the opposite this massive stretch of land tends to be more East-West in shape according to Diamond this difference in shape played a significant role in the spread of Agriculture over the centuries when agriculture began to spread around the globe Farmers had an easier time expanding along East-West routes than along north-south ones this is because locations along the same latitude generally share similar climates amounts of sunlight and rainfall and changes in season these factors allowed farmers in Europe and Asia to domesticate a few crops and grow them along the entire stretch of land from France to China the shape of human behavior figure 13 the primary axis of Europe and Asia is East-West the primary axis of the Americas and Africa is north south this leads to a wider range of climates up and down the Americas than across Europe and Asia as a result agriculture spread nearly twice as fast across Europe and Asia than it did elsewhere the behavior of farmers even across hundreds or thousands of years was constrained by the amount of friction in the environment by comparison the climate varies greatly when traveling from north to south just imagine how different the weather is in Florida compared to Canada you can be the most talented Farmer in the world but it won't help you grow Florida oranges in the Canadian winter snow is a poor substitute for soil in order to spread crops along north-south routes Farmers would need to find and domesticate new plants whenever the climate changed as a result agriculture spread two to three times faster across Asia and Europe than it did up and down the Americas over the span of centuries this small difference had a very big impact increased food production allowed for more rapid population growth with more people these cultures were able to build stronger armies and were better equipped to develop new technologies the changes started out small a crop that spreads slightly farther a population that grew slightly faster but compounded into substantial differences over time the spread of Agriculture provides an example of the Third Law of behavior change on a global scale conventional wisdom holds that motivation is the key to Habit change maybe if you really wanted it you'd actually do it but the truth is our real motivation is to be lazy and to do what is convenient and despite what the latest productivity bestseller will tell you this is a smart strategy not a dumb one energy is precious and the brain is wired to conserve it whenever possible it is human nature to follow the law of least effort which states that when deciding between two similar options people will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work for example expanding your farm to the east where you can grow the same crops rather than heading north where the climate is different out of all the possible actions we could take the one that is realized is the one that delivers the most value for the least effort we are motivated to do what is easy every action requires a certain amount of energy the more energy required the less likely it is to occur if your goal is to do 100 push-ups per day that's a lot of energy in the beginning when you're motivated and excited you can muster the strength to get started but after a few days such a massive effort feels exhausting meanwhile sticking to the habit of doing one push-up per day requires almost no energy to get started and the less energy a habit requires the more likely it is to occur look at any behavior that fills up much of your life and you'll see that it can be performed with very low levels of motivation Habits Like scrolling on our phones checking email and watching television steal so much of our time because they can be performed almost without effort they are remarkably convenient 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 you don't actually want the Habit itself what you really want is the outcome The Habit delivers the greater the obstacle that is the more difficult to have it the more friction there is between you and your desired end state this is why it is crucial to make your habits so easy that you'll do then even when you don't feel like it if you can make your good habits more convenient you'll be more likely to follow through on them but what about all the moments when we seem to do the opposite if we're also lazy then how do you explain people accomplishing hard things like raising a child or starting a business or climbing Mount Everest certainly you are capable of doing very hard things the problem is that some days you feel like doing the hard work and some days you feel like giving in on the tough days it's crucial to have as many things working in your favor as possible so that you can overcome the challenges life naturally throws your way the less friction you face the easier it is for your stronger self to emerge the idea behind make it easy is not to only do easy things the idea is to make it as easy as possible in the moment to do things that pay off in the long run how to achieve more with less effort imagine you are holding a garden hose that is bent in the middle some water can flow through but not very much if you want to increase the rate at which water passes through the hose you have two options the first option is to crank up the valve and force more water out the second option is to Simply remove the bend in the hose and let water flow through naturally trying to pump up your motivation to stick with a hard habit is like trying to force water through a bent hose you can do it but it requires a lot of effort and increases the tension in your life meanwhile making your habit simple and easy is like removing the bend in the hose rather than trying to overcome the friction in your life you reduce it one of the most effective ways to reduce the friction associated with your habits is to practice environment design in chapter 6 we discussed environment design as a method for making cues more obvious but you can also optimize your environment to make actions easier for example when deciding where to practice a new habit it is best to choose a place that is already along the path of your daily routine habits are easier to build when they fit into the flow of your life you are more likely to go to the gym if it is on your way to work because stopping doesn't add much friction to your lifestyle bye comparison if the gym is off the path of your normal commute even by just a few blocks now you're going out of your way to get there perhaps even more effective is reducing the friction within your home or office too often we try to start habits in high friction environments we try to follow a strict diet while we are out to dinner with friends we try to write a book in a chaotic household we try to concentrate while using a smartphone filled with distractions it doesn't have to be this way we can remove the points of friction that hold us back this is precisely what electronics manufacturers in Japan began to do in the 1970s in an article published in the New Yorker titled better all the time James shirawiki writes Japanese firms emphasized what came to be known as lean production relentlessly looking to remove waste of all kinds from the production process down to redesigning workspaces so workers didn't have to waste time twisting and turning to reach their tools the result was that Japanese factories were more efficient in Japanese products were more reliable than American ones in 1974 service calls for American-made color televisions were five times as common as for Japanese televisions By 1979 it took American workers three times as long to assemble their sets I like to refer to this strategy as addition by subtraction the Japanese companies look for every point of friction in the manufacturing process and eliminated it as they subtracted wasted effort they added customers in Revenue similarly when we remove the points of friction that sap our time and energy we can achieve more with less effort this is one reason tidying up can feel so good we are simultaneously moving forward and lightening the cognitive load our environment places on us if you look at the most habit forming products you'll notice that one of the things these goods and services do best is remove little bits of friction from your life meal delivery services reduce the friction of shopping for groceries dating apps reduce the friction of making social introductions ride sharing Services reduce the friction of getting across town text messaging reduces the friction of sending a letter in the mail like a Japanese television manufacturer redesigning their workspace to reduce wasted motion successful companies design their products to automate eliminate or simplify as many steps as possible they reduce the number of fields on each form they Pare down the number of clicks required to create an account they deliver their products with easy to understand directions or ask their customers to make fewer choices when the first voice activated speakers were released products like Google home Amazon Echo and apple homepod I asked a friend what he liked about the product he had purchased he said it was just easier to say play some country music than to pull out his phone open the music app and pick a playlist of course just a few years earlier having unlimited access to music in your pocket was a remarkably frictionless Behavior compared to driving to the store and buying a CD business is a never-ending quest to deliver the same result in an easier fashion similar strategies have been used effectively by governments when the British government wanted to increase tax collection rates they switched from sending citizens to a web page where the tax form could be downloaded to linking directly to the form reducing that one step in the process increased the response rate from 19.2 to 23.4 percent for a country like the United Kingdom those percentage points represent millions in tax revenue the central idea is to create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible much of the battle of building better habits comes down to finding ways to reduce the friction associated with our good habits and increase the friction associated with our bad ones Prime the environment for future use Oswald Knuckles is an I.T developer from Natchez Mississippi he is also someone who understands the power of priming his environment Knuckles dialed in his cleaning Habits by following a strategy he refers to as resetting the room for instance when he finishes watching television he places the remote back on the TV stand arranges the pillows on the couch and folds the blanket when he leaves his car he throws any Trash Away whenever he takes a shower he wipes down the toilet while the shower is warming up as he notes the perfect time to clean the toilet is right before you wash yourself in the shower anyway the purpose of resetting each room is not simply to clean up after the last action but to prepare for the next action when I walk into a room everything is in its right place Knuckles wrote because I do this every day in every room stuff always stays in good shape people think I work hard but I'm actually really lazy I'm just proactively lazy it gives you so much time back whenever you organize a space for its intended purpose you are priming it to make the next action easy for instance my wife keeps a box of greeting cards that are pre-sorted by occasion birthday sympathy wedding graduation and more whenever necessary she grabs an appropriate card and sends it off she is incredibly good at remembering to send cards because she has reduced the friction of doing so for years I was the opposite someone would have a baby and I would think I should send a card but then weeks would pass and by the time I remembered to pick one up at the store it was too late The Habit wasn't easy there are many ways to prime your environment so it's ready for immediate use if you want to cook a healthy breakfast place the skillet on the stove set the cooking spray on the counter and lay out any plates and utensils you'll need the night before when you wake up making breakfast will be easy want to draw more put your pencils pens notebooks and drawing tools on top of your desk with an easy reach want to exercise set out your workout clothes shoes gym bag and water bottle ahead of time want to improve your diet chop up a ton of fruits and vegetables on weekends and pack them in containers so you have easy access to healthy ready to eat options during the week these are simple ways to make the good habit the path of least resistance you can also invert this principle and prime the environment to make bad behaviors difficult if you find yourself watching too much television for example then unplug it after each use only plug it back and if you can say out loud the name of the show you want to watch this setup creates just enough friction to prevent mindless viewing if that doesn't do it you can take it a step further unplug the television and take the batteries out of the remote after each use so it takes an extra 10 seconds to turn it back on and if you're really hardcore move the television out of the living room and into a closet after each use you can be sure you'll only take it out when you really want to watch something the greater the friction the less likely the habit whenever possible I leave my phone in a different room until lunch when it's right next to me I'll check it all morning for no reason at all but when it is in another room I rarely think about it and the friction is high enough that I won't go get it without a reason as a result I get three to four hours each morning when I can work without interruption if sticking your phone in another room doesn't seem like enough tell a friend or family member to hide it from you for a few hours Ask A co-worker to keep it at their desk in the morning and give it back to you at lunch it is remarkable how little friction is required to prevent unwanted Behavior when I hide beer in the back of the fridge where I can't see it I drink less when I delete social media apps from my phone it can be weeks before I download them again and log in these tricks are unlikely to curb a true addiction but for many of us a little bit of friction can be the difference between sticking with a good habit or sliding into a bad one imagine the cumulative impact of making dozens of these changes and living in an environment designed to make the good behaviors easier and a bad behavior is harder whether we are approaching Behavior change as an individual a parent a coach or a leader we should ask ourselves the same question how can we design a world where it's easy to do what's right redesign your life so the actions that matter most are also the actions that are easiest to do chapter summary human behavior follows the law of least effort we will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible reduce the friction associated with good behaviors when friction is low habits are easy increase the friction associated with bad behaviors when friction is high habits are difficult prime your environment to make future actions easier 13. how to stop procrastinating by using the two-minute rule Twyla Tharp is widely regarded as one of the greatest answers and choreographers of the modern era in 1992 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship often referred to as the genius Grant and she has spent the bulk of her career touring the globe to perform her original works she also credits much of her success to simple daily habits I begin each day of my life with a ritual she writes I wake up at 5 30 am put on my workout clothes my leg warmers my sweatshirt and my hat I walk outside my Manhattan home hail a taxi and tell the driver to take me to the pumping iron gym at 91st Street and First Avenue where I work out for two hours the ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym the ritual is the cab the moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual it's a simple act but doing it the same way each morning habitualizes it makes it repeatable easy to do it reduces the chance that I would skip it or do it differently it is one more item in my arsenal of routines and one less thing to think about hailing a cab each morning may be a tiny action but it is a splendid example of the Third Law of behavior change researchers estimate that forty to fifty percent of our actions on any given day are done out of habit this is already a substantial percentage but the true influence of your habits is even greater than these numbers suggest habits are automatic choices that influence the conscious decisions that follow yes a habit can be completed in just a few seconds but it can also shape the actions that you take for minutes or hours afterward habits are like the entrance ramp to a highway they lead you down a path end before you know it you're speeding toward the next Behavior it seems to be easier to continue what you are already doing than to start doing something different you sit through a bad movie for two hours you keep snacking even when you're already full you check your phone for just a second and soon you have spent 20 minutes staring at the screen in this way the habits you follow without thinking often determine the choices you make when you are thinking each evening there is a tiny moment usually around 5 15 PM that shapes the rest of my night my wife walks in the door from work and either we change into our workout clothes and head to the gym or we crash onto the couch order Indian food and watch the office similar to twilatharb hailing a cab the ritual is changing into my workout clothes if I change clothes I know the workout will happen everything that follows driving to the gym deciding which exercises to do stepping under the bar is easy once I've taken the first step every day there are a handful of moments that deliver an outsized impact I refer to these little choices as decisive moments the moment you decide between ordering takeout or cooking dinner the moment you choose between driving your car or riding your bike the moment you decide between starting your homework or grabbing the video game controller these choices are a fork in the road decisive moments figure 14 the difference between a good day and a bad day is often a few productive and healthy choices made at decisive moments each one is like a fork in the road and these choices Stack Up throughout the day and can ultimately lead to very different outcomes decisive moments set the options available to your future self for instance walking into a restaurant is a decisive moment because it determines what you'll be eating for lunch technically you are in control of what you order but in a larger sense you can only order an item if it is on the menu if you walk into a steakhouse you can get a sirloin or a rib eye but not sushi your options are constrained by what's available they are shaped by the first choice we are limited by where our habits lead us this is why mastering the decisive moments throughout your day is so important each day is made up of many moments but it is really a few habitual choices that determine the path you take these little choices stack up each one setting the trajectory for how you spend the next chunk of time habits are the entry point not the end point they're the cab not the gym the two-minute rule even when you know you should start small it's easy to start too big when you dream about making a change excitement inevitably takes over and you end up trying to do too much too soon the most effective way I know to counteract this tendency is to use the two minute rule which states when you start a new habit it should take less than two minutes to do you'll find that nearly any habit can be scaled down into a dominant version read before bed each night becomes read one page do 30 minutes of yoga becomes take out my yoga mat study for class becomes open my notes fold the laundry becomes fold one pair of socks run three miles becomes tie my running shoes the idea is to make your habits as easy as possible to start anyone can meditate for one minute read one page or put one item of clothing away and as we have just discussed this is a powerful strategy because once you've started doing the right thing it is much easier to continue doing it a new habit should not feel like a challenge the actions that follow can be challenging but the first two minutes should be easy what you want is a gateway habit that naturally leads you down a more productive path you can usually figure out the Gateway habits that will lead to your desired outcome by mapping out your goals on a scale from very easy to very hard for instance running a marathon is very hard running a 5k is hard walking ten thousand steps is moderately difficult walking 10 minutes is easy and putting on your running shoes is very easy your goal might be to run a marathon but your gateway habit is to put on your running shoes that's how you follow the two-minute rule very easy moderate hard very hard put on your running walk 10 walk 10 000 steps run a 5k run a shoes minutes Marathon write one sentence write one write one thousand write a five thousand write a paragraph words article book open your note study for 10 study for three hours get straight A's earn a PhD minutes people often think it's weird to get hyped about reading one page or meditating for one minute or making one sales call but the point is not to do one thing the point is to master the habit of showing up the truth is a habit must be established before it can be improved if you can't learn the basic skill of showing up then you have little hope of mastering the finer details instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start then the easy thing on a more consistent basis you have to standardize before you can optimize as you master the art of showing up the first two minutes simply become a ritual at the beginning of a larger routine this is not merely a hack to make habits easier but actually the ideal way to master a difficult skill the more you ritualize the beginning of a process the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things by doing the same warm-up before every workout you make it easier to get into a state-of-peak performance by following the same creative ritual you make it easier to get into the hard work of creating by developing a consistent power down habit you make it easier to get to bed at a reasonable time each night you may not be able to automate the whole process but you can make the first action mindless make it easy to start and the rest will follow the two-minute rule can seem like a trick to some people you know that the real goal is to do more than just two minutes so it may feel like you're trying to fool yourself nobody is actually aspiring to read one page or do one push-up or open their notes and if you know it's a mental trick why would you fall for it if the two-minute rule feels forced try this do it for two minutes and then stop go for a run but you must stop after two minutes start meditating but you must stop after two minutes study Arabic but you must stop after two minutes it's not a strategy for starting it's the whole thing your habit can only last 120 seconds one of my readers used the strategy to lose over 100 pounds in the beginning he went to the gym each day but he told himself he wasn't allowed to stay for more than five minutes he would go to the gym exercise for five minutes and leave as soon as his time was up after a few weeks he looked around and thought well I'm always coming here anyway I might as well start staying a little longer a few years later the weight was gone journaling provides another example nearly everyone can benefit from getting their thoughts out of their head and onto paper but most people give up after a few days or avoid it entirely because journaling feels like a chore the secret is to always stay below the point where it feels like work Greg McEwen a leadership consultant from the United Kingdom built a daily journaling habit by specifically writing less than he felt like he always stopped journaling before it seemed like a hassle Ernest Hemingway believed in similar advice for any kind of writing the best way is to always stop when you were going good he said strategies like this work for another reason two they reinforce the identity you want to build if you show up at the gym five days in a row even if it's just for two minutes you are casting votes for your new identity you're not worried about getting in shape you're focused on becoming the type of person who doesn't miss workouts you're taking the smallest action that confirms the type of person you want to be we rarely think about change this way because everyone is consumed by the end goal but one push-up is better than not exercising one minute of guitar practice is better than none at all one minute of reading is better than never picking up a book it's better to do less than you hope than to do nothing at all at some point once you've established the habit and you're showing up each day you can combine the two-minute rule with a Technique we call habit shaping to scale your habit back up toward your ultimate goal start by mastering the first two minutes of the smallest version of the behavior then advance to an intermediate step and repeat the process focusing on just the first two minutes and mastering that stage before moving on to the next level eventually you'll end up with The Habit you had originally hoped to build while still keeping your focus where it should be on the first two minutes of the behavior examples of habit shaping becoming an early riser phase one be home by 10 pm every night Phase 2 have all devices TV phone Etc turned off by 10 pm every night phase 3 be in bed by 10 pm every night reading a book talking with your partner phase 4 lights off by 10 pm every night Phase 5 wake up at 6am every day becoming vegan phase one start eating vegetables at each meal phase two stop eating animals with four legs cow pig lamb Etc phase three stop eating animals with two legs chicken turkey Etc phase 4 stop eating animals with no legs fish clams scallops Etc phase five stop eating all animal products eggs milk cheese starting to exercise phase one change into workout clothes phase two step up the door try taking a walk phase three drive to the gym exercise for five minutes and leave phase four exercise for 15 minutes at least once per week phase five exercise three times per week nearly any larger life goal can be transformed into a two-minute Behavior I want to live a healthy and long life I need to stay in shape I need to exercise I need to change into my workout clothes I want to have a happy marriage I need to be a good partner I should do something each day to make my partner's life easier I should meal plan for next week whenever you are struggling to stick with a habit you can employ the two-minute rule it's a simple way to make your habits easy chapter summary habits can be completed in a few seconds but continue to impact your behavior for minutes or hours afterward many habits occur at decisive moments choices that are like a fork in the road and either send you in the direction of a productive day or an unproductive one the two-minute rule states when you start a new habit it should take less than two minutes to do the more you ritualize the beginning of a process the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things standardize before you optimize you can't improve a habit that doesn't exist 14. how to make good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible I in the summer of 1830 Victor Hugo was facing an impossible deadline 12 months earlier the French author had promised his publisher a new book but instead of writing he spent that you're pursuing other projects entertaining guests and delaying his work frustrated Hugo's publisher responded by setting a deadline less than six months away the book had to be finished by February 1831. Hugo concocted a strange plan to beat his procrastination he collected all of his clothes and asked an assistant to lock them away in a large chest he was left with nothing to wear except a large shawl lacking any suitable clothing to go Outdoors he remained in his study and rode furiously during the fall and winter of 1830. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was published two weeks early on January 14 1831. sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard this is an inversion of the Third Law of behavior change make it difficult if you find yourself continually struggling to follow through on your plans then you can take a page from Victor Hugo and make your bad habits more difficult by creating what psychologists call a commitment device a commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future it is a way to lock in future Behavior bind you to good habits and restrict you from bad ones when Victor Hugo shut his clothes away so he could focus on writing he was creating a commitment device there are many ways to create a commitment device you can reduce overeating by purchasing food in individual packages rather than in bulk size you can voluntarily ask to be added to the banned list at casinos and online poker sites to prevent future gambling sprees I've even heard of athletes who have to make weight for a competition choosing to leave their wallets at home during the week before weigh-in so they won't be tempted to buy fast food as another example my friend and fellow habits expert niri all purchased an outlet timer which is an adapter that he plugged in between his internet router and the power outlet at 10 pm each night the outlet timer cuts off the power to the router when the internet goes off everyone knows it is time to go to bed commitment devices are useful because they enable you to take advantage of Good Intentions before you can fall victim to temptation whenever I'm looking to cut calories for example I will ask the waiter to split my meal and box half of it to go before the meal is served if I waited until the meal came out and told myself I'll just eat half it would never work the key is to change the task such that it requires more work to get out of the good habit than to get started on it if you're feeling motivated to get in shape schedule a yoga session and pay ahead of time if you're excited about the business you want to start email an entrepreneur you respect and set up a Consulting call when the time comes to act the only way to bail is to cancel the meeting which requires effort and may cost money commitment devices increase the odds that you'll do the right thing in the future by making bad habits difficult in the present however we can do even better we can make good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible how to automate a habit and never think about it again John Henry Patterson was born in Dayton Ohio in 1844. he spent his childhood doing chores on the Family Farm and working shifts at his father sawmill after attending college at Dartmouth Patterson returned to Ohio and opened a small supply store for coal miners it seemed like a good opportunity the store faced little competition and enjoyed a steady stream of customers but still struggled to make money that was when Patterson discovered his employees were stealing from him in the mid-1800s employee theft was a common problem receipts were kept in an open drawer and could easily be altered or discarded there were no video cameras to review behavior and no software to track transactions unless you were willing to hover over your employees every minute of the day or to manage all transactions yourself it was difficult to prevent theft as Patterson mulled over his predicament he came across an advertisement for a new invention called release incorruptable cashier designed by fellow Dayton resident James riddy it was the first cash register the machine automatically locked the cache and receipts inside after each transaction Patterson bought two for fifty dollars each employee theft at his store vanished overnight in the next six months Patterson's business went from losing money to making five thousand dollars in profit the equivalent of more than one hundred thousand dollar today Patterson was so impressed with the machine that he changed businesses he bought the rights to release invention and opened the national cash register company Ten Years Later National Cash Register had over 1 000 employees and was on its way to becoming one of the most successful businesses of its time the best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do increase the friction until you don't even have the option to act the Brilliance of the cash register was that it automated ethical Behavior by making stealing practically impossible rather than trying to change the employees it made the preferred Behavior automatic some actions like installing a cash register pay off again and again these one-time choices require a little bit of effort up front but create increasing value over time I'm fascinated by the idea that a single Choice can deliver returns again and again and I surveyed my readers on their favorite one-time actions that lead to better long-term habits the table on the following page shares some of the most popular answers I'd wager that if the average person were to Simply do half of the one-time actions on this list even if they didn't give another thought to their habits most would find themselves living a better life a year from now these one-time actions are a straightforward way to employ the Third Law of behavior change they make it easier to sleep well eat healthy be productive save money and generally live better one-time actions that lock in good habits nutrition buy a water filter to clean your drinking water use smaller plates to reduce caloric intake sleep buy a good mattress get blackout curtains remove your television from your bedroom productivity unsubscribe from emails turn off notifications and new group chats set your phone to silent use email filters to clear up your inbox delete games and social media apps on your phone happiness get a dog move to a friendly social neighborhood General Health get vaccinated by good shoes to avoid back pain buy a supportive chair or standing desk Finance enroll in an automatic savings plan set up automatic bill pay cut cable service ask service providers to lower your bills of course there are many ways to automate good habits and eliminate bad ones typically they involve putting technology to work for you technology can transform actions that were once hard annoying and complicated into behaviors that are easy painless and simple it is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right Behavior this is particularly useful for behaviors that happen too infrequently to become habitual things you have to do monthly or yearly like rebalancing your Investment Portfolio are never repeated frequently enough to become a habit so they benefit in particular from technology remembering to do them for you other examples include medicine prescriptions can be automatically refilled personal finance employees can save for retirement with an automatic wage deduction cooking meal delivery services can do your grocery shopping productivity social media browsing can be cut off with a website blocker when you automate as much of your life as possible you can spend your effort on the tasks machines cannot do yet each habit that we hand over to the authority of Technology frees up time and energy to pour into the next stage of growth as mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them of course the power of Technology can work against us as well binge watching becomes a habit because you have to put more effort into stop looking at the screen and to continue doing so instead of pressing a button to advance to the next episode Netflix or YouTube will autoplay it for you all you have to do is keep your eyes open technology creates a level of convenience that enables you to act on your smallest whims and desires at the mere suggestion of hunger you can have food delivered to your door at the slightest hint of boredom you can get lost in the vast expanse of social media 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 more rewarding work I often find myself gravitating towards social media during any downtime if I feel bored for just a fraction of a second I reach for my phone it's easy to write off these minor distractions as just taking a break but over time they can accumulate into a serious issue the constant tug of just one more minute can prevent me from doing anything of consequence I'm not the only one the average person spends over two hours per day on social media what could you do with an extra 600 hours per year during the year I was writing this book I experimented with a new time management strategy every Monday my assistant would reset the passwords on all my social media accounts which logged me out on each device all week I worked without distraction on Friday she would send me the new passwords I had the entire weekend to enjoy what social media had to offer until Monday morning when she would do it again if you don't have an assistant team up with a friend or family member and reset each other's passwords each week one of the biggest surprises was how quickly I adapted within the first week of locking myself out of social media I realized that I didn't need to check it nearly as often as I had been and I certainly didn't need it each day it had simply been so easy that it had become the default once my bad habit became impossible I discovered that I did actually have the motivation to work on more meaningful tasks after I removed the mental candy from my environment it became much easier to eat the healthy stuff when working in your favor automation can make your good habits inevitable and your bad habits impossible it is the ultimate way to lock in future Behavior rather than relying on Willpower in a moment by utilizing commitment devices strategic one-time decisions and Technology you can create an environment of inevitability a space where good habits are not just an outcome you hope for but an outcome that is virtually guaranteed chapter summary the inversion of the Third Law of behavior changes make it difficult a commitment device is a choice you make in the present that locks in better behavior in the future the ultimate way to lock in future behavior is to automate your habits one-time choices like buying a better mattress or enrolling in an automatic savings plan are single actions that automate your future habits and deliver increasing returns over time using technology to automate your habits is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right Behavior how to create a good habit the first law make it obvious 1.1 fill out the Habit scorecard write down your current habits to become aware of them 1.2 use implementation intentions I will Behavior at time in location 1.3 use habit stacking after current habit I will new habit 1.4 design your environment make the cues of good habits obvious and visible the second law make it attractive 2.1 use Temptation bundling parent action you want to do with an action you need to do 2.2 join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior 2.3 create a motivation ritual do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit the third law make it easy 3.1 reduce friction decrease the number of steps between you and your good habits 3.2 Prime the environment prepare your environment to make future actions easier 3.3 Master the decisive moment optimize the small choices that deliver outsized impact 3.4 use the two minute rule downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less 3.5 automate your habits invest in technology and one-time purchases that lock in future Behavior the fourth law make it satisfying how T.O break a bad habit in version of the first law make it invisible 1.5 reduce exposure remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment in version of the second law make it unattractive 2.4 reframe your mindset highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits inversion of the third law make it difficult 3.6 increase friction increase the number of steps between you and your bad habits 3.7 use a commitment device restrict your future choices to the ones that benefit you in version of the fourth law make it unsatisfying you can download a printable version of this habits cheat sheet at the fourth law make it satisfying 15. the cardinal rule of behavior change I in the late 1990s a public health worker named Steven loopy left his hometown of Omaha Nebraska and bought a one-way ticket to Karachi Pakistan Karachi was one of the most populous cities in the world by 1998 over 9 million people called it home it was the economic Center of Pakistan and a Transportation Hub with some of the most active airports and seaports in the region in the commercial parts of town you could find all of the standard Urban amenities and bustling downtown streets but Karachi was also one of the least livable cities in the world over 60 percent of karachi's residents lived in squatter settlements and slums these densely packed neighborhoods were filled with makeshift houses cobbled together from old boards cinderblocks and other discarded materials there was no waste removal system no electricity grid no clean water supply when dry the streets were a combination of dust and trash when wet they became a muddy pit of sewage mosquito colonies thrived in pools of stagnant water and children played among the garbage the unsanitary conditions lead to widespread illness and disease contaminated water sources caused epidemics of diarrhea vomiting and abdominal pain nearly one-third of the children living there were malnourished with so many people crammed into such a small space viruses and bacterial infections spread rapidly it was this Public Health crisis that had brought Stephen Luby to Pakistan Luby and his team realized that in an environment with poor sanitation the simple habit of washing your hands could make a real difference in the health of the residents but they soon discovered that many people were already aware that hand washing was important and yet despite this knowledge many residents were washing their hands in a haphazard fashion some people would just run their hands under the water quickly others would only wash one hand many would simply forget to wash their hands before preparing food everyone said hand washing was important but few people made a habit out of it the problem wasn't knowledge the problem was consistency that was when Luby and his team partnered with Proctor and gambled to supply the neighborhood with Safeguard soap compared to your standard bar of soap using Safeguard was a more enjoyable experience in Pakistan Safeguard was a premium soap loopy told me the study participants commonly mentioned how much they liked it the soap foamed easily and people were able to lather their hands with suds it smelled great instantly hand washing became slightly more pleasurable I see the goal of hand washing promotion not as Behavior change but as habit adoption Luby said it is a lot easier for people to adopt a product that provides a strong positive sensory signal for example the mint Taste of toothpaste than it is to adopt a habit that does not provide pleasurable sensory feedback like flossing one's teeth the marketing team at Procter and Gamble talked about trying to create a positive hand washing experience within months the researchers saw a rapid shift in the health of children in the neighborhood the rate of diarrhea fell by 52 pneumonia by 48 and impetigo a bacterial skin infection by 35 percent the long-term effects were even better we went back to some of the households in Karachi six years after Luby told me over 95 percent of households who had been given the soap for free and encouraged to wash their hands at a hand washing station with soap and water available when our study team visited we had not given any soap to the intervention group for over five years but during the trial they had become so habituated to wash their hands that they had maintain the practice it was a powerful example of the fourth and final law of behavior change make it satisfying we are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying this is entirely logical feelings of pleasure even minor ones like washing your hands with soap that smells nice and lathers well are signals that tell the brain this feels good do this again next time pleasure teaches your brain that a behavior is worth remembering and repeating take the story of chewing gum chewing gum had been sold commercially throughout the 1800s but it wasn't until Wrigley launched in 1891 that it became a worldwide habit early versions were made from relatively Bland resins chewy but not tasty Wrigley revolutionized the industry by adding flavors like spearmint and Juicy Fruit which made the product flavorful and fun to use then they went a step further and began pushing chewing gum as a pathway to a clean mouth advertisements told readers to refresh your taste tasty flavors and the feeling of a fresh mouth provided little bits of immediate reinforcement and made the product satisfying to use consumption skyrocketed and Wrigley became the largest chewing gum company in the world toothpaste had a similar trajectory manufacturers enjoyed great success when they added flavors like spearmint peppermint and cinnamon to their products these flavors don't improve the effectiveness of toothpaste they simply create a clean mouth feel and make the experience of brushing your teeth more pleasurable my wife actually stopped using Sensodyne because she didn't like the aftertaste she switched to a brand with a stronger mint flavor which proved to be more satisfying conversely if an experience is not satisfying we have little reason to repeat it in my research I came across the story of a woman who had a narcissistic relative who drove her nuts in an attempt to spend less time with this egomaniac she acted as dull and as boring as possible whenever he was around within a few encounters he started avoiding her because he found her so uninteresting stories like these are evidence of the cardinal rule of behavior change what is rewarded is repeated what is punished is avoided you learn what to do in the future based on what you were rewarded for doing or punished for doing in the past positive emotions cultivate habits negative emotions destroy them the first three laws of behavior change make it obvious make it attractive and make it easy increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time the fourth law of behavior change make it satisfying increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time it completes the Habit Loop but there is a trick we are not looking for just any type of satisfaction we are looking for immediate satisfaction the mismatch between immediate and delayed Rewards imagine you're an animal roaming The Plains of Africa a giraffe or an elephant or a lion on any given day most of your decisions have an immediate impact you are always thinking about what to eat or where to sleep or how to avoid a predator you are constantly focused on the present or the very near future you live in what scientists call an immediate return environment because your actions instantly deliver clear and immediate outcomes now switch back to your human self in modern society many of the choices you make today will not benefit you immediately if you do a good job at work you'll get a paycheck in a few weeks if you exercise today perhaps you won't be overweight next year if you save money now maybe you'll have enough for retirement decades from now you live in what scientists call a delayed return environment because you can work for years before your actions deliver the intended payoff the human brain did not evolve for life in a delayed return environment the earliest remains of modern humans known as Homo Sapien sapiens are approximately 200 000 years old these were the first humans to have a brain relatively similar to ours in particular the neocortex the newest part of the brain and the region responsible for higher functions like language was roughly the same size 200 000 years ago as today you are walking around with the same Hardware as your Paleolithic ancestors it is only recently during the last 500 years or so that Society has shifted to a predominantly delayed return environment compared to the age of the brain modern society is brand new in the last 100 years we have seen the rise of the car the airplane the television the personal computer the internet the smartphone and Beyonce the world has changed much in recent years but Human Nature has changed little similar to other animals on the African Savannah our ancestors spent their days responding to grave threats securing the next meal and taking Shelter From a storm it made sense to place a high value on instant gratification the distant future was less of a concern and after thousands of generations in an immediate return environment our brains evolved to prefer quick payoffs to long-term ones behavioral economists refer to this tendency as timing consistency that is the way your brain evaluates rewards is inconsistent across time you value the present more than the future usually this tendency serves as well a reward that is certain right now is typically worth more than one that is merely possible in the future but occasionally our bias toward instant gratification causes problems why would someone smoke if they know it increases the risk of lung cancer why would someone overeat when they know it increases their risk of obesity why would someone have unsafe sex if they know it can result in sexually transmitted disease once you understand how the brain prioritizes rewards the answers become clear the consequences of bad habits are delayed while the rewards are immediate smoking might kill you in 10 years but it reduces stress and eases your nicotine Cravings now overeating is harmful in a long run but appetizing in the moment sex safe or not provides pleasure right away disease and infection won't show up for days or weeks even years every habit produces multiple outcomes across time unfortunately these outcomes are often misaligned with our bad habits the immediate outcome usually feels good but the ultimate outcome feels bad with good habits it is the reverse the immediate outcome is unenjoyable but the ultimate outcome feels good the French Economist Frederick Bassey had explained the problem clearly when he wrote it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable the later consequences are disastrous and vice versa often the sweeter the first root of a habit the more bitter are its later fruits put another way the cost of your good habits are in the present the costs of your bad habits are in the future the brain's tendency to prioritize the present moment means you can't rely on good intentions when you make a plan to lose weight write a book or learn a language you are actually making plans for your future self and when you envision what you want your life to be like it is easy to see the value in taking actions with long-term benefits we all want better lives for our future selves however when the moment of decision arrives instant gratification usually wins you are no longer making a choice for future you who dreams of being fitter or wealthier or happier you are choosing for present you who wants to be full pampered and entertained as a general rule the more immediate pleasure you get from an action the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals with a fuller understanding of what causes our brain to repeat some behaviors and avoid others let's update the cardinal rule of behavior change what is immediately rewarded is repeated what is immediately punished is avoided our preference for instant gratification reveals an important truth about success because of how we are wired most people will spend all day chasing quick hits of satisfaction The Road Less Traveled is the road of delayed gratification if you're willing to wait for the rewards you'll face less competition and often get a bigger payoff as the saying goes the last mile is always the least crowded this is precisely what research has shown people who are better at delaying gratification have higher SAT scores lower levels of substance abuse lower likelihood of obesity better responses to stress and Superior social skills we've all seen this play out in our own lives if you delay watching television and get your homework done you'll generally learn more and get better grades if you don't buy desserts and chips at the store you'll often eat healthier food when you get home at some point success in nearly every field requires you to ignore an immediate reward in favor of a delayed reward here's the problem most people know that delaying gratification is the wise approach they want the benefits of good habits to be healthy productive at peace but these outcomes are seldom top of mind at the decisive moment thankfully it's possible to train yourself to delay gratification but you need to work with the grain of human nature not against it the best way to do this is to add a little bit of immediate pleasure to the habits that pay off in the long run and a little bit of immediate pain to ones that don't how to turn instant gratification to your advantage the vital thing in getting a habit to stick is to feel successful even if it's in a small way the feeling of success is a signal that your habit paid off and that the work was worth the effort in a perfect world the reward for a good habit is the Habit itself in the real world good habits tend to feel worthwhile only after they have provided you with something early on it's all sacrifice you've gone to the gym a few times but you're not stronger or fitter or faster at least not in any noticeable sense it's only months later once you shed a few pounds or your arms gain some definition that it becomes easier to exercise for its own sake in the beginning you need a reason to stay on track this is why immediate rewards are essential they keep you excited while the delayed rewards accumulate in a background what we're really talking about here when we're discussing immediate rewards is the ending of a behavior the ending of any experience is vital because we tend to remember it more than other phases you want the ending of your Habit to be satisfying the best approach is to use reinforcement which refers to the process of using an immediate reward to increase the rate of a behavior habit stacking which we covered in chapter 5 ties your Habit to an immediate cue which makes it obvious when to start reinforcement ties your Habit to an immediate reward which makes it satisfying when you finish immediate reinforcement can be especially helpful when dealing with habits of avoidance which are behaviors you want to stop doing it can be challenging to stick with Habits Like no frivolous purchases or no alcohol this month because nothing happens when you skip happy hour drinks or don't buy that pair of shoes it can be hard to feel satisfied when there is no action in the first place all you're doing is resisting temptation and there isn't much satisfying about that one solution is to turn the situation on its head you want to make avoidance visible open a savings account and label it for something you want maybe leather jacket whenever you pass on a purchase put the same amount of money in the account skip your morning latte transfer five dollars pass on another month of Netflix move ten dollar over it's like creating a loyalty program for yourself the immediate reward of seeing yourself save money toward the leather jacket feels a lot better than being deprived you are making it satisfying to do nothing one of my readers and his wife used a similar setup they wanted to stop eating out so much and start cooking together more they labeled their savings account trip to Europe whenever they skipped going out to eat they transferred fifty dollars into the account at the end of the year they put the money toward the vacation it is worth noting that it is important to select short-term rewards that reinforce your identity rather than once the conflict with it buying a new jacket is fine if you're trying to lose weight or read more books but it doesn't work if you're trying to budget and save money instead taking a bubble bath or going on a leisurely walk are good examples of rewarding yourself with free time which aligns with your ultimate goal of more freedom and financial Independence similarly if your reward for exercising is eating a bowl of ice cream then your casting votes for conflicting identities and it ends up being Awash instead maybe your reward is a massage which is both a luxury and a vote toward taking care of your body now the short-term reward is aligned with your long-term vision of being a healthy person eventually as intrinsic rewards like a better mood more energy and reduced stress kick in you'll become less concerned with chasing the secondary reward the identity itself becomes the reinforcer you do it because it's who you are and it feels good to be you the more a habit becomes part of your life the less you need outside encouragement to follow through incentives can start a habit identity sustains a habit that said it takes time for the evidence to accumulate and a new identity to emerge immediate reinforcement helps maintain motivation in the short term while you're waiting for the long-term rewards to arrive in summary a habit needs to be enjoyable for it to last simple bits of reinforcement like soap it smells great or toothpaste that has a refreshing mint flavor or seeing 50 hit your savings account can offer the immediate pleasure you need to enjoy a habit and change is easy when it is enjoyable chapter summary the fourth law of behavior changes make it satisfying we are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying the human brain evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed Rewards the cardinal rule of behavior change what is immediately rewarded is repeated what is immediately punished is avoided to get a habit to stick you need to feel immediately successful even if it's in a small way the first three laws of behavior change make it obvious make it attractive and make it easy increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time the fourth law of behavior change make it satisfying increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time 16. how to stick with good habits every day in 1993 a bank in Abbotsford Canada hired a 23 year old stockbroker named Trent dursmid Abbotsford was a relatively small suburb tucked away in the shadow of nearby Vancouver where most of the big business deals were being made given the location and the fact that dursmith was a rookie nobody expected too much of him but he made brisk progress thanks to a simple daily habit dursman began each morning with two jars on his desk one was filled with 120 paper clips the other was empty as soon as he settled in each day he would make a sales call immediately after he would move one paperclip from the full jar to the empty jar in the process would begin again every morning I would start with 120 paper clips in one jar and I would keep dialing the phone until I had moved them all to the second jar he told me within 18 months firsman was bringing in 5 million dollars to The Firm by age 24 he was making seventy five thousand dollars per year the equivalent of 125 000 today not long after he landed a six-figure job with another company I like to refer to this technique as the paper clip strategy end over the years I've heard from readers who have employed it in a variety of ways one woman shifted a hairpin from one container to another whenever she wrote a page of her book another man moved a marble from one bin to the next after each set of push-ups making progress is satisfying and visual measures like moving paper clips or hairpins or marbles provide clear evidence of your progress as a result they reinforce your behavior and add a little bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity visual measurement comes in many forms food journals workout logs loyalty Punch Cards the progress bar on a software download even the page numbers in a book but perhaps the best way to measure your progress is with a habit tracker how to keep your habits on track a habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit the most basic format is to get a calendar and cross off each day you stick with your routine for example if you meditate on Monday Wednesday and Friday each of those dates gets an X As Time Rolls by the calendar becomes a record of your habit streak countless people have tracked their habits but perhaps the most famous was Benjamin Franklin at age 20 Franklin carried a small booklet everywhere he went and used it to track 13 personal virtues this list included goals like lose no time be always employed in something useful and avoid trifling conversation at the end of each day Franklin would open his booklet and record his progress Jerry Seinfeld reportedly uses a habit tracker to stick with his streak of writing jokes in the documentary comedian he explains that his goal is simply to never break the chain of writing jokes every day in other words he is not focused on how good or bad a particular joke is or how inspired he feels he is simply focused on showing up and adding to his streak don't break the chain is a powerful mantra don't break the chain of sales calls and you'll build a successful book of business don't break the chain of workouts and you'll get fit faster than you'd expect don't break the chain of creating every day and you will end up with an impressive portfolio habit tracking is powerful because it leverages multiple laws of behavior change it simultaneously makes a behavior obvious attractive and satisfying let's break down each one benefit number one habit tracking is obvious recording your last action creates a trigger that can initiate your next one habit tracking naturally builds a series of visual cues like the streak of x's on your calendar or the list of meals in your food log when you look at the calendar and see your streak you'll be reminded to act again research has shown that people who track their progress on goals like losing weight quitting smoking and lowering blood pressure are all more likely to improve than those who don't one study of more than 1600 people found that those who kept a daily food log lost twice as much weight as those who did not the mere Act of tracking a behavior can spark the urge to change it habit tracking also keeps you honest most of us have a distorted view of our own behavior we think we act better than we do measurement offers one way to overcome our blindness to our own behavior and notice what's really going on each day one glance at the paper clips in the container and you immediately know how much work you have or haven't been putting in when the evidence is right in front of you you're less likely to lie to yourself benefit number two habit tracking is attractive the most effective form of motivation is progress when we get a signal that we are moving forward we become more motivated to continue down that path in this way habit tracking can have an addictive effect on motivation each small win feeds your desire this can be particularly powerful on a bad day when you're feeling down it's easy to forget about all the progress you have already made habit tracking provides visual proof of your hard work a subtle reminder of how far you've come plus the empty Square you see each morning can motivate you to get started because you don't want to lose your progress by breaking the streak benefit number three habit tracking is satisfying this is the most crucial benefit of all tracking can become its own form of reward it is satisfying to cross an item of your to-do list to complete an entry in your workout log or to mark an x on the calendar it feels good to watch your results grow the size of your Investment Portfolio the length of your book manuscript and if it feels good then you're more likely to endure habit tracking also helps keep your eye on the ball you're focused on the process rather than the result you're not fixated on getting six-pack abs you're just trying to keep the streak alive and become the type of person who doesn't miss workouts in summary habit tracking one creates a visual cue that can remind you to act two is inherently motivating because you see the progress you are making and don't want to lose it and three feel satisfying whenever you record another successful instance of your habit furthermore habit tracking provides visual proof that you are casting votes for the type of person you wish to become which is a delightful form of immediate and intrinsic gratification you may be wondering if habit tracking is so useful why have I waited so long to talk about it despite all the benefits I've left this discussion until now for a simple reason many people resist the idea of tracking and measuring it can feel like a burden because it forces you into two habits The Habit you're trying to build in the habit of tracking it counting calories sounds like a hassle when you're already struggling to follow a diet writing down every sales call seems tedious when you've got work to do it feels easier to say I'll just eat less or I'll try harder or I'll remember to do it people inevitably tell me things like I have a decision Journal but I wish I used it more or I recorded my workouts for a week but then quit I've been there myself I once made a food log to track my calories I managed to do it for one meal and then gave up tracking isn't for everyone and there is no need to measure your entire life but nearly anyone can benefit from it in some form even if it's only temporary what can we do to make tracking easier first whenever possible measurement should be automated you'll probably be surprised by how much you're already tracking without knowing it your credit card statement tracks how often you go out to eat your Fitbit registers how many steps you take and how long you sleep your calendar records how many new places you travel to each year once you know where to get the data add a note to your calendar to review it each week or each month which is more practical than tracking it every day second manual tracking should be limited to your most important habits it is better to consistently track one habit than to sporadically track 10. finally record each measurement immediately after the Habit occurs the completion of the behavior is the cue to write it down this approach allows you to combine a habit stacking method mentioned in chapter 5 with habit tracking The Habit stacking plus habit tracking formula is after current habit I will track my habit after I hang up the phone from a sales call I will move one paper clip over after I finish each set at the gym I will record it in my workout Journal after I put my plate in the dishwasher I will write down what I ate these tactics can make tracking your habits easier even if you aren't the type of person who enjoys recording your behavior I think you'll find a few weeks of measurements to be insightful it's always interesting to see how you've actually been spending your time that said every habit streak ends at some point and more important than any single measurement is having a good plan for when your habits slide off track how to recover quickly when your habits break down no matter how consistent you are with your habits it is inevitable that life will interrupt you at some point Perfection is not possible before long an emergency will pop up you get sick or you have to travel for work or your family needs a little more of your time whenever this happens to me I try to remind myself of a simple rule never miss twice if I miss one day I try to get back into it as quickly as possible missing one workout happens but I'm not going to miss two in a row maybe I'll eat an entire pizza but I'll follow it up with a healthy meal I can't be perfect but I can avoid a second lapse as soon as one streak ends I get started on the next one the first mistake is never the one that ruins you it is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows missing once is an accident missing twice is the start of a new habit this is a distinguishing feature between winners and losers anyone can have a bad performance a bad workout or a bad day at work but when successful people fail they rebound quickly the breaking of a habit doesn't matter if the reclaiming of it is fast I think this principle is so important that I'll stick to it even if I can't do a habit as well or as completely as I would like too often we fall into an all or nothing cycle with our habits the problem is not slipping up the problem is thinking that if you can't do something perfectly then you shouldn't do it at all you don't realize how valuable it is to just show up on your bad or busy days lost days hurt you more than successful days help you if you start with 100 then a 50 gain will take you to 150 dollars but you only need a 33 loss to take you back to 100. in other words avoiding a 33 loss is just as valuable as achieving a 50 gain as Charlie Munger says the first rule of compounding never interrupted unnecessarily this is why the bad workouts are often the most important ones sluggish days and bad workouts maintain the compound gains you accrued from previous good days simply doing something 10 squats five Sprints a push-up anything really is huge don't put up a zero don't let losses eat into your compounding furthermore it's not always about what happens during the workout it's about being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts it's easy to train when you feel good but it's crucial to show up when you don't feel like it even if you do less than you hope going to the gym for five minutes may not improve your performance but it reaffirms your identity the All or Nothing cycle of behavior change is just one Pitfall that can derail your habits another potential danger especially if you are using a habit tracker is measuring the wrong thing knowing when and when not to track a habit say you're running a restaurant and you want to know if your Chef is doing a good job one way to measure success is to track how many customers pay for a meal each day if more customers come in the food must be good if fewer customers come in something must be wrong however this one measurement daily revenue only gives a limited picture of what's really going on just because someone pays for a meal doesn't mean they enjoy the meal even dissatisfied customers are unlikely to dine and dash in fact if you're only measuring Revenue the food might be getting worse but you're making up for it with marketing or discounts or some other method instead it may be more effective to track how many customers finish their meal or perhaps the percentage of customers who leave a generous tip the Dark Side of tracking a particular behavior is that we become driven by the number rather than the purpose behind it if your success is measured by quarterly earnings you will optimize sales revenue and accounting for quarterly earnings if your success is measured by a lower number on the scale you will optimize for a lower number on the scale even if that means embracing crash diets juice cleanses and fat loss pills the human mind wants to win whatever game is being played this Pitfall is evident in many areas of life we focus on working long hours instead of getting meaningful work done we care more about getting 10 000 steps than we do about being healthy we teach for standardized tests instead of emphasizing learning curiosity and critical thinking in short we optimize for what we measure when we choose the wrong measurement we get the wrong Behavior this is sometimes referred to as good heart's law named after the economist Charles goodheart the principal States when a measure becomes a Target it ceases to be a good measure measurement is only useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture not when it consumes you each number is simply one piece of feedback in the overall system in our data driven World We tend to overvalue numbers and undervalue anything ephemeral soft and difficult to quantify we mistakenly think the factors we can measure are the only factors that exist but just because you can measure something doesn't mean it's the most important thing and just because you can't measure something doesn't mean it's not important at all all of this to say it's crucial to keep habit tracking in its proper place it can feel satisfying to record a habit and track your progress but the measurement is not the only thing that matters furthermore there are many ways to measure progress and sometimes it helps to shift your focus to something entirely different this is why non-scale victories can be effective for weight loss the number on the scale may be stubborn so if you focus solely on that number your motivation will sag but you may notice that your skin looks better when you wake up earlier or your sex drive got a boost all of these are valid ways to track your improvement if you're not feeling motivated by the number on the scale perhaps it's time to focus on a different measurement one that gives you more signals of progress no matter how you measure your improvement habit tracking offers a simple way to make your habits more satisfying each measurement provides a little bit of evidence that you're moving in the right direction and a brief moment of immediate pleasure for a job well done chapter summary one of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of making progress a habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit like marking an x on a calendar habit trackers and other visual forms of measurement can make your habit satisfying by providing clear evidence of your progress don't break the chain try to keep your habit streak alive never miss twice if you miss one day try to get back on track as quickly as possible just because you can measure something doesn't mean it's the most important thing 17. how an accountability partner can change everything after serving as a pilot in World War II Roger Fisher attended Harvard Law School and spent 34 years specializing in negotiation and conflict management he founded the Harvard negotiation project and worked with numerous countries and world leaders on peace resolutions hostage crises and diplomatic compromises but it was in the 1970s and 1980s as the threat of nuclear war escalated that fisher developed perhaps his most interesting idea at the time Fisher was focused on designing strategies that could prevent nuclear war and he had noticed a troubling fact any sitting president would have access to launch codes that could kill millions of people but would never actually see anyone die because he would always be thousands of miles away my suggestion was quite simple he wrote In 1981. put that nuclear code number in a little capsule and then implant the capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer the volunteer would carry with him a big heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the president if ever the president wanted to fire nuclear weapons the only way he could do so would be for him first with his own hands to kill one human being the President says George I'm sorry but tens of millions Must Die he has to look at someone and realize what death is what an innocent death is Blood on the White House carpet its reality brought home when I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said my God that's terrible having to kill someone would distort the president's judgment he might never push the button throughout our discussion of the fourth law of behavior change we have covered the importance of making good habits immediately satisfying Fisher's proposal is an inversion of the fourth law make it immediately unsatisfying just as we are more likely to repeat an experience when the ending is satisfying we are also more likely to avoid an experience when the ending is painful pain is an Effective Teacher if a failure is painful it gets fixed if a failure is relatively painless it gets ignored the more immediate and more costly a mistake is the faster you will learn from it the threat of a bad review force is a plumber to be good at his job the possibility of a customer never returning makes restaurants create good food the cost of cutting the wrong blood vessel makes a surgeon Master human anatomy and cut carefully when the consequences are severe people learn quickly the more immediate the pain the less likely the behavior if you want to prevent bad habits and eliminate unhealthy behaviors then adding an instant cost to the action is a great way to reduce their odds we repeat bad habits because they serve Us in some way and that makes them hard to abandon the best way I know to overcome this predicament is to increase the speed of the punishment associated with the behavior there can't be a gap between the action and the consequences as soon as actions incur an immediate consequence Behavior begins to change customers pay their bills on time when they are charged a late fee students show up to class when their grade is linked to attendance we'll jump through a lot of Hoops to avoid a little bit of immediate pain there is of course a limit to this if you're going to rely on punishment to change Behavior then the strength of the punishment must match the relative strength of the behavior it is trying to correct 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 getting fined for smoking in a restaurant or failing to recycle adds consequence to an action behavior only shift to the punishment is painful enough and reliably enforced in general the more local tangible concrete and immediate the consequence the more likely it is to influence individual Behavior the more Global intangible vague and delayed the consequence the less likely it is to influence individual Behavior thankfully there is a straightforward way to add an immediate cost to any bad habit create a habit contract The Habit contract the first seat belt law was passed in New York on December 1st 1984. at the time just 14 of people in the United States regularly wore a seat belt but that was all about to change within five years over half of the nation had seatbelt laws today wearing a seat belt is enforceable by law in 49 of the 50 states and it's not just the legislation the number of people wearing seat belts has changed dramatically as well in 2016 over 88 of Americans buckled up each time they got in a car in just over 30 years there was a complete reversal in the habits of millions of people laws and regulations are an example of how government can change our habits by creating a social contract as a society we collectively agreed to abide by certain rules and then enforce them as a group whenever a new piece of legislation impacts Behavior seat belt laws Banning smoking inside restaurants mandatory recycling it is an example of a social contract shaping our habits the group agrees to act in a certain way and if you don't follow along you'll be punished just as governments use laws to hold citizens accountable you can create a habit contract to hold yourself accountable a habit contract is a verbal or written agreement in which you state your commitment to a particular habit and the punishment that will occur if you don't follow through then you find one or two people to act as your accountability partners and sign off on the contract with you Brian Harris an entrepreneur from Nashville Tennessee was the first person I saw put this strategy into action shortly after the birth of his son Harris realized he wanted to shed a few pounds he wrote up a habit contract between himself his wife and his personal trainer the first version read Brian's number one objective for q1 of 2017 is to start eating correctly again so he feels better looks better and is able to hit his long-term goal of 200 pounds at 10 body fat below that statement Harris laid out a road map for achieving his ideal outcome phase number one get back to a strict slow carb diet in q1 phase number two start a strict macronutrient tracking program in Q2 phase number three refine and maintain the details of his diet and workout program in Q3 finally he wrote out each of the daily habits that would get him to his goal for example write down all food that he consumes each day and weigh himself each day and then he listed the punishment if he failed if Brian doesn't do these two items then the following consequence will be enforced he will have to dress up each workday and each Sunday morning for the rest of the quarter dress-up is defined as not wearing jeans t-shirts hoodies or shorts he will also give Joey his trainer 200 to use as he sees fit if he misses one day of logging food at the bottom of the page Harris his wife and his trainer all signed the contract my initial reaction was that a contract like this seemed overly formal and unnecessary especially the signatures but Harris convinced me that signing the contract was an indication of seriousness anytime I skipped this part he said I start slacking almost immediately three months later after hitting his targets for q1 Harris upgraded his goals the consequences escalated too if he missed his carbohydrate and protein targets he had to pay his trainer one hundred dollars and if he failed to weigh himself he had to give his wife 500 to use as she saw fit perhaps most painfully if he forgot to run sprints he had to dress up for work every day and where in Alabama had the rest of the quarter the bitter rival of his beloved Auburn team the strategy worked with his wife and trainer acting as accountability partners and with the Habit contract clarifying exactly what to do each day Harris lost the weight to make bad habits unsatisfying your best option is to make them painful in the moment creating a habit contract is a straightforward way to do exactly that even if you don't want to create a full-blown habit contract simply having an accountability partner is useful the comedian Margaret Cho right to joke or song every day she does the song a day challenge with a friend which helps them both stay accountable knowing that someone is watching can be a powerful motivator you are less likely to procrastinate or give up because there is an immediate cost if you don't follow through perhaps they'll see you as untrustworthy or lazy suddenly you are not only failing to uphold your promises to yourself but also failing to uphold your promises to others you can even automate this process Thomas Frank an entrepreneur in Boulder Colorado wakes up at 5 55 each morning and if he doesn't he has a tweet automatically scheduled that says it's 6 10 and I'm not up because I'm lazy reply to this for five dollars via Paypal limit five assuming my alarm didn't malfunction we are always trying to present our best selves to the world we comb our hair and brush our teeth and dress ourselves carefully because we know these habits are likely to get a positive reaction we want to get good grades and graduate from top schools to impress potential employers and mates and our friends and family we care about the opinions of those around us because it helps if others like us this is precisely why getting an accountability partner or signing a habit contract can work so well chapter summary the inversion of the fourth law of behavior changes make it unsatisfying we are less likely to repeat a bad habit if it is painful or unsatisfying an accountability partner can create an immediate cost to an action we care deeply about what others think of us and we do not want others to have a lesser opinion of us a habit contract can be used to add a social cost to any Behavior it makes the costs of violating your promises public and painful knowing that someone else is watching you can be a powerful motivator how to create a good habit the first law make it obvious 1.1 fill out the Habit scorecard write down your current habits to become aware of them 1.2 use implementation intentions I will Behavior at time in location 1.3 use habit stacking after current habit I will new habit 1.4 design your environment make the cues of good habits obvious and visible the second law make it attractive 2.1 use Temptation bundling parent action you want to do with an action you need to do 2.2 join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior 2.3 create a motivation ritual do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit the third law make it easy 3.1 reduce friction decrease the number of steps between you and your good habits 3.2 Prime the environment prepare your environment to make future actions easier 3.3 Master the decisive moment optimize the small choices that deliver outsized impact 3.4 use the two minute rule downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less 3.5 automate your habits invest in technology and one-time purchases that lock in future Behavior the fourth law make it satisfying 4.1 use reinforcement give yourself an immediate reward when you complete your habit 4.2 make doing nothing enjoyable when avoiding a bad habit design a way to see the benefits 4.3 use a habit tracker keep track of your habit streak and don't break the chain 4.4 never miss twice when you forget to do a habit make sure you get back on track immediately how to break a bad habit in version of the first law make it invisible 1.5 reduce exposure remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment inversion of the second law make it unattractive 2.4 reframe your mindset highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits in version of the third law make it difficult 3.6 increase friction increase the number of steps between you and your bad habits 3.7 use a commitment device restrict your future choices to the ones that benefit you in version of the fourth law make it unsatisfying 4.5 get an accountability partner ask someone to watch your behavior 4.6 create a habit contract make the costs of your bad habits public and painful you can download a printable version of this habits cheat sheet at Advanced tactics how to go from being merely good to being truly great 18. the truth about Talent when genes matter and when they don't and many people are familiar with Michael Phelps who is widely considered to be one of the greatest athletes in history Phelps has won more Olympic medals not only than any swimmer but also more than any Olympian in any sport fewer people know the name is Shamel Guru but he was a fantastic athlete in his own right elguru is a Moroccan Runner who holds two Olympic gold medals and is one of the greatest middle distance Runners of all time for many years he held the world record in the mile 1500 meter and two thousand meter races at the Olympic Games in Athens Greece in 2004 he won Gold in the 1500 meter and 5000 meter races these two athletes are wildly different in many ways for starters one competed on land and the other in water but most notably they differ significantly in height elguru is five feet nine inches tall Phelps is six feet four inches tall despite the seven inch difference in height the two men are identical in one respect Michael Phelps and Hisham al-guru were the same length inseam on their pants how is this possible Phelps has relatively short legs for his height and a very long torso the perfect build for swimming El Guru has incredibly long legs and a short upper body an ideal frame for distance running now imagine if these world-class athletes were to switch Sports given his remarkable athleticism could Michael Phelps become an Olympic caliber distance Runner with enough training it's unlikely at Peak Fitness Phelps weighed 194 pounds which is 40 heavier than elgaru who competed at an ultralight 138 pounds taller Runners are heavier Runners and every extra pound is occurs when it comes to distance running against Elite competition Phelps would be doomed from the start similarly elguru might be one of the best runners in history but it's doubtful he would ever qualify for the Olympics as a swimmer since 1976 the average height of Olympic gold medalists in a men's 1 500 meter run is 5 feet 10 inches in comparison the average height of Olympic gold medalists in a men's 100 meter freestyle swim is six feet four inches swimmers tend to be tall and have long backs and arms which are ideal for pulling through the water elguru would be at a severe disadvantage before he ever touched the pool the secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition this is just as true with habit change as it is with sports and business habits are easier to perform and more satisfying to stick with when they align with your natural inclinations and abilities like Michael Phelps in the pool or Hisham Al Guru on the track you want to play a game where the odds are in your favor embracing this strategy requires the acceptance of the simple truth that people are born with different abilities some people don't like to discuss this fact on the surface your genes seem to be fixed and it's no fun to talk about things you cannot control plus phrases like biological determinism makes it sound like certain individuals are destined for success and others doomed to failure but this is a short-sighted view of the influence of genes on Behavior the strength of genetics is also their weakness genes cannot be easily changed which means they provide a powerful advantage in favorable circumstances and a serious disadvantage in unfavorable circumstances if you want to dunk a basketball being seven feet tall is very useful if you want to perform a gymnastics routine being seven feet tall is a great hindrance our environment determines the suitability of our genes and the utility of our natural talents when our environment changes so do the qualities that determine success this is true not just for physical characteristics but for mental ones as well I'm smart if you ask me about habits and human behavior not so much when it comes to knitting rocket propulsion or guitar chords competence is highly dependent on context the people at the top of any competitive field are not only well trained they are also well suited to the task and this is why if you want to be truly great selecting the right place to focus is crucial in short genes do not determine your destiny they determine your areas of opportunity as physician Gabor make notes genes can predispose but they don't predetermine the areas where you are genetically predisposed to success are the areas where habits are more likely to be satisfying the key is to direct your effort or areas that both excite you and match your natural skills to align your ambition with your ability the obvious question is how do I figure out where the odds are in my favor how do I identify the opportunities and habits that are right for me the first place we will look for an answer is by understanding your personality how your personality influences your habits your genes are operating beneath the surface of every habit indeed beneath the surface of every Behavior genes have been shown to influence everything from the number of hours you spend watching television to your likelihood to marry or divorce to your tendency to get addicted to drugs alcohol or nicotine there's a strong genetic component to how obedient or rebellious you are when facing Authority how vulnerable or resistant you are to stressful events how Proactive or reactive you tend to be and even how captivated or bored you feel during sensory experiences like attending a concert as Robert Plowman a behavioral geneticist at King's College in London told me it is now at the point where we have stopped testing to see if traits have a genetic component because we literally can't find a single one that isn't influenced by our genes bundled together your unique cluster of genetic traits predispose you to a particular personality your personality is the set of characteristics that is consistent from situation to situation the most proven scientific analysis of personality traits is known as the big five which breaks them down into five spectrums of behavior one openness to experience from Curious and inventive on one end to cautious and consistent on the other two conscientiousness organized and efficient to easy going and spontaneous 3. extroversion outgoing and energetic to solitary and reserved you likely know them as extroverts versus introverts 4. agreeableness friendly and compassionate to challenging and detached 5. neuroticism anxious and sensitive to confident calm and stable all five characteristics of biological underpinnings extroversion for instance can be tracked from birth if scientists play a loud noise in the nursing Ward some babies turn toward It While others turn away when the researchers track these children through life they found that the babies who turned toward the noise were more likely to grow up to be extroverts those who turned away were more likely to become introverts people who are high in agreeableness are kind considerate and warm they also tend to have higher natural oxytocin levels a hormone that plays an important role in Social bonding increases feelings of trust and can act as a natural antidepressant you can easily imagine how someone with more oxytocin might be inclined to build habits like writing thank you notes or organizing social events as a third example consider neuroticism which is a personality trait all people possess to various degrees people who are high in neuroticism tend to be anxious and worry more than others this trait has been linked to hypersensitivity of the amygdala the portion of the brain responsible for noticing threats in other words people who are more sensitive to negative cues in their environment are more likely to score high in neuroticism our habits are not solely determined by our personalities but there is no doubt that our genes not just in a certain direction our deeply rooted preferences make certain behaviors easier for some people than for others you don't have to apologize for these differences or feel guilty about them but you do have to work with them a person who scores lower unconscientiousness for example will be less likely to be orderly by nature and may need to rely more heavily on environment design to stick with good habits as a reminder for the less conscientious readers Among Us environment design is a strategy we discussed in chapters 6 and 12. the takeaways that you should build habits that work for your personality people can get ripped working out like a bodybuilder but if you prefer rock climbing recycling or rowing then shake your exercise habit around your interests if your friend follows a low-carb diet that you find that low fat works for you then more power to you if you want to read more don't be embarrassed if you prefer steamy romance novels over non-fiction read whatever fascinates you you don't have to build the habits everyone tells you to build choose the Habit that best suits you not the one that is most popular there is a version of every habit that can bring you Joy and satisfaction find it habits need to be enjoyable if they're going to stick this is the core idea behind the fourth law tailoring your habits to your personality is a good start but this is not the end of the story let's turn our attention to finding and designing situations where you're at a natural advantage how to find a game where the odds are in your favor learning to play a game where the odds are in your favor is critical for maintaining motivation and feeling successful in theory you can enjoy almost anything in practice you are more likely to enjoy the things that come easily to you people who are talented in a particular area tend to be more competent at the task and are then praised for doing a good job they stay energized because they are making progress where others have failed and because they get rewarded with better pay and bigger opportunities which not only makes them happier but also propels them to produce even higher quality work it's a virtuous cycle pick the right Habit in progress is easy pick the wrong Habit in life is a struggle how do you pick the right habit the first step is something we covered in the third law make it easy in many cases when people pick the wrong habit it simply means they picked a habit that was two difficult when a habit is easy you are more likely to be successful when you are successful you are more likely to feel satisfied however there is another level to consider in the long run if you continue to advance and improve any area can become challenging at some point you need to make sure you're playing the right game for your skill set how do you figure that out the most common approach is trial and error of course there's a problem with the strategy life is short you don't have time to try every career date every eligible bachelor or play every musical instrument thankfully there is an effective way to manage this conundrum and it is known as the explore exploit trade-off in the beginning of a new activity there should be a period of exploration in relationships it's called dating in college it's called the liberal arts in business it's called split testing the goal is to try out many possibilities research a broad range of ideas and cast a wide net after this initial period of exploration shift your focus to the best solution you found but keep experimenting occasionally the proper balance depends on whether you're winning or losing if you are currently winning you exploit exploit exploit if you are currently losing you continue to explore explore explore in the long run it is probably most effective to work on the strategy that seems to deliver the best results about 80 to 90 of the time and keep exploring with the remaining 10 to 20 percent Google famously asks employees to spend 80 of the work week on their official job and 20 on projects of their choice which has led to the creation of Blockbuster products like AdWords and Gmail the optimal approach also depends on how much time you have if you have a lot of time like someone at the beginning of their career it makes more sense to explore because once you find the right thing you still have a good amount of time to exploit it if you're pressed for time say as you come up on the deadline for a project you should implement the best solution you've found so far and get some results as you explore different options there are a series of questions you can ask yourself to continually narrow in on the habits and areas that will be most satisfying to you what feels like fun to me but work to others the mark of whether you are made for a task is not whether you love it but whether you can handle the pain of the task easier than most people when are you enjoying yourself while other people are complaining the work that hurts you less than it hurts others is the work you were made to do what makes me lose track of time flow is the mental state you enter when you are so focused on the task at hand that the rest of the world Fades away this blend of happiness and beat performance is what athletes and performers experience when they are in the zone it is nearly impossible to experience a flow State and not find a task satisfying at least to some degree where do I get greater returns than the average person we are continually comparing ourselves to those around us and a behavior is more likely to be satisfying when the comparison is in our favor when I started writing at my email list grew very quickly I wasn't quite sure what I was doing well but I knew that results seem to be coming faster for me than for some of my colleagues which motivated me to keep writing what comes naturally to me for just a moment ignore what you have been taught ignore what Society has told you ignore what others expect of you look inside yourself and ask what feels natural to me when have I felt alive when have I felt like the real me no internal judgments or people pleasing no second guessing or self-criticism just feelings of Engagement and enjoyment whenever you feel authentic and genuine you are headed in the right direction to be honest some of this process is just luck Michael Phelps and Isham al-guru were lucky to be born with a rare set of abilities that are highly valued by society and to be placed in the ideal environment for those abilities we all have limited time on this planet and the truly great Among Us are the ones who not only work hard but also have the Good Fortune to be exposed to opportunities that favor us but what if you don't want to leave it up to luck if you can't find a game where the odds are stacked in your favor create one Scott Adams the cartoonist behind Dilbert says everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25 with some effort in my case I can draw better than most people but I'm hardly an artist and I'm not any funnier than the average stand-up comedian who never makes it big but I'm funnier than most people the magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes it's the combination of the two that makes what I do so rare and when you add in my business background suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to understand without living it 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 you can shortcut the need for a genetic advantage or for years of practice by rewriting the rules a good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing a great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses in college I designed my own major biomechanics which was a combination of physics chemistry biology and Anatomy I wasn't smart enough to Stand Out Among the top physics or biology Majors so I created my own game and because it suited me I was only taking the courses I was interested in studying felt like less of a chore it was also easier to avoid the Trap of comparing myself to everyone else after all nobody else was taking the same combination of classes so who could say if they were better or worse specialization is a powerful way to overcome the accident of bad genetics the more you master a specific skill the harder it becomes for others to compete with you many bodybuilders are stronger than the average arm wrestler but even a massive bodybuilder may lose at arm wrestling because the armed wrestling champ has very specific strength even if you're not the most naturally gifted you can often win by being the best in a very narrow category boiling water will soften a potato but Harden an egg you can't control whether you're a potato or an egg but you can decide to play a game where it's better to be hard or soft if you can find a more favorable environment you can transform the situation from one where the odds are against you to one where they are in your favor how to get the most out of your jeans our genes do not eliminate the need for hard work they clarify it they tell us what to work hard on CE we realize our strengths we know where to spend our time and energy we know which types of opportunities to look for in which types of challenges to avoid the better we understand our nature the better our strategy can be biological differences matter even so it's more productive to focus on whether you are fulfilling your own potential than comparing yourself to someone else the fact that you have a natural limit to any specific ability has nothing to do with whether you are reaching the ceiling of your capabilities people get so caught up in the fact that they have limits that they rarely exert the effort required to get close to them furthermore genes can't make you successful if you're not doing the work yes it's possible that the rip trainer at the gym has better jeans but if you haven't put in the same reps it's impossible to say if you have been dealt a better or worse genetic hand until you work as hard as those you admire don't explain away their successes look in summary one of the best ways to ensure your habits remain satisfying over the long run is to pick behaviors that align with your personality and skills work hard on the things that come easy chapter summary the secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition pick the right Habit in progress is easy pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle genes cannot be easily changed which means they provide a powerful advantage in favorable circumstances and a serious disadvantage in unfavorable circumstances habits are easier when they align with your natural abilities choose the habits that best suit you play a game that favors your strengths if you can't find a game that favors you create one genes do not eliminate the need for hard work they clarify it they tell us what to work hard on 19. the Goldilocks rule how to stay motivated in life and work I in 1955 Disneyland had just opened in Anaheim California when a 10 year old boy walked in and asked for a job labor laws were loose back then and the boy managed to land a position selling guidebooks for 50 cents a piece within a year he had transitioned to Disney's magic shop where he learned tricks from the older employees he experimented with jokes and tried out simple routines on visitors soon he discovered that what he loved was not performing magic but performing in general he set his sights on becoming a comedian beginning in his teenage years he started performing in little clubs around Los Angeles the crowds were small and his act was short he was rarely on stage for more than five minutes most of the people in the crowd were too busy drinking or talking with friends to pay attention one night he literally delivered his stand-up routine to an empty Club it wasn't glamorous work but there was no doubt he was getting better his first routines would only last one or two minutes by High School his material had expanded to include a five-minute act and a few years later a 10-minute show at 19 he was performing weekly for 20 minutes at a time he had to read three poems during the show just to make the routine long enough but his skills continued to progress he spent another decade experimenting adjusting and practicing he took a job as a television writer and gradually he was able to land his own appearances on top shows by the mid-1970s he had worked his way into being a regular guest on The Tonight Show in Saturday Night Live finally after nearly 15 years of work the young man Rose to fame he toured 60 cities in 63 days then 72 cities in 80 Days then 85 cities in 90 days he had 18 695 people attend one show in Ohio another 45 000 tickets were sold for his three-day show in New York he catapulted to the top of his genre and became one of the most successful comedians of his time his name is Steve Martin 's story offers a fascinating perspective on what it takes to stick with habits for the long run comedy is not for the timid it is hard to imagine a situation that would strike fear into the hearts of more people than performing alone on stage and failing to get a single laugh and yet Steve Martin faced this fear every week for 18 years in his words 10 years spent learning four years spent refining and four years as a wild success why is it that some people like Martin stick with their habits whether practicing jokes or drawing cartoons or playing guitar while most of us struggle to stay motivated how do we design habits that pull us in rather than ones that fade away scientists have been studying this question for many years while there is still much to learn one of the most consistent findings is that the way to maintain motivation and Achieve Peak levels of Desire is to work on tasks of just manageable difficulty the human brain loves a challenge but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty if you love tennis and try to play a serious match against a four-year-old you will quickly become bored it's too easy you'll win every point in contrast if you play a professional tennis player like Roger Federer or Serena Williams you will quickly lose motivation because the match is too difficult now consider playing tennis against someone who is your equal as the game progresses you win a few points and you lose a few you have a good chance of winning but only if you really try your focus Narrows distractions fade away and you find yourself fully invested in the task at hand this is a challenge of just manageable difficulty and it is a prime example of the Goldilocks rule the 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 the Goldilocks rule figure 15 maximum motivation occurs when facing a challenge of just manageable difficulty in Psychology research this is known as the Yorkies Dotson law which describes the optimal level of arousal as the midpoint between boredom and anxiety Martin's comedy career is an excellent example of the Goldilocks rule in practice each year he expanded his comedy routine but only by a minute or two he was always adding new material but he also kept a few jokes that were guaranteed to get laughs there were just enough victories to keep him motivated and just enough mistakes to keep him working hard when you're starting a new habit it's important to keep the behavior as easy as possible so you can stick with it even when conditions aren't perfect this is an idea we covered in detail while discussing the Third Law of behavior change once a habit has been established however it's important to continue to advance in small ways these little improvements and new challenges keep you engaged and if you hit the Goldilocks zone just right you can achieve a flow state a flow state is the experience of being in the zone and fully immersed in an activity scientists have tried to quantify this feeling they found that to achieve a state of flow a task must be roughly four percent beyond your current ability in real life it's typically not feasible to quantify the difficulty of an action in this way but the core idea of the Goldilocks rule remains working on challenges of just manageable difficulty something on the perimeter of your ability seems crucial for maintaining motivation Improvement requires a delicate balance you need to regularly search for challenges that push you to your Edge while continuing to make enough progress to stay motivated behaviors need to remain novel in order for them to stay attractive and satisfying without variety we get bored and boredom is perhaps the greatest villain on the Quest for self-improvement how to stay focused when you get bored working on your goals after my baseball career ended I was looking for a new sport I joined a weightlifting team and one day an elite coach visited our gym he had worked with thousands of athletes during his long career including a few Olympians I introduced myself and we began talking about the process of improvement what's the difference between the best athletes and everyone else I asked what do the really successful people do that most don't he mentioned the factors you might expect genetics luck Talent but then he said something I wasn't expecting at some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day doing the same lifts over and over and over his answer surprised me because it's a different way of thinking about work ethic people talk about getting amped up to work on their goals whether it's business or sports or art you hear people say things like it all comes down to Passion or you have to really want it as a result many of us get depressed when we lose focus or motivation because we think that successful people have some bottomless reserve of passion but this coach was saying that really successful people feel the same lack of motivation as everyone else the difference is that they still find a way to show up despite the feelings of boredom Mastery requires practice but the more you practice something the more boring and routine it becomes once the beginner gains have been made and we learn what to expect our interest starts to fade sometimes it happens even faster than that all you have to do is hit the gym a few days in a row or publish a couple of blog posts on time and letting one day slip doesn't feel like much things are going well it's easy to rationalize taking a day off because you're in a good place the greatest threat to Success is Not failure but boredom we get bored with habits because they stop delighting us the outcome becomes expected and as our habits become ordinary we start derailing our progress to seek novelty perhaps this is why we get caught up in a never-ending cycle jumping from one workout to the next one die to the next one business idea to the next as soon as we experience the slightest dip in motivation We Begin seeking a new strategy even if the old one was still working as Machiavelli noted men desire novelty to such an extent that those who are doing well wish for a change as much as those who are doing badly perhaps this is why many of the most habit forming products are those that provide continuous forms of novelty video games provide visual novelty porn provides sexual novelty junk foods provide culinary novelty each of these experiences offer continual elements of surprise in Psychology this is known as a variable reward slot machines are the most common real world example a gambler hits the jackpot every now and then but not at any predictable interval the pace of rewards varies this variance leads to the greatest Spike of dopamine enhances memory recall and accelerates habit formation variable rewards won't create a craving that is you can't take a reward people are uninterested in give it to them at a variable interval and hope it will change their mind but they are a powerful way to amplify the Cravings we already experience because they reduce volume The Sweet Spot of Desire occurs at a 50 50 split between success and failure half of the time you get what you want half of the time you don't you need just enough winning to experience satisfaction and just enough wanting to experience desire this is one of the benefits of following the Goldilocks rule if you're already interested in a habit working on challenges of just manageable difficulty is a good way to keep things interesting of course not all habits have a variable reward component and you wouldn't want them to if Google only delivered a useful search result some of the time I would switch to a competitor pretty quickly if Uber only picked up half of my trips I doubt I'd be using that service much longer and if I floss my teeth each night and only sometimes ended up with a clean mouth I think I'd skip it variable Rewards or not no habit will stay interesting forever at some point everyone faces the same Challenge on the Journey of self-improvement you have to fall in love with Borum we all have goals that we would like to achieve in dreams that we would like to fulfill but it doesn't matter what you are trying to become better at if you only do the work when it's convenient or exciting then you'll never be consistent enough to achieve remarkable results I can guarantee that if you manage to start a habit and keep sticking to it there will be days when you feel like quitting when you start a business there will be days when you don't feel like showing up when you're at the gym there will be sets that you don't feel like finishing when it's time to write there will be days that you don't feel like typing but stepping up when it's annoying or painful or draining to do so that's what makes the difference between a professional and an amateur professionals stick to the schedule amateurs let life get in the way professionals know what is important to them and work toward it with purpose amateurs get pulled off course by the urgencies of life David Kane an author and meditation teacher encourages his students to avoid being fair weather meditators similarly you don't want to be a fair weather athlete or a fair weather writer or a fair weather anything when a habit is truly important to you you have to be willing to stick to it in any mood professionals take action even when the mood isn't right they might not enjoy it but they find a way to put the Reps in there have been a lot of sets that I haven't felt like finishing but I've never regretted doing the workout there have been a lot of articles I haven't felt like writing but I've never regretted publishing on schedule there have been a lot of days I've felt like relaxing but I've never regretted showing up and working on something that was important to me 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 chapter summary the Goldilocks rule states that humans experience Peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities the greatest threat to Success is Not failure but boredom as habits become routine they become less interesting and less satisfying we get bored anyone can work hard when they feel motivated it's the ability to keep going when work isn't exciting that makes the difference professionals stick to the schedule amateurs let life get in the way 20. the downside of creating good habits each of its create the foundation for Mastery in chess it is only after the basic movements of the pieces have become automatic that a player can focus on the next level of the game each chunk of information that is memorized opens up the mental space for more effortful thinking this is true for any endeavor when you know the simple movement so well that you can perform them without thinking you are free to pay attention to more advanced details in this way habits are the backbone of any pursuit of Excellence however the benefits of habits come at a cost at first each repetition develops fluency speed and skill but then as a habit becomes automatic you become less sensitive to feedback you fall into mindless repetition it becomes easier to let mistakes slide when you can do it good enough on autopilot you stop thinking about how to do it better the upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking the downside of habits is that you get used to doing things a certain way and stop paying attention to little errors you assume you're getting better because you're gaining experience in reality you are merely reinforcing your current habits not improving them in fact some research has shown that once a skill has been mastered there is usually a slight decline in performance over time usually this minor dip in performance is no cause for worry you don't need a system to continuously improve how well you brush your teeth or tie your shoes or make your morning cup of tea with Habits Like These good enough is usually good enough the less energy you spend on trivial choices the more you can spend it on what really matters however when you want to maximize your potential and Achieve Elite levels of performance you need a more nuanced approach you can't repeat the same things blindly and expect to become exceptional habits are necessary but not sufficient for Mastery what you need is a combination of automatic habits and deliberate practice habits plus deliberate practice equals mastery to become great certain skills do need to become automatic basketball players need to be able to dribble without thinking before they can move on to mastering layups with their non-dominant hand surgeons need to repeat the first incision so many times that they could do it with their eyes closed so that they can focus on the hundreds of variables that arise during surgery but after one habit has been mastered you have to return to the effortful part of the work and begin building the next habit 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 old tasks become easier the second time around but it doesn't get easier overall because now you're pouring your energy into the next challenge each habit unlocks the next level of performance it's an endless cycle mastering one habit mastering a field figure 16 the process of Mastery requires that you progressively layer improvements on top of one another each habit building upon will last until a new level of performance has been reached and a higher range of skills has been internalized although habits are powerful what you need is a way to remain conscious of your performance over time so you can continue to refine and improve it is precisely at the moment when you begin to feel like you have mastered a skill right when things are starting to feel automatic and you are becoming comfortable that you must avoid slipping into the Trap of complacency the solution establish a system for reflection and review how to review your habits and make adjustments in 1986 the Los Angeles Lakers had one of the most talented basketball teams ever assembled but they are rarely remembered that way the team started the 1985 1986 NBA season with an astounding 29 5 record the pundits were saying that we might be the best team in the history of basketball head coach Pat Riley said after the season surprisingly the Lakers stumbled in the 1986 playoffs and suffered a season-ending defeat in the Western Conference Finals the best team in the history of basketball didn't even play for the NBA Championship after that blow Riley was tired of hearing about how much talent his players had and about how much promise his team held he didn't want to see flashes of Brilliance followed by a gradual fade in performance he wanted the Lakers to play up to their potential night after night in the summer of 1986 he created a plan to do exactly that A system that he called the career best effort program or CBE when players first joined the Lakers Riley explained we tracked their basketball statistics all the way back to high school I call this taking their number we look for an accurate gauge of what a player can do then build him into our plan for the team based on the notion that he will maintain and then improve upon his averages after determining a player's Baseline level of performance Riley added a key step he asked each player to improve their output by at least one percent over the course of the season if they succeeded it would be a CBE or career best effort similar to the British cycling team that we discussed in chapter 1 the Laker saw Peak Performance by getting slightly better each day Riley was careful to point out that CBE was not merely about points or statistics but about giving your best efforts spiritually and mentally and physically players got credit for allowing an opponent to run into you and you know that a foul will be called against him diving for loose balls going after rebounds whether you are likely to get them or not helping a teammate when the player he's guarding has surged past him and other unsung hero Deeds as an example let's say that Magic Johnson the Lakers star player at the time had 11 points eight rebounds 12 assists two Steals and five turnovers in a game magic also got credit for an unsung hero d by diving after a loose ball plus one finally he played a total of 33 minutes in this imaginary game the positive numbers 11 plus 8 plus 12 plus two plus one add up to 34. then we subtract the five turnovers 34 5 to get 29. finally we divide 29 by 33 minutes blade 2933 is equal to 0.879 magic CBE number here would be 879. this number was calculated for all of a player's games and it was the average CB that a player was asked to improve by one percent over the season Riley compared each player's current CBE to not only their past performances but also those of other players in the league as Riley put it we ranked team members alongside League opponents who play the same position and have similar role definitions sports writer Jackie McMullan noted Riley trumpeted the top performers in the league in bold lettering on the Blackboard each week and measured them against the corresponding players on his own roster solid reliable players generally rated a score in the 600s while elite players scored at least 800. Magic Johnson who submitted 138 triple doubles in his career often scored over one thousand the Lakers also emphasized year-over-year progress by making historical comparisons of CBE data Riley said we stacked the month of November 1986 next to November 1985 and showed the players whether they were doing better or worse than at the same point last season then we showed them how their performance figures for December 1986 stacked up against November's the Lakers rolled out CBE in October 1986. eight months later they were NBA champions the following year Pat Riley LED his team to another title as the Lakers became the first team in 20 years to win back-to-back NBA championships afterward he said sustaining an effort is the most important thing for any Enterprise the way to be successful is to learn how to do things right then do them the same way every time the CBE program is a prime example of the power of reflection and review the Lakers were already talented CBE helped them get the most out of what they had and made sure their habits improved rather than declined reflection and review enables the long-term Improvement of all habits because it makes you aware of your mistakes and helps you consider possible paths for improvement without reflection we can make excuses create rationalizations and lie to ourselves we have no process for determining whether we are performing Better or Worse compared to yesterday top performers in all Fields engage in various types of reflection and review and the process doesn't have to be complex is one of the greatest marathoners of all time in an Olympic gold medalist he still takes notes after every practice in which he reviews his training for the day and searches for areas that can be improved similarly gold medal swimmer Katie Ledecky records her Wellness on a scale of one to ten and includes notes on her nutrition and how well she slept she also records the times posted by other swimmers at the end of each week her coach goes over her notes and adds his thoughts it's not just athletes either when comedian Chris Rock is preparing fresh material he will first appear at small nightclubs dozens of times and test hundreds of jokes he brings a notepad on stage in records which bits go over well and where he needs to make adjustments the few killer lines that survive will form the backbone of his new show I know of Executives and investors who keep a decision journal in which they record the major decisions they make each week why they made them and what they expect the outcome to be they review their choices at the end of each month or year to see where they were correct and where they went wrong Improvement is not just about learning habits it's also about fine-tuning them reflection and review ensures that you spend your time on the right things and make course Corrections whenever necessary Like Pat Riley adjusting the effort of his players on a nightly basis you don't want to keep practicing a habit if it becomes ineffective personally I employ two primary modes of reflection and review each December I perform an annual review in which I reflect on the previous year I tally my habits for the Year by counting up how many articles I published how many workouts I put in how many new places I visited and more then I reflect on my progress or lack thereof by answering three questions one what went well this year two what didn't go so well this year three what did I learn six months later when summer rolls around I conduct an Integrity report like everyone I make a lot of mistakes my Integrity report helps me realize where I went wrong and motivates me to get back on course I use it as a time to revisit my core values and consider whether I have been living in accordance with them this is when I reflect on my identity and how I can work toward being the type of person I wish to become my yearly Integrity report answers three questions one what are the core values that drive my life and work two how am I living and working with Integrity right now three how can I set a higher standard in the future these two reports don't take very long just a few hours per year but they are crucial periods of refinement they prevent the gradual slide that happens when I don't pay close attention they provide an annual reminder to revisit my desired identity and consider how my habits are helping me become the type of person I wish to be they indicate when I should upgrade my habits and take on new challenges and when I should dial my efforts back and focus on the fundamentals reflection can also bring a sense of perspective daily habits are powerful because of how they compound but worrying too much about every daily choices like looking at yourself in the mirror from an inch away you can see every imperfection and lose sight of the bigger picture there is too much feedback conversely never reviewing your habits is like never looking in the mirror you aren't aware of easily fixable flaws a spot on your shirt a bit of food in your teeth there is too little feedback periodic reflection and review is like viewing yourself in a mirror from a conversational distance you can see the important changes you should make without losing sight of the bigger picture you want to view the entire mountain range not obsess over each Pecan Valley finally reflection and review offers an ideal time to revisit one of the most important aspects of behavior change identity how to break the beliefs that hold you back in the beginning repeating a habit is essential to build up evidence of your desired identity as you latch onto that new identity however those same beliefs can hold you back from the next level of growth when working against you your identity creates a kind of Pride that encourages you to deny your weak spots and prevents you from truly growing this is one of the greatest downsides of building habits the more sacred an idea is to us that is the more deeply it is tied to our identity the more strongly we will defend it against criticism you see this in every industry the school teacher who ignores Innovative teaching methods and sticks with her tried and true lesson plans the veteran manager who is committed to doing things his way the surgeon who dismisses the ideas of her younger colleagues the band who produces a mind-blowing first album and then gets stuck in a rut the tighter we cling to an identity the harder it becomes to grow Beyond it one solution is to avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of Who You Are in the words of investor Paul Graham keep your identity small the more you let a single belief Define you the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you if you tie everything up in being the point guard or the partner at the firm or whatever else then the loss of the facet of your life will wreck you if you're a vegan and then develop a health condition that forces you to change your diet you'll have an identity crisis on your hands when you cling too tightly to one identity you become brittle lose that one thing and you lose yourself for most of my young life being an athlete was a major part of my identity after my baseball career ended I struggled to find myself when you spend your whole life defining yourself in one way and it disappears who are you now military veterans and former entrepreneurs report similar feelings if your identity is wrapped up in a belief like I'm a great Soldier what happens when your period of service ends for many business owners their identity is something along the lines of I'm the CEO or I'm the founder if you have spent every waking moment working on your business how will you feel after you sell the company the key to mitigating these losses of identity is to redefine yourself such that you get to keep important aspects of your identity even if your particular role changes I'm an athlete becomes I'm the type of person who's mentally tough and loves a physical challenge I'm a great Soldier transforms into I'm the type of person who is disciplined reliable and great on a team I'm the CEO translates to I'm the type of person who builds and creates things when chosen effectively an identity can be flexible rather than brittle like water flowing around an obstacle your identity works with the changing circumstances rather than against them the following quote from the taotai Ching encapsulates the ideas perfectly men are born soft and supple dead they are stiff and hard plants are born tender and bliant dead they are brittle and dry thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life the hard and stiff will be broken the soft and supple will prevail Lao Tzu habits deliver numerous benefits but the downside is that they can lock us into our previous patterns of thinking and acting even when the world is Shifting around us everything is impermanent life is constantly changing so you need to periodically check in to see if your old habits and beliefs are still serving you a lack of self-awareness is poison reflection and review is the antidote chapter summary the upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking the downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors habits plus deliberate practice equals mastery reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time the tighter we cling to an identity the harder it becomes to grow Beyond it conclusion the secret to results that last is an ancient Greek Parable known as the sorites Paradox which talks about the effect one small action can have when repeated enough times one formulation of the Paradox goes as follows can one coin make a person rich if you give a person a pile of 10 coins you wouldn't claim that he or she is rich but what if you add another and another and another at some point you will have to admit that no one can be rich unless one coin can make him or so we can say the same about Atomic habits can one tiny change transform your life it's unlikely you would say so but what if you made another and another and another at some point you will have to admit that your life was transformed by one small change the Holy Grail of habit change is not a single one percent Improvement but a thousand of them it's a bunch of atomic habits stacking up each one a fundamental unit of the overall system in the beginning small improvements can often seem meaningless because they get washed away by the weight of the system just as one coin won't make you rich one positive change like meditating for one minute or reading one page each day is unlikely to deliver a noticeable difference gradually though as you continue to layer small changes on top of one another the scales of Life start to move each Improvement is like adding a grain of sand to the positive side of the scale slowly tilting things in your favor eventually if you stick with it you hit a Tipping Point suddenly it feels easier to stick with good habits the weight of the system is working for you rather than against you over the course of this book we've looked at dozens of stories about top performers we've heard about Olympic gold medalists award-winning artists Business Leaders life-saving Physicians and star comedians who have all used the science of small habits to master there craft involved to the top of their field each of the people teams and companies we have covered has faced different circumstances but ultimately progressed in the same way through a commitment to Tiny sustainable unrelenting improvements success is not a goal to reach or a Finish Line to cross it is a system to improve an endless process to refine in chapter one I said if you're having trouble changing your habits the problem isn't you the problem is your system bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change but because you have the wrong system for change as this book draws to a close I hope the opposite is true with the four laws of behavior change you have a set of tools and strategies that you can use to build better systems and shape better habits sometimes a habit will be hard to remember and you'll need to make it obvious other times you won't feel like starting and you'll need to make it attractive in many cases you may find that a habit will be too difficult and you'll need to make it easy and sometimes you won't feel like sticking with it and you'll need to make it satisfying behaviors are effortless here behaviors are difficult here obvious invisible attractive unattractive easy hard satisfying unsatisfying you want to push your good habits toward the left side of the Spectrum by making them obvious attractive easy and satisfying meanwhile you want to Cluster your bad habits toward the right side by making them invisible unattractive hard and unsatisfying this is a continuous process there is no Finish Line there is no permanent solution whenever you're looking to improve you can rotate through the four laws of behavior change until you find the next bottleneck make it obvious make it attractive make it easy make it satisfying round and round always looking for the next way to get one percent better the secret to getting results that lasted to never stop making improvements it's remarkable what you can build if you just don't stop it's remarkable the business you can build if you don't stop working it's remarkable the body you can build if you don't stop training it's remarkable the knowledge you can build if you don't stop learning it's remarkable the fortune you can build if you don't stop saving it's remarkable the friendships you can build if you don't stop caring small habits don't add up they compound That's The Power of atomic habits tiny changes remarkable results appendix what should you read next T thank you so much for taking the time to read this book it has been a pleasure sharing my work with you if you are looking for something to read next allow me to offer a suggestion if you enjoyed Atomic habits then you may like my other writing as well my latest articles are sent out in my free Weekly Newsletter subscribers are also the first to hear about my newest books and projects finally in addition to my own work each year I send out a reading list of my favorite books from other authors on a wide range of subjects you can sign up at little lessons from the four laws I end this book I have introduced a four-step model for human behavior Q craving response reward this framework not only teaches us how to create new habits but also reveals some interesting insights about human behavior problem phase one Q2 craving solution phase three response for reward in this section I have compiled some lessons and a few bits of common sense that are confirmed by the model the purpose of these examples is to clarify just how useful and wide-ranging this framework is when describing human behavior once you understand the model you'll see examples of it everywhere Ness comes before desire a craving is created when you assign meaning to a queue your brain constructs an emotion or feeling to describe your current situation and that means a craving can only occur after you have noticed an opportunity happiness is simply the absence of Desire When You observe a cue but do not desire to change your state you are content with the current situation happiness is not about the achievement of pleasure which is Joy or satisfaction but about the lack of Desire it arrives when you have no urge to feel differently happiness is the state you enter when you no longer want to change your state however happiness is fleeting because a new desire always comes along as cognitra says happiness is the space between one desire being fulfilled and a new desire forming likewise suffering is the space between craving a change in state and getting it it is the idea of pleasure that we Chase we seek the image of pleasure that we generate in our minds at the time of action we do not know what it will be like to attain that image or even if it will satisfy us the feeling of satisfaction only comes afterward this is what the Austrian urologist Victor Frankel meant when he said that happiness cannot be pursued it must ensue desire is pursued pleasure ensues from action peace occurs when you don't turn your observations into problems the first step in any behavior is observation you notice a cue a bit of information an event if you do not desire to act on what You observe then you are at peace craving is about wanting to fix everything observation without craving is the realization that you do not need to fix anything your desires are not running rampant you do not crave a change in state your mind does not generate a problem for you to solve You're simply observing and existing with a big enough why you can overcome anyhow Friedrich Nietzsche the German philosopher and poet famously wrote he who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow this phrase Harbors an important truth about human behavior if your motivation and desire are great enough that is why are you are acting you'll take action even when it is quite difficult great craving can power great action even when friction is high being curious is better than being smart being motivated and curious counts for more than being smart because it leads to action being smart will never deliver results on its own because it doesn't get you to act it is desire not intelligence that prompts Behavior as Naval Ravi Khan says a trick to doing anything is first cultivating a desire for it emotions Drive Behavior every decision is an emotional decision at some level whatever your logical reasons are for taking action you only feel compelled to act on them because of emotion in fact people with damage to emotional centers of the brain can list many reasons for taking action but still will not act because they do not have emotions to drive them this is why craving comes before response the feeling comes first and then the behavior we can only be rational and logical after we have been emotional the primary mode of the brain is to feel the secondary mode is to think our first response the fast non-conscious portion of the brain is optimized for feeling and anticipating our second response the slow conscious portion of the brain is the part that does the thinking psychologists refer to this as system one feelings and Rapid judgments versus system 2 rational analysis the feeling comes first system 1 the rationality only intervenes later system two this works great when the two are aligned but it results in a logical and emotional thinking when they're not your response tends to follow your emotions our thoughts and actions are rooted in what we find attractive not necessarily in what is logical two people can notice the same set of facts and respond very differently because they run those facts through their unique emotional filter this is one reason why appealing to emotion is typically more powerful than appealing to reason if a topic makes someone feel emotional they will rarely be interested in the data this is why emotions can be such a threat to wise decision-making put another way most people believe that the reasonable response is the one that benefits them the one that satisfies their desires to approach a situation from a more neutral emotional position allows you to base your response on the data rather than the emotion suffering drives progress the source of all suffering is the desire for a change in state this is also the source of all progress the desire to change your state is what powers you to take action it is wanting more that pushes Humanity to seek improvements develop new technologies and reach for a higher level with craving we are dissatisfied but driven without craving we are satisfied but lack ambition your actions reveal how badly you want something if you keep saying something is a priority but you never act on it then you don't really want it it's time to have an honest conversation with yourself your actions reveal your true motivations reward is on the other side of sacrifice responds sacrifice of energy always precedes reward the collection of resources the runner's high only comes after the hard run the reward only comes after the energy is spent self-control is difficult because it is not satisfying a reward is an outcome that satisfies your craving this makes self-control ineffective because inhibiting our desires does not usually resolve them resisting temptation does not satisfy your craving it just ignores it it creates space for the craving to pass self-control requires you to release a desire rather than satisfy it our expectations determine our satisfaction the gap between our cravings and our rewards determines how satisfied we feel after taking action if a mismatch between expectations and outcomes is positive surprise and Delight then we are more likely to repeat a behavior in the future if the mismatch is negative disappointment and frustration then we are less likely to do so for example if you expect to get ten dollars and get one hundred dollars you feel great if you expect to get 100 and get ten dollars you feel disappointed your expectation changes your satisfaction an average experience preceded by high expectations is a disappointment an average experience preceded by low expectations is a delight when liking and wanting are approximately the same you feel satisfied satisfaction equals liking wanting this is the wisdom behind seneca's famous quote being poor is not having too little it is wanting more if your wants outpace your likes you'll always be unsatisfied you're perpetually putting more weight on the problem than the solution happiness is relative when I first began sharing my writing publicly it took me three months to get 1 000 subscribers when I hit that Milestone I told my parents and my girlfriend we celebrated I felt excited and motivated a few years later I realized that one thousand people were signing up each day and yet I didn't even think to tell anyone it felt normal I was getting results 90 times faster than before but experiencing little pleasure over it it wasn't until a few days later that I realized how absurd it was that I wasn't celebrating something that would have seemed like a pipe dream just a few years before the pain of failure correlates to the height of expectation when desire is high it hurts to not like the outcome failing to attain something you want hurts more than failing to attain something you didn't think much about in the first place this is why people say I don't want to get my hopes up feelings come both before and after the behavior before acting there is a feeling that motivates you to act the craving after acting there is a feeling that teaches you to repeat the action in the future the reward cue craving feeling response reward feeling how we feel influences how we act and how we act influences how we feel desire initiates pleasure sustains wanting and liking are the two drivers of behavior if it's not desirable you have no reason to do it desire and craving are what initiate a behavior but if it's not enjoyable you have no reason to repeat it pleasure and satisfaction are what sustain a behavior feeling motivated gets you to act feeling successful gets you to repeat hope declines with experience and is replaced by acceptance the first time an opportunity arises there is hope of what could be your expectation Cravings is based solely on promise the second time around your expectation is grounded in reality you begin to understand how the process works and your hope is gradually traded for a more accurate prediction and acceptance of the likely outcome this is one reason why we continually grasp for the latest get rich quick or weight loss scheme new plans offer hope because we don't have any experiences to ground our expectations new strategies seem more appealing than old ones because they can have unbounded hope as Aristotle noted youth is easily deceived because it is quick to Hope perhaps this can be revised to youth as easily deceived because it only hopes there is no experience to root the expectation in the beginning hope

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