How to Get 1% Better Every Day //Atomic Habits - James Clear

daily habits are what make us who we are even tiny changes such as being one percent better every day can make you 37 better in just one year on the flip side if you adopt bad habits being one percent worse every day can bring you close to zero compound interest is known as the eighth wonder of the world and I'm sure you understand its power when it comes to investing and money but what you probably don't know is that compound interest works not only with money but also when it comes to other things such as habits when people start a habit what they usually expect looks something like this a linear curve but the reality is somewhat different it looks something like this did you notice the progress in the beginning it's almost flat it seems to be rather insignificant and not really noticeable the author calls this part the valley of disappointment you put so much effort yet you see almost no results this is the point where the pain you experience is the highest but the results you see are the lowest this is the part where you work on your business for almost a year but still don't see any profit this is the part where you keep going to the gym but don't see any changes when you look in the mirror this is the part where you keep uploading videos to your YouTube channel but no one watches it eventually there comes a moment where the growth curve goes over the pain curve and you start seeing the results unfortunately many people can't wait until that point and quit too early only people who keep improving eventually experience the exponential growth now here's the big question how do you actually improve by one percent every day what do you need for that many people believe that you need better and more well-defined goals that's not the case you need to focus on systems not the goals the author says 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 and for the profits I wanted to earn in business I succeeded at a few but I failed and 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 you probably wonder what's the difference between a goal and a system so let me give you a few examples earning a million dollars is a goal setting up an automated investment account is a system that will get you there losing 20 kilograms is a goal getting a coach and a nutrition specialist who will assign to you the proper diet and exercise is a system having more friends is a goal deliberately going to meetings and events every week is a system getting a promotion at work is a goal working out what the company's biggest problems are and then breaking them down into small pieces and solving them one by one is a system the author says winners and losers have the same goals at the end of the day the determining factor is not the goal we set after all those who fail and those who succeed clearly had the same thing in mind what will fundamentally determine our level of success is the way we approach the systems to get there one of the reasons for that is something called hedonic adaptation when we set goals the primary motivator for doing every task is to get us closer to our desired goal buying a new home having a brand new car or becoming financially free but what really happens when we finally achieve the thing we have been dreaming about for the last few months we feel very happy and successful for about a week or so instead of goals you should focus on systems build a system that helps you to stay in the game longer and actually enjoy playing it as well goals are about the results you want to achieve systems are about the processes that lead to those results just to be clear the author does not have any personal problem with the goal itself it becomes a problem when it is the primary motivator of anyone's actions goals are good for setting directions but systems are best for making progress so if we have to sum up the key points we covered as the first lesson then our first lesson would be this don't Focus too much on goals but rather focus on systems lesson number two how to build good habits in order to create a new habit we need to divide the process into four simple steps which are queue craving reward response for example if you are a smoker seeing someone smoking is a cue once you see the cigarette there's a strong urge to smoke this is craving if you go to the person and ask for a cigarette and smoke then this is a response finally after the cigarette the feeling of satisfaction you get is the reward if an action is insufficient in any of the four stages it will not become a habit the author pairs each step with the formula on how to achieve it one cue make it obvious every habit is triggered with a cue so if you are building a new habit then you have to make it obvious this can be done through various strategies strategy number one habit stacking habit stacking means using already established habits to build new ones for example every morning before I brush my teeth I will do 20 push-ups after I drink my morning coffee I will meditate for five minutes when I come back from the gym I will listen to audiobooks on the way Etc this way you program your brain to always think about two activities as a whole once you do one the other will come automatically strategy number two redesign your environment building a new habit in an old environment is extremely difficult because your brain has already made certain associations with that environment and it's very hard to fight against it you must redesign the environment according to your new habits otherwise you will keep falling back to your old habits what might redesigning your environment look like for example if you are trying to live a healthy lifestyle then redesigning your environment might look like this putting a pull-up bar in your room so that every time you see it you do a few pull-ups replacing the cookies on the table with fruits removing the TV from the living room deleting Instagram from your phone and replacing it with an audiobook app such as audible instead of taking one glass of water in the morning using a big bottle keeping healthy food ready to eat in your fridge for lazy moments because those moments will definitely come finally the most important one surrounding yourself with the right people for example if you want to become an entrepreneur and you hang out with friends who have the same goal then you'll always be talking about entrepreneurship you don't need to make an extra effort talking about entrepreneurship will become an ordinary topic for you in simple terms designing your environment means that you create an environment where your desired outcome becomes an ordinary outcome that you do without any effort I am personally a big fan of environmental redesign and hope that by now you are also convinced but if not then listen to this story during the Vietnam war the majority of U.S soldiers in Vietnam were addicted to drugs and the problem was so serious that even on the government level a committee was created to deal with it quite interestingly as soon as the war ended and soldiers returned home 90 of them quit automatically without any help and the reason was simple the environment had changed and the cues were gone in their new environment there were no cues anymore that reminded them to do drugs but back in Vietnam cues were everywhere and it triggered them all the time as soon as the environment had changed the queues were gone and the addiction was also gone by the way this is the reason why so many people go to Rehabilitation but as soon as they come back home they become the same old person because they returned to their old environment where queues are everywhere and they can't resist very long so after this video ends just take a look at your room and your life and see if your environment is helping you to build the habits you want or going against you for example how many of you eat sleep and work in the same room at home well it's no wonder you can't finish your work and procrastinate all the time try to select each room for a different activity bedroom for sleeping kitchen for eating and living room for relaxing for those of you who live in a one-room apartment then the author suggests using Each corner or part of the room for different activities for example having one corner for working and one for sleeping Etc 2. craving make it attractive the second step to successfully creating a habit is making it attractive one of the key strategies with this step is called Temptation bundling this simply means pairing an action you want to do with an action you need to do for example if you desperately want to watch that show on Netflix then do it while running on a treadmill if you want to start going to the gym try to pair it up with some of your obligations your office where you work might be close enough to a gym that you can attend use this to your advantage and pair those things together another really powerful tool is becoming part of a group of like-minded people if you want to start a habit and you do that on your own then there's a high chance you will fail because there will be nobody to push you or call you out when the lazy part of you wakes up three response make it easy have you ever seen a water hose that is tied up so badly that the water is almost not running if you want the water to run freely what you need is to Simply untie the hose and it will run freely you don't need to pump even more water into the hose simply untie it and that's it you need to do the same thing with your habits you don't need extra willpower or extra motivation just make it easy for the Habit to flow here are a few tips for how to do that reduce friction have you ever wanted to go to the gym or for a run but then you said to yourself yeah but I would have to dress up and drive in a car for 20 minutes just for the sake of working out and that's not worth it simply the idea of doing a few tasks before our desired habits puts us off so try to reduce the amount of steps if you want to eat healthy if you can afford it then buy healthy lunch boxes from your local food delivery service or alternatively you can cook yourself a healthy bulk meal on Sunday for the next week ahead this will reduce the friction as the only thing needed will be going to the fridge 4. reward make it satisfying the reason the majority of people can't stick to their habits is that they have to suffer first without any immediate reward if you go running you won't see any difference if you step on a scale once you finish your session it will take weeks if not months to see any significant result as we mentioned at the beginning the pain level is very high at the beginning of a habit so in order to keep yourself motivated use a habit tracker which will remind you of your successes every day a habit tracker can be a simple wall calendar where you put an X every time you do something related to your habit once a young and aspiring comedian approached famous comedian Jerry Seinfeld and asked for tips for writing better jokes Seinfeld thought for a minute and said well the secret to being a better comic is to write better jokes and the secret to writing better jokes is to write every day so here's what you should do get a wall calendar where you can see every day of the month and the year mapped out on one page then each day that you stick to your behavior of writing for 10 minutes or 15 minutes I want you to put an x on that day in the beginning you'll do it every now and then but eventually at some point you'll have a chain and at that point your only goal is simple don't break the chain it doesn't matter how you feel or how bad your writing is you stick to the behavior sticking to the things that we want to do is what makes the difference it's the consistency that helps us get one percent better every day and eventually become 37 times better at the end of the year you probably are still unsure about becoming 37 times better so let me prove it to you with a simple example let's say you want to start listening to audiobooks okay this is the Habit you want to build for the new year so it's January 1st and you're starting the Habit you take a big calendar that has all the days of the year and stick it to your wall the calendar is our habit tracker according to the two-minute rule you only need to listen to the book for two minutes which is 120 seconds for simplicity's sake let's keep it as a hundred seconds because we'll do some calculations now so it's day one and you just listened to a book for 100 seconds and also put an x on your calendar now it's day two and you need to improve one percent which means you will now listen to 101 seconds it's simple math one percent of 100 is one so we add one extra second on day two to make it easy and simple I did the calculation in Excel so for the first 10 days the results look like this now I am sure many of you say that I can listen for more than 109 seconds by the time I'm on day 10. but let's stick to the one percent Improvement formula and fast forward for a few more days and see what happens on day 42 you will be listening for 150 seconds remember you started with 100 seconds per day and on day 42 you are still listening to only 150 seconds and you have 42 x's on your calendar which has created a very nice chain don't break the chain let's keep going let's say you keep continuing like that for the entire year what would the result look like by the time you hit day 365. well it would look like this and a 365 you would already be listening to 3740 seconds per day remember we started with only 100 seconds and at the end of the year we are at 3740 seconds if we convert that into minutes then it would be roughly 62 minutes per day if you remember at the beginning of the video we said that if you improve one percent every day you would be 37 times better at the end of the year would you like to see where that number comes from well simply divide 3740 seconds by 100 seconds which was the starting point and you will get 37.4 in other words you become 37.4 times better at listening to audiobooks by the end of the year here is the interesting part if you sum up all the seconds you have listened for the entire year then how many books would that be well the total amount of seconds would be 367 834 again if we convert it into hours then it would be 102 hours if we consider that the average audiobook is about five hours long then it means you read roughly 20 books within the year it isn't a small number the average person doesn't even read one book per year reading 20 business books within a year is like talking to 20 of the smartest businessmen on the planet by the way if you are looking for an app for listening to audiobooks check out audible I've used it for years and it's one of the best apps I have on my phone if you sign up for a 30-day trial you will get one book for free it can be any book even the one I'm summarizing now Link in the description now back to our example if we take the data from day one until day 365 and then convert it into a graph to see how the progress happened across the year then you would get the same graph I mentioned at the beginning of the video again take a good look at this graph especially the beginning part where the progress is almost flat whatever habit you start you need to be comfortable with being on the flat line for a long time you just saw how even after 42 days you were only listening to 150 seconds progress might seem insignificant but you're doing the foundation work you are establishing the habit every habit first needs to be established before it can be improved before moving to the next lesson here is one more tip for making a habit more satisfying when you start a new habit there will be days that you will not be able to follow through if you miss a day make sure you never miss it twice the author says that everybody misses sometimes nobody is perfect the problem arises when we miss twice once we miss twice we are creating a behavior of not doing the activity we previously signed up for we are sending signals to our subconscious saying I don't care it's not important to me so the next time you miss make sure it's the first and last time lesson number three how to break a bad habit breaking a bad habit can be quite simple once you learn how to create a good one what you need to do is simply reverse those four laws that we just discussed and make the bad habit not so obvious unattractive difficult and unsatisfying for example if you log into Instagram too often you can delete the app from your phone if you watch too much TV remove it from your room Etc one bonus tip I found very useful in the chapter on how to break a bad habit is to find an accountability partner once you don't answer only to yourself but also to your accountability partner quitting or making an excuse won't even be an option let me share a short example if you want to hit the gym on a regular basis but you have always failed to do so when you tried it on your own find a partner and make a deal that every time you miss or skip a session the next entry in protein shake is on you this will work because skipping the gym would mean that one you're not only disappointing yourself but also your friend two the next session will be much more expensive and you will likely try to avoid it this is it for this video check out the playlist on your screen for more book summaries thanks for watching

Channel: LITTLE BIT BETTER

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Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 05 2022