Why Your Habits Control Your Destiny (and How to Change Them)

hey everyone today we'll be discussing the fascinating book Atomic habits an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones by James Clear there's an analogy in here that immediately grabbed my attention imagine you see a gardener watering plants as he's watering he realizes the water pressure is getting low he has two choices keep watering as is and turn up the pressure more and more not changing his original habit but just increasing the effort eventually with enough pressure the hose might burst the other choice is to pause examine the hose and see if there's a kink somewhere blocking the flow this represents changing our past habits in life so many of us are like that Gardener we just keep our heads down watering away turning up our own pressure thinking the reason things aren't going well is we're not trying hard enough but if we stop to consider what behaviors and habits we could adjust bit by bit that's how tiny habits can gradually make a big impact there's a compelling if imperfect calculation that gets shared a lot what's the difference between 1.01 toon 365 and 0.999 to 365 compounded over a year improving by just 1% each day leads to an end result of 37.78 but declining by 1% daily compounds to 0.043 many argue this is an overly mechanical comparison more motivational than realistic but in my experience if you look at a group of students graduating college with the same degree and track them 20 years later the differences in their work habits lead to disparities in success far greater than 30X because in real life our habit differences are often much larger than just 1.01 verse 0.99 so I think the title of this book is very fitting you are a product of your habits it really is true the opening drives home just how important small habits can be there's a particularly funny and compelling case study about how the British cycling team made a huge turnaround from 1908 to 2003 a span of nearly 100 years British cyclists had won just one gold medal at the Olympics and had never won the Tour to France in 2003 they hired a new performance director Named Dave brailsford he required that they improve every single element of cycling by just 1% in training equipment nutrition everything this included redesigning bike seats for more Comfort rubbing alcohol on tires for better grip wearing electrically heated overshoes to keep muscles warm using biof feedback sensors to monitor how athletes responded to training testing Fabrics in a wine tunnel to find the lightest and most aerodynamic outfits finding the ideal massage gels for faster Muscle Recovery teaching right as the best way to wash hands to reduce illness tailoring the best pillows and mattresses to each athlete for optimal sleep and even painting the inside of their transportation truck white to better spot dust that could degrade bike performance no detail was too small to overlook 5 years after braford took over at the 2008 Beijing Olympics British cyclists dominated winning 60 % of the gold medals available in cycling then in 2012 they set nine Olympic records and seven world records that same year Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour to France the next year his teammate Chris Frum won the race then proceeded to win again in 2015 2016 and 2017 giving the British team five tour to France victories in six years from 2007 to 2017 British cyclists won 178 World Championships and 66 Olympic or Paro Olympic gold medals and captured five tour to France victories making it the most successful run in cycling history and to think this was a team that just years before was so unsuccessful that one of the top bike manufacturers wouldn't even sell them bikes all of this came from aggregating Tiny 1% improvements in everything they did I think the Chinese soccer team could learn something from this instead of repeatedly spending huge sums on new coaches and foreign star players the key Insight here is that we tend to overestimate the importance of single defining moments but underestimate the value of small improvements on a daily basis that's one of the wisest lines in the book our faulty thinking leads us to believe success comes from some big sudden transformation a new coach takes over a new leader makes big changes or a superstar joining the team makes all the difference but in reality the things that lead to Lasting change are the small actions we take and sustain day after day so habits are the compound interest of self-improvement but I'm referring to both good and bad habits here good habits compounded over years years can lead to enormous positive changes while bad habits compounded over time can make things drastically worse imagine you're flying a plane from New York to LA if you adjust the heading just 3.5 de South you could end up in Washington DC instead small changes have big impacts over time that's the power of atomic habits examples of positive compounding habits include clude boosting productivity the knowledge we accumulate each day and the strengthening of our relationships you may not think much of listening to One bookie book summary each week but many of our members tell me they've been doing it for 2 3 years now and it's completely transformed their lives there are negative compounding effects too like stress you think you're fine tolerating it day after day until it suddenly erupts into a major health problem other examples are negative thinking and anger these are all long-term negative compounding effects when building a personal habit system it's key to focus more on the system and process than on goals for example if your goal is to lose 20 and you just weigh yourself every day to see how far you are from that goal you're setting yourself up for frustration here's the thing at Major competitions like the Olympics the winning and losing teams usually have the exact same goal that's the Paradox if goals are what matters most then why do teams with the same goal end up with vastly different results the difference is in their systems and processes furthermore if you only focus on that end goal be it weight loss or winning or learning it becomes a source of stress that sucks the enjoyment out of the actual activity so the key is building your habit system once you get that in place like the British cycling team you may not see huge changes in the first year or two but as you sustain it over time remarkable results emerge there's a graph I want to sketch out for you imagine a typical graph with an X and Y AIS we usually think of goals as a straight diagonal line let's say for losing weight it's a downward sloping line that's what we hope for but in reality our actual process of change looks more like a jagged line with ups and downs the straight line is the goal our idealized life the squiggly line is our real life improvement process at some point those two lines intersect and that's what I call the valley of disappointment when we first try to change our lives and habits we often find ourselves in that Valley of disappointment we've put in effort for a month 2 months 3 months but don't seem to be getting anywhere but once you push past that intersection point the results start to show here's another key Insight if someone offers you a cigarette and you say no thanks I'm trying to quit How likely are you to succeed compared to saying no thanks I don't smoke it's clear that you're much more likely to quit for good with the latter statement why because when you say I'm trying to quit you still identify as a smoker in your mind smoking is part of your identity you're just currently taking a break from it once you get through this quitting phase you'll likely revert back to that smoker identity to effectively change habit you have to aim at changing your identity to become a different type of person so if someone offers you a cigarette you need to say I don't smoke you are asserting your identity as a non-smoker so if you have an area of life you want to change ask yourself what kind of person do I want to become here we need to emphasize the importance of identity your goal is not to read a book but to become a reader your goal is not to run a marathon but to become a runner your goal is not to learn an instrument but to become a musician see how this shifts your thinking when you change your perspective this way you'll be filled with motivation because ultimately we change our habits because we want to change who we are our very identity every time you practice a tiny habit you're reinforcing this ident shift you're casting off your old labels and becoming your new self we often burden ourselves with negative labels I'm not a runner I have no sense of direction I'm bad at business I'll never be rich and so on why do we saddle ourselves with these limiting identities once we believe them we immediately resist opportunities for growth so we need to purposefully replace them with more empowering identities small habits can serve as evidence of these new identities they help us decide what type of person we want to be a series of small winds can prove to ourselves that we are actually changing gradually we become our habits to achieve this there are four key steps we've discussed a similar four-step process from the book The Power of Habit before all habits form through four stages Q craving response and reward let's start with cues if your phone buzzes with a notification that's a cue that something just happened that leads to a craving you wonder who's contacting you and want to know what they have to say that triggers a response you grab the phone and check it the reward is satisfying your curiosity and getting the new information it's that simple Q craving response reward why do you turn on a light when you walk into a dark room the darkness is the queue you have a craving to be able to see and feel safe your response is to reach for the light switch the reward is being able to see so many everyday actions we don't even think about consciously follow this Loop even something as basic as tying your shoes do you always start with the same foot then lace one side over the other the same way each time without having to think about it you follow the same steps in order that's a habit the scary thing about habits is that once they start they continue on autopilot you might sit down on the couch just to relax for a minute but that triggers the next habitual step of reaching for the remote then clicking it on next thing you know hours have evaporated as you've sunken into a TV trance all from the initial cue of sitting down this habit Loop has four steps each time so if we want to build a new good habit or change a bad one we need to work on these four stages the two-part problem phase of Quee and craving and two-part solution phase of response and reward to install a positive habit make the queue obvious and visible the craving attract Ive and enticing the response simple and frictionless and the reward pleasurable and satisfying get those four things right and a good behavior will lock into place similarly to break a bad habit like smoking make the cues invisible and hard to see strip the craving of its appeal so it seems boring or undesirable make it difficult and friction filled to do and create an unpleasant dis satisfying reward or consequence get those four things in place and you can dismantle a bad habit but here's the hard part that I really want to clarify the reason bad habits are so easy to acquire and good habits so difficult to pick up take exercise you may admire people who consistently work out and think it looks pretty straightforward but when you try to do it yourself your willpower Fizzles out after just a few days meanwhile sleeping in every day and being sedentary feels effortless or unconsciously overeating super easy to do why is this it's because virtually all bad habits provide immediate gratification while good habits require delayed gratification this is the key difference between modern society and our evolutionary past our hunter gatherer ancestors lived in an immediate return environment they caught an animal they feasted they found a bush of ripe berries they indulged when good things happened they celebrated and reaped the rewards instantly so our brains evolved to prefer quick payoffs but modern society is a delayed return environment exercising requires tolerance of pain now for a future payoff studying is a grind in the short term for hoped for knowledge and credentials later almost all good habits require us to resist immediate gratification for a greater future benefit therein lies the challenge virtually all bad habits are instantly rewarding video games provide an immediate feeling of accomplishment and Status that's far harder to earn in real life eating junk food delivers a surge of salty fat sugary Bliss right now even though it erodes Health in the long run even drugs addict because the high is so immediate even as the Habit ravages the user over time so if we want to design habits that stick we have to find ways to bring the future rewards into the present moment in the four-step process that's the craving and response stages the first LW of behavior change is to make it obvious how do we make a new habit more obvious and visible there are a couple effective techniques the first is what I call the habits scorecard make your current habits more obvious by writing them down at the start of each day write down each habit you do step by step note whether it's a positive negative or neutral habit this simple Act of recording your behavior will make you much more aware of what you do without thinking in Japan Subway operators use this technique to an almost absurd degree as an operator approaches a signal light they actually point at it and say out loud signal is green seems silly and redundant maybe but their safety record is world class because they build in this extra moment of obvious awareness that prevents them from slipping into autopilot I'll teach you a trick that that's guaranteed to work if you're someone who's absent-minded and always forgetting Essentials like your wallet keys or phone when leaving the house as you're heading out the door audibly call out a checklist wallet check Keys check phone check actually verbally name and confirm each item just that brief obvious check can prevent so many frustrating lockouts and lost item scenarios this technique called implementation intentions makes it more likely you'll actually follow through on a behavior the formula is I will Behavior at time in location being that specific makes a huge difference so instead of I will exercise more make it I will go for a 30-minute run at 7:00 a.m. at Brian Park the more obvious the plan the better an even more powerful method is what I call habit stacking you piggy back a new habit onto an existing one so now the formula expands to after I current habit I will new habit by linking a new Behavior to an ingrained habit you make it more obvious and easier to remember some examples after I pour my morning coffee I will meditate for 1 minute after I take off my work shoes I will immediately change into workout clothes after I sit down to dinner I will say one thing I'm great a fool for today the key is tying a new habit to an existing one that's already a strong trigger this brings us to the importance of environment design did you know we have 11 million sensory receptors in our bodies but 10 million of those are dedicated to site over 90% of the sensory information we process is visual so if we don't optimize our visual environment to support good habits we are missing a huge opportunity for example one study looked at the eating choices of people in a cafeteria it turned out that simply moving the water bottles closer to eye level and Shifting the soda bottles to a slightly less obvious position massively increased water sales and cut soda consumption without changing anything else in another case a study found some apartment residents used 30 40% less electricity than their neighbors why because the apartments with lower usage had their electrical meters in the main hallway where they were seen every day the higher usage Apartments had meters hidden away in the basement out of sight and out of mind so if you have a bad habit you want to minimize just reduce exposure to to the queue if you're wasting too much time watching TV move it to a less prominent location in your home if you're spending too much on electronics unsubscribe from the gadget blogs and email lists that are tempting you if video games are consuming your life unplug the console and put it in a closet after each use make the cues invisible and the habits will follow suit the opposite is true for good habits you want to build say you want to practice guitar more don't stash it in the closet place it in the middle of your living room on a stand so it's always visible and ready if you want to drink more water don't just keep a bottle in the fridge Place water bottles all over on your desk in your bag by your couch everywhere so you always have a visual queue to hydrate design your environment to make bad habits invisible and unseen and positive habits obvious and in your face it takes a little thought but these visual tweaks can make a big difference over time the second law of behavior change is to make it attractive how do we make a habit irresistible let's look at a fascinating example from nature scientists studying the behavior of baby seagulls noticed something peculiar as soon as a mother seagull returns to the nest her chicks start pecking vigorously at a red spot on her beak the mama bird then regurgitates food into the chicks waiting mouths so these scientists decided to experiment they made a fake beak out of wood painted a red spot on it and presented it to the baby gulls in the nest guess what the chicks started pecking it just as intensely even though it looked nothing like their actual mom the bigger the red spot the harder they pecked turns out seagull chicks have such a strong instinctive attraction to red dots they pursue them at all costs another bird The Grey Lag Goose has such a powerful drive to sit on round objects that if you place a volleyball near its nest the goose will scoot it underneath itself to incubate it along with pumpkins soccer balls you name it it's slave to this visual cue so what are humans helplessly drawn to three things salt sugar and fat food scientists know this that's why virtually every highly processed snack is loaded with salt sugar and fat as soon as we taste the combination our brains light up with pleasure and we shovel more in it's an automatic Behavior so how can we tie our natural impulses and Cravings to the habits we want to adopt the strategy is called Temptation bundling you link an action you need to do with one you want to do I love the example of a guy who was really into watching Netflix but felt guilty about how it distracted him from working out as an engineer he hacked his stationary bike to be powered by his pedaling if he pedal at a certain speed his Netflix stream would play normally but if his cycling speed dropped too low playback would stop suddenly exercise and entertainment were bundled he had to keep pedaling to keep watching which kept him in shape genius the formula is after I current habit I will habit I need I will habit I need then I will habit I want for example after I finish my morning coffee I will do 10 push-ups I will practice guitar for 15 minutes then I will check Instagram I will empty the dishwasher then I will play a video game see how you're yoking a less desirable task to a more desirable reward over time this bundle makes the tougher habit much more attractive another key principle here is that we humans love to imitate and mirror the close people around us we pick up habits from three main groups the close family and friends the many what Society at large is doing and the powerful those we look up to so if you want to build a good habit spend time with others who have already done so if your Social Circle exercises together eats healthy and reads A Lot it'll feel natural to to do so yourself but if they sit around playing video games snacking and watching reality TV that leagy will likely rub off choose your peer group wisely the power of social norms is staggering in one study scientists taught a chimp a more efficient method for cracking open nuts but when they transferred her to a different chimp community that used an inferior nut cracking method she immediately abandoned her better approach and conformed to the group Norm even though it meant getting less food such is the sway of the crowd we would often rather be wrong with the herd than write by ourselves finally we look to our heroes and role models to guide our own habits find someone you want to emulate and study what they do each day adopt their routines and practices conf deformity can be a powerful force for positive habits when wielded correctly Beyond social influence another good habit building strategy is to shift your underlying motivations your habits are only as attractive as the story you tell yourself about them a great example is the two different mindsets a person in a wheelchair might adopt framed negatively they could Bean how the chair limits and confines them each day or they could think this wheelchair frees me without it I would be stuck in bed and couldn't explore the world exact same situation two opposite attitudes the key to Habit change is often not in the habit itself but in how you perceive it let's take exercise many people have a unconscious script like GH if I don't work out today I'll feel so guilty exercise this is such a chore I really should get in shape but it's so hard with this attitude The Habit feels like a burden what if you flipped the script I get to work out today pushing my body and seeing what it can do is so rewarding and boosts my energy for the whole day I love the feeling of getting stronger and more capable over time can't wait to see the results from staying consistent suddenly you are pulled toward the Habit rather than forcing yourself to do it look our brains are an accumulation of habits ACR over our lifetimes including the habit of how we perceive a behavioral cue the good news is you can dramatically alter the longevity of a habit by shaping your own contextual lens on cues that come your way this is exactly how the book mentioned previously the easy way to stop smoking helps so many people quit cigarettes it doesn't rely on Willpower it relies on changing your perspective it forces you to ask does smoking actually relieve stress no it's just a brief distraction that returns you to the same Baseline does smoking really make you more sociable no non-smokers find you less attractive and cough at the smell is smoking good for concentration no it releases is dopamine which is proven to reduce Focus longterm once you frame smoking as smelly expensive stressful and detrimental to your health and social life suddenly quitting doesn't seem so hard it seems like Common Sense seeing smokers huddled outside in the cold suddenly shifts from enviable to pitiable you broke the spell contrast this with telling yourself no smoking no matter what think of the children be strong resist temptation that just makes cigarettes seem even more powerful and alluring reframing them as a silly gross waste changes the whole dynamic so for the habits you dislike emphasize the negatives and make them unattractive for the habits you want emphasize the benefits and make them as appealing and magnetic as possible pair them with things you already love and watch them take root the Third Law of behavior change is to make it easy here's one of my favorite insites from the book the best question is not how long does it take to build a habit but rather how many reps does it take to build a habit we often fixate on a certain number of days or weeks as the gold standard for locking in a behavior change like the common myth that habits take 21 days to form but frequency of repetition matters far more than length of time imagine you have two groups learning photography group a is told to take as many photos as possible group b is told to focus only on taking the absolute best photos who ends up taking better pictures by the end of the month it's not even close group a wins by a landslide why because they weren't worried about perfection ction they just repeated the process of shooting over and over sure their first shots were mediocre but through sheer practice and iteration they improved dramatically meanwhile Group B was paralyzed trying to get a few perfect portfolio shots so they barely practiced at all repetition is the mother of skill our natural tendency is always to minimize energy output humans are at our core lazy creatures we pursue the path of least resistance this law of least effort dictates so much of our Lives think about how much more convenient everything has gotten just in the past few years thanks to technology instead of walking all the way to the kitchen to preheat the oven you can tell Alexa to do it from the couch instead of spending an afternoon at the library researching something you can Google it in seconds everything has been reduced to a tap a voice command a swipe all to make life easier and reduce friction so the key Insight is that your habits are not the limiting factor to achieving your goals the level of friction is every habit you have good or bad is really just an obstacle to getting what you really want if you can reduce the friction even marginally you'll be much more more successful want to eat healthier having to go to the grocery store look up a recipe get all the ingredients and spend an hour cooking is a lot of friction compare that to tapping three buttons on Postmates and having a salad at your door in 20 minutes see why fast food is winning it's not the food itself it's the reduced steps so if you want a habit to stick you need to prune away as many energy sapping inertia inducing barriers as possible this is why the Mantra go big or go home is actually terrible advice much better is to follow the two-minute rule no matter what habit you're trying to build scale it down into a 2-minute version read 30 books a year just read one page a night study a new language learn one new vocab word a day run a marathon just put on your running shoes and Jog around the block if you turn a habit into a two-minute commitment suddenly it goes from daunting and Abstract to concrete and eminently doable you can become a reader athlete musican cook writer or whatever by mastering the art of showing up set the bar low enough and you can Vault over it each day which builds the identity of the type of person who does that habit so often we think we have to revamp our whole life at once going from slob to Olympic athlete in one Rocky training montage in reality just lacing up your shoes each morning is what gets you there in a year the 2in rule is a way to ritualize the beginning of a habit you want so it pulls you along after that once you start you usually continue the two-minute Mark isn't meant to be the whole habit just the Gateway over time you can expand and improve but not until it's second nature to at least show up each day think of each micro habit as an on-ramp to the highway of your desired identity most of us have big aspirations like getting healthy writing a book starting a business and so on if you try to take those on all at once you'll likely fail but could you do five push-ups write one sentence register for a business license those are the atomic units that blossom into incredible results down the road I'm sure many of you have the dream of reading more and becoming really knowledgeable well I can tell you from personal experience just committing to listen to one chapter of a book summary like this each day can lead to a complete transformation suddenly you've finished hundreds of books and your friends are coming to you for answers and insights but but you didn't start there you started with a simple two-minute habit making it easy and removing obstacles works for quitting bad habits too a shopkeeper kept having money stolen by one of his employees but could never prove it then he bought a new cash register that made it physically impossible for the clerk to get the money back out after it went in the stealing stopped overnight the Temptation was still there but the friction was was too high so the bad habit melted away there's an old saying the road to hell is paved with good intentions we all have positive aspirations but without a smooth path to realize them we give up too soon but if you design your environment for effortless execution and make good habits Take 2 minutes Everything Changes the fourth and final law of behavior change is to make it satisfying most of what we've covered so far has been about making habits obvious attractive and easy to start but you need a fourth element for them to really stick longterm and that's a sense of satisfaction when completed we underestimate the power of feeling successful early versions of shampoo toothpaste and other toiletries had no foaming agents they were seen as harsh medicines but customer cers didn't enjoy using them and sales were mediocre then manufacturers started adding ingredients like sodium Laurel sulfate chemicals that don't make the products any more effective but create a thick satisfying lather suddenly people loved using them and couldn't imagine living without them chewing gum was originally an elastic gray rubbery mess sold for jaw exercise when William Wrigley started adding mint and fruit extracts to make gum actually taste good Sals exploded even though the core function was exactly the same never underestimate the power of making a habit pleasurable to do bad habits are so hard to Shake in large part because they feel good in the moment checking social media playing video games eating junk food watching mindless videos our brains get a surge of dopamine each time meanwhile good habits like exercising meditating and studying are less instantly rewarding and often feel like a chore what to do one strategy is to use visual cues of progress like a habit tracker say you want to write a book you could try to will yourself to pump out Pages through guilt and sheer determination but a far better approach is to Simply put two jars on your desk one mayay be led pages to write and filled with little marbles or paper clips the other labeled Pages written and empty each time you finish a page move one object to the completed jar this sounds stupidly simple but the power of visual progress is astounding suddenly the intangible goal of writing a book is broken down into satisfying daily increases is the full jar gets more and more full and the empty one drains bit by bit it pulls you forward an even more extreme version I love is the paperclip method say you're a sales rep who needs to make 120 calls today you put 120 paper clips in a jar and each time you dial you move One Clip over to a second jar visual proof of your effort any major goal can be broken down into trackable progress units like this and I highly encourage you to do this publicly when I was really getting into meditation I would post my session length each day to Twitter did it help me focus and derive more mindfulness from the practice probably not but it sure helped me be consistent the more you can make your habits obvious and display evidence of your repetition the more motivation you'll gain to keep going it feels good to see yourself winning each day especially for delayed gratification tasks though of course you have to be careful not to only respond to incentives there's a classic business school Maxim what gets measured gets managed in other words the mere Act of tracking something tends to improve it but the dark corollary is when a measure becomes a Target it ceases to be a good measure if if you set a goal to read 100 books in a year and you only focus on hitting that number you might blow through a bunch of short easy reads instead of engaging deeply with truly growth inducing books the number is driving you more than the knowledge same for weightlifting if you fixate on doing a 100 reps you'll likely use a weight that's far too light and fail to put on any muscle so yes use tracking is a way to keep your habits consistent and emotionally satisfying in the short term but always remember tracking is a means to an ending not the end in itself you want to be fit not just do empty reps you want to be wise not just collect books like trophies let the tracker be a tool not a tyrant a key phrase to remember is never miss twice sure you'll have off days you'll over sleep sometimes you'll miss a workout or eat something unhealthy no biggie the key is to never miss twice in a row one mistake is just a temporary slip two mistakes in a row is the beginning of a new habit miss one day of guitar practice fine miss two days in a row Sound the Alarm even a crappy version of your habit on a bad day is better than skipping it entirely squeeze in 5 minutes of study instead of an hour do one pushup instead of a full workout write a single sentence instead of a chapter of your book why because you're maintaining your identity skipping the Habit entirely is a vote for your old identity doing it at least in some form is a vote for your new one those votes build up over time stop thinking I'm the type of person who meditates each morning and you won't be for much longer stop thinking I'm an athlete and skipping workouts will become more frequent always be reinforcing the identity you want to embody even if the quality is less than ideal some days the Ultimate key to Habit formation really comes down to Identity shift many people start by saying they want better results losing weight making more money reducing stress and so on but these are really just surface level changes the next level down is changing your process developing a meditation practice a new workout routine a better diet and so on and this level is powerful and does lead to better outcomes but the deepest level is changing your identity you have to start believing new things about yourself I'm the type of person who is conscious about my spending I'm the type of person who stands up for herself self I'm an early riser I'm a committed partner I'm a world traveler I'm a novelist whatever identity you want you have to believe it first then align your habits to reinforce it we underestimate how much our self-image controls Our Lives the world can yell at you and say you're not a good artist or athlete or leader or lover all day long but if you have an unshakable identity built up over thousand thousand of small habits that say otherwise you'll persevere that's just not who I am be careful though it's easy to let your identity get wrapped up too narrowly in one area you're a marathon runner until you get injured then who are you you're a top sales rep until you get laid off you're a CEO until you retire then what it's crucial to tie your identity more to your your values than to a single label I'm not just an athlete but a person who values health and vitality I'm not just an exec but a person who enjoys strategy and building teams that way if circumstances change your foundation remains overall tiny habits are not just little ways to improve they are the building blocks of a completely different trajectory through life by stacking together micro commitments and until they wire in new neural Pathways and make a behavior effortless you pave the way for remarkable results remember the British cycling team they didn't go from 100 Years of mediocrity to the best Squad in history through some massive Revolution they did it by adjusting the angle of a bike seat by a few millimeters finding a slightly better massage gel testing different fabrics for aerodynamics each gain was maybe 1% but aggregated and compounded it revolutionized what they were capable of what tiny habit will you start with to reshape your identity in the comments I'd love to hear what two-minute action you plan to take after listening to this as this book makes clear habits are the compound interest of self-improvement every good decision you make today pays dividends for decades every time you choose the salad over the fries the project over the Netflix binge the kind word over the cruel one you are casting a vote for the type of person you want to become bit by bit Choice by choice your habits are shaping your destiny will your habits today make you 37 times better in a year or a fraction of the person you could have been that's up to you by making your habits obvious attractive easy and satisfying you make them automatic and unconscious you design a system that pulls you in the right direction rather than having to push yourself there greatness is not some singular moment it's a result of stacking up thousands of two-minute choices habits are not a Finish Line to cross but a lifestyle to live not a goal to reach but an identity to embody they are the difference between Who You Are and who you have the potential to be they will make you or break you what will your habits make of you

Channel: Book Every Day

Views: 2,135

Keywords: personal development, productivity, goal setting, motivation, discipline, willpower, habit stacking, habit tracker, identity shift, compounding effect, habit formation, time management, procrastination, environment design, habit triggers, habit replacement, James Clear, Atomic Habits, book summary, readers book club, book review, best audiobooks, audiobook asmr, reading, free audio books

Id: dMK04Zdp14Q

Length: 47min 35sec (2855 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024