February Book Recommendation: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Atomic Habits?(2018) provides a practical and proven framework for creating good habits and shedding bad ones. Drawing on scientific research and real-life examples, it shows how tiny changes in behaviour can result in the formation of new habits and help you achieve big things.

James Clear is an author and entrepreneur who focuses on habits and their potential to support self-improvement. In a weekly newsletter received by hundreds of thousands of people, Clear writes about the science of habits and human behavior, sharing stories from his own life and from the lives of top performers in business, sports, the arts and other fields.

Below you will find a summary of the 7 key ideas according to Blinkist . As usual, the only purpose of our summary is to give you a better idea of what you will find in the book and encourage you to read it.

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Key Idea 1

Small habits can have a surprisingly powerful impact on your life.

We don't notice tiny changes in our lives. Small changes leave a negligible?immediate?impact. If you are out of shape today, and go for a 20-minute jog, you'll still be out of shape tomorrow. If you eat a family-size pizza for dinner, it won't make you overweight overnight.?

But if we repeat these small behaviours day after day, our choices compound into major results. Eat pizza every day, and you will likely have gained considerable weight after a year. Go jogging for 20 minutes every day, and you'll eventually be leaner and fitter, even though you won't notice the change happening.?

It's that small habits can have a surprisingly powerful impact on your life – and you won't necessarily see this impact happening in real-time. You'll only see the results of your habits after a while.

Now, we know that not seeing the impact of your efforts can be dispiriting. If this is happening to you – if you're feeling discouraged by the lack of immediate positive change – then it's important to try to focus on your current trajectory rather than your current results.?

But how do you get yourself on the right trajectory? You need to develop habits.

Key idea 2

Habits are automated behaviours that we’ve learned from experience and repetition.

Automatic habits dominate our live, from brushing our teeth to driving our car. And they are immensely powerful.?

Behaviours that give satisfying consequences tend to be repeated until they become automatic.?

Habits are made up of four elements: cue, or a trigger to act; a?craving?for a change in state; then a?response, or action and the end goal of every habit, the?reward.

Key idea 3

Building new habits requires hard-to-miss cues and a plan of action.

Changing your environment to put your cues front and centre will help you if you want to introduce a new habit, but if you want to perfect your triggers even more, you can use what's known as?implementation intentions.?

An implementation intention helps us move beyond the vague intention and introduces a clear plan of action; they help you set out when and where you'll carry out the habit you'd like to cultivate.?

By creating an?implementation intention,?you'll give yourself both a clear plan and an obvious clue, and it may surprise you how much easier it will be to build a positive habit.?

Key idea 4

Humans are motivated by the anticipation of reward, so making habits attractive will help you stick to them.

Dopamine is a crucial motivator. When we do something beneficial for our survival, dopamine is released, and we feel good. This feeling of pleasure motivates us to do the beneficial action again and again.?

Researches show that we don't actually have to do the pleasurable activity to get the hit of dopamine. The mere anticipation of doing something pleasurable is enough to get the dopamine flowing. In the brain's reward system, desiring something is on par with getting something!

When building our new habit, if we make it something we look forward to, we'll be much more likely to follow through and actually do it.?

Key idea 5

If you want to build a new habit, make that habit as easy to adopt as possible.

Another way we can hack the habit-building process is to make it easy.?

Easy behaviours dominate our lives. By making our desired behaviours as easy as possible, we stand the best chance of turning them into a?habit.

There are various ways we can make this happen like:?reducing friction. You can reduce friction to turn a beneficial behavior into a habit, but you can also?increase?friction if you want to kill a bad habit.?

Key idea 6

Making your habits immediately satisfying is essential to effective behaviour change.

The final and most important rule for behavioural change is 'habits need to be satisfying.'?

Unfortunately, our brains evolved to cope with an?immediate-return environment. It means that when pursuing habits with a delayed return (lose weight, run a marathon, etc.) you need to try to attach some immediate gratification to them.?

Key idea 7

Create a framework to keep your habits on track, using trackers and contracts.

One simple trick for making new habits stick is called?habit tracking.?

You can track your new habit by using a simple calendar or diary, and crossing off every day that you stick with your chosen behaviours.

Habit tracking is itself an attractive and satisfying habit. The anticipation and action of crossing off each day will feel good and keep you motivated.?

Other option is to engage an accountability partner. Making a commitment to your partner, your best friend, or one of your coworkers, you'll be much more likely to stick to your habits.