Atomic Habits - Book summary

Atomic Habits talk about how you can achieve remarkable results with tiny changes to your habits. We have the practice of tying everything to goals. I'll lose 10 pounds in 1 month, I'll learn a new programming language, etc.

There are 2 problems with goals.

If the journey to your goals is long, you might get demotivated soon if you don't see instant results. In a week, if you've managed to reduce only 1 pound, 10 pounds might seem very far. And if you get demotivated, you might end up abandoning your goal.
If you achieve your goal, what do you do after that? Your journey is accomplished and you might not have anything more to look forward to, and you are back where you started.

Setting goals is good. But you have to back that up with a system. The system is tiny portions that'll help you to reach your goal. If you want to achieve your goal, set a system in place.

If you plan to learn a new language, set up a system

pick a language you find interesting
allot a specific time every day for your studies
Understand what topics are important for you to lean
find projects you can build to practice your skills etc.

If you have a system in place, you can apply the same to different goals and not necessarily get rid of it after you reach your goal. You can focus on getting 1% of your goal regularly. Initially, 1% might sound very less, but over time that compounds to a more significant portion.

Atomic Habits is a book by James Clear, an easy & proven way to build good habits and break bad ones.

If you want to build better habits, it's important to focus on your identity more than the goal itself. Another way to put it, instead of focusing on what you want to achieve, emphasize who you wish to become. If you want to become an athlete, think about what an athlete would do in their life.

They will train every day
Have a diet plan and stick to it.
Work on their mental and physical well-being.
Get good sleep

Now that you know the habits of an athlete, work toward developing them in your daily life.

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.

Laws of behavior change

Law 1: Make it obvious

If you decide I'll study for 1 hour every day, there are a lot of uncertainties. When will I study? What will I study ? and you could drift off from making a new habit because of these uncertainties.

Habit stacking is a good strategy to start new habits. If you want to start something new, stack it with your current habits. If you want to create a pattern of learning every day, you can stack this new habit like this.

I wake up → Brush my teeth → Have a cup of coffee → Complete 1 lesson in JavaScript from Udemy → Go for a walk. When you stack it like this, it allows you to create a set of simple rules that guide your future behavior.

Your environment is vital to building good habits and staying away from bad ones. If you want to sleep early every day, identify what in your environment doesn't allow you to do that. Maybe it's the mobile phone or Television. Before going to bed, try keeping your mobile phone in some other room, or keep the TV remote inside cabinet instead of keeping them in your bed.

If you want to eat healthily, keep healthy food in the most accessible places. When you are hungry, you go for what you can grab faster. Organize your room/house/environment to build better habits and stay away from bad ones.

Law 2: Make it attractive

To build better habits you have to make them attractive and to get rid of bad habits, make them unattractive. Most of the time, we give preference to our "wants" over "needs". You want to watch YouTube instead of exercising. Build a positive habit of exercising (need), and pair it with something that you want to do (watch YouTube).

1. After I open YouTube, I'll do ten push-ups
2. After 10 push-ups, I'll watch YouTube for 15 mins

If you make your habits attractive this way, there's more likely to end up doing them.

Similarly, to get rid of a bad habit you have to make it unattractive. Highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit and making it seem unattractive.

1. If I watch YouTube for a long time, I'll feel tired and have no energy to go for a walk afterward.

Law 3: Make it easy.

Prepare your environment so you to do your habits more easily. If you want to study more, keep distractions out of your study room. Avoid studying in the living room where there's a television. If you want to work out, ready your gym bag ahead of time.

At times it could be intimidating when you look at a habit as a whole. For example, reading a chapter every day or running a 5k every day is challenging to start. Instead of that, make the smallest part of these activities your habit. I'll read one page of a book every day, I'll walk for 10 minutes every day, and I'll study for 15 minutes every day. When you start small, you'll end up continuing the activity for longer than you envisioned.

Similar to how you make it easy to start a habit, you should make it difficult to continue a bad one. Consider you are spending too much time on social media. You could ask your spouse or friend to set an App Password for you. Now, if you have to use social media, you've to go to them to unlock the app. And slowly you might stay away from social media to avoid the hassle of unlocking the phone.

Law 4: Make it attractive

We are more likely to repeat something when that experience is satisfying. Whenever we get that instant reward, we are more likely to repeat the same activity in the future.

Habit tracking is another way of making habits attractive. After completing a habit and when we check it off in the calendar, that is a pleasurable moment that gives you a positive vibe. Habit tracking can be helpful to make sure you don't mess up with the habit history unknowingly. For example, it is impossible to remember all the days you worked out in the past month, you might've missed a few. But if you keep a habit tracker, you can precisely notice your habit history and make it better.

Making a pact with somebody to stay with the habit can also help you. You can make a pact with your spouse/friend, if you miss out on a workout day, you'll do something in return for them. Like, washing their dishes, or giving them $100.

Life happens and there will be times we have to set aside our habits for a day. But try not to miss 2 days continuously, because bouncing back from a long gap can be difficult.

Takeaways

Habit building is not done in a day or a week. Start slowly, be consistent, and improve.
Reward yourself when you complete a habit.
Make bad habits unattractive and difficult to do. Make good habits easy to do.
Try not to miss on your habits two days in a row.

Building a good habit

Even before reading the book, I had 2 goals in mind, for myself.

Read more books in 2023 (12 books).
Learn more things in 2023.

The plan I had in mind fits perfectly well within the framework of atomic habits.

After every chapter, I'll note down the summary.
After every topic I learn, I'll either note down the summary or share what I've learned with my colleagues.

Stopping a bad habit

I don't like how much time I spent on Twitter. Twitter is the only social media I'm in, and most of the accounts I follow are of developers and entrepreneurs. But Twitter will plug 'things I might like' videos, and my brain falls for it. When I realize I didn't want to be there, 45 minutes already lost.

I don't want to quit Twitter altogether. Because I find lot of good stuff there.

Conversations on React and best practices.
What's new in CSS and brilliant designs.
Discover new prodcts, libraries and frameworks.

So, to avoid the Twitter trap, here's what I did.

I deleted my Twitter app. Now, If I've to go to Twitter, I should open my browser and visit Twitter, like a madman.
After browsing for every 15 minutes. I'll log out. So the next time I subconsciously open Twitter, I'll have to login. This makes me think twice should I really go in there or not.

And so far, it's going very well.