11 minutes
I would rather suggest you read the whole book. It is written by James Clear. Since it contains a lot of information on building habits and stories. It’s hard to summarize the whole thing, so I’m sharing all the key quotes and ideas that I found interesting and useful.
Chap 1. Surprising Power
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
Meanwhile, improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable—sometimes it isn’t even noticeable—but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run.
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.
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.
All big things come from small beginnings.
If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
Chap 2. Your Identity
Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe.
Behind every system of actions are a system of beliefs.
True behavior change is identity change.
The more deeply a thought or action is tied to your identity, the more difficult it is to change it.
Every belief, including those about yourself, is learned and conditioned through experience.
You have the power to change your beliefs about yourself.
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.
Chap 3. Simple Steps
Habits have four stages: cue, craving, response, and reward. Understanding these helps build better habits.
First, there is the cue. The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior. It is a bit of information that predicts a reward.
Cravings are the second step, and they are the motivational force behind every habit.
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.
Finally, the response delivers a reward. Rewards are the end goal of every habit.
The cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. This cycle is known as the habit loop.
Chap 4. Man Who Didn’t Look Right
You are much more than your conscious self.
Focus on making habits obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying to change behavior.
You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them.
Chap 5. Start a New Habit
The 1st Law of Behavior Change is make it obvious.
Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.
The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases.
Habit stacking is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a current habit.
Chap 6. Environment Often Matters More
People often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are.
Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.
Behavior is a function of the Person in their Environment, or B = f (P,E).
In other words, customers will occasionally buy products not because they want them but because of how they are presented to them.
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.
You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.
Our behavior is not defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them.
One space, one use.
Chap 7.Secret to Self-Control
The inversion of the 1st Law of Behavior Change is make it invisible.
The idea that a little bit of discipline would solve all our problems is deeply embedded in our culture.
Willpower alone is not enough. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.
Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.
Bad habits are autocatalytic: the process feeds itself.
Chap 8. Make a Habit Irresistible
Make habits more attractive by linking them to positive feelings and rewards.
The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.
Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike.
Temptation bundling is one way to apply a psychology theory known as Premack’s Principle.
Chap 9. Role of Family and Friends
A genius is not born, but is educated and trained.
The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.
In the 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.
A person’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if he or she had a friend who became obese.
Join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
Whenever we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide our behavior. 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. Once we fit in, we start looking for ways to stand out.
If a behavior can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it attractive.
Chap 10. Causes of Your Bad Habits
The inversion of the 2nd Law of Behavior Change is make it unattractive.
A craving is just a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive.
At a deep level, you simply want to reduce uncertainty and relieve anxiety, to win social acceptance and approval, or to achieve status.
Our behavior is heavily dependent on how we interpret the events that happen to us, not necessarily the objective reality of the events themselves.
Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires.
Chap 10. Walk Slowly
The 3rd Law of Behavior Change is make it easy.
Focus on making habits easy and simple. Start small and increase gradually.
Repetition is a form of change.
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?
Chap 11. Law of Least Effort
Human behavior follows the Law of Least Effort. We will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.
Design your environment to reduce friction for good habits and increase friction for bad ones.
The idea is to make it as easy as possible in the moment to do things that payoff in the long run.
The greater the friction, the less likely the habit.
Chap 12. Two-Minute Rule
Decisive moments set the options available to your future self.
Your options are constrained by what’s available. They are shaped by the first choice.
When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.
The point is to master the habit of showing up. The truth is, a habit must be established before it can be improved.
Chap 13. Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible
This is an inversion of the 3rd Law of Behavior Change: make it difficult.
Commitment devices are useful because they enable you to take advantage of good intentions before you can fall victim to temptation. Commitment devices increase the odds that you’ll do the right thing in the future by making bad habits difficult in the present.
Increase the friction until you don’t even have the option to act.
Chap 14. Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change
The 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it satisfying.
The costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.
What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.
Chap 15. Stick with Good Habits Every Day
One of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of making progress.
Don’t break the chain.
Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.
Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits. It is pitfall that can detail your habits.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing.
Chap 16. Accountable Partner
The inversion of the 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it unsatisfying.
The more immediate and more costly a mistake is, the faster you will learn from it.
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.
Chap 17. When Genes Matter
The secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition.
Genes cannot be easily changed, which means they provide a powerful advantage in favorable circumstances and a serious disadvantage in unfavorable circumstances.
Competence is highly dependent on context. if you want to be truly great, selecting the right place to focus is crucial.
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.
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.
The most common approach is trial and error.
The proper balance depends on whether you’re winning or losing.
The work that hurts you less than it hurts others is the work you were made to do.
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.
The more you master a specific skill, the harder it becomes for others to compete with you.
Chap 18. Goldilocks Rule
The human brain loves a challenge, but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty.
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.
You need to regularly search for challenges that push you to your edge while continuing to make enough progress to stay motivated.
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.
You have to fall in love with boredom.
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.
Chap 19. Downside of Creating Good Habits
Habits are the backbone of any pursuit of excellence.
At first, each repetition develops fluency, speed, and skill.
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.
Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
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.
The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you.
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.
Please read the summary, the whole book and buy them.
Cheers!
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Sunandhini Radhakrishnan
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