Atomic Habits is a New York Times bestseller self-help book written by James Clear, which has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide since 2018. Clear started writing about habit-formation and the psychology behind it in his blog and went on to write a book after getting a really good feedback from fans, particularly from athletes and coaches. James is also a motivational speaker, weightlifter, and a former baseball athlete.
The Power of 1% Change
In the book Atomic Habits, James points out that by improving 1% every single day for a full year, you will have become 37 times better at the end of the year because of the compounding effect. On the other hand, if you get 1% worse each day for a full year, you would only go back to zero and not go anywhere else. When people think about habit formation, they tend to go for the fast and easy solution, which 75% of the time ends up as a failure.
Real results comes from the tiny habits that we develop and the little choices that we make for ourselves every day when we marginalize these things into a specific time horizon. According to Clear's book, habit is defined as a behaviour that has been repeated enough times to become automatic, with the ultimate purpose of solving the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible.
The Plateau of Latent Potential
According to the book, The Plateau of Latent Potential is the lag time between doing what we need to do and seeing the results we want to see. Apparently, when we try to form a habit, we expect progress to be linear when in reality, outcomes actually come out delayed, hence we do not see the progress that we’re making. A good example of this is when a stonecutter hits away at a rock 100 times without making a dent, but then, on the 101st hit, the rock splits in half.
In terms of progress and performance, there is often a delay between what we expect to happen and what actually happens. Desired results are often delayed. Clear calls the delay between expectations and results as the Plateau of Latent Potential, or the Valley of Disappointment, because people often lose the motivation to continue when months or even years of hard work, take time to produce the breakthrough they are looking for.
Systems, not Goals
For years, we have been more accustomed to the mindset that if we want something in life, we have to set specific, actionable goals. Goal setting focuses on some sort of a survivorship bias. We only recognize the people who end up as winners or survivors, and mistakenly assume that it was their goals that led to their success. Imagine if you had a messy room and you made a goal to clean it. If you find the energy and will to clean it now, then you will have accomplished your goal of getting a clean room. However, if you maintain the sloppy habits that led to having a room full of clutter in the first place, you’re never going to have a clean room forever.
While goals can provide direction and push you forward considering you find the motivation to do things, systems are much better in making sure that there is real progress taking place even in the absence of motivation. The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. Meanwhile, the purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. If you focus on systems instead of goals, the score takes care of itself.
The 4 Stages of Habit Formation
The process of habit formation can be split into four simple steps: cue, craving, response and reward.
Cue
The cue is the stimulus that triggers your brain to start a behaviour. This first part of the entire four-part process is very important as this propels a habit into action. A cue predicts a reward at the end.
It could be your phone buzzing when you get a new text message. It could also be the sweet smell of bread as you walk down the street next to a bakery. It could also be as simple as waking up. Because the cue is the first indication that there is a reward in the end, it leads us to obsessing about the next thing to do which is the craving.
Craving
Craving is the second part of the habit loop and is mostly involved in the motivation aspect of every habit. Craving doesn’t particularly point out to the habit itself, but the change it delivers gets us hooked. You do not crave for a cigarette, you crave the feeling of relief it provides when you’re blowing smoke off your lips. You’re not really motivated at brushing your teeth, but rather crave the feeling of a clean mouth afterwards.
Every craving is connected to a change that you want to experience. If your phone buzzes, your craving is to learn the contents of the message. If you smell bread from a nearby bakery, then you begin to crave to eat that bread.
Response
The third part of the habit loop is Response. This is when you actually perform the habit after the cue and craving happens. When your phone buzzes and you’re craving to find out the contents of the message, then your response is to open your phone and read the text. If you smell bread from a nearby bakery, and you crave to eat that bread, then the response is to buy bread so you can eat it. Response is simply the action that you want to do based on cues and cravings, which will lead you to the fourth stage of the habit loop - Rewards.
Reward
Rewards are the end goal of each habit. The cue primarily anticipates the reward in the end while the craving is about desiring the reward. Response is the action involved that leads to claiming the reward.
The first purpose of rewards is to satisfy cravings. Second is to teach us which actions are worth retaining in the future. If a behaviour is insufficient in any of the four stages within the process, it will not become a habit. Simply eliminating a cue can prevent a habit from starting in the first place. Place a lot of cues, and the sky's the limit to creating new habits.
How to create and sustain a good habit
Make it obvious
When attempting to form a habit, many people look for motivation when all that they really need is clarity. If you can clearly identify the cue that starts and propels a habit into action, the process becomes unstoppable and automatic. For example, if you're trying to learn how to play the guitar, if your guitar is placed in the middle of the living room, then you're more likely to grab it to practice because you see it more often.
If you constantly carry a water bottle around at work, you are more likely to drink it. If you want to build a reading habit, by placing a book on top of your bed, 99% of the time the outcome is predictable. You will grab the book, open the pages and start reading as you lie yourself down on bed. Every habit is initiated by a cue and we are more likely to notice these cues if they easily stand out.
When it comes to stopping a bad habit, we can simply invert this law to making it invisible. By making cues difficult if not impossible to see, a habit or behaviour would never take place. If you put your phone far away from your bed during bedtime, then you won't be able to use it. If you don't buy cigarettes in the first place, then you wouldn't be able to smoke. If you hide your Xbox in a cupboard, then you wouldn't be able to play with it the moment you get home from work.
Make it attractive
According to James Clear's book, the more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming. According to science, habits are driven into action by a dopamine feedback loop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act. The easiest way to making a new habit attractive, is to pair that certain habit with something that we might like or enjoy.
For example, jogging on a treadmill while watching a Netflix film could make the activity more enjoyable. Reading a book is more relaxing if you pair it with drinking your favourite hot beverage like tea or coffee. Writing could be more fun if you're doing it in a place with a great view, or if you're using a special pen or notebook. Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do, with an action you need to do.
In stopping bad habits, we can make the habit unattractive. Cigarette manufacturers have already put warnings on cigarette packs about the high risk of cancer for people who smoke. You can also put some reminders in your wallet about the risks of eating processed foods so when you take out your grocery card, it would remind you to make better choices when shopping. You can also watch documentaries about the dangers of alcohol consumption or attend an AA program, if you want to stop drinking alcohol.
Make it easy
The main objective, which is to sustain the formation of a new habit and make it automatic, is to make it easy to execute. James Clear talks about the Law of Least Effort, which focuses on the execution of an action with the least amount of work or friction, ignoring the magnitude. To make a habit easy to do, we have to reduce the friction or the barriers that block it's execution. To make a habit impossible to do when trying to stop bad habits, we have to increase the friction and add more barriers to block the execution.
For example, doing 5 push-ups per day is more likely to be sustainable rather than doing 30 push-ups per day. Studying a foreign language for 15 minutes only per day, is more sustainable than doing it 3 hours per day. Eating a healthy diet would be easier if your fridge was full of healthy food in the first place, rather than junk foods and sweets. A good strategy of starting out a new habit is using the Two-Minute Rule, which states that a habit should only take at least two minutes to do. When the habit has taken off for a while, the duration can slowly increase either intentionally with you deciding on it or unintentionally because you can do more naturally.
By making it difficult, we can stop certain habits and behaviours from execution. For instance, if you tend to overspend at shopping centres, by leaving your cards at home and carrying only a certain amount of cash, you are unlikely to spend more than what you really need. By not buying desserts, cakes, junk foods and other unhealthy treats and not storing them in your fridge, then there is no way that you can eat any when you're at home. By turning your phone off on Friday or Saturday nights, there is no way for friends to contact you for drinks, unless they turn up at your doorstep.
Make it satisfying
According to research, a behaviour is more likely to be repeated if the experience is satisfying or rewarding. The human brain has evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards. James Clear wrote about the Cardinal Rule of Behaviour Change, which is "What is immediately rewarded, gets repeated". Basically, to get a habit to stick, you need to feel immediately successful, which is why in the formation of new habits there should be a very small margin of expectations.
The best way to make a habit satisfying is to track it's progress. By simply marking an X on that calendar sheet for days when you've gone to the gym, it gives you the feeling of making progress, which makes it highly likely for you to go to the gym again tomorrow just to get another X. If you give yourself a cheat meal where you can eat whatever you want after sticking to a healthy diet for a week, you are more likely to sustain that diet because you know you're not being deprived of the food you want to eat, and can still have them at the end of the week. You can also reward yourself by buying new clothes, every time you lose a few pounds on the scale.
Also, by making habits unsatisfying, you can prevent them from happening in the first place when there are no rewards anticipated by cues. For example, getting an accountability partner when trying to lose weight can make you feel guilty every time you lose track of your diet. You can also make a bet with someone or at some websites online and pay them money if you don't achieve certain goals. The most common ones are if you don't lose a certain amount of weight, you pay, or if you were supposed to run a certain number of miles and didn't achieve it, you pay.
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