Atomic Habits: consistency is key

Introduction

Atomic Habits has been a truly life-changing book. Written by James Clear, it was published on October 16, 2018, and is a New York Times bestseller as well as having sold over 15 million copies. In his book, he uses studies in psychology and neuroscience as well as examples of successful entrepreneurs and coaches, sports teams, etc. he proves the power of tiny 1% improvements through habits.

This book has helped me see the power of slow and consistent progress, not just in habits, but in all aspects of life, whether it be financially, educationally, spiritually, or something completely different.

Key ideas in the book

1% improvements

James Clear says: “Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement”. After I read the book, I can see why he says that. The benefits of habit are not linear but are exponential, or compounding as James prefers. He says if you get 1% better every day for one year, you will be almost 38 times better than you were before that year began. Similarly, if you got 1% worse every day for one year, you would be only 3% of what you were at the beginning of that year. I also noticed in the graph below that in one year, you make more progress because of good habits long term but you make more (negative)progress short term. This means that while bad habits do a lot of damage at first they slowly do less damage, but this doesn’t mean bad habits, or as Clear likes to say, ineffective habits, are ok. Meanwhile, the longer you do a good habit, the more beneficial it becomes, because the consequences of habits compound.

Graph from Atomic Habits: https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Media.pdf

James also says in his book that time magnifies whatever you feed it. If you do good(or effective) habits consistently, their outcomes will compound, resulting in larger and larger (positive or negative)outcomes the longer you do them.

Because the outcomes of habits compound, the results of our effort aren’t linear and often don’t come quickly. Unfortunately, a lot of people expect the results of our habits to come promptly after we start doing them, but that is often not the case. It can take weeks, months, and even years before our effort is visible. It is important to remember that before our efforts show, our effort isn’t wasted, it’s simply stored until we cross a critical threshold. when we cross this threshold, the results of our effort, suddenly become a lot more visible. When we expect our progress to show promptly or to be linear, we often find ourselves quitting the habit because what we wanted to happen or expected to happen, doesn’t happen as soon as we expect or want. This is what James Clear calls the valley of latent potential. It may sound very fancy, but it seems simple after we look at the graph below:

Graph from Atomic Habits: https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Media.pdf

To help his readers better understand the plateau of latent potential, James wrote in Atomic Habits that the critical threshold we have to cross to see our progress paying off is like an ice cube in a very cold room. The room’s temperature is 3 degrees Celsius. The room slowly warms up. The room is now 0 degrees Celsius. The ice cube is still frozen. The room continues to slowly heat up. The room is now 1 degree Celsius. The ice cube starts melting. That tiny 1-degree increase was no different than the increases before it. But that tiny difference unlocked that threshold I was talking about, and all of a sudden. All that progress became visible.

Systems over goals

James says there are 4 main problems with goals:

• Winners and losers have the same goals, which is why goals are not what differentiated winners and losers. Every candidate wants the job, every olympian wants that gold medal, every businessman wants to make billions, every author wants to sell millions of books. The list goes on and on.
• Achieving your goals is good, but if you don’t build a system to achieve your goals, you will slump back into your old ways. For example, cleaning your room has no long-term benefits unless you stop your pigsty habits because your room will become messy again very soon.
• Goals limit happiness because we continuously say “When we achieve (goal), then we will be happy”. This puts off happiness as something only our future self can enjoy. What if we never achieve that goal in our lifetime? We would have so much regret.
• When we achieve our greatest goals, there is always the question “What now?”. When you focus on systems instead of goals, you always have something to do and you don’t have to fear having nothing left to achieve. “The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.“ — James Clear

When you forget about goals and focus on systems instead then you will automatically achieve your goals. The coach of the San Francisco 49ers, Bill Walsh said “The score takes care of itself”. It would be dumb to constantly clean a regularly without at least trying to fix the source of the river’s pollution.

The best way to form a habit

When it comes to behavior change, most people focus on the outcomes they want to achieve through their habits. They focus on their goals. They then go through the process of forming their habit, then, the habit becomes part of their identity. The most effective way to change a habit is to try and change your identity. What I mean by that is that you should think about “what kind of person would have this habit” or “what kind of person has already achieved what I want to achieve?”. Then, you should try and be like that person. When your habits conflict with your identity, you automatically change your habits to match your identity. This is why it is so important to focus on changing your identity to achieve what you want to achieve. If you want to get ripped, don’t go on some random diet you found on social media. Instead, think “What would a ripped person have done to achieve that ripped physique?”. You would think, they probably would have gone to the gym consistently and taken care of their nutrition. When you adopt the identity of a ripped person and start thinking like a ripped person, you eventually become ripped. It’s common sense.

Graph from Atomic Habits: https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Media.pdf

In another example, 2 people are trying to quit their bad smoking habits. When offered a cigar, the first replies “No thanks, I’m trying to quit”. When offered a cigar, the second person replies “No thanks, I’m not a smoker”. James points out that while this may be a small difference, the second person is more likely to achieve their goal of not quitting cigars because the second person is focusing on changing their identity instead of changing their smoking habit. The second person thought to themselves “What would a person who doesn’t smoke say when offered a cigar?” he then answered his question and said, “No thanks, I’m not a smoker”.

Graph from Atomic Habits: https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Media.pdf

The 4 stages of a habit

The 4 stages of a habit are cue, craving, response, and reward. The cue is what causes you to notice the habit. The craving is caused by the cue and is when you want to do the habit because, in a similar scenario in your life, the outcome of that action or habit was positive or beneficial. The response is how you act according to your craving. After your action, you get an outcome. All this happens within seconds. The more we do a habit, the more that habit or action becomes habitual. The more habitual something becomes, the faster we do it and the more subconscious the habit becomes because essentially, habits are our brain’s autopilot mode. Habits are essential because our conscious mind can only take a limited amount of things at a time so the mind tries to put whatever it can into autopilot mode.

Graph from Atomic Habits: https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Media.pdf

If the outcome or reward is good, you are likely to do the habit again. If the outcome is bad, you are unlikely to do the habit again. If the response or action required to obtain the reward requires too much effort, you are not likely to make the habit. If the craving for the reward is not strong enough, you are not likely to the habit. If the cue is not pronounced or noticeable enough, you are not likely to do the habit. With this knowledge, we can engineer good habits that we are likely to do and bad habits that we are unlikely to do.

Graph from Atomic Habits: https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Media.pdf

How to build a good(effective) habit and break a bad(ineffective) one

James has 4 rules for making good habits. Make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying.

Make it obvious

The make-it-obvious rule increases the number of cues you get for a good habit. The make-it-invisible rule decreases the number of cues you get for bad habits. The make-it-obvious rule is all about your environment and how you design it. If you’re trying to eat better, would it be helpful to have junk food on your kitchen counter where you could easily see it and have fruit hidden away in the fridge, or have fruit on the kitchen counter where you can easily see it and all the junk food hidden away in the back of your pantry?

If the cue is not obvious enough, we’re not likely to start the habit.

Make it attractive

The make-it-attractive rule is all about increasing your craving for a good habit and decreasing your craving for a bad habit. For example, if you made the habit of eating junk food seem gross, unhealthy and something that does not feel good and eating healthy foods seem like something that feels good, healthy, and pleasant you can really improve your diet. You could also join a culture or community where your desired habits are normal and appreciated because that makes your desired habits more attractive and easier to do because most people would rather be wrong with the crowd than be right alone.

If the habit is not attractive enough, we are not likely to have a strong enough desire to do the habit.

Make it easy

As humans, we have evolved to lean towards doing the thing that takes the least amount of energy. This is why we have to engineer habits so that there is as little friction between us and a good habit and as much friction between us and a bad habit as possible. This is where the make-it-easy rule comes in. If you’re trying to eat healthier, over the weekend, meal-prep some healthy snacks and dishes. Hide all the junk food in a hard-to-reach place like a very high shelf, upstairs(if you live in a house). If you’re really hard-core you can have a friend hide the junk food or if they live close to you, in their own home. You can also lock it in a safe. After a while, you’re going to stop buying junk food because you always end up not eating it as it is so inaccessible.

If the habit is immediately too difficult(we tend to lean towards things that are easy and more rewarding short term, not long term), We are not likely to do the habit because as humans, we have evolved to do what is easiest(this counts not just for our body, but also mentally, and is why we lie. Lying may seem easy at first, but it becomes difficult later on).

Make is satisfying

James Clear’s cardinal rule of behavior change states: “What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided”. When I was talking about the make-it-easy rule I briefly talked about long-term vs short-term rewards. Before agriculture, our ancestors lived in a type of environment called an immediate-return environment. This means that their actions would have clear outcomes either right away or in the near future. After agriculture, we did not need to worry about survival as much, so our environment turned into a delayed-return environment. The last time our minds evolved was about 35,000 years ago. Agriculture became a thing around 12,000 years ago. This means our minds haven’t really gotten the chance to evolve for the change between an immediate-return environment and a delayed-return environment. This is why our minds prefer immediate outcomes over delayed outcomes.

When creating a good habit that is easy to stick to and more likely to be repeated, we need our habits’ outcomes to be satisfying.

What I took away from this book

Atomic Habits has been one of those few truly life-changing books. Not only has it helped me to understand the power of habits and gradual; consistent progress, but t has also taught me a lot about human behavior. I have an interest in psychology but don’t really want it o become my career and that is why Atomic Habits appealed a bit more to me than the average reader. Honestly, I would definitely recommend this book to other people, and I have to. I’ve recommended it to a lot of family and friends. I also really love reading. I love it so much, I’ve actually gotten into trouble with my parents and teachers for reading too much and not paying attention. I’ve read for hours on end before. sometimes, only getting up to use the bathroom!

Atomic habits has taught me in a lot of areas in my life, that consistency is more important than the time money, or effort you invest in the thing you’re doing. This is because if you spend 2 hours on something, 5 times a week, you’re probably going to make less progress long-term than if you spend around 45 minutes every day because you are not spending so much time that you get burnt out and the consistency makes up for the less time spent doing the task. On top of that, you’re more likely to complete the daily 45 minutes, than the 2 hours because it is a pretty long time and it’s hard to stay productive that long. That is why, long-term progress heavily depends on consistency, as the effort required, gets spread out so that it feels like less work, but in reality, it’s the same amount of work. Consistency is key.

Thank you for reading! your support means a lot to me. I have decided that from today, I will send my newsletter, and make a new blog post every other Sunday on a bi-weekly basis. Thanks again, and see you in 2 weeks!

-Luqman

Email me: luqman_siddique@icloud.com