An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

By James Clear

atomic

1. an extremely small amount of a thing; the single irreducible unit of a larger system.
2. the source of immense energy or power.

habit

1. a routine or practice performed regularly; an automatic response to a specific situation.

Introduction

• Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years…With the same habits, you’ll end up with the same results. But with better habits, anything is possible.

The Fundamentals

Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference

The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits

• If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero.
• A single decision is easy to dismiss. But when we repeat 1 percent errors, day after day, by replicating poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalizing little excuses, our small choices compound into toxic results.
• Success is the product of daily habits - not once-in-a-lifetime transformations…You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.
• Positive Compounding:
  • Productivity compounds - the more tasks you can handle without thinking, the more your brain is free to focus on other areas.
  • Knowledge compounds - learning one new idea won’t make you a genius, but a commitment to lifelong learning can be transformative…Each book you read not only teaches you something new but also opens up different ways of thinking about old ideas.
  • Relationships compound - being a little bit nicer in each interaction can result in a network of broad and strong connections over time.
• Negative compounding:
  • Stress compounds - stress is manageable, but when it persists for years, little stresses compound into serious health issues.
  • Negative thoughts - the more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way.
  • Outrage compounds - micro aggressions/daily aggravations slowly multiply until one event tips the scales and outrage spreads like wildfire.
• “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it - but all that had gone before.” - Jacob Riis
• The Plateau of Latent Potential
• Forget about goals, focus on systems instead
  • Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.