Atomic Habits by James Clear: Summary & Lessons - 2 | Summaries: Must Read Books for Entrepreneurs - Entrepreneurship PDF Download

The 2nd Law: Make It Attractive

Chapter 8: How to Make a Habit Irresistible

The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.
Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. Every behavior that is highly habit-forming – taking drugs, eating junk food, browsing social media – is associated with higher levels of dopamine. Dopamine is released when you experience pleasure but also when you anticipate it.
It is the anticipation of a reward – not the fulfillment of it – that gets us to take action.

“Desire is the engine that drives behavior. Every action is taken because of the anticipation that precedes it. It is the craving that leads to the response.”

The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike.
Temptation Bundling: pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do
For example:

• Only listen to podcasts you love while exercising
• Only watch your favorite show while ironing 

How to build your temptation bundling strategy:

• In the first column, write the pleasures you enjoy and the temptations that you want to do
• In the second column, write the tasks you should be doing but often procrastinate on
• Browse your list and link one of your instantly gratifying “want” behaviors with something you “should” be doing

You can combine temptation bundling with habit stacking:  “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED]. After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].”
For example:

• You want to read the news but need to express more gratitude: “After I get my morning coffee, I will say one thing I’m grateful for that happened yesterday (need). After I say one thing I’m grateful for, I will read the news (want).”
• You want to check Facebook but need to exercise more: “After I pull out my phone, I will do ten burpees (need). After I do ten burpees, I will check Facebook (want).”

Chapter 9: The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits

The culture we live in determines which behaviors are attractive to us. We tend to adopt habits that are praised and approved of by our culture because we have a strong desire to fit in and belong to the tribe.
We tend to imitate the habits of three social groups. Each group offers an opportunity to leverage the 2nd Law of Behavior Change and make our habits more attractive:

• Imitating the Close: we pick up habits from the people around us. To build better habits, join a culture where your desired behavior is normal behavior. If you are surrounded by fit people, you’re more likely to consider working out to be a common habit
• Imitating the Many: whenever we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide our behavior.  Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves
• Imitation the Powerful: we are drawn to behaviors that earn us respect, approval, admiration, and status. If a behavior can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it attractive. We are also motivated to avoid behaviors that would lower our status

Inversion of the 2nd Law: Make It Unattractive

Chapter 10: How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits

Every behavior has a surface level craving and a deeper underlying motive.
We do not desire to smoke cigarettes or check Instagram. At a deep level, we simply want to reduce uncertainty and relieve anxiety, win social acceptance and approval, or achieve status.
Our habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires. Some reduce stress by smoking a cigarette while others go for a run.
Once you associate a solution with the problem you need to solve, you keep coming back to it.
For example:

• Cue: You notice that the stove is hot. Prediction: “If I touch it I’ll get burned, so I should avoid touching it.”
• Cue: You see that the traffic light turned green. Prediction: “If I step on the gas, I’ll make it safely through the intersection, so I should step on the gas.”

Life feels reactive, but it is actually predictive.
The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them. The prediction leads to a feeling, which is how we normally describe a craving – a feeling, a desire, an urge.
Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings.
To reprogram your brain to enjoy hard habits, make them more attractive by learning to associate them with a positive experience. Highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit to make it seem unattractive.
For example:

• Exercise. Exercise can be associated with a challenging task that drains energy and wears you down. You can view it as a way to develop skills and strength. Instead of “I need to go run in the morning,” say “It’s time to build endurance and get fast”
• Finance. Saving money is often associated with sacrifice. You can associate it with freedom as living below your current means increases your future means

Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.

The 3rd Law: Make It Easy

Chapter 11: Walk Slowly, but Never Backward

We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action.

“I refer to this as the difference between being in motion and taking action. The two ideas sound similar, but they’re not the same. When you’re in motion, you’re planning and strategizing and learning. Those are all good things, but they don’t produce a result. Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will deliver an outcome.”

For example:

• Motion: outlining twenty ideas for articles. Action: sitting down and writing an article
• Motion: search for a better diet plan and read a few books on the topic. Action: eat a healthy meal

Motion can be useful, but it will never produce an outcome by itself.
Motion feels like making progress without running the risk of failure. But really, you’re just preparing to get something done.
The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning. Focus on taking action, not being in motion.
To master a habit, start with repetition, not perfection. You don’t need to map out every feature of a new habit. Just practice it. Get your reps in.
Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition.

The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it. What matters is the rate at which you perform the behavior. It’s the frequency that makes the difference.

Chapter 12: The Law of Least Effort

Human behavior follows the Law of Least Effort. We naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.
So it is crucial to make your habits so easy that you’ll do them even when you don’t feel like it.
Create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible.
Rather than trying to overcome friction, reduce the friction associated with good behaviors. When friction is low, habits are easy.
Optimize your environment to make actions easier. To practice a new habit, choose a place that is already along the path of your daily routine. Habits are easier to build when they fit into the flow of your life.
Another way is to prime your environment to make future actions easier. 

For example:

• Want to exercise? Set out your workout clothes, shoes, gym bag, and water bottle ahead of time
• Want to improve your diet? Chop up a ton of fruits and vegetables and pack them in containers so you have easy access to healthy snacks

To break bad habits, increase the friction associated with bad behaviors. When friction is high, habits are difficult.

For example:

• Watch too much television? Take the batteries out of the remote after each use so it takes an extra ten seconds to turn it back on
• Check your phone too much? Leave it in another room so you must get up to check it

Chapter 13: How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule

Habits can be completed in a few seconds but continue to impact your behavior for minutes or hours afterward. It’s easier to continue what you are doing than start something different.
Many habits occur at decisive moments – choices that are like a fork in the road – and either send you in the direction of a productive day or an unproductive one.
It’s easy to start too big. Excitement inevitably takes over and you end up trying to do too much too soon. To counteract it, use the Two-Minute Rule:

“When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”

Scale down habits into a two-minute version:

• “Read before bed each night” becomes “Read one page”
• “Do thirty minutes of yoga” becomes “Take out my yoga mat”

The idea is to make your habits as easy as possible to start. The actions that follow a new habit can be challenging, but the first two minutes should be easy. You need a “gateway habit”.
Find gateway habits that lead to your desired outcome by mapping your goals on a scale from “very easy” to “very hard.”
For example:

• Running a marathon – very hard
• Running a 5K – hard
• Walking ten thousand steps – moderately difficult
• Walking ten minutes – easy
• Putting on your running shoes – very easy

Your goal might be to run a marathon, but your gateway habit is to put on your running shoes.
The point is to master the habit of showing up. You can’t improve a habit that doesn’t exist. Make it easy to start and the rest will follow.
The more you ritualize the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things. Standardize before you optimize.
The rule also reinforces the identity you want to build. You’re taking the smallest action that confirms the type of person you want to be. One minute of reading is better than never picking up a book. It’s better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all.
Once you’ve mastered showing up, scale your habit back up toward your ultimate goal with habit shaping.
For example, if you want to become an early rise:

• Be home by 10 p.m. every night
• Have all devices turned off by 10 p.m. every night
• Be in bed by 10 p.m. every night 
• Lights off by 10 p.m. every night
• Wake up at 6 a.m. every day

Inversion of the 3rd Law: Make It Difficult

Chapter 14: How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible

Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard.
Commitment Device: a choice you make in the present that locks in better behavior in the future
For example:

• Overeating? Purchase food in individual packages instead of bulk size
• Want to get in shape? Schedule a yoga session and pay ahead of time

Commitment devices are useful because they take advantage of good intentions before you can fall victim to temptation. They increase the odds that you’ll do the right thing in the future by making bad habits difficult in the present.
The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do.
The ultimate way to lock in future behavior is to automate your future habits. Onetime choices – like buying a better mattress or enrolling in an automatic savings plan – deliver increasing returns over time.
Using technology to automate your habits is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right behavior.

“Every Monday, my assistant would reset the passwords on all my social media accounts, which logged me out on each device. All week I worked without distraction. On Friday, she would send me the new passwords. I had the entire weekend to enjoy what social media had to offer until Monday morning when she would do it again.”

For example:

• Cooking: meal-delivery services can do your grocery shopping
• Productivity: social media browsing can be cut off with a website blocker

The 4th Law: Make It Satisfying

Chapter 15: The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change

• Behavior is repeated when the experience is satisfying. For habits to stick, you need to feel immediately successful – even if it’s in a small way.
• Habits produce outcomes across time that are often misaligned. The costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.
• The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: “What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.”
• Add a little bit of immediate pleasure to the habits that pay off in the long-run and immediate pain to ones that don’t.
• In the beginning, make the ending of your habit satisfying so you stay on track. Use reinforcement with an immediate reward to increase the rate of the behavior.
• Select short-term rewards that reinforce your identity rather than ones that conflict with it.
• For example, rewarding exercise with ice cream is conflicting. Maybe reward yourself with a massage, which is both a luxury and a vote toward taking care of your body.
• You can also make avoidance visible. Open a savings account for something you want – like a “Leather Jacket”. The immediate reward of seeing yourself save money toward the jacket feels better than being deprived. You are making it satisfying to do nothing.
• Eventually, intrinsic rewards (better mood, more energy, etc.) kick in and you’ll be less concerned with chasing the secondary reward. You do it because it’s who you are. Identity sustains a habit.

Chapter 16: How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day

One of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of making progress.

A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit—like marking an X on a calendar. Don’t break the chain.

Habit trackers and other visual forms of measurement can make your habits satisfying by providing clear evidence of your progress.

Whenever possible, automate measurement. Limit manual tracking to your most important habits. Record each measurement immediately after the habit occurs. 

The habit stacking + habit tracking formula is: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [TRACK MY HABIT].”

For example:

• After I finish each set at the gym, I will record it in my workout journal
• After I put my plate in the dishwasher, I will write down what I ate

Try to keep your habit streak alive.

Life will interrupt you at some point. Remind yourself of a simple rule: never miss twice. If you miss one day, try to get back on track as quickly as possible. 

Show up on your bad (or busy) days. Lost days hurt you more than successful days help you. Doing something – ten squats or one push-up – is huge. Don’t put up a zero. Don’t let losses eat into your compounding.

Measurement is only useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you. Each number is simply one piece of feedback in the overall system. Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing.

Inversion of the 4th Law: Make It Unsatisfying

Chapter 17: How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything

• Behavior is avoided when the experience is painful or unsatisfying. Pain is an effective teacher. The more immediate the pain, the less likely the behavior.
• To prevent bad habits and eliminate unhealthy behaviors, add an instant cost to the action to reduce their odds. There can’t be a gap between the action and the consequences. As soon as actions incur an immediate consequence, behavior begins to change.
• Habit Contract: a verbal or written agreement in which you state your commitment to a particular habit and the punishment that will occur if you don’t follow through. Find accountability partners that sign off on the contract with you
• An accountability partner can create an immediate cost to inaction. Suddenly, you are not only failing to uphold your promises to yourself but also failing to uphold your promises to others.
• A habit contract can be used to add a social cost to any behavior. It makes the costs of violating your promises public and painful. Knowing that someone else is watching you can be a powerful motivator.

Advanced Tactics: How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great

Chapter 18: The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don’t)

• To maximize your odds of success, 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. 
• Habits are easier when they align with your natural abilities.
• Choose the habits that best suit you, not the most popular. Find the version of the habit that brings you satisfaction.
• Pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle. 
• At the beginning of a new activity, you want to explore. In relationships, it’s called dating. You want to try out many possibilities, research a broad range of ideas, and cast a wide net.
• Then, shift focus to the best solution you’ve found—but keep experimenting occasionally. The proper balance depends on whether you’re winning or losing.
• If you are currently winning, you exploit, exploit, exploit. If you are currently losing, you continue to explore, explore, explore.
• In the long-run, work on the strategy that delivers the best results about 80 to 90% of the time and keep exploring the remaining 10 to 20% (as per the 80/20 rule).

To narrow in on the habits and areas that will be most satisfying to you, ask yourself as you explore:

• What feels like fun to me, but work to others?
• Where do I get greater returns than the average person?
• What comes naturally to me?

Play a game that favors your strengths.

• And if you can’t find a game that favors you, create one. Rewrite the rules. When you can’t win by being better, win by being different. 
• 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.
• Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. Once you realize your strengths, you know where to spend your time and energy.

Chapter 19 The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work

The human brain loves a challenge, but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty.
The Goldilocks Rule: “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.”

The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. As habits become routine, they become less interesting and satisfying. We get bored. Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It’s the ability to keep going when work isn’t exciting that makes the difference.

“What’s the difference between the best athletes and everyone else? 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.”

Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.

When a habit is truly important to you, you have to be willing to stick to it in any mood.
The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.

Chapter 20: The Downside of Creating Good Habits

• The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors and feedback.
• Habits alone aren’t sufficient for mastery. You need a combination of automatic habits and deliberate practice:
• Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
• Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development. Each habit unlocks the next level of performance. It’s an endless cycle. 
• You must remain conscious of your performance over time so you can continue to refine and improve. Establish a system for reflection and review to ensure that you spend your time on the right things and make course corrections whenever necessary.

Annual Review

Each December, reflect on the previous year. Tally your habits and reflect on your progress by answering three questions:

• What went well this year?
• What didn’t go so well this year?
• What did I learn?

Integrity Report

Six months later, conduct a different review. Revisit your core values and question if you have been living in accordance with them. Answer three questions:

• What are the core values that drive my life and work?
• How am I living and working with integrity right now?
• How can I set a higher standard in the future?

Reflection and review is also the ideal time to revisit your identity.
In the beginning, repeating a habit is essential to build up evidence of your desired identity. As you latch on to that new identity, however, those same beliefs can hold you back from the next level of growth.
The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it. Avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of who you are.
Redefine yourself such that you get to keep important aspects of your identity even if your particular role changes:

• “I’m an athlete” becomes “I’m the type of person who is mentally tough and loves a physical challenge.”
• “I’m the CEO” translates to “I’m the type of person who builds and creates things.”

When chosen effectively, your identity works with the changing circumstances rather than against them.