The world’s most popular book on habit change:
Atomic Habits
I’ve spent the past 100 days summarizing and visualizing the best ideas in the book.
Here’s what I learned:
Small repeated habits add up to big changes.
Imagine you’re a pilot flying from Los Angeles to New York City. Just before takeoff you turn right by 3.5 degrees. This tiny change is barely noticeable on the runway. The front of the plane moves only 90 inches.
It seems like nothing. But when you take flight, that small change in direction starts to add up. After flying across the entire United States, you land hundreds of miles away in Washington DC instead of New York City.
Tiny changes in your habits add up in the same way. At the start you can’t see their impact. Over months and years, though, your habits multiply to change your life.
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.” – page 16
Early progress is invisible. Don’t get discouraged.
Most of us want fast results—We want to see the impact of a new habit right away. Unfortunately, early progress is hidden.
Imagine an ice cube in a room 10 degrees colder than the melting point of ice…
You heat up the room by 1 degree and look at the ice cube. Nothing’s changed. You heat the room again—2 degrees. Still nothing. 3 degrees, 4 degrees—nothing. At this point you probably feel like giving up. The work you’re doing to heat the room seems pointless.
But if you keep going, you’ll eventually hit the melting point. Suddenly you get results—water starts dripping from the ice. With each additional degree, your work compounds. The ice melts faster and faster. All that invisible work is finally paying off.
Habits work the same way. When you start a new habit you don’t see immediate results. You might work for days, months, or even years. This long period of work with no results is discouraging—It’s why a lot of people give up before they see a difference.
If you stick to a habit for long enough, eventually you’ll break through The Plateau of Latent Potential. It’s the critical threshold (like hitting the melting point) where results become suddenly visible.
Goals don’t work. Use systems.
Classic productivity advice emphasizes goal setting. Companies use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and people use New Year’s Resolutions.
With such a strong focus on goals you’d think we’d all be succeeding, but we all know people who’ve failed to hit their goals (including ourselves!). What’s the difference between someone who succeeds and someone who fails? Hint: it’s not their goals.
What we really need is something that makes success inevitable.
Imagine two people trying to start a weekly newsletter.
Person A writes down their goal, but they’re overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, so they don’t take action towards achieving it.
Person B focuses on the steps to achieve their goal. They create a system:
• Write every morning at 8 AM for 30 minutes
• Edit on Thursdays at 6 PM
• Schedule the email to go out on Monday at 10 AM.
Which person is more likely to start a newsletter?
We don’t need better goals. We need better systems.
Lasting change is identity change.
There are three layers involved in changing any behavior: identity, process, and outcomes.
Every single person trying to change thinks about the outcome layer. You know the outcome you want to achieve. For example:
• Lose 10lbs
• Stop drinking
• Write a novel
This is the WHAT of behavior change. Most attempts to change start here.
The middle layer involves process—Setting up a time to go to the gym or planning a new workout routine.
This is the HOW of behavior change.
Very few people consider the third layer—Identity.
The identity layer of behavior change involves changing your beliefs about yourself and the world.
Most people try to change habits from the outside in. They focus on what they want without changing their beliefs.
Even if they succeed, beliefs from their old identity prevent them from making a lasting change.
If you want to make changes that last don’t start with what you want. They start with who you want to become. Start your habit change by changing your identity.
If identity change is so important, what can you do about it? There are two steps:
1. Decide who you want to be
2. Prove it to yourself with small wins
You can think of every habit and every action as a vote for the person you want to be.
When you practice these habits over and over your votes accumulate. This proof starts to shift your identity.
The best part is that you don’t have to be perfect. You just need the majority of the votes.
This is the power of habits. Stick with them long enough and you can actually change your identity.
How to build good habits and break bad ones
We know we need to repeat tiny habits. But how do you get yourself to take action so you can become who you want to be? The key is to understand what drives your daily habits—The Habit Loop:
This 4 step process is beneath everything you do.
1. A cue triggers a craving
2. The craving makes you want a reward
3. You respond to get that reward
4. The reward satisfies your craving
Understanding these 4 steps gives you a blueprint for building good habits and breaking a bad ones. If you want to build a good habit you can:
1. Make it Obvious (cue)
2. Make it Attractive (craving)
3. Make it Easy (response)
4. Make it Satisfying (reward)
You can make good habits obvious by:
• Creating visual cues in your environment that prompt you to act
• Setting implementation intentions—”I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]
You can make good habits attractive by:
• Temptation bundling—pairing something you want to do with something you need to do
• Joining social groups where your desired behavior is the norm
You can make good habits easy by
• Using the two minute rule—when starting a new habit, it should take less than 2 minutes to complete
• Focusing on quantity over quality when you’re creating something
You can make good habits satisfying by
• Making rewards immediate after you accomplish a good habit
• Using visual progress and habit tracking to make each action more satisfying
If you want to break a bad habit you can:
• Make it Invisible (cue)
• Make it Unattractive (craving)
• Make it Difficult (response)
• Make it Unsatisfying (reward)
You can make bad habits invisible by:
• Reducing visual cues in your environment for the bad habit
• Spending less time in tempting situations
You can make bad habits unattractive by:
• Highlighting the benefits of avoiding the bad habit
You can make bad habits difficult by:
• Using a commitment device—a one-time choice that locks in your behavior in the future
• Adding friction that makes a bad habit harder to do
You can make bad habits unsatisfying by:
• Adding an accountability partner to create an immediate cost to inaction
• Making failure public and painful by letting people watch your behavior
If you’re struggling to change your behavior but don’t know why, the answer can be found somewhere in these 4 laws:
What good habits would you like to build?
What bad habits would you like to change?
If you found this helpful:
1. RT the tweet below to help others
2. Follow me @nalband for more visual threads. twitter.com/nalband/status…
The world’s most popular book on habit change:
Atomic Habits
I’ve spent the past 100 days summarizing and visualizing the best ideas in the book.
Here’s what I learned:
If you like this tweet, you’ll ❤️ my exclusive emails.
Join here and get The Ultimate Habit Worksheet for free: thunknotes.com/newsletter-hab…