Tiny Changes and Remarkable Results
The book that made a major impact in my life is “Atomic Habits by James Clear” — it’s a must read book that each one of us should read and imbibe the insights to actually realize the benefits in your life
Some key learnings that I imbibed from the book are as below:
- The power of 1% Change
Its all about the power of compounding — it can be amazingly powerful both positively and negatively if we can leave it to develop for a period of time.
If we can get 1% better each day for a year = 1.01exp365 ~37 times better
But
If we can get 1% worse each day for a year = 0.99exp365 ~00.03 nearly to zero
“Habits are the compound interest of self improvement” — James Clear
We do not think about of these changes as the effect comes so long to come up to us — but when we keep repeating the same mistakes every day we accumulate it to larger problems.
Habits don't seem to make any difference until we cross a critical threshold as we expect improvement to be linear but the progress does not follow a linear trajectory so we tend to reach a valley of disappointment which prohibits us in continuing the habit for a long time
2.Screw Goals and Focus on Systems
The author describes four key problems of goal setting:
a. Winners and losers have the same goals of winning a race but only one wins it so it cannot be the one that differentiates between them.
b. Achieving a goal is only a momentary change
c. Goals restrict our happiness
d. Goals are at odds with long term progress
“The purpose of setting goals is to win the game whereas the purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game” — James Clear
Say you are playing a sport — in every sport the goal is to have the best score at the end of the game — so it will be ridiculous to see the score board continuously, in fact if you can focus on the process and strategy — the score will take care of itself.
3.Identity Change is the North Star of Habit change
The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when our habit becomes a part of our identity. When we solve problems in terms of outcomes and results we only solve it temporarily but to solve problems for a longer term at the system level we need to change our identity.
I am sure many one of us try to start living a healthy lifestyle by starting to go to gym but ultimately lose that habit as we always set a goal for ourselves that we want six packs or great super model figure if we can change our mindset that yes I am a healthy person and so I exercise and jog not the other way round it can remarkably inculcate the habit of doing exercise and jogging into our daily system of activities which itself will take care of our goal.
4. How do we actually build habits?
There are four stages to build a habit for your self which are:
a. Cue
First thing to do is to make it obvious by which James means that keep shorter steps to reach your habit rather than make more cumbersome steps to build it. So in simple word to give a trigger to our mind to start the habit. You have to make your habit closer to your daily environment.
b. Craving
Make your habit attractive so that it acts like dopamine to you which entices you to follow that habit and also make it easy by which I mean if you want to make your habit of reading keep the books or kindle in front of you near by your visual area by that you are less procrastinating and reducing the friction of doing it and gives that motivation to perform the habit
c. Response
Response is the action or habit that we perform
d. Reward
“what is immediately rewarded is repeated and what is immediately punished is avoided — James Clear” is the human psyche that acts a inducing effect on us to start a good or a bad habit.
Its the end goal of our habit that we initiate
Conclusion
We want to ensure to make our good habits easy, attractive, obvious and satisfying and try to make our bad habits more difficult by making the cues invisible, the action unattractive and hard and the rewards unsatisfying.
So, the great power of atomic habits is its emphasis on systems rather than goals — the key part to remember is that small habits compound they might be individually small but collectively and given time they hold remarkable power and remarkable changes to our lives
“Habits are not a finish line to cross but a lifestyle to remember”
