Atomic Habits

        Can one coin make a person rich? If you give a person a pile of ten coins, you wouldn’t claim that he or she is rich. But what if you add another? And another? And another? At some point, you will have to admit that no one can be rich unless one coin can make him or her so. Similarly, can one tiny change transform your life? It’s unlikely you would say so. But what if you made another? And another? At some point, you will have to admit that your life was transformed by one small change. A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. The better the habits are, the better the outcomes will be. “Atomic Habits” by James Clear is one such masterpiece which clearly signifies the importance of habits and how one can change his/her habits progressively. James starts with his own life story and how he was able to overcome his struggles through the change of his habits. Small changes often appear to make no difference until it overcomes a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. One needs to be patient.

        The author suggests that the most effective way to change habits is to focus not on what one want to achieve, but on who one wish to become. For example, the goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader. Building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. The cue triggers the brain to initiate a behavior. Cravings are the motivational force behind every habit. For a smoker, the sight of seeing someone smoking can be potent trigger that sparks an intense wave of desire. The response is the actual habit we perform, which can take the form of a thought or an action. Finally, the response delivers a reward. For example, your phone buzzes with a new text message which is a cue. Due to craving, you want to know the contents of the message. Next, you grab your phone and read the text, which is a response. Thereby, you satisfy your craving to read the message which is your reward. Here, grabbing your phone becomes associated with your phone buzzing which becomes a habit. The author put forth four laws for making a good habit and breaking a bad habit. For building a good habit,

      1. Make it obvious
      2. Make it attractive
      3. Make it easy
      4. Make it satisfying

        Once our habits become automatic, we stop paying attention to what we are doing. So, how to make good habits to automatic? The first step is to design our environment to have proper cues. For example, if one want to drink more water, fill up a few water bottles each morning and place them in common locations around the home. This will increase the chance of drinking more water. The second method is we can use habit stacking i.e., after my current habit, I will do my new habit. After I write my to-do list for the day, I will immediately begin my first task. On the other hand, to avoid bad habits, reduce exposure to bad one. We can remove the cues of our bad habits from our environment. If you are wasting too much time watching television, move the TV out of the bedroom.

        The author explains how dopamine helps in maintaining the habits. When the level of dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act. We will keep a habit, only when the level of pleasure it gives is high (i.e., high dopamine level). It is the anticipation of reward, not the fulfillment of it, that gets us to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine strike. To make a habit attractive, we can pair an action we want to do with an action we need to do. For example, if we want to check social media, but at the same time, we need to exercise more, then we can plan like: After I pull out my phone, I will do ten pushups (need). After I do ten pushups, I will check social media (want). Similarly, to break a bad habit, we must make it unattractive. We can highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit to make it seem unattractive. Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feeling and unattractive when we associate them with negative feeling.

        I was super impressed with the two-minute rule mentioned in this book. It says that when you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do. This was impressing. We can scale down any habit into a two-minute version. For example, if your goal is to 'Read before bed each night', scale it down to 'Read one page before bed'. If you planned to lose weight and hit the gym, start by going to gym everyday and stay there just for 5 minutes. You can leave after five minutes. As you progress, you can notice, this will become your habit and these 5 minutes will gradually increase, as you would develop your mentality, to increase your progress at Gym. Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, we can do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. We must standardize before we can optimize. The amount of time we have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times we have performed it.

        Have you wondered, why would someone smoke if they know it will increase the risk of lung cancer? Why would someone overeat when they know it increases their risk of obesity? If you understand, how our brain prioritizes rewards, we can make a clear judgement. The consequences of bad habits are delayed while the rewards are immediate. Smoking might kill you in ten years, but it reduces stress and eases your nicotine craving now. Overeating is harmful in the long run but appetizing in the moment. With good habits, it is the reverse. The immediate outcome is unenjoyable, but the ultimate outcome feels good. We may not see progress at the first day of gym, but it will payoff in long run. To get a habit to stick, we need to feel immediately successful, even if it’s in a small way. We can achieve this by giving us a small reward immediately when we complete our habit. For example, after coming back from Gym, you can afford yourself with fresh juice and good food, which makes you to feel motivated.

        So, what we can do if we miss our habit for a day? The author reminds us a simple rule: Never miss twice. Missing one day in a gym happens, but we need not miss two in a row. As soon as one streak ends, we must get started on the next one. The first mistake is never the one that ruins us. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.

        This book has so many other insights on, how to choose habits for our personality? How to love boredom? How to review our habits and make adjustment? And so on. I have started this book with less hope. But after reading this book, it gave me a completely new idea to build a new habit and break my bad habits. The techniques mentioned in this book are so easy to adapt and follow. The language was quite clear and understandable. Anyone with basic vocabulary knowledge can easily read this book as it is very easy to grasp the points. And finally, as the saying goes by, “Practice makes Perfection”. Only by practicing the techniques, we can expect the outcome. Small habits just don’t add up. They indeed compound.

Tiny changes over a course of time bring remarkable results!

Happy Reading☺️

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