Foreword
This is my first book reflection. You should expect that it’s gonna be a bit fast and loose. Also, it might be balanced too far to the “useful to me”/”just some personal notes” side of the scale than the “well-polished, intelligible, and useful to others” side.
General Impression
I really liked Atomic Habits. I think it can be a very useful book for many people and I hope that this will be true for me as well. Later on, I’ll be putting that to the test and trying to form some new atomic habits. The book starts off quite personally, with the author sharing his story of being a young man going from tragedy to triumph, allowing us to appreciate just how much he was able to benefit from his knack for forming good habits. He builds upon this personal beginning with two chapters that explain why we also ought to pay attention and learn from the book how to make effective habits for ourselves. Then there’s a chapter that goes over the four rules of building better habits (make them Obvious, Attractive, Easy, and Satisfying) and, conversely, minimizing problematic ones (Invisible, Unattractive, Difficult, and Unsatisfying). Following this initial section, there are four sections, each composed of multiple chapters and dedicated to elaborating on one of the rules (and its inverse). The book then wraps up by having a chapter each on A) the topics of genetic dispositions in relation to habit formation and life direction, B) staying motivated and focused by sticking to the right difficulty level, and C) what one has to be wary of when it comes to building strong habits and identities. Then the book concludes.
I like some specific things about the book (the first few of which I frequently appreciate in the instructional books I’ve been reading lately):
- End-of-chapter summaries and reviews
- Previewing information that will come later in the book
- Calling back to information that has already been introduced
- Effective use of diagrams and figures
- A table with sections for the four rules that are present after each of the respective main sections and slowly gets filled out with all the major points on how to best achieve Atomic Habits
- The use of websites/links within the text make the book less likely to be out-of-date even with new data, changes in the author’s opinion, etc.
- Funny and relatable examples for information
A couple of useful and important topics were brought up but are somewhat outside the internal process of habit-formation: quantity of repetitions is one of the biggest factors in improvement and that it’s important to identify the spots where one is strong, then subsequently apply maximal effort there.
What do I want to retain from this book?
Habit Scorecard: a good exercise to analyze my day and see what I do that’s positive, negative, and neutral.
I should point and call to certain activities to enforce the good ones and also verbalize the negative effects of negative ones.
- Intention Implementations: “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [SPECIFIC CONDITION, usually TIME in LOCATION]”
- Habit Stacking: “After I [EXISTING HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]”
- Temptation Bundling: + “After [NEW, NECESSARY HABIT], I will [REWARD/HABIT I WANT]” (could also be implemented with variable rewards)
The right culture (they do what I’m hoping to do, I have a form of connection with them), context, and environment have a strong effect on my ability to stick to certain habits. Try to think about affecting my environment in small ways to make the thing I want to do next time easier.
Habits are often associations/relationships with people, places, and things. Being in the context of new people, places, and things with their respective fresh/blank associations can often be a powerful step in changing one’s habits successfully.
Internal willpower/self-control/determination is a renewable but limited resource. It’s better to minimize those expenditures by making a small expenditure of willpower that completely changes the context to on in which it’s easier to do what needs doing (e.g. calling a taxi to bring you to the gym while you’re still groggy from getting up) or by designing your environment (phone locks, fridge locks, automatic internet shut-offs, etc.).
We have even our worst habits for a reason.
I can speed up habit formation by performing more repetitions over a smaller time frame than is “natural.” I want to drop my keys off in the bowl every evening? I can do it 10 times right now to get the ball rolling.
Utilize my own (very human) tendency for laziness/energy-efficiency/desire to maintain reputation.
Identify the critical moments that cascade into desirable vs. undesirable outcomes.
Two-Minute Rule: Do the smallest thing that approximates the goal (or the goal’s beginning) and just do that consistently. It’ll get easier and easier. Once consistent, then work on building it up.
Use technology/invest in my environment/automation tools.
Desire initiates, pleasure sustains. I should do better with tying particular bouts of effort/achievement into rewards, such as by immediately satisfying myself when I’ve accomplished a habit that I want to stick.
Track my habits to make them pleasurable.
Commitment devices, accountability partners, habit contracts.
The questions: What feels like fun to me, but like work for others? What makes me lose track of time? Where do I get greater returns than average? What comes naturally to me?
It’s about longevity/survival, one of the greatest threats to success is not failure but boredom (more generally, interruption – and boredom leads to interruption.
Don’t get too tied to habits/identity, you’ll constantly change and need to review/revise. These are tools for optimization but what is optimal one year might become suboptimal the next. Check what you’ve done every year or so and, on a similar time scale, see if you’re on a path that matches where you’d like to be going.
Connections to other Materials
Trigger Action Plans (TAPs), which I discovered from the rationalist community, are known in this book as intention implementations, habit stacking, and temptation bundling.
Warren Buffet (and/or Charlie Munger) strongly advises and attributes his success to just knowing what he’s good at, sticking to it, and being in a society that strongly rewards his form of talent in (might be the wrong term here) asset valuation.
A connection to my interest in therapy/self-compassion is James Clear’s claim that even the behaviors we don’t like or that we don’t want to do actually have justification. For each of us, they first developed and continue to exist to serve our real and human needs or, at least, our instincts – even if it’s mismatched with what’s actually good for us. In other words, it’s not “all your own fault” and the things you’re doing aren’t “completely useless.”
The practicality of religions and traditional cultures (explored in Jonathan Haidt’s, The Righteous Mind) is supported in this text by making selfish/free-riding behavior less attractive (“You’ll go to hell!”, “You’ll be reincarnated as a lower life form!”, etc.) and perhaps because they don’t need to expend as much willpower/self-control to do things that a lot of people can claim are “good” (“I’ll go to this food drive because it’s what we [religious group] do.”). Of course, the flip side of this is also supported in the last chapter’s warning that negative inclinations and identities can be just as strongly tied.
There were a number of connections with the teachings in “The Psychology of Money”:
- Compound interest/small changes (good and bad) really make a big difference over time in both our finances (with respect to savings -> investment -> return rates) and livelihood (with respect to habits/behaviors -> outcomes -> identity changes)
- You don’t want to unnecessarily interrupt the gradual process of your small changes incrementing – so don’t get overleveraged (even in rare crises) or, in your behaviors, immediately return to your planned strategy rather than continuing what could have been a singular small failure.
My Habits Scorecard
- Wake up =
- Turn off my alarm / sometimes snooze it (inconsistent) -=
- Get dressed =
- Go outside without glasses and eat a banana +
- Ingest vitamin D (inconsistent) +
- Turn on overhead/room light +
- Check communications (including social media) in case something else has come up -=
- Check manga subreddit to save updates for later reading -=
- Look at my Google Calendar/journal/project management software for the day +
- Desire: Refer less to my journal and more to either my schedule or the project management software
- Log into EA Gather to engage in virtual co-working +
- Put phone screen side down (inconsistent) +
- Work in segments of 25-90 minutes +
- Put on white noise while working (inconsistent) +
- Take breaks (eye-rests, stretches, snacks, grooves, and chores) in between +
- Drink coffee 2 hours after I wake up +
- Dental hygiene (inconsistent) +
- Turn off light around mid-day =
- Lunch (while listening to podcasts) +=
- …
- Write my daily journal entry (gratitude/musings, ongoing topics, incoming tasks) +
- Update my calendar/project management software with tomorrow’s tasks (very inconsistent) +
- Turn off devices and overhead lights (inconsistent) +
- Read +
- Shower +
- Dental hygiene (inconsistent) +
- Go to sleep +
Let’s make some Atomic Habits!
First off, what are the habits or behaviors that I’d like to implement? On the flip side, what is troubling me or that I’d like to stop doing?
- Get back to doing Non Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) regularly or while going to sleep
- Keep my spaces clean and organized
- Fold and put away laundry in a more uniform manner
- Develop Schelling spaces after I’ve moved
- I’d like to update my structures with tomorrow’s tasks more consistently
- I’d like to turn off devices and overhead lights more consistently
- I’d like to ingest Vitamin D more consistently
- I’d like to put white noise on more consistently
- Before writing up a journal entry for my current time period, I want to review my journal entry for the previous one
Now that we have that list, let’s explore how we’re going to use the tools we’ve learned about to address each one of these points!
- Get back to doing Non Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) regularly or while going to sleep
- When I get into bed, I’ll make it obvious (and perhaps a bit attractive) by reciting the phrase: “I’m going to sleep and I’ll sleep better by starting off with an NDSR protocol.”
- Keep my spaces clean and organized
- Two-Minute Rule (Easy): Clean up just one thing per day
- Fold and put away laundry promptly
- Obvious/Attractive: Put the laundry close to me in a way that hampers my movement so I’ll want to put the laundry away
- Develop Schelling spaces after I’ve moved
- Accountability partner: Tell my mother I’m going to make Schelling spaces and she’ll check on me to see if I’ve done so during one of our calls – failing to live up to my promise will be unattractive
- I’d like to update my structures with tomorrow’s tasks more consistently
- Satisfying: Use a habit tracker and mark down every time I journal and then update my calendar + project manager
- I’d like to turn off devices and overhead lights more consistently
- Two-Minute Rule (Easy): Get up from my chair at 10 o’clock each night
- I’d like to ingest Vitamin D more consistently
- Obvious/Easy: Leave my pills in front of my keyboard when I go to sleep so they’re right there when I start getting to work
- I’d like to put white noise on more consistently
- Obvious/Easy: Have Spotify open up automatically when I boot up my computer
- Before writing up a journal entry for my current time period, I want to review my journal entry for the previous one
- To make writing difficult, I’ll remove my hands from the keyboard and put them into my lap after opening up my journal
And those are all the changes I’ll start with in my quest to have excellent Atomic Habits. I imagine this article is not too useful for people who have not yet read the book but do let me know if you have any comments either way. Have a good one.
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