– Make it your identity
– Take the smallest next step
– Make good habits easy
– Create the environment for good habits easy and bad habits hard
– Find a partner
– Do it every single day
Category: habits
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I loved this book and will keep and re-read again in a year.
Each chapter is about 10 pages, which fits very nicely with my “read 10 pages of a book” habit in the morning.
It gives a little bit of science with each advice given on how to build long lasting good habits and break bad habits. The cheat sheet is at http://atomichabits.com/cheasheet
Some ideas from the book that I didn’t know about
- Design your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible.
- Use temptation bundling. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
- Use the 2 minute rule. Downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less.
- Use reinforcement. Give yourself and immediate reward when you complet you habit
- Never miss twice. When you forget to do a habit, make sure you get back on track immediately.
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James Clear’s book Atomic Habits – During the early phases of forming a good habit (going to the gym, eating healthier, saving for retirement) there is no immediate reward. However with bad habits (eating ice cream, watching Netlifx, scrolling through Instagram), we get immediate reward.
Unfortunately humans are flawed, we tend to avoid things that give us pain and do more of what feels good as a default. In his book, he recommends building in a reward in order to trick the brain to do more of what is good for us. For example, getting a massage after a workout. Setting aside a fund to Travel to Europe, when we skip going to the restaurant.
Atomic Habits is one of the most easy to read and actionable book I have encountered. Each chapter is 10 pages, at the end there are bullet items to summarize the book.
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We can talk about what we value but until we put our time and our money as wagers, talk is cheap.
In the book Atomic Habits, the author James Clear suggest that repetition is the key to forming habits. Doing 5 minutes of reading every day, is way better than spending 6 hours reading a book every 6 months. Taking 100 photos and iterating, is better than taking 1 perfect photo a year.
As an example about my parents, agreeing to pay for a new car with the safety features for my parent is better than talking about worrying about my dad driving at his age.
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By accident I stumbled upon a method to start changing behaviors.
2018
In 2018 I wanted to not buy anything that was not perishable. I wanted to learn to pratice self control.
As the year passed, I wrote down as few rules as I realized the gap between a very strict rule and what else I wanted to accomplish in my life.
- Rule 1: All food and household consumables was okay to buy.
- Rule 2: I chose to buy all the books I wanted to read, because I wanted to read long form and keep on learning.
- Rule 3: No clothing of any kind including socks and underwear ( this was a mistake )
- Rule 4: Nothing that was not a consumable.
I finished the year feeling very good about being able to control what I buy. My only non consumable was a badminton racket, the Astrox 88D.
2019
After a strict rule about not buying , in 2018, I strive to only buy non consumables only once a quarter. So I kept a list of items I will purchase once the quarter window opens up. This should help eliminate impulse buying.
In 2019, I also cancelled Amazon prime since I wanted to ween myself off of addictative services like prime, Netflix.
Small habits
In many habit research, they suggest to
- Replace one bad habit with a good habit.
- Add a new habit on top of another, chaining them together
- Do something small first
To try out suggestion, I have started to wake up earlier and do 5 to 10 minutes of meditation, follow by 5 to 10 minutes of stretching, strength or yoga using the Peloton app. So far, this habit has stuck for 10 weeks. My daily habit is to wake up at 6:25, make coffee, drink a quarter cup, do meditation, stretch and begin the day to get ready.
Part of my bookclub at work is to read through Atomic Habits book by James Clear and using the book to form another new habit.
My next habit is to read 10 pages of a physical book everyday after my morning stretching. Wish me luck.
Tony Tam 