Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

by James Clear

looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.

But in order to make a meaningful difference, habits need to persist long enough to break through this plateau—what I call the Plateau of Latent Potential.

The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.

Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

There are three levels of change: outcome change, process change, and identity change. The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become. Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.

Whenever you want to change your behavior, you can simply ask yourself: How can I make it obvious? How can I make it attractive? How can I make it easy? How can I make it satisfying?

If a habit remains mindless, you can’t expect to improve it. As the psychologist Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Pointing-and-Calling in your own life. Say out loud the action that you are thinking of taking and what the outcome will be. If you want to cut back on your junk food habit but notice yourself grabbing another cookie, say out loud, “I’m about to eat this cookie, but I don’t need it. Eating it will cause me to gain weight and hurt my health.” Hearing your bad habits spoken aloud makes the consequences seem more real. It adds weight to the action rather than letting yourself mindlessly slip into an old routine.

The habit stacking formula is: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”

Habit stacking works best when the cue is highly specific and immediately actionable.

Some experts estimate that half of the brain’s resources are used on vision.

For this reason, a small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do.

When the cues that spark a habit are subtle or hidden, they are easy to ignore.

Create a separate space for work, study, exercise, entertainment, and cooking. The mantra I find useful is “One space, one use.”

Whenever possible, avoid mixing the context of one habit with another. When you start mixing contexts, you’ll start mixing habits—and the easier ones will usually win out.

“disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.

Make the cues of your good habits obvious and the cues of your bad habits invisible.

One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.

Automaticity is the ability to perform a behavior without thinking about each step, which occurs when the nonconscious mind takes over.

The purpose of resetting each room is not simply to clean up after the last action, but to prepare for the next action.

can also invert this principle and prime the environment to make bad behaviors difficult.

is remarkable how little friction is required to prevent unwanted behavior.

Increase the friction associated with bad behaviors. When friction is high, habits are difficult.

Prime your environment to make future actions easier.

Every day, there are a handful of moments that deliver an outsized impact. I refer to these little choices as decisive moments.

Habits are the entry point, not the end point.

Two-Minute Rule, which states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”

A new habit should not feel like a challenge. The actions that follow can be challenging, but the first two minutes should be easy.

Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. You have to standardize before you can optimize.

Commitment devices are useful because they enable you to take advantage of good intentions before you can fall victim to temptation.

Eventually, as intrinsic rewards like a better mood, more energy, and reduced stress kick in, you’ll become less concerned with chasing the secondary reward. The identity itself becomes the reinforcer. You do it because it’s who you are and it feels good to be you. The more a habit becomes part of your life, the less you need outside encouragement to follow through. Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.

The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.

It’s easy to train when you feel good, but it’s crucial to show up when you don’t feel like it—even

The all-or-nothing cycle of behavior change is just one pitfall that can derail your habits.

Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on.

The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities.