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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
James Clear
Read between
August 31 - October 3, 2024
Your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face; they are just the methods you learned to use.
Feelings and emotions transform the cues we perceive and the predictions we make into a signal that we can apply.
A craving is the sense that something is missing.
Desire is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be in the future.
When you binge-eat or light up or browse social media, what you really want is not a potato chip or a cigarette or a bunch of likes. What you really want is to feel different.
SPOT ON.
Now, imagine changing just one word: You don’t “have” to. You “get” to. You get to wake up early for work. You get to make another sales call for your business. You get to cook dinner for your family.
Reframing your habits to highlight their benefits rather than their drawbacks is a fast and lightweight way to reprogram your mind and make a habit seem more attractive.
Say you want to feel happier in general. Find something that makes you truly happy—like petting your dog or taking a bubble bath—and then create a short routine that you perform every time before you do the thing you love. Maybe you take three deep breaths and smile. Three deep breaths. Smile. Pet the dog. Repeat. Eventually, you’ll begin to associate this breathe-and-smile routine with being in a good mood. It becomes a cue that means feeling happy. Once established, you can break it out anytime you need to change your emotional state. Stressed at work? Take three deep breaths and smile. Sad
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It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change: the fastest way to lose weight, the best program to build muscle, the perfect idea for a side hustle. We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action. As Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.” I refer to this as the difference between being in motion and taking action.
If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection.
Repeating a habit leads to clear physical changes in the brain.
Like the muscles of the body responding to regular weight training, particular regions of the brain adapt as they are used and atrophy as they are abandoned.
Each time you repeat an action, you are activating a particular neural circuit associated with that habit. This means that simply putting in your reps is one of the most critical steps you can take to encoding a new habit.
That is, how many repetitions are required to make a habit automatic?
To build a habit, you need to practice it. And the most effective way to make practice happen is to adhere to the 3rd Law of Behavior Change: make it easy. The chapters that follow will show you how to do exactly that.
the less energy a habit requires, the more likely it is to occur.
In a sense, every habit is just an obstacle to getting what you really want. Dieting is an obstacle to getting fit. Meditation is an obstacle to feeling calm. Journaling is an obstacle to thinking clearly. You don’t actually want the habit itself. What you really want is the outcome the habit delivers.
it is crucial to make your habits so easy that you’ll do them even when you don’t feel like it. If you can make your good habits more convenient, you’ll be more likely to follow through on them.
HOW TO ACHIEVE MORE WITH LESS EFFORT
Pay attention to this chapter for work.
Trying to pump up your motivation to stick with a hard habit is like trying to force water through a bent hose. You can do it, but it requires a lot of effort and increases the tension in your life. Meanwhile, making your habits simple and easy is like removing the bend in the hose. Rather than trying to overcome the friction in your life, you reduce it.
when deciding where to practice a new habit, it is best to choose a place that is already along the path of your daily routine.
Similarly, when we remove the points of friction that sap our time and energy, we can achieve more with less effort.
The central idea is to create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible.
Much of the battle of building better habits comes down to finding ways to reduce the friction associated with our good habits and increase the friction associated with our bad ones.
Whenever you organize a space for its intended purpose, you are priming it to make the next action easy.
make the good habit the path of least resistance.
Habits are like the entrance ramp to a highway. They lead you down a path and, before you know it, you’re speeding toward the next behavior. It seems to be easier to continue what you are already doing than to start doing something different.
You keep snacking even when you’re already full. You check your phone for “just a second” and soon you have spent twenty minutes staring at the screen. In this way, the habits you follow without thinking often determine the choices you make when you are thinking.
Every day, there are a handful of moments that deliver an outsized impact. I refer to these little choices as decisive moments. The moment you decide between ordering takeout or cooking dinner. The moment you choose between driving your car or riding your bike. The moment you decide between starting your homework or grabbing the video game controller. These choices are a fork in the road.
Each day is made up of many moments, but it is really a few habitual choices that determine the path you take.
Habits are the entry point, not the end point. They are the cab, not the gym.
“When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”
What you want is a “gateway habit” that naturally leads you down a more productive path.
The point is to master the habit of showing up.
You’re taking the smallest action that confirms the type of person you want to be.
The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do. Increase the friction until you don’t even have the option to act.
By utilizing commitment devices, strategic onetime decisions, and technology, you can create an environment of inevitability—a space where good habits are not just an outcome you hope for but an outcome that is virtually guaranteed.
Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided.
Positive emotions cultivate habits. Negative emotions destroy them.
The fourth law of behavior change—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time.
immediate satisfaction.
Imagine you’re an animal roaming the plains of Africa—a giraffe or an elephant or a lion. On any given day, most of your decisions have an immediate impact. You are always thinking about what to eat or where to sleep or how to avoid a predator. You are constantly focused on the present or the very near future. You
This is a profound and calming exercise. Pretend you don't know there is anything other than now and the immediate future. Wow.
With our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. With good habits, it is the reverse: the immediate outcome is unenjoyable, but the ultimate outcome feels good.
Put another way, the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.
The brain’s tendency to prioritize the present moment means you can’t rely on good intentions.
when the moment of decision arrives, instant gratification usually wins.
Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.
is important to select short-term rewards that reinforce your identity rather than ones that conflict with it.
Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.
“Don’t break the chain” is a powerful mantra.
