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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
James Clear
Read between
May 25 - June 13, 2020
If a habit remains mindless, you can’t expect to improve it.
Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Pointing-and-Calling is so effective because it raises the level of awareness from a nonconscious habit to a more conscious level.
The more automatic a behavior becomes, the less likely we are to consciously think about it.
Don’t blame yourself for your faults. Don’t praise yourself for your successes.
The sentence they filled out is what researchers refer to as an implementation intention, which is a plan you make beforehand about when and where to act. That is, how you intend to implement a particular habit.
Broadly speaking, the format for creating an implementation intention is: “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.”
Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.
I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].
Rather than pairing your new habit with a particular time and location, you pair it with a current habit.
Fogg’s habit stacking formula is: “After I [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”
The key is to tie your desired behavior into something you already do each day.
Social skills. When I walk into a party, I will introduce myself to someone I don’t know yet. Finances. When I want to buy something over $100, I will wait twenty-four hours before purchasing.
Minimalism. When I buy a new item, I will give something away. (“One in, one out.”)
People often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are.
Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior. Despite our unique personalities, certain behaviors tend to arise again and again under certain environmental conditions.
customers will occasionally buy products not because they want them but because of how they are presented to them.
We perceive the world through sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. But we also have other ways of sensing stimuli. Some are conscious, but many are nonconscious.
The most powerful of all human sensory abilities, however, is vision.
If you want to drink more water, fill up a few water bottles each morning and place them in common locations around the house.
Our behavior is not defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them.
You can train yourself to link a particular habit with a particular context.
It can be hard to study in the living room without getting distracted if that’s where you always play video games. But when you step outside your normal environment, you leave your behavioral biases behind.
Whenever possible, avoid mixing the context of one habit with another.
But when you can use your phone to do nearly anything, it becomes hard to associate it with one task.
If your space is limited, divide your room into activity zones: a chair for reading, a desk for writing, a table for eating.
“disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control.
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but the way to improve these qualities is not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment.
Bad habits are autocatalytic: the process feeds itself.
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You can break a habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it.
simply resisting temptation is an ineffective strategy.
One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.
If you’re continually feeling like you’re not enough, stop following social media accounts that trigger jealousy and envy.
you’re spending too much money on electronics, quit reading reviews of the latest tech gear.
Rather than make it obvious, you can make it invisible.
Instead of summoning a new dose of willpower whenever you want to do the right thing, your energy would be better spent optimizing your environment.
This is the secret to self-control. Make the cues of your good habits obvious and the cues of your bad habits invisible.
A primary goal of food science is to create products that are more attractive to consumers.
The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.
Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. Every behavior that is highly habit-forming—taking drugs, eating junk food, playing video games, browsing social media—is associated with higher levels of dopamine.
dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it.
It is the anticipation of a reward—not the fulfillment of it—that gets us to take action.
This is one reason the anticipation of an experience can often feel better than the attainment of it.
Temptation bundling works by linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
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After I [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED]. After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].
Habit bundling
“The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.”
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.
A craving is just a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive. Your brain did not evolve with a desire to smoke cigarettes or to check Instagram or to play video games. At a deep level, you
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.
Take three deep breaths and smile. Sad about life? Three deep breaths and smile.
Important
