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

by James Clear

It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.

Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.

Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. You get what you repeat.

Tiny battles like these are the ones that will define your future self.

“That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.”

Negative thoughts compound. The more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a thought loop. The same is true for how you think about others. Once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry, unjust, or selfish, you see those kind of people everywhere.

Similarly, habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance.

the most powerful outcomes are delayed.

Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees.

The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.

The goal in any sport is to finish with the best score, but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard. The only way to actually win is to get better each day.

Problem #1: Winners and losers have the same goals.

Problem #2: Achieving a goal is only a momentary change.

Problem #3: Goals restrict your happiness.

The problem with a goals-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone.

York Times, then I could finally relax. Furthermore, goals create an “either-or” conflict: either you achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and you are a disappointment.

When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.

Problem #4: Goals are at odds with long-term progress.

The race is no longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?

They are little habits that are part of a larger system.

You need to be patient.

The first layer is changing your outcomes.

The second layer is changing your process.

The third and deepest layer is changing your identity.

but this person still believes they are a smoker who is trying to be something else. They are hoping their behavior will change while carrying around the same beliefs.

They no longer identify as someone who smokes.

Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last.

You may want better health, but if you continue to prioritize comfort over accomplishment, you’ll be drawn to relaxing rather than training.

It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.

Once your pride gets involved, you’ll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits.

Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are.

What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are—either consciously or nonconsciously.

Once you have adopted an identity, it can be easy to let your allegiance to it impact your ability to change.

There is internal pressure to maintain your self-image and behave in a way that is consistent with your beliefs. You find whatever way you can to avoid contradicting yourself.

If your beliefs and worldview play such an important role in your behavior, where do they come from in the first place?

When you make your bed each day, you embody the identity of an organized person. When you write each day, you embody the identity of a creative person. When you train each day, you embody the identity of an athletic person.

Your identity is literally your “repeated beingness.”

We are continually undergoing microevolutions of the self.

Each habit is like a suggestion: “Hey, maybe this is who I am.”