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

by James Clear

changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.13

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

You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.

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.

Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.

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

FORGET ABOUT GOALS, FOCUS ON SYSTEMS INSTEAD

Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.

Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.

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.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. 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.

It is a simple two-step process: Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

“behaviors followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated.”

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].

The 1st Law of Behavior Change is to make it obvious.

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

This is one reason why the versatility of modern technology is both a strength and a weakness. You can use your phone for all sorts of tasks, which makes it a powerful device. But when you can use your phone to do nearly anything, it becomes hard to associate it with one task. You want to be productive, but you’re also conditioned to browse social media, check email, and play video games whenever you open your phone. It’s a mishmash of cues.

Every habit should have a home.

If you want behaviors that are stable and predictable, you need an environment that is stable and predictable.

If you can’t seem to get any work done, leave your phone in another room for a few hours. ■ If you’re continually feeling like you’re not enough, stop following social media accounts that trigger jealousy and envy. ■ If you’re wasting too much time watching television, move the TV out of the bedroom. ■ If you’re spending too much money on electronics, quit reading reviews of the latest tech gear. ■ If you’re playing too many video games, unplug the console and put it in a closet after each use.

The fact that the brain allocates so much precious space to the regions responsible for craving and desire provides further evidence of the crucial role these processes play. Desire is the engine that drives behavior. Every action is taken because of the anticipation that precedes it. It is the craving that leads to the response.

“The best is the enemy of the good.”

When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing.

But the truth is, our real motivation is to be lazy and to do what is convenient.

Habits like scrolling on our phones, checking email, and watching television steal so much of our time because they can be performed almost without effort. They are remarkably convenient.

I often find myself gravitating toward social media during any downtime. If I feel bored for just a fraction of a second, I reach for my phone. It’s easy to write off these minor distractions as “just taking a break,” but over time they can accumulate into a serious issue. The constant tug of “just one more minute” can prevent me from doing anything of consequence. (I’m not the only one. The average person spends over two hours per day on social media.8 What could you do with an extra six hundred hours per year?)

the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.

The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty. Perhaps this is why we get caught up in a never-ending cycle, jumping from one workout to the next, one diet to the next, one business idea to the next. As soon as we experience the slightest dip in motivation, we begin seeking a new strategy—even if the old one was still working. As Machiavelli noted, “Men desire novelty to such an extent that those who are doing well wish for a change as much as those who are doing badly.”6

We all have goals that we would like to achieve and dreams that we would like to fulfill, but it doesn’t matter what you are trying to become better at, if you only do the work when it’s convenient or exciting, then you’ll never be consistent enough to achieve remarkable results. I can guarantee that if you manage to start a habit and keep sticking to it, there will be days when you feel like quitting. When you start a business, there will be days when you don’t feel like showing up. When you’re at the gym, there will be sets that you don’t feel like finishing. When it’s time to write, there will be days that you don’t feel like typing. But stepping up when it’s annoying or painful or draining to do so, that’s what makes the difference between a professional and an amateur.

“Sustaining an effort is the most important thing for any enterprise.5 The way to be successful is to learn how to do things right, then do them the same way every time.”

“The trick to doing anything is first cultivating a desire for it.”