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A habit is a routine or behavior that is performed regularly—and, in many cases, automatically.
The backbone of this book is my four-step model of habits—cue, craving, response, and reward—and the four laws of behavior change that evolve out of these steps.
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.
If you find yourself struggling to build a good habit or break a bad one, it is not because you have lost your ability to improve. It is often because you have not yet crossed the Plateau of Latent Potential.
Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
The implicit assumption behind any goal is this: “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy.” The problem with a goals-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone.
goals create an “either-or” conflict: either you achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and you are a disappointment. You mentally box yourself into a narrow version of happiness. This is misguided.
It makes no sense to restrict your satisfaction to one scenario when there are many paths to success.
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.
The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it.
Your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity. What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are—either consciously or nonconsciously.fn1
your ability to notice the relevant cues in a given situation is the foundation for every habit you have.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”9
The process of behavior change always starts with awareness. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them. ■ Pointing-and-Calling raises your level of awareness from a nonconscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalizing your actions. ■ The Habits Scorecard is a simple exercise you can use to become more aware of your behavior.
people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through.
The simple way to apply this strategy to your habits is to fill out this sentence: I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].
Habit stacking is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a current habit. ■ The habit stacking formula is: After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].
Environment design allows you to take back control and become the architect of your life. Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it.
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. 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
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You may be thinking, “You don’t understand. I live in New York City. My apartment is the size of a smartphone. I need each room to play multiple roles.” Fair enough. If your space is limited, divide your room into activity zones: a chair for reading, a desk for writing, a table for eating. You can do the same with your digital spaces. I know a writer who uses his computer only for writing, his tablet only for reading, and his phone only for social media and texting. Every habit should have a home.
Small changes in context can lead to large changes in behavior over time. ■ Every habit is initiated by a cue. We are more likely to notice cues that stand out. ■ Make the cues of good habits obvious in your environment. ■ Gradually, your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behavior. The context becomes the cue. ■ It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cues.
addictions could spontaneously dissolve if there was a radical change in the environment.
perseverance, grit, and willpower are essential to success, but the way to improve these qualities is not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment.
Shaming obese people with weight-loss presentations can make them feel stressed, and as a result many people return to their favorite coping strategy: overeating.9 Showing pictures of blackened lungs to smokers leads to higher levels of anxiety, which drives many people to reach for a cigarette.10 If you’re not careful about cues, you can cause the very behavior you want to stop.
We need to make our habits attractive because it is the expectation of a rewarding experience that motivates us to act in the first place.
Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
To make your habits even more attractive, you can take this strategy one step further. Join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal behavior and (2) you already have something in common with the group.
One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal behavior and (2) you already have something in common with the group.
Hebb’s Law: “Neurons that fire together wire together.”
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.
One of the most common questions I hear is, “How long does it take to build a new habit?” But what people really should be asking is, “How many does it take to form a new habit?” That is, how many repetitions are required to make a habit automatic?
The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning.
If your goal is to do a hundred push-ups per day, that’s a lot of energy! In the beginning, when you’re motivated and excited, you can muster the strength to get started. But after a few days, such a massive effort feels exhausting. Meanwhile, sticking to the habit of doing one push-up per day requires almost no energy to get started. And the less energy a habit requires, the more likely it is to occur.
Human behavior follows the Law of Least Effort. We will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.
Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way. Professionals know what is important to them and work toward it with purpose; amateurs get pulled off course by the urgencies of life.
Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail. —LAO TZU
A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.
