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

by James Clear

As you master the art of showing up, the first two minutes simply become a ritual at the beginning of a larger routine. This is not merely a hack to make habits easier but actually the ideal way to master a difficult skill. The more you ritualize the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things.

■ Habits can be completed in a few seconds but continue to impact your behavior for minutes or hours afterward. ■ Many habits occur at decisive moments—choices that are like a fork in the road—and either send you in the direction of a productive day or an unproductive one. ■ The Two-Minute Rule states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.” ■ The more you ritualize the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things. ■ Standardize before you optimize. You can’t improve a habit that doesn’t exist.

Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard. This is an inversion of the 3rd Law of Behavior Change: make it difficult. If you find yourself continually struggling to follow through on your plans, then you can take a page from Victor Hugo and make your bad habits more difficult by creating what psychologists call a commitment device. A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future.2 It is a way to lock in future behavior, bind you to good habits, and restrict you from bad ones. When Victor Hugo shut his clothes away so he could focus on writing, he was creating a commitment device.4 fn2

Commitment devices are useful because they enable you to take advantage of good intentions before you can fall victim to temptation.

Commitment devices increase the odds that you’ll do the right thing in the future by making bad habits difficult in the present. However, we can do even better. We can make good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible.

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.

■ The inversion of the 3rd Law of Behavior Change is make it difficult. ■ A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that locks in better behavior in the future. ■ The ultimate way to lock in future behavior is to automate your habits. ■ Onetime choices—like buying a better mattress or enrolling in an automatic savings plan—are single actions that automate your future habits and deliver increasing returns over time. ■ Using technology to automate your habits is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right behavior.

You are constantly focused on the present or the very near future. You live in what scientists call an immediate-return environment because your actions instantly deliver clear and immediate outcomes.

Now switch back to your human self. In modern society, many of the choices you make today will not benefit you immediately.

You live in what scientists call a delayed-return environment because you can work for years before your actions deliver the intended payoff.

Behavioral economists refer to this tendency as time inconsistency. That is, the way your brain evaluates rewards is inconsistent across time.fn2 You value the present more than the future. Usually, this tendency serves us well. A reward that is certain right now is typically worth more than one that is merely possible in the future. But occasionally, our bias toward instant gratification causes problems.

Every habit produces multiple outcomes across time. Unfortunately, these outcomes are often misaligned. 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.

With a fuller understanding of what causes our brain to repeat some behaviors and avoid others, let’s update the Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.

What we’re really talking about here—when we’re discussing immediate rewards—is the ending of a behavior. The ending of any experience is vital because we tend to remember it more than other phases. You want the ending of your habit to be satisfying. The best approach is to use reinforcement, which refers to the process of using an immediate reward to increase the rate of a behavior. Habit stacking, which we covered in Chapter 5, ties your habit to an immediate cue, which makes it obvious when to start. Reinforcement ties your habit to an immediate reward, which makes it satisfying when you finish.

Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.

■ The 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it satisfying. ■ We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying. ■ The human brain evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards. ■ The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided. ■ To get a habit to stick you need to feel immediately successful—even if it’s in a small way. ■ The first three laws of behavior change—make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time.

In summary, habit tracking (1) creates a visual cue that can remind you to act, (2) is inherently motivating because you see the progress you are making and don’t want to lose it, and (3) feels satisfying whenever you record another successful instance of your habit. Furthermore, habit tracking provides visual proof that you are casting votes for the type of person you wish to become, which is a delightful form of immediate and intrinsic gratification.

First, whenever possible, measurement should be automated.

Second, manual tracking should be limited to your most important habits. It is better to consistently track one habit than to sporadically track ten.

Finally, record each measurement immediately after the habit occurs.

Whenever this happens to me, I try to remind myself of a simple rule: never miss twice.

The first mistake is never the one that ruins you.7 It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident.8 Missing twice is the start of a new habit.

You don’t realize how valuable it is to just show up on your bad (or busy) days. Lost days hurt you more than successful days help you.

“The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.”

The dark side of tracking a particular behavior is that we become driven by the number rather than the purpose behind it. If your success is measured by quarterly earnings, you will optimize sales, revenue, and accounting for quarterly earnings. If your success is measured by a lower number on the scale, you will optimize for a lower number on the scale, even if that means embracing crash diets, juice cleanses, and fat-loss pills. The human mind wants to “win” whatever game is being played. This pitfall is evident in many areas of life. We focus on working long hours instead of getting meaningful work done. We care more about getting ten thousand steps than we do about being healthy. We teach for standardized tests instead of emphasizing learning, curiosity, and critical thinking. In short, we optimize for what we measure. When we choose the wrong measurement, we get the wrong behavior. This is sometimes referred to as Goodhart’s Law. Named after the economist Charles Goodhart, the principle states, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”9 Measurement is only useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you. Each number is simply one piece of feedback in the overall system. In our data-driven world, we tend to overvalue numbers and undervalue anything ephemeral, soft, and difficult to quantify. We mistakenly think the factors we can measure are the only factors that exist. But just because you can measure s...

■ One of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of making progress. ■ A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit—like marking an X on a calendar. ■ Habit trackers and other visual forms of measurement can make your habits satisfying by providing clear evidence of your progress. ■ Don’t break the chain. Try to keep your habit streak alive. ■ Never miss twice. If you miss one day, try to get back on track as quickly as possible. ■ Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing.

■ The inversion of the 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it unsatisfying. ■ We are less likely to repeat a bad habit if it is painful or unsatisfying. ■ An accountability partner can create an immediate cost to inaction. We care deeply about what others think of us, and we do not want others to have a lesser opinion of us. ■ A habit contract can be used to add a social cost to any behavior. It makes the costs of violating your promises public and painful. ■ Knowing that someone else is watching you can be a powerful motivator.

The most proven scientific analysis of personality traits is known as the “Big Five,” which breaks them down into five spectrums of behavior. Openness to experience: from curious and inventive on one end to cautious and consistent on the other. Conscientiousness: organized and efficient to easygoing and spontaneous. Extroversion: outgoing and energetic to solitary and reserved (you likely know them as extroverts vs. introverts). Agreeableness: friendly and compassionate to challenging and detached. Neuroticism: anxious and sensitive to confident, calm, and stable.

■ The secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition. ■ Pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle. ■ Genes cannot be easily changed, which means they provide a powerful advantage in favorable circumstances and a serious disadvantage in unfavorable circumstances. ■ Habits are easier when they align with your natural abilities. Choose the habits that best suit you. ■ Play a game that favors your strengths. If you can’t find a game that favors you, create one. ■ Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on.

The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.

When you’re starting a new habit, it’s important to keep the behavior as easy as possible so you can stick with it even when conditions aren’t perfect. This is an idea we covered in detail while discussing the 3rd Law of Behavior Change. Once a habit has been established, however, it’s important to continue to advance in small ways. These little improvements and new challenges keep you engaged. And if you hit the Goldilocks Zone just right, you can achieve a flow state.fn1

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.

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.”

The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.

■ The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. ■ The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. ■ As habits become routine, they become less interesting and less satisfying. We get bored. ■ Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It’s the ability to keep going when work isn’t exciting that makes the difference. ■ Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.

HABITS CREATE THE foundation for mastery. In chess, it is only after the basic movements of the pieces have become automatic that a player can focus on the next level of the game. Each chunk of information that is memorized opens up the mental space for more effortful thinking. This is true for any endeavor. When you know the simple movements so well that you can perform them without thinking, you are free to pay attention to more advanced details. In this way, habits are the backbone of any pursuit of excellence.

However, the benefits of habits come at a cost. At first, each repetition develops fluency, speed, and skill. But then, as a habit becomes automatic, you become less sensitive to feedback. You fall into mindless repetition. It becomes easier to let mistakes slide. When you can do it “good enough” on autopilot, you stop thinking about how to do it better.

The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside of habits is that you get used to doing things a certain way and stop paying attention to little errors. You assume you’re getting better because you’re gaining experience. In reality, you are merely reinforcing your current habits—not improving them. In fact, some research has shown that once a skill has been mastered there is usuall...

However, when you want to maximize your potential and achieve elite levels of performance, you need a more nuanced approach. You can’t repeat the same things blindly and expect to become exceptional. Habits are necessary, but not sufficient for mastery. What you need is a combination of automatic habits and deliberate practice. Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery

Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development. Old tasks become easier the second time around, but it doesn’t get easier overall because now you’re pouring your energy into the next challenge. Each habit unlocks the next level of performance. It’s an endless cycle.

Although habits are powerful, what you need is a way to remain conscious of your performance over time, so you can continue to refine and improve. It is precisely at the moment when you begin to feel like you have mastered a skill—right when things are starting to feel automatic and you are becoming comfortable—that you must avoid slipping into the trap of complacency.

In the beginning, repeating a habit is essential to build up evidence of your desired identity. As you latch on to that new identity, however, those same beliefs can hold you back from the next level of growth. When working against you, your identity creates a kind of “pride” that encourages you to deny your weak spots and prevents you from truly growing. This is one of the greatest downsides of building habits.

The following quote from the Tao Te Ching encapsulates the ideas perfectly: 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

■ The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors. ■ Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery ■ Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time. ■ The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.