By James Clear
My personal notes on the book.
Displays a refreshing humility rare among best-selling book authors. The book aims to be an operating manual rather than an academic paper.
Outcomes are lagging measures of habits. Tricky to measure, I suppose, like all things with moving averages.
Progress is NOT linear, but rather a sort of exponential rising curve. Don't be discouraged by the lack of initial progress.
Here's a paradigm shift that's relevant to my work on the March right now – focus on systems rather than goals. Some things require goals, of course (technical projects for example) but the system that delivers a person's work to those goal-producing actions is more important. And thus we get that famous quote:
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
Many walk through life in a "cognitive slumber", another phrase I love. They let some image of themselves become a part of their mind unconciously and then it's with them forever. I suppose that Kant's Enlightenment is the point at which a person awakes from cognitive slumber and realizes they can choose who they are.
Habits must be coherent with identity.
The word identity comes from the Latin essentitas (being) and identidem (repeatedly), so identity means "repeated beingness". Unless we delude ourselves, our identities are by default products of how we spend our time. Identity emerges from common practice.
A ramification of this model is that one can't just choose a new identity. Habits are sort of like gold backing a currency; without it you've got fiat. Habits, says James, are the path to changing your identity. He goes so far as to suggest a simple, two step process to change identity:
To figure out the right 'victories' to pursue (e.g. outcomes) simply ask yourself "what would Θ do?" where Θ is a person with the identity you want. For example, "what would a runner do". This is to build a sort of feedback loop.
Again, think of habits as a form of automation where "solved problems" can be shunted to the computer-brain, freeing up the prefrontal cortex (presuming you have one) to more interesting problems.
Here's another model. Habits can be broken down into four stages:
— Time →
The brain tracks through each of these steps in order every time it selects and performs a habit.
This model gives rise to James' Four Laws of Behavior Change and the resulting structure of the book:
| Good Habit Creation | ||
| 1st Law | Cue | Make it obvious. |
| 2nd Law | Craving | Make it attractive. |
| 3rd Law | Response | Make it easy. |
| 4th Law | Reward | Make it satisfying. |
| Bad Habit Deconstruction | ||
| 1st Law Inversion | Cue | Make it invisible. |
| 2nd Law Inversion | Craving | Make it ugly. |
| 3rd Law Inversion | Response | Make it difficult. |
| 4th Law Inversion | Reward | Make it dissapointing. |
It can be helpful to spend a whole day trying to identify which habits one currently has and what cues them.
But the real meat of this chapter is about making a cue obvious. Creation of a new habit requires strong, specific implementation plans. This usually comes down to creating a cue of some sort. A cue like "I will go running for 10 minutes at 7:30pm" is pretty good. It's better still to choose a cue that is disctinctive and occurs whenever the habit needs to be formed. There are plenty of good every-day cues (like waking up). It will be harder to find cues for things that occur only once a week like "visit grandparents".
The environment itself forms us. In James' book here he remarks on how our habits and choices are predicated far more on our environment (e.g. what's presented to us) than concious thought or even desire. Naturally, an environment littered with cues will help reinforce respective habits.
However, I do think it's better to think of this in terms of the relationships set down in Baumeinster and Tierney's Willpower regarding temptation as a function of convenience.
The conclusion is the same either way. We can control our environments, to a degree, and should engineer them to benefit the habits we are trying to form.
The environment itself can be a cue. For example, sleeping is far easier in a space in which we exclusively sleep. It's helpful to assign locations to the sort of task we perform there and keep those tasks segregated. A seperate room is not realistic for most, but a seperate space can be created within a room for a purpose. James says:
One space, one use.
Here's something for me to solve later – how can I match task to context when so much of my work must be done at a desktop computer for practical reasons?
In a nutshell, the craving for a new habit should be made as attractive as possible.
The dopamine response of the brain is what helps form and keep habits, at a sort of fundamental checmical level. Tabula rasa we might come across some reward (like trying chocolate for the first time). This releases some dopamine. But as a habit actually forms, the response changes. Craving, rather than the actual reward, will release some dopamine. Wanting, it appears, is better than having.
This subtle but important detail leads to the Premack Principle:
More probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors.
More practically, that boost of dopamine released during the craving stage for an existing rewardable habit can be exploited. The dopamine response during the craving stage of an existing habit can also be used to help create a new habit, especially if the reward for the prompting habit comes after the new habit is launched.
The attractiveness of a habit (and its associated craving) are highly influenced by the society or culture in which a person is imbedded. This is another face of the coin presented earlier regarding environmental cues. We hold our peers in esteem (usually) and that esteem causes us to find their behaviors attractive. If you work in a place where everyone works out, the craving stage of the workout habit will be more appealing than otherwise.
We tend to find three social contexts attractive:
I think of these as flywheels. Perform the ritual when you feel good and you add some momentum to the flywheel. Perform the ritual when you feel bad and you'll perhaps feel better, but the flywheel has lost momentum. Without occasionally putting energy into the flywheel it will one day stop spinning, and the ritual / object / place will simply be associated with bad memories or emotions.
Neurons that fire together wire together.
Donald Hebb
The first lesson of this section is that it's better to act than to plan.
Repetition alone can bring about change.
Rather than how many days does it take to form a habit, we should ask how many times must I repeat this to form a habit.
Eliminate friction from habits you wish to form, and add friction to those you want to remove.
I'm not sure what this concept is called but I've seen it referenced elsewhere. The idea is that the choices you make influence later choices directly and somewhat irreversibly. This is especially understandable when flattend to a single axis of a good v. a bad day. A good choice moves one 50% of the way up the axis, a bad one 50% down. But the space one can move is restricted to the length of the previous movement after a choice is made. Good -> Bad -> Bad takes one from +50% to +25% to +12.5%.
This model is constructive because it reminds us that the earlier choices are far more important than the latter ones. The first thoughts of the day set the tone till the last. I don't believe that the ranges are exactly 50%, however, and I do believe that an initial bad choice can be overcome by many successive good (and vice versa) at the expense of extreme amounts of work. I'd put the collapse ratio at 60% or so.
Anyways, making the right choices earlier make it far easier to continue to make them later.
It should be very easy to actually perform the task of a new habit. This will mean starting programs off with a very light and simple task that tapers out until the full effort neccessary to meet goals is ultimately being released.
A man starting to work out might simply plan to spend five minutes in the gym every day with no obligation to spend any more. This will taper up but, especially in the early instances, any progress is good progress so long as consitency is maintained.
Make bad habits difficult. Add friction. Elaboration not needed.
The big point to remember here is that the computer part of the brain forms habits on the basis of immediate results. Instant gratification becomes a habit. Instant pain is avoided. Long term repercussions and results are entirely ignored by the pattern-forming brain.
The conclusion to this is simple enough – reward adherence to new habits with something immediately gratifying. However, the short-term reward should reinforce the new identity rather than conflict with it. As with all things when changing, one must seek harmony. The classic example, I suppose, is that a person attempting to lose weight should not reward themselves for going on a run with a brownie.
Instant gratification can't work forever. Eventually the habit must be self-sustaining (perhaps because identity has shifted) and the gratification removed.
Some sort of tangible, or at least visible, habit tracking method can really help build that satisfaction. We do like to succeed in our own goals. Most habits we are trying to learn won't yield tangible results until later (e.g. working out, dieting) and a physical tracker helps build satisfaction into the achievement of the task itself.
My favorite of these is Benjamin Franklin's famous little page of dots. I've created one below – it is pretty self-explanatory.
| October | ||||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | ||
| Wake Up On Time | • | • | • | • | • | |||||
| Go For A Run | • | • | ||||||||
| Clean Living Space | • | • | ||||||||
| Sleep On Time | • | |||||||||
I've found tracking like this to be indespensible to real change. Tracking is, however, a real drag so it should be as simple and easy to maintain as possible.
James notes (and I, from long experience, strongly agree) that what matters is not how hard you work, or even how consistently, but what you do when you fail. Discipline is like a chain. Once any link in that chain is broken it's incredibly easy to let the whole load slip back to some lowest equilibrium point.
We will all eventually fail in our journey. When that failure occurs, it is so terribly critical to make the next time even more successful than usual. If you are a fan of David Goggins, you'll even set punishments for yourself. But James doesn't mention punishment in this way.
Personal change is easy when our minds are fresh and clear. It's very hard at the end of a long workday when we are exhausted. The creation of a contract that clearly defines permissible actions, obligations, and punishments really helps. This way we don't have to make so many decisions. We simply adhere to the contract.
Think of genetics as a sort of natural proclivity. Nothing is off the table, but some things will be harder than others. Know thyself, and your talents.
Of course, we need to spend some time and effort finding out what we are and are not good at. James suggests starting any new venture with a period of pure exploration
James recommends that we all choose a game that we can win at. Maybe our genetics don't deliver us top 10% performance in any generic place – but we can choose perhaps an intersection of two skills in which we specialize and become top performers in a smaller solution space.
We like to work at new things and succeed. The sting of failure dampens even the most enthused. We should seek challenge to overcome, but that challenge must hit a balance between:
Getting into this "Goldilocks Zone" is deeply rewarding. Almost anything will feel good to do when we reach this point. Some call this a flow state, others the zone. I'd not thought about it like this, but such a zone is something a person can conciously aim to enter. Perhaps we can even get better at finding it.
Mastery requires practice. But once we solve all the fun challenges, practice can get pretty boring. Indeed, James even says:
The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.
We will derail our own success because we get used to it. The mind seeks novelty. And novelty is good for us! But there must be balance. And there's no easy solution. On those days when the work is boring and we want to quit, only discipline carries us through. As James (approximately) says:
Stepping up when it's annoying, or draining, or painful to do so is what makes the difference between a professional and an amateur.
Habits offload concious thought axiomatically. But true mastery requires more than repetition. Deliberate, front-brain effort is required to rise from consistent mediocrity to real mastery. Not all tasks need mastering. One doesn't need to become an olympic athlete to lose weight.
It's simply important to remember that, where mastery is involved, pure habit building alone will never be enough.
This front-brain effort that continuously improves a habit into mastery is one definition of reflection. I have many thoughts on this word and this use of it is merely one facet.
The tail-end of the section James titles "How To Review Your Habits And Make Them Effective" is very interesting. Most of this book is narrowly tactical in scope, which is totally fine. However, here he touches upon how makes decisions and chooses habits. If we define making a habit as a form of engagement, then choosing which habits to form (or altering them) becomes a strategic choice. About once a year, James will sit down and look at his own identity and core values. He assesses whether his habits have been successful in serving that greater vision which is different than whether he has been successful in creating them.
This is a charming little philosophical section. It's not terribly actionable but it makes one think and is just a pleasure to read. Some of these have correlations in Stoicism. Perhaps one day I'll map them out.