68
Habit Formation and Identity
- 📈 The only way to make progress is to start small and employ the same strategy consistently.
- 🧠 The backbone of this book is auther’s four-step model of habits Q craving, response, reward and the four laws of behavior change that evolve out of these steps.
- 💪 The compound interest of habits means that getting 1% better each day can lead to being 37 times better in a year, while 1% worse can lead to a decline down to zero.
- 🔄 Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment, what we really need to change are the systems that cause those results.
- 🔄 Your identity emerges out of your habits, and the more you repeat a behavior, the more you reinforce the identity associated with that behavior.
- 🔄 Your habits shape your identity and your identity shapes your habits, it’s a two-way street in the formation of all habits.
- 🔄 The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible.
- 🌱 Small habits don’t add up, they compound – that’s the power of atomic habits.
Environment and Behavior
- 🧠 The human brain is a prediction machine, continuously analyzing information and noticing important cues without conscious thought, forming the foundation for every habit.
- 🚆 Pointing and calling reduces errors by up to 85 percent and cuts accidents by 30 percent, making it an effective safety system for the Japanese Railway system.
- 🍽️ Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior, so changing the choice architecture of your environment can lead to significant changes in habits without relying on willpower or motivation.
- 🏡 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.
- 🧠 Self-control is a short-term strategy, it’s easier to avoid temptation than resist it, so make the cues of bad habits invisible and the cues of good habits obvious.
- 🧠 Making good habits more convenient increases the likelihood of following through on them, while reducing the friction associated with bad habits can help in building better habits.
- 🤖 Automation can make your good habits inevitable and your bad habits impossible, creating an environment where good habits are virtually guaranteed.
Motivation and Progress
- 📅 The most effective form of motivation is progress, and habit tracking can have an addictive effect on motivation, providing visual proof of your hard work and subtle reminders of how far you’ve come.
- 💡 The Holy Grail of habit change is not a single one percent Improvement but a thousand of them.