What positive improvement would you like to make in your life? Perhaps you wish to consume healthier. Maybe you want to read more books, understand a new language, or master the clarinet. Whatever modifications you'd like to make, actually making them and adhering to them is much easier said than done. Just intending to consume more salad does not in fact imply you will. Just saying you'll learn more books doesn't indicate you'll get War and Peace instead of binging Netflix.

However, that's where habits come in.

In this short article, I'm going to take you through the bottom lines of James Clear's best-seller Atomic Habits.

Together, we're going to discover that the secret to making big changes in your life does not have to include significant upheaval; you don't require to revolutionize your behavior or reinvent yourself. Rather, you can make tiny modifications to your behavior, which, when duplicated time and time again, will become routines that can generate big outcomes.

Idea 1

Small routines can have a remarkably powerful impact on your life.

To kick things off, I want you to envision an airplane preparing to take off from Los Angeles. The airplane's location is in New York City. The pilot inputs all the appropriate information into the plane's computer, and the airplane takes off heading in the right direction. Now imagine that, not long after takeoff, the pilot mistakenly changes the flight path a little. He only alters it by 3.5 degrees-- which is pretty much nothing, simply a couple of feet. The aircraft's nose shifts a little to one side, and no one-- not the pilot, not the passengers-- knows anything.

However, over the journey throughout the United States, the impact of this minor modification would be substantial. At the end of their journey, the confused passengers-- and a lot more confused pilot-- would find themselves landing in Washington DC, not New York City.

So, why am I telling you this?

It's because-- much like the confused pilot-- we don't notice small modifications in our lives. Small changes leave a negligible immediate effect. If you are out of shape today and go for a 20-minute jog, you'll still be out of shape tomorrow. If you eat a family-size pizza for dinner, it won't make you obese overnight.

But if we duplicate these little behaviors day after day, our options intensify into significant results. Eat pizza every day, and you will likely have actually acquired significant weight after a year. Go jogging for 20 minutes every day, and you'll become leaner and fitter, although you will not discover the modification occurring.

You've most likely worked out the primary insight here: it's that small habits can have a remarkably effective impact on your life-- and you won't necessarily see this effect taking place in real-time. You'll only see the results of your practices after a while.

Now, we understand that not seeing the impact of your efforts can be dispiriting. If this is presenting itself to you-- if you're feeling dissuaded by the absence of instant positive modification-- then it's important to try to concentrate on your current trajectory instead of your existing outcomes.

Let's say you have a little deposit. However, you are saving something every month. Your current results may not be that excellent-- your nest egg is still pretty small. But you can be confident that your trajectory is right. Keep proceeding in this direction and, in a couple of months or a couple of years, you will observe a significant improvement. When the lack of perceived development gets you down, remember that you're doing the ideal things and that you're moving in the right instructions.

However, how do you get on the right trajectory? You desire to develop practices. In the next point, we'll find out how they are constructed.

 

Idea 2

Routines are automated actions that we've gained from experience.

When you walk into a dark room, you don't think of what to do next; you instinctively grab a light switch. Getting a light switch is a routine-- it's a behavior that you've duplicated numerous times that it now takes place automatically.

Practices like this dominate our lives, from brushing our teeth to driving our automobiles. They are profoundly powerful.

But how are they formed?

In the 19th century, a psychologist named Edward Thorndike attempted to address this concern. First, he put some cats inside a black box. Then, he timed the length of time it took them to get away. To start with, each cat acted exactly as you'd expect when placed inside a box. It desperately looked for a way of escape. It sniffed and pawed at the corners; it clawed at the walls. Ultimately, the cat would find a lever that, when pushed, would open a door, enabling it to leave.

Thorndike then took the cats that'd successfully gotten away and repeated the experiment: he positioned them back inside the box. And what did he discover? After being put in the box a couple of times, each cat found out the technique. Instead of scrambling around for a minute or more, the cats went straight for the lever. After 20 or 30 efforts, the average cat could escape in simply six seconds.

Simply put, the process of getting out of the box had actually ended up being habitual for the felines.

With his experiment, Thorndike had actually found something important: habits that provide pleasing effects-- in this case, acquiring freedom-- tend to be repeated till they end up being automated.

We have actually learned a lot more about routines in the years after Thorndike's experiment. We now understand that practices are comprised of 4 unique elements.

First, there's the cue, or a trigger to act. Walking into a dark room cues you to perform an action that will allow you to see. Then comes a yearning for a change in the circumstances-- in this case, from darkness to light. Then comes an action, or action-- flicking the light switch. The final step in the process, and the end goal of every routine, is the reward. In this case, it's the feeling of moderate relief and convenience that originates from being able to see your environment.

Every routine follows the exact same process. Do you consume coffee every early morning? Awakening is your hint, setting off a craving to feel alert. Your action is to drag yourself out of bed and make a cup of joe.

Your benefit is feeling large awake and ready to face the world.

OK, now that you have a concept of how practices work, let's take a look at how you can develop good routines that can transform your life for the better.

Idea 3

Building new habits requires hard-to-miss cues and a strategy.

We have actually just explored how habits are formed. Let's briefly recap. A habit is composed of 4 things: a cue-- a trigger that gets you to act; a yearning-- a desire you wish to achieve; a reaction-- the action of the habit itself; and a reward-- the good feeling you experience from performing the habit.

Once you understand how they work, you can begin to hack the habit-forming procedure to get excellent, efficient habits to stick.

Let's say you're determined to learn the guitar. You've got your instrument, and you've picked up the essentials, but you have a hard time keeping up with training. Each morning, you tell yourself that you'll practice later, but the end of the day quickly comes, and you haven't picked up your guitar once.

Now that you understand the tricks to creating a habit, you can utilize it to your advantage. In this case, you wish to make the cue to pick up your guitar difficult to miss. Instead of keeping your instrument in the cupboard or in the corner of your spare room, leave it right in the middle of your living room-- in full view. Make your cue visible and unmissable; this will make it much easier to turn your desire to practice into a habit.

Reforming your environment to put your cues front and center will assist, but if you wish to refine your triggers all the more, you can use what's called implementation intentions. What are these?

When it pertains to setting good habits, the majority of us tend to be too unclear about our intentions. We say, "I'm going to eat better," or "I'm going to learn guitar." And we just hope that we'll follow through.

An implementation intention can assist us to move beyond the vague intention. Implementation intentions present a clear plan of action; they help you set out when and where you'll carry out the habit you want to cultivate.

OK, let's go back to our guitar example. Instead of telling yourself that "you're going to practice guitar sometime this week," say to yourself, "On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, when the alarm goes off, the first thing I'll do is pick up my guitar and practice for one hour." And do not forget to leave your guitar in the middle of the room.

By establishing an implementation intention, you'll give yourself both a clear strategy and an apparent clue, and it may amaze you how much easier it will be to create a favorable habit.

Let's take a little pause in our expedition here.

You might be wondering, this all sounds quite possible, however, does it truly work? Can I actually modify my environment and make it effortless to form favorable habits? Sounds good on paper? In practice?

To answer the question, let's look at the work of Anne Thorndike, a doctor based in Boston, and in case you're being curious, she isn't related to the cat lover, Edward Thorndike. Dr. Anne Thorndike dealt with a problem most health pros face: she wanted to help her clients enhance their diet plans and their snacking habits. She likewise knew that making a mindful choice to eat healthier can be tough. It takes a lot of willpower and discipline-- and not everybody has endless supplies of willpower and discipline.

Anne Thorndike and her associates designed a test. As part of the experiment, she had the hospital cafeteria reorganized. The soda in the refrigerators beside the cash registers was replaced with bottled water, and baskets of bottled water were positioned all around the lunchroom. Dr. Thorndike and the group then watched to see what would happen.

And what do you think occurred? Well, over 3 months, soda sales fell by 11 percent, and water sales soared by over 25 percent. Merely by creating more cues for individuals to drink water, Dr. Thorndike and her team were able to get people to make the much healthier choice.

In other words, they managed to assist individuals to establish better habits, without pushing them to make a conscious decision to do so. Clear proof that modifying your environment can help you embrace much better habits.

 

Idea 4

Humans are motivated by the anticipation of benefit, so making habits attractive will help you stick to them.

We're now about halfway through our exploration of Atomic Habits. We've looked at how powerful habits are, how they are made, and how you can utilize habit cues to your advantage.

Now, it's time to talk about the benefits side of habit structure.

In 1954, neuroscientists James Olds and Peter Milner ran an experiment to look into the neuroscience behind desire. Utilizing electrodes, they obstructed the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in some rats. The results were unexpected; the lab rats simply lost the will to live. Without dopamine, they had no desire to eat, drink, procreate or do anything else. Just a few days later, they all died of thirst.

This rather troubling story tells us one thing: dopamine is a vital motivator. When we do something helpful for our survival-- eating, drinking, having sex-- dopamine is released, and we feel good. This sensation of satisfaction motivates us to do helpful actions again and again.

So far, so clear. But what does this have to do with habit-building?

Well, we do not in fact have to do the satisfying activity to get the hit of dopamine. The very anticipation of doing something pleasant is enough to get the dopamine streaming. In the brain's reward system, wanting something is on par with getting something!

We can turn this to our advantage. When developing our brand-new habit, if we make it something we anticipate, we'll be far more likely to follow through and actually do it.

Here's where I'd like to introduce you to the idea of temptation bundling. Temptation bundling is where you take a behavior that you consider essential but unpleasant and link it to a behavior that you're drawn to. This is how you can use dopamine to your advantage when building a brand-new habit.

Consider the story of Ronan Byrne, an engineering student from Ireland. Ronan knew he ought to exercise more, but he got little pleasure from exercising. On the other hand, he did enjoy watching Netflix. So Ronan hacked an exercise bike. He linked the bike to his laptop and wrote some code that only allowed Netflix to run if he was cycling at a specific speed. By linking exercise to something that he was naturally drawn to, he transformed a distasteful activity into an enjoyable one.

You do not need to engineer a complicated Netflix/exercise bike contraption to apply this to your own life. There are simpler methods to do this. For example, if you require to work out, however, you want to catch up on the most recent A-list gossip, you could commit to only reading magazines while at the gym. Or if you wish to watch sports, but really need to make sales calls, promise yourself a half-hour of ESPN after you talk to your tenth prospect.

Just find a method of making those unappealing but essential tasks satisfying, and you'll be surfing a wave of dopamine, and developing favorable habits, at the same time.

 

Idea 5

If you wish to establish a new habit, make that habit as easy to embrace as possible.

Making a habit pleasant is a guaranteed way to make it stick. Another way we can hack the habit-building process is to make it simple.

Easy behaviors dominate our lives. We scroll through social networks or chomp through a bag of potato chips due to the fact that these are easy things to do. On the other hand, doing a hundred push-ups or studying Mandarin are both pretty difficult and take a lot of effort. This is why we don't discover ourselves drawn to intensive exercise or language learning in our leisure.

By making our desired behaviors as simple as possible, we stand the very best possibility of turning them into a habit. And fortunately, there are numerous methods we can make this occur.

The first way is by cutting down friction. Here's what it means.

James Clear has always been hopeless at sending out greeting cards. His wife, however, never misses an event to send a card. And there's a clear factor for this. She keeps a box of greeting cards in the house, presorted by occasion. This little bit of preparation makes it much easier to send out congratulations or condolences or whatever is required. She doesn't have to go out and buy a card when somebody gets married or gets a new job, and this reduces the friction involved in sending one.

Friction is a two-way process. You can reduce friction to turn a useful behavior into a habit, but you can likewise increase friction if you want to kill a bad habit.

If you desire to waste less time in front of the Television, unplug it and take the batteries out of the remote. This will introduce enough friction to ensure you only watch when you really want to.

That's friction. The 2nd technique for making a habit easier in the long term is what's known as the two-minute rule. This is a way to make any new activity feel workable. The concept is that any behavior can be distilled into a habit that is achievable within 2 minutes. So, if you want to read more, do not devote yourself to reading one book each week. Instead, make a habit of reading two pages per night.

Or, if you want to run a marathon, dedicate yourself to simply putting on your running gear every day after work.

The two-minute rule is a way to develop easily achievable habits-- small achievements that can lead you to higher things. Once you've pulled on your running shoes, you'll probably head out for a run. As soon as you have actually read 2 pages, you'll likely continue. Simply getting started is the very first and crucial step toward doing something.

 

Idea 6.

Making your habits immediately pleasing is necessary for effective behavior change.

We're getting closer to the end now. But before we're done, let's discuss the final rule for utilizing habits to enhance your life. And to do this, we need a story. It's the story of a very successful public-health scientist called Stephen Luby.

Back in the 1990s, Luby was working in a neighborhood of Karachi, Pakistan-- and was exceptional at his job. He reduced diarrhea among the neighborhood children by a significant 52 percent. He likewise cut pneumonia rates by 48 percent and the rate of skin problems by 35 percent.

What was his trick?

Great soap. Yes, that's right, Luby's big public health accomplishments were the result of great soap.

Luby knew that handwashing and simple sanitation were vital to reducing health problems. The locals comprehended this, too. They just weren't turning their understanding into a habit. Everything changed when Luby teamed up with Proctor and Gamble to introduce a premium soap into the neighborhood for free. Overnight, handwashing ended up being a satisfying experience. The new soap lathered easily and smelled delightful. All of a sudden, everybody was washing their hands due to the fact that it was now a pleasing activity.

Stephen Luby's story shows the final and crucial rule for behavioral change: habits need to be satisfying.

Making good behaviors pleasing can be tough. This is because of human advancement. Today, we reside in what is known as a delayed-return environment. You show up at the office today, but the return-- a paycheck-- does not come until the completion of the month. You go to the fitness center in the early morning, but you do not slim down overnight.

Regrettably, our brains evolved to manage an immediate-return environment. Our distant ancestors weren't thinking about long-term returns like saving for retirement or sticking to a diet plan. They were concentrated on immediate concerns like getting their next meal, looking for shelter, and staying alert enough to escape any close saber-toothed tigers.

This focus on instant returns can encourage bad habits. Cigarette smoking may give you lung cancer in twenty years, but, at the moment, it alleviates your tension and the yearning for nicotine. The instant hit from your cigarette will likely override the long-term costs to your health.

All this implies is that when working toward habits with a prolonged return, you need to try to attach some immediate satisfaction to them.

I can discuss this best by using the experiences of a couple the author knows. This couple wished to eat in restaurants less, cook more, get healthier and save money. These are objectives with delayed returns. To give their objectives a little immediate-return kick, they opened a savings account called "Trip to Europe." Whenever they eluded a meal out, they moved $50 to the account. The short-term fulfillment of seeing $50 land in that savings account supplied the instant gratification they required to keep them on track for the utmost, longer-term reward.

 

Idea 7.

Develop a structure to keep your habits on track, utilizing trackers and agreements.

OK, so we've learned how to establish excellent habits. But no matter how pleasant and rewarding we make our habits, we may still fail to sustain them. So in this last point, let's have a look at how we can stick to our good intentions.

One easy technique for making brand-new habits stick is called habit tracking.

Throughout history, many individuals have actually succeeded by keeping a record of their habits. One of the most popular is Benjamin Franklin. From the age of 20, Franklin kept a journal where he recorded adherence to 13 personal virtues. These virtues consisted of aims like staying away from frivolous discussions and to always be doing something valuable. Each night, Franklin would tape-record his development in each location.

You can follow Franklin's habit-tracking lead by using a basic calendar or diary, and crossing off every day that you stick with your selected behaviors. You'll find it effective— habit tracking is itself an attractive and satisfying habit. The anticipation and action of crossing off every day will feel good and keep you encouraged.

The next thing I suggest you do is to establish a habit contract that enforces unfavorable repercussions if you fail to remain on track.

Bryan Harris is an entrepreneur from Nashville, and he took his habit contract really seriously. In a contract signed by him, his wife, and his personal fitness instructor, he devoted himself to getting his weight to 200 pounds. He identified specific habits that would help get him there. These included tracking his food intake each day and weighing himself every week. He then established consequences for refraining from doing those things. If he failed to track food consumption, he would need to pay $100 to his fitness instructor; if he failed to weigh himself, he would owe $500 to his wife.

The strategy worked, driven not just by his worry of losing money but by his worry of losing face in front of two individuals who mattered to him. Humans are, after all, social animals. We appreciate the opinions of those around us-- simply knowing that someone is watching you can be a powerful motivator for success.

So why not set yourself a habit agreement? Even if it isn't as detailed as Bryan Harris's, contemplate making a dedication to your partner, your best friend, or one of your coworkers. If you agree upon a set of consequences for failing to follow through, you'll be far more likely to adhere to your habits. And as we've seen, adhering to a favorable habit, however little, is a surefire way to accomplish huge things in life.

Final summary.

Here's what we've found out.

A tiny change in your behavior will not change your life right away. But turn that behavior into a habit that you perform every day, and it definitely can cause big changes. Changing your life is not about making big developments or changing whatever you do. Rather, it has to do with establishing a positive system of habits that, when combined, deliver impressive outcomes.

And, I'd like to leave you with one final piece of advice: Use habit stacking to introduce brand-new behaviors.

If you want to develop a brand-new habit, you could try stacking it on top of an existing habit. Let's say you want to start meditating, however, you can’t find the time. Try thinking about those things you do effortlessly every day, like drinking coffee in the morning. Then just stack the brand-new habit on top. Dedicate to meditating each morning when you've finished your coffee, and grow on the natural momentum that comes from a habit you already have.