if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together

We often dismiss small changes because they don’t seem to matter very much in the moment.
The slow pace of transformation also makes it easy to let a bad habit slide.

• Outcomes vs Habits
  
• Goals vs Habits
  

• Habits are a double-edged sword
  

Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits.

Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.

Bad habits can cut you down just as easily as good habits can build you up, which is why understanding the details is crucial.

Habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance.
why it is so hard to build habits that last? People make a few small changes, fail to see a tangible result, and decide to stop.

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.

• Habits trigger a phase transition
  

• Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
  
• Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.
  
• Problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems.
  
• You’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone. (“Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy.”)
  
• Goals create an “either-or” conflict: either you achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and you are a disappointment.
  

It is unlikely that your actual path through life will match the exact journey you had in mind when you set out. It makes no sense to restrict your satisfaction to one scenario when there are many paths to success.

1. we try to change the wrong thing and (this chapter)
   
2. we try to change our habits in the wrong way. (following chapters)
   

Since too
When working against you, though, identity change can be a curse.
Once you have adopted an identity, it can be easy to let your allegiance to it impact your ability to change.
Many people walk through life in a cognitive slumber, blindly following the norms attached to their identity.
When you have repeated a story to yourself for years, it is easy to slide into these mental grooves and accept them as a fact.

Every belief, including those about yourself, is learned and conditioned through experience.

1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
   
2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.
   

many people aren’t sure where to begin —but they do know what kind of results they want:
Start there and work backward from the results you want to the type of person who could get those results.

Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits.

because they help you become the type of person you wish to be.

• Without some level of motivation or desire we have no reason to act.
  
• What you crave is not the habit itself but the change in state it delivers.
  

Feelings of pleasure and disappointment are part of the feedback mechanism that helps your brain distinguish useful actions from useless ones.
Rewards close the feedback loop and complete the habit cycle.

The problem phase includes the cue and the
craving, and it is when you realize that something needs to change. The
solution phase includes the response and the reward, and it is when
you take action and achieve the change you desire.

Either notice something good and you want to obtain it or experiencing pain and you want to relieve it.

It is continuously taking in your surroundings and analyzing the information it comes across.

Whenever you experience something repeatedly your brain begins noticing
what is important,
sorting through the details and
highlighting the relevant cues, and
cataloging that information for future use.

With enough practice, you can pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it.

We can’t always explain what it is we are learning, but learning is happening all along the way, and your ability to notice the relevant cues in a given situation is the foundation for every habit you have.

As the psychologist Carl Jung said,
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

is a safety system designed to reduce mistakes.
It seems silly, but it works incredibly well.

when we’ve done something a thousand times before, we begin to overlook things. We assume that the next time will be just like the last.
We’re so used to doing what we’ve always done that we don’t stop to question whether it’s the right thing to do at all.

a plan you make beforehand about when and where to act
how you intend to implement a particular habit.
“When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.”

Rather than pairing your new habit with a particular time and location, you pair it with a current habit.
“After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”

live and work in environments that are filled with productive cues and devoid of unproductive ones.

• If you want to make a habit a big (small) part of your life, make the cue a big (small) part of your environment
  

The cues that trigger a habit can start out very specific, but over time
your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the
entire context surrounding the behavior.

You aren’t battling old environmental cues,

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.
«Evolutionary view of habits»

antifragile

an external trigger causes a compulsive craving to repeat a bad habit.
Once you notice something, you begin to want it.
This process is happening all the time—often without us realizing it.

A more reliable approach is to cut bad habits off at the source.
One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce
exposure to the cue that causes it.

is a heightened version of reality and it elicits a stronger response than usual.

FIGURE 9: Before a habit is learned (A), dopamine is released when the
reward is experienced for the first time. The next time around (B), dopamine
rises before taking action, immediately after a cue is recognized. This spike
leads to a feeling of desire and a craving to take action whenever the cue is
spotted. Once a habit is learned, dopamine will not rise when a reward is
experienced because you already expect the reward. However, if you see a
cue and expect a reward, but do not get one, then dopamine will drop in
disappointment (C). The sensitivity of the dopamine response can clearly be
seen when a reward is provided late (D). First, the cue is identified and
dopamine rises as a craving builds. Next, a response is taken but the reward
does not come as quickly as expected and dopamine begins to drop. Finally,
when the reward comes a little later than you had hoped, dopamine spikes
again. It is as if the brain is saying, “See! I knew I was right. Don’t forget to
repeat this action next time.”

The habit stacking + temptation bundling formula is:

1. After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED].
   
2. After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].
   

whatever
habits are normal in your culture are among the most attractive
behaviors you’ll find.

one of the deepest human desires is to belong.

We imitate the habits of three groups in particular:

1. The close.
   
2. The many.
   
3. The powerful.
   

1. Imitating the Close
   

We pick up habits from the people around us.

As a general rule, the closer we are to someone, the more likely we
are to imitate some of their habits.

One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is
to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.

New habits seem achievable when you see others doing them every
day.

Surround yourself
with people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You’ll rise
together.

Join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal
behavior and (2) you already have something in common with the
group.

Nothing sustains motivation better than belonging to the tribe.

Previously, you were on
your own. Your identity was singular.

When you join a book club or a band or a
cycling group, your identity becomes linked to those around you.

Growth and change is no longer an individual pursuit.

The shared identity begins to
reinforce your personal identity. This is why remaining part of a group
after achieving a goal is crucial to maintaining your habits. It’s
friendship and community that embed a new identity and help
behaviors last over the long run.

Whenever we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide
our behavior. We are constantly scanning our environment and
wondering, “What is everyone else doing?”

It’s usually a smart strategy. There is
evidence in numbers.
But there can be a downside.

There is tremendous internal pressure to
comply with the norms of the group. The reward of being accepted is
often greater than the reward of winning an argument, looking smart,
or finding truth. Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than
be right by ourselves.

The human mind knows how to get along with others. It wants to
get along with others. This is our natural mode. You can override it—
you can choose to ignore the group or to stop caring what other people
think—but it takes work. Running against the grain of your culture
requires extra effort.

When changing your habits means challenging the tribe, change is
unattractive. When changing your habits means fitting in with the
tribe, change is very attractive.

1. Imitating the Powerful
   

Once we fit in, we
start looking for ways to stand out.

these habits and behaviors maintained their attractiveness, in part,
because they were valued by their culture.

You think you are quitting something, but you’re not quitting
anything because cigarettes do nothing for you.
You think smoking is something you need to do to be social, but
it’s not. You can be social without smoking at all.
You think smoking is about relieving stress, but it’s not. Smoking
does not relieve your nerves, it destroys them.

“Get
it clearly into your mind,” he says. “You are losing nothing and you are
making marvelous positive gains not only in health, energy and money
but also in confidence, self-respect, freedom and, most important of
all, in the length and quality of your future life.”

Now, imagine changing just one word: You don’t “have” to. You
“get” to.

Meditation.

each interruption gives you a chance to
practice returning to your breath. Distraction is a good thing because
you need distractions to practice meditation.

Pregame jitters.

You can reframe “I am nervous” to “I am excited
and I’m getting an adrenaline rush to help me concentrate.”

motivation
ritual. You simply practice associating your habits with something you
enjoy, then you can use that cue whenever you need a bit of
motivation.

You can adapt this strategy for nearly any purpose. Say you want to
feel happier in general. Find something that makes you truly happy—

bath—and then create a short
routine that you perform every time before you do the thing you love.

It becomes a cue that means feeling happy.

Once a habit has
been built, the cue can prompt a craving, even if it has little to do with
the original situation.

all the best photos were produced by the quantity group.
these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learning from their mistakes.
In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills.
Meanwhile, the quality group sat around speculating about perfection.
In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo.

That means habits that you perform more often will be caught earlier

this is a smart strategy, not a dumb one.

when deciding between two similar options, people will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.

On the tough days, it’s crucial to have as many things
working in your favor as possible so that you can overcome the
challenges life naturally throws your way.

The idea behind make it
easy is not to only do easy things. The idea is to make it as easy as
possible in the moment to do things that payoff in the long run.

You can do it, but it requires
a lot of effort and increases the tension in your life.

Rather than trying to overcome the friction in your life, you reduce it.

when deciding where to practice a new habit, it is
best to choose a place that is already along the path of your daily
routine. Habits are easier to build when they fit into the flow of your
life.

Too often, we try to start habits in high-friction
environments.

‘lean
production,’ relentlessly looking to remove waste of all kinds from the
production process,

addition by subtraction.* The
Japanese companies looked for every point of friction in the
manufacturing process and eliminated it.

when we remove
the points of friction that sap our time and energy, we can achieve
more with less effort. (This is one reason tidying up can feel so good:
we are simultaneously moving forward and lightening the cognitive
load our environment places on us.)

create an environment where doing the right
thing is as easy as possible.

finding ways to reduce the friction associated with our
good habits and increase the friction associated with our bad ones.

“perfect time to clean the toilet is right before you wash yourself in
the shower anyway.”)

Whenever you organize a space for its intended purpose, you are
priming it to make the next action easy.

You can also invert this principle and prime the environment to
make bad behaviors difficult.

If that doesn’t do it, you can take it a step further.

You can be sure you’ll only take it out when you really want
to watch something. The greater the friction, the less likely the habit.

It is remarkable how little friction is required to prevent unwanted
behavior.

“How can we design a world where it’s easy to do what’s
right?” Redesign your life so the actions that matter most are also the
actions that are easiest to do.

Habits are automatic choices that influence the

conscious decisions that follow.

a habit can be completed in just a
few seconds, but it can also shape the actions that you take for minutes
or hours afterward.

It seems to be easier to continue what you are already doing
than to start doing something different.

there are a handful of moments that deliver an outsized
impact.

decisive moments.

walking into a restaurant is a decisive moment because it
determines what you’ll be eating for lunch.

Your options are constrained by
what’s available. They are shaped by the first choice.

Even when you know you should start small, it’s easy to start too big.
When you dream about making a change, excitement inevitably takes
over and you end up trying to do too much too soon.

Two-Minute Rule,
which states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two
minutes to do.”

The idea is to make your habits as easy as possible to start.

once you’ve started doing the right thing, it is much easier to
continue doing it.

A new habit should not feel like a challenge.

What you want is a “gateway habit” that naturally leads you
down a more productive path.

the point is not
to do one thing. The point is to master the habit of showing up.

a habit must be established before it can be improved.

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.

You may not be able to automate the whole process, but
you can make the first action mindless. Make it easy to start and the
rest will follow.

If the Two-Minute Rule feels forced, try this: do it for two minutes
and then stop.

you must stop after two minutes.

The secret is to always stay below the point where it
feels like work.

“The best way is to always stop when you are going good,”

You’re not worried about getting in shape. You’re focused on
becoming the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts. You’re taking
the smallest action that confirms the type of person you want to be.

everyone is
consumed by the end goal.

once you’ve established the habit and you’re showing
up each day, you can combine the Two-Minute Rule with a technique
we call habit shaping to scale your habit back up toward your ultimate
goal.

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.

make it difficult.

A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that
controls your actions in the future. It is a way to lock in future
behavior, bind you to good habits, and restrict you from bad ones.

change the task such that it requires more work to get
out of the good habit than to get started on it.

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.

When you automate as much of your life as possible, you can spend
your effort on the tasks machines cannot do yet.

Each habit that we
hand over to the authority of technology frees up time and energy to
pour into the next stage of growth.

“Civilization advances by extending the
number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.”

the power of technology can work against us as well.

Binge-watching becomes a habit because you have to put more effort in
to stop looking at the screen than to continue doing so.

autoplay

When
the effort required to act on your desires becomes effectively zero, you
can find yourself slipping into whatever impulse arises at the moment.
The downside of automation is that we can find ourselves jumping
from easy task to easy task without making time for more difficult, but
ultimately more rewarding, work.

Every Monday, my assistant would reset
the passwords on all my social media accounts, which logged me out
on each device. All week I worked without distraction. On Friday, she
would send me the new passwords. I had the entire weekend to enjoy

After I
removed the mental candy from my environment, it became much
easier to eat the healthy stuff.

“It is a lot easier for people to adopt
a product that provides a strong positive sensory signal, for example
the mint taste of toothpaste, than it is to adopt a habit that does not
provide pleasurable sensory feedback, like flossing one’s teeth.

We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is
satisfying. This is entirely logical. Feelings of pleasure—even minor
ones

We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is
satisfying. This is entirely logical. Feelings of pleasure—even minor
ones

well—are signals that tell the brain: “This feels good. Do this again,
next time.”

We are not looking for just any type of
satisfaction. We are looking for immediate satisfaction.

immediate-return environment

your actions instantly deliver
clear and immediate outcomes.

delayed-return environment

you
can work for years before your actions deliver the intended payoff.

It is only recently—during the last five hundred years or so—that
society has shifted to a predominantly delayed-return environment.*

after
thousands of generations in an immediate-return environment, our
brains evolved to prefer quick payoffs to long-term ones.

time inconsistency.

the way your brain evaluates rewards is inconsistent across
time.* You value the present more than the future.

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.

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.

the costs of your good habits are in the present.
The costs of your bad habits are in the future.

most people know that delaying gratification is
the wise approach.

But these outcomes are seldom top-of-
mind at the decisive moment.

Thankfully, it’s possible to train yourself
to delay gratification—but

In a perfect world, the reward for a good habit is the habit itself. In
the real world, good habits tend to feel worthwhile only after they have
provided you with something. Early on, it’s all sacrifice.

It’s only months later,

that it becomes easier to
exercise for its own sake.

In the beginning, you need a reason to stay
on track.

immediate rewards are essential. They keep you
excited while the delayed rewards accumulate in the background.

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.

Immediate reinforcement can be especially helpful when dealing
with habits of avoidance, which are behaviors you want to stop doing.

It can be hard to feel
satisfied when there is no action in the first place. All you’re doing is
resisting temptation, and there isn’t much satisfying about that.

One solution is to turn the situation on its head. You want to make
avoidance visible. Open a savings account and label it for something
you want—maybe

Whenever you pass on a purchase,
put the same amount of money in the account.

it is important to select short-term rewards
that reinforce your identity rather than ones that conflict with it.

Eventually, as intrinsic rewards like a better mood, more energy,
and reduced stress kick in, you’ll become less concerned with chasing
the secondary reward.

The identity itself becomes the reinforcer. You
do it because it’s who you are and it feels good to be you.

The more a
habit becomes part of your life, the less you need outside
encouragement to follow through. Incentives can start a habit. Identity
sustains a habit.

it takes time for the evidence to accumulate and a new
identity to emerge.

Making progress is satisfying, and visual measures—like moving
paper clips or hairpins or marbles—provide clear evidence of your
progress.

they reinforce your behavior and add a little bit of
immediate satisfaction to any activity.

“Don’t break the chain” is a powerful mantra.

Recording your last action creates a trigger that can initiate your next
one.

Research has shown that people who track their progress

are all more likely to improve than those who don’t.

Habit tracking also keeps you honest. Most of us have a distorted
view of our own behavior. We think we act better than we do.

Measurement offers one way to overcome our blindness to our own
behavior and notice what’s really going on each day.

The most effective form of motivation is progress. When we get a
signal that we are moving forward, we become more motivated to
continue down that path.

habit tracking can have an
addictive effect on motivation.

When you’re feeling
down, it’s easy to forget about all the progress you have already made.
Habit tracking provides visual proof of your hard work—a

the empty square you see each
morning can motivate you to get started because you don’t want to lose
your progress by breaking the streak.

Tracking can become its own
form of reward.

Habit tracking also helps keep your eye on the ball: you’re focused
on the process rather than the result.

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.*

many people resist the idea of tracking and measuring.
It can feel like a burden because it forces you into two habits: the habit
you’re trying to build and the habit of tracking it.

What can we do to make tracking easier?

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.

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. The completion of the behavior is the cue to write it down.

habit-stacking

After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [TRACK MY HABIT].

No matter how consistent you are with your habits, it is inevitable that
life will interrupt you at some point. Perfection is not possible.

rule: never miss twice.

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

Anyone
can have a bad performance, a bad workout, or a bad day at work. But
when successful people fail, they rebound quickly. The breaking of a
habit doesn’t matter if the reclaiming of it is fast.

I think this principle is so important that I’ll stick to it even if I can’t
do a habit as well or as completely as I would like. Too often, we fall
into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits.

the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something
perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.

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.

As Charlie Munger says, “The first rule of compounding:
Never interrupt it unnecessarily.”

This is why the “bad” workouts are often the most important ones.
Sluggish days and bad workouts maintain the compound gains you
accrued from previous good days. Simply doing something—ten

doing something—ten
squats, five sprints, a push-up, anything really—is huge.

it’s not always about what happens during the
workout. It’s about being the type of person who doesn’t miss
workouts.

It’s easy to train when you feel good, but it’s crucial to show
up when you don’t feel like it—even if you do less than you hope. Going

The dark side of tracking a particular behavior is that we become
driven by the number rather than the purpose behind it.

we optimize for what we measure. When
we choose the wrong measurement, we get the wrong behavior.

Goodhart’s Law.

“When a measure
becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Measurement is only
useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not
when it consumes you.

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 something doesn’t mean it’s
the most important thing. And just because you can’t measure
something doesn’t mean it’s not important at all.

we are more likely to repeat an experience when the ending
is satisfying, we are also more likely to avoid an experience when the
ending is painful.

If a failure is painful, it
gets fixed. If a failure is relatively painless, it gets ignored.

When the consequences are
severe, people learn quickly.

The more immediate the pain, the less likely the behavior.

We repeat bad habits because they serve us in some way, and that
makes them hard to abandon.

increase the speed of the punishment associated with
the behavior. There can’t be a gap between the action and the
consequences.

As soon as actions incur an immediate consequence, behavior
begins to change.

There is, of course, a limit to this. If you’re going to rely on
punishment to change behavior, then the strength of the punishment
must match the relative strength of the behavior it is trying to correct.

the more local, tangible, concrete, and immediate the
consequence, the more likely it is to influence individual behavior. The
more global, intangible, vague, and delayed the consequence, the less
likely it is to influence individual behavior.

As a society, we
collectively agree to abide by certain rules and then enforce them as a
group.

if you don’t follow along, you’ll be punished.

you can
create a habit contract to hold yourself accountable.

verbal or written agreement in which you state your commitment to a
particular habit and the punishment that will occur if you don’t follow
through.

find one or two people to act as your accountability
partners and sign off on the contract with you.

wrote up a
habit contract

laid out a road map for achieving his
ideal outcome:

wrote out each of the daily habits that would get him to
his goal.

listed the punishment if he failed:

My initial reaction was that a contract like this seemed overly
formal and unnecessary, especially the signatures.

signing the contract was an indication of
seriousness.

To make bad habits unsatisfying, your best option is to make them
painful in the moment. Creating a habit contract is a straightforward
way to do exactly that.

Suddenly, you are not only failing to uphold your promises to yourself,
but also failing to uphold your promises to others.

We are always trying to present our best selves to the world.

We care
about the opinions of those around us because it helps if others like us.
This is precisely why getting an accountability partner or signing a
habit contract can work so well.