Atomic Habits by James Clear main takeaways (bonus notes at the end)
Tags: Phsychology, Habit Building, Habits, Atomic Habit, Book Review

Takeaway 3: How to form a good habit

When it comes to creating a good habit or breaking a bad habit, you can do so in 4 easy steps, according to the Laws of Behavior Change:

(1) make it obvious

(2) make it attractive

(3) make it easy

(4) make it satisfying.

Make it Obvious

Give yourself cues to start your new habit. The 2 most common cues are location and time. The implementation intention formula is a good way to put this into action: I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].

The environment shapes your habits, without you knowing. Let’s say you want to drink more water if you place water bottles all around your house, and the environment then you are making it obvious to drink water for yourself. Hence the “Make it Obvious” rule. Now let’s say you are trying to stay away from cookies (thus breaking your bad habit of eating too many cookies), if you do not have any cookies in your house/environment then it is near impossible to eat the cookies. However, if you had a big bowl of cookies every time you walked into the kitchen then it would be hard to resist grabbing a cookie now and then.

Make it Attractive

The more attractive a habit is, the more likely you will keep it. If you want to form a good habit, you must be tempted to do so. A good way to do so is with the right crowd. James Clear says that you tend to be influenced by 3 groups of people, the close (family members), the tribe (the majority of the people around you), and the powerful (people with high status or power). But I would like to add one more, the role models, people who you look up too but are not necessarily in the other 3 groups. So if you wish to develope a certain habit, you should place you should make sure that the 3 groups of influencial people have that habit as well. Let us say you wish to eat healthier, you should ask your family to eat healthier as well, you should also join a community of healthy eaters, you should ask your boss at work to not offer cookies to you at work and you should look at role models who eat healthy (Like watch youtube videos of someone who lives a healthy lifestyle).

Make it Easy

Make it easy to follow a habit. Be specific when it comes to doing something. Like if you wish to form a habit of taking Vitamin C every day, you want to be specific WHEN you take it. The implementation intention formula should be very clear. It should not be: I will take my Vitamin C after lunch, at the water faucet. This is because it is unclear when you will take it. Before clearing the table? After washing the dishes? Instead, it should be like: I will put my Vitamin C and a glass of water on the table before I eat, and as soon as I finish eating I will take the Vitamin C at the table before doing anything else. This way it makes it easy not to forget to take Vitamin C.

Make it Satisfying

After you accomplish doing your habit in a day, a good way to increase your chance of repeating the habit the next day is to reward yourself. If you take your Vitamin C at lunch, you could reward yourself with dessert.

What truly drives you to form a habit is the reward, or the anticipation of the reward. The brain once it