Atomic Habits- Book Summary (Part-1)

I recently started a book titled Atomic Habits by James Clear. This book goes with the beliefs and principles of compounding. So here is the part 1 summary of the same.

This book is based more on real-life examples and so is this post. More than concepts, you find examples.

Believe it or not, Life is uncertain and one cannot imagine how drastically an incident can change the course of life. Introducing himself, James mentions about how his life has changed after getting hit hard by the baseball and how he was back just by practicing small habits which he describes as Atomic Habits.

James explains that getting better by 1% consistently has a lot of impact in the long run (Compounding) and to explain this, he pulls out an example where a cycling team never won a medal despite giving their best and how changing their perspective and focuses on minute details like their clothing, maintaining body temperatures and diet of every individual made them win consistently for years. All these 1% of new ideas mattered to win, not just one idea alone. If you still think small changes never matter, think of how a degree shift in the airplane's direction could lead to change in the destinations.

(Image Source: Book)

Success is neither overnight nor linear.

There is an interesting concept called The Plateau of Latent Potential which explains how small changes often appear to make no difference until one crosses a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed because time is the major factor and one needs to be patient.

(Image Source: Book)

(Fun fact: 99.7 % of warren buffets wealth was created after the age of 52.)

(Image Source: shorturl.at/CKLU1)

Though water changes its state from 100 to 101th degree, every degree which made it boil till 100th-degree matters. The San Antonia Spurs which is one of the most successful teams in NBA history has a quote hanging in their locker which says,

"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a 100 times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow, it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it but all that had gone before."

Ever have you wondered why it's easy to keep repeating bad habits and so hard to form the good ones? Maybe we are trying to change the wrong thing!!

Our Habits define our identity and it works the other way too. Most of the goals are outcome-based and these are temporary and one time according to the author, rather he stresses one to be more process and identity oriented.

There are three levels at which a change can occur:

• Identity(what you believe)

• Process(what you do)

• Outcome(what you get)

(Image Source: Book)

According to him, the most effective way to change your habit is not to focus on what you want to achieve but on who you wish to become. So, each time you play the guitar, believe yourself as a musician. each time you try to workout, believe you are an athlete.

If you are worried about being late always or bad with memory or not being the morning person for that matter, maybe it's because you are believing them. Try not to believe and see if things change.

If you are still confused, think it this way, to complete reading a book is outcome-based, thinking of becoming a reader is identity-based.

Building habits is the most important thing and it's based on trial and error method.

There was an experiment conducted using cats where they are placed in a puzzle box and they could get out it either by pulling the cord, stepping on a platform, or pressing a button. This experiment was repeated multiple times using the same cats and the results were interesting. The time to get out of the puzzle box has gradually decreased from 120 secs in the first time to 5 secs in the 20th time. Solving the puzzle box has now become a habit and so, it can now solve without thinking of or using its energy.

Our mind can focus on one thing at a time and this is why developing habits is important to not let our brain waste time thinking about the same routine every time.

Once habits are developed, our mind is free to focus on something else. All we do in life is develop habits and more the habits you have more you are free to try out new things. Habits are the behavior that becomes automatic and we try to do with the least energy possible.

The habit loop is all about 4 stages namely cue, craving, response and reward.

Cue is all about a clue to reward (a small piece of information that gives clues to the reward). Craving is wanting to do something to get the reward (Motivational force behind the habit).

The response is your actual habit and reward is what satisfies and teaches you.

The first two (Cue and craving) are a problem phase and the next two are the solution phase.

Morning coffee, switching lights in the darkroom, changing clothes on getting back from work are all habits which we follow even without thinking and all these follow these four steps unknowingly.

Let's take a few examples to make it clear.

Problem Phase:

Cue: Your phone buzzes with a new text message.

Craving: You want to learn the contents of the message.

Solution Phase:

Response: You grab your phone and read the text.

Reward: You satisfy your craving to read the message. Grabbing your phone becomes associated with your phone buzzing.

Problem Phase:

Cue: You walk into a dark room.

Craving: You want to be able to see.

Solution Phase:

Response: You flip the light switch.

Reward: You satisfy your craving to see. Turning on the light switch becomes associated with being in a dark room.

The author asks one to think about how one can make cue-obvious, craving-attractive, response-easy to repeat and reward-satisfying to really make it a habit and these 4 tools become the base to the next chapters.

So, stay tuned..........

This is a really interesting book I have come across and I believe one will not regret investing time on it. It was really difficult for me to write the summary as every word I read felt like it was important but I had to skip many to keep it short.

This is the first time I tried to write a summary of a book and if you feel something is missing, please let me know in the comments.

-with love