“Success is the product of daily habits, not just once-in-a-lifetime transformation”
James Clear
A precise and reliable Holy Grail of habit formation, James Clear offers practical and evidential strategies for building good habits and breaking bad habits in his debut book Atomic Habits.
James elucidates his four-pronged model (The Habit Loop – Fig 1) of acquiring a new habit and the four laws of behaviour change that materialize out of the four-pronged model.
The Four Laws of Behaviour Change
Clear bifurcates the behaviour change process into 4 simple yet effective laws (Figure 2).
1st Law – Make It Obvious
He speaks about strategies like implementation intentions and habit stacking (a strategy to pair the intended habit with a current habit). He explains with evidence that these are perhaps the most practical ways to create obvious cues for the habits we intend to cultivate for ourselves.
2nd Law – Make It Attractive
The author states that habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it becomes more motivational and in turn habit-forming for us.
3rd Law – Make It Easy
Usually, we are so focused on figuring out our best approach to obtain optimum results that we hardly ever get around to taking action. Jerry Ulesmann’s experiment about ‘Quantity vs Quality’ sets the stage for this law. James states that “if you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection”. Thus we need to focus on deliberate practice and not plan for perfection.
4th Law – Make It satisfying
James writes that pleasure teaches our brain whether a behaviour is worth remembering and repeating, ergo, we are more likely to repeat a behaviour when the experience is satisfying. Similarly, if we encounter an experience that is less than satisfactory, we have little or no reason to repeat it. Positive emotions cultivate habits while negative ones destroy them.
The fourth law of behaviour change suggests that we may want to prioritize our intended habit with short-term rewards as it reinforces our satisfaction level. This increases the odds of us repeating an action to turning it into a habit.
Lessons I Learnt From This Book:
Choice Architecture is important. Our habits are indirectly shaped by the environment we are in, and to make the environment conducive to our intended habit we need to tweak the environment we are in. Environment design is a powerful and subtle way to encourage our intended habit.
The author talks about his mantra of “one space, one use”. This is something I resonate with as it helps me set a distinct mood for work and relaxation. This is especially true now when I am full-fledged into working from home since the beginning of the pandemic.
Proximity has a powerful effect on our behaviour. We usually pick up the qualities and habits of those around us. Hence, we should surround ourselves with people who have the habits that we want for ourselves. This ties in perfectly with one of my favourite laws (Law 10 – Figure 3) from 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (read my review here). This dictates that we should always associate ourselves with the happy and the fortunate.
Oswald Nuckols’ “resetting the room” approach is something I have started doing recently. It has helped me immensely because ‘a stitch in time saves nine.’
Bottom line:
Forming good habits and following them through is not a one-time task. To achieve positive and intended results that last forever, we need to put in the work. It is a continuous process and only (deliberate) practice makes us perfect.