N02 Book Break Notes: "Atomic Habits" | James Clear | Small changes subvert cause and effect, bring rich life results

📖 Author: James Clear | 📝 Translator: Cai Shiwei | 📠 Publisher: Fangzhi Press | ⭐️Douban Score: 9.0

📗 About destiny, habits and this book

There can be a big difference between people, and at the same time, they can be classified into two types, ordinary people and extraordinary people. Extraordinary people can be geniuses we understand, amazing talents, successful people on the rich list, Nobel laureates, or the wealthy businessmen that the neighbors know about.

Feng shui guys say that one fate, two luck, three feng shui, this world is destined for later life. The editor is also convinced of this statement, but the editor does not agree with this statement. Is there really nothing we can do? Destiny and feng shui are external questionnaires given to us, but how to answer, I think it is our choice.

When we were young, we may not have realized that our every move imitates the people around us. We will imitate how family and friends answer, make choices, and respond to the questionnaires the world gives us. We are like artificial machines, learning and applying until these experiences are embedded into our habits and consciousness. The pattern between people is here to judge the high and low. Children from wealthy families naturally know how to play upstream games. The habits and experience of success can be directly obtained from the previous generation, saving ordinary people the suffering and time they need to go through. to obtain.

It can be seen that the difference between ordinary people and extraordinary people is not external factors, but the pattern of choices and habits. Atomic Habits by James Clear Unveiled Extraordinary Secrets. From the book Atomic Habits, we can understand that

 1. Why are we who we are now?
2. How to create new habits to improve life?
3. How to break the pattern of breaking the habit of soaring higher?

Let James Clear walk us through how to get started on the road to extraordinary without much effort.

Don't challenge human nature, cultivate good habits without willpower - Wen Meiyu

📗 The nature of habits

Before we discuss atomic habits, we first need to understand the nature of habits. What is a habit? To put it simply, it is the process of transforming the past experience of one thing into a subconscious archive, which will be read and used when encountering the same scene. Dismantling habits and behaviors, we can get such a process.

 Received stimulus--> Motivation--> Response--> Reward feedback (referring to the simplified model of the essence of human behavior / TMBRT model)

In the continuous repetition of the above process, this set of behaviors will eventually become habits. But is it really that simple in reality? We can imagine if you have repeated those few things many times, but you are still very resistant to doing them, and you are not even used to doing them. On the contrary, some things you don't like or things you shouldn't do have become bad habits.

📗 The core theory of atomic habits

Atomic Habit cites three core concepts to answer the above question, namely compound interest , action over everything , and identity .

• Compounding effect

The simple understanding of compound interest effect is a multiplication formula, which accumulates results in multiples. Imagine a snowball rolling, and the snowball will get bigger and bigger in the snow. So compound interest is also known as snowballing. The key to life's success or failure is the compound interest effect. Good habits make time your ally, bad habits make time your enemy.

The actions and choices you make every day determine the level of your life

 Learn from 031 Atomic Habits, if you can improve by 1% every day for a year, you will eventually improve thirty-seven times; on the contrary, if you retreat by 1% every day for a year, in the end you will weaken to the point where zero.

It can be seen that the small improvement every day is of amazing value. As the saying goes, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", and it can't be more suitable to apply here. Every small success is accumulated and multiplied, and one day it will be a great achievement. Even if we get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in life, we must rely on our strength to fight for it, and the key to our strength is our daily habits.

• Action above all else

Habit also means persistence. Repeated behavior will become muscle memory, making the same response to the same thing. But back to the problem we mentioned above, some things are repeated many times, and they can't become habits in the end. There are two crucial things at stake here, systems and identities .

Let's talk about the system first, and let's talk about identity. In the deep work article, we mentioned that the brain is lazy and likes to save energy. In the face of resistance, the brain will choose to escape, so we need to mobilize willpower to execute. The same is true of habit building, if we perform in the face of resistance, our willpower will be drained, and by deducting points from reward feedback, the brain will continue to resist, preventing us from forming new habits.

The book mentions a good solution to this problem, that is, the generation system. Using the flow system, we can execute new habits we want to form without the processing of our brains. The system allows us to subconsciously execute new habits and improve mobility without consuming willpower.

We always set goals for ourselves, and what we accomplish can become what we do. this will not work. Ordinary people will not do what they should do for the sake of illusory imagination. Human nature is to believe what is in front of them. The book mentions 4 major problems with setting goals:-

 1. Winners and losers share the same goals 2. Goals achieve results as short-term changes 3. Goals limit happiness 4. Goals contradict long-term progress

• identity

What you believe will become. The easiest way to change a person is to change an identity. Xiaobian also has a similar situation. After just graduating, Xiaobian still thinks that he is a student. When he is in society, he naturally sees things from the perspective of a student. It wasn't until my changed identity that life started to get better.

We often think that change should start from the outside, and we must first change the result before we can change ourselves. The answer given to us in the book is not like this. The author believes that if we want to change ourselves, we must first change our inner self before we can change the result. Only by making a change from the bottom of your heart can your life truly change.

 The goal is not to read a book, but to become a reader. 
The goal is not to run a marathon, but to become a runner. 
The goal is not to learn an instrument, but to become a player.

Every day I read, I became a reader. 
Running every day, I became a runner. 
By practicing an instrument every day, I became a player.

Because I am a reader, I read every day. 
Because I'm a runner, I run every day. 
Because I'm a player, I practice every day.

When you identify with who you are, habits make you who you want to be. This is interaction. And we take the result as the end, and what is the end? Habits and becoming are cause and effect, but also cause and effect, the relationship between immortality, immortality, and constant transformation.

 Drawing on the 053 atomic habit of telling the same story to myself over and over again, it is easy to fall into this mental routine after many years, thinking that he is the truth. At the end of the day, you start to resist certain things because "I'm not that kind of person". An inner oppression forces you to maintain a self-image and act in a way that is consistent with your beliefs. You will do everything you can to avoid contradicting yourself.

📗4 steps to building a habit

The key diagram of the habit is as follows

prompt ---> desire ---> response ---> reward

See if this is similar to the simplified model/TMBRT model of the nature of human behavior we mentioned. Here we continue to dismantle the essential simplification model/TMBRT model, the nature of habits, and how to use the nature of habits to build habits.

Ways to build good habits:

 Make the hint obvious (hint)
Make the habit attractive (craving)
Make action easy (response)
Make the reward satisfying (reward)

Ways to break bad habits:

 Ways to break bad habits:
make prompt invisible (hint)
Make the habit unattractive (craving)
make action difficult (response)
Make the consequences unhappy (reward)

Rule 1 - Hint

The process of behavior change begins with awareness

What is the hint? A hint is that when you see something, you probably already know what to do next, or what the consequences will be. A cue is a precondition for arousing a craving. We can use an analogy to be hungry. Hunger is a reminder from our body that it is time to eat. And we also have almost invisible cues in our lives, that's because we've hidden their presence. It's like putting a mobile phone on a desk, but when you want to sit down and work, you will choose to play with your mobile phone first, because playing with a mobile phone can bring happiness.

 Action ---> Desire

Without being aware of the unconscious, he will direct your life, and you will call it destiny - Jung

 How to Make a Habit Scorecard (Aware Habits and Reminders)
Planning habits (specific times, specific places, specific projects)
Habits stack up (and old habits stack up)
Ambient cues (make habits obvious, make execution a breeze, reduce friction)

Law 2 - Desire/Attraction

Desires are inner desires. As long as we can drive our desires, even if we don’t have willpower, our fighting spirit can be ignited at one point. The more attractive something is, the easier it is to form a habit. The book mentions 3 keys to using attractiveness to change your habits.

• dopamine
• surroundings
• desire drive

💡Dopamine

Using scientific dissection of the relationships, we have a dopamine-driven feedback loop in our brains. Dopamine is our desire and sense of survival, and without it, we have no sense of survival. High dopamine is not a good thing. As we mentioned, the greater the attraction, the easier it is to form a habit. There are also fast and massive dopamine-stimulating substances like drugs, social media, junk food, etc. that are designed to be addictive. Another key to dopamine is that expectations are better than what actually comes . Therefore, we can improve our living habits through this mechanism, which is the trigger binding mentioned in the book. It's all about putting together what you want to do and what you like to do. Just like if I wanted to practice drawing, I would draw while watching Netflix, which is the easiest technique.

Tips for Incentive Bundling -

After completing the [current habit], execute the [needed habit]; after completing the [needed habit], execute the [desired habit].

It's like if you want to play a game, but you want to read, you can read for a minute before you take out your phone, and then play the game.

💡 Environment

As we mentioned before, our earliest habits come not through our choices, but through imitation. Since it is imitated, then our behavior, habits and cognition will be the choices that the environment guides us, and naturally we will not do things other than cognition. Another key is that we all want to be recognized, to fit into the group. Herding affects us a lot, so how do we break it? It's very simple, get out of the group, choose to get along with the group you want to be, habits will naturally affect your choice, and finally change your habits, those who are close to Zhu are red, those who are close to ink are black.

Make the self who you want to be regarded as the norm, and naturally there will be the same group, who will go with you and walk with you.

💡 Desire drive

Action comes from desire. Before we study our own behavior, we need to understand why we do it. We can simply normalize our motivation into intrinsic and extrinsic factors.

Internal factors are self-needs (psychological and physical needs), and external factors are realistic needs (material and social needs).

By understanding our underlying motivations, we can overturn habits and the predictions and associations our brain makes. The brain likes pleasant things, but it remembers hard and hard things better. Therefore, it takes more willpower to do difficult things. Here, the book proposes a plan to subvert the system of the brain, that is, change your mind.

1. Think of things as the benefits of doing them
2. Turn yourself on and enjoy the process with motivational rituals (prompts)

Law 3 - Response/Action

We mentioned that the associations that prompt the brain generate cravings. If we do not execute or respond to cravings, we also cannot generate habits. The most we can generate is the thinking habits of the brain. In the Law of Response, the book mentions 4 core principles:-

 1. Frequency of Action 2. Principle of Least Effort 3. The Two Minute Rule 4. Automation

With these three principles in mind, we can create a plan to develop good habits. By increasing the frequency of action , we can drive the frequency through cues and cravings, like stacking and bundling habits . Then use the principle of least effort to simplify things and make actions easy , such as preparing in advance, collecting every time you run out, etc. to make the next action more convenient. If you still can't open the behavioral habit, let yourself try to do it for two minutes . The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step, at least the beginning, and there may be a chance to do more. Combining the above 3 laws makes behavior a mental inertia, and after a long time, a system can be formed and started to be automated. If we want to break a bad habit, then we can make the cues or things of the bad habit invisible, or increase the difficulty of doing it, increase the resistance, and greatly reduce the attraction and execution.

Law 4 - Rewards

Desires and actions are based on motivation, and the incentives for motivation are rewards. The bigger the reward, the bigger the attraction and the bigger the execution. The way to stimulate our reward system is tracking. Many companies use punch cards, daily tasks, etc. to stimulate our reward mechanism to keep us using the product. We can also apply these methods to our lives through the usual methods of business, and we can record every thing we do (every little thing is done, we tick the calendar). With habit tracking we can measure our performance, manifest habits, and improve persistence.

If you want to break a bad habit/improve your life habit, you can also find an accountability partner to get immediate feedback. In this way, we can instantly understand that we have made a mistake or made the right choice, and let ourselves continue.

📗 Additional content and epilogue

Combining the four laws we talked about, in fact, the key is continuity, and the other things to talk about are actually how to continue a behavior. Xiaobian also has a system when learning painting and writing. Using this system, Xiaobian can enter the state to start learning and writing at any time, even when he does not want to do it.

1. The moment you turn on the computer, immediately open the application software (the two-minute rule).
2. Start with some simple preparations (work rituals, the principle of least resistance, and tips).
3. Do the task of the day (craving for progress and state of flow) when you start deep.
4. Immediate feedback (reward mechanism) after recording in Notion.

But many times when we just started to learn something new, the gap between our imagination and our actual ability is too far, and when we try to execute it, we give up because we still can't achieve the ideal appearance because of cross-level fighting monsters. So it is also mentioned in the book that the brain likes challenges, but it should choose something equal to our ability to do it , so that we can get the challenge and enjoy the process.

Just like doing anything, we always care too much about the result, this is the principle that this society teaches us. However, in order to achieve real change, we should live in the process, enjoy the feeling of the process, the joys and sorrows, rather than the temperatureless results.

Achievement is more happy than becoming, and chasing is more happy than getting. Feel the ideal from the heart, keep chasing, keep changing, and finally break the chrysalis into a butterfly.

 Post Date 3/7/2022, Time 4:24pm - First Edition