That one book about habits that you really should read

For some reasons most of us think that if you want to achieve something remarkable in life you need big improvements. Huge changes that will provide spark for that change. Maybe it is matter of perspective. Only something significant is really visible for us. But is it for sure?

James Clear in his book "Atomic Habits" points out that it is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.

Core message

Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.

It works both ways. When you will repeat small, even tiny, errors, day after day, our choices compund into bad habits and bad results. But when you will be better every day by aforementioned 1 percent in the long term we will see significant results.

If you need to remember something from that book it can be this:

1. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
2. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
3. The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become.
4. The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.
5. Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.

Key highlights from "Atomic Habits"

Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.

What you get from your actions is strictly connected with your habits. No matter if you are talking about:

• weight or general health,
• finance,
• learning,
• writin g.

You are getting what you are repeating, what you are doing over and over again. That's why:

You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.

This is guiding us to that:

Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.

We all have ability to improve and we all struggle. All the time. When you find yourself struggling to build some good habit or change bad one, it's not because you don't know how to improve or you don't have that ability. Mostly is because you are not on the Plateau of Latent Potential.

When you fail, you complain. You complain because you feel that you are not achieving. When in fact you will achieve your goal mostly beacuse your work was not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at thirty-two degrees.

If you are NBA fan you already know this. If you are not it will be something new for you. In locker room of San Antonio Spurs, one of great NBA teams, you can find this quote:

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred 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. -  Jacob Riis

Processes lead you to results. Not goals. That's why you need to build processes that lead you towards results not goals for results.

• Goal is for showing you direction,
• System is for making progress.

System can give you happines because you have you don't wait for result of achieving goal. You are satisfied because your system is running. And a system can be successful in many different forms, not just the one you first envision. Everything what we are doing came to cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress. This will give you result. To give you more context:

• The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader,

And for that you need a process but for that you need change of your self-image. Why?

Over the long run, however, the real reason you fail to stick with habits is that your self-image gets in the way. This is why you can’t get too attached to one version of your identity. Progress requires unlearning. Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.

Your identity emerges out of your habits. You are not born with preset beliefs. Every belief, including those about yourself, is learned and conditioned through experience.

Your habits are connected with your own identity. For example. If you write each day, you maybe think about yourself as creative person. You belive in that because you have proof. You have proof that you are committed to fitness becuase you working out. The more evidence you have for a belief, the more strongly you will believe it.

You will build that believe not with revolution but with gradual evolution. Like in that Morcheeba song, and famous quote:

Don't you know that Rome wasn't built in a day,

You are building Rome day by day. Habit by habit. By microevolutions not microrevolutions. That's why:

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

You are working in iterations, each day. Habits are great tool to help you achieve, but fundamentally they are not about having something. They are about becoming someone.

Ultimately, your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally, you become your habits.

How you can work with that? Mostly by thinking about each action that you take like actions that help you to become person that you want or wish yo be. I like how Ali Abdaal describe this:

"Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?” Habits that reinforce your desired identity are usually good. Habits that conflict with your desired identity are usually bad.

Ready for this? Than here we go. Motivation it's not a problem. Real problem is lack of clarity and integrity between what you think about yourself and what you are in fact doing. You need less energy to change something if does not require willpower and a lot of self-control. Once I heard sentence:

You can't stop diarrhea by sheer force of will.

It's true and I can give you more to that. It's easier to have strong will when you don't need to you use it. To be clear, you need some kind of perseverance, grit or willpower to be successful. But you will fail if you don't build environment that support you in what you think or wish.

And now another very harsh truth. We spend more time thinking about action than taking action itself. Why? Because we are programmed to see results. If you don't see results than why you to do anything. In the meantime it's better to do something than don't do anything.

We don't act, because we are afraid of failure so we are avoiding that situation, delay possibility of failure. That's why we are preparing everything. iterating all what we can. Preparation can be a form of procrastination. Plans and planning are good but without action there is no use in them. You don't need perfection, you need first step, than second. If you want to be perfect from the start than in my opinion you already fail. For habits you need practice not very precise plan. Precise plans are needed in different areas.

But how you can practice something, in that case habit? By making it easy. More convenient, easier, higher chance of start acting and building good habit. Why this is so important? Because:

Certainly, you are capable of doing very hard things. The problem is that some days you feel like doing the hard work and some days you feel like giving in. 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 less friction you face, the easier it is for your stronger self to emerge. - Ali Abdaal

What is also very important? To experience satisfaction from your action. If what you repeat is easy and satisfying you are closer to build good habit. You will send simple signal:

This feels good. Do this again, next time.

It works both ways but with different outcome. With our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. In good habits the immediate outcome is unenjoyable, but the ultimate outcome feels good.

It almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa ….18 Often, the sweeter the first fruit of a habit, the more bitter are its later fruits. - Frédéric Bastiat, French economist

Key for that is delaying gratification. We all know that it's important but we are thinking and feeling here and now. That's why we have problem with delaying gratification. The best way to do this is to add a little bit of immediate, pleasure to the habits that pay off in the long-run and a little bit of immediate pain to ones that don’t.

This will give you feel of success. Thanks to that you will get small victory on the road to building new system. It's important because we all need a reason to stay on our road. This little victory, noticable progress, are essential. They keep you excited. That's why it's hard to stick to things like “no alcohol this month”. Resisting tempation is hard and in the long run very painfull. What you can do? Put a reward for your resist. Like in loyalty programs, but that one is for you. Something what you see, because habit is easy when it is enjoyable.

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. If you start with $100, then a 50 percent gain will take you to $150. But you only need a 33 percent loss to take you back to $100. In other words, avoiding a 33 percent loss is just as valuable as achieving a 50 percent gain. As Charlie Munger says, “The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.” - Ali Abdaal

That's why for example when you working out and you have "bad day", than this is the most important training that you can have. That "bad workout" it's your success.

At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over.

If you add to this also that you need to understand that when you can't win only by being better than others there is solution. Create new game. Game that favors your strength. You must remember that there will be days when you don't want anything. You want to quit. David Cain, an author and meditation teacher, encourages his students to avoid being “fair-weather meditators.” Similarly, you don’t want to be a fair-weather athlete or a fair-weather writer or a fair-weather anything. When a habit is truly important to you, you have to be willing to stick to it in any mood. Professionals take action even when the mood isn’t right. They might not enjoy it, but they find a way to put the reps in.

Trust the process.

Buy this book

PS While writing that I was refering to that articles, which I also recommend.