I had convinced myself to never read self help books again as they more or less contain the same premise. Nevertheless I gave atomic habits a chance because I had heard that the author truly focuses on practical ideas. Fortunately, what I heard was true to a great extent.
The author mainly follows a scientifically rigorous approach to understand how habits for and why are they hard to get rid off. Being a self help book having recaps at the end of each chapter was nice addition which in my opinion should be in every book of this genre.
Cue, carving, response and reward are introduced as the lifecycle of an action. The author proposes a framework to maximise the chances of repeating the action i.e form an habit by manipulating the above mentioned factors.
I don’t think it’s worth to delve deep into each technique he talks about though, there are a few I found really powerful.
- Habit stacking: The method of “stacking” habits together, in other words pairing a new habits with one which is already present. This system assists greatly in remembering to do the habit we are trying to form, moreover it plays an integral part in forming a routine.
- Environment Design: Simple and effective system where we design the environment we work in to support a frictionless workflow. It can be simple as setting up stuff we need beforehand and putting away all sources of distractions. I went a notch further by having sticky notes with phrases which remind me to “lock in”.
- Identity shift: This might seem unwieldy and a bit strange at first, but as we progress think along the lines “That version of would do such and such”, the ability to break shackles of procrastination and self doubt significantly increases. Before you know it, you would metamorphose into the person you wished to be.
- Commitment Devices: Setting up specific circumstances in the present to increase the odds of doing the intended tasks in future. This falls more into region of environment design however it deals more with actions we do than the objects we have in our view. It could be as simple deciding not to watch youtube while we eat which otherwise would turn into a YT binge session.
As a closing thought, you could have all the knowledge in the world but failing to turn them into action would deem everything as worthless.