Book summary of Atomic Habits by James Clear
Easy way to leave old habits by adopting new habits.
In this Atomic Habits book summary, we will learn about habits, how our habits are formed, why we repeat them unknowingly again and again, and why it is so difficult to leave them. This book tells us how to adopt good habits and give up bad habits.
Who it is for?
- Those who love to study psychology.
- Those who want to know about habits.
- Those who want to leave their bad habits and adopt good habits.
About the Author
James Clear is an entrepreneur who enjoys writing about habits and psychology. He is also a photographer.
Chapter 1:
The result of small actions can be huge.
When you exercise every day, you never become healthy in one day, but one day your health definitely gets better. Similarly, when you eat outside food every day, you do not realize that you are getting fat, but after a few years when you look at your old photo, you realize that that everyday food has taken a toll on your health.
What effect did Every day we do so many things which are either good or bad? We think that the result of that small work will not be anything special, but we forget that by doing that small work continuously, we can go back and forth. For example, if a person always searches for information things on the Internet and a person always searches for entertainment, although it seems that both of them are using the Internet after 10 years the difference between them is huge.
So if you want you to be successful and healthy for a long time, then try to identify those everyday habits of yours. Try to see if that work is taking you forward or backward. See whether the work is good or bad. After that decide whether you should do that work every day or not. If you are doing any new work for the example today, then ask yourself that if you keep doing this work continuously for the next 10 years, then what will be the effect on you. In this way, you can find out whether you should do that work or not.
If you spend most of your income on buying good gadgets or amenities, then it is obvious that you are giving yourself the comfort and even after 10 years you will earn as much money as you are earning today. But if you spend most of your income on making yourself smarter than before or investing somewhere, then it is obvious that 10 years from now you will probably be earning a lot of money by doing very little work.
Chapter 2:
We do those things over and over again from which we get some reward.
Just think about what work you do everyday. Now think about why you do that work and how you will be in trouble if you do not do that work. Most of us have a habit of brushing in the morning. If you do not brush for two days, then you will start to smell bad from the mouth and you will not like it. In other words, brushing gives you a reward that you repeat every day to get it.
To prove this, some psychologists experimented on a monkey. He locked the monkey in a cage and placed a lever and a computer in front of it. When red lines were shown on that computer and then the lever was pulled, the monkey got fruits to eat. The monkey understood this with time and then he started looking at the screen with attention. As soon as he could see the red lines, he would pull the lever and he would get fruits to eat.
In order to get a reward in this way, he started doing that work again and again. To do any work, we need a why which tells us that the time has come to do that work. For example, some people resort to alcohol to get rid of their stress. Whenever they get stressed, why is it that they tell them it's time to drink. After this, we get a reward for doing every work, to get which we keep doing that work again and again.
When that person gets relief after drinking alcohol, then that person again remembers alcohol after going under stress. In this way almost every habit follows this pattern. There are also some bad habits which give us comfort or enjoyment for some time, but they are harmful for us in the long run. But still we keep on doing those things to get the reward we get from those works. We cannot stop ourselves from doing this. We will learn about its solution in the coming lesson.
Chapter 3:
You have to change your environment to create new habits.
Now that you know how our habits are formed, let us try to use it to know how you can easily adopt new habits. There are some things that motivate us to do a certain thing. For example, if you ever pass in front of a restaurant and the smell of food comes from there, then you go there to eat. That fragrance inspired you to do so.
This means that if you want to make a new work your habit, then always keep those things with you that will motivate you to do that work.
If you want to make a habit of exercising every morning, then put a photo related to health in your room so that every morning as soon as you wake up, you exercise to make your health.if you want to eat good and healthy food, then always keep healthy food in your fridge. If possible, start living with healthy people so that seeing their health, you will feel like you should be healthy like them and in this way you will always eat good food. Apart from this, one way is to plan well to adopt that new work. For example, don't just tell yourself that you will take care of your health from now on.
Rather you make a good plan to do so. You decide what you will do every morning, what food you will eat if you ever feel like eating pizza, how will you stop yourself, what kind of people will you live with, which food to keep in your fridge. In this way, you are all set and now you will really do that work.
Chapter 4:
Give yourself a reward for adopting a new habit.
As we have already said for every work you do, you get a reward. By using it, you can create many habits inside yourself. But if you want to be healthy then you have to eat healthy food, but you do not enjoy eating healthy food.
So how can you adopt this habit? The simple way to do this is to associate that work with something that you enjoy doing. For example, if you have a passion for stories, then tell yourself that if you eat healthy food every day this week, then you can read a story on Sunday.
Similarly, if you have to complete your work within time, then tell yourself that if you have done so, then you can watch a movie on Sunday. When we think about the reward we get from some work, a hormone called dopamine is released in our brain, which makes us feel good. That's why some people get into the habit of dreaming during the day because they keep dreaming with open eyes and roam themselves in Mercedes and that's only they enjoy.
We all have this quality and so thinking about your next reward will make you feel good. But you will get that treat only when you complete your work. Therefore, to get it, your interest in that work will increase. Psychologists conducted experiments on rats to understand the importance of dopamine. They stopped the release of dopamine by inserting an electric rod into their brain.
The result of this was that those rats even stopped eating and drinking. They used to feel hungry, but the comfort they get after eating food, they did not get it. Now because he is not enjoying doing that work, he stopped doing that work. He died of thirst in a few days.
So if you promise to give yourself a reward for completing boring to boring tasks that you enjoy thinking about, then you will be able to complete that task comfortably.
Chapter 5:
We take things for granted that are easy.
Our brains like to rest. That's why he always likes to do those things which are easy. So if you want to make a new habit, then you have to make it so easy that you adopt it easily.
Similarly, if you want to give up a bad habit, you have to make it so difficult that you leave it. First of all, let's talk about giving up bad habits. For this, you have to do something that will make that work difficult for you. For example, if you want Facebook to scroll less, you can delete its app from your phone and also sign out every time you use Facebook from the browser.
In this way, to use Facebook, you have to log in again and again after searching for it on Google, which made this task difficult. Now you can easily drop it. Similarly, if you are thinking of waking up in the morning, then always keep your shoes under your bed, sleep with your waking dress somewhere in front of you, so that in the morning you only have to run away.
Another way is to adopt the two-minute rule to adopt a habit. Our brain likes small tasks because they get over quickly. So don't tell yourself that you will read a book every week, rather say that you will read only two minutes or only two pages. In this way every day you will keep doing these small things and a time will come that you will get used to it. For all this you have to start first. Without him you will never be able to reach your destination.
Chapter 6:
Give yourself some reward for repeating your good habits once.
Earlier the people of the time were only concerned about food, living and keeping themselves safe. They used to roam in the forests to eat and when they got food, they used to sit comfortably. But in today's time we work thinking about the future. Things have changed, but our mindset remains the same. Looking at the long time, we do not want to work, but we are not able to do it.
For example, we drink alcohol because it gives us instant relief. But it will take the form of cancer after twenty years. We know it, but we still drink it because we get instant relief from it and that is our mindset. But maybe we can see the benefit of exercising after 2 years. We do not get immediate benefit from it, so we do not do that work. This means that if we can somehow reward ourselves by repeating good habits once in a while, we will soon adopt it. For example, a person had to travel to Europe and at the same time he had a habit of eating outside.
He wanted to get rid of this habit and eat healthy food at home. So he opened an account in his own house which he named Trip to Europe. Whenever he stopped himself from eating out, he would put that money in his account.
In this way, he was happy to see that his dream was about to come true and he started working again and again to get this happiness. After some time he got used to eating outside.
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Chapter 1:
Put yourself on a contract and punish yourself for not repeating your good habits.
Benjamin Franklin used to keep a notebook with him from the age of 20 in which he used to write down the 13 qualities that he had to adopt. If he used to repeat all his good deeds on some day, then on that day he would stick to them, and on the day he could not repeat some of his habits for some reason, he would cross it.
In this way, they came to know with time that to what extent they were adopting their good habits, on the day they used to do all their work, on that day they used to tick all the work which gave them a rest. To find that comfort, he kept repeating his good habits every day and we don't need to tell you about his success. In the same way, keep a tracker with you so that you can know which work you are doing and which are not.
When you will also see all your work being completed, you will feel relaxed and in this way you will be able to find out whether you will be successful 10 years from now or not. Apart from this, put yourself on a Habit contract. You sign a deal together with some of your special people.
If someday you fail to repeat your good habits then punish yourself. Brian Harris is an entrepreneur from Nashville who decided to lose weight by writing down what kind of food to eat and how to exercise. If he couldn't do all that work someday, he would give $100 to his trainer and $500 to his wife. In this way, they started doing their work honestly.
When we feel that we will be embarrassed in front of those we love, we do not do that work. When Brian felt that he would be embarrassed for not completing his work in front of his wife and his trainer, he started doing his work every day. In this way, you too can adopt good habits by keeping yourself on a contract.
Overall, we form new habits over time because doing that work gives us some reward. To get that reward, we repeat that work over and over again. If we reward ourselves for repeating a good deed, we will easily adopt that habit. In the same way if we make it difficult for ourselves to repeat our bad habits, we will easily give them up. To adopt a new habit, associate it with an old habit. Suppose you have to make a habit of meditating. To adopt this habit, associate it with any of your old habits. After drinking a lot of sugar every day, meditate. You tell yourself that every morning when you drink enough, you will meditate, or you will drink a lot after meditating.
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