Now that I’m getting out of the hardest part of parenting with our second kid I’ve started re-reading Atomic Habits in an effort to regain some of the loss ground and get started kicking some ass. This article is going to be a summary and synthesis of the most important points of this and other books about habits.

Building habits

• Habits are the compound interest of self improvement
• Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results over a long time span. Ice doesn’t melt when you increase temperature one degree from -10°C to -9°C, or one degree more, or another one, but all this effort compounds so that when you get 1°C all change happens at once. Likewise with small habits all your effort isn’t wasted. Small actions done consistently over time will produce remarkable results.
• Start with your identity
• Every habit can be broken down into four steps
  • Cue: what triggers the habit (a place, an object, etc)
  • Craving: what you want to do (go for a run, eat a cookie, etc)
  • Action: actual doing what you want to do
  • Reward: a rewarding feeling after doing the action
• If you want to build a habit you need to pay attention to all these 4 steps following the 4 laws of behavior change:
  • Cue: Make it obvious
  • Craving: Make it attractive
  • Action: Make it easy
  • Reward: Make it satisfying
• Likewise to break a undesired habit you can reverse the 4 laws of behavior change:
  • Cue: Make it invisible
  • Craving: Make it unattractive
  • Action: Make it hard
  • Reward: Make it unsatisfying

Resources

• Atomic Habits
• Atomic habits book summary