Atomic Habits Reading Notes
My records and organize notes taking from the book Atomic Habits.
Jump to:
- Outcomes 結果
- The Importance of the System 系統的重要
- Compound interest 複利效應
- Self-Awareness 對自己的認知
- Methodologe 方法論
- Effect of surroundings 環境的影響
- Dopamine 多巴胺
- Practicability 可行性
- Bandwagon Effect 從眾效應
- Action 行動
- Pay Now Gain Later 現在與未來的付出與結果
- Don’t break the chain 不要打斷習慣
- Thinking Purpose not Behavior 思考習慣的本質而不是為了做而做
- Phenomenon 現象
- Handle the Boredom 戰勝無聊
- Reflection of the Year 年度反思
- Keep Your Identity Small 過高的自我認知會阻礙自己的進步
- The Pros and Cons of Habits 習慣的優缺點
Outcomes 結果
Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits.
Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits.
Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits.
Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits.
Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits.
You get what you repeat.
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.
The Importance of the System 系統的重要
Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.
The purpose of setting goals is to win the game.
The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.
True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement.
Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine.
Compound interest 複利效應
Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them.
They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous.
It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.
Self-Awareness 對自己的認知
It’s hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior.
You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven’t changed who you are.
The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity.
It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.
It is a simple two-step process: Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.
There are three levels of change:
outcome change,
process change,
and identity change.
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. Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.
The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.
Your identity is literally your “repeated beingness.”
Methodologe 方法論
How can I make it obvious?
How can I make it attractive?
How can I make it easy?
How can I make it satisfying?
I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].
The habit stacking formula is: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”
If you can’t seem to get any work done, leave your phone in another room for a few hours.
formula is: After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [TRACK MY HABIT].
Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
Exercise. When I see a set of stairs, I will take them instead of using the elevator.
Social skills. When I walk into a party, I will introduce myself to someone I don’t know yet.
Finances. When I want to buy something over $ 100, I will wait twenty-four hours before purchasing.
Healthy eating. When I serve myself a meal, I will always put veggies on my plate first.
Minimalism. When I buy a new item, I will give something away. (“ One in, one out.”) Mood.
When the phone rings, I will take one deep breath and smile before answering.
Forgetfulness. When I leave a public place, I will check the table and chairs to make sure I don’t leave anything behind.
Effect of surroundings 環境的影響
Behavior is a function of the Person in their Environment, or B = f (P, E).
Stop thinking about your environment as filled with objects. Start thinking about it as filled with relationships. Think in terms of how you interact with the spaces around you.
“cue-induced wanting”: an external trigger causes a compulsive craving to repeat a bad habit.
Once you notice something, you begin to want it.
In the short-run, you can choose to overpower temptation. In the long-run, we become a product of the environment that we live in.
If you’re continually feeling like you’re not enough, stop following social media accounts that trigger jealousy and envy.
Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one. You may be able to resist temptation once or twice, but it’s unlikely you can master the willpower to override your desires every time.
Dopamine 多巴胺
Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop.
Dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it.
Practicability 可行性
More probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors.
Habits are the entry point, not the end point. They are the cab, not the gym.
Bandwagon Effect 從眾效應
Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves.
When changing your habits means challenging the tribe, change is unattractive.
When changing your habits means fitting in with the tribe, change is very attractive.
Action 行動
When you’re in motion, you’re planning and strategizing and learning. Those are all good things, but they don’t produce a result.
Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will deliver an outcome.
You just need to get your reps in.
Neurons that fire together wire together.
The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning.
Focus on taking action, not being in motion.
The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.
Addition by subtraction.
“How can we design a world where it’s easy to do what’s right?”
Make it easy to start and the rest will follow.
Happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue. Desire is pursued. Pleasure ensues from action.
Pay Now Gain Later 現在與未來的付出與結果
Pleasure teaches your brain that a behavior is worth remembering and repeating.
The costs of your good habits are in the present.
The costs of your bad habits are in the future.
let’s update the Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change:
What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.
The road less traveled is the road of delayed gratification.
If you’re willing to wait for the rewards, you’ll face less competition and often get a bigger payoff.
As the saying goes, the last mile is always the least crowded.
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.
A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future.
In a perfect world, the reward for a good habit is the habit itself.
In the real world, good habits tend to feel worthwhile only after they have provided you with something.
Don’t break the chain 不要打斷習慣
Don’t break the chain
As Charlie Munger says, “The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.”
Thinking Purpose not Behavior 思考習慣的本質而不是為了做而做
The dark side of tracking a particular behavior is that we become driven by the number rather than the purpose behind it.
We optimize for what we measure. When we choose the wrong measurement, we get the wrong behavior.
But just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing.
And just because you can’t measure something doesn’t mean it’s not important at all.
Phenomenon 現象
Behavior only shifts if the punishment is painful enough and reliably enforced.
As physician Gabor Mate notes, “Genes can predispose, but they don’t predetermine.”
The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.
Awareness comes before desire.
Being curious is better than being smart.
Naval Ravikant says, “The trick to doing anything is first cultivating a desire for it.”
Suggestion Impulse Buying, which “is triggered when a shopper sees a product for the first time and visualizes a need for it.”
In other words, customers will occasionally buy products not because they want them but because of how they are presented to them.
It’s easy to train when you feel good, but it’s crucial to show up when you don’t feel like it — even if you do less than you hope.
We focus on working long hours instead of getting meaningful work done.
We care more about getting ten thousand steps than we do about being healthy.
We teach for standardized tests instead of emphasizing learning, curiosity, and critical thinking.
Peace occurs when you don’t turn your observations into problems.
We can only be rational and logical after we have been emotional.
As Caed Budris says, “Happiness is the space between one desire being fulfilled and a new desire forming.”
As the psychologist Carl Jung said,
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Habits that reinforce your desired identity are usually good.
Habits that conflict with your desired identity are usually bad.
Handle the Boredom 戰勝無聊
“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.”
The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.
As Machiavelli noted, “Men desire novelty to such an extent that those who are doing well wish for a change as much as those who are doing badly.”
Everyone faces the same challenge on the journey of self-improvement: you have to fall in love with boredom.
Stepping up when it’s annoying or painful or draining to do so, that’s what makes the difference between a professional and an amateur.
Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.
Professionals know what is important to them and work toward it with purpose; amateurs get pulled off course by the urgencies of life.
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.
When a habit is truly important to you, you have to be willing to stick to it in any mood.
The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.
Reflection of the Year 年度反思
What went well this year?
What didn’t go so well this year?
What did I learn?
My yearly Integrity Report answers three questions:
What are the core values that drive my life and work?
How am I living and working with integrity right now?
How can I set a higher standard in the future?
You can see the important changes you should make without losing sight of the bigger picture.
You want to view the entire mountain range, not obsess over each peak and valley.
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?
Keep Your Identity Small 過高的自我認知會阻礙自己的進步
The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.
Paul Graham, “keep your identity small.” The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you.
“I’m the type of person who is mentally tough and loves a physical challenge.”
“I’m the type of person who builds and creates things.”
Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry.
Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life.
The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.
— LAO TZU
The Pros and Cons of Habits 習慣的優缺點
The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking.
The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors.
The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking.
The downside of habits is that you get used to doing things a certain way and stop paying attention to little errors.
