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The Secrets of Behavior Change

Those are my notes and learnings from the first three chapters of the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.

For me, the most important learnings from this book are about the environment and willpower. James Clear says that the secret to strong willpower is not training yourself to resist temptation but to avoid them. It’s much easier to avoid temptation than resist it. And we can avoid temptation by carefully designing our environment. From making your good habits obvious and easy, to making the bad ones invisible and hard. Put your fruits in a bowl at easy reach and the chocolate in the back of the fridge where you can’t even see it.

In this article, I will make a short description of each of the twenty chapters.

This is one of a series of articles based on the work of James Clear. This article is a short description of the fundamentals of behavior change.

What to expect from this article?

So, let’s start.

Why is it that a tiny change can create a remarkable result? James says that “habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.” That means your habits stack one on top of each other in order to create a result. It’s not one plus one, it’s one percent plus one percent.

Compounding is the ability of an asset to generate earnings, which are then reinvested to generate their own earnings. In other words, compounding refers to generating earnings from previous earnings.

How much better your life could be if you just improve 1% in many instances? Improve your sleep by 1%, your health by 1%, and your work by 1%. All of those small habits stack up and build a better you. This is called “the aggression of marginal gains”. This means searching for marginal improvements in everything you do. James says “if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done” This is why a small habit can make a significant difference.

But this, like many other aspects of life, is a double-edged sword. Bad habits stack on top of each other just like good habits. James mentioned that if you are a billionaire but spend more than you earn, you are on a bad trajectory. Money can be easily tracked, sooner or later you will change this trajectory. But aspects like stress and negativity are pretty hard to be tracked and we often neglect them. We may think “this is just another stressful day at the office” but really it is another negative experience building on top of many others, reinforcing a negative compound effect that will result in a significantly negative outcome. So, a great idea will be to identify and eliminate those bad behaviors. And by the end of this article, you will learn a couple of efficient ways to break bad habits.

The challenging part with improving one percent every day is that you will not see any result for a long period. It is frustrating to not see any reward for our work and we might give up because of this. We expect our evolution to be in a linear trajectory. But it’s actually a curved trajectory.

In this bad drawing that I made in paint, you can see the principle of The Plateau Of Latent Potential, which is the lag time between what you think should happen and what actually happens. The first (1) line is what we think happens, a linear trajectory of our evolution. The second (2) line is what actually happens, a curved line that slowly evolves to a point where skyrockets. The red zone is where we are most likely to give up, that gap between expectation and reality. More solutions for this problem will be found along our way through this article, but what you need to understand for the moment is that patience is the key. As James says “Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored.” Every action you make will stack up with another and in the end, will create a significant result.

The meaning of a goal is to give us a clear vision of what we want, but in the process, we might lose sight. Achieving a goal is just a temporary moment of happiness that won’t last too much. Don’t fool yourself by thinking that if you get that promotion, buy that car, or achieve that number then you will be happy. After we achieve a goal we usually set another, making it a loop of goals. Also, our goals might even change along the way, mine did a lot. “The goal in any sport is to finish with the best score, but it will be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard.”Winners and losers have the same goals, so goals are not what separates winners from losers. What separates them is a system. As James says “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Goals are good for setting directions, but systems are the ones who get you there. Once you find an efficient system, the scoreboard will take care of itself.

How I apply this chapter in my life

For the bad habits, I keep myself as aware as possible regarding my behavior in order to identify bad habits, then I dig for solutions to eliminate them.

For the good habits, I created a list of multiple daily habits. Each habit is designed to improve my life by one percent. Every day I have to complete as many as possible, but at least three must be completed. I made this because I cannot do the same stuff every day, it becomes tedious at one point. For the last couple of days, I’ve read for hours. But today I feel like writing.

Everyone has a unique set of behaviors that define their identity. An athlete will practice every day, a writer will write every day, a reader will read every day, and a lazy person will waste time every day. “Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on WHAT they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on WHO we wish to become.” The problem with outcome-based habits is that, once we achieve a certain outcome — get fitter, finish that book, write that article — there is a high chance of us stopping our evolution there. With identity-based habits, we create an identity — become an athlete, a reader, a writer — around our habits that enforces our habits even further. “The ultimate form of instinct is when a habit becomes part of your identity”

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When your identity and habits are fully in sync, you are no longer pursuing a change. You are simply acting naturally.

Ther is a simple two-step process to changing your identity. First, you need to decide who you want to become. Then prove it to yourself with small wins. We always prove to ourselves that we are in a certain way or not. By saying “I don’t know German” you reinforce the idea that you don’t know German and it makes it even harder for the mind to accept that there is a way to understand it. By learning German daily, you reinforce the idea that you know German. By always complaining about your extra layer of fat, you reinforce the idea that you are fat. But by practicing a sport daily, you reinforce the idea that you are an athlete and the loss of fat will just be a common outcome.

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Once you know who you want to become is worth proving it every day with small wins. Our mind needs proof that we are someone in order to reinforce an idea. Once an idea is reinforced enough times, we feel natural doing things we normally felt uncomfortable doing. ’“Habits can help you achieve all of these things, but fundamentally they are not about having something. They are about becoming someone”

How I apply this chapter in my life

I decided who I want to be and I prove to myself every day that I am that person already. I write this article because I am a writer. I read this book because I am a reader. Finishing this article will be a little win that will demonstrate to me that I really am a writer. Finishing this book was a little win that demonstrated to me that I am a reader.

“A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic”

If you write a lot on your computer, you probably noticed that you don’t look at the keyboard very often. This is because the brain has memorized every location of the keys in order to make our work easier. If you have practiced a fighting sport before, you probably noticed that your defense is more automatic than conscious. “A choice that once required effort is now automatic. A habit has been created” The brain is learning and automatizing frequent behaviors in order to free up space in our processing power. Of course, in the process were many mistakes, “this is the feedback loop behind all human behavior: try, fail, learn, try differently”.

This cognitive function allows us to automatize the basics behaviors of life in order to free our minds, so we can focus on new challenges. But this doesn’t mean only good behaviors will be automatized. Every action that is repeated enough times will be automatized.

The Science of How Habits Work

All habits can be divided into four simple steps that always occur in the same order: cue, craving, response, and reward.

Every behavior starts with a cue, a piece of information that predicts a reward. “Our prehistoric ancestors were paying attention to cues that signaled the location of primary rewards like food, water, and sex.” Today, we spend our time, attention, and energy learning cues that predict secondary rewards like money, fame, or status. Not like those things don’t matter, they do, but survival is much easier nowadays so we will focus more on evolution. It’s like we automatized the behavior of survival into a habit and now we focus on a new challenge, evolution.

After we notice a cue, we start developing a craving. A craving is a motivational force behind every habit. Without motivation or a desire, we will never act. Like, what is the point of doing anything without a reason? So, craving is the reason we take action. “What you crave is not the habit itself but the change in state it delivers. You do not crave smoking a cigarette, you crave the feeling of relief it provides” Every craving is connected to a desire to change your current inner state. Under every tangible habit or behavior is a craving pushing us to act.

The response is the decision you take when encountering a craving. This can take the form of a thought or action. The response that you will take depends on the level of friction and motivation. If the friction is too heavy and the motivation is too low, you won’t take action. Friction is an important aspect when it comes to response.

The response delivers a reward. “Rewards are the end goal of every habit. The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward.” We chose rewards because they deliver one of two possible outcomes. We either get satisfaction or a lesson. Satisfaction is what we want when a cue occurs but sometimes we get burned, therefore we learn a lesson. “At least for a moment, rewards deliver contentment and relief from a craving.”

“Your brain is a reward detector. As you go about life, your sensory nervous system is continuously monitoring which actions satisfy your desires and deliver pleasure. Feelings of pleasure and disappointment are part of the feedback mechanism that helps your brain distinguish useful actions from useless ones.”

Rewards are the end of the feedback loop and complete the habit circle. If a behavior is insufficient in any of the four stages, it will not become a habit. If you eliminate a cue, your habit will never start again. Reduce the craving and you won’t have enough motivation to take action. Increase the difficulty of the action and you wouldn’t do it. And if we don’t get enough satisfaction from the reward, there will be no reason to repeat it.

“The brain is continually scanning the environment, predicting what will happen next, trying out different responses, and learning from the results. The entire process is completed in a split second, and we use it again and again without realizing everything that has been packed into the previous movement.”

Every behavior is driven by a desire to solve a problem. Sometimes we see something, we like it, and we want to obtain it. Sometimes a severe problem occurs, you experience pain and you want to relive it.

In the following chapters, we will see again and again how cue, craving, response, and reward influence almost every aspect of our lives. James is talking about the four laws of behavior change that are a practical framework we can use in order to design an environment in which we can easily do the right thing and avoid bad decisions.

I write every article, including this one, in the hope that it might help someone. The next articles from this series will appear shortly. Till then, don’t forget that:

Thanks for reading,

Andrei Boghiu (Shadow)

Stay Strong!

This article is for informational purposes only, it should not be considered financial, tax, legal, or health advice. Consult a professional before making any major decisions. You are in charge of any of your actions.

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