HOW THIS BOOK WILL BENEFIT YOU
The entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant has said, “To write a
great book, you must first become the book.” I originally learned
about the ideas mentioned here because I had to live them. I had to
rely on small habits to rebound from my injury, to get stronger in
the gym, to perform at a high level on the field, to become a writer,
to build a successful business, and simply to develop into a
responsible adult. Small habits helped me fulfill my potential, and
since you picked up this book, I’m guessing you’d like to fulfill yours
as well.
In the pages that follow, I will share a step-by-step plan for
building better habits—not for days or weeks, but for a lifetime.
While science supports everything I’ve written, this book is not an
academic research paper; it’s an operating manual. You’ll find
wisdom and practical advice front and center as I explain the
science of how to create and change your habits in a way that is easy
to understand and apply.
The fields I draw on—biology, neuroscience, philosophy,
psychology, and more—have been around for many years. What I
offer you is a synthesis of the best ideas smart people figured out a
long time ago as well as the most compelling discoveries scientists
have made recently. My contribution, I hope, is to find the ideas
that matter most and connect them in a way that is highly
actionable. Anything wise in these pages you should credit to the
many experts who preceded me. Anything foolish, assume it is my
error.
The backbone of this book is my four-step model of habits—cue,
craving, response, and reward—and the four laws of behavior
change that evolve out of these steps. Readers with a psychology
background may recognize some of these terms from operant
conditioning, which was first proposed as “stimulus, response,
reward” by B. F. Skinner in the 1930s and has been popularized
more recently as “cue, routine, reward” in The Power of Habit by
Charles Duhigg.
Behavioral scientists like Skinner realized that if you offered the
right reward or punishment, you could get people to act in a certain
way. But while Skinner’s model did an excellent job of explaining
how external stimuli influenced our habits, it lacked a good
explanation for how our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs impact our
behavior. Internal states—our moods and emotions—matter, too. In
recent decades, scientists have begun to determine the connection
between our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. This research will also
be covered in these pages.
In total, the framework I offer is an integrated model of the
cognitive and behavioral sciences. I believe it is one of the first
models of human behavior to accurately account for both the
influence of external stimuli and internal emotions on our habits.
While some of the language may be familiar, I am confident that the
details—and the applications of the Four Laws of Behavior Change—
will offer a new way to think about your habits.
Human behavior is always changing: situation to situation,
moment to moment, second to second. But this book is about what
doesn’t change. It’s about the fundamentals of human behavior. The
lasting principles you can rely on year after year. The ideas you can
build a business around, build a family around, build a life around.
There is no one right way to create better habits, but this book
describes the best way I know—an approach that will be effective
regardless of where you start or what you’re trying to change. The
strategies I cover will be relevant to anyone looking for a step-by-
step system for improvement, whether your goals center on health,
money, productivity, relationships, or all of the above. As long as
human behavior is involved, this book will be your guide.
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