Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

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.
—L
AO
T
ZU
Habits deliver numerous benefits, but the downside is that they can lock
us into our previous patterns of thinking and acting—even when the world
is shifting around us. Everything is impermanent. Life is constantly
changing, so you need to periodically check in to see if your old habits and
beliefs are still serving you.
A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.
Chapter Summary
The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The
downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors.
Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious
of your performance over time.
The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow
beyond it.

T
Conclusion
The Secret to Results That Last
HERE IS AN 
ancient Greek parable known as the Sorites Paradox,
*
 which
talks about the effect one small action can have when repeated enough
times. One formulation of the paradox goes as follows: Can one coin make
a person rich? If you give a person a pile of ten coins, you wouldn’t claim
that he or she is rich. But what if you add another? And another? And
another? At some point, you will have to admit that no one can be rich
unless one coin can make him or her so.
We can say the same about atomic habits. Can one tiny change transform
your life? It’s unlikely you would say so. But what if you made another?
And another? And another? At some point, you will have to admit that your
life was transformed by one small change.
The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1 percent improvement, but
a thousand of them. It’s a bunch of atomic habits stacking up, each one a
fundamental unit of the overall system.
In the beginning, small improvements can often seem meaningless
because they get washed away by the weight of the system. Just as one coin
won’t make you rich, one positive change like meditating for one minute or
reading one page each day is unlikely to deliver a noticeable difference.
Gradually, though, as you continue to layer small changes on top of one
another, the scales of life start to move. Each improvement is like adding a
grain of sand to the positive side of the scale, slowly tilting things in your
favor. Eventually, if you stick with it, you hit a tipping point. Suddenly, it
feels easier to stick with good habits. The weight of the system is working
for you rather than against you.

Over the course of this book, we’ve looked at dozens of stories about top
performers. We’ve heard about Olympic gold medalists, award-winning
artists, business leaders, lifesaving physicians, and star comedians who
have all used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to
the top of their field. Each of the people, teams, and companies we have
covered has faced different circumstances, but ultimately progressed in the
same way: through a commitment to tiny, sustainable, unrelenting
improvements.
Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to
improve, an endless process to refine. In Chapter 1, I said, “If you’re having
trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your
system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t
want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.”
As this book draws to a close, I hope the opposite is true. With the Four
Laws of Behavior Change, you have a set of tools and strategies that you
can use to build better systems and shape better habits. Sometimes a habit
will be hard to remember and you’ll need to make it obvious. Other times
you won’t feel like starting and you’ll need to make it attractive. In many
cases, you may find that a habit will be too difficult and you’ll need to make
it easy. And sometimes, you won’t feel like sticking with it and you’ll need
to make it satisfying.

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