Your habits are how you embody your identity. If you want results you need to focus on your system, not on your goals. You get what you repeat, so in order to master a new habit the key is to start with repetition, not perfection.

#The aggregation of marginal gains

A philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do. This was used by the British bicycle team in 2003. They thought about every aspect that goes into cycling, then they made small improvements for each. All hundreds of small improvements accumulate and makes for a bigger impact.

Small habits make a big difference. Massive success doesn’t require massive action. If you can get one percent each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better when you’re done. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Success is the product of daily habits, not once-in-a-lifetime transformations. You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results. Remember that time magnifies the margin between success and failure.

#Progress is not linear

Habits need to persist long enough to break through the Plateau of Latent Potential. Remember that all your work is not wasted: it’s just stored. All the action happens at that point when you break through the plateau. The time you invested in your work previously led up to today’s jump. You will see a lot of result when you come out of the valley of disappointment. But each step was crucial to lead you out of it. Change can take years—before it happens all at once. The Valley of Disappointment is the time when no progress seems to happen.

#Focus on systems rather than goals

Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results. If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal might be to build a million-dollar business. Your system is how you test product ideas, hire employees, and run marketing campaigns. Systems focus on what you have control over.

Forget about setting goals if you want better results. Focus on your system instead. Goals are good for setting direction, but systems are best for making progress. Take the time to design your systems. If you don’t focus on changing the system behind your results, you will always be looking for a burst of inspiration to help with your goals. You need to treat the symptom by addressing the cause, not overlooking it.

Fix the inputs and the outputs will take care of themselves. Better to fall in love with the process than the product. True long-term thinking is goalless thinking. You do not rise to the level of your goals—you fall to the level of your systems.

#The three levels of change

There are three levels at which change can occur. It’s like the layers of an onion.

  1. Outcomes. The outer layer. This layer is concerned with results: losing weight, publishing a book, etc. It’s about what you get in the end.
  2. Processes. The second layer is concerned with changing habits and systems. This is all about what you do.
  3. Identity. The deepest layer is concerned with changing your beliefs: your worldview, self-image, your judgments about yourself. It’s about what you believe. This is the most powerful level for change to happen, because it’s transformative.

#Identity-based habits

True behavior change is identity change. You may start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you would stick to it is that it becomes part of your identity. Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are.

The goal is not to write a novel, but to become a writer. Doing the right thing is so much easier when it’s part of your identity. This is the reason why you should switch from Outcome-based habits to identity-based habits. You have the power to change your beliefs about yourself. You can choose the identity you want to reinforce with the habits you choose today.

The biggest barrier to positive change at any level is identity conflict. Progress requires unlearning. Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, to upgrade and expand your identity.

The two-step process to identity change:

  1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
  2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

#Outcome-based habits

Most people begin the process of change by focusing on outcome-based habits, which are focused on goals and results. It’s about what you get in the end.

The alternative would be to build identity-based habits, which focus on who you wish to become, rather than the results you want to achieve. This is change from the inside-out, rather than outside-in, if you think of it in terms of onion layers.

#Identity is about the stories you tell yourself

Your identity is part of the stories you tell yourself: “I’m not a morning person. I’m horrible at math. I’m always late.”

Your habits are how you embody your identity. For example, when you make your bed each morning, you embody the identity of an organized person. The word identity comes originally from Latin and means something like “repeated beingness.”

#Long-term potentiation

The strengthening of connections between neurons in the brain is based on recent patterns of activity. This cell-to-cell signaling improves with each repetition and the neural connections tighten. The phenomenon is commonly known as Hebb’s Law: “Neurons that fire together wire together.”

#Immediate rewards

In order to keep you excited as you start your habit formation you need to pay attention to the ending phase of the habit.

You want your ending of the habit to be satisfying. The best approach for this is to use reinforcement. A reinforcement is the process of using an immediate reward to increase the rate of behavior.

This is very similar to habit stacking in that it ties your habit to an immediate reward, which makes it satisfying when you finish.

#Gather evidence for the person you wish to be

You need to gather evidence for your identity. You only start believing it yourself when you have the proof. If you go to the gym when it snows—you have evidence that you are committed to fitness. When you skip desert for a cup of tea—you have evidence that you are a healthy person.

As you repeat your habits the evidence accumulates and your self-image begins to change. The process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself.

We are constantly undergoing micro-evolutions of the self. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. Small habits make a meaningful difference by providing evidence for a new identity. Each habit not only gets results but also teaches you something far more important: to trust in yourself. You start believing in yourself.

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

Your habits are just a series of automatic solutions that solve the problems and stresses you come across regularly. Habits then turn into reliable solutions that you can use non-consciously. See them as small recipes. The purpose of habits is to solve life’s problems with as little energy and effort as possible.

Your brain is always working to preserve your conscious attention for whatever it deems most essential. That’s why it needs habits, they are mental shortcuts learned from experience. Remember that your habits do not restrict freedom: they enable it.

#The habit loop

There are four steps to building a habit:

  1. Cue. The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior. A cue predicts a reward, it’s all about noticing there is a reward.
  2. Craving. The craving makes you want the reward. We don’t crave the habit itself, but rather the change in state it delivers.
  3. Response. The response is the actual habit you perform. The response is about obtaining the reward.
  4. Reward. The response delivers a reward, the end goal of the habit. We chase rewards because they serve two purposes: they satisfy us and they teach us.

There are then two phases involved when we want a change of behavior:

  1. The problem phase which includes the cue and the craving.
  2. The solution phase which includes the response and reward.

#The habit line

You need to string together enough successful attempts until the behavior is firmly embedded in your mind and you cross the habit line.

#The four laws of behavior change

To increase the chances of performing habits that are good for you, take the habit loop and apply these four steps to it:

  1. Make the cue obvious.
  2. Make the craving attractive. The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming. Dopamine is released not only when you are experiencing pleasure, but also when you anticipate it. Whenever you predict an opportunity to be rewarding, your levels of dopamine spikes in anticipation. And whenever dopamine rises, so does your motivation to act.
  3. Make the response easy. If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection. Frequent repetition cuts a pathway and the difficulty vanishes. Simply putting in the reps is one of the most critical steps you can take to encode a new habit.
  4. Make the reward satisfying.

In order to decrease the chances of performing habits that are bad for you, inverse these laws.

#How to create a good habit

#1. Make it obvious

  1. Fill out a habits scorecard. Write down your current habits to become aware of them.
  2. Use an
  3. Use
  4. Design your environment. Make the cues of good habit’s obvious and visible.

#2. Make it attractive

  1. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
  2. Join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
  3. Create a motivation ritual. Do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.

#3. Make it easy

  1. Reduce friction. Decrease the number of steps between you and your good habits.
  2. Priming the environment for future use. Prepare your environment to make future actions easier.
  3. Master the decisive moments. Optimize the small choices that deliver outsized impact.
  4. Use the two-minute rule. Downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less.
  5. Automate your habits. Invest in technology and onetime purchases that lock in future behavior.

#4. Make it satisfying

  1. Use reinforcement. Give yourself an immediate reward when you complete your habit.
  2. Make “doing nothing” enjoyable. When avoiding a bad habit, design a way to see the benefits.
  3. Keep track of your habit streak and “don’t break the chain.”
  4. Never miss twice. Make sure you get back on track immediately.

#Use a habits scorecard to gain awareness of your current behavior

One of the greatest challenges in changing habits is to gain awareness of what you’re actually doing. A habit scorecard is a list you make over your current daily habits. Just note them down as they come to mind. Then go over the list and for each item make a plus if it’s a positive habit, a minus if it’s a negative one, and a dash if it’s neutral.

This will give you an overview of your current habits and how they affect you. It will help to let you gain awareness of your current behavior. It’s a “point-and-call” for your personal life.

As you scan the list categorize your habits by how they will benefit you in the long run. Good habits will have positive net outcomes. You’re striving towards healthy long-term behavior. Ask yourself: “Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?” Identity-based habits

#The Pointing-and-Calling Technique

Pointing-and-Calling is known as a safety system designed to reduce mistakes. For example, when a train approaches a signal, the operator will point at it and say, “the signal is green.” This is used by the Japanese railway system.

  • Pointing-and-Calling reduces errors by up to 85 percent.
  • It cuts accidents by 30 percent.

It’s so effective because it raises awareness from a non-conscious habits to a more conscious level. You can integrate a “point-and-call” system for your personal life. You can use a Habit Scorecard for this, to raise awareness of the habits you do on a daily basis.

#Implementation intention

An implementation intention is a plan which you make beforehand about when and where to act on something. It’s often used in research.

People who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through. The simple way to use an implementation intention is to fill out this sentence:

I will BEHAVIOR at TIME in LOCATION.

#Habit stacking

Habit stacking is one way of an implementation intention. Identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. The habit stacking formula is:

“After CURRENT HABIT I will NEW HABIT.”

For example:

  • “After I pour my cup of tea each morning, I will meditate for three minutes.”
  • “After I’ve done my morning meditation, I will sit down and synthesize my notes I took from last night’s reading.”

Once you master the basic structure of chaining small habits together, you can begin chaining larger stacks. This takes advantage of the natural momentum that comes from one behavior leading to the next.

#The Diderot Effect

The tendency for one purchase to lead to another. The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases.

It’s a chain reaction of purchases. You buy a new couch, and question the whole layout of your living room. Or buy a new toy for your kid, and end up getting all the accessories for it as well.

#Temptation bundling

You can achieve temptation bundling by bundling a thing you want to do with a thing you should do. Let’s say you want to hear about the latest celebrity gossip, but you need to get in shape. With temptation bundling, you could then only read tabloids and watch reality shows while you’re at the gym. Temptation bundling is one way to apply a psychology theory known as. You can combine temptation bundling with the [[]] strategy to create a set of rules to guide your behavior.

#Premack’s Principle

“More probable behavior will reinforce less probable behavior.” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premack’s_principle

#Become aware of your cravings

A craving is a sense that something is missing. It’s the desire to change your internal state. A craving comes from a prediction that you would be better off in a different state, it provides you with a reason to act: so you take action. Desire is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be in the future. Emotion is what allows you to mark things as good, bad, or indifferent.

#Program your brain to enjoy hard habits

We often talk about all the things we have to do in a given day:

  • You have to wake up early for work.
  • You have to make another sales call.
  • You have to cook dinner for your family.

Change just one word: You don’t have to. You get to.

  • You get to wake up early.
  • You get to make another sales call.
  • You get to cook dinner for your family.

With this change, you shift the way you view each event. You shift the way you look at life. See also 📚 The Obstacle Is the Way.

#The Paper Clip Strategy

Use two jars, one filled with a specific amount of paper clips and the other empty. Whenever you finish one of your tasks you can move over one paper clip to the other jar. This was used by Trent Dyrsmid who would start each day with 120 paper clips in one jar. And every time he made a sales call he moved one over. The only thing he had to do was to keep dialing until he had moved over all to the second jar. Making progress is satisfying, and visual measures like these provides clear evidence of your progress. It adds a bit of immediate satisfaction to any activity.

#The Habit Contract

A habit contract is a straightforward way to add an immediate cost to any bad habit. Social contracts shape our habits. Think of whenever a new piece of legislation impacts behavior—seat belt laws, banning smoking inside restaurants, mandatory recycling. You can use habit contracts on a personal level as well: having an accountability partner.

#Make the wrong habits unsatisfying

If a failure is painful, it gets fixed. If a failure is relatively painless, it gets ignored. There needs to be a punishment associated with the type of behavior you don’t want to perform. There can’t be a gap between the action and the consequences. When there is an immediate consequence, behavior begins to change. For instance: customers pay their bills on time when they are charged a late fee. The cost of procrastination must be greater than the cost of action. The cost of laziness must be greater than the cost of exercise.

#Do not optimize only for what you measure

Goodhart’s Law – “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

It’s dangerous when you start optimizing only for what you measure. For the times you care more about getting ten thousand steps than you do about being healthy. Or when you start working long hours instead of getting meaningful work done. Or when you only care about how the scrum board looks at the end of the sprint instead of looking at the features implemented in your actual application. Measurement is only useful when it guides you, and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you. Remember that just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing to focus on.

#Make the good habits satisfying

Every habit produces multiple outcomes across time. Unfortunately, with our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. With good habits, it is the reverse: the immediate outcome is unenjoyable, but the ultimate outcome feels good. Our brains have evolved to reward instant gratification. Our preference for instant gratification is why we spend all day chasing quick hits of satisfaction. The road less traveled is the road of delayed gratification. Success in nearly any field requires you to ignore an immediate reward in favor of a delayed reward.

#Reduce the friction

By removing the points of friction that sap our time and energy, we can achieve more with less effort. Most habit-forming products operate on removing little bits of friction from your life.

  • Meal delivery services reduce the friction of shopping for groceries.
  • Dating apps reduce the friction of making social introductions.
  • Ride-sharing services reduce the friction of getting across town.

Create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible.

#Habit shaping

Habit shaping is a technique for scaling back your habit up towards your ultimate goal. You have to start by mastering the first two minutes of the smallest version of the behavior. Then you advance to an intermediate step and repeat the process. Eventually you’ll end up with the habit you originally hoped to build, but still keeping your focus on where it belongs: on the first two minutes, standardize before you optimize. You can’t improve a habit that doesn’t exist.

#Commitment devices

A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls actions in the future. It’s a way to lock in future behavior. In 1880, Victor Hugo was faced with an impossible deadline for his book. So he asked his assistant to lock in his clothes in a closet and remove the key. He was left wearing only an old shawl and could not go out or be seen by anyone, so he did the inevitable: worked on his book. A commitment device binds you to good habits and restrict you from bad ones. The key is to change the task such that it requires more work to get out of the good habit than to get started on it.

#Priming the environment for future use

Oswald Nuckol’s cleaning habit is following a strategy known as “resetting the room.” For instance, when he finishes watching television, he places the remote back on the TV stand, arranges the pillows on the couch, and folds the blanket.

The purpose of resetting each room is not simply to clean up after the last action, but to prepare for the next action. There are many ways to prime your environment:

  • Want to exercise? Set out your workout clothes, shoes, gym bag, and water bottle ahead of time.
  • Want to improve your diet? Chop up a ton of fruits and vegetables on a weekend and pack them in containers. Now you have healthy ready-to-eat options during the week.
  • How can you design a world where it’s easy to do what’s right?

#How to break a bad habit

  1. Make it invisible. Reduce exposure. Remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment.
  2. Make it unattractive. Reframe your mindset. Highlight the benefits of avoiding bad habits.
  3. Make it difficult. Increase friction. Increase the number of steps between you and your bad habits. Use a commitment device. Restrict your future choices to the ones that benefit you.
  4. Make it unsatisfying. Get an accountability partner. Ask someone to watch your behavior. Create a habit contract. Make the costs of your bad habits public and painful.

#Never miss twice

When emergencies starts popping up it’s easy to let your habits slide. To avoid this use this simple rule: never miss twice. Missing one workout happens, but don’t miss two in a row. Avoid that second lapse, and get started on your next streak when the current one comes to an end. See it as an opportunity. Missing once is an accident, missing twice is the start of a new habit. ^94822c

The problem is not slipping up, that happens. The problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all. Avoid that mindset.

#The two-minute rule

The two minute rule states that when you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do. Nearly any habit can be scaled down to a micro version:

  • “Read before bed each night” becomes “Read one page.”
  • “Study for class” becomes “Open my notes.”
  • “Fold the laundry” becomes “Fold one pair of socks.”

If it takes less than two minutes it turns into a “gateway habit”, and will lead you down a more productive path.

Figure out the gateway habits by mapping out your goals on a scale from “very easy” to “very hard.”

  • Running a marathon is very hard.
  • Running a 5K is hard.
  • Walking ten thousand steps is moderately difficult.
  • Walking ten minutes is easy.
  • Putting on your running shoes is very easy.

Remember that a habit must be established before it can be improved.