Summary

• Athletic: he was a bad player in high school, became team captain and conference all-star in college.

"The quality of our lives often depends on the quality ofour habits"

• Cue, craving, response, reward
• Skinner’s stimulus, response, reward
• British cycling coach on Aggregation of Marginal Gains, searching for 1% improvements basically went worst to first. 1% better everyday means 37x better in a year.

"Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement"

• Slow pace of improvement can make it easy to let a smallh abit slide

"But when we repeat 1 percent errors, day after day, by replicating poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalizing little excuses, our choices compound into toxic results."

• It doesn’t matter how successful/not you are right now, only habits and trajectory.
• Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. ‍
• Accomplishing one extra task is a small feat on any given day, but counts for a lot over an entire career.‍
• Plateau of latent Potential – breakthrough moments.
• Focus on systems over goals.   Systems are the process that leads to the results.

"Problem #1 with goals: winners and losers have the same goals."

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"When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.  You can be satisfied any time your system is running."

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"The purpose of setting goals is to win the game.  The purpose of systems is to keep playing the game” (on motivation)

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"You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems."

Chapter Two: How Habits Shape Identity

• Three layers of behavior change -> Identity at center, then processes,  then outcomes.
• Identity based habits are more powerful.   Old identity can sabotage new plans for behavior.  Having pride in a part of your identity will help solidify the habits related to that.
• Embody the identity of a person who does X when we repeat the habit.
• Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become.
• 2-step process: decide the person you want to be, then prove it with small wins.

Chapter 3:  How to build better habits in 4 steps

• Habits don’t restrict freedom, they create it.
• It’s only by making the fundamentals of life easier that you can create the mental space needed for free thinking and creativity.
• Cue craving, response reward as a feedback loop.  First two as problem phase, second two as solution phase.

Example:   1. You hit a stumbling block on a project at work. 2. You feel stuck and want to relieve your frustration.  3.  You grab your phone and check social media. 4.  You satisfy your urge and checking social media is associated with feeling stalled at work.  

• Four laws of behavior change:

Chapter 4:  Make it Obvious.

• Point-and-call system for personal life:  bring some bad habit to conscious attention.  
• Self awareness as key for noticing our own habits

Chapter 5:  The Best Way to Start a New Habit

• Implementation intention, where and when will you do X. These plans help us so NO to other things that could derail.
• Habit Stacking:  Analogy of one purchase leading to another is the Diderot Effect.
• After old habit, I will new habit.   Don’t ask yourself to do something when you’re likely occupied with something else.

Chapter 6:  Motivation is overrated, environment is what matters

• Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.  Vision is most powerful sense, so we should use this to architect environment we want.
• Associated contexts, for example, don’t go to bed until you are ready to sleep.  We want this relationship of sleepiness and bed. One space, one use.

Chapter 7:  The secret of self-control

• Vietnam vet heroin addicts could lose addiction overnight with a major environment change. Cut out bad habits by changing the environment in which the triggers exist.  Don’t rely on willpower.  For bad habits, make it invisible.

Chapter 8:  How to Make a Habit Irresistible.

• Supernatural stimuli and hyper-palatable foods.  Dopamine released when we anticipate pleasure.  When dopamine rises, so does your desire to act.
• Temptation bundling:  More likely to find a behavior attractive if you get to do one of your favorite things at the same time. Pairing actions youneed to do with ones you want to do.

Chapter 9:  Role of Family and Friends

• Chess prodigy family example.   Join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.  The mob of the world is influencing us, but we can ignore it.
• Habits can be attractive if society values the result ofthem (respect, approval, praise)

Chapter 10:  How to Find the Causes and Fixes for Bad Habits

• Allen Carr’s easy way to stop smoking .  Make it unattractive.
• Same cue can have different response from different people.  When doing bad habits, what you really want is to feel different internally. Get to vs. have to mentality. Reframing to highlight benefits.

Chapter 11:  Walk slowly, never backward.

• The best is the enemy of the good. Action vs. being in motion, plans for action vs. action.  Attempt at delaying failure.
• Just get your reps in, fire together wire together.  For mathematicians, the amount of gray matter is a function of time spent in the field. Frequency of practice is the determining factor.

Chapter 12:  The Law of Least Effort

Make your good habits more convenient so you have energy to do them.  Lean production in Japan, reduce clutter.

"How can we design a world where it’s easier to do what’s right?"

Chapter 13:  Stop procrastinating with the 2 minute rule

• Decisive moments/rituals that will cause stuff to happen. Habits are an entrypoint to a tunnel of time.  Master the art of showing up. Always do less than an amount that’s a hassle. Stop early, but always start.
• Standardize before you optimize, scale the habit up laterafter showing up is mastered.

Chapter 14:  How to make Good Habits inevitable and bad habits impossible

Example of Victor Hugo writing Hunchback of Notre Dame by hiding all his outdoor clothes away so he couldn’t leave.  Concept of a commitment device, locking things away to make bad habits hard.

Do one-time automations that save time in long run.

4^th Law: Make it Satisfying

Chapter 15: Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change

Example of handwashing and toothpaste in Karachi, Pakistan.  By making a soap more enjoyable to use, P&G made it easier to adopt the hand washing habit.  

"What is rewarded immediately is repeated, what is punished immediately is avoided."

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Fourth law helps us repeat something the next time it comes up.  We live in a delayed-return environment as humans.  This is from time inconsistency.  Consequences of bad habits are delayed.  

"Costs of good habits are in the present (as discomfort), cost of bad habits are in the future."

Favor delayed gratification. Can be hard to work with habits of avoidance, because there’s no immediate reward inherent inavoiding some alcohol for a night.  Have a savings account that accumulates when you avoid the purchases you want to avoid.  Loyalty program.  Don’t choose a conflicting reward.  Incentives start a habit, but identity can reinforce it.

Chapter 16:  How to stick with good habits every day

Use visual measures like moving items or keeping lists.  Jerry Seinfeld never break the chain.  Recording a food journal is better than trying to diet.  Habit tracking is attractive.  Focused on process and not the ultimate goal. Issue is it causes two habits,  to do it and to track it.  If you get off track, never miss twice.  Don’t be all or nothing with your habits.  Lost days hurt way more than the difference between perfect and bad.  Don’t focus on hours worked, focus on valuable work getting done.  Some important things can’t be measured.  Don’t “study to the test” like SAT.

Chapter 17:  How an accountability Partner Can Change Everything

Make a bad habit immediately unsatisfying.  Example of president having to butcher an innocent person to get access to nuclear codes.  Habit contracts, overly formal on purpose to make it work.  Strong costs for failure.

Chapter 18:  The truth about Talent

Choose right field for your abilities. Competence is highly dependent on context.  Big five traits as openness, conscientiousness (organized and efficient), extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism. Find a game where the odds are in your favor.  Life is short, don’t have time to try every career (Dylan’s note:  I certainly tried). Google makes employees do 80% on job, 20% on exploration.  What feels like fun to me, but work to others?  When you can’t win by being better, win by being different.  Be the best in a very narrow category if you aren’t elite at mainstream things.

Chapter 19:  The Goldilocks rule, How to stay Motivated in Life and Work

Find the optimal zone of difficulty.  The goats can handle the boredom of training every day better than others. Machievelli quote:  

“Men desire novelty to such an extent that those who are doing well wish for change as much as those who are doing poorly.”

Stepping up when it’s annoying or painful or draining is the difference between a professional and amateur. Don’t be a fair-weather X.  

Chapter 20:  Downside of creating good habits.  

With mastery we go on auto-pilot and it’s harder to keep focused on monotonous tasks.

Use tracking, reflection and review to nit pick forexcellence.

Annual review.  What went well this year?  What didn’t go well?  What did I learn?

Integrity report. What are my 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?

Don’t get locked into habits and identity because the world is shifting quickly around us.  Have to stay supple and agile mentally.  

Conclusion:  

One coin won’t make anybody rich, but if we continue to add one coin at a time, somebody eventually tips the scale and becomes rich. Same for habits and discipline.

FIN

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