Synopsis

Now this book here, is according to me, a masterpiece. The writing, the prose, the pacing and the content are all very well structured and distils the essence of nurturing good habits that lead to a good life through incremental, consistent change in the right direction. Most popular books sometimes can't live up to the hype and so I often listen to them in audiobook form before deciding whether to write about them, but this book is not one of them. I highly recommend that people read this, and more importantly, use the lessons and apply them in their lives ASAP, which are easily available throughout the internet - My review of the book just adds on to the pile of what I imagine are thousands of existing reviews that others would have already written about it. Practical, no BS advice that you can implement right away.

Core ideas

1.01^365: Basically, small (atomic) but consistent changes made in the right direction can WILL lead to massive results. That is a fact. And therefore, be more concerned with your current trajectory than your current situation. Hold the line, when things are bad, esp. when things are bad, hold the line.
Valley of disappointment: Often we will dismiss an incremental decision that leads to an incremental result. Because in the moment it is indeed small and inconsequential. During the initial time of anything since progress is slow and small we get disappointed. It is important to persist with the activity long enough to break through to the plateau of latent potential - when all the small steps taken earlier start to add up and all of a sudden you get what feels like overnight success but that has actually been decades, years in the making.
Create systems, not goals: Repeated across many books I have read, it is better to create systems/processes instead of goals because the latter way of working has many inherent limitations. If you can't achieve your goals, you are using the wrong system. In organizations, systems are made up of processes. In our lives, systems are made up of habits.
Our outcomes result from our habits, our habits result from our self-identity: You cannot continue habits for very long that are incongruent with your identity. So, if you want to get outcomes that last, habits that persist then first identify as a person who has those habits. E.g., it's easier to go to the gym if you identify as a healthy person. A powerful quote that I heard on a Tim Ferriss podcast comes to mind: "In order to have, you must do. But in order to do, you must be". This is exactly what the author is trying to say here.
Habits and identity dance together: It’s a feedback loop, the habits you have (whether consciously cultivated or unconsciously acquired) shape how you view yourself - how you view yourself influences your habits that persist. Identity forms over time, you need to have multiple data points to truly believe something about yourself, one-offs will not do. Each time you choose to do something, it’s a vote for that identity. As the votes accumulate over time, it gets easier for you to do that thing because by then that's who you ARE. Your identity is your reality, and you have the power to create your reality:

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

Habits are the automatic responses you have developed to recurring situations you face in the world: Initially, when encountering something new, we have no habits. We're spending a lot of energy trying to make sense of the thing, looking for patterns, some form of reliability because, as I said in my review of "Thinking, Fast and Slow", the brain doesn't like being taxed so it likes to find short-cut answers to problems that it can bring up whenever faced with a similar situation. Once we find these short-cuts, we use them the next time around - these are habits bring formed. As habits are created, the level of brain activity decreases. That is, we go on auto-pilot mode and like a zombie have already eaten 3 slices of chocolate cake before we realize what's happening.
They're not good or bad, habits just are: Habit formation is incredibly useful because the conscious mind is the bottleneck of the brain. It can only pay attention to one problem at a time. If we did not develop habits, we would have decision making paralysis from the moment we got up in the morning. Habits help reduce cognitive load.
Four step model of habits: Cue, craving, response, reward. All 4 are needed for a habit to sustain. What follows therefore is a way to make good habits stick OR bad habits disappear depending on your goal:

Cue: Make it obvious OR make it invisible
Craving: Make it attractive OR make it unattractive
Response: Make it easy OR make it hard
Reward: Make it satisfying OR make it unsatisfying

Cues can be invisible: And before making lasting change, we first must identify the cues that might be subconsciously starting habit loops for us. To do this the author suggests creating a habit scorecard which is made in two parts:

Identify the actions that you often repeat as you go through your day - I suggest doing this for a few days so that persistent habits bubble up
Mark the habits as good, bad or neutral - This should be done basis your self-identity, the type of person you want to become and whether you feel a habit helps or hinders that progress

For new habits you want to start (AND KEEP):

Make then intent specific in a time and place: Tell yourself (or others) how exactly you will do what you plan to do. As the author puts it: Give your habits a time and a space to live in the world. The goal is to make the time and location so obvious that, with enough repetition, you get an urge to do the right thing at the right time, even if you can’t say why.
Use habit stacking: Use the reward state of an existing habit as the cue for the new habit you want to start. You can stack multiple habits like this. Now, I think it's important that the cue for new habit be the reward of the previous habit because if linked to any other thing (i.e. the cue, craving or response) will prevent the existing habit from closure. However, if it’s a bad habit we want to quit - I think that linking the bad habit's cue or craving with the response of the new (good) habit we want to start will lead to some interesting results. Example: "Whenever I feel the need to binge-eat (cue or craving), I will go for a 5 minute brisk walk (response) that I will log in my wearable device as a workout (reward)."
Design the right environment: If you want to make a good habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment. The most persistent behaviours usually have multiple cues. And if you want to cut down a bad habit, (identify and) eliminate its cues. Example: if you want to build a habit of running daily, have your running shoes right outside your bathroom. Also important to note is that it's not the actual physical objects in our environment that influence our behaviour but how we view that relationship. Continuing my example from above, if a person habitually goes to work in their running shoes then having them as a visual cue outside the bathroom will not do much or may even remind the person of work. Therefore, its advised to create separate, specific contexts for one's primary habits and not mix contexts. The author calls this: One space, one use.
Use temptation bundling: You will have an easier time building a new habit if you get to so something you already like doing after it. Basically, if you make the habit you want to start doing a precursor to something you already like doing then you will take to the new habit more readily since it will be associated with something pleasant and your brain in anticipation of the reward will start looking forward to the new habit. Temptation bundling when combined with habit stacking can be even more powerful as you get to strengthen multiple habits in a row including the ones you might not like doing. The author gives an example: After I get my morning coffee [CURRENT HABIT], I will say one thing I’m grateful for that happened yesterday [HABIT YOU WANT TO BUILD]. After I say one thing I’m grateful for, I will read the news [HABIT YOU ALREADY LIKE DOING].
Keep the right company: I can't put it any better than the author: One of the most effective things you can do to build a better habit is to join a culture where your desired behaviour is the normal behaviour. We imitate the habits of three groups in particular: The close. The many. The powerful.
Use the two-minute rule: Any new habit should take less than two minutes to perform. "Meditate each day" can become "focus on your breath 5 consecutive times". The author calls these "gateway habits" and these are an attempt to make a new habit feel less daunting by giving you a small start. He says the point is not to do small things, but to show up. The more you show up, the more the habit becomes part of your identity, the more it becomes part of your identity the easier it is for you to increase the intensity in the future. With new habits, the goal is consistency, not mastery. This is esp. useful for the difficult habits that will take time to develop and even longer to master - the secret is to always stay below the point where it feels like work.
Use reinforcement: Add a little bit of immediate pleasure to habits that benefit you in the long run - you want the end of a good habit to feel immediately satisfying. Either get yourself a small reward (that is also good) or make the sacrifice of the habit visible and attractive (useful when you are foregoing things, like giving up smoking, every time you skip the cigarette you can deposit some money in a deposit account that you will use to buy your daughter a birthday present).

For bad habits you want to break (essentially do the opposite of the points above)

Make their cues harder to see: Remove them from your environment, get rid of the company where you often indulge in your bad habit
Associate them with negative things (make them unattractive) and reframe your mind to see the benefit of doing the hard work of eliminating them
Instead of relying on willpower use commitment devices, one-time decisions and automation (using technology) to make your bad habits so hard to do they become impossible to do. Example, while working from home you can ask your partner to hide your phone so that even when the urge to check social media arises you can't do much about it.
Get an accountability partner: … or two. That sign your habit contract. "A habit contract is a verbal or written agreement in which you state your commitment to a particular habit and the punishment that will occur if you don’t follow through. Then you find one or two people to act as your accountability partners and sign off on the contract with you.". The punishment must be immediate, unambiguous, painful and most importantly executed without fail every time you don't follow through.

Planning is not action, action is action: Don't kid yourself into thinking you're making progress because you are making plans. Planning is an essential part of life but more often than not it masquerades for procrastination. Therefore, the author emphasizes the importance of taking action, any action - Similar to Jim Kwik from Limitless, the previous book I read. Also, habits formation is a function of repetition (frequency) more than it is a function of time.
Decisive moments: Every day, there are a handful of moments that deliver an outsized impact, they set the options available to our future selves. The moment after which the habit takes over and things become automatic is a decisive moment, these moments are often hidden from view. For instance, yesterday I decided to work in the living room instead of my home office, and that was the decisive moment that led to me finishing a jar of cookies - because the living room has a "snacks corner" which is in my direct line of sight when I am working there. Had I decided to work from the home office, which is on the upper floor bereft of any distractions - I am pretty sure I would not have indulged.
Important to track habits: And try to make the tracking automated, according to the author, manual tracking should be done for the most important habits you are trying to build and habits should be recorded immediately after they are completed for the day. Be sure to make the progress satisfying, and for this purpose habit trackers are useful. Never miss a habit twice, do something, even the smallest thing, but don't put up a zero.
Choose a game you are good at, if it doesn't exist, create one: All of us are born with innate proclivities, this is decided by our genetic makeup. However, beyond that it is up to us to choose the specifics, as is mentioned in the book: "genes do not determine your destiny. They determine your areas of opportunity.". One needs to choose the right area to compete in to maximize one's odds of success. Things that you are: naturally gifted, can do for longer without getting fatigued/bored/defeated, likely to get lost/find flow in are good indicators of what your game should be. Until you find your game be in explore mode, when you find it (evidenced by continued success in a field) change over to exploit mode. You can also combine your skills to find a game only you can play; you might not be the best at the individual things but can be the best when the things are combined in a unique manner.
Goldilocks rule: In order to stay consistently motivated about a task, its difficulty must be just out of your grasp. That is, there should be a real chance that you will lose if you don't pay attention, but at the same time the odds should not be such that even if you do all you can you still find it very hard to win. "The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.". As you get habituated to something, it can get boring, hence it is important that we continue to raise the bar.
The downside of creating good habits is that you get complacent and rigid: Once you get really good at something, it becomes part of your identity, and identities don't like to change. Be careful about this, if you end up developing habits that were once strong but are now holding you back from your next level of growth, that is a red flag. A way to overcome this is to keep your identity plaint and general as a learner/grower/creator and not too specific as a straight-A student/master investor/celebrity influencer because your performance on latter is bound to change as time goes on. Another way is to have regular review cycles where you reflect on the big picture of your life and whether your habits are contributing to it; personally I have an annual review where I set my big intents for the year ahead and then monthly mini-reviews to see whether I am on track.

Notable quotes

Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. 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.
Change can take years—before it happens all at once.
Eventually, I began to realize that my results had very little to do with the goals I set and nearly everything to do with the systems I followed.
Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.
If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
Your behaviours are usually a reflection of your identity.
The biggest barrier to positive change at any level—individual, team, society—is identity conflict.
If a habit remains mindless, you can’t expect to improve it.
You often decide what to do next based on what you have just finished doing.
One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking.
Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.
A small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do.
If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment. The most persistent behaviors usually have multiple cues.
One space, one use.
Every habit should have a home.
It is the anticipation of a reward—not the fulfillment of it—that gets us to take action.
You’re more likely to find a behavior attractive if you get to do one of your favorite things at the same time.
Your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face; they are just the methods you learned to use.
Whenever a habit successfully addresses a motive, you develop a craving to do it again.
You can make hard habits more attractive if you can learn to associate them with a positive experience.
If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection.
One of the most common questions I hear is, “How long does it take to build a new habit?” But what people really should be asking is, “How many does it take to form a new habit?”
The central idea is to create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. Much of the battle of building better habits comes down to finding ways to reduce the friction associated with our good habits and increase the friction associated with our bad ones.
A new habit should not feel like a challenge.
The point is to master the habit of showing up.
Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided.
Never miss twice.
If a failure is painful, it gets fixed. If a failure is relatively painless, it gets ignored.
Competence is highly dependent on context.
At some point, you need to make sure you’re playing the right game for your skillset. How do you figure that out?
Even if you’re not the most naturally gifted, you can often win by being the best in a very narrow category.
The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.
Habits are necessary, but not sufficient for mastery. What you need is a combination of automatic habits and deliberate practice.
Small habits don’t add up. They compound.
Awareness comes before desire.
Happiness is simply the absence of desire.
It is the idea of pleasure that we chase.
Peace occurs when you don't turn your observations into problems.
Being curious is better than being smart.
We can only be rational and logical after we have been emotional.
Suffering drives progress.
Self-control is difficult because it is not satisfying.
Our expectations determine our satisfaction.
Desire initiates. Pleasure sustains.
Hope declines with experience and is replaced by acceptance.

In closing

A good book recommended for people of all ages. They are simple ideas, but their power lies in consistently implementing them. I will be taking away many lessons from this book:

The importance of getting in the reps and not putting up a zero
Building my identity first before I try to build my habits
To call out aloud my bad habits so that I am less likely to do them
Make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it rewarding
The power of environment design
Importance of choosing a game where the chances of success are in my favor

Worth a quick read once a year or so. Timeless lessons.

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Lessons from: Atomic Habits

Synopsis

Core ideas

Notable quotes

In closing

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