By James Clear “Atomic Habits”
“The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do. Increase the friction until you don’t even have the option to act.”
“Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard.” (p. 169)
Examples:
- A publisher hired Victor Hugo to write a new novel. He spent one year procrastinating, socializing, and partying outside his home. The publisher was not happy and gave him a deadline to finish the novel in 6 months. Hugo told his assistant to take away all his clothes except for a shawl. He could no longer go outside the house because he had no clothes to wear! He became so focused on writing his novel, he ended up finishing early! That novel was the “Hunchback of Notre Dame”.
- “Whenever I’m looking to cut calories, for example, I will ask the waiter to split my meal and box half of it to go before the meal is served. If I waited until the meal came out and told myself “I’ll just eat half,” it would never work.” (p. 170)
- “I’ve even heard of athletes who have to “make weight” for a competition choosing to leave their wallets at home during the week before weigh-in so they won’t be tempted to buy fast food.”(p. 170)
- “expert Nir Eyal purchased an outlet timer, which is an adapter that he plugged in between his internet router and the power outlet. At 10 p.m. each night, the outlet timer cuts off the power to the router. When the internet goes off, everyone knows it is time to go to bed.”
- “I often find myself gravitating toward social media during any downtime. If I feel bored for just a fraction of a second, I reach for my phone. It’s easy to write off these minor distractions as “just taking a break,” but over time they can accumulate into a serious issue. The constant tug of “just one more minute” can prevent me from doing anything of consequence. (I’m not the only one. The average person spends over two hours per day on social media. What could you do with an extra six hundred hours per year?)”
- “Every Monday, my assistant would reset the passwords on all my social media accounts, which logged me out on each device. All week I worked without distraction. On Friday, she would send me the new passwords. I had the entire weekend to enjoy what social media had to offer until Monday morning when she would do it again.”
“Using technology to automate your habits is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right behavior.”
Examples:
- Enroll in an automatic savings plan.
- Set up automatic bill pay.
- Cut cable service.
- Ask service providers to lower your bills.
- Medicine: Prescriptions can be automatically refilled.
- Personal finance: Employees can save for retirement with an automatic wage deduction.
- Cooking: Meal-delivery services can do your grocery shopping.
- Productivity: Social media browsing can be cut off with a website blocker.
- Buy a water filter to clean your drinking water.
- Use smaller plates to reduce caloric intake.
Some More Examples:
To be more productive:
- Unsubscribe from emails.
- Turn off notifications and mute group chats.
- Set your phone to silent.
- Use email filters to clear up your inbox.
- Delete games and social media apps on your phone.