The biggest takeaway: environment beats willpower. Instead of relying on discipline to build good habits or break bad ones, design your surroundings to make the right behavior easy and the wrong behavior hard. Want to read more? Put a book on your pillow. Want to eat healthier? Keep fruit on the counter and hide the snacks. The goal is to reduce friction for what you want to do and increase friction for what you don’t.
Outcomes Are Lagging Indicators
Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. You get what you repeat.
This complements Deep Work’s advice to act on the lead measures. You can’t directly control outcomes, but you can control the habits that produce them.
The Laws of Behavior Change
Clear provides a practical framework for building good habits (or breaking bad ones):
The 1st Law of Behavior Change is to make it obvious. Strategies like implementation intentions and habit stacking are among the most practical ways to create obvious cues for your habits and design a clear plan for when and where to take action.
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.
Environment Over Willpower
Shane Parrish’s Clear Thinking reinforces this idea:
What may look like discipline often involves a carefully created environment to encourage certain behaviors. The way to improve your defaults isn’t by willpower but by creating an intentional environment where your desired behavior becomes the default behavior.
— Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish
Parrish also describes why habits are so powerful (and hard to change):
The inertia default: we’re habit forming and comfort seeking. We tend to resist change, and to prefer ideas, processes, and environments that are familiar.
— Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish
The Stimulus-Response Gap
In the space between stimulus and response, one of two things can happen. You can consciously pause and apply reason to the situation. Or you can cede control and execute a default behavior. … So our first step in improving our outcomes is to train ourselves to identify the moments when judgment is called for in the first place, and pause to create space to think clearly.
— Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish
This speaks to habit awareness—the first step before you can change a habit is noticing the cue that triggers it.
Repeat What Works
If you’re doing something that doesn’t get you the results you want, try something new. If you’re doing something that seems to work, keep doing it. Consistently repeat successful actions.
— Letting the World Do the Work for You, Farnam Street
This is the essence of Atomic Habits in one line: find what works, then repeat it relentlessly.