Date read: 2022-08-27

How strongly I recommend it: 9/10

Go to the Amazon page for details.

I have always been attracted towards learning and building good habits. So when i came across this book i was willing to grasp the ideas and no doubt this book not only helps you get into forming good habits but also helps sustaining them.

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. This book helps you build good habits as you desire for your identity and will help you break bad habits easily.
2. Provides easy strategies. By implementing tiny changes it helps in achieving remarkable results overtime, as your habit will compound.
3. It brings your attention to your daily life routine and suggests the tips around it to improve and sustain good habits effortlessly.

💙 Impressions

This is the first book that has changed my life. It has changed my personality by helping be build and sustain habits that I always wanted to be the part of my identity and encourages me to build new habits and break my bad ones.

👀 Who Should Read It?

you’ll enjoy and will benefit from this book if:

• You care about achieving your goals,
• You want to build good habits in order to make a good life,
• You want to know how to create and sustain new habits effortlessly.
• You want to know how you can build systems that will support your goals.

🥰 How the Book Changed Me

• It helped me build healthy habits like waking up early, meditating, studying, taking my supplements everyday.
• From now on whenever I seek to change my habit I look inwards trying to change my identity first instead of focusing on desired goal.
• I realised that systems are more important than goals since systems are what really helps us to reach our goals.
• I notice much more of what I do each day. I reflect and change. Since every little thing - good or bad it becomes a habit.

💯 My Top 3 Quotes

• Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.
• Focus on your system not on goals.
• Reduce the friction with good habits to make it easy, increase friction with bad habits to make it difficult.

MY NOTES

1.  Learn about habits

Focus on getting life in order. While maybe your peers will stay up late and watch movies but build a good sleep habit, go to bed each night early. (Tip - have your dinner 3 hours before for sound sleep). Keep you room neat & tidy. These changes are minor but it gives you a sense of control over your life.

1% better everyday- Search for a tiny amount of improvement in everything you do.

Effects of small habit will compound over time to give you remarkable results.

Focus on your system not on goals-  We do not rise to the level of our goals but fall to the level of our systems.

2. Bulid identity based habits

Focus on who you wish to become. Shift the way you look at your self, change underlying beliefs.

example- the goal is not to read a book, the goal is to be a reader, the goal is not to be a coder, but be a problem solver, etc.

Clear thoughts of who we are, not vague idea of self.

“Becoming best version of yourself requires to continuously edit your beliefs, to upgrade & expand your identity”

“Decide the person you want to be, prove yourself with small wins.”

3. How to create a good habit-

1. (Cue) Make it obvious
2. (Craving) Make it attractive
3. (Response) Make it easy
4. (Reward) Make it satisfying

4. How to break a bad habit-

1. (Cue) Make it invisible
2. (Craving) Make it unattractive
3. (Response) Make it difficult
4. (Reward) Make it unsatisfying

3.1 Make it obvious

Start a new habit

Pointing and calling our actions raises our awareness of habits, it helps us avoid bad one.

I will [BEHAVIOUR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].

eg- I will meditate  for 15 minutes at 5am in my bedroom.

Habit Stacking- After [CURRENT HABIT], i will [NEW HABIT]

eg- After i wake up at 5am, I will meditate each morning

Be as specific as you can with details while starting a new habit.

Design your environment

Visual cues are greatest catalyst in what we do everyday.

Live and work in environments that are filled with only productive cues.

• Want to practice guitar- keep guitar near table not in the closet.
• Want to take vitamins/eat healthy- keep it on the centre of table
• Want to drink more water- fill few bottles each morning & place them in common locations around the house.

If you want to make habit big part of your life, make cue big part of your environment.

Alter sapces where you live and work to reduce exposure to negative cues. Habits are easier to change in a new environment. Go to new places, new coffee shops, new benches to create a new routine there. “ONE SPACE ONE USE”

Bed only for sleep, desk only to work, sofa to eat, etc . Every habit should have a home.

3.2 Make it attractive

Temptation bundling- Do the thing you need to do, then only you get to do what you want to do.

eg- you want to check your phone- “After i respond to these mails i will check phone",  you want to watch a movie-  “After i complete the task i will watch a movie", etc.

Social Influence

The lone wolf dies but the pack survives.

Collaborate, bond with other good people, to increase joy, gain access to resources and ideas.

“A genius is not born but educated and trained.”

We don’t chose our earliest habit, we imitate them. We follow our friends, family, school, the powerful. We are average of 5 people around us. Choose wisely.

We imitate the close- join a culture where your desired behaviour is the normal behaviour, you already have something ain common with the group.

“The culture we follow sets our expectation of what is normal.”

Sustain motivation

Motivation sustatins when we belong to the same tribe. Our personal quest transforms into shared one. eg- you are a reader, join a book club.

       - You are spiritual, join institution. 

       - you are a creator, join the community. 

       - you are an engineer, join tech enthussiasts.

Imitating the powerful - If we surround ouself with those powerful around us, it becomes our new normal. Connect with powerful people in real life, through podcasts, books, youtube or in person.

Enjoy hard habits

Change the word- You don’t HAVE to, You GET to

eg- you get to do work,  you get to write and express, you get to learn this.

“When you are not excited, take more responsibility towards it. You get to do this.

3.3 Make it easy

Focus on taking action, not being in motion.

Effective form of learnig is practice not planning.

The key is to start with repetition and not perfection.

There is a difference in being in motion and taking action. You need to get your reps in, do actions repeteadly. Only planning and thinking will not give results.

Law of least effort

strategy- addition by subtraction. Reset each room after the last action as a prep for next action.

eg- want to improve diet? Chop up tons of fruits on weekends and pack them in containers, so you have ready to eat options on weekdays.

eg- Want to improve screen time? leave your phone in next room until you finish your work.

Reduce the friction with good habits to make it easy, increase friction with bad habits to make it difficult.

Two Minute Rule

It states when you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do, each day until you ritualize it, slip into deep focus and it becomes automatic routine. 2 min rule makes the first action easy to start and rest will follow.

The secret is to stay below the point where it feels like work. “The best way is to always stop when you are going good.

eg- Meditating 30 mins everyday becomes “Sit for 2 mins”

- Study every morning becomes “open laptop each morning” and so on.

Standardize before you optimize. We can not improve a habit that does not exist.

3.4 Make it satisfying

To get a habit to stick we need to feel immensly successful, even if it’s in a small way.

We will repeat the behaviour next time, if we have a sense of accompishment.

eg- Tick off each day’s to do list.

-Use habit tracker to track you habits (eg- marking X on a calander).

Stick with good habit everyday

Do not break the chain of doing it everyday.

Mantra: Never miss twice!

We can not be perfect, but we can avoid a second lapse. The first rule of compounding- “Never interrupt it unnecessarily”.

4.1 Make it invisible

To eliminate a bad habit reduce the exposure to the negative cues from your environment.

Make the cues invisible.

4.2 Make it unattractive

Reframe your mind-set.

Highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits.

4.3 Make it difficult

eg- If you are wasting too mcuh time on instagram, uninstall it

-  If you are surfing a lot on mobile, cut off the internet after 8pm

-  If you miss someone, avoid grasping their information. 

Increase friction and steps between you and your bad habits.

4.4 Make it unsatisfying

Get an accountabilty partner. Ask someone to watch your behaviour and punish you.

Make the cost of your bad habits public and painful.

5. Review Habits to Master a Field

It helps to make sure habits improve rather than declined.

Strategy- Career Best Effort (CBE)

It sates about giving your “best effort spiritually, mentally and physically”.

Do not worry daily about perfection, be consistent and do annual review.

Reflection and Review

It will help you realise when you should upgrade yourself , take new challange and when to step back and focus on fundamentals.

Annual December Review-

Reflect on previous year. How many projects, articles, books, courses you finished. How many workouts, meditations you put in. Analyse progress or lack  using 3 questions-

1. what went well this year?
2. What didn’t go so well this year?
3. What did I learn?

March Review (Yearly Integrity Report) -

1. What are the core values that drive my life and work
2. How am I living and working with integrity right now?
3. How can i set a higher standard in future?

Stay Humble

Keep you identity samll. Do not attach yourself with your habit or single belief, then you will be open to growth.