Atomic Habits

From Introduction
"Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years. We all deal with setbacks but in the long run, the quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits."

"The backbone of this book is my four-step model of habits— cue,craving, response, and reward —and the four laws of behavior change that evolve out of these steps."

1 The Surprising Power Of Atomic Habits
The aggregation of marginal gains= the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do....It is too easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.

The slow pace of transformation also makes it easy to let a bad habit slide...when we repeat errors, day after day, by replicating poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalizing little excuses, our small choices compound into toxic results.

Positive Trends/Compounds = Improving Productivity, Knowledge, Pleasant Relationships Negative Trends/Compounds = Stress, Negative Thoughts, Outrage

Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change...habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance... too many people People make a few small changes, fail to see a tangible result, and decide to stop. In order to make a meaningful difference, habits need to persist long enough to break through the "Plateau of Latent Potential" ...

We expect progress to be linear and to come come quickly. In reality, tangible results are often delayed. It The true value of new healthier habits can be subtle which might cause a “valley of disappointment” where people you feel discouraged after putting in weeks or months of hard work without experiencing dramatic results. Stay patient. The efforts are not being wasted.

The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us because roots entrench themselves within and branches grow without.

FORGET ABOUT GOALS, FOCUS ON SYSTEMS INSTEAD 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. Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. That’s the counterintuitive thing about improvement. We think we need to change our results, our systems for thinking/feeling/acting cause those results in the first place.

Goals create an “either-or” conflict: either you achieve your goal (success) or you fail and face disappointment. This creates a misguided and narrow route to happiness. box yourself into a narrow version of happiness. Don't restrict your satisfaction to one outcome- appreciate the journey instead of stressing over accomplishing a specific destination.

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 anytime your system is running... Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.

Atomic habits are part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of our live portrait.