I really like this book. It's the book that "The Power of Habit" should have been. My book review is too long.
Habits have a compounding effect over time - and because of that, small habits done consistently eventually return huge results. They do more than help you achieve your goals, they bring you closer to being the person you want to be. So start by asking yourself "what does the person I want to be do?" Then create a system that enables doing those things. Good habits moves you toward being that person, bad habits away. Don't focus too much on immediate goals, focus instead on exercising the system. Each time you repeat a habit, you cast a vote for your new identity. Find the joy in that instead of waiting for the joy of achieving your goal.
The basic habit loop is cue → craving → response → reward. You can manipulate each step in this process to help adopt good habits and break bad ones.
Cue - make habit triggers obvious. Setup your environment to expose good cues often, and hide bad cues. Be very specific with when and how you will perform a habit. Try stacking a habit you aspire to do with one you already do.
Example: Place moisturizer next to the coffee machine. Tell yourself "after each time I press 'brew', I will moisturize my hands".
Craving - make good habits attractive. Use temptation bundling to stack good habits with things you enjoy (ensuring the good habit and the thing you enjoy don't cast conflicting votes toward your new identity). Also you can associate with people who already have the habit you want.
Example: "Only after my weekly review of budgets, will l watch the new episode of my TV show."
Response - make the good habit easy & the bad habit hard. Tailor the environment to add or remove friction where possible. Many good habits can be automated & bad habits prevented via one-time actions. Quantity is often more important than quality. You'd benefit more from never failing to meet a daily goal of "do a 2 minute warmup" than from consistently failing to meet a daily goal "do a one hour workout"... and you'll often find after you do the warmup it's often easy to do the workout.
Example: Unplug the TV after each use and set your journal on the power cable. Commit to writing two sentences before plugging in the TV.
Reward - make it immediately satisfying to perform a good habit by using rewards. Habit trackers can supplement rewards, and be rewards themselves. Make bad habits painful by using a habit contract and an accountability partner.
Example: After finishing my workout, I will make myself a healthy smoothie and put an X on the calendar next to the blender. If I fail to put 3 Xes in any week this month, I have to do the whole family's laundry by myself next month.
Habit trackers are immensely helpful. They are a cue that can serve as a craving and a reward. When using a habit tracker, don't break the chain... and when it breaks, commit to not failing twice in a row.
Experiment with many different habits. Stick with what naturally works for you. Keep pursuing what is on the edge of your capability - not easy but not impossible. After mastering any given habit, after your interests change, or just every so often, reevaluate how your systems. Ask yourself: Have your habits become rote? Can you dive deeper? Should you to refine or upgrade the person you want to be?
Atomic - the tiny element. The smallest irreducible unit of a larger system. Or: A source of great energy or power.
Habit - a routine performed regularly and consistently in response to a situation. Often times unconsciously.
Cue → Craving → Response → Reward →(reinforces the Cue)
Make the cue obvious. Make the craving attractive. Make the response easy. Make the reward satisfying.
Make the cue invisible. Make the craving unattractive. Make the response difficult. Make the reward unsatisfying.