Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

External obstacles play a huge role in shaping your choices. Motivation is not enough for habits to change. Humans tend to follow the Law of Least Effort, gravitating towards the option that requires the least amount of work. The more energy something requires, the less likely it is to happen. For example, continents have different shapes. The anthropologist and biologist Jared Diamond uses this simple observation to highlight why agriculture spread faster in Europe and Asia. East-west routes share climate and seasons, whereas north-south routes have different seasons and climate and variable levels of sunlight and rainfall. Different crops are required as one moves along north-south routes, which slowed the spread of agriculture in the Americas. There were more obstacles to agricultural growth in the Americas, which required more effort.

Habits are obstacles. For example, getting fit is the goal but dieting or working out is an obstacle. You don’t want to diet, but you desire the outcome. The more complex the obstacle, the less likely you are to pursue the desired goal. To succeed in change, your habits have to be easy. Instead of overcoming obstacles, try to reduce them; try to make things more straightforward so that achieving your goals is possible.

Environmental design is one place to start. Optimizing your environment makes habits easier. For example, finding a gym that is on the way home from your workplace means that you are more likely to go after work. Preparing your environment for future use makes you more likely to follow through on your goals. Creating obstacles for bad behaviors is another effective strategy.

Forty to fifty percent of your daily tasks are habits. Many of these habits are small, quick tasks, but they impact how you follow through on your goals. For example, the dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp is one of the greatest performers of the modern era. She begins every day with a ritual: asking a cab driver to take her to a gym, where she works out for two hours. She describes the act of telling the cab driver the address of the gym as the ritual. By making getting a cab a habit, she follows through on the workout. The tiny, relatively easy action contributes to good habit formation. These are decisive moments, moments that deliver an outsized impact. They are choices like deciding to get takeout or cook dinner, between walking or hailing a cab.

The two-minute rule proclaims that “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do” (Chapter 13, 6). For example, rather than ambitious goals like run three miles, make a goal to tie my shoes. Once your shoes are on, you have set in motion the action of going for a run. Tying your shoes is less of a mental hurdle that is easier to follow through on. Two-minute tasks help you master the act of showing up. Once they become rituals, you can achieve the deep focus required to commit to the harder tasks. Critically, small actions also reinforce the type of person you want to be, “you are casting votes for your new identity” (Chapter 13, 9). Once you have mastered the two- minute rule, it can be combined with habit shaping. Once you have the initial step mastered, add a second task. Slowly scale up until you reach the final goal or phase. 

The inversion of the 3rd Law of Behavior is to make bad habits hard. After procrastinating on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the French novelist Victor Hugo was given a six-month deadline by his publisher. To make sure he finished his book on time, he locked all of his clothes in a large chest. With no clothing besides a large shawl, he couldn’t go outside. He wrote productively, and the book was published two weeks early. Implementing barriers to bad habits are what Clear calls a commitment device. This is a choice that you make in the present that controls your future actions. If you don’t have any clothes, you can’t go outside. If you are trapped inside, you may as well write. Commitment devices can involve not buying food in bulk, leaving your wallet at home, or asking to be added to a banned list from casinos to prevent a gambling spree.

John Henry Patterson, founder of the National Cash Register Company, used James Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier to reduce employee theft. The cash register broke a bad habit (employee theft) by making it impossible (through an automatic lock). The cash register automated ethical behavior by making unethical behavior impossible. Buying the cash register is an example of a one-time choice.

There are simple ways to make good habits easier and bad habits harder. For example, using smaller plates reduces portion sizes, getting vaccinated increases general health, while automatic bill payments save time and reduces the chance of missing a payment. Technology is an effective tool in automating your habits. However, the convenience of technology can also automate bad habits, like auto play on Netflix or YouTube or food delivery services.