Improved 37 times in one year! Master the 4 rules of habit building and the "chain reaction" mechanism, and use atomic habits to renovate your life

In the 1980s, Leadership guru Stephen Covey compiled "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" through 30 years of research, and summarized the working methods of efficient people into 7 habits, namely:

1. Be proactive
2. Begin with the end in mind
3. Put first things first
4. Win-win thinking
5. Know the enemy and understand yourself
6. Integrated and synergistic effects
7. Constantly updated

If you want to develop a habit, you will not succeed through enthusiasm and persistence! It's more important to master the mechanism

We can make good use of the scientific techniques shared in "Atomic Habits" to form habits in a less effortful way.

First, let's dispel the myths about willpower. If you want to form a habit, it does not mean that you are passionate and determined, and you will stick to it; even if you give up halfway, it is not because of insufficient willpower. The brain's executive-control allows us to consciously choose and supervise actions, as does willpower and decision-making. However, there are actually a large number of non-conscious mechanisms operating in the human mind, such as habits.

A habit is a behavior that is repeated often enough to become automatic. Once developed, it becomes automatic. It can free up our busy brains and free up space to do or think about other more important things.

Neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and animal behavior researchers have conducted different experiments, but the results are consistent. They found that doing something only once is a decision, but if you do it in the same way several times and gradually becomes an automatic reaction (habit), the areas of brain activity will change. In other words, the area of ​​mental operation that forms habits is different from the area that controls willpower, and there is no positive correlation between the two.

If not willpower, what determines whether people can maintain a habit? One school of thought believes that it depends on whether the motivation and goal are strong enough. But James Clear believes that the key to success or failure in building a habit is not the goal, but the system.

How to build good habits? The 4 stages that the human brain goes through: prompt, desire, response, reward

The system in James Clear's mouth is derived from the four stages that all habit creation goes through - prompt, desire, response, and reward.

1. Prompt: Reminds the brain to take action.
2. Desire: The motivation to create a habit and urge you to perform it quickly.
3. Response: A response or action to a desire. If there are too many restrictions on performing the action, people would rather choose not to act.
4. Reward: Responding will also bring rewards. Your sensory nerves will monitor what behaviors can satisfy desires and bring pleasure, and then perform them repeatedly.

For example, your phone lights up (prompt) because you want to know the content of the message (desire), so you pick up the phone to read it (response). The content of the message satisfies the desire to know (reward), and you pick up the phone to read it. The action is connected with the phone lighting up. Whether good or bad, this habit of "picking up the phone when it lights up" has been established.

Without one of these four stages, behavior will not become a habit. Remove the cue, and the habit won't start; remove the desire, and there isn't enough motivation to perform; the behavior is too difficult, and there's no way to perform it; if the behavior doesn't satisfy the desire, there's no reason to do it again in the future.

The "4 Laws of Behavior Change" proposed by James Clear are based on this foundation. When you want to change a behavior, just ask yourself:

1. How do I make the prompt obvious?
2. How do I make my habit attractive?
3. How do I make action a breeze?
4. How do I make the rewards satisfying?

Likewise, if you want to break a bad habit, you can reverse these laws: Make the cue invisible, the habit unappealing, the action difficult, and the consequences unsatisfactory.

Let habits have a "chain reaction" and make good use of the compound interest effect to amplify benefits

However, before you can see results, you have to go through a period of hard work that has not yet shown results. This is why we know we should do good things for ourselves, but we can't sustain them. "Atomic Habits" points out that the reason why it is so difficult to build lasting habits is that the results always come late.

This is what atomic habits are: small, regular behaviors that are easy to perform. At first, these actions may seem insignificant, but slowly, they will stack up on top of each other, sparking larger wins that, in turn, will multiply and eventually exceed your expectations.

In other words, habits have a "chain reaction." For example, once you develop the habit of getting up early, you will have a lot of extra time on your own, which you can use to do what you want to do, such as preparing for license exams, exercising, etc. Over time, if you get up early and exercise, your physical condition will improve and your work efficiency will become higher. Your certificate will also add value to your resume, making your promotion smoother.

If you find it difficult to develop a good habit or get rid of a bad habit, it's not because you don't work hard enough, it's because you haven't overcome the latent stagnation period. However, the work you do is not wasted, it is just stored away first.

This is also a concept that is constantly described in "Atomic Habits": as long as you make small changes every day, through the compound interest of time, it will accumulate into a huge difference. If you make 1% progress every day, it will grow 37 times in one year; if you regress 1% every day, it will weaken to zero after one year. In other words, let small habits multiply.