In this week’s summary of Atomic Habits by James Clear, we focus on The First Law: Make it Obvious.
In Chapter 4, James Clear tells us that we must begin the process of behavior change with awareness. Before we can change our habits, we must know where to begin. Your ability to notice the cues embodies the habits you build.
So, he gives us one technique to do this effectively: POINTING AND CALLING.
Pointing and calling is an exercise to help make us aware of our daily habits and learn what to start questioning. When you perform a habit or behavior, point it out. Maybe even say it out loud. Hearing yourself voice your habits out loud adds reinforcement.
Better yet, make a list of daily behaviors. Then, after the list is formed: ask yourself if it’s a good habit, bad habit, or neutral habit.
He gives us a Habit Scorecard to help us make this easy. Score habits on their long-term effects. For a good habit, maybe put a plus (+) sign, bad habit a negative (-) sign. Neutral habit, an equal (=) sign.
How do you determine if it’s a positive, negative, or neutral habit? Ask yourself: does this habit help me become the person I want to be?
Once we have figured out what habits we already do, now it’s time to learn how to build new ones (or remove bad ones). In Chapter 5, James Clear teaches us the technique of an IMPLEMENTATION INTENTION.
This implementation intention builds on the idea of creating more CUES (or inversely, removing cues) from our environment. Speaking of environment, Clear tells us that our habits are mostly tied to TIME and LOCATION. So when we are looking at how to build habits, we should pay attention to WHERE and WHEN those habits are performed.
Clarity of your time and space is a better indicator of habits than motivation. When a moment of action occurs, you automatically follow a predetermined plan. So, when creating an implementation intention, you should follow this equation:
Make the time and location OBVIOUS
What helps new habits are to start them at the beginning of a day, week, or month, because it’s in those TIME periods that we have more hope.
No habit happens in ISOLATION … each habit becomes a CUE that TRIGGERS the next habit.
James Clear uses this term ISOLATION. You know what else doesn’t happen in ISOLATION? Innovation.
A new habit is also kind of like an innovation in your life, in your daily / weekly routine. And just like an innovation doesn’t happen in ISOLATION, neither does a new habit. It must work with another habit, and it must work at a precise time and location. So as you are learning about how to create an innovation in your life, in your routine, think about how the relationship of those new habits work with other habits, just like an innovation builds off of previous innovations.
Clear also says the best way to build a new habit is to look at the habit scorecard, then identify a current habit you do each day, and then STACK a new habit (a new behavior) on top of it. This is what James Clear means by HABIT STACKING
So, a better IMPLEMENTATION INTENTION is:
And, SELECT THE RIGHT CUE that will signal to you to do that new habit. For example, if you normally migrate from the dinner table to the couch to watch television, but you want to read before you watch television, maybe put a book on the couch to be that CUE for the new habit to begin.
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In Chapter 6, Clear show us how people choose products mostly by WHERE they are rather than WHAT they are. Why do you think so many companies and salespeople fight to get their product on the end caps in grocery stories?
Environment is the INVISIBLE HAND that shapes human behaviors. Every habit is CONTEXT DEPENDENT. The more OBVIOUSLY available a product is, the more likely you are to try it. VISIBLE CUES are the greatest catalyst of our behavior.
However, once you understand this, here’s the secret sauce you can employ. You don’t have to be the VICTIM of your environment, you can be the ARCHITECT of it.
Let’s pause to reflect. What are some examples of ways you might become the victim of your environment? And then, what are some ways you can become the architect of your environment?
LOCATIONS have a relationship to our habits/behavior. Train yourself to associate certain locations with certain actions. For example, place that book on the couch. Or, go to a new environment to think more clearly. For me, I like to get my long-form writing done on a patio or in a library.
It’s easier to build a new habit with a new context than in the face of COMPETING CUES. So, be sure to avoid conflicting contexts / cues. James Clear says when he first started working from home, he wasn’t sure if his living room was where he checked email or watched television. Once he understood this, he changed the location of where to check email.
Remember: the context becomes the CUE!
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In Chapter 7, Clear gives us the secret to self control.
He says, to cut off a bad habit, eliminate the cue that causes it (make it INVISIBLE). This is the inverse of making a habit OBVIOUS. You want to remove a bad habit by making the cues for it INVISIBLE (less obvious).
Self-control itself is a short-term strategy, says Clear. Our energy is better spent optimizing our environment. It’s easier to AVOID temptation than to RESIST IT. People who appear best at self-control typically just avoid the times and places where those bad habits are done. If you want to reduce drinking, hanging out at bars less frequently will likely help reduce that habit (especially if you’re a social drinker).
As a final pause and reflection, what is a bad habit you have that you’d like to eliminate? What are some ways you can avoid a temptation? What kind of cues could you eliminate?
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Ok, keep thinking about how you can make some new habits more OBVIOUS and what CUES you can put in place to build them, while also taking away the cues of some bad habits you want to eliminate. And, keep reading. For next week, you’ll want to have read Chapters 8, 9, and 10 as we uncover the ingredients of The 2nd Law: Make it Attractive.