Atomic habits tiny chang.., p.27
Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results, page 27
* The irony of how closely this story matches my process of writing this book is not lost on me. Although my publisher was much more accommodating, and my closet remained full, I did feel like I had to place myself on house arrest to finish the manuscript.
* This is also referred to as a “Ulysses pact” or a “Ulysses contract.” Named after Ulysses, the hero of The Odyssey, who told his sailors to tie him to the mast of the ship so that he could hear the enchanting song of the Sirens but wouldn’t be able to steer the ship toward them and crash on the rocks. Ulysses realized the benefits of locking in your future actions while your mind is in the right place rather than waiting to see where your desires take you in the moment.
* The shift to a delayed-return environment likely began around the advent of agriculture ten thousand years ago when farmers began planting crops in anticipation of a harvest months later. However, it was not until recent centuries that our lives became filled with delayed-return choices: career planning, retirement planning, vacation planning, and everything else that occupies our calendars.
* Time inconsistency is also referred to as hyperbolic discounting.
* This can derail our decision making as well. The brain overestimates the danger of anything that seems like an immediate threat but has almost no likelihood of actually occurring: your plane crashing during a bit of turbulence, a burglar breaking in while you’re home alone, a terrorist blowing up the bus you’re on. Meanwhile, it underestimates what appears to be a distant threat but is actually very likely: the steady accumulation of fat from eating unhealthy food, the gradual decay of your muscles from sitting at a desk, the slow creep of clutter when you fail to tidy up.
* Interested readers can find a habit tracker template at atomichabits.com/tracker.
* You can see the actual Habit Contracts used by Bryan Harris and get a blank template at atomichabits.com/contract.
* If you are interested in taking a personality test, you can find links to the most reliable tests here: atomichabits.com/personality.
* If it’s Harry Potter on repeat, I feel you.
* I have a pet theory about what happens when we achieve a flow state. This isn’t confirmed. It’s just my guess. Psychologists commonly refer to the brain as operating in two modes: System 1 and System 2. System 1 is fast and instinctual. Generally speaking, processes you can perform very quickly (like habits) are governed by System 1. Meanwhile, System 2 controls thinking processes that are more effortful and slow—like calculating the answer to a difficult math problem. With regard to flow, I like to imagine System 1 and System 2 as residing on opposite ends of the spectrum of thinking. The more automatic a cognitive process is, the more it slides toward the System 1 side of the spectrum. The more effortful a task is, the more it slides toward System 2. Flow, I believe, resides on the razor’s edge between System 1 and System 2. You are fully using all of your automatic and implicit knowledge related to the task while also working hard to rise to a challenge beyond your ability. Both brain modes are fully engaged. The conscious and nonconscious are working perfectly in sync.
* The discovery of variable rewards happened by accident. One day in the lab, the famous Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner was running low on food pellets during one experiment and making more was a time-consuming process because he had to manually press the pellets in a machine. This situation led him to “ask myself why every press of the lever had to be reinforced.” He decided to only give treats to the rats intermittently and, to his surprise, varying the delivery of food did not decrease behavior, but actually increased it.
* I created a template for readers interested in keeping a decision journal. It is included as part of the habit journal at atomichabits.com/journal.
* You can see my previous Annual Reviews at jamesclear.com/annual-review.
* You can see my previous Integrity Reports at jamesclear.com/integrity.
* Sorites is derived from the Greek word sorós, which means heap or pile.
James Clear, Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results
