Book reco - Atomic Habits

James clear has written an excellent book about habits. Why you should care about your habits. How you can create good habits and how you can break bad ones. I have read this and it is dripping with actionable advice. A must read book I would say.

My top five takeways from this book

Habit change is identify change: Your habits influence your identity and your identity influences your habits.
once your habits are established, they seem to stick around forever—especially the unwanted ones. Despite our best intentions, unhealthy habits like eating junk food, watching too much television, procrastinating, and smoking can feel impossible to break.This is because our identity is wrapped up in the habit. You can make the change easy by shifting your identity. For a smoker tyring to quit, instead of saying - I'm trying to quit smoking, try saying I'm not a smoker.
True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity.

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity.
The good news is that you don’t need to be perfect. In any election, there are going to be votes for both sides. You don’t need a unanimous vote to win an election; you just need a majority. It doesn’t matter if you cast a few votes for a bad behavior or an unproductive habit. Your goal is simply to win the majority of the time.
It is a simple two-step process:
Decide the type of person you want to be.
Prove it to yourself with small wins.

Environment is extremely important for habits: Habits have four steps
Cue, Craving, Action, Reward
Eliminate the cue and your habit will never start. Reduce the craving and you won’t experience enough motivation to act. Make the behavior difficult and you won’t be able to do it. And if the reward fails to satisfy your desire, then you’ll have no reason to do it again in the future.
Add more friction to things you want to avoid and make things easy for those you want to add.


The four laws of habit change: 

Creating Good Habits:

The 1st law (Cue): Make it obvious.
The 2nd law (Craving): Make it attractive.
The 3rd law (Response): Make it easy.
The 4th law (Reward): Make it satisfying.

Breaking bad habits:

Inversion of the 1st law (Cue): Make it invisible.
Inversion of the 2nd law (Craving): Make it unattractive.
Inversion of the 3rd law (Response): Make it difficult.
Inversion of the 4th law (Reward): Make it unsatisfying.

Why modern technology is both a strength and a weakness 
This is one reason why the versatility of modern technology is both a strength and a weakness. You can use your phone for all sorts of tasks, which makes it a powerful device. But when you can use your phone to do nearly anything, it becomes hard to associate it with one task. You want to be productive, but you’re also conditioned to browse social media, check email, and play video games whenever you open your phone. It’s a mishmash of cues.

How to be disciplined: 

“disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations. Setup your environment to do the right thing easily and the wrong thing not without jumping through various hoops.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Just go read the whole thing and have it with you for reference always. Now this is not one book which has few insights that we will read and remember. It is packed so the apt name is - Habits - The complete reference. Get it asap.