"Atomic Habits" | Part 2 of 3
We discussed the importance of small habits compounded over a long period of time in the last article. You can read that here if you haven’t. As we talked about before, creating a habit consists of 4 steps: Make it Obvious, Attractive, Easy and Satisfying. We discussed the first one yesterday, so let’s go to the next steps today.
The 2nd Law: Make It Attractive
Behaviours that seem attractive are more likely to be repeated and hence become habits.
Our motivation to act in a certain way is primarily driven by the level of dopamine that is released when engaged in that behaviour.
You can pair actions you want to do with the ones you need to do, so that you invariably form the habit of things that have to be done. For example, if you’re a sports fanatic, you can say to yourself, “After I call three leads in the morning, I will check the scores on my phone.”
This might be repetitive (from the last article), but your environment matters: the people you surround yourself with (at home, peers and people you look up to) matter, because the context this sets in your life would drive the types of habits you form. The behaviours that receive approval or respect from people around would make those attractive to you and would eventually form into habits.
Associate the habits you want to incorporate with positive feelings and the habits you want to get rid of with negative ones. For example, when you want to form the habit of reading, instead of thinking “I have to read this book.”, think “I get to read this book.” And this need not also be a lie, because most good habits, like reading or exercising, would eventually benefit your life.
The 3rd Law: Make It Easy
Ideas and planning are not very important. Yes, they are important to start with anything, but only action can lead to anywhere worth going.
Habits are formed by you performing the same actions over and over and over, eventually getting them ingrained into your subconscious. But forming new habits is hard, and we tend to follow the path of least resistance with everything.
So again, the environment is important. You need to set up an environment where good habits can fester and bad habits die out. Make taking action towards good behaviours easy.
That’s it for this part, I’ll be back with more from the book tomorrow (you can read that here). Meanwhile, you can read more from me here. And do let me know if you want a specific topic covered! Subscribe for free to receive more posts like this every day!