During the 2012 Olympics Games in London, the British Cycling team won 70% of the Gold
Medals available. That same year, for the first time, a British cyclist won the Tour De France,
and they went on to win it again in 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2017. But the truth is,
that in the past 110 years no single British cyclist won the event and they won a total of one
gold medal in that period. Their cycling team's record was so bad that several bike manufacturers
refused to supply them bikes, fearing that they would be associated with poor performance.
So the question is how does one get from hundred years of mediocrity to dominating
the Olympic games and winning multiple Tour de France events in such a short period?
Fortunately for the British team, everything changed in 2003
when their newly hired performance director Dave Brailsford introduced the power of marginal gains,
which James Clear in his book Atomic Habits calls the 1% improvements.
It’s the theory that big lasting change comes from small improvements that compound over time.
The British Cyclists didn’t buy new bikes, and there weren’t any new super talented riders,
they did, however, improved by a small margin in everything they could. They made the seats more
ergonomic, wore heated over-shorts, tested various fabrics for the best aerodynamics,
and even went that far as to teach the riders how to properly wash their hands
so they don’t catch a cold. They had a 1% improvement in many different areas,
and when combined, it lead to them dominating the Olympic Games and winning Tour de France.
It wasn’t any one defining moment that changed everything, but small continuous adjustments
that lead to astonishing outcomes. As James wrote it, Tiny Changes Remarkable Results.
If you do a close analysis of your day-to-day existence, there are patterns that will emerge
bound by a recurring theme - you tend to repeat things. Every day you brush your teeth,
you eat, watch Netflix, study or work, do chores, socialize and hopefully exercise. You go to bed,
sleep, and during the night, your brain analyzes your actions and it optimizes itself to be more
efficient, so the next morning you waste less time and energy into performing them,
essentially without knowing you’re building habits.
Habits are automatic, or in psychological terms,
subconscious actions that happen frequently and make our lives easier by sparing time
and energy from making a decision every time there’s a possibility of choice.
Habits are strong, consolidated systems, however, they all start their baby life as a small particle
in the form of decision. The more we tend to decide on something, the more stable it becomes.
A 2002 daily experience study by habit researcher Wendy Wood and her colleagues
found that approximately 43% of daily behaviors are performed out of habit.
So it’s inevitable to say that habits surround us in everyday life. Often unnoticed, they identify
who we are. Even the smallest activities, that seem unimportant, have an influence on us. If
you do the arithmetic, you will figure out yourself, that you are the sum of the things
you do every day. And people frequently consider those things mundane because you do them often,
and they are totally wrong. The things you do every day, are the most important things you do.
How to improve yourself through habits? Similar to the British Cycling team,
if you want to make a lasting change you need to focus on the tiny actions, the 1% improvements
which is a crucial component in recognizing how small steps are lucrative in the long run.
We often mistakenly attribute success to something that happens overnight, a major event,
or a big win. But rather, it is very similar to growing bamboo. Bamboo takes around 5 years to
grow. When you look at it within its first few years of growth, you can barely see anything
at all. However, as you water and nourish this presumably dry area on a daily basis, incredible
things begin to happen beneath the surface. The bamboo plant extends its roots to gather the water
and nutrients it requires for its unique display. After establishing its root network, in the fifth
year, the bamboo will then skyrocket into the air, growing more than 90 feet in a matter of weeks.
The majority of people make the mistake of focusing on one big change or transformation,
that nowadays, we tend to get attached to instant feedbacks and results and own no wider perspective
for the future. If we don’t see instant results as in the case of the bamboo, we simply stop watering
it, essentially stopping us from reaching our true potential. This is one of the two most important
paradigm shifts you need to get out of this video. Success and habits are not made out of one big
change, but many atomic improvements that compound over a set period of time. Do not disregard the
importance of small changes, because essentially they are all that matters. Small atomic habits.
The 4 Laws of Behaviour Change
Habits form when the brain processes the four stages of behavior:
cue, craving, response, and reward.
The brain is constantly absorbing information from the environment. When faced with a problem,
the brain considers a variety of possibilities before deciding on the best course of action.
Through a process of trial and error, the brain deciphers which response elicits the best results.
In an experiment, cats were placed in boxes and had to press a lever to be let out.
This experiment exemplifies how the mind becomes conditioned
to a certain response after doing it leads to a positive result.
At first, the cats sniffed each corner of the box and clawed at the walls. Finally,
either by accident or persistence, they found the lever, and one side of the box slid open. The test
was repeated with each cat, and each time, the cat found the lever more easily than before.
Eventually, most cats were able to push the lever immediately after being placed in the box.
This experiment can be efficiently explained with the 4 Laws of Behaviour change
and once you learn what each stage means, and how they affect each other to create habits,
changing your behavior becomes an easier task.
Cue
First is the Cue. The cue can be literally anything in the world. It triggers the brain
to recognize potential paths that lead to rewards. It can be the smell of coffee on the way to work,
the sweets on the kitchen counter, phone notifications, or simple boredom.
Craving Next is the craving.
The craving usually follows after the cue indicates the possibility of a reward.
It’s the WANTING to do something, WANTING to eat a cookie, or WANTING to check your phone.
The cues can be related to anything in the world and they don’t differentiate from person
to person, after all, coffee smells the same for everyone. What does differs is the craving.
Two people might hear the sound of a slot machine. One person is a compulsive gambler and
the other one never gambled at all. The compulsive gambler when exposed to the sound will develop a
craving that he needs to satisfy, while the other person might not even register the sound at all.
Response Next is the response. The response
is what follows the craving, the actual action taken. And whether you chose to respond or not
heavily depends on the strength of the craving and how much effort is required to do it.
Reward And in the fourth and final stage, the
response delivers a reward. This is the end goal of the whole circuit. Starting from the cue which
marks the reward, the craving that desires the reward, and the response which obtains the reward.
If a behavior lacks one or multiple of these stages,
it will not become a habit. If you remove the cue you won’t notice the potential reward. If
you reduce the craving you won’t be motivated to act upon it. If you make the behavior hard enough,
you won’t be able to do it. And If you make the reward unsatisfying you won’t repeat it.
This process of Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward is endless and continuous,
it runs in the background 24/7, and without you know about it,
it is really difficult to change your habits. This process however does become easier once
you learn how to approach and leverage each of the 4 stages of habit formation.
First, to start, make sure your cues are obvious! Make your habits available to you
24/7. If you want to learn Spanish, leave out your notebooks on the table all day. Change
the language of your phone! Save some podcasts that you can listen to when you are driving.
Tune in to a Spanish radio channel while you are cooking. Make them inevitable to bump into!
The way your environment is designed and utilized has a major impact on your
behaviors. We are constantly influenced by environmental factors without realizing it.
For instance, when we walk into a quiet room, like a church, we automatically
whisper. Environment shapes behavior, which makes habits more dependent on context than we know.
Next step: craving. Make your activity attractive! The habits you have now are merely the behaviors
the brain latched onto because of dopamine stimulation when rewards were experienced. The
more attractive and stimulating an experience, the more your brain will crave it. Unfortunately, many
healthy new habits (like exercising or reading) aren’t as highly stimulating as the bad ones.
The solution to this is to bundle them up together with something you already want.
For example, an engineer loved binge-watching Netflix but
also knew he should get more exercise. He used his knowledge to manipulate the
functions of a stationary bike and the Netflix app. In order to watch Netflix,
he had to ride the bike and keep a certain speed. If the pace decreased, the streaming stopped.
By creating a connection between his craving to watch Netflix with his desire to exercise more,
he made the act of exercising more attractive.
Also to make your habits even more attractive, you can use a shift in paradigm.
Instead of thinking of your habits as something you HAVE to do, think instead of something you
GET to do. I don’t HAVE to write this script and make this video, I GET to do it. It is a
privilege. You don’t HAVE to workout, you GET to workout and you don’t HAVE to eat healthily
you GET to eat healthily. This simple paradigm shift will make ordinary habits more attractive.
Next up: response. The law governing the third stage of habit formation is to make the response
easy. In other words, creating pathways for behavior that are low in friction and high in
follow-through. Repetition is your best friend at this stage. The more you perform an action
the more it will stick, and you will practice a behavior more often if it is considered easy.
Checking out social media, and binge-watching TV shows is very easy. That’s why they are so
inclined to stick. I mean who would want to go to the gym that’s 40 minutes away?
You need to change, get into your car, drive there, check-in, etc. All the procedure makes
it difficult to even start your new habit. You need to make this process as easy as possible.
Sign in to a closer gym and prepare your clothes before you leave for work - do anything that
lowers the friction and makes the response easier. You can even buy your own weights and place them
near your bed. The friction is much lower if you only need to pick them up and start working out.
Another powerful technique you can use is the 2-minute rule:
Committing to two minutes of activity is easier than trying to surmount the whole activity at
once. Once you determine what actions are required in your system to reach your goal,
rate them from easiest to hardest and commit to performing the easiest for two minutes.
The habit of practicing yoga 4 times a week is transformed into the following steps:
Step 1: Change into workout clothes when you get home.
Step 2: Pull out your yoga mat. Step 3: Exercise for 2 minutes.
The point of the two-minute rule is not to only do the thing for two minutes. The point is
to make a habit of showing up for your desired goal and identity.
The biggest enemy to progress is the anticipation of work. As you generate enough days of performing
the two-minute rule, your identity as the person you want to be strengthens,
which motivates you to keep moving forward, two minutes at a time.
And last but not least: the reward. the culmination
and the pleasure point. All habits are based on anticipated pleasure because pleasure triggers
the brain to remember what happened to create it. Satisfaction is the final link in the habit loop,
which is why the fourth law of habit formation is “make it satisfying.”
However, for satisfaction to impact behavior,
the sensation must be experienced immediately. Unfortunately,
you only see the results of exercise after you worked out for several months and this is why good
habits are harder to internalize whereas bad ones stick around more. Bad habits almost always serve
some immediate purpose and satisfaction. Watching TV shows release us from boredom that evening
not the day after, and smoking reduces anxiety, at that moment, not 30 days later. But the
cumulative outcome of instant satisfaction and bad habits is almost always negative.
However, success in any aspect of life
usually requires less attention on immediate gratification. And especially
when forming habits, the focus typically is on sacrifice. You sacrifice your energy now
to have the body you want LATER, and you sacrifice being bored to study this evening,
to have good grades at the end of the semester. To mitigate the strain of sacrifice, you must
find a way to link small bits of satisfaction to positive behaviors. Your brain remembers the
end of behavior more than the process, and you can use this to your advantage.
For instance, after a hard workout session, you probably will feel hungry, and you can reward
yourself with a big meal from your favorite restaurant. Or after studying for 3 hours or
finishing an important chapter you can play call of duty for the next 30 minutes as a small reward.
If you want to repeat something, make your brain feel good, however, make sure the rewards align
with your desired identity. Outro
Now you know how the British Cycling team became one of the most
successful teams in history, and the similarities between good habits and bamboo.
You now know what habits are on the deepest level, and why should you care about them.
You learned how to improve yourself through habits and with the 4 Laws of behavior,
you now have set tools and strategies to build healthier habits and shape your behavior for
the better. Sometimes a habit will be hard to remember and you’ll need to make it obvious. Other
times you won’t feel like starting and you’ll need to make it attractive. In various cases,
you may find that a habit will be too difficult and you’ll need to make it easy. And sometimes,
you won’t feel like sticking with it and you’ll need to make it satisfying.
You also know that the little things are all that matter and that you should focus
on improving 1% at a time. It’s incredible what you can build
if you just don’t stop. It’s remarkable the business you can build if you don’t stop working
and the body you can have if you don’t stop training. The secret to getting results that last
is to never stop making improvements. Small habits don’t add up. They compound.
And as James Clear said: That’s the power of atomic habits. Small changes. Remarkable results.