James Clear är författaren som har skrivit min kanske favoritbok som jag ofta har framme och läser delar av, Atomic Habits. Första gången jag läste den, för ett år sedan ungefär, var mycket insiktsfull. Boken handlar om hur man kan skapa bra vanor som sker naturligt, och samtidigt berättar hur man på ett enkelt sätt fasar ut dåliga vanor och/eller beteenden. Målet är att alltid sträva efter att bli en så bra version av sig själv. James Clear menar inte att man alltid ska göra allt rätt, men om 51 % av alla beslut man tar under en dag, vecka eller liknande är bra, så kommer utgången av det bli positivt. Det är omöjligt att varje gång ta 100 % rätt beslut inom alla områden, men om majoriteten av besluten som tas är positiva, är det allt man kan sträva efter.
Strävar man efter att bli 1 % bättre varje dag, kommer man efter ett år vara 37 % bättre än utgångsläget. Sträva inte efter att bli 37 % bättre på kort tid, utan ta små steg så kommer resultaten.
Jag har läst boken pärm till pärm två gånger och delar av den mer än så. Jag har den liggande på skrivbordet hemma och bläddrar i den när jag får feeling. Hela boken är bra, men jag har tagit ut många delar och citat ur boken som jag verkligen tar med mig och delar med mig av här.
Blir man mer intresserad av boken men inte har den, finns en otroligt bra 28 minuter lång sammanfattning och visualisering på Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ7lDrwYdZc
Här kommer de delar och citat jag har tagit med mig, och det är många:
s. 21 “Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heatens it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees. Your work was not wasted; it was just being stored. All the action happens at thirty-two degrees.”
s. 27 “Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.”
s. 34 “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.”
s. 39 “In any election, there are going to be votes on 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 times."
s. 39 “If nothing changes, nothing is going to change. It is a simple two-step process:
Decide the type of person you want to be.
Prove it to yourself with small wins.
s. 49 “If a particular action requires more physical or mental effort than you are willing to expend, then you won’t do it.”
s. 62 ”Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”
s. 71 “Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity. It is not always obvious when and where to take action. Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement."
s. 105 “Without desire, action stops”
s. 106 “When it comes to habits, the key takeaway is this: dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it. Whenever you predict that an opportunity will be rewarding, your levels of dopamine spike in anticipation. And whenever dopamine rises, so does your motivation to act.”
s. 117 “One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.”
s. 123 “The normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual. Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves.”
s. 131 “I once heard a story about a man who uses a wheelchair. When asked if it was difficult being confined, he responded, “I’m not confined to my wheelchair, I am liberated by it. If it wasn’t for my wheelchair, I would be bed-bound and never able to leave my house”. This shift in perspective completely transformed how he lived each day.”
s. 133 “The key to finding and fixing the causes of your bad habits is to reframe the associations you have about them. It’s not easy, but if you can reprogram your predictions, you can transform a hard habit into an attractive one.”
s. 141 “ At the end of the term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. During the semester, these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lightning, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learning from their mistakes. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around speculating about perfection”
s. 142 “Most of us are experts at avoiding criticism. It doesn’t feel good to fail or to be judged publicly, so we tend to avoid situations where that might happen. And that’s the biggest reason why you slip into motion rather than taking action: you want to delay failure.”
s. 161 “The difference between a good and a bad day is often a few productive and healthy choices made at decisive moments”
s. 162-163 “The two-minute rule” “The idea is to make your habits as easy as possible to start. Anyone can meditate for one minute, read one page, or put one item of clothing away. And, as we have just discussed, this is a powerful strategy because once you’ve started doing the right thing, it is much easier to continue doing it. A new habit should not feel like a challenge.”
s. 169 “Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard”
s. 188 “ You value the present more than the future. Usually, this tendency serves us well. A reward that is certain right now is typically worth more than one that is merely possible in the future. But occasionally, our bias toward instant gratification causes problems.”
s. 189 “With bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. With good habits, it is the reverse: the immediate outcome is unenjoyable, but the ultimate outcome feels good.”
s. 193 “Change is easy when it is enjoyable”
s. 201 “I can’t be perfect, but I can avoid a second lapse. As soon as one streak ends, I get started with the next one.”
s. 201 “The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit. This is a distinguishing feature between winners and losers. Anyone can have a bad performance, a bad workout, or a bad day at work. But when successful people fail, they rebound quickly.”
s. 203 “We focus on working long hours instead of getting meaningful work done. We care more about getting ten thousand steps than we do about being healthy”
s. 203 ”When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Measurement is only useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you.”
s. 206 “If a failure is painful, it gets fixed. If a failure is relatively painless, it gets ignored. The more immediate and more costly a mistake is, the faster you will learn from it”.
s. 222 “You don’t have to build the habits everyone tells you to build. Choose the habit that best suits you, not the one that is most popular. There is a version of every habit that can bring you joy and satisfaction. Find it. Habits need to be enjoyable if they are going to stick.”
s. 223 “Pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle”.
s. 225-226 “When you can't win by being better, you can win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it easier to stand out… …a good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses”.
s. 233 “A flow state is the experience of being “in the zone” and fully immersed in an activity. Scientists have tried to quantify this feeling. They found that to achieve a state of flow, a task must be roughly 4 percent beyond your current ability”
s. 233 “Behaviors need to remain novel in order for them to stay attractive and satisfying. Without variety, we get bored. And boredom is perhaps the greatest villain on the quest for self-improvement.”
s. 234 “As soon as we experience the slightest dip in motivation, we begin seeking a new strategy - even if the old one was still working. As Machiavelli noted, “Men desire novelty to such an extent that those who are doing well wish for a change as much as those who are doing badly.”
s. 235-236 “We all have goals that we would like to achieve and dreams that we want to fulfill, but it doesn’t matter what you are trying to become better at, if you only do the work when it’s convenient or exciting, then you’ll never be consistent enough to achieve remarkable results”
s. 236 “There have been lots of sets that I haven’t felt like finishing, but I've never regretted doing the workout… …The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.
s. 240 “The less energy you spend on trivial choices, the more you can spend it on that really matters”
s. 246 “Reflection can also bring a sense of perspective. Daily habits are powerful because of how they compound, but worrying too much about every daily choice is like looking at yourself in the mirror from an inch away. You can see every imperfection and lose sight of the bigger picture. There is too much feedback”
s. 252 “Gradually, though, as you continue to layer small changes on top of one another, the scales of life start to move. Each improvement is like adding a grain of sand to the positive side of the scale, slowly tilting things in your favor. Eventually, if you stick with it, you hit a tipping point. Suddenly, it feels easier to stick with good habits. The weight of the system is working for you rather than against you.”
s. 252 “Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine.”
