My key objective in reading Atomic Habits, the million-selling book by James Clear, was simple: How can I get myself and my team in the habit of learning?

I love learning. I think every marketer should be constantly trying to bring new ideas into their thinking.

But I’ve struggled with it in the past. I used to ask my team to schedule two hours a week for reading or listening to podcasts. I now cringe when I think of how many times I would message one of them to say “I need to schedule a meeting during your learning time – can you move it?” knowing they probably wouldn’t move it. They’d more likely forego their learning for that week, with the sense that I didn’t really care about it or see the need to prioritise it.

When it gets busy at work, learning seems to be the thing on the list that gets dropped. I wanted to know how to break that cycle.

Why Habits Matter

• Atomic Habits was written to be “an operating manual on how to create and change your habits”
• It does this by focusing on the importance of small wins – he gives the example of David Brailsford who focused on the aggregation of marginal gains to turn British Cycling into a huge success. They looked for 1% improvements everywhere. Massage gels were tested, mattresses were optimised; they even worked out the best way to wash your hands. They won 5 Tour de Frances and 60 Olympic medals within a few years.
• If you improve 1% every day, you’ll be 37% better by the end of the year.
• Success is the product of daily habits, not once in a lifetime transformations.
• Compounding is very important:
  • Productivity compounds
  • Knowledge compounds
  • Relationships compound
  • But so do stress and negative thoughts
• The Plateau of Latent Potential is when all the effort you put in seems to get you nowhere. You must be prepared that progress is not linear. You’ll see a valley of disappointment.
• Focus on systems, not goals. Goals set the direction and the systems make progress. Fix the inputs and the outputs change themselves. In my case this might be a system where we all schedule the same learning time and hold each other to keeping it. Or we each choose a training course we want to do and pay for them upfront, so there’s a financial penalty in cancelling the learning.
• Winners and losers have the same goals – goals don’t help.
• We often try to change the wrong things. Change occurs at 3 levels:
  • Identity (what you believe) – your beliefs, your self-image, your judgments
  • Processes (what you do) – the systems
  • Outcomes (what you get) – the goals
• For identity, focus on who you want to become through change. Your habits form your identity, so small habits can make a big difference by providing evidence of that identity. In my case this might be “I’m a voracious reader of books” – reading 20 pages every day would help me reinforce that.
• If you know the results you want, think about what type of person is going to get there. He mentions a friend who asked themselves “what would a healthy person do?” to help them lose weight. For me and my team, this could be “what would a curious marketer do?” to help us find the book or podcast episode to help us solve a problem.

What are habits?

A habit is a behaviour that has been repeated enough to become automatic. Habits are a series of automatic solutions that solve the problems and stresses you face regularly.

How Habits Work

The process of building a habit has 4 steps:

1. Cue – a bit of info that predicts a reward (e.g. noticing the reward)
2. Craving – the desire to change your internal state (e.g. wanting the reward)
3. Response – the habit itself (e.g. obtaining the reward)
4. Reward – the end goal of the habit

If you eliminate the cue, the habit won’t start. Reduce the craving and you won’t be motivated to act. Without all 4 steps the habit will not occur.

Habits are dopamine-driven – habits like social media or smoking are all dopamine related. Dopamine is a neuro-transmitter that is released when you achieve pleasure but also when you anticipate it. The anticipation gets us to act. You brain has more capacity for wanting/craving the thing than actually liking the thing.

The 4 Laws of Behaviour Change

Clear lays out 4 laws for changing your behaviour to create a good habit:

Law 1: Make it Obvious

• Use a habit scorecard
• Use an implementation intention – this is a plan that makes you do the thing, eg “when X happens, I will do Y”. If you think things through you’re more likely to do them, e.g. if you ask people what route they’re taking to the polling station, they are more likely to vote
• Use habit stacking – take advantage of the momentum of one action to trigger the next behaviour, e.g. “after I do Y, I will do Z.”
• Design your environment – it’s easy to avoid practising guitar if the actual guitar is in a cupboard. Move the cue so it is obvious. On the other side, the best approach to self-control is not to need it at all. If you watch too much TV, move the TV out of your bedroom. Change your environment to remove the cue and change a habit.

Law 2: Make it Attractive

• Use temptation bundling – for example, a man tied his Netflix to his exercise bike and could only watch if he pedalled. Bundle an action you want to do with one you need to do.
• Join a culture where your desired behvaiour is the norm, as family and friends affect our habits. We imitate those close to us, we imitate the many, and we imitate the powerful.
• Create motivation rituals – put your running kit on when you get up so you go for the run, or put your earphones on to encourage you to work.
• Reframe your mindset to break a bad habit

Law 3 – Make it Easy

The question is not how long will it take for a good habit to form but how many repetitions? The Law of Least Effort = people will graduate to the option that requires the least amount of work.

• Optimise the environment to make actions easier – put your gym kit out, chop up fruit and veg, unplug the TV
• The 2-Minute Rule stops procrastination – when you start a new habit it should take 2 minutes, e.g. I will read one page of a book. I will fold one pair of socks.
• Use a commitment device – a choice you make now to control your future actions, eg arranging for internet connectivity to be shut at 10pm.
• Use technology to automate your habits

Law 4: Make It Satisfying

The first three laws make sure the action happens this time. Law 4 makes sure it happens next time. This is because ‘what is immediately rewarded is repeated’.

• Use reinforcement with an immediate reward
• Use a habit tracker
• Make doing nothing enjoyable (e.g. if you’re giving up a bad habit, put money into an account every time you don’t gamble or buy cigarettes)
• Create a habit contract with someone, e.g. I will pay them $20 if I miss
• Never miss twice – showing up on bad days is critical. Bad workouts are the important ones.

The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We seek out new strategies even when the the old one is working.

Your next steps:

Read Atomic Habits if you have behaviours that you want to change. I’m definitely seeing an improvement on my side!