I realized how easily my environment shaped my behavior. Rereading Atomic Habits helped me understand why goal-driven motivation fades and how identity-based habits can create lasting change.
As I prepared to move to London for graduate school, I quickly let my guard down and spent weeks absorbed in video games. Once I had achieved my goal, my motivation to stay disciplined disappeared. The excitement of a new city mixed with the stress of starting over, and my old coping habits quietly resurfaced.
While writing press releases, I reread Atomic Habits. The book emphasizes building habits based on identity rather than goals and explains why motivation often disappears once a goal is achieved. Thanks to its insight, I came to understand my own behavior better, and I stepped away from my gaming addiction. Let’s talk about it.
Small changes are important
Before we look at how to cultivate habits, we need to realize that there are no universally good or bad habits. Every habit has a purpose and helps us solve problems. Smoking can temporarily relieve stress, but it damages our health in the long term; eating chocolate can lift our mood, but it undermines our goal of losing weight. The pros and cons of a habit depend entirely on your current goals.
Let’s first consider the power of microhabits. People often assume that big changes require extraordinary efforts – such as losing five kilograms in a month, running a marathon, or radically changing their lifestyle overnight. In reality, however, it is often the smallest adjustments that have the greatest impact. Pilots know that a deviation of two or three degrees at take-off can cause the flight path to deviate hundreds of kilometers from its course.
Similarly, subtle changes in daily habits that accumulate over years ultimately determine the destination of life’s journey. As an old Chinese proverb says, “Drop by drop, the water wears away the stone.” The first hundred drops may not leave any visible marks, but persistent effort inevitably leads to irreversible change. Remember that it is not the last drop that pierces the stone, but every single drop that makes its indispensable contribution.
Habit formation works in the same way. Running an extra lap or treating yourself to a meal may seem insignificant, but over time, your health will change fundamentally. Good habits make time your ally; bad habits gradually turn it into your enemy.
Consider ice cubes at room temperature: When the ambient temperature rises from 26 °C to 27 °C and then gradually to 31 °C, their surface remains solid. But even a rise of just one degree triggers visible melting. This change is not due to the last degree of warming but to the cumulative effect of each preceding degree. Developing habits is precisely this journey through the “latent accumulation phase”. We long for instant gratification, but most of the time, every little habit quietly builds strength, much like an ice cube steadily absorbing heat. Until one day, with the same effort as before, you break through this accumulation phase. The world only sees your sudden success, but you know the depth of your commitment so far.
Remember: Every small change you make is never in vain. It’s just that “the strongest results often become visible last.”
Focus on the process rather than the result
If such subtle changes harbor such hidden power, then the next question is, what exactly are we changing? James Clear’s answer is clear: We are building systems. Goals may help us win championships, but systems enable us to stay in the game.
For students, the goal might be to get good grades. However, the real system manifests itself in daily habits: how to concentrate during lectures, how to take notes, how to review after class, how to seek help when you don’t understand something. For athletes, the goal may be to win championships, but their system includes daily training plans, nutrition plans, communication with coaches, and countless preparatory exercises. We tend to fixate on goals and forget that winners and losers have identical goals. The real difference lies in the systems they follow.
This book argues that focusing exclusively on goals leads to demotivation once they are achieved – a phenomenon similar to falling back into bad habits. A similar pattern can be seen in the health sector: People often put on significant weight again after dieting. This is known as the “yo-yo effect,” where repeated weight loss and gain create a vicious circle.
Furthermore, focusing exclusively on goals leads to a binary dilemma: Either you feel fleeting joy when you succeed, or you sink into despair when you fail. If we focus our attention on the process rather than the outcome, we don’t have to wait for a specific scenario to happen in order to be happy. Every small change gradually strengthens our self-confidence.
This concept is also explored in The Courage to Be Disliked, where Adler argues that one should not spend one’s life fixated on future goals. Instead, we should dance through life and fully savor the present moment, in which every moment can be its own conclusion. This idea is further elaborated upon in another article: “5 Things I Learned from “The Courage to Be Disliked“.
Let’s take basketball as an example: No player spends the entire game staring at the scoreboard. They focus on every dribble, every pass, every shot. The result comes naturally. When you focus on every small change in the process, you gradually allow your identity to be shaped by habits. A single run may seem insignificant, but if you run consistently for six months, you may become a disciplined person.
If you want to lose weight, you can ask yourself, “What would someone who has lost ten pounds do? Would they eat salad or roast chicken?” First, adopt that identity, and through each small change, you will truly become that person.
This is how identity-based habits develop: Define who you want to be, and then prove it to yourself through gradual changes. In the next section, we’ll look at how you can better manage these small changes.
Ensure the prompts are clear and visible
Let us now consider the four principles of habit formation: trigger, craving, response and reward. If all four elements are sufficiently strong, good habits can be easily established, but if one of the elements is missing, it becomes difficult to maintain the habit.
The first principle is to make the trigger clearly visible. One of the most direct methods of raising awareness is to verbalize the action being performed. In the Japanese railway system, for example, train attendants loudly announce their observations when the train departs: “60 kilometers per hour,” “signals clear.”
This practice, known as pointing and calling, significantly reduces human error by forcing staff to remain alert and focused. The same strategy can be applied to everyday life: Imagine that someone on a diet sees a bar of chocolate and says aloud, “I want this, but I’m on a diet, and chocolate has too many calories”. By verbalizing the trigger, we transform unconscious impulses into conscious decisions.
Many bad habits are difficult to break precisely because we are unaware of their existence. This book emphasizes that the more we repeat an action, the less we question it. Think of how people instinctively cover their mouths when they laugh or unconsciously bite their lips when they are stressed. These behaviors are deeply ingrained in our subconscious. To change a behavior, you first have to become aware of it.
Beyond verbal reminders, we can design our environment to naturally encourage positive habits. To eat more apples, move them from the bottom of the fridge to a plate on the dining table; to drink more water, place several bottles around the house. When the environment is filled with effective cues, it is easy to develop good habits.
Develop habits with fun
The second principle for developing habits is to make the process appealing. The book suggests a method called “temptation bundling”: combining necessary tasks with desirable activities.
Suppose you want to stick to an exercise program, but you’re also interested in celebrity gossip. Why not try listening to a gossip podcast while you exercise? As a rule, activities that are performed frequently can encourage less frequent activities.
The effectiveness of this strategy depends on the brain’s dopamine response mechanism. In a famous experiment, researchers blocked dopamine release in laboratory rats. Without this neurotransmitter, the animals lost the motivation to move or search for food.
Interestingly, they still felt pleasure when given sugar directly. What had disappeared was the drive to act. This shows that the role of dopamine goes beyond the reward itself: It arouses anticipation. By linking important habits to dopamine-triggering activities, we use the brain’s dopamine mechanism to bridge the tedious phase of habit formation, during which energy is built up.
Simplify your actions
The third rule for forming new habits is to simplify. An effective strategy is to apply the “two-minute rule”: if you can do something for two minutes, it will be easier to continue afterwards. Want to read more? Just open a book and read one page. Want to exercise? Put on your trainers. Want to study? Sit down at your desk and open your notebook. Once you get started, momentum will take over.
If you doubt its effectiveness, try forcing yourself to stop after two minutes and see if you still want to continue.
Why does it work? Because we face countless crucial decisions every day. One choice can lead to a positive habit, while another can lead to a vicious cycle. For example, the decision to get up on time can motivate you to prepare your breakfast, which improves your concentration at work. Conversely, staying in bed can lead you to skip breakfast, which causes fatigue and ultimately pushes you to eat unhealthy foods.
The countless choices we make every day are like a tree diagram that gradually expands, with each decision branching out into multiple paths. Repeatedly choosing good habits will lead to a good day, while too many bad habits will lead to a bad day. The “two-minute rule” helps us prioritize good habits at key decision-making moments, increasing the chances of sticking to them.
Make progress visible
The fourth principle of habit formation is to make results visible. The simplest and most effective method is to track your habits: Record your progress in a visual form. For example, cross off completed tasks on a to-do list or tick off a calendar after exercising. This instant feedback promotes a sense of accomplishment, making the tracking itself a reward that motivates you to persevere.
However, tracking is not a panacea. Placing too much importance on “ticking off” can be distracting and even increase psychological burdens. Clear recommends tracking only key habits to keep it simple and effective.
In summary, the four key elements for cultivating good habits are: triggers, urges, actions, and rewards. These four elements are essential. The same principles can be applied in reverse to break bad habits: Eliminate triggers, reduce urges, increase difficulty, and weaken rewards.
For example, when you stop playing, uninstall the game after each session, lock your device in a cupboard, and stay away from any information related to the game in order to strengthen your resistance. At the same time, it is necessary to identify the underlying craving, which may be the search for success and recognition.
