Author: James Clear
BrailsFord : “aggregation of marginal gains”. A UK cyclist
1% better every day :
1.01^{365} = 37.78\%
0.99^{365} = 0.03\%
Plane tip even by 1 degree over long distance changes the direction. say plane flies 5000 miles. It will be off by 87.26 miles even if it is off by 1 degree.
The principle of compounding. Small at the start but by each passing day, it adds up and that added whole is again added again. and you have this graph
Relationship compounds, it takes time to build up a good behaviour and each day try and approach a single guy. be nice to them, watch what happens within a year.
The construct of winners and losers means for someone to win , there must be someone to lose and It is the action of performing certain task, agreed by the players that defines winning or losing. Playing means actively taking part in a trying to achieve that task and comparing the process. Some completely confused , some laser focused, and some pretending to not play the game . Don’t know what is happening in the brain that produces inefficiency. Things life depends upon, such as breathing, heartbeat. All the humans seems to be winning. a living Human is efficient in that regard. The complexities of other games such as who gets to bang more, how much money you make and so on. What happened? It is all but a construct driven by evolution of society and human in general.
The book insinuates that if you make small improvements over a longer course of time, you will win. But the game and the rules are not written and standarized like FIDE does for chess, or FIFA does for football. Within the vast land of dopamine needles trying to inject you and rewire the brain, making the brain rethink the game they are involved in injecting itself with a jab of dopamine, and later reminding itself with a tight deadline where you can just perform the act of barely winning the game you left to play. the cycle continues like a ups and downs; a hilly ascent and descent that is not perfect but just enough that the upward climb is arduous and the downward climb is easy.
Why do i want to improve myself?
Book says acheiving goal only changes your life for a moment. But you need to improve. Isn’t improvement like walking towards your goal. There will always be something to walk for, maybe run too but isn’t all your goal incrementally revealed by time? There must be some mountain that has to be conquered but it is all blurry to me. Choosing a mountain means you are prepared for failure afterall you need to keep on taking the steps forward but sometimes downhill path seems pleasing for the soul. What is the absolute goal that i think i require? all i think about is money right now. Setting up for goals means restricting your happiness and i feel that is true to some extent. before reaching goals how can you be happy? Book says The goal of playing, the joy of climbing is more important that the accomplishment you get after reaching the top. Joy of loving the process. what process do i love?
Plataeu of latent potential: you work on something and the threshold where the results show up aren’t present yet so you feel like you aren’t improving.
Habits Scorecard
track your days for all the things that you do, because japanese trains do it, aeroplane pilots do it so accidents don’t happen. Also brain has all these way of taking mental shortcuts, one doesn’t know what just happened or why it is the default behaviour or they don’t know they have tendency to do that thing
Scorecard is just bunch of things you did, just remember that if you want to create a habit scorecard then you have to be really observant about things that you do and take time to consideration. Later sitting down and each row has a three columns : action you took , time it happened and is it good or is it bad?
IPO (identity process and outcome). I am a clean person so i keep my room clean which means i have to sweep the floor be conscious about my hygiene.
OPI: i have to be sweep the floor because i have to keep my room clean. But why? Is it the mark of civilized person? or intelligent person ? Isn’t it simply because keeping yourself clean makes you less prone to diseases and more likable ?
In IPO frame all this questions wouldn’t have risen because you have the identity of a clean person, hence your main task is to remain clean. But having a identity requires
It is all really faking yourself to be someone who you want to be while thinking you are the one.
Be yourself is such a scam. The person i was 5 years ago is nothing like what i am today. If i remained myself who can i improve. The thing is you identify yourself as someone who you want to be(is it faking), whatever it is. it’s the way
You repeat a behaviour because it has a satisfying consequence.
Our brain likes taking shortcuts. How else could one ride a bike, which is very hard task in itself while thiking all the stuff in his brain? Because there we have a shortcut which creates room for thinking other things other than riding bike. Now if one has to do mental calculation like $54*45$ while riding a bike then they might fall down because most people don’t have shortcut for that calculation, which will take space.
How this shorcuts are created? and why waste brain effort for that shortcut?
CUE, CRAVING, RESPONSE , REWARD
cue predicts a reward. It might be a sound
craving for change in internal state. Like there is some pushbutton created by a habit that you press to for state change. Watching porn to satisfy my primordial instinct of having sex, Because i don’t like watching porn, the moment i ejaculate it’s all gibberish and loud. Drinking beer because it is associated with being happy.
Response is the habit you perform. Response is dependent on friction and motivation. Friction quantifies the heat it produces when i perform the action. More the heat more hesitant i will be
Reward is what brain likes and it marks the satisfaction of craving. The action that brought upon that reward will be remembered.
These four things are to be mastered and you create a habit.
Cue: Make it obvious
Craving : Make it attractive
Response: Make it easy
Reward: Make it satisfying
Making It Obvious
look at face and know the guy is having the heartattack because the brain in a pattern recognizer and you have been looking at the face of the guys having a heart attack or about to have a heartattack. How do you find cues
With a habit scorecard
How do you start building a good habit?
Be more committed. How do you become more committed? Your brain will forget and you can count upon that. You have to actually make your brain remember stuff. And to do that if you include the time factor, day factor and the place factor. Three more things connected to the task. Hard for your brain Next time you look at watch or calendar and you remember the task you have to do
I will do X in [DAY] at [TIME] in [PLACE]
Another way : Habit Stacking
After [CURRENT ONE] i will do [NEW HABIT]
Shape your environment
Supermarket, the sweets just ahead of counter
You have to pay supermarkets for your product to be in eye level
Cafeteria experiment of having water in every food counter
B = f(P,E) function of person in environment
If i want to start a day with a routine, print a glass that says routine if the first thing you drink is water, tea, coffee after you wake up
If i want to play guitar, place in the middle of living room
Self Control
Soldiers indulging themselves with heroin in war. When they came home most of them stopped it. It was counter intuitive and against the popular belief. The first thing that caused people to use heroin was the intensity of war, their dying peers, gun and mortar shots etc. once they came to america all these cues disappeared for most of them which means, no more heroin
function of environment.
Fridge has a icecream but your mom might not eat it, because she doesn’t have temptations at all. She has associated icecream as a food for children.
To remove bad habit, make the cues invisible.
I have stopped playing valorant, I boot up the game when i am bored. I have a : are you bored list that i fill with things to do when i am bored. I first read it then still if i feel like it then i boot it up. It is combination of habit stacking but for things i consider bad habit.
Now i don’t have to resist the temptation of not playing valorant because performing the task in that “i am bored” list just as fun as valorant.
Make it attractive
Turkeys mothers are very protective and caring. But they have quite a quirk. First seems like a “survival of fittest” in action. If younglings makes a specific click sound they are fine, but any of the chick is not doing that, they kill the chick. Interesting thing is that, scientists did a experiment on them. Racoons are its enemy. they designed a racoon contraption that makes the turkey child sounds. For some reason the mother accepted it as a child and placed it under itself.
That’s called supernormal stimuli
The food industry has exploited our supernormal stimuli for humans. Our prehistoric times were hard. there is Food today, what about tommorow? How many more days should the tribe wait was the question so when they had the chance of eating calorie dense food they ate as much as they can. Industrialization is just couple of centuries old. Fritz haber invented ammonia last century so food abundance is a new thing. Not only abundance we are producing more than what is required because most of our lives have become sedentary. no need to hunt, no need to plough and sow. But we have to look at abstract problems in computers. It doesn’t require physical gymnastics.