Atomic Habits: Ch. 4-6

Hello and welcome to Readers, a podcast where the real-life lessons and applications of books are talked about by a 16-year-old, me, Prithviraj Chavda. Hello everyone and welcome to our second episode of Readers. Today we will be reviewing chapters 4 to 6 in Atomic Habits. I will hand it over to my guest now, Mr. Dutya.

Thanks, Bitviraj. Thanks for having me over again. Uh, yep, excited to be reviewing the next 3 chapters, and hopefully we make it very meaningful for our listeners too.

Absolutely. Uh, so before we start, let's just do a quick recap of the last 3 chapters that we reviewed in the last episode. He started off with the concept of what is a habit with a very interesting and just different perspective. He talks about the very small yet atomic changes and the importance of systems rather than goals. He also talks about what leads to the creation of habits. He says it's all about behavior change and how to create good habits that can change you at the root level. In the third chapter, he goes into the psychology and thought process that your brain goes through in order to create good habits that will stay with you. Through life. So without further ado, let's get into Chapter 4. This chapter is about how habits are and how they can become automatic and how we can create these good habits by being self-aware. The author starts off this chapter with a story, which he does often, about a paramedic woman. This woman went to a family gathering and she had spent years working as a paramedic. He mentions how upon arriving at the event, she took one look at her father-in-law and got very concerned. She noticed that something was off about his face and told him that he needed to go to the hospital immediately. The father-in-law thought she was joking. However, she was 100% serious, and a few hours later, This man was undergoing life-saving surgery, and he realized that he had a blockage to a major artery and was at immediate risk of a heart attack. This story talks about how somebody, through experience, can notice small intricacies within their department that can enable them to see so much more than a normal person who did not have this same experience would have been able to.

It's funny, in that example, right, something interesting he mentions. He says, you know, the daughter-in-law tells her father-in-law, you don't look very good. And the father-in-law jokes, he says, oh, I don't like the way you look either. And of course, that was just a joke, but at the end of the day, it turned out to be a serious situation. The next couple of examples he gives, right, the author gives, right, it's very intriguing to me. He gives an example about a commander during the Gulf War who actually ordered a missile shot down which looked very similar to the battleship's own planes. So imagine this is like a life and death situation. He's telling his crew to shoot down a missile that actually looked very much like its own plane. How did he even do that? It's, you know, his superior officers even couldn't explain that. The intriguing part in this whole example is the habit, the, you know, the whole call that he made was so automated because he was just trained that well over the period of years. Maybe even he couldn't say why he did that, although that's not mentioned in the book. But there are a lot of other examples that the author gives where a doctor sees a problem that is not very evident in the reports or sees those patterns in the patient behavior Then he talks about how museum curators can identify like a fake piece of art with the real one and so on and so forth. So the bottom line is he talks about how human mind is able to train itself with weeks, months, or years of practice. So I don't know, some of these examples were very intriguing and I thought, hey, there is something to be learned here.

Absolutely. Um, his bottom line within this, all of these examples that he mentions and gives, is that the human mind is essentially a prediction machine. Any experiences that you repetitively go through many times in the day, many times in the year, all the time, your brain will take all of these experiences and it will scan these experiences essentially for patterns and relevant cues that it can use in later areas and later times. Whether you want this to be used all the time or not, whether that paramedic consciously made that effort to recognize that in her father-in-law or not, it still happened. And that's a byproduct of her brain doing that constantly for her job all the time. And this is the most amazing part about this phenomenon that happens within your brain. Is that it happens automatically. Things such as breathing, blinking, your blood flow from your heart, everything that happens such as this is automatic. It's not something you think about and you enable it to do so because you feel like it or you want to do this. It happens as a byproduct of your very existence and you going through these experiences. And he loops this into what the whole book is about, which is Creating the—

these habits.

And he says going through experiences, what you do every day, can apply to our habits as well. Regardless of whether you realize it or not, you can end up creating new habits because of something you did not intend to do. Whether you started covering your mouth every time you laugh or say sorry before you ask a question, it can influence and affect you in every way. Because of this, whether or whether not you realize it.

Those subtle examples that you mentioned, Pritviraj, are interesting, right? When I was reading the book and when I was even listening to the audiobook, I realized that those small things of covering the mouth or saying sorry before you ask a question are so common around us. You may not be doing it, but you may know someone who does that. So it was a very interesting set of examples he used. Speaking of making the habits automatic, right, it's— there's also a pitfall to this phenomenon, and the downside of the pitfall is these habits even can be negative ones, or the ones that you don't want. For example, he gives yet again a funny example where a clerk at a store was used to taking the gift card, using the gift card, and then cutting it out as a part of his or her job. And after doing it for a few times, the next customer actually ended up giving him an actual credit card and not a gift card. The guy swiped the credit card, and the next thing he does is picks up a scissor and cuts it. And without realizing what he has done, so he looks at the customer, and the customer is just shell-shocked, like, what just happened? So this tells you about how unconscious or how unconsciously or in an automated way he just did that behavior. So there's an interesting saying by a psychologist called Carl Jung, which the author mentions. He says, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct, direct your life and you will call it fate. If you think about it, if you think about that statement, it's extremely powerful. Everything that we think is not in our control, we call it fate or destiny, but it's actually probably an outcome of a habit that we have formed or a series of actions that we unconsciously repeat and we don't even know. So You know, with this, with these set of examples, the author talks about how important it is for us to be self-aware of the habit, because literally whatever, whatever you're not aware of, it's almost going to be impossible to change it or improve it. So interesting set of examples. He mixes some stories, some examples with some concepts and some studies. So it kind of registers well when you read the book or you listen to the book.

And in order to improve our habits, in order to change them, the ones that we might have created consciously or unconsciously, whether we want to change them, we need to be aware of these habits first. And he, in order to do this, he proposes something that he calls maintaining a habits scorecard. So essentially what you do in a habits scorecard is you take all of the habits that you would do say in your morning, maybe, maybe in your night routine, in the middle, anytime, and you list them all down first, right? So wake up, check my phone, brush my teeth, floss my teeth, drink my milk, whatever, whatever. Whether or whether or not you think that it is an important part of your day or not, you write it and you mention it because something you do unconsciously most likely you will not feel like it is an important and essential part of your day, although it can be affecting you in major ways. And after doing this, he mentions how you need to mark them either with a plus, a minus, or an equal sign. This is what he uses, um, and the plus sign means positive. This is a positive activity for me. You know, brushing my teeth would be a positive, good activity. I like my dental hygiene and keeping my teeth clean. A negative habit might be, I don't know, checking my phone first thing in the morning. And something that's neutral might be pouring myself a cup of tea or something that doesn't really impact me as much, but I do every day anyway. And this is how he mentions how you're able to become more and more aware, and that's how you are able to affect yourself in those ways whether or whether or not they are unconscious. He also talks about a technique that he calls pointing and calling. This is something he mentions that his wife does when she's about to go out of the house every time, you know, mentioning, I have my phone, I have my wallet, I have my keys, I have my purse, etc., etc. And this pointing and calling technique makes sure you call everything out so you remember all of it. Otherwise, thinking in your head, you know, I've thought plenty of times, yeah, of course I have my phone in my pocket, or of course I have my wallet on me. But after I get out and get where I need to be going, I don't end up having it at all. And then it's like, I thought I had it all along, but I really don't. Um, and he says this not just in this context, but also in the context of being able to break bad habits. He mentions the example of eating a cookie, and for me You know, if I'm, if I'm about to watch, you know, one more episode of The Office than I should, you know, say it, say it out loud. Maybe, maybe don't even stop yourself from watching it. That's a long-term benefit of this. But say it, I am about another, I am about to watch another episode of The Office. I do not need to watch this episode and it will waste time that I could be using to do real work instead. He says that saying the bad habit out loud makes it seem more real and makes it stand out to you. Do the same thing with something that you wish to remember to do, such as, I'm going to go to the grocery store tomorrow to pick up some apples. Same example, same routine that you will go through.

Some of, some of these things that he calls out as a framework or as I call it a hack or even a SMART goal, depending on the context. It's actually interesting. I have decided to try out a few things. For example, I would like to work out every single day. And the day I miss— like today is a good day when I haven't been able to work out, or a good example— I think I'm going to call out and say, I wanted to work out today, but I did not. Let's see, let's see if it invites a discipline going forward or not, because it's interesting. He, even in the previous chapters, right, he talks about, you know, or maybe upcoming chapters, he talks about setting the intentions. I think he calls it implementation intention or something like that. But bottom line is calling it out, pointing and calling These could be those easy techniques that we can adopt and actually improve. I know you skipped that part in interest of time, Prithviraj, but he also gives a history of this pointing and calling technique, right? He says it was first introduced and still pretty much used in the train systems in Japan. By pointing and calling, they have avoided so many mishaps, so many accidents. He even describes a couple of, you know, very interesting things that he observed when he was there. And when the New York MTA systems, right, the subway systems adopted that same technique, learning from the Japanese train system, I think they could, you know, I think I read that they could reduce the incidents, so to speak, significantly. I don't remember the exact percentage, but it was, it was a huge, huge improvement in the incidents happening in the New York subway systems. But case in point, the, the, the key outcome or the key takeaway with, with, in, with this, these examples is there are certain techniques, certain proven ways to, or I'm almost interested to call them hacks or frameworks that we can adopt to make sure we are able to get the desired outcomes from our own actions. So I just thought of mentioning that, although it was pretty obvious with everything we discussed, but intriguing to say the least.

Absolutely. And on that note, we will end Chapter 4. Moving on to Chapter 5, kind of an overview of the chapter. Uh, the author gives a framework around how to cultivate and continue with a new habit that you might just have formed. So as you might remember or know, the first law of behavior change is to make it obvious. Um, and to— in order to do this, he uses an example of a study in which subjects were divided into 3 different groups. The first group, uh, and this, this study was conducted in order to track how effective different methods would be for these groups in order to exercise. The first group was called the control group, and this group was asked to track how often they exercised, and that was it. The second group was called the motivation group. This group was asked to track how often they exercised, and they were also explained how exercise could reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. Then there was the third group. The third group was also presented with the same information, were, was also asked to track how often they exercised, but they also completed a sentence and filled in the blanks within the sentence. During the next week, I will participate in at least 20 minutes of vigorous exercise on blank day at blank time in blank place. You know, so if I was to fill in that sentence, I will partake in at least 20 minutes of vigorous exercise on Thursday at 6 o'clock PM in the nearest LA Fitness. These were the three groups, and after this, they tracked how effective this was. The results were incredible. In the first and second groups, about 35-39% of the people exercised at least once per week. In the third group, 91% of participants exercised at least once a week. And this is because of an interesting idea that he calls implementation intention. Now, what is that? He mentions that it is essentially a plan that one can make in order to show when and where you will act in order to make it more specific and easy for you to remember, to make it more obvious, as the first law of behavior change states. Um, he mentions kind of a simple formula When situation blank arises, I will perform response blank, right? When I get the craving to watch TV, I will perform the response to, you know, whatever I choose in order to not do that, or to do that if I— that's my goal.

If you, if you think about it, right, he uses a sentence in the book that caught my eye for sure. He says, many people think that they lack motivation, but what they really lack is clarity. And if I go back to the first 3 chapters that we reviewed in the first episode and connect the dots a little bit, right? So he does mention that a lot of times the people who feel— who we think have self-control actually have to use it the least. Why? Because they are basically— they have worked on the systems or the framework and not on the burst of motivation to get something done. So he's kind of strengthening that fact even more with more and more data and more and more techniques, right? So when he talks about this implementation intention, right, Again, if you think about it, the way to execute it is so simple. At a specific time and a specific location, I'll do a specific behavior. So he gives an example of, oh, I want to do 10 push-ups at the time of lunch in one of the chapters. But he says, oh, that wasn't specific. I wasn't getting the success. Then I set the quote-unquote implementation intention, as you know, with a lot of clarity. Once I shut down my laptop for lunch, I'll do 10 push-ups right next to my desk, or something like that. So he was so specific, and that just increased the odds or the probability of him actually doing it. That's what he tries to, you know, tries to tell us with all these different examples. And once again, I may sound repetitive here, but if you think about it, these are such simple techniques that at least they are worth a try. You know, you, you, we follow these, um, so-called rules or so-called, um, frameworks, right? And maybe, maybe these work like a magic, like magic. I mean, as we know, simple things sometimes make the most impact. So I have decided I'm going to try a few things, both to cultivate good habits and break some bad ones. And maybe in the next episode, we can even talk about some results that we've had in our personal lives.

Absolutely. I mean, what is there to lose, right? I mean, you can only gain, you can only get better, and You know, like, why not? So, um, moving on, um, he says that there are many ways that you can use implementation intentions. And one way that he mentions that to me really stood out, and I've tried to use this in my personal life as well, he calls it habit stacking. So what is habit stacking? It's essentially a formula: after current habit that you have, I will new habit, right? So say me, I brush every morning, right? So after I brush, I will say, if I didn't floss, I might say, after I brush every morning, I will floss. This is an example of habit stacking. So the key is to tie your desired behavior into something that you already do every day. And this habit stacking can lead to so many new chains and you doing just so many new habits that you've never done before, right? Like, if it's something I really want to do, if it's something that has a correlation to something that I already might do, I know that waking up or exercising, for example, is something that's very difficult for some people. What if the goal is just to get out of bed, go upstairs, and, you know, maybe your home gym is right next to your bathroom. If that's your goal, then just make that right turn instead of the left turn. Don't go into the bathroom, go into your home gym and work out for— you know, you don't have to start off with a straight 2-hour workout. You can start off with 30 minutes, whatever you want. Maybe it's even 5 push-ups and 5 pull-ups every morning. But if you start that, if you get it going, and if you stack those habits after everything that you already do, that can only lead to more and newer and bigger more advanced chains of habits that you can build upon. He also mentions that you can stack the habit stacks that you have already created, right? And maybe this sounds a little, a little, uh, complicated, but you know, an example is, you know, after eating my morning cereal, I will do 5 push-ups. After I do those push-ups, I will make some daily goals. After making those daily goals, I I will meditate, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? And this is something that really stood out to me because it seems like such a simple way to introduce new habits into your daily schedule or your daily routine. He says that habit stacking works the best when your cue is highly specific and immediately actionable. When your cue is very specific, you know, don't mention, After I eat, I will, you know, after I eat, I will meditate. When, where, how, like, what am I going to do? Am I going to meditate for 5 minutes? Am I going to meditate for 10 minutes? Am I going to do it like by my chair, in my chair? Where, when, how? Be extremely specific about what you do. And he says, the last point that he says is that the secret to creating a successful habit stack is selecting the right cue to kick things off. Select something that you already know you're gonna do every single day so that you can build upon that.

Actually, that makes me think of something. As you were describing this, I was, it's literally a light bulb went off. I know my wife is a cleanliness freak. She wants to be organized and clean everything all the time. So I remember, you know, she always keeps telling me to clean the toilet bowl every single day. And I'm like, It's a toilet bowl, why does it need to be cleaned every day? But what ended up happening is I turn on the shower these days and it just takes a few, like 4 to 5 minutes for the water to get hot because, you know, because of a lot of reasons. So earlier I used to just sit there, surf on my phone till I'm ready to hop into the shower. I actually replaced that surfing the phone with, in a way, a habit stack. So turn on the shower cue, then I go into the toilet, clean the toilet bowl just to make her happy. I did that just for a few days to make her happy, but then it became a nice routine and a habit. So turn on the shower, okay, that's, you know, that literally that shower starts, that voice triggers, okay, my next thing is I have to go and clean the toilet bowl. By the time I'm back, the water is already hot and I jump into the shower. And if you think about it, I didn't even do this on purpose. It is a way that I stack the habits and it works like a charm. So think about it, if we consciously do this habit stacking, this practice of habit stacking, maybe the compound effect that he talks about in the first few chapters is enormous. And again, like I said earlier, it's worth a try. We have nothing to lose.

Absolutely. Please don't tell my mom about that example, otherwise you might find me cleaning the toilet a lot more than I want to.

Oh, I can understand. I can imagine.

Um, all right, so on that note, let's end Chapter 5 and move on to our final chapter, Chapter 6. Overview of this chapter, um, and the focus of this chapter is basically on the environment in which a habit can thrive. Where do you do this habit so that it can be nurtured to its maximum potential? He starts this chapter off with another story about a woman named Anne Thorndike. This was a woman who wanted to change her workplace environment in order to make her coworkers drink more water. And she decided to do this through a means in which she would not at all persuade them verbally or tell them what to do, and she wasn't going to talk to them at all. So what did she do? She noticed that near wherever the rest of her colleagues went, a lot of soda vending machines were located right near there. And every time they would walk by and they got thirsty, first thing they would do is grab a Sprite or a soda, and that's what they would drink. So she did a very simple thing, which was replace a couple of the sodas, of course keeping the sodas there, but replacing some of them with water. And she added water next to all of the food stations and any place where you can go to essentially replenish. and she discovered something incredible, and that was that over the next 3 months, the number of soda sales at the hospital in which she worked at dropped by about 11%, and sales of bottled water increased by about 26%. There's a name for this, and it's called choice architecture. In other words, how to design your environment to make a habit habit easier to cultivate.

This word choice architecture intrigued me a little bit. And he uses a couple of sentences that I remember. He says, give your habits a place to live or a place to thrive. That's a very powerful statement, which is exactly in line with this chapter's theme that create that environment and give it a chance to— give your habit a chance to live, right? The other statement he uses, which was also very intriguing, it says, "Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior." That is amazing. He talks about— he gives a few examples either in this chapter or previous one, I don't recall, but he says, Certain things can happen very naturally. For example, if you are on a dark, quiet street, you are going to be a little bit, you know, alert, if you will, or on the guard. If you are in a church, there is a chance that you will be talking in whispers. Some things are so shaped by your environment. Now, these things, when you think in isolation, they're very easy to comprehend. But when you connect the dots in a way that, oh, so if I put in or I start and continue a habit in a specific environment, there is a very good chance that I'll actually be very successful at maintaining the habit. He gives a few business-driven examples as well. One of the statistics that he shares is 45% of Coca-Cola sales come specifically from the end-of-the-aisle racks. I mean, that's very powerful. We go to a grocery store or a retail store, we think we are controlling our buying behavior, but we don't know what environment is doing to us, good and bad, to prompt us a few things, to prompt us to do a few things that we may or may not have planned. So those were some interesting things. Another interesting, or rather funny, funny story that he talks about, which is again very, very intriguing, is Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, right? He says they did this experiment where they put a little plastic bug in the men urinals. And every person was trying to aim at the plastic bug thinking it's a real bug. And as a result, the spillovers were a lot less than before. And they saved a ton of effort and maybe money on cleaning the toilets. So it was a unique experiment that yielded results. About around the fact that how they changed a few things within the environment and cultivated a habit. So these are a few things that, you know, again, easy to implement, worth a try. Like we've discussed before, he gives some very simple things as examples as well. He says, if you want to practice guitar more, just put it in the middle of your living room, I know, uh, Prithviraj, you mentioned about this example last time as well, and it has given you some success, uh, yourself. So these are some things that are not very hard to do, or, or, uh, you know, you can easily insert them in your daily routine and give it a try if you can cultivate a good habit. So what I love about this book and, and the author is he's always giving you some techniques, framework, and not just theory and examples. Which gives us an opportunity to, to try it out and see if we can cultivate the habit that we desire.

Absolutely. And that awareness is just amazing. You know, I watched a couple of documentaries before as well, and knowing that like everything from the music you hear at a store to where each item is placed in which aisle is so intricately designed that Every— everything is very calculated and placed in that exact order and way so that you can be targeted towards it. And this information, it's, it's not to make you paranoid, um, that the rest of the world is, you know, out to just get you, but just rather to have that awareness and control over your own surroundings. Um, bringing me to, um, an interesting quote that he mentions, which is, uh, be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it. And this is something that really stood out to me because many of us out there are simply the consumers of our world. We don't— we live in a world that is designed by other people for us. And whether or not that's designed for the betterment of us or whether or not it's designed for the betterment of them, a lot of us aren't always aware of. And choosing our own places, our own environment, is something that can be so much more powerful and nurturing to our own minds and our own souls. And it can help make us so much more powerful in terms of how and the way we work, in the way we live. Um, he talks about how the location greatly affects your behavior, and he mentions an interesting example: how most people drink in social situations and they drink a lot more there rather than they would do when they're alone, right? When you go to a party and you're seeing a bunch of your friends there and they're all drinking, you're more likely to drink there than when you're sitting on your couch at home browsing through Twitter. And he talks about how this location, what others are doing, can affect you so much more than what you would do every day. And he says that this, although can be something that can lead you down the wrong path, it can also help you make yourself in control if you control your own environment. For example, he says, limit certain places in your life to certain tasks. He says, although even if you may have a very small apartment, label certain areas of it to certain tasks, to certain duties that you may be doing. For me personally, all of my workplace, my desks, my phones, any electronic devices are all downstairs, not in my room upstairs. You know, like I don't want to put all of that over there. That is a place where I sleep and that's why it's specifically over there. Now when I go to my desk, I don't feel like sleeping. I feel like working and getting something done. So when that association, that connection is made between your brain then that strengthens you working. When you sit down at your desk, your brain isn't confused, hey, is it time to sleep or is it time to work? It knows this is where you come to get work done, and that, uh, neural connection in your brain can truly help you get the most out of wherever you are and whatever you're doing within that area.

Actually, you know what, um, I was keenly listening to everything you were saying, and, um, Believe it or not, even way before I read this book, I'm a firm believer of that, of that theory that certain places, certain things have to be done in specific places, right? I remember growing up years when I was a teenager. Well, that was years ago, but I always, I always believed that if I want to study I have to go to library. So, you know, rain or shine, I would go to library for studying whenever I had to study. Not that I was very studious kind. Same thing, I still believe that if you're serious about something, go do it at a specific place. I've had a million examples where my friends, even myself for that matter, you would buy a fitness equipment thinking that, oh, now this is going to change my life. And the next thing you know is that fitness equipment is either a useless piece of furniture at home, or it's an— it, it's, it's something where you hang your clothes. So it's just ridiculous because, because it's not like, oh, even if I've bought a fitness equipment, it is in a room and it is in a place, it's, it's in my exercise where I only exercise. No, it's not, it's not like that. It's sitting in front of TV and we hope miracles are going to happen. Anyways, these are the things that, you know, are food for thought, right? I'll say a final thing that I felt was an interesting statement by him. He says, small changes in the context or maybe environment can lead to large changes in behavior over time. That's That's a very powerful statement. It summarizes this context and environment that we talked about, as well as it has a flavor of the compounding effect that he talked about in the first few chapters. So when you say the small changes can lead to large changes in behavior over time, so the results can be much more can be much bigger if we are able to control the environment, control the cues, have those implementation intentions set, and make sure that we give it an environment to thrive. And the rest is yet to be observed if we were to try it ourselves. But I don't know, I'm motivated to try a lot of things after review of these chapters. And see where it takes me. I think the results can be really, really positive over the period of time.

Absolutely. And on that note, we are going to conclude the second episode. Thank you everyone for listening. Thank you so much, Mr. Dutia, for coming and being my guest.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Prithviraj. See you soon for the next episode, for the next few chapters.

It's an honor. And thank you to all the listeners for reaching out and sharing it. I recently saw, you know, there's some listeners from Oman, there's a couple from Europe now. So grateful to everyone who's sharing. Keep on learning, keep on changing, keep on growing. Thank you, everyone.