Amblessed E's Key Ideas from Atomic Habits
by James Clear

Building a habit of reading a chapter of a book every day might seem like a small feat on any given day. It takes a little bit of effort to read at first but over time, you begin to adjust and it becomes a lot easier and effortless.

The more tasks you can handle without thinking, the more tour brain is free to focus on other tasks.

Everyone has experienced this in one way or the other. After hitting the gym for a week with no noticable difference.

I don't have Arnolds arms yet ? Yeah, this isn't really working out as I expected, I better quit now.

The plateau of disappointment is a period of time when no tangible results are seen despite all your efforts. This is a totally normal thing.

Growth, just like almost every other thing build up gradually, it occur at different speeds for different people.

You have to acknowledge the effort(if you are putting in the right effort) not the end goal within this time frame.

Your focus shouldn't be on your goals but rather the systems that help you attain those goals (your habits).

In sports , the wining and the losing team usually have same goals which is to win, yet one team end up on the losing side.

Rather than focusing your energy into a goal, channel that energy into building excellent systems that'll help you attain those goals.

"You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems"

When I make 20 sales calls, I'll be happy . When I get an A in chemistry, I'll finally be happy.

It has various forms in which it appears.

Once I achieve...I'll finally be happy. This creates a deep-seated conflict, what happens if you don't attain those goals?

By loving the systems, it becomes a million times easier and effortless to achieve those goals. Even if you don't acheive your goals(which is less likely to happen if you have the right system), you are still happy because your systems are still working perfectly fine.

Would you continue striving to be better if you've achieved your goal?

When goals are made priority over your systems(habits), when you've achieved your goals, you are very likely to revert into your previous unproductive habits.

This is one way that focusing solely on goal setting can actually be detrimental to long term progress.

When your systems are given utmost priority, your goals will fall into place naturally.

So you want to quit midnight snacking huh? You've been piling on the pounds and it's really getting to you now.

So what do you do?

When you notice yourself craving your favorite snacks after 8pm, you drink lots of water to trick yourself into filling fuller.

Does this work?

Rarely.

Instead of attacking the habits, look into what builds up into indulging in that bad habit.

Instead of drinking gallons of water at night, maybe you don't eat enough during the day causing you to get hungry a lot faster.

By eating better during the day, you are less hungry at night, reducing the chances of snacking.