Continuing through Clear's *[[Clear - Atomic Habits|Atomic Habits]]* this morning I read through chapter 3 about forming habits. At nearly 38 years old, I've heard quite a bit of this in life. However, one of the habits I'm forming is taking notes while I read non-fiction works and writing about it. Consuming it in this form has me thinking more about the content than just the words, which may show itself to be a better use of my time. Habits are the pre-discovered, efficient solutions to problems in our lives. Clear uses the example of walking into a dark room. For most of us, the first thing we do is reach for a light switch. We don't think about it; we just do it. It's not until we can't find the switch that we start investigating the action, but the next time we walk into that specific room we'll likely not have to search for it. This is one of the "habits" we've developed over years and years of life that largely remains invisible. We learn to turn a light on young. This comes from the "habit loop" described by Clear as cue, craving, response, and reward. The brain is constantly examining our environment for cues. Cues being outlined as the catalyst that triggers a craving. This can be anything in life, for Pavlov's dogs it was the ring of a bell. Walking into a dark room can be the cue. Craving is more difficult because of the connotation of the word "crave" being so heavily used around food. Desire or motivation could be good words for this. It's simply the motivation to achieve the end state. Standing in a dark room and wanting to be able to see can be viewed as the craving. Responses are the actions or thoughts we take in order to satisfy that craving. The reward is that satisfaction. The dark room example is easy to see that flipping a light switch enables one to see the room in full. The response is the action of flipping the switch, the reward is being able to see which satisfies the craving. Once it's laid out in this fashion, it feels easier to see how habits work. That doesn't necessarily mean it will be easier to intentionally build them, but it leans that direction. Clear gives four steps for changing behaviors, either good or bad, at the end of this chapter and just provides some brief introduction to each step. I'll include those here, but future chapters will dive deep into each one, so I'm going to try to reserve my thoughts on each. The four laws of behavior change are: 1. The Cue - Make it obvious, or in the case of trying to break bad habits make it invisible. 2. The Craving - Make it attractive or unattractive 3. The Response - Make it easy or difficult 4. The Reward - Make it satisfying or unsatisfying. I know I've written a brief bit about it, but I bought a [[Smart but Dumb Phone|Brick]] to lock my phone down. The cues are still there to grab my phone, but I made the response of browsing Reddit difficult and replaced it by making reading easier. It's a long way to go, but there's something to these laws. --- - Tags: #Habits - Source: [[Clear - Atomic Habits]]