Chapter 11 – Walk Slowly, but Never Backward
Clear begins the chapter talking about “motion” and “action.” He says being in motion means one is planning, strategizing, and learning while being in action leads to results. When building habits, Clear believes we should be in action, or getting repetitions of an activity. He states that the process of making a habit become an unconscious act is called automaticity. With enough repetitions one can cross the “Habit Line,” making the habit automatic.
Quotes from the chapter:
- And that’s the biggest reason why you slip into motion rather than action: you want to delay failure.
- This is the first takeaway of the 3rd Law: you just need to get your reps in.
- You need to string together enough successful attempts until the behavior is firmly embedded in your mind and you cross the Habit Line.
Chapter 12 – The Law of Least Effort
Chapter 12 opens with the idea that humans tend to take the path of least resistance. This can be used in a positive way by making the habits we want to integrate as easy as possible to complete. Clear says that we can set up our environment to remove the friction that gets in the way of setting good habits. As an example, setting out all the necessary kitchenware needed to make a healthy breakfast the night before increases the chances of choosing a healthy breakfast. Clear states that adding friction (the inverse) reduces bad habits.
Related quotes:
- If you can make your good habits more convenient, you’ll be more likely to follow through on them.
- Whenever you organize a space for its intended purpose, you are priming it to make the next action easy.
- The greater the friction, the less likely the habit.
- Redesign your life so the actions that matter most are also the actions that are easiest to do.
Chapter 13 – How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule
Here, Clear explains how “decisive moments” are moments throughout the day that have an “outsized impact” on the rest of the day. People who create positive habits at decisive moments increase the chances of accomplishing their full potential. When starting out, Clear recommends breaking a goal down into activities that take less than two minutes. The point isn’t to reward yourself for doing something for up to two minutes, it’s to begin the incorporation of it into your life. After this has been established, the difficulty of the activity can be increased over time. Clear calls this “habit shaping.”
A couple of related quotes:
- Habits are the entry point, not the end point.
- What you want is a “gateway habit” that naturally leads you down a more productive path.
- Make it easy to start and the rest will follow.
Chapter 14 – How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible
Making a task difficult is the inverse of the 3rd Law of Behavior Change. Clear defines a “commitment device” as “a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future.” Sometimes these can be onetime decisions that reap returns into perpetuity (e.g., automating salary deductions to establish a savings). Clear says we must be careful with technology, however, as it can create bad habits as well (e.g., bingeing the next automatically played Netflix episode).
Quotes from the chapter:
- Commitment devices are useful because they enable you to take advantage of good intentions before you can fall victim to temptation.
- The key is to change the task such that it requires more work to get out of the good habit than to get started on it.
- The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do.
Andrew T. Daniel 