what habit tracking application has worked for you?
I recently built a habit contract (a concept mentioned in Atomic Habits) website (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29726228). It's helped me achieve a 116 day streak on Duolingo.
Summary of Atomic Habits
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Re: Summary of Atomic Habits
#72Posts like these are really helpful, thanks! Especially since, in my opinion, at least, a lot of the new English nonfiction books that come out nowadays are 90% fluff and 10% actual material. Many of them seem to be filled with anecdotes that often ramble on and on, making them a chore to read. Basically, 30 pages worth of material turned into a 300 page book. And worse, ALL of them are "best-sellers" with raving reviews from supposedly big media outlets adorning their back pages...
Even worse, a lot of them cannot be trusted... Atleast in Japan, I've seen many books on the bookshelves of big bookstores with clickbaity titles like "The Real Effects of the COVID-19 vaccine! Will you be safe after 2 years!?" written by "reputed doctors" who have a dubious history of peddling weird things.
I have, in principle, stopped buying and reading these nonfiction books unless and until they were written atleast 30 years ago, either written by people on the level of Richard Feynmann in their field, or have a reputable track record and enough (preferably decades) experience about the topic they're writing. This filters out 99.99% of the books flooding the market today. I still run into weird things though.
Re: Summary of Atomic Habits
#73I read this book and I think this sums it up in a Tweet: The laws are: Make it obvious, Make it attractive, Make it easy, Make it satisfying; Each law maps to one of the four steps of habit formation: Make it obvious → Cue Make it attractive → Craving Make it easy → Response Make it satisfying → Reward; Make it Obvious To effectively build a new habit, make the cue for that habit blatantly obvious
For example? Leave fresh fruit on the table to encourage (cue) eating an apple a day?
Yup. In general - handle the dependencies after you've done The Thing instead of before doing it the next time.
It's easy to do Y and Z after you already got up and did X. It's much harder to persuade yourself to do Y so that you can do Z so that you can do X when you're lying in bed fighting to get out 15 minutes earlier.
Re: Summary of Atomic Habits
#74I always go way too late to bed, reading hacker news all night, and wake up late and exhausted as a consequence. First impressions of this blog post are good, going to think of ways to change my identity and behavior, and report back in a month or so with the outcomes here.
I’ve managed to cut news out of my life entirely. Nothing really changed, except the extra free time.
Hacker news is not really any different, it is just easier to justify as “I might find something useful here”.
But all I achieved here is fav & forget smart sounding articles, and point whored at the comment section for easy dopamine.
It’s a trap.
Re: Summary of Atomic Habits
#75I always go way too late to bed, reading hacker news all night, and wake up late and exhausted as a consequence. First impressions of this blog post are good, going to think of ways to change my identity and behavior, and report back in a month or so with the outcomes here.
One thing I have found that helps is "not finding my phone attractive". Weird phrasing, pardon my English.
Basically, I have a midrange phone that cannot play the latest games at 60fps, and has a crack on its tempered glass running through the middle. This functionality and appearance makes it much less appealing than say, a Kindle with no scratches to spend time on.
Due to this, I basically forget my phone is next to me on my bed, and it only serves to take calls if needed in the middle of the night and wake me up next morning with the alarm.
Good luck!
Re: Summary of Atomic Habits
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
For example? Leave fresh fruit on the table to encourage (cue) eating an apple a day?
No, to watch an apple rot on your counter over 2 weeks to remind yourself of your mortality and motivate yourself.
That's the danger of doing something like this. Plenty of people leave things out to remind themselves to do it, but it quickly becomes part of the background noise. I've had loose wires hanging from the ceiling for nearly a year to remind myself to install lights at some point.
Re: Summary of Atomic Habits
#77I'm sorry, but at 7500 words, this is more of a novella than a summary. The summary at the end of the book is shorter than this blog post and contains the big takeaways. I love this book as much as the other person does, but there are much better reads to go deeper into some of the inspiration: https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1059504529111158784 Additionally the major influences on the book: https://twitter.com…
That's because the title was editorialized.
The original title "The Thinner Book: Atomic Habits by James Clear" is explicit on its nature:
> The most important ideas in your typical 300-page book can usually be distilled into several pages. These several pages are the thinner book.
Re: Summary of Atomic Habits
#78Re: Summary of Atomic Habits
#79I always go way too late to bed, reading hacker news all night, and wake up late and exhausted as a consequence. First impressions of this blog post are good, going to think of ways to change my identity and behavior, and report back in a month or so with the outcomes here.
Consider enabling greyscale mode on your phone.
I have an older iPhone, and a triple tap of the home button will toggle grayscale. Incredible difference in my sensory experience when everything looks a bit…dull.
Re: Summary of Atomic Habits
#80This is great, most self-help content is overly repetitive so definitely good to have summaries like this. Tangential: Is the whole good habits thing not a bit overdone at this point? I meant "Practice maketh perfect" isn't a new message -- every new generation is taught the value of discipline in schools by teachers and sports coaches, Outliers popularised the 10000 hours rule more than a decade ago. Why do then peo…
> most self-help content is overly repetitive so definitely good to have summaries like this.
Yup, a lot of them are basically written out versions of blogposts. I mean one of the "original" self-help books, Dale Carnegie's one about people, can be summarized in a list of bullet points - the book itself is padded out with anecdotes.