Atomic Habits - Chapter 16

Key Notes
Paperclip Strategy: have two jars, one filled with paperclips and the other empty
Each time you perform a desired habit, move one paperclib from the filled jar to the empty jar
The reason why the paper clip strategy works is because you're visually seeing the results of your work with each paperclip that you move to the empty jar
A simpler way of doing this could be a habit tracker
For example, a calendar on which you cross out each day that you performed a certain habit
With time, the calendar becomes a form of monitoring your progress for a certain habit by creating a streak
Apps like snapchat use this strategy to keep their users engaged, once you send a snap 3 days in a row, it starts a streak. Users are enticed to log in each day and send a snap to their friend to ensure that their streak doesn't end
Habit Tracking helps us in the following ways:
1. Urges us to take action because the visual cues are in front of us
2. Keeps us honest with ourselves
3. Allows us to easily monitor the progress of a habit
4. Motivates us to continue with our habit once we have a streak going
How to recover quickly when your streak falls apart
It becomes a psychological thing. The issue is not slipping up, the issue is not rebounding back to the good habit fast enough
Lost days hurt you more than successful days help you
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It is also important to know which habits to track
Some more examples could be:
Judging our work by the number of hours we put into it
Same with gym
Counting to 10,000 steps per day to declare yourself healthy rather than reviewing other aspects of health such as food and mental health
Watching a few long opinionated videos on a subject and considering yourself an expert