Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

HOW TO TURN INSTANT GRATIFICATION TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
The vital thing in getting a habit to stick is to feel successful—even if
it’s in a small way. The feeling of success is a signal that your habit paid
off and that the work was worth the effort.
In a perfect world, the reward for a good habit is the habit itself. In
the real world, good habits tend to feel worthwhile only after they have
provided you with something. Early on, it’s all sacrifice. You’ve gone to
the gym a few times, but you’re not stronger or fitter or faster—at least,
not in any noticeable sense. It’s only months later, once you shed a few
pounds or your arms gain some definition, that it becomes easier to
exercise for its own sake. In the beginning, you need a reason to stay
on track. This is why immediate rewards are essential. They keep you
excited while the delayed rewards accumulate in the background.
What we’re really talking about here—when we’re discussing
immediate rewards—is the ending of a behavior. The ending of any
experience is vital because we tend to remember it more than other
phases. You want the ending of your habit to be satisfying. The best
approach is to use reinforcement, which refers to the process of using
an immediate reward to increase the rate of a behavior. Habit stacking,
which we covered in Chapter 5, ties your habit to an immediate cue,
which makes it obvious when to start. Reinforcement ties your habit to
an immediate reward, which makes it satisfying when you finish.
Immediate reinforcement can be especially helpful when dealing
with habits of avoidance, which are behaviors you want to stop doing.
It can be challenging to stick with habits like “no frivolous purchases”
or “no alcohol this month” because nothing happens when you skip
happy hour drinks or don’t buy that pair of shoes. It can be hard to feel
satisfied when there is no action in the first place. All you’re doing is
resisting temptation, and there isn’t much satisfying about that.
One solution is to turn the situation on its head. You want to make
avoidance visible. Open a savings account and label it for something
you want—maybe “Leather Jacket.” Whenever you pass on a purchase,
put the same amount of money in the account. Skip your morning

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latte? Transfer $5. Pass on another month of Netflix? Move $10 over.
It’s like creating a loyalty program for yourself. The immediate reward
of seeing yourself save money toward the leather jacket feels a lot
better than being deprived. You are making it satisfying to do nothing.
One of my readers and his wife used a similar setup. They wanted to
stop eating out so much and start cooking together more. They labeled
their savings account “Trip to Europe.” Whenever they skipped going
out to eat, they transferred $50 into the account. At the end of the year,
they put the money toward the vacation.
It is worth noting that it is important to select short-term rewards
that reinforce your identity rather than ones that conflict with it.
Buying a new jacket is fine if you’re trying to lose weight or read more
books, but it doesn’t work if you’re trying to budget and save money.
Instead, taking a bubble bath or going on a leisurely walk are good
examples of rewarding yourself with free time, which aligns with your
ultimate goal of more freedom and financial independence. Similarly,
if your reward for exercising is eating a bowl of ice cream, then you’re
casting votes for conflicting identities, and it ends up being a wash.
Instead, maybe your reward is a massage, which is both a luxury and a
vote toward taking care of your body. Now the short-term reward is
aligned with your long-term vision of being a healthy person.
Eventually, as intrinsic rewards like a better mood, more energy,
and reduced stress kick in, you’ll become less concerned with chasing
the secondary reward. The identity itself becomes the reinforcer. You
do it because it’s who you are and it feels good to be you. The more a
habit becomes part of your life, the less you need outside
encouragement to follow through. Incentives can start a habit. Identity
sustains a habit.
That said, it takes time for the evidence to accumulate and a new
identity to emerge. Immediate reinforcement helps maintain
motivation in the short term while you’re waiting for the long-term
rewards to arrive.
In summary, a habit needs to be enjoyable for it to last. Simple bits
of reinforcement—like soap that smells great or toothpaste that has a
refreshing mint flavor or seeing $50 hit your savings account—can
offer the immediate pleasure you need to enjoy a habit. And change is
easy when it is enjoyable.

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Chapter Summary
The 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it satisfying.
We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is
satisfying.
The human brain evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over
delayed rewards.
The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately
rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.
To get a habit to stick you need to feel immediately successful—
even if it’s in a small way.
The first three laws of behavior change—make it obvious, make it
attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior
will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change
—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be
repeated next time.

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I
16
How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day
N 1993
, a bank in Abbotsford, Canada, hired a twenty-three-year-old
stockbroker named Trent Dyrsmid. Abbotsford was a relatively small
suburb, tucked away in the shadow of nearby Vancouver, where most
of the big business deals were being made. Given the location, and the
fact that Dyrsmid was a rookie, nobody expected too much of him. But
he made brisk progress thanks to a simple daily habit.
Dyrsmid began each morning with two jars on his desk. One was
filled with 120 paper clips. The other was empty. As soon as he settled
in each day, he would make a sales call. Immediately after, he would
move one paper clip from the full jar to the empty jar and the process
would begin again. “Every morning I would start with 120 paper clips
in one jar and I would keep dialing the phone until I had moved them
all to the second jar,” he told me.
Within eighteen months, Dyrsmid was bringing in $5 million to the
firm. By age twenty-four, he was making $75,000 per year—the
equivalent of $125,000 today. Not long after, he landed a six-figure job
with another company.
I like to refer to this technique as the Paper Clip Strategy and, over
the years, I’ve heard from readers who have employed it in a variety of
ways. One woman shifted a hairpin from one container to another
whenever she wrote a page of her book. Another man moved a marble
from one bin to the next after each set of push-ups.
Making progress is satisfying, and visual measures—like moving
paper clips or hairpins or marbles—provide clear evidence of your
progress. As a result, they reinforce your behavior and add a little bit of
immediate satisfaction to any activity. Visual measurement comes in

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many forms: food journals, workout logs, loyalty punch cards, the
progress bar on a software download, even the page numbers in a
book. But perhaps the best way to measure your progress is with a
habit tracker.