Atomic Habits Chapter 14
How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible
In the summer of 1830, Victor Hugo was facing an impossible deadline. Twelve months earlier, the French author had promised his publisher a new book. However, instead of writing, he spent that year pursuing other projects, entertaining guests, and delaying his work. Frustrated, Hugo’s publisher responded by setting a deadline less than six months away: the book had to be finished by February 1831.
To overcome his procrastination, Hugo devised a peculiar plan. He gathered all his clothes and asked an assistant to lock them away in a large chest, leaving him with nothing to wear except a large shawl. Without suitable clothing to go outdoors, he stayed in his study and wrote fervently during the fall and winter of 1830. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" was published two weeks early, on January 14, 1831.
Sometimes, success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard. This is an inversion of the 3rd Law of Behavior Change: make it difficult. If you find yourself continually struggling to follow through on your plans, you can take a cue from Victor Hugo and enhance the difficulty of your bad habits by creating what psychologists call a commitment device.
A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that influences your actions in the future. It is a way to lock in future behavior, bind yourself to positive habits, and restrict yourself from negative ones. When Victor Hugo locked away his clothes to focus on writing, he was effectively creating a commitment device.
There are numerous ways to create a commitment device. You can reduce overeating by purchasing food in individual packages rather than in bulk. You can voluntarily request to be added to the banned list at casinos and online poker sites to prevent future gambling sprees. Some athletes, who need to "make weight" for competitions, choose to leave their wallets at home during the week leading up to weigh-in to avoid being tempted by fast food.
For another example, my friend and fellow habits expert Nir Eyal invested in an outlet timer, an adapter he plugged in between his internet router and the power outlet. Each night at 10 p.m., the outlet timer cut off power to the router. When the internet went off, everyone knew it was time for bed.
Commitment devices are valuable because they enable you to capitalize on your good intentions before you can succumb to temptation. For instance, when I’m trying to cut calories, I ask the waiter to split my meal and box half of it to go before the meal is served. If I wait until the meal arrives and think to myself, “I’ll just eat half,” it rarely works.
The key is to change the task so that it requires more effort to abandon the good habit than to engage in it. If you’re motivated to get in shape, schedule a yoga session and pay for it in advance. If you’re excited about starting a business, email an entrepreneur you respect and set up a consulting call. When the time comes to act, the only way to back out is to cancel the meeting, which requires effort and may cost money.
Commitment devices boost the odds that you’ll make the right choice in the future by making bad habits difficult in the present. However, we can take it a step further. We can make good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible.
How to Automate a Habit and Never Think About It Again
John Henry Patterson was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1844. He spent his childhood doing chores on the family farm and working shifts at his father’s sawmill. After attending college at Dartmouth, Patterson returned to Ohio and opened a small supply store for coal miners. The store faced little competition and enjoyed a steady customer stream but still struggled to make a profit. It was then that Patterson discovered his employees were stealing from him.
In the mid-1800s, employee theft was a common problem. Receipts were kept in open drawers and could easily be altered or discarded. There were no security cameras to monitor behavior, nor was there software to track transactions. Unless you were willing to supervise your employees constantly or manage all transactions yourself, it was difficult to prevent theft.
As Patterson pondered his dilemma, he stumbled upon an advertisement for a new invention called Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier. Designed by fellow Dayton resident James Ritty, it was the first cash register. The machine automatically locked the cash and receipts inside after each transaction. Patterson bought two for fifty dollars each, and employee theft at his store vanished overnight. In the next six months, Patterson’s business transformed from losing money to earning $5,000 in profit—the equivalent of more than $100,000 today.
Impressed by the machine's effectiveness, Patterson shifted careers. He acquired the rights to Ritty’s invention and founded the National Cash Register Company. Ten years later, National Cash Register had over a thousand employees and was on its way to becoming one of the most successful businesses of its time.
The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do. Increase the friction until you don’t even have the option to act. The brilliance of the cash register was that it automated ethical behavior by making stealing practically impossible. Instead of attempting to change the employees, it made the preferred behavior automatic.
Certain actions—like installing a cash register—yield continuous benefits. These one-time choices require a little effort upfront but create increasing value over time. I’m fascinated by the idea that a single choice can provide ongoing returns, and I've surveyed my readers about their favorite one-time actions that lead to improved long-term habits. The table below highlights some of the most popular responses.
I believe that if the average person were to adopt just half of the one-time actions on this list—even without further consideration of their habits—most would find themselves living a better life a year from now. These one-time actions are a straightforward way to implement the 3rd Law of Behavior Change. They facilitate better sleep, healthier eating, productivity, saving money, and an overall improved life.
One-Time Actions That Lock In Good Habits
- Nutrition:
- Buy a water filter to ensure clean drinking water.
- Use smaller plates to reduce caloric intake.
- Sleep:
- Invest in a good mattress.
- Get blackout curtains.
- Remove your television from your bedroom.
- Productivity:
- Unsubscribe from emails.
- Turn off notifications and mute group chats.
- Set your phone to silent.
- Use email filters to organize your inbox.
- Delete games and social media apps from your phone.
- Happiness:
- Get a dog.
- Move to a friendly, social neighborhood.
- General Health:
- Get vaccinated.
- Buy good shoes to prevent back pain.
- Purchase a supportive chair or standing desk.
- Finance:
- Enroll in an automatic savings plan.
- Set up automatic bill pay.
- Cut cable service.
- Ask service providers to lower your bills.
Of course, there are many ways to automate good habits and eliminate bad ones. Typically, they involve leveraging technology to benefit you. Technology can transform actions that were once hard, annoying, and complicated into behaviors that are easy, painless, and straightforward. It is the most reliable and effective means of ensuring the desired behavior occurs.
This is particularly useful for behaviors that take place too infrequently to become habitual. Tasks you must do monthly or yearly—like rebalancing your investment portfolio—are often not repeated frequently enough to become a habit, making it advantageous for technology to manage them for you.
Other examples include:
- Medicine: Prescriptions can be automatically refilled.
- Personal finance: Employees can save for retirement through automatic wage deductions.
- Cooking: Meal delivery services can take care of your grocery shopping.
- Productivity: Website blockers can restrict social media browsing.
When you automate as many aspects of your life as possible, you can concentrate your efforts on tasks that machines cannot perform. Each habit that we delegate to technology frees up time and energy for more significant personal growth. As mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote, "Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them."
Of course, the power of technology can also work against us. Binge-watching becomes a habit simply because it requires more effort to stop watching than to continue. Rather than needing to press a button to advance to the next episode, platforms like Netflix or YouTube will autoplay the next episode for you. All you need to do is keep your eyes open.
Technology offers a level of convenience that allows you to act on your smallest whims and desires. With the mere suggestion of hunger, you can have food delivered to your door. At the slightest hint of boredom, you can get lost in the vast expanse of social media. When the effort required to act on your desires is effectively zero, you risk slipping into whatever impulse arises at that moment.
The downside of automation is that we can find ourselves bouncing from easy task to easy task without dedicating time to more challenging but ultimately rewarding work. I often find myself gravitating toward social media during any downtime. If I feel bored for just a moment, I reach for my phone. It's easy to dismiss these brief distractions as "just taking a break," but they can accumulate into a significant issue over time. The constant tug of "just one more minute" can prevent me from accomplishing anything meaningful. (I’m not alone in this; the average person spends over two hours per day on social media—imagine what you could achieve with an extra six hundred hours per year!)
While writing this book, I implemented a new time management strategy. Every Monday, my assistant would reset the passwords on all my social media accounts, logging me out on every device. All week, I worked without distraction, and on Friday, she would send me the new passwords. I had the entire weekend to enjoy social media until Monday morning when she would do it again. (If you don’t have an assistant, consider teaming up with a friend or family member to reset each other’s passwords weekly.)
One of the biggest surprises was how quickly I adapted. Within the first week of locking myself out of social media, I realized that I didn't need to check it nearly as often as I had been, and I certainly didn't need it every day. It had simply been so easy that it had become the default. Once my bad habit became impossible, I found that I did indeed have the motivation to work on more meaningful tasks. After I removed the mental clutter from my environment, it became much easier to engage in healthier activities.
When used effectively, automation can make your good habits inevitable and your bad habits impossible. It is the ultimate method for locking in future behavior rather than relying on willpower at the moment. By utilizing commitment devices, making strategic one-time decisions, and leveraging technology, you can create an environment of inevitability—a space where good habits are not just an outcome you wish for, but an outcome that is virtually guaranteed.
Chapter Summary
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