Inspirational One-Liners from Atomic Habits

Introduction

While going through Atomic Habits, numerous sentences caught my attention, hence I decided to have an article for my favorite inspirational one-liners (A few might be two sentences long though) from Atomic Habits. I believe some of them will equally catch your attention and hopefully spark some thoughts in your mind.

Which one-liner do you resonate the most with? Do you disagree with any of them? Do you have life experiences that can substantiate them? You can leave whatever thought passes through your mind while reading this as a comment.

My Favorite One-Liners from Atomic Habits

1. If you can get 1% better each day, you’ll end up with results that are nearly 37 times better after one year. Chapter 1
2. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Chapter 1
3. All big things come from small decisions. Chapter 1
4. Identity means the quality of being the same. Chapter 2
5. Habits are evidence of identity. Chapter 2
6. Habits are solutions to recurring problems. Chapter 3
7. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Chapter 4
8. People who make a specific plan on when and where they’ll do something are most of the time successful. Chapter 4
9. No behavior acts in isolation, one leads to the next. Chapter 5
10. We are more dependent on vision than any other sense. Environment matters. Chapter 6
11. You are likely to break a bad habit, but you are unlikely to forget it. Chapter 7
12. Dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you expect it. Chapter 8
13. Every action takes place because of the anticipation that precedes it. It is the craving that leads to the response. Hence, we need to make our habits attractive, because it is the expectation of their rewards that motivates us in the first place. Chapter 8
14. When we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide our behavior. Chapter 9
15. A craving is a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive. Chapter 10
16. Life is not reactive, but predictive. You are constantly trying to act based on what you’ve just seen and what you know about it from the past. Chapter 10
17. Being in motion (Planning, Strategizing, learning, but no outcome) vs taking action (Behavior that delivers an outcome). Only action leads to results. Chapter 11
18. To master a habit, start with repetition, not perfection. Get your reps in, cast your votes. Chapter 11
19. Repeating a habit leads to clear physical changes in the brain. Chapter 11
20. It is human nature to follow the law of least effort. Chapter 12
21. To make a habit easier, make it fit in the flow of your life (decrease the friction associated with the habit as much as possible). Chapter 12
22. Prime the environment for future use. Chapter 12
23. 40-50% of our daily actions are done out of habit. Chapter 13
24. A habit can shape what you do for the next minutes or hours after the habit. Chapter 13
25. Make your habits as easy as possible to start. Once you have started doing it, it is easier to continue doing it. Chapter 13
26. A habit should not feel like a challenge, the actions that come after the habit can be challenging, but the habit itself should be easy. Chapter 13
27. The point of the 2-minute rule is to master the habit of showing up (Break down each habit into a gateway habit). Chapter 13
28. You have to standardize before you optimize. Chapter 13
29. For a habit to stick, always stay below the point it starts to feel like work. Chapter 13
30. It’s better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all. Chapter 13
31. What single action can lead to positive returns in the long run? Chapter 14
32. Pleasure teaches the brain that a behavior is worth remembering and repeating. Chapter 15
33. What is immediately rewarded is repeated, what is immediately punished is avoided. Chapter 15
34. The cost of good habits is in the present, while the cost of your bad habits is in the future. Chapter 15
35. Our brains like rewards in the present, not in the future. Chapter 15
36. Incentives can start a habit, identity sustains a habit. Chapter 15
37. Lost days hurt you more than successful days help you. Chapter 16
38. Never interrupt compounding unnecessarily. Chapter 16
39. We optimize for what we measure, and when we measure the wrong thing, we get the wrong behavior. Chapter 16
40. If a failure is painful, it gets fixed. If a failure is relatively painless, it gets ignored. Chapter 16
41. The cost of not doing a habit should be higher than the cost/pain of doing it. Chapter 17
42. The secret to maximizing odds of success is to choose the right field of competition. Chapter 18
43. You want to play a game where the odds are in your favor. Chapter 18
44. Genes do not determine your destiny, they determine your field of opportunity. Chapter 18
45. To understand where the odds are in your favor, you need to understand your personality. Chapter 18
46. Your personality is a set of characteristics that is consistent from situation to situation. Chapter 18
47. Goldilocks Rule: Humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Chapter 19
48. Successful people show up despite the feeling of boredom caused by repetitive daily training. Chapter 19
49. The greatest threat to success is not failure, but boredom (The human brain loves variety). Chapter 19
50. Professionals stick to the schedule, amateurs let life get in the way. Chapter 19
51. You need to constantly get feedback and improve on habits you need to become exceptional. Chapter 20
52. Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery. Chapter 20

Conclusion

You can decide to read and reflect on one of the above each week for a year, it can be for 10-15mins only a week. This will help you value habits a bit better. I hope you enjoyed this article. If you did and have anything in mind, feel free to drop a comment.