• British Cycling, Brailsford, and "the aggregation of marginal gains"
    • break everything down, 1 percent gain to each part adds up
  • Easy to overestimate importance of one defining moment vs value of making small improvements on a daily basis
  • Convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action
  • If you can get 1 percent better every day for a year, that's 37 times better by the end
  • One percent worse and you're down to nearly zero
  • Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement
  • Should be more concerned with current trajectory than current results
  • Outcomes are a lagging measure of habits
  • Time magnifies the margin between success and failure
  • Plateau of latent potential
  • Ice cube doesn't melt at 25 to 31 degrees - it starts melting at 32
  • seed of every habit is a small decision
  • Task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting an oak tree
  • Forget about goals, focus on systems
  • Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results
  • Problem 1: winners and losers have the same goals
    • Goal setting suffers from survivorship bias
    • We concentrate on the winners. Overlook those who don't succeed
    • Goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from losers
  • Problem 2: achieving a goal is only a momentary change
    • Summon up the energy to clean up, you will have a clean room for now
    • If habits aren't changed, it'll all be messy again and you'll need to summon up that energy again soon
    • We need to change the systems that cause results
    • Don't treat symptoms without treating the cause
    • Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves
  • Problem 3: goals restrict your happiness
    • goals create an either-or conflict - either you achieve the goal and are successful or you fail and are a disappointment
    • But if you can fall in love with a process, you can give yourself permission to be happy along the way to results. Be satisfied anytime the system is running
  • Problem 4: Goals are at odds with long-term progress
    • Train for months for a race, finish the race and stop training
    • Focus of goals is to win the game. Focus of systems is to continue playing.
    • Commitment to process will determine progress
  • A system of atomic habits
    • You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
    • Habits are like the atoms of our lives. Each a fundamental unit contributing to overall improvement.