Atomic Habits - James Clear Page 0,89

combines their telling of the ceramics story with facts from the original source of Uelsmann’s photography students. David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking (Santa Cruz, CA: Image Continuum Press, 1993), 29.

As Voltaire once wrote: Voltaire, La Bégueule. Conte Moral (1772).

long-term potentiation: Long-term potentiation was discovered by Terje Lømo in 1966. More precisely, he discovered that when a series of signals was repeatedly transmitted by the brain, there was a persistent effect that lasted afterward that made it easier for those signals to be transmitted in the future.

“Neurons that fire together wire together”: Donald O. Hebb, The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory (New York: Wiley, 1949).

In musicians, the cerebellum: S. Hutchinson, “Cerebellar Volume of Musicians,” Cerebral Cortex 13, no. 9 (2003), doi:10.1093/cercor/13.9.943.

Mathematicians, meanwhile, have increased gray matter: A. Verma, “Increased Gray Matter Density in the Parietal Cortex of Mathematicians: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study,” Yearbook of Neurology and Neurosurgery 2008 (2008), doi:10.1016/s0513–5117(08)79083–5.

When scientists analyzed the brains of taxi drivers in London: Eleanor A. Maguire et al., “Navigation-Related Structural Change in the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97, no. 8 (2000), doi:10.1073/pnas.070039597; Katherine Woollett and Eleanor A. Maguire, “Acquiring ‘the Knowledge’ of London’s Layout Drives Structural Brain Changes,” Current Biology 21, no. 24 (December 2011), doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.018; Eleanor A. Maguire, Katherine Woollett, and Hugo J. Spiers, “London Taxi Drivers and Bus Drivers: A Structural MRI and Neuropsychological Analysis,” Hippocampus 16, no. 12 (2006), doi:10.1002/hipo.20233.

“the actions become so automatic”: George Henry Lewes, The Physiology of Common Life (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1860).

repetition is a form of change: Apparently, Brian Eno says the same thing in his excellent, creatively inspiring Oblique Strategies card set, which I didn’t know when I wrote this line! Great minds and all that.

Automaticity is the ability to perform a behavior: Phillippa Lally et al., “How Are Habits Formed: Modelling Habit Formation in the Real World,” European Journal of Social Psychology 40, no. 6 (2009), doi:10.1002/ejsp.674.

habits form based on frequency, not time: Hermann Ebbinghaus was the first person to describe learning curves in his 1885 book Über das Gedächtnis. Hermann Ebbinghaus, Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology (United States: Scholar Select, 2016).

CHAPTER 12

this difference in shape played a significant role in the spread of agriculture: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: Norton, 1997).

It is human nature to follow the Law of Least Effort: Deepak Chopra uses the phrase “law of least effort” to describe one of his Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga. This concept is not related to the principle I am discussing here.

a garden hose that is bent in the middle: This analogy is a modified version of an idea Josh Waitzkin mentioned in his interview with Tim Ferriss. “The Tim Ferriss Show, Episode 2: Josh Waitzkin,” May 2, 2014, audio, https://soundcloud.com/tim-ferriss/the-tim-ferriss-show-episode-2-josh-w....

“it took American workers three times as long to assemble their sets”: James Surowiecki, “Better All the Time,” New Yorker, November 10, 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/better-time.

addition by subtraction: Addition by subtraction is an example of a larger principle known as inversion, which I have written about previously at https://jamesclear.com/inversion. I’m indebted to Shane Parrish for priming my thoughts on this topic by writing about why “avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.” Shane Parrish, “Avoiding Stupidity Is Easier Than Seeking Brilliance,” Farnam Street, June 2014, https://www.fs.blog/2014/06/avoiding-stupidity.

those percentage points represent millions in tax revenue: Owain Service et al., “East: Four Simple Ways to Apply Behavioural Insights,” Behavioural Insights Team, 2015, http://38r8om2xjhhl25mw24492dir.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploa....

Nuckols dialed in his cleaning habits: Oswald Nuckols is an alias, used by request.

“perfect time to clean the toilet”: Saul_Panzer_NY, “[Question] What One Habit Literally Changed Your Life?” Reddit, June 5, 2017, https://www.reddit.com/r/get disciplined/comments/6fgqbv/question_what_one_habit_literally_changed_your/diieswq.

CHAPTER 13

“arsenal of routines”: Twyla Tharp and Mark Reiter, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life: A Practical Guide (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006).

40 to 50 percent of our actions on any given day are done out of habit: Wendy Wood, “Habits Across the Lifespan,” 2006, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315552294_Habits_Across_the_Lif....

habits you follow without thinking: Benjamin Gardner, “A Review and Analysis of the Use of ‘Habit’ in Understanding, Predicting and Influencing Health-Related Behaviour,” Health Psychology Review 9, no. 3 (2014), doi:10.1080/17437199.2013.876238.

decisive moments: Shoutout to Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the greatest street photographers of all time, who coined the term decisive moment, but for an entirely different purpose: capturing amazing images at just the right time.

the Two-Minute Rule: Hat tip to David Allen, whose version of the Two-Minute Rule states, “If it takes less than two minutes, then do