blink twice and two months are over. I definitely like this company and I definitely like the people here, but I can't say that the job has been the most enjoyable so far. Bad economy, technical difficulties, not-the-best learning environment, not-the-best working environment.. you name it . I'm going to go out of my my way to be truthful that I don't think i'm the best work-from-home employee either. I definitely do not think efficiency is at its best when i'm home.. and its not that I don't  try.

BUT. the cool part is that the book I read for the month of May (which i procrastinated and finished only on the final day itself) gave me so much that is related to what I am going through to think about. Well without much ado: its ATOMIC HABITS by James Clear. Fun fact: I can actually recount this book a lot better than most books and I can type out the main summary of the book without even a white board to take notes because I have been running this book over and over in my head during my jogs to make it less boring, and it actually does help alot.

Atomics Habits:

- Habits are compounding. If you do something to make yourself better by 0.1% everyday, it compounds and the effect exponentially increase. But so do habits.

-Many people focus on habits as outcomes or as processes. But maybe the focus should be on our own identity first. Just like the golden circles of why how what, for habits, its identity process outcome. Habits are alot harder to focus on if we focus on the what. Jogging 5km a day without a purpose or a reason is rather hard to follow. But if we assume the identity of a "healthy person". we are doing all these because we are a healthy person, it helps, to know why. My favourite example from the book is when they said too many people focus on the outcome of "I'm quitting smoking", indicating its something they want to do but are refraining from, when perhaps, the line of thought all along should be "I am not a smoker".

-Habits come in 4 stages. Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward. In each stages they focus on a different factor. In the Cue stage, the focus is making a habit noticeable (for a good habit), or invisible (for a bad habit). For Craving, its about making it attractive or unattractive. For Response, its about making the habit easy or difficult to carry out. For Reward, its about making a habit satisfying, or not satisfying.

-Cue

---About making a habit obvious. The japanese metro system use something simple called a point-and-call method that drastically decreases the chances of making mistakes. Despite the simplicity of the system, it made them one of the most accident-free metro system in the world. We can do this in our own life with respect to habits as well. The point and call in this case, would be a habits time table where we list down all the habits we have in our daily lives (truthfully of course), and to figure out which are the bad ones, the good ones, and the neutral ones. To define whether the habit is good or bad, go back to the identity that you want to be and see if its a habit you can see said identity having.

---Implementation Intention: Pegging a good habit you want to have to something you will do without thinking. Like having lunch, waking up. Pegging a habit to something that you will definitely do will increase its visibility. but dont be so silly as to peg a habit you want to do daily to something that happens once a week.
---Habit stacking: Habit stacking is to stack each pegged habit on to the next one. In II, we have something like, I will do 10 pushups everday after I wake up. But by habit stacking, you could be like. I will do 10 pushups everyday after I wake up, then I will eat breakfast, then I will read the news (habit 2)
---The environment matters too. Companies that put water more commonly throughout its cafeteria leads to more of their employees choosing water over soft drinks.
---Bad habits too can be removed by environmental changes. Heroin addicts from the vietnam war, as opposed to heroin addicts from domestic drug abuse.


-Craving

---Dopamine is the secretion released in our brain when our brain goes through an stimulated state most easily described as "happiness". Scientists found out that dopamine is secreted during the act of happiness, but as it wears on, it is also secreted in anticipation for the act. The trick is to pair the new habit right before an act of happiness, to reverse enigneer it in such a way that your habit brings you dopamine as it is always done before an act of happiness.
---The environment and the people in the environment matters alot to the attractiveness of a habit. The people, are determined by closeness, quantity, and power. Remembering the chess sisters as example of this. Similarly, if you want to get rid of a bad habit like smoking, dont have heroes who smoke as that is power.
---Our brain can be reprogrammed to constantly think about the good parts of good habits and bad parts of bad habits. Instead of saying im going to make myself tired, constantly think of the good like, im going to make myself have better stamina.


-Response

---Reduce number of steps to make it easier. How tasks like filing taxes have become so simplified for us by now.
---Prime the environment. Set up your home workout equipment to be within rich so its easier to do all the time. Off your ps4 and unplug it everytime you are done with it so it becomes less reachable
---Take charge of decisive moments in your day. The decisive moments are decisions where they put you in a very favourable or very unfavourable position to fulfil your habits. Your day's happiness is a compilation of the number of good choices and bad choices you make in the day itself. For example, going to the gym or not. If you made that decision and head to the gym, it will be easy to complete your habit of keeping fit whereas if you didnt.. you know.
---Habits have to start with the 2 minute rules. They have to always start with something simple that you can complete in two minutes so that there is an opportunity to build consistency and identity before we progress to bigger and harder habits.
---Make use of automation to make our habits easier and less thought based so we can focus on thinking of other stuff. Savings account with auto savings are an example.

---To get rid of bad habits, increase the number of steps required to do a bad habit
---use automation devices to help you.


-Reward

---Cue, Craving, Response are to ensure a habit is done THIS time, Reward is to ensure a habit is done NEXT time.

--- Humans have been wired to want immediate rewards for millenniums. Add immediate rewards or immediate punishments if you want a bad habit to go away. Immediate rewards can be something as simple as writing down progress.
---Be ok with doing nothing (as opposed to doing something against what you want). example, be ok with being at home bumming instead of being out drinking. I am not hundred percent sure about this point tbh.
---Make use of habit tracking no matter how simple they might be. could be complicated apps, could be as simple as writing them down on a whiteboard. Habit tracking is measurable, attractive (as it shows progress), and satisfying.
---Never skip a habit twice. Skipping it once is inevitable eventually, skipping it twice in a row is the formation of a new habit.



Extra:
-Just like genes, choose habits that are compatible for us, not deliberately choosing those that are against our nature or advantages.
-Habits that are too easy or too difficult are both less effective. choose something in the region bothering on success and failure, to enter the flow zone.
-Be used to the boring part of habits. It is bound to happen. It is bound to get tiring. The trick is back down to the five minute theories, do something simple instead of doing nothing. Keep yourself consistent with your identity and you will always be able to keep going and believing. Winners and losers all have the same goals, but different mentalities.
-With frequency of a task, automacity increases and after a certain number of frequency over time, our brain gets used to the task and it frees us up to think of more stuff while sticking to the habit. However, skills also follow a similar curve and slows down over time and habit. For skills purposes, progressive habits have to be added to ensure they dont stagnate, instead of one curve, its one curve, stacked on another, and then stacked on another.
-Last but not least, keep your identities small. Dont revolve your identity around something impermanent like being an athlete, because what happens when one day you aren't one? Keep impermanent identities small or keep identities with more room permanent. Like an identity of someone who always tries his best everyday. That is something that can be kept permanent