In this book, Matt Ridley makes the case for evolution, rather than design, as the force that has shaped much of our culture, our technology, our minds, and that even now is shaping our future. Darwinism is “the special theory of evolution”. But there is a general theory of evolution, too, and it applies to society, money, technology, language, law, culture, music, violence, history, education, politics, God, morality. The general theory says that things do not stay the same; they change gradually but inevitably. 

The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch—the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Ridley tries to demolish conventional assumptions that major scientific and social imperatives are dictated by those on high. On the contrary, our most important achievements develop from the bottom up. Patterns emerge, trends evolve.

The author, Matt Ridley is the 5th Viscount Ridley and is a British journalist and businessman. Ridley is known for his writings on science, the environment and economics. 




Key Learnings

This book explores evolution outside the realm of genetics, be it the evolution of morality, economy, language or technology. Typically, we're taught that these things are created in a top-down manner by leaders, scientists, priests, business people and so on. However, when evolution is understood in its broadest sense i.e. as the gradual development of something, it is far more common for things to evolve from the bottom up. Ridley argues that evolution, in the bottom-up sense can explain virtually all human cultural changes.

Evolution is not limited to biology. It's in our culture, our economy, our technology, our morality and even our religions. Ridley promotes that we shouldn't fall into creationist ways of thinking, we would better to try to see the ways in which our culture evolves. In doing so, we stand to reap the great benefits.



With few exceptions, the history of Western thought is shaped by a creationist perspective.

When we think of evolution, we often think of biology, Charles Darwin and his evolutionary theory. But the word “evolution” doesn’t just denote genetics. Originally, “evolution” meant “unfolding” and described how things gradually changed without a plan. And yet, the history of Western thought has been dominated by a creationist mode of thinking. That is, explaining the world through design and planning. Consider a few examples:

  • The ancient Greek philosopher Plato thought that society functioned by mimicking a designed cosmic order; 
  • in The Iliad, Homer had gods deciding the outcome of battles; 
  • much later, the Christian reformer Martin Luther stated that our fate lay in the hands of God; 
  • the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche believed that healthy societies were made by the plans of powerful leaders; and 
  • Karl Marx claimed that a planned state was the best means to encourage economic and social progress.
The list goes on. Again and again, we see top-down descriptions of how the world is designed or should be organised. 

However, there are a few exceptions to this creationist mode of thinking. Just take the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. Epicurus believed that the physical world, including society and morality, emerged spontaneously, needing no divinity or royal power to explain it. Everything, he said, was made of invisible atoms which followed the laws of nature rather than the laws of God. The Roman poet Lucretius adopted Epicurus’s stance, stating that the world was made of invisible particles. He believed the world had no creator and life had no end or purpose. Epicurus and Lucretius were thus precursors to Darwin. 


Darwinian evolution removed the notion of creationism from biology.

It was the ideas of philosophers and poets such as Epicurus and Lucretius and, later, Enlightenment thinkers like David Hume, which gave rise to the question: “If God is the designer of humans and the world, who designed the designer?” However, it was Charles Darwin who eliminated creationism from biology and replaced it with a theory of evolution through natural selection. Darwin came up with his theory of biological evolution after his sailing expedition to the Galápagos Islands, where he collected various animals and plants, and meticulously observed and reflected on his findings. 

Darwinian evolution argued for a mechanism that explained the emergence of complex organisms from simple cells. This mechanism was natural selection, or the process by which beings with specific characteristics that make them better suited to their environment have increased chances of survival.Today, Darwinian evolution is widely accepted as truth. Yet, since we have been able to decode genes, people now ask what individual genes are for. 

It has been argued that genes aren’t designed to serve the body. Rather, they use the body to serve themselves. As Richard Dawkins stated in his book The Selfish Gene, the only reasonable way to understand organisms is to view them as temporary vehicles used by genes to secure their continued survival. This idea is supported by the finding that many of the genes that humans and other organisms have appear to have no function. They don’t exist for the needs of the body: they’re just hitching a ride in a vessel. Dawkins’s description of the selfish gene provides a strong argument against creationism as it seems unlikely that an intelligent, divine designer would create “useless” genes. 


Evolution exists in culture, the economy and technology.

Although we associate it with biology and genetics, evolution’s reach is much longer than this. Evolution is inevitable in any system where information is transmitted with a degree of randomness, such as the genetic information in our DNA that we pass on to our children or the cultural information we impart to them when we raise them. In other words, evolution applies to human culture, too. The best example can be seen in the evolution of language. Actually, there is a strong parallel between the evolution of DNA and the evolution of language. Both are systems capable of combining a small number of basic building blocks to form virtually infinite permutations. The building blocks of DNA consist of four nucleobases; the building blocks of many languages are the letters of the alphabet. Moreover, DNA evolves through natural selection and, in a sense, so do languages. For instance, words and phrases that are popularly used in written and spoken language are likely to endure, while words that nobody uses will die out. 

The concept of evolution also applies to economy and technology. It was Adam Smith who first realised that markets could regulate themselves without an overseer such as a government. In his book The Wealth of Nations, Smith argues that general prosperity is produced by the free exchange of goods and services.

Later, in the twentieth century, economist Joseph Schumpeter understood markets as evolutionary systems that were constantly testing new products and services to meet human needs. The “fittest” products on the market were bought and sold, i.e., they “survived,” whereas the unfit products didn’t.

Technological progress, too, can be seen as an evolutionary phenomenon. Like biological evolution, technology moves from tool to tool through trial and error. In communication technology, for instance, the telegraph evolved into the traditional telephone, which evolved into the cell phone, which will inevitably evolve into another device one day.


Morality and religion are not God-given, but have evolved with society.

Most religions teach that morality is prescribed by God. For instance, the Judeo-Christian God had Moses climb Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments to pass on to his people. In Islam, it was Muhammad who received the word of God and imparted this to his people. However, God isn’t necessary for morality. Rather, morality evolves through social interaction in which people seek out ways to communicate successfully and happily. While Adam Smith is famous for The Wealth of Nations, he also spent a lot of time exploring morality. Smith observed that morality was not so much taught as evolved - an attribute that develops as we mature in our societal framework. As children, we discover by trial and error which actions evoke positive responses and sympathy from others, and it’s through these discoveries that we have evolved toward a common moral code. So morality isn’t God-given. But since teaching morality is central to religion, what does this say about religion itself? It means that not even religion is passed on to us by God. Instead, it’s an evolving, man-made invention. Moreover, some examples make clear that the concept of God has an evolutionary history, too. For example, the ancient Greeks and Romans believed in several gods, while Christianity dictates the existence of only one God. There was also a shift from gods who were temperamental, foolish and desirous, to gods who were disembodied and virtuous. Just compare the jealous and moody Zeus to the holy and perfect Allah. Religions are also the result of selection among various people and beliefs. Christianity, for example, arose in the first century AD from a number of different competing religions in the Roman Empire. So in that sense, religions have evolved, too.


Creationist thinking shapes concepts of personality development and education.

Twins raised apart have very similar personalities. This is a fascinating discovery, because until the 1990s, psychologists widely assumed that personality depended only on a child’s upbringing. Even today, our idea of personality development is shaped by the creationist belief that culture creates a child’s personality when, in actuality it evolves from within. Consider the following example: toy shops are split into girls’ and boys’ aisles where parents are encouraged to buy trucks for boys and dolls for girls. This angers people who believe that behavioural differences between the sexes are culturally forced upon children. But while it’s true that culture evolves, this doesn’t necessarily mean that personality evolves along with culture, or that culture creates personality. In fact, there’s evidence against the theory that behavioural differences between sexes were generated by culture. 

Experiments show that, when offered a truck and a doll, girls will choose to play with the doll and boys with the truck, regardless of their previous experience. And, interestingly, the same is true of male and female monkeys. Therefore, personality evolves from within, and isn’t just influenced by culture. Education, too, is shaped by creationist thinking. However, evolving and experimental educational systems seem to be more successful. Education is governed by the belief that the best way to impart knowledge to children is through adult instruction, the idea being that teachers “create” educated children. But one educational system does better than many traditional schools – Montessori system. The Montessori method of collaborative, self-directed learning techniques have given the schools an impressive track record of producing entrepreneurs. Interestingly, the founders of Amazon, Google and Wikipedia all attended Montessori schools, demonstrating that learning thrives in evolving, bottom-up educational systems.


Innovation evolves on its own – there’s no need for leaders or governments to “create” it.

In its first edition, the Encyclopédie – the encyclopedia of the French Enlightenment published between 1751 and 1772 – contained nearly no entries on people. The authors wanted to remind readers that innovation evolves on its own, rather than being created by a handful of powerful people. These days, though, leaders are viewed as the creators of innovation. But really, innovation can flourish without top-down creation. Take leadership in business. Hugely influential CEOs like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are granted nearly godlike powers for their innovation and success. So much so that, when Steve Jobs died in 2011, many people assumed that Apple would simply go under without him. And yet, companies can create success without any leadership at all. 

The Californian company Morning Star Tomatoes understands this and has been experimenting with self-management for two decades. And it’s working. It is a highly innovative company and its profits have increased rapidly, despite the fact that it has no managers or CEOs. Moreover, its success came about without any central planning or leadership.

Laws can also evolve from the bottom up. In most political science classes, students are taught that governments create laws and that it’s the state’s job to enforce them. But this is only partly true. Consider the Wild West. Many people assume that the nineteenth century American West was lawless and violent because it had no government. But the Wild West wasn’t as wild as we’ve been made to believe. With few formal law enforcement systems in place, the people regulated themselves. Customs and laws evolved from the people and weren’t dictated by a governing body.


Money and the internet are evolutionary phenomena.

Most of us take for granted that the internet belongs to nobody in particular. It is neither controlled by monopolising companies nor governments. So when it comes to money, which today is created and issued solely by governments through central banks, why do so many of us assume that it’s always been a government monopoly? In fact, money was once free to develop much in the way the internet does today. Money gradually emerged among traders, and wasn’t always controlled by rulers. Take Sweden, which established a free banking system in the nineteenth century. During this time, several banks – the central bank among them – competed to issue their own banknotes. This system worked remarkably well and not a single bill-issuing bank went out of business. Canada, too, took a similar approach. In the 1930s, it had no central bank and its banking system came out unscathed after the Great Depression. 

Today, thanks to the internet, we’re seeing new forms of self-organising money systems. For example, air miles, mobile phone credit and the internet currency Bitcoin. And so, the internet itself is an evolutionary phenomenon. The internet emerged in an unplanned, unpredictable way; no one had anticipated blogs, social networks or search engines. The internet has no core or hierarchy. Nobody controls it, yet it isn’t chaotic. Its inception came about through decentralised programming and hobbyist groups. Unfortunately, however, the internet is in danger of becoming controlled and centralised, as the number of governments that have opted to censor it has steadily risen. So, if we’d prefer the internet to avoid suffering the same fate as money, we must advocate for an internet that can continue to evolve freely.





 



The Inevitable is a book authored by Kevin Kelly, is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine and a futurist who foresaw the scope of the internet revolution. Kelly provides a plausible, optimistic road map for the next 30 years and shows how the coming changes can be understood as the result of a few long-term forces that are already in motion. Kelly both describes these 12 deep trends-including cognifying our surroundings, valuing access over ownership, tracking everything-and demonstrates how they are codependent on one another.

This book was written in 2016 and with so much that has happened since, it does seem outdated if you were to read this now. It does feel a bit like a time capsule and for those who work or who are immersed in the tech world, a lot of the things that are mentioned here seems like a given. However, for its time when I bought the book, some of the concepts seemed revolutionary. I did like the philosophical nature of the book, it was interesting looking at technology from an unusual perspective. 





Summary & Key Learnings

  1. Becoming
  2. Cognifying
  3. Flowing
  4. Screening
  5. Accessing
  6. Sharing
  7. Filtering
  8. Remixing
  9. Interacting
  10. Tracking
  11. Questioning
  12. Beginning

We are used to industry commentators, and media especially, viewing technological developments through a negative and skeptical lens. We have to remind ourselves that often we are actually in control of our destiny and therefore have the opportunity to affect positive change and create the future we want to see and experience.

We have entered protopia, a ‘state of becoming, rather than a destination’. In this state we are continually seeing small, incremental improvements to our daily lives, rather than large jumps in technological progress. This is apparent in everything from regular app updates and the availability of new and improved hardware. We don’t recognise this on a daily basis, but can look back year on year and see huge improvements in the technologies we use. (This reminds me of the compounding effect - reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart changes e.g. atomic habits/Buffet's rule.)

Humans shouldn’t fear robots taking jobs; robots will perform tasks we can’t do, don’t want to do, and didn’t even know could be done, freeing us to discover new jobs for ourselves, and new tasks that expand who we are.

We should think of the world in terms of ‘flow’; information is becoming more fluid, following through our lives in real-time. This has been apparent in music, books and movies, and will increasingly spread to areas such as games, newspapers, and education.


1. Becoming

We are in a state of unceasing change and are continually learning and adapting (we are constant ‘newbies’) to the new that is unlike anything that was before. Technology is constantly improving and always in flux. What we’re experiencing and will continue to experience is a protopia, a world that keeps getting better, one baby step at a time.

In a protopia, things are always a bit better today than yesterday. Living in a protopia also means that nothing is fixed. Technology moves forward, accelerating progress. To put it differently, everything is in a state of becoming, which means you and everyone else will always be “newbies” in this ever-evolving technological world.

No invention is ever finalised or fixed if each invention is a starting point for another invention or development. Just think of how the advent of personal computers paved the way for the internet.Basically, all human technology is permanently moving forward, and this process, in which every innovation has the potential to trigger another innovation, will never be straightforward or predictable.

Because of this, the best predictions we can make about future events are generalised trends.<And since technology never stops improving, you’ll always feel like a newcomer no matter what you learned or experienced in the past. You’ll have to upgrade your devices to adapt to the evolving digital landscape – and we all know how long it takes to get used to new technology.

Your permanent newbie status is also a result of the decreasing longevity of devices and software, which means you likely won’t get to spend enough time with any technology to truly master it.For example, the average lifespan of a smartphone app – the amount of time it takes a user to stop using the technology – is now 30 days.


2. Cognifying 

Applied intelligence will be available just like electricity was over 100 years ago. It will be embedded into everything and change the nature of how things work. Artificial intelligence and robust online filters will shape how we work and what we learn.

Over 100 years ago, the advent of electricity transformed the tools we use every day. The next technological step is artificial intelligence. Today, AI is cognifying objects, turning them into tools that are “intelligent.”Making previously “dumb” objects “smart” is one trend that will dramatically shape the future. This process isn’t limited to physical objects, however. In fact, AI will cognify chemistry, for example, using algorithms and databases to run virtual chemistry experiments. But if this is the future, will AI replace all human intelligence? Definitely not. Yet AI will certainly redefine human intelligence and perhaps humanity as a whole. While AI can enhance certain areas of study, such as medicine, this doesn’t mean AI will replace human specialists in those fields.

People and AI working together will produce the best outcomes. The most accurate health diagnoses will be made by physicians, for example, who combine intuition with state-of-the-art diagnostic software.Humans won’t become superfluous, but we will have to constantly evaluate the things we can do better than computers and delegate other tasks accordingly. This will leave us to perform tasks that are uniquely human, such as caring for others and engaging in intuitive thinking, while letting AI take over other jobs such as memorisation. As a result, AI will shape what we do and, in time, who we are.


3. Flowing

Stocks to flows, ownership to use. Atoms and bits are now flowing from creators to consumers who are themselves creators. We want things that flow, in time and space. “Hard” goods were yesterday; flowing content and shareable resources are the future of commerce.

Material goods used to define commerce. With the advent of the internet, however, much of what is bought and sold is intangible, streamed online or shared offline. In other words, modern goods are flowing. A flowing good is a good you can purchase as a service or real-time update. For instance, previously if you wanted an answering machine for a phone, you had to purchase and install hardware. Today, software can automatically install itself on your smartphone without you lifting a finger. Once a good is digitized, a user can transform, copy or share it. Consider music streaming service Spotify, which allows a user to build playlists to then listen to, like or share with friends. Services such as Twitter, Spotify and Netflix which offer real-time content streams are just the beginning. People who subscribe to and use these services also contribute to another force that’s shaping our technological future which is 'sharing'.


4. Screening

We will interact with information through screens. All information will become fluid, linked and tagged. All content and libraries will become symbols on screens we interact with. Screens will have a profound impact on how we absorb information. Indeed, screening is another powerful future trend. In the future, screens won’t just be fixed on subway station platforms or smartphones, but will appear everywhere. This is an important development. On screen, text and ideas aren’t fixed and authoritative as they appear in printed books but rather constantly changing and thus open to question. Compare the Encyclopedia Britannica, a series of printed tomes, to its online equivalent Wikipedia, where users can discuss and edit entries. Screens encourage us to interact, pushing us to research and discuss the ideas on display.


5. Accessing

The availability of anything, atoms or bits, immediately without owning. Whatever you need you can get, and get the latest and best. Ownership is no longer necessary. Why buy goods when you can rent them instead? Possession will give way to access in the future. In the not-so-distant past, possession, whether of a business or a good, was essential to engage in a commercial transaction. Today the largest provider of accommodation in the world, Airbnb, owns none of the real estate it offers as rentals. This business is part of a larger trend, in which physical possession is less important and access is more important.

Businesses are seeing the benefits of providing services instead of selling physical goods. Offering car rentals instead of selling a vehicle outright means a business can accrue greater benefits from the same object. A business doesn’t even need to own the object it’s “selling,” thus requiring less capital outlay for maintenance, too. Additionally, access-based businesses are often available in real time, and therefore offer better service. Peer-to-peer taxi service Uber, for example, can offer a ride to a customer faster than can a centralised taxi service, precisely because of its decentralised workforce. Every Uber driver is self-employed and owns a car, thus allowing Uber to offer the services of multiple drivers at any time, anywhere. Accessing instead of owning is a key driver of the future. 



6. Sharing

Everyone creates and it’s all shared. Any idea, thought, expression or artifact can be contributed to by anyone and experienced by anyone if they so desire. When you watch a movie, listen to a great song or share an insightful tweet over a social network, you’re adding your content to the general stream of online information. Sharing, therefore, is another key force that will affect how we engage in commerce in the future. Every day, people share 1.8 billion photos on social media. We’re witnessing the evolution of a sharing economy, a market in which people form networks, exchange resources and collaborate on projects – such as the open-source, online community encyclopedia, Wikipedia. A sharing economy allows any person to become a producer, by giving that person access to equipment, such as a 3D printer, for example, without having to own it personally.


7. Filtering

Attention is the scare resource. Allocating it to an exponentially expanding universe requires filtering based on who we are. Future filters will both serve us and surprise us. Online content has been expanding at an exponential rate. To make sense of all this data, we need to be able to filter out what’s important to us. Filtering, which depends on AI, will help shape the future. In just 9,000 days, people produce over 60 trillion web pages! If you ever want to find what you’re looking for online, you’ll need to use a robust filter, such as a Google search engine. AI can ably filter through content and identify relevant pieces because it can process massive quantities of data. All the while, AI learns to personalise results to individual user preferences. 


8. Remixing

Whatever is new is a remix of what exists. Remixing requires radical deconstruction and the ability to find the pieces to recombine and transform into something new. More and more growth today is generated by rearranging content – even further rearranging rearranged content – instead of producing new resources. It’s not possible to talk about remixing without mentioning the transformation of people from passive consumers to active content producers. While Hollywood makes 600 feature films yearly, 100 million video clips are shared on the internet every day, and many are simply remixed snippets of preexisting movies. Now that it’s so easy to copy and remix content, the next step should be a service that offers video hyperlinks, allowing people to cite specific frames of a film or video at the click of a button. This also means that property rights will need to adapt, as most are written for a world of tangible, owned goods, not digitised snippets that are easily accessed and remixed. (This is quite interesting as this was written before the time NFTs have started to become mainstream, however doing some research looks like NFTs have been around since 2014. Kevin McCoy was the first to create one.)


9. Interacting

We will interact with our devices and with others in realistic virtual and augmented worlds. Our devices will ‘know’ us and we will know worlds and others through our devices. Virtual reality and screens will transform human interaction, bringing the world into our living rooms. Virtual reality, or VR, is a form of simulation that is essentially fake but feels real, which is why it could change our lives.For instance, the possibilities offered by VR will transform human interaction while increasing the actual number of interactions people have. Interacting is another key force that will affect the future.

As devices become less expensive to produce and purchase, people will be able to spend more time in virtual reality scenarios. As the technology develops to react more accurately to voice and movement, for instance through eye tracking, VR will begin to feel more “natural.”But VR will also offer people the feeling that they have “superhuman” senses, such as x-ray vision. With time, people may start to perceive such senses as synonymous with regular human senses. A person’s interaction with VR technology will undoubtedly change his self-perception; and as a result, that person will want to keep interacting with VR. Immersion in technology will become the norm, and objects that don’t offer VR capabilities, such as printed photographs, will start to appear “broken.” VR will open up space for greater interactivity between people. Within a virtual world, you can meet thousands of people from all over the world without setting foot outside your home.


10. Tracking

We will track and be tracked everywhere. What we track will expand exponentially and become extra ‘senses’. ‘Coveillance’ will emerge where the watchers and the watched are transparent. Personal privacy and certainty will disappear in the future, but really, it’s not all that bad. Tracking will bring both big risks and big opportunities in the future. Today we quantify and document an ever-greater amount of our lives, and in the process, we are producing tons of data. If performed accurately, data collection can be then used to customise aspects of our lives to match specific needs, such as creating personalised medicine. But if tracking becomes too invasive, we’ll spend too much time monitoring personal data and little time living our lives.There is also the risk that personal data could be compromised. Businesses or even other people could collect your data from sources such as blogs, social media and apps, using the information against you. Even if it is, this new “transparency” is inevitable. Society will undoubtedly learn to accept it, even enjoying its upsides. While coworkers will be able to track you, you’ll have the option to track them as well – and as a result, everyone will be more accountable.

11. Questioning

Billions of connected people are creating a new level of organisation where questioning is the norm and answers emerge from the collective. Unimagined questions beget unimaginable answers. As tracking becomes a larger part of our lives, so will questioning. The future, with its exponential growth of content, will force us to sift through a tremendous amount of information in search of truth. The amount of information society generates doubles every 1.5 years, yet much of it is contradictory and uncertain. For every fact we discover, we’ll find another to dispute it. Plenty of society’s longest-held assumptions have been proven false over time. For instance, we used to assume people would never work for free, but today free intern labor is widespread. The point is, people have begun to question everything, no longer believing in a universal truth but rather in multiple truths assembled from a stream of facts. This desire to question can only grow since every truth or solution produces new questions and as a result, new knowledge.


12. Beginning

Now is the time in which, 30 years hence, people will look back and say, ‘that was the dawn of the era we are living in’. These forces will shape our future and we are only at the beginning. In just a few hundred years, machine intelligence will meld with human minds to produce a “super intelligence". This intelligence is called the force of beginning, and it marks a new era – that starts today. Consider this: 15 billion devices are already linked through the internet, essentially forming one massive circuit. New connections are made every second. What will this mean for the future?







'The Attention Merchants' is a book written by Tim Wu, author, activist and law professor at Columbia University. Wu is also known for coining the term 'net neutrality'– the idea that the oligopoly that owns our internet infrastructure shouldn’t charge differently for different kinds of data. In his book The Attention Merchants, he targets another kind of corporate domination, the industry that monopolises our attention.

This book is a revelatory look at the rise of the 'attention merchants', the advertising marketeers who influence and control our consumption in ways previously unimagined. An 'attention merchant' is an industrial-scale harvester of human attention, a firm whose business model is the mass capture of attention for resale to advertisers.

In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of advertising enticements, branding efforts, sponsored social media, commercials and other efforts to harvest our attention. Over the last century, few times or spaces have remained uncultivated by the 'attention merchants', contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this is not simply the byproduct of recent inventions but the end result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention.

Wu makes clear that attention merchants grow ever-new heads, and their means of harvesting our attention have given rise to the defining industries of our time, changing our nature - cognitive, social, and otherwise - in ways unimaginable even a generation ago.




Key learnings

  • about the subtle inner workings of branding
  • why social media is so addictive
Over the course of the modern era, the business of advertising has experienced several dramatic shifts. From the small, informational notices that used to populate newspapers to the algorithmically driven internet ads of today, advertising is a field with a rich and compelling history. 


Newspaper advertisements used to be strictly informational until one New York paper change the game forever

Ads in the earliest newspapers, which date back to the start of the eighteenth century for the most part were informational. They weren't as persuasive or loaded with gripping rhetoric. Instead they were simply there to impart facts. 

Then in 1833, a young journalist and businessman named Benjamin Day changed everything. Day set out to launch his own newspaper called the 'New York Sun'. To reach a large audience, he began selling each copy for just a penny. With rival papers like the New York Times, the Morning Courier and the New York Enquirer each selling for six cents per copy, Day's paper was a much more affordable option. However, selling paper so cheaply was bound to generate a loss, as the cost of production would exceed the income from sales. 

To overcome this obstacle, Day invited businesses to place ads in his paper, charging them a fee for the exposure. Within just months, the paper had become an enormous success, selling thousands of copies a day. By the end of the year, the advertisements were bringing massive surplus. Within two years, the paper was number one in New York city.

Day had shown, unintentionally, how a newspaper could be about more than just news. It could also do business and literally resell the attention of its audience.



Advertising was used to make a fortune on useless medicine and reinforce the British Army during World War 1

It’s not exactly common knowledge, but early in the twentieth century, advertising for commercial over-the-counter medicine, or medicine as it was then known, was revolutionised. This shift was the work of Claude C. Hopkins, an innovative ad man and copywriter, then colloquially referred to as a “scheme man.” For several years, Hopkins wrote ads for Dr. Shoop’s Restorative, a company that sold patent medicine. While there, he came up with a plan for “direct mail” advertising, what we now lovingly call “spam mail.”

From there he went to Chicago, where he was recruited by Douglas Smith to advertise his product, Liquozone. Liquozone was comparable to most other patent medicines in that it promised to cure just about whatever ailed you, from a cough to cancer and even malaria. Hopkins then continued innovating by coming up with the idea of free samples. Millions were lured into making purchases only to later realize how useless the medicine actually was. Nonetheless, Hopkins was content; by 1904, he and Smith had raked in the modern-day equivalent of $100 million in revenue.

But attention harvesting wasn’t just a cash cow for patent medicine. As World War I ignited across Europe in 1914, advertising was even used to raise an army. Leading up to the invasion of Germany, Britain was in dire need of reinforcements for its military. With a series of victories under its belt, the German Imperial Army was almost 4.5 million strong compared to Britain’s army of just a few hundred thousand.

So, the British army expanded its forces through a series of comprehensive, state-run advertising campaigns, also known as propaganda. They plastered the country’s buses, buildings and telephone poles with posters that declared the country’s need for army volunteers to ensure the nation’s survival. The plan worked perfectly and, by 1915, around 2.75 million men had enlisted of their own free will.


In the 1920s, advertising and branding became more methodical

In the years after World War I, advertising moved forward into a new age. Twenty years into the twentieth century, a new term became quite popular: scientific advertising. It referred to a new view of advertising as a calculated practice involving specific approaches that could be sure to grab an audience’s attention. From then on, there was no element of chance about it; advertising was considered to be a science like any other.

One of these “scientific” approaches was demand engineering, which wasn’t just about creating demand for a product, but about advertising a problem. Generally, these problems would be ones that people didn’t even know existed, and were often entirely fabricated. Naturally, the perceived problem was then utilised as a means to get people to buy a product that claimed to solve it.

A prime example of this concept in action was the case of a toothpaste produced by Listerine, which launched an advertising campaign that used a clinical sounding term, “halitosis,” to refer to bad breath and suggested that having this condition would make you deeply unpopular. Demand for the product skyrocketed as a result, as did the company’s revenue: Listerine’s annual earnings went from $115,000 in 1922 to a whopping $8 million in 1929.

And demand wasn’t all that was being engineered in the 1920s – reputations were too. While we now simply call this practice branding and see it as an essential aspect of any business, it was the advertisers of the 1920s who realised that a good reputation could simply be engineered. A company didn’t have to put in years of hard work and dedication to earn the trust of its customers; instead, a brand could simply be devised and broadcast.

For instance, the copywriter Theodore MacManus brought Cadillac cars to the summit of their market through the subtle branding that Cadillacs carried “The Penalty of Leadership.” The implication was that no product could become a world standard without inspiring, and having to deal with, the envy of others. To see how well this worked, you need only consider the fact that the word “Cadillac” is to this day used as an adjective to describe something of the highest quality in any context.


Radio and television were the successful attention-grabbers of the twentieth century.

During the first few decades of the twentieth century, advertising was primarily focused on public space. But as the 1920s came to an end, that all changed. Radio advertising was becoming the new big thing, piping its message right into the homes of consumers. Sellers could now sponsor radio content like serial programs or orchestral performances that aired regularly. This was to the tremendous benefit of sponsors, since the mere mention of a company’s name was a great way to attract attention.

Take the toothpaste brand, Pepsodent. When the public found out that Pepsodent toothpaste didn’t actually contain any cleaning agents, sales of the product plummeted. Not only that, but toward the end of the 1920s, competition was getting stiffer in their sector, with many more dental hygiene products entering an increasingly lucrative market. So, to reclaim its place in the market, the general manager of Pepsodent, Walter Templin, invested in and began sponsoring Amos ‘n’ Andy, one of the earliest “prime-time” serial radio programs, which turned out to be a tremendous success. By 1931, 40 to 50 million listeners out of a total US population of around 120 million were tuning in every night to follow this enthralling soap opera. And every night, those same listeners heard the sponsor’s message, praising the incredible new formula of Pepsodent.

But radio’s time in the spotlight wouldn’t last; just a few decades later, television stepped into its place. By the 1950s, TVs were in the homes of countless Americans, grabbing their attention in a most captivating way.The number of home televisions in the United States rose from just nine percent in 1950 to 72 percent in 1956. And TV was so good at holding the attention of its audience that, by the close of the 1950s, the average viewer was spending five hours a day in front of the tube! An advertiser's dream!


Email made it easier to reach people and grab their attention.

So TV transformed advertising in the 1950s, but it wouldn’t be long before a new ad revolution began to swell with the launch of the internet. This groundbreaking technology entered its infancy just two decades later, in the 1970s. However, at its outset, the internet wasn’t very useful – it would take the invention of email to begin connecting people in a truly revolutionary way.

It began in 1969, when the internet formed a network that allowed research organisations to share files between universities like UCLA and Stanford, as well as companies like IBM and government contractors like Bolt, Beranek and Newman, or BBN.

From there, in 1971, a young computer scientist at BBN by the name of Ray Tomlinson took the fledgling internet a step further by launching a system for sending not just files, but messages too.
It wasn’t long before it took off and a 1973 survey found that emails comprised 75 percent of all network traffic.

But why is email so effective at grabbing our attention? Because emails act like rewards. Consider the theory developed by the renowned scientist B.F. Skinner, who states that human behavior, just like that of animals, is controlled by stimuli, like rewards and punishments. When such stimuli occur, the actions that prompted them are reinforced or discouraged accordingly. This theory is known as operant conditioning.

But how does this relate to email? According to scientist Tom Stafford, every time we get a nice email or digital message, we get a little boost, like a reward. As this feels good, we continue searching for another one, meaning we constantly refresh our inboxes in the vain hope we’ll get another reward soon.
It’s no wonder advertisers love to send us email after email.


The internet offered a new opportunity to harvest attention, but it wasn’t immediately clear how to use it.

Google has become utterly ubiquitous in modern life, so much so that it has, of course, become its own verb. And it’s rise has been no accident. Google was founded in the late 1990s, at a time when the internet was becoming more and more crowded and relevant content was becoming harder to find. It was nothing like TV, where you could easily move from channel to channel, knowing what you were looking for. Google thus made a name for itself as a way of solving this issue.

Its search engine went above and beyond competitors like Yahoo!, Lycos and AltaVista by way of a powerful algorithm, tight code and simple design. As a result, it rapidly became the number-one choice for internet users. As a result, Google could harvest loads of attention. While it wasn’t immediately clear to the founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, how to monetize that attention, they soon found a way: advertising.

But this was not to be the regular, nonstop bombardment style of traditional ads. Google’s founders were determined to maintain their transparent, algorithm-driven search engine and keep it free of bias. In other words, they didn’t want companies to be able to buy their way to the top of search results.<So, in collaboration with the Canadian mathematician Erik Veach, Brin and Page invented a new system known as Adwords, an advertising tool that only displays advertisements that are relevant to a user’s interests. Therefore, if a Google search isn’t clear enough to identify a specific need or interest, no ads will appear.


Celebrities capture our attention like no other entity.

Celebrities are powerful attention harvesters around which a lucrative industry is centered. Consider the incredible success of People magazine, a publication focused solely on celebrities, published by the renowned Time-Life Inc. When the first issue of People hit the newsstands in 1974, it sold around 1 million copies. But despite decades of academic inquiry, there are still no convincing explanations for why celebrities captivate our attention so thoroughly. That being said, the powerful reaction that celebrities prompt in average humans has led many scholars to draw parallels with traditions of worship that are commonly known to involve descriptions of transcending the banality of life and getting a glimpse of the extraordinary or the infinite.So, even though we aren’t sure exactly why, the lives of celebrities remain a constant pull on our attentions.




Former FBI agent Robin Dreeke shares his simple toolkit for assessing who you can trust and who you can't. Dreeke has worked for two decades as a behaviour analyst in the FBI, through that experience he has developed a knack for reading people, their intentions, their capabilities, their desires and their fears. This book is a manual to be able to quickly and easily determine who you can trust and who you can't. It helps readers to determine who is likely to deliver on promises and who will disappoint, and when a person is vested in your success versus when they are actively plotting your demise. 

So much of your success, from your career to your family life depends on being able to differentiate between people you can trust and people you can't. This book teaches the subtle behavioural signs the people around you are giving off and how you can read those signs to make better decisions about whom to trust. It teaches you how to gather data that really matters about a person, from the language they use to their past behaviour to their personal appearance. You'll learn to look beyond the obvious to the hidden and reveal the true inner character. This is a how-to-guide to decide which people you should never let go and those you should keep at a distance.


Key Learnings

  • The three personality traits of emotionally unstable people
  • Why you can't trust someone who can't apologise
One of the most predicable things about human beings is that we will almost always act in our own best interests. This might sound selfish, but doing what's right for us is also healthy and necessary for our survival. So when you're trying to determine how someone will act in the future, think about that they want. Then you'll know how they will behave.


People's behaviour can often be predicted by their circumstances

When you're trying to predict how someone will act towards you, consider how much immunity do they have from the consequence of their behaviour. It's often said that power tends to corrupt, sadly this tends to be true. When someone has a lot of power, perhaps in the form of wealth or high status position, then they have the freedom to behave badly. The reason for this is, the are protected from the consequence of their behaviour. It's harder to predict how a powerful person will behave because in many situations they can do whatever they like.

The flip side it's easier to predict the behaviour of someone who is highly vulnerable. A vulnerable person is easier to punish when they break the rules, so they often feel they must behave a certain way and that makes their actions more predictable.

To accurately size someone up, bear in mind how long your relationship with that person is likely to last. This matters because, in shorter relationships, people are more likely to behave badly because they won't be around to face the consequences of their behaviour. On the other hand, a longer relationship leaves a lot more time for them to be either rewarded or punished for their actions, so thee is a stronger incentive to behave well. 

Intuition is unreliable, it usually means we trust those we like and distrust those we don't which is not always accurate. Intuition can't predict behaviour.


Put your trust in those who believe that they win when you win

It's important to identify those individuals who believe that your success is their success too. These people will go to great lengths to help you achieve things. They will shield you from negative outcomes and identify ways to further your interest. 

  1. Look out for people who are happy to adapt their working style to fit yours and who are willing to work at your pace. They're showing you that they will inconvenience themselves to help you reach your full potential.
  2. People who are invested in you are willing to do you favours, even when you don't ask for them. Interestingly, helping you out actually makes them even more disposed to like you. The reason for this is, disliking someone after helping them creates cognitive dissonance (Benjamin Franklin Effect). This is the uncomfortable sensation of behaving one way and feeling a different way. People tend to try to avoid cognitive dissonance. So, if a person helps you, that person's feelings toward you will also improve.
  3. It's crucial to identify the people who do not think that your success is their success, especially in the workplace. It you're working for someone who isn't invested in your future, it might be time to consider seeking new professional opportunities.

You can't trust someone who doesn't trust you

Human relationships often boil down to one simple question, 'Can I trust this person?' But if you want an accurate answer, then you're going to have to ask yourself something else too: 'How much do they trust you?'

First try to put your ego aside during conversations. When we see someone displaying egotistical behaviour, it makes us defensive, suspicious and cold. We don't trust self-centered people to be fair to us which makes us behave unfairly toward them. It's the only way to make sure we won't get cheated. So to gain people's trust make them feel as if you're interested in them rather than yourself. Never boast and don't even mention your achievement unless you're specifically asked. Another way to gain trust is to make others feel validated. Once people feel validated they will feel comfortable enough to be their authentic self and trust will soon follow. 

Unsurprisingly we are more likely to trust givers than takers. To boost trust levels in any relationships, try to give other people more than what they expect from you (hmmmm.... not entirely sure about this). Most people remember when their expectations have been exceeded and act generously in return. 


Most of the ways we assess people's reliability are unreliable

Ways to gauge whether a potential recruit is reliable is, instead of exploring their professional history try to get a feel for an applicant's whole life. Someone who is competent and reliable in the workplace tends to be like this in every other area of life too. People who aren't competent on their own time probably won't be on yours either. Pay attention to self-presentation. Unreliable people are often careless with their appearance. When potential recruits seem to neglect personal appearance, they are telling you that they are unhappy with themselves.



One of the best indications of future behaviour is past behaviour

One pattern of behaviour is loyalty. If someone has your back when it would be easier for them to bad-mouth you, that's a sign that you can trust them in the future. 

One negative behaviour pattern that should be a trust deal-breaker is when someone repeatedly gossips to you about other people. 

This is an indicator of underlying insecurity. Insecure people tend to judge others to feel better about themselves. Tread carefully because you never know when you will become the subject of one of their tales. 

On the other hand, a positive behaviour pattern is when someone always walks away when the conversation turns to gossip. This tells you that this person is a healthy, secure person who is not interested in dwelling on the problems or minor flaws of others. They are only interested in having healthy relationships.

Most dangerous behaviour is inconsistency. Be wary of people who constantly behave in unpredictable ways and have a track record of not doing what they say they will. Such people are showing you that they can't be trusted. In a crisis situation there is almost nothing worse than an inconsistent person. 


Trustworthy people use simple language and aren't afraid to apologise

Trustworthy people tend to speak simply and clearly. This is because they are confident and secure in their ideas. They have no need to dress them up with long words or florid sentences. In contrast, untrustworthy people tend to be insecure and will often confuse you with complex language. They do this to conceal a lack of confidence, either in themselves or in their ideas. Also, don't be fooled by people who talk very fast or who are overly smooth. People you can really trust are straight-talkers and don't need a lot of words.

People you can trust also use words like often, sometimes, and frequently, rather than words like always or never.

Look out for people who use this sort of absolutist language because it tends to provoke conflict. In the real world, absolutes are rare and so it's dishonest to frequently use words like "never". Instead look out for people who use more moderate words like "often" or "sometimes". This tells you that they are fairer, more honest and more keen to keep the peace with other people. 

It's also a good idea to keep your distance from people who can't fully apologise for their mistakes. Errors is part of being human. Trustworthy people can shoulder blame, apologise and move on. Whereas untrustworthy people will become defensive. 


Emotionally unstable people have certain traits that you should look out for

When you're considering placing your faith in someone you'll need to consider how emotionally stable they are. What are their default mindset? 

Emotionally unstable people often have what is a "3-P Personality"
  1. They believe that any hardship they experience is permanent. They can't understand that nothing lasts forever - even misfortune.
  2. They struggle to compartmentalise their life. All problems they face are pervasive, affecting every part of life. You might try to persuade them that they can compartmentalise their life but you can't change their outlook.
  3. They believe that everything that goes wrong is their fault. They personalise every misfortune. Emotionally unstable people also tend to have victim mentality. They can't differentiate between big problems and small ones. In their minds, minor issues spiral into terrifying catastrophes. What's more, fear is a highly contagious emotion. So think twice before you trust anyone who seems to turn small challenges into disasters. 
Emotionally stable mindset is ruled by love, not fear. This loving mindset primarily finds its expression in appreciation. Emotionally stable people are grateful for what they have. No time is wasted with anxiety about what they lack. Stable people tend to be at peace with themselves. They like who they are and as a result, they come across as accepting and pleasant. 

In contrast, emotionally unstable people are usually dissatisfied with themselves. This makes is difficult to form good relationships with them. People who don't like themselves, they don't tend to like anything else either and that probably includes you.


'Atomic Habits' looks at how to make positive changes in your life and the easiest way to bring about positive change is to cultivate the right habits. In this book you will discover all about habits, what they are, how you can form them, and crucially, how you can make the best ones stick. Atomic habits is written by James Clear who is an American journalist. Clears reveals exactly how these minuscule changes can grow into such life-altering outcomes. He uncovers a handful of simple life hacks (the forgotten art of Habit Stacking, the unexpected power of the Two Minute Rule, or the trick to entering the Goldilocks Zone), and delves into cutting-edge psychology and neuroscience to explain why they matter.





Summary & Key Learnings

The Fundamentals - Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference

1. The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits
2. How your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)
3. How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps

The 1st Law - Make It Obvious

4. The Man Who Didn't Look Right
5. The Best Way to Start a New Habit
6. Motivation Is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More
7. The Secret to Self-Control

The 2nd Law - Make It Attractive

8. How to Make a Habit Irresistible
9. The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits
10. How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits

The 3rd Law - Make It Easy

11. Walk Slowly, but Never Backward
12. The Law of Least Effort
13. How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule
14. How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible

The 4th Law - Make It Satisfying

15. The Cardinal Rule of Behaviour Change
16. How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day
17. How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything

Advanced Tactics - How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great

18. The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don't)
19. The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work
20. The Downside of Creating Good Habits

Conclusion: The Secret to Results That Last


The key learnings from this book:
A tiny change in your behaviour will not transform your life overnight however, turning that behaviour into a habit that you do every day will lead to big changes. Changing your life is not about making big breakthroughs or revolutionising your entire life but it's about building a positive system of habits. When those habits are combined they delivery remarkable results.

Actionable advice:
Use habit stacking to introduce new behaviours which is building a new habit by stacking it on top of an existing habit.


The Fundamentals - Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference

1. The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits

Books own chapter summary:
  • Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run.
  • Habits are a double-edged sword. They can work for you or against you, which is why understanding the details is essential.
  • Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient.
  • An atomic habit is a little habit that is part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results.
  • If you wan better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
  • You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

2. How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)

  • There are three levels of change: outcome change, process change, and identity change.
  • The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become.
  • Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
  • Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.
  • The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.

3. How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps

  • A habit is a behaviour that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.
  • The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problem of life with as little energy and effort as possible.
  • Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: 
    1. cue
    2. craving
    3. response
    4. reward
  • The Four Laws of Behaviour Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are:
    1. Make it obvious
    2. Make it attractive
    3. Make it easy
    4. Make it satisfying



The 1st Law - Make it Obvious


4. The Man Who Didn't Look Right

  • With enough practice, your brain will pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it.
  • Once our habits become automatic, we stop paying attention to what we are doing.
  • The process of behaviour change always started with awareness. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them.
  • Pointing-and-Calling raises your level of awareness from a non-conscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalising your actions.
  • The Habits Scorecard is a simple exercise you can use to become more away of your behaviour.


5. The Best Way to Start a New Habit

  • The 1st Law of Behaviour Change is make it obvious.
  • The two most common cues are time and location.
  • Creating an implementation intention is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a specific time and location. 
  • The implementation intention formula is: I will [BEHAVIOUR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].
  • Habit stacking is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a current habit.
  • The habit stacking formula is: After [current habit], I will [NEW HABIT].

6. Motivation is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More

  • Small changes in context can lead to large changes in behaviour over time.
  • Every habit is initiated by a cue. We are more likely to notice cues that stand out.
  • Make cues of good habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behaviour. The context becomes the cue.
  • It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because your are not fighting against old cues.

7. The Secret to Self-Control

  • The inversion of the first law of behaviour change is “make it invisible”.
  • Once a habit is formed, it is unlikely to be forgotten.
  • People with high self-control tend to spend less time in tempting situations. It’s easier to avoid temptation than to resist it.
  • One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.
  • Self-control is a short-term strategy.




The 2nd Law - Make it Attractive

8. How to Make a Habit Irresistible

  • The 2nd Law of Behaviour Change is make it attractive.
  • The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.
  • Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. When dopamine rises, so does our motivation to act.
  • It is the anticipation of a reward - not the fulfilment of it - that gets use to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike.
  • Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

9. The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits

  • The culture we live in determines which behaviours are attractive to use.
  • We tend to adopt habits that are praised and approved of by our culture because we have a strong desire to fit in and belong to the tribe.
  • We tend to imitate the habits of three social groups: the close (family and friends), the many (the tribe), and the powerful (those with status and prestige).
  • One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where:
    1. Your desired behaviour is normal behaviour
    2. You already have something in common with the group
  • The normal behaviour of the tribe often overpowers the desired behaviour of the individual. Most days, we'd rather by wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves.
  • If a behaviour can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it attractive

10. How to Find and Fix Causes of Your Bad Habits

  • The inversion of the 2nd Law of Behaviour Change is make it unattractive.
  • Every behaviour has a surface level craving and a deeper under lying motive.
  • Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires.
  • The cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them. The prediction leads to a feeling. 
  • Highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit to make it seem unattractive.
  • Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings. Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.





The 3rd Law - Make it Easy


11. Walk Slowly, but Never Backward

  • The 3rd Law of Behaviour Change is make it easy.
  • The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning.
  • Focus on taking action, not being in motion.
  • Habit formation is the process by which a behaviour becomes progressively more automatic through repetition.
  • The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the nimber of times you have performed it.

12. The Law of Least Effort

  • Human behaviour follows the Law of Lease Effort. We will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work. 
  • Create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible.
  • Reduce the friction associated with good behaviours. When friction is low, habits are easy.
  • Increase the friction associated with bad behaviours. When friction is high, habits are difficult.
  • Prime your environment to make future actions easier.

13. How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule

  • Habits can be completed in a few seconds but continue to impact your behaviour for minutes or hours afterward.
  • Many habits occur at decisive moments - choices that are like a fork in the road - and either send you in the direction of a productive one.
  • The Two-Minute Rule states, "When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do."
  • The more you ritualise the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the sate of deep focus that is required to do great things. 
  • Standardise before you optimise. You can't improve a habit that doesn't exist.

14. How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible

  • The Inversion of the 3rd Law of Behaviour Change is make it difficult.
  • A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that locks in better behaviour in the future.
  • The ultimate way to lock in future behaviour is to automate your habits.
  • Onetime choices - like buying a better mattress or enrolling in an automative savings plan - are single actions that automate your future habits and deliver increasing returns over time.
  • Using technology to automate your habits is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right behaviour.




The 4th Law - Make it Satisfying


15. The Cardinal Rule of Behaviour Change

  • The 4th Law of Behaviour Change is make it satisfying.
  • We are more likely to repeat a behaviour when the experience is satisfying.
  • The human brain evolved to prioritise immediate rewards over delayed rewards.
  • The Cardinal Rule of Behaviour Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.
  • To get a habit to stick you need to feel immediately successful - even it it's in a small way.
  • The first three laws of behaviour change - make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy - increase the odds that a behaviour will be performed this time. The fourth law of behaviour change - make it satisfying increases the odds that a behaviour will be repeated next time.

16. How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day

  • One of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of making progress.
  • A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit - like marking an X on a calendar.
  • Habit trackers and other visual forms of measurement can make your habits satisfying by providing clear evidence of your progress.
  • Don't break the chain. Try to keep your habit streak alive.
  • Never miss twice. If you miss one day, try to get back on track as quickly as possible.
  • Just because you can measure something doesn't mean it's the most important thing.

17. How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything

  • The inversion of the 4th Law of Behaviour Change is make it unsatisfying.
  • We are less likely to repeat a bad habit if it is painful or unsatisfying.
  • An accountability partner can create an immediate cost to inaction. We can deeply about what others think of us, and we do not want others to have a lesser opinion of us.
  • A habit contract can be used to add a social cost to any behaviour. It makes the costs of violating your promises public and painful.
  • Knowing that someone else is watching you can be a powerful motivator.



Advanced Tactics - How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great


19. The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don't)

  • The secret to maximising your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition.
  • Pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle.
  • Genes cannot be easily changed, which means they provide a powerful advantage in unfavourable circumstances.
  • Habits are easier when they align with you natural abilities. Choose the habits that best suit you.
  • Play a game that favours your strengths. If you can't find a game that favours you, create one.
  • Genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. they tell us what to work hard on. 

19. The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work

  • The Goldilocks Rules states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities.
  • The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredome.
  • As habits become routine, they become less interesting and less satisfying. We get bored.
  • Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It's the ability to keep going when work isn't exciting that makes the difference. 
  • Professional stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.

20. The Downside of Creating Good Habits

  • the upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors.
  • Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
  • Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time.
  • The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.


Conclusion: The Secret to Results That Last

The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements. It's remarkable what you can build if you just don't stop. Small habits don't add up. They compound. That's the power of atomic habits. Tiny changes. Remarkable results.
© Christine Calo 2021. Please do not reproduce without the expressed consent of Christine Calo. Powered by Blogger.