A really good book for beginners and intermediate people to understand human behaviour around habits.
Every habit can be broken down into 4 steps: Cue > Craving > Response > Reward
By looking at each of these in isolation, we can build systems that make good habits long-lasting and bad habits go away. The author lists 4 laws associated with each step in the cycle.
Good habits: Make them obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying.
Bad habits: Make them invisible, unattractive, difficult and unsatisfying.
The human mind has evolved from animals and our brains are wired to always want for things that satisfy us in the short term. This is related to the release of dopamine. It is hard to overcome temptations. To make matters worse, consumerism and capitalism know how to target humans to their benefit. Junk foods taste really good, the new TV shows are amazing and that thing we've always wanted is just one click away and available on EMIs.
The trick is to alter your behaviour to avoid these signals and rather form a system that reinforces habits that are good in the long run like investing and saving money, cooking and eating healthy food, exercising and moving. This can be hard at first but small changes compound into large things given enough time.
Starting small by making habits more obvious and attractive and getting better 1% every day is something that is very easy but the majority of the time overlooked by most people. Technologies like calendars, to-do lists, habit trackers can help sustain habits. It is easy to keep working out if Google Fit is recording your progress. Rewards reinforce behaviour.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
All behavior is driven by the desire to solve a problem.
We have the brains of our ancestors but temptations they never had to face.