Disclaimer:- Reading this summary does not mean that you do not have to read the actual book as everyone has their own opinions and perspectives and this is my perspective so when you will read the book you will look at it from your perspective so please read the book if you like the summary.
Atomic Habits Chapter 4 Summary
The main theme of the chapter is awareness, the author tells us that how can we be more aware of our actions and the chapter also sets ground for the first law of behaviour change i.e. make it obvious. The author tells that our brain is a prediction machine and it is always looking for cues and whenever we perform a task repeatedly our brain starts noticing the important things so that the task can be performed faster and when we do these tasks for a lot of years our brain starts predicting the results without consciously noticing the cues. The author tells that what makes habits useful is the ability to perform habits without even picking up the cues but also tells that this is the reason why habits are dangerous as well. The author explains that when a habit becomes automatic and non-conscious that is when we start falling in the loop for example, a woman who was a teacher for many years changed her job and started working at a company but her habits as a teacher did not go away as they had become automatic so whenever her colleagues came back from the restroom she always asked them that 'have you washed your hands?'. Author tells that behaviour change should begin from awareness and that before starting a new habit we need to control our old habits and this can happen through awareness only. There is also a quote in the book 'Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate'. Then the author introduces us to 'Pointing and Calling', which is a safety system in which we point at a object and call its name, even though it sounds silly but it is really effective. This system helps make a non-conscious habit to a conscious habit as hands, ears, mouth, ears and brain is used in this whole system. The author says that when we do something repeatedly we begin to overlook things and that leads to mistakes and he also tells that most of our failures in performance come from a lack of self-awareness. Then the author tells us about 'Habit Scorecard' which is a simple yet complicated way of evaluating our habits. In the habit scorecard we have to write down all the habits that we do in a day and then mark good habits with '+', negative with '-' and neutral habits with '='. The author tells that a good habit for someone might be a bad habit for someone else and he also tells that no habit is good or bad as all habits are effective, effective in solving problems, for example, smoking gives us instant relief from stress but in the long term it is bad for health. The goal of creating habits scorecard is to simply recognise what is going on in our daily life and not for blaming us or appreciating us. The author tells that the first step in changing bad habits is to look for them and pointing and calling and habit scorecard help a lot in these as these methods make us more aware of our daily life.
