Habits

life writing

Recently, I was reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. This book discusses the foundation of habit formation in great detail.

The four foundational blocks of habits are:

• cue
• craving
• response
• reward

The cue deals with the triggers, using which our brain detects the presence of a reward in the vicinity. The craving is the motivation behind generating the response. The response is the sequence of thought or actions that take us from the cue to the reward. The reward is the end goal that we want to achieve.

In general, the end goal has to do with either the primary goals of beings (survival and reproduction) or the secondary goals (fame, money, respect, etc). But as an instant result, they provide us with satisfaction, or pleasure, which is a dopamine surge. This dopamine surge can be used as a positive reward in the feedback loop, and help us through the “action” stage.