A sure-shot way to understand habits and change them !
This New York Times bestseller and breakthrough book from James Clear, a writer, and speaker, focuses on subjects like habits, decision making, and continuous improvement has already been translated into 50 languages and sold 5 million copies worldwide. 
A regular speaker at Fortune 500 companies, Clear has been featured in Time Magazine, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and CBS This Morning. He even sends a popular "3-2-1" email newsletter to more than 1 million subscribers.    

There are three layers to changing habits:

·  Changing outcomes — results like losing weight, running 5kms, and so on.
·  Changing process — developing systems and routines that help people achieve goals.
· Changing identity — changing some beliefs which drive actions.

Clear through his narrative establishes that people generally start with the goal of changing outcomes, which is why they can't sustain the habits. The idea is to start with changing identity — it is not about what people want to achieve but more about what they want to become. Once people focus on identity, he says, they will use behaviours likely to act according to that identity. Hence, the goal is not about running 5kms but becoming a runner. Once the focus is on changing the essence, the changes in the process will fall in place, leading to the difference in outcomes anyway.

 The author's framework for the formation of the proper habits is:

1. Cues — triggers and signs in the environment; you need to make it obvious

2. Cravings — motivation is critical to be persistent. The logical way to do that is to make habits alluring

3. Response — actions we take; habits need to be made a little easy to start with and then a little hard incrementally so that they don't become too hard in one go. Making it easy does not mean easy things but removing as much friction that stands in the way of doing something you want.

4. Rewards — feedback, the satisfaction for cravings; habits need to be satisfying. For each of the above elements in the framework, the author provides practical advice on what levers could be changed to make those elements effective.

For example: For cues, the author covers aspects like location, time, and also what he calls Habit stacking (piling a new habit on top of an existing habit). He also advocates planting visual cues throughout the spaces so that the environment is designed suitable for habit formation.

For craving, he suggests ideas like temptation bundling (like getting on a treadmill while watching Netflix). In the course of these practical tips, the author presents quite a few thought-provoking arguments, which you might nod in agreement. In a chapter, he says every behaviour has a surface-level craving and a more profound underlying motive — survival, conserving energy, and alike. Many products are developed to meet such innate urges (social media handles). Habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires, new versions of old vices. And while digging deep into these aspects, he also busts several myths around habit formation, like this: To master a habit, the key is repetition, not perfection.