Book Review: Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

The beginning of the year is typically the time when people try to establish new goals and habits. Very often these goals and habits fail miserably. I have been guilty of good intentions only to be a contributing paver of the road to hell. Again, this year, I set out to set some goals. The difference between this year and other years is that have some help. James Clear, through his highly informative book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, has been willing to assist me. I am gladly going to accept his assistance.

Atomic Habits is 306 pages long. Clear arranged his book into six major sections. Across these six sections, he arranged twenty chapters. The major sections include

• The Fundamentals
• The 1st Law – Make it obvious
• The 2nd Law – Make it attractive
• The 3rd Law – Make it easy
• The 4th Law – Make it satisfying
• Advanced Tactics – How to go from being merely good to being truly great

Every chapter begins with a story. Clear must have realised that storytelling helps lessons stick with a person—what a clever brain hack. At the end of each chapter, he also included a useful summary of the main points in the chapter. This has proven to be very useful as I write this review. Additionally, Clear shared cheat sheets at the end of each major section. His supporting website allowed users to download the final cheat sheet.

Clear outlined a four-step model for habits—cue, craving, response, and reward. He noted that EVERYTHING we do is based on a habit. Habits are our operating system. He shared the neuroscience behind habits and why they are so powerful. We must reprogram our operating system.

The reason so many of us fail at adopting a new habit is that we do not recognize that we must change the system. It is not about willpower. It is about the system and our environment.

In line with the book The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, small sustained efforts can result in a significant change over time. The problem is that we want immediate gratification. Clear also used the same example as Hardy when he discussed a flight from Los Angeles to New York. By adjusting the nose 3.5 degrees, you would end up in Washington, D.C. instead. Making a single-degree change in behavior will result in a significant change.

Clear is not advocating that one makes radical changes. Instead, make small changes to your system in order to make it a lifetime habit. This all begins with looking at your systems. As Clear said,

“Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.” (Clear, 2018, p. 23).

In order to change your habits, you must first recognize what you do subconsciously. Clear provided several different exercises to help one recognize the behaviors in a habit. You must be able to understand what you are doing before you can change it.

Once you understand your current habit and how it works, Clear recommends hacking the system by stacking one habit with another. For example, if you want to start meditating, attach meditation to another morning ritual such as drinking coffee. Once you pour a cup of coffee, meditate for sixty seconds.

Clear also stressed the importance of reshaping the environment to make changing a habit easier. If you want to eat healthier, then display fruit rather than hiding it away. Do you want to read more? Then leave your books lying out where you can easily grab them. I bring a book with me each day to read at lunch. It sits next to my glasses on the table where I store my wallet, keys, and phone. Right now, I am packing my workout clothes ahead of time and putting them by the door. I am now stopping at the gym on the way home from work. I have to make the environment easy to use.

Another section of the book that affected me was that of showing up. As Clear said, “One minute of guitar practice is better than none at all. One minute of reading is better than never picking up a book. It’s better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all” (Clear, 2018, p. 165). There are days I do not want to stop by the gym. Even if I stay for five minutes, I need to go to the gym rather than skip it. I need to become someone who goes to the gym again .

“Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way” (Clear, 2018, p. 237).

One tool I have been using, recommended by Clear, is a Don’t Break the Chain calendar. This is a tool that Jerry Seinfeld is famous for using . The idea is to mark off every day that you complete the task. That is it. Just put an “X” through the day when you completed the task. The idea is not to break the chain. I will have to let you know how it works. I will have to print a Don’t Break the Chain calendar just to ensure I don’t break the chain for the other tasks I am tracking.

Throughout Atomic Habits, Clear provides great ideas for staying on task. More importantly, he backed his observations with science. He explained why one strategy worked and why another didn’t. If you have ever struggled with staying the course, I would definitely recommend that you grab a copy of Atomic Habits.

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Additional Reading

• The Compound Effect

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