Book Review: “Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones” by James Clear
Håfa adai! Welcome to my review of Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones, by James Clear.
This book review consists of two parts: a brief summary of content followed by my personal takeaways. I may go into detail about some parts of the book, but I will leave out the greater nuance. I want to share my opinions of the book and encourage you to purchase a copy of your own.
Click on the tags at the bottom of this post to see all reviews with the same tags in the On Writing & More bookshelf.
Summary of Atomic Habits
Do you struggle with maintaining good habits? Are there bad behaviors you just want to quit doing? Why is it so difficult to start doing good activities and stop doing bad ones? James Clear dives into these questions in Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. Organized into six sections—The Fundamentals, Four Laws of Behavior Change, and Advanced Tactics—Atomic Habits provides detailed instructions for how to apply evidence-based methods of successful habit formation in our daily lives. Each section is broken down into chapters that identify and define the topic, expand on it citing science and real life examples, and point out what the reverse of that topic would look like. Below is the gist of each section along with some examples from my own efforts to maintain good habits.
The Fundamentals: Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference
“It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits (page 15)
We typically want to form habits that reflect the kind of person we aspire to be, or the larger identity or system we want to have. A larger system or identity (e.g. “I am a writer”) is comprised of daily smaller habits (e.g. “I write every day”). It is the smaller daily habits that work at an atomic level to empower larger systems of self improvement. The four-part feedback loop that fuels every habit—cue, craving, response, reward—can be used to understand the four laws of behavior change.
The 1st Law: Make It Obvious
"Our behavior is not defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits (page 87)
The First Law of Behavior Change is to make it obvious: create a cue for you to perform the habit. Implementation intention strategies and habit stacking can be used to pair a new habit with a specific time and place while performing an already established habit. For example, I drink coffee every morning in my living room at 5:30 AM, so I will practice music every morning in my living room at 5:30 AM while I drink my coffee. To make it obvious, I will place my guitar and keyboard in my living room. I will also reduce exposure to cues of bad habits to avoid temptation. For example, I do NOT leave my laptop computer on my living room coffee table so that I am not tempted to watch YouTube videos instead of practicing music.
The 2nd Law: Make It Attractive
“If history serves as a guide, the opportunities of the future will be more attractive than those of today.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits (page 104)
The Second Law of Behavior Change is to make it attractive. The four-part feedback loop of habits is driven by dopamine, the “feel good” drug produced by our brains. When we have more dopamine, we have more motivation. To establish a craving for a habit, we can bundle it with other tempting behaviors. For example, if I exercise for 15 minutes, I get to scroll Reddit for 5 minutes. Additionally, a habit can become more attractive if it is encouraged by the groups we follow or observe (i.e. family and friends, local communities, and the rich and famous). To make a bad habit unattractive, we can highlight the negative aspects of it. For example, I will NOT eat sugary sweets in excess because too much sugar gives me headaches.
The 3rd Law: Make It Easy
“If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits (page 143)
The Third Law of Behavior Change is to make it easy: our response to the cues we set in our environment determine how successful our habits will be. The best response, it seems, would be to take action and show up. We often confuse being in motion with taking action. “Motion” would be watching hours of YouTube videos about how to write a book, but “action” would be sitting down and writing a book. We also tend to prioritize optimizing a habit before we standardize it. Do not worry about perfecting your prose if you have not established a pattern of writing every day. To establish a pattern, start by just showing up: take time to write, even if all you have is two minutes. Make sure that showing up takes the least amount of effort possible. For this, I leave my notebook of my novel draft on my coffee table with my pen case. Conversely, to discourage perpetuating a bad habit, put as many steps as possible between you and the bad habit. For example, I want to make sure I do not overeat sweets and pastries. I love pastries! But I prefer homemade pastries over store-bought. So I tell myself that if I want pastries, then I must make them myself. And I am just too lazy to do that most days.
The 4th Law: Make It Satisfying
“Positive emotions cultivate habits. Negative emotions destroy them.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits (page 186)
The Fourth Law of Behavior Change is to make it satisfying: we have evolved to prioritize immediate reward over delayed gratification. James Clear provides better examples and explanations than I could. In this section, he emphasizes the importance of using a habit tracker. A habit tracker creates visual cues to remind us of our successes in perpetuating a behavior. The satisfaction you feel as you see the number get higher every day can serve as the reward for maintaining the good habit. Of course, to stop perpetuating a bad habit, make it unsatisfying. To demonstrate this, James Clear points out that frivolous spending today (e.g. buying a $10 bougie coffee when you could make coffee at home) takes away money from your future self.
Advanced Tactics: How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great
“If you can’t find a game where the odds are stacked in your favor, create one.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits (page 225)
It is easier to establish a new habit when it is supplemented by your natural abilities. For example, I stand at 5 feet 2 inches tall. I might enjoy watching basketball, but I will not aspire to be the greatest basketball player of all time. Creating a challenge that is too great can set you up for failure. But attempting something that is far too easy can be just as counter-productive to forming a new habit. The greatest threat to success is boredom, not failure. Working at the boundaries of your abilities (hard enough to be a challenge but not so hard that the task is undoable) is what creates optimal motivation to push further and, eventually, turn a habit into an aspect of your identity. The closer we hold on to an identity (“I am a writer, musician, climber, etc.”), the more likely we are to perform the habits and activities that support that identity. Ultimately, a successful habit defined by repetitive intentional practice is what produces mastery of any skill.
My Thoughts on Atomic Habits: 4.5 stars
James Clear’s Atomic Habits blew my mind. That may sound like a cliché, and the methods he outlines may sound like common sense to many, but they were not so obvious to me. I condensed my major takeaways into three broad points: (1) it takes many things to make one thing work; (2) show yourself patience and forgiveness; and (3) repetition and progress make a system successful, not perfection. These may be points that resonate with others, so I will expand on them below.
It takes many things to make one thing work.
What James Clear’s book makes absolutely apparent is how many things have to be in the proper place in order for a system to be successful. After deciding what habit you want to adopt, it takes time to (1) identify what needs to be in place, (2) figure out how to put it in place, and (3) consistently put yourself in that place! For many—myself included—consistently perpetuating a new habit is not as simple as “just do it.” With this in mind, the steps outlined in Atomic Habits have truly helped me put things in the proper place in order to start a new habit.
Show yourself patience and forgiveness.
Like many, I am my harshest critic. No one is harder on me than me. And as someone who was a “gifted child,” I can be a horrifically impatient and cruel adult to myself if I don’t immediately figure something out or quickly become good at a new skill. This tends to result in mean (or outright abusive) internal self talk. But I would never say the things I say to myself to those closest to me, so why am I saying it to myself? That psychological rabbit hole is too deep to dive down in a book review; so I’m just going to acknowledge the hole is there, glance down into the abyss, and walk on. In short, I will have to remind myself to be patient and forgiving to the woman in the mirror as she takes the time to learn and get good at new skills.
Repetition and progress make a system successful, not perfection.
One of the greatest mistakes I make when it comes to forming habits is that I will be consistent for a week, miss a few days, feel awful, and then believe that I completely failed. This unhelpful cycle would make it difficult and sometimes even give me a sense of dread at the thought of starting a new habit. But expecting yourself to repeat a certain behavior every single day without failure can be unrealistic. Instead of idealizing perfection, you should focus on progress. Did you forget to work out or practice music or study language today? That’s okay! Just get back to it tomorrow. Try not to go more than a day skipping it, but don’t beat yourself up for not having a perfect record. For this reason, my motto for the Become a Bard Challenge is “progress over perfection.”
My overall rating for James Clear’s Atomic Habits is 4.5 out of 5 stars. This was one of several books I read while developing the concept that would become my Become a Bard Challenge. Like many, it is not easy for me to form habits. Adding the daily realities of living with ADHD on top of the same challenges everybody else faces makes forming habits (or forming sustainable systems) an incredible and sometimes daunting task. James Clear does not explicitly state that the material in his book is especially meant for those who are neurotypical or neurodiverse, but there were many things I (some person on the internet with ADHD) could take, alter to match my own abilities, and apply to my own attempts to form habits.
I recommend this book to anyone who struggles with being consistent with habits as well as those who just want to learn new ways to make a habit stick. James Clear’s prose is straight to the point and easy to follow. He uses appropriate examples and studies to demonstrate his points without becoming inaccessible. For those who like to annotate the physical copies of their books, the margins in the hardcover copy are spacious enough to write in and the pages themselves are thick enough for highlighters and pens not to bleed through. For those who prefer to listen to their books, the audiobook version of Atomic Habits is read by James Clear himself in a way that feels like he is having a casual conversation with the listener.
Completely unrelated side note: While typing this review, I had to consciously tell myself not to type “Atomic Hobbits,” which sounds like an awesome band name. It’s too bad the Tolkien estate has trademarked the word “Hobbit.”
Dångkulo' na' saina ma'åse'! Thank you so much for reading my review of Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear.
Rating Cheat Sheet
4.75 - 5.00 stars: Everyone should read this book! (If you’re into that sort of thing.)
4.00 - 4.50 stars: I appreciated many aspects of this book. I recommend it!
3.00 - 3.75 stars: I liked some aspects of this book. I won’t revisit it, but someone else might really like it.
2.00 - 2.75 stars: There were some things I appreciated about this book, but I do not recommend it.
0.25 - 1.75 stars: I do not recommend this book. I did not enjoy or appreciate the experience of it.
Post Date: 11 November 2024
Publishing: 16 October 2018 by Avery
Audiobook Publishing: 16 October 2018 by Penguin Audio
