Book Notes #2: Atomic Habits by James Clear
Atomic Habits is the most comprehensive and practical guide on how to create good habits, break bad ones, and get 1 percent better every day.
Atomic Habits is possibly the most iconic and well-known book in the self-help/ productivity genre.
It’s one of the books that I think everyone should read at some point in their lives and for those that have already read it, should revisit every few years.
Which is exactly why I decided to write this summary - to convince you to read this book or remind you of the key points.
Building better habits is the foundation of achieving your goals, no matter how big or small. After all, as Aristotle said “you are what you repeatedly do”.
Focusing on adding small (or should I say, atomic), incremental, everyday steps into our everyday routines can compound into massive, life-changing improvements towards our goals.
However, it’s not always easy to know where to start, which is where this book comes in.
SUMMARY
Taken from James Clear’s website:
Atomic Habits is the most comprehensive and practical guide on how to create good habits, break bad ones, and get 1 percent better every day. I do not believe you will find a more actionable book on the subject of habits and improvement.
If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system.
Bad habits repeat themselves not because you don’t want to change but because you have the wrong system for change. This is one of the core philosophies of Atomic Habits: You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. In this book, you’ll get a proven plan that can take you to new heights.
Who should read this book?
Everyone.
3 MAIN TAKEAWAYS
I. Build habits using a habit loop of cue, craving, response and reward
Cue: This is the trigger, the piece of information that reminds you to do your habit and start the habit loop. Examples of cues can be: a specific time of day, an emotional state, a reminder on your phone, seeing an item of clothing, brushing your teeth or anything else.
Craving: Following the cue, there is a force (the craving) that motivates you to do the habit in order to get a reward. This is the desire to do the habit because it will feel good or you will get another type of reward for doing it.
Response: This is the habit itself - you take the action needed to get the desired reward in response to the cue and craving.
Reward: Finally, this is the reason for doing the habit. The reward can be any positive outcome you get from completing the habit, whether it’s a financial reward, personal satisfaction or praise from another person. This reward is what reinforces the loop and increases the chance of repeating the habit again (and again).
This same system also works if you’re trying to break bad habits. Here’s an example of how this habit loop might look for a bad habit you’re trying to break, such as scrolling on your phone mindlessly: you get a notification (cue), you feel a craving to know what your friends are posting on Instagram (craving), you choose to silence your phone rather than picking it up (response), turn to your spouse to chat instead and feel personal satisfaction for not going onto social media (reward).
II. To form new good habits, they need to fulfil 4 key principles - habits should be obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying.
The key to forming good habits that stick is to change your physical environment to trigger you to perform the habit. You should surround yourself with people who are building similar habits (or who already do the habit you are trying to build), find ways to reduce the friction required to do that habit and
Obvious: Make your habit easy to see and be reminded of. If you want to learn to play the guitar, place your guitar by the TV. If you want to start going to the gym regularly, leave your gym shoes by the front door. If you want to eat healthily, place healthy food at the front of your fridge.
Attractive: Find ways to make the habit as fun as possible. Listen to music or your favourite podcast while cooking healthy meals. Pick books that you enjoy reading to get into the habit of reading before bed. Find an accountability buddy or friend to go for a walk with.
Easy: Reduce the amount of friction required to get going with your good habit. This could involve automating as much of the habit as possible, investing in technology or apps to help you or asking for help from a close friend or family member.
Satisfying: Completing the habit in itself can often be satisfying. However, if you don’t inherently enjoy the habit or find satisfaction from the feeling of completing the habit, but the habit is important to you for other reasons, find ways to make it satisfying. This could involve gamifying habit development, maintaining a daily streak or sharing your wins with your friends in an accountability WhatsApp group.
Therefore, conversely, to break bad habits, you should do the opposite. Make the habits invisible, unappealing, difficult and unenjoyable. For example, if you want to stop snacking on unhealthy food, but you buy snacks on your way home from work each day, try making the habit unappealing and difficult. This could include taking a different route home that avoids passing that shop (invisible), find a friend that you need to inform each time you buy unhealthy snacks (unappealing), store snacks in a hard to reach cupboard or in a room further away from your living/dining area (difficult) and remember how guilty/full/uncomfortable you feel after eating the snacks (unenjoyable).
Here is a great article summarising this in a lot more detail.
III. Focus on setting systems, not goals.
As Clear states in the book, “winners and losers have the same goals”. What differentiates winners and losers is their systems. Goals are for one-time wins, whereas systems are for the people that want to win repeatedly and consistently move forward.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
But what exactly is a system and how should you go about building system?
A system is simply a set of rules and routines that focus on the processes and actions you take daily. In other words, it is the collection of habits you perform on a day to day basis. Building systems requires small, consistent steps that are manageable and sustainable. However, it is equally important to building flexibility and adaptability into our systems. If one approach isn’t working or your life circumstances change, your system should change with you without abandoning your ultimate goal/objective.
Other takeaways
Focus on making small adjustments to your behaviours, rather than going ‘cold turkey’ or trying to make drastic changes that are hard to maintain.
Align your habits with the identity that you want to build.
Use habit stacking (adding a new habit onto an existing one e.g. brushing your teeth) to make it easier to remember your habits.
Break down habits into manageable two-minute tasks e.g. instead of ‘go to the gym for a 1 hour workout’, break it down into: put on gym clothes, put on and tie gym shoes, get into car, drive to gym, go into the locker room, put stuff in locker, go to treadmill, press button to start treadmill and then you have started your workout.
Adjust your habits as your circumstances change - habit formation is an ongoing process of continually improving and getting better, so your habits should change with you.
2 BEST QUOTES
I. On perfectionism and the importance of taking action rather than planning
"It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change: the fastest way to lose weight, the best program to build muscle, the perfect idea for a side hustle. We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action. As Voltaire once wrote, ‘The best is the enemy of the good.'"
II. On how your goals shape your identity
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
“You do it because it’s who you are, and it feels good to be you. The more a habit becomes part of your life, the less you need outside encouragement to follow through. Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.”
1 ACTION POINT
If you start doing one thing after reading Atomic Habits, start habit tracking.
Through tracking your habits over time, you can measure your progress and make sure that when you stray off track, you can easily get back to it.
The idea is simple: record all of the habits you want to establish and when you don’t complete it on a particular day, write down why you weren’t able to.
Some practical ways you can do this:
Print out a monthly calendar and mark each day you complete your habit with an X (this is how Jerry Seinfeld infamously tracked his habits).
Open an Excel spreadsheet with the dates down one column and your habit in another.
Use a habit tracking app (such as Done, TickTick or Productive).
Write it down in the notes app of your phone or in a simple pocket notebook.
How you track your habits is less important, but what you should focus on is trying to do them every single day. Since our habits compound over time, it’s important to start today and keep showing up each day.