Atomic Habits | Book Review

Atomic Habits

by James Clear

OVERVIEW

A lot of the really great content comes early in the book. You get hit with the main concepts and the main learnings which I think is a great way to kick off a book because you're instantly engaged. Once you start to understand the real concepts behind how to create and lose habits the book format makes sense - because one of the key areas of changing behaviours is to make it attractive and James has put that into practice with his book - straight from the jump you get the key learnings and the lightbulb goes on - you’re hooked.

THE BIG IDEA

We need to take ownership of our behaviours, and realise that everything we need to make or break habits is within us - we just need to frame it within the right process that gives us the rewards we need for the behaviours that we want.

4 laws of behaviour change

Each law is a lever that influences human behaviour:

1. Make it obvious

2. Make it attractive

3. Make it easy

4. Make it satisfying

Reverse them to help unlearn a habit:

1. Make it invisible

2. Make it unattractive

3. Make it difficult

4. Make it unsatisfying

BIGGEST LEARNING/INSIGHT FOR ME

Aside from the obvious learnings around clear behaviours and processes that you can put into effect, what I found the most interesting and motivating was in chapter 1. We learn about the compounding of small incremental changes and the significant impact that can have over a longer term. Review the graph below, and you can see that just by getting 1% better every day, while it feels small and immeasurable, over a year it becomes quite tangible.

I like how this also aligns to the concept that successful people have ‘grit’ - defined as Passion and Perseverance, with the idea of delayed gratification being very relevant here. If you want to hear a great overview of Grit, check out Angela Duckworth’s Ted Talk here.

FAVOURITE QUOTE

“Habits are the compound interest of self improvement”  JAMES CLEAR

THOUGHT PROVOKERS

Questions to self-reflect on

• What one change could you make in your life that over a year would have a huge impact on your happiness or quality of life?

• Have you tried to create a new habit before? What happened?

• Have you tried to break a bad habit before? What happened?