How Atomic Habits IMPROVED my life

Atomic Habits by James Clear

This book provides an insight into how implementing systems into a persons life can improve the way they live. James Clear gives a detailed account of why he thinks daily habits are essential to living a successful life.

Check out the book here!

🤯 Interesting Thoughts

James Clear has an overarching idea which he states that a person only needs to make 1% daily improvements. The idea was taken from Pat Riley’s, championship-winning, LA Lakers side, which entails that making small improvements each day has a compounding effect. An emphasis is placed on compounding, as these daily improvements will exponentially add up. There is a double meaning to the word compounding, being made of atomic habits. The atomic habits that we create are the building blocks of creating a more successful life for ourselves. Success is the product of daily habits — this could not be more true.

When we build atomic habits i.e., small habits to improve, we create systems. Systems are important especially because we want all that hard work to come to fruition. Systems help redefine success. Currently, we look at success as something we get, something we achieve. However, we must reframe success as something we continually look to do. Systems help us repeat and improve and therefore, prolong success. Therefore, systems are greater than goals.

Systems become particularly useful in the journey to success. James Clear speaks about the Plateau of Latent Potential. This plateau is the lull period where we grind but see no intrinsic results. However, once we break through this stage is when the hard work of the good habits breakthrough.

Four Laws of Habit Building

I enjoyed how Atomic Habits followed Charles Duhigg’s model of creating habits. I liked the application and breakdown that James Clear presented. There are four laws: Make it Obvious, Make it Attractive, Make it Easy, Make it Satisfying. Each law has an interesting insight into habit building.

Make it Obvious correlates to Charles Duhigg’s cue. The cue is what triggers a habit. A cue could be another habit, a note, an environment, or a want. James discussed how habit stacking is used to build habits. I found this to be true. After reading, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, I implemented this into my own life. The habit of brushing my teeth triggers my journaling habit, which then triggers my meditation habit and so on. Clear discusses using a note to tell yourself to do something in a time and location. Our environment is often used to trigger habits. For example, when I go to my bed I use my phone. An unideal habit, but a habit nonetheless. Wanting can also be a cue. Once you become aware of something, you want it. That is cue-induced wanting.

Make it Attractive corresponds to craving. Clear goes in-depth about how dopamine affects the brain. Dopamine creates a feedback loop where it drives you to want it more. Sometimes the craving/desire is cultural. This is similar to your environment. The culture is often too attractive to many people. Craving is a straightforward concept.

Make it easy is talking about the reward. The easier to receive the reward, the easier habits form. This is the concept of the Law of Least Effect. The Law of Least Effect is putting in the least amount of effort for the expected reward. As humans, we can become lazy very easily. However, in this case, becoming lazy can be used as an advantage for the reward. Clear is big on the idea of action rather than motion. Motion entails planning, thinking and other things we do before/to avoid doing the action. The action is doing the task. This exhibits the mindset of practising vs planning. We rather do the task and repeat it, otherwise, we plan and go through the motions. This links back well to the 1% daily improvement. We only improve by doing.

Finally, Make it Satisfying relates to the response. Humans from a young age get taught what is rewarded is repeated, what is punished is avoided. When we do something bad, we get punished and when we do something good, we get rewarded. The same goes for habits. Going back to the compounding nature of habits, the more good habits we do the reward becomes greater each time. To realise our goals through our systems, we can implement habit streaks and an accountability partner. The former is similar to streaks on Snapchat, doing streaks on Snapchat is a habit. From this habit, we get an increase in our streak and for some reason, we find this rewarding. The response, we keep doing it. The accountability partner is like a Personal Trainer at the gym, they keep on track and motivated to succeed.

I enjoyed the consistent inversion of all the laws to break bad habits. Make it Obvious becomes Make it Obscure. Make it Attractive becomes Make it Unattractive. Make it Easy becomes Make it Hard. Make it Satisfying becomes Make it Dissatisfying. We can do the opposite to break bad habits. James Clear goes into this deeply throughout Atomic Habits.

🏋🏽‍♂️ Affect on my life

I intend to follow James Clear’s motto of making 1% Daily Improvements. I currently have habits which are like this such as meditation, reading etc. I follow Habit Stacking. In my bedtime routine, the trigger habit of brushing my teeth leads to journaling, meditation and eye drops. Thus creating this chain of habits. I want to improve my environment. Although hard, I would like to isolate myself where I relax, study, and have fun. Currently, I do everything from my desk or bed. However, changing the location of relaxing to another room or isolating the desk to just studying can be the 1% improvement I make. The habits streaks I constantly implement. I currently have a habit streak of days without a soft drink. Every day I avoid a soft drink, I had one to the tally.

I enjoyed James Clear’s, Goldilocks Rule. The Goldilocks Rule states peak motivation occurs when tasks are on the edge of their current ability. Therefore, finding my limits and pushing them slightly, is the best way I can improve in any task. The Goldilocks Rule can also help achieve the Flow State. The Flow State is something I tend to aspire to in my cricket. It means I am ignoring all the distractions whether they come from the past or future and my focus is solely on the ball. This is something I will look more closely at so that I can improve.

Another concept is that professionals schedule and amateurs let life interfere. I have to say that this is so true of me. I always let life get in the way of what I want most. I think going into the future, I will need to set times where I can focus on gym, training and other things important in my life.

James Clear has an equation for mastery. Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery. I need to make my training more deliberate. This means I should focus on one habit each training and look to master that. Thus, repeating it over and over again.

Finally, Review and Reflection of Habits allow you to remain aware of your performance. I currently implement a system after each training and game I journal and jot down the main focuses and ideas of that event. I do this so I can come back to things I may have forgotten and need to get into the habit again. It is also a great way of tracking improvement. I find journaling is beneficial for this reason.

🔚 Closing Remarks

To summarise I find this book to be a great extension to Charles Duhigg’s ‘The Power of Habit’. I would highly recommend anyone interested in self-improvement and productivity to read this after Duhigg’s book. I enjoyed a lot of concepts in this book and can see myself implementing a few.

I have not touched on every aspect in this review and as such, I would direct anyone interested to read the book. I have also left my raw notes underneath. Although brief, they touch on ideas that I found interesting.

Success is the product of daily habits — James Clear

🥩 Raw Notes

1% Daily Improvements — Success is the product of daily habits (compounding)

Plateau of Latent Potential — After this is when your hard work of good habits breaks through

Systems > Goals

Identity Emerges from Habits — e.g., my interviews

Charles Duhigg’s model

Awareness — Pointing and Calling

1st Law = Make it Obvious

• Cue
• Habit Stack
• Note Behaviour time and location
• Environment — Give rooms/objects roles
• cue-induced wanting — once you notice something, you want it

2nd Law = Make it Attractive

• Craving
• Dopamine driven feedback loop
• Culture → Imitation
• Reframing thoughts

3rd Law = Make it Easy

• Reward
• Motion vs Action
• Practice not Planning
• Law of Least Effect
• Minimising Friction and Activation Energy
• Gateway Habit
• 2 minute rule = “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes”

4th Law = Make it satisfying

• Response
• What is rewarded is repeated, what is punished is avoided
• Habit Streaks
• Accountability Partner

Consistent inversion of rules to break bad habits

Goldilocks Rule — peak motivation occurs when tasks are on the edge of their current ability

Goldilocks rule can be used to achieve flow state — e.g. in cricket?

Boredom is the threat to success

Pros schedule, amateurs let life interfere

Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery

Review and Reflection of Habits allow you to remain aware of your performance

Hard and Tight = Death, Soft and Flexible = Life