Atomic Habits by James Clear is the go-to book if you want to build good habits or remove bad ones. Out of all the habit books out there, this is the most complete one, having just enough scientific research, interesting stories, and a coherent structure. A must-read for any habit-builders out there!
Book Title: Atomic Habits
Author: James Clear
Date of Reading: October, 2018
Rating: 9/10
What is the book about as a whole:
How can you make the easiest possible changes in your life by breaking bad habits and establishing good habits, bringing remarkable results.
What is being said in detail:
The book presents a system that helps you eradicate your bad habits and establish good habits.
The process of building a habit is divided into four simple steps: Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward.
The Cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior.
Cravings are a motivational force behind every habit. If there’s no craving, there’s no reason to act.
The Response is the actual habit you perform (thought or action).
The response delivers a Reward. Rewards are the end goals of the habits. The rewards either satisfy (fulfill craving) or teach us (remember and repeat this action for the future).
You need all four to create a habit loop (never-ending loop):
“Eliminate the cue and your habit will never start. Reduce the craving and you won’t experience enough motivation to act. Make the behavior difficult and you won’t be able to do it.
And if the reward fails to satisfy your desire, then you’ll have no reason to do it again in the future. Without the first three steps, a behavior will not occur. Without all four, a behavior will not be repeated.”
The system for creating good habits has four laws (components) to it:
- Make the Cue obvious
- Make the Craving attractive
- Make the Response easy
- Make the Reward satisfying
The inverse laws apply if we want to get rid of bad habits:
- Make the Cue invisible
- Make the Craving unattractive
- Make the Response difficult
- Make the Reward unsatisfying
Introduction – My Story
We meet our author through his personal story and a life-changing event – a baseball accident. He emphasizes how important it was for his mental recovery to bring order into his life through habits. The author explains his background in understanding habits and the impact they have. It’s not the significant, instant changes that provide long-term results; it’s the stacking of small habits over long periods.
Part One: The Fundamentals – Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference
Chapter One – The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits
Clear start chapter one by giving us the story of the success of the British Cycling Team. This team had a hard time having meaningful results over the years.
When they changed their coach, they managed to change their outcomes. This coach had a strategy called “the aggregation of marginal gains,” which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do.
From 2007 to 2017, British cyclists won 178 world championships and sixty-six Olympic or Paralympic gold medals and captured five Tour de France victories.
The impact of minor improvements accumulates into significant results.
Our author continues this chapter by highlighting how we often underestimate small lifestyle improvements. Doing one percent more or one percent less, in the long run, means much more than we believe. The author showcases this with a simple formula:
1% worse every day for one year: 0.99365 = 0.03
1% better every day for one year: 1.01365 = 37.78
You get what you repeat. Compounding is important in every aspect of our life, both positive and negative.
Our habits can compound for us or against us. When aspiring for a result, like losing weight, growing our business, etc., we tend to focus on the end goal rather than our path to achieving it. These changes we aspire to accomplish take patience and persistence.
This is why our author suggests focusing on the system, and the result will take care of itself. This is where atomic habits come in as a system we create for ourselves through small and stable improvements.
Chapter Two – How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)
In chapter two, the author suggests we often try to change the wrong thing when trying to change a habit. Additionally, we try to change our habits in the wrong way. Understanding the three layers of behavior change helps with this problem.
These layers are outcome change, process change, and identity change. A better (and rarer) way to change habits is through changing our identity; this means the change should start from identity rather than from outcome.
If we start the change through identity, we will likely stick with it in the long run. You might start a habit because of motivation. Still, you’ll only stick with one because it becomes a part of your identity.
What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are – either consciously or unconsciously.
Becoming the version of yourself you aspire to requires editing your beliefs, unlearning bad habits, and therefore expanding your identity.
Chapter Three – How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps
Habits are automatic. They represent a useful behavior repeated enough times to become automatic. They unconsciously make up at least 50% of our daily actions.
Forming a habit happens every time we are put in a new situation to solve. This is its primary purpose – problem-solving. Building a habit in the present allows you to do more of what you want in the future. That is why it’s important to know how to build a habit.
The author helps us understand the backbone of every habit through the four-step pattern our brain makes: cue, craving, response, and reward.
It will not become a habit if behavior is insufficient in any of the four stages. At the end of part one, the author introduces us to the four laws of behavior change we will examine in detail through the upcoming parts of the book. The four laws of behavior change are:
1. Make it obvious,
2. Make it attractive,
3. Make it easy,
4. Make it satisfying.
Each one of them is explained through the upcoming parts and chapters.
Part Two: The 1st Law – Make it Obvious
Chapter Four – The Man who Didn’t Look Right
In chapter four, we get an insight into how much we don’t know what we know. Confusing at first – however, we aren’t aware of the processes our brain goes through to make a conclusion or solve a problem.
This is an interesting insight into our habits – we don’t need to be aware of the cue for a habit to begin.
We can notice an opportunity and take action without thinking about it. This is what makes habits both useful and dangerous. It is important to include activating our awareness in the process of habit-building.
Before we can build new ones, we need to understand our current habits. Developing one skill, such as self-awareness, can make it easier for us to develop multiple new habits.
Many of our failures in performance are largely attributed to a lack of self-awareness.
The author suggests making a Habit scorecard by listing down all of our daily habits and evaluating them as positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the goal we are currently working on. A habit is positive or negative, depending on the context of our goals.
There are no good or bad habits – only effective habits. The Habit scorecard is a simple exercise that may help with a question: “Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be?”
Chapter Five – The Best Way to Start a New Habit
Chapter Five focuses on making the habit obvious. Implementation intentions are a product of two crucial habit-making cues: time and location.
The format for creating an implementation intention is: “When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.” Numerous studies have proven this: people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through.
Once the implementation intention has been set, you don’t need to wait for inspiration. The simple way to apply this strategy to your habits is to fill out this sentence: I will (BEHAVIOR) at (TIME) in (LOCATION).
For instance – I will exercise for one hour at 5 p.m. in my local gym. The goal is to make the time and location so obvious that, with enough repetition, you get the urge to do the right thing at the right time.
One of the highlighted ways of implementation intention is habit stacking. Habit stacking is a strategy to par a new habit with a current one. Our actions are connected. This can be used to our advantage when building new habits. The habit stacking formula is:
“After (CURRENT HABIT), I will (NEW HABIT).”
Example: After I take off my work shoes, I will immediately change into my workout clothes.
The key is to connect the desired habit to the one you already do each day. It’s important to connect the desired habit with the right current one, considering elements like the frequency of both habits, etc.
Chapter Six – Motivation is Overrated: Environment Often Matters More
Through chapter six, we learn that the habit solely isn’t enough for a desired outcome – it’s the context (or environment) we put it in. Motivation and willpower might not be enough if our environment is designed to work against our desired habits.
By understanding how our environment affects our everyday choices, we can turn it into our advantage. By putting cues for our desired habits in our environment, the environment becomes a cue for us.
For instance: if you want to practice your guitar more frequently, place your guitar stand in the middle of the living room.
Our behavior is not defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them. When making our environment our cue for a desired habit, we should stop thinking about it as filled with objects.
We should start thinking about our environment as filled with relationships. Additionally, habits can be easier to change in a new environment.
Our current environment is already filled up with cues for various habits. This is why adjusting our brains to our desired lifestyle in the same environment can be hard. If you can’t move to an entirely new environment, redefine or rearrange your current one.
The author suggests his mantra, “One space, one use.” This is a good tactic for not mixing-up cues by placing specific cues for a specific habit in a space solely intended for it.
Chapter Seven: The Secret to Self-control
In chapter seven, we get to see the application of inverting the 1st law – Make it invisible. Avoiding an environment already set to trigger our cues for an unwanted habit makes it easier to stop it.
Once the habit has been encoded, the urge to act follows whenever environmental cues reappear.
In the short-run, the practical way to avoid a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it. This is why instead of making it obvious, make the negative cues invisible.
Part Three: The 2nd Law – Make it Attractive
Chapter Eight – How to Make a Habit Irresistible
In chapter eight, the author explains how the 2nd law of habit forming – making it attractive, positively influences our habit creation. Our society evolved quickly, making our world far different from the one our ancestors developed.
We are surrounded by exaggerated qualities of what we are generally attracted to through social media, marketing, porn, etc. We have the brains of our ancestors, but temptations they never had to face. Our goal is to learn how to make our habits irresistible.
Dopamine is a big factor in why a habit may be attractive or not to us. Our brains are dopamine reliant on forming a desire to act.
The key is: dopamine is released not only when we experience pleasure but also when we anticipate it. It’s the anticipation of a reward – not the fulfillment of it – that gets us to take action.
We need to make our habits attractive to us. One way to do so is through temptation building. Temptation building works by linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
This is where we get the habit stacking formula enhanced by temptation building:
1. After (CURRENT HABIT), I will (HABIT I NEED).
2. After (HABIT I NEED), I will (HABIT I WANT).
For instance:
1. After I pull out my phone, I will do ten burpees (need),
2. After I do ten burpees, I will check my social media (want).
Chapter Nine – The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping your Habits
As a result of our desire to fit in – we imitate the habits of our environment from an early age. This is due to humans’ urge to fit in. The culture we live in determines which behaviors are attractive to us. Behaviors are attractive when they help us fit in.
Imitating the close: It’s most effective to join a culture where our desired behavior is normal. To do this, it’s suggested that you already have something in common with the given group.
Imitating the many: When we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide us. This can have negative consequences, as the normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual.
Humans want to get along with others, which can benefit them but also slow them down. It’s important to be aware of the influence our environment has on us and on the version of us we aspire to become.
Imitating the powerful: We are drawn to behaviors that earn us respect, approval, admiration, and status. Once we fit in, we start looking for ways to stand out. We are motivated to avoid behaviors that lower our status.
Chapter Ten – How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits
Chapter ten provides us with the use of the inverted 2nd law – make it unattractive. The author provides the context of cravings with the formation of our habits.
A craving is just a specific manifestation of a deeper underlying motive. The habits we use are a path to our desired outcome, whether it is using Tinder to find a date, searching on Google to reduce uncertainty, etc.
Our current habits are usually not the best way to get to the desired outcome. They are simply the way we are familiar with them. The solution we’ve associated with our problems.
Habits form after we repeatedly use them as a solution for the same problem. At some point, we tend to predict the rise of the given problem and use our habits to prevent it.
Out behavior heavily depends on these predictions, especially how we interpret the events that happen to us. These predictions lead to cravings, desires, urges, etc.
We then use these elements in order to act with a certain habit that solves them. This makes habits attractive – they solve our problems and create a positive experience.
We can make hard habits more attractive if we associate them with a positive experience.
A simple way to do so is changing the phrase “I have to” to “I get to.” Creating a motivation ritual by doing something we enjoy right before a difficult habit makes it more attractive.
Part Four: The 3rd Law – Make it Easy
Chapter Eleven: Walk Slowly, but Never Backwards
Chapter eleven is the introduction to the 3rd Law – Make it Easy. The author introduces us to the difference between being in motion and taking action.
Being in motion suggests planning, strategizing, and learning about the desired outcome. Taking action is the behavior that delivers the outcome.
Motion is useful, but it doesn’t produce the outcome by itself. By focusing on action, we practice the habit rather than plan it. The key to mastering a habit is repetition.
How long does it actually take to form a new habit? Habit formation progresses with repetition. The more we repeat an activity, the more our brain gets used to it.
That’s what makes repetition a form of change. The right question people should be asking is, “How much does it take to form a new habit?”
Chapter Twelve: The Law of Least Effort
Human behavior follows the Law of Least Effort. We will naturally gravitate toward the option requiring the least work.
We don’t actually want the habit itself – we want the outcome it delivers. That’s why we tend to gravitate toward the easier one when we get two choices. We choose the option with less friction.
Friction represents all the little parts of the path to achieving our goal. Rather than trying to overcome friction in these actions, we can simply try to reduce it: make the habits fit in the flow of your life.
For instance, choosing a gym that’s on our way from work to home is the one with the least friction. We adjust this habit by not making it “out of our way” and fitting it into our lifestyle.
When we remove the points of friction that sap our time and energy, we achieve more with less effort. Successful companies design their product to automate, eliminate, or simplify as many steps as possible.
The central idea of this chapter is to create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. Increase the friction associated with bad behaviors and lower the friction associated with positive behaviors.
Chapter Thirteen: How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule
The two-minute rule is a way to make sure the action is taken and overpower procrastination. When starting a new habit, performing shouldn’t take longer than two minutes.
The initial two minutes of the habit mentally motivate us enough to start the process. When we start the process, it’s easier to finish it. The key here is to make small decisions that will eventually impact the outcome for the better.
The author calls these small choices – decisive moments.
Decisive moments set the options available for our future selves. They are the entry point of the outcome as a whole.
By making a positive direction in our decisive moment, even if it’s for two minutes, it will eventually influence the whole outcome positively. For instance, when we are not eager to start reading a book – it’s much easier to start reading it if we say to ourselves, it will only take two minutes – or one page.
After we complete the one page, it is easier to continue with the second, third, etc.
The key is to start the desired habit, and the desired result will follow. This is a way to make the habit not feel like a challenge. It’s a challenge to read 50 pages a day, but it’s only a small task to read one.
If we do this daily, the completed task will accumulate, and the result will follow. The key is to master the habit of showing up to it.
Make it easy to start, and the rest will follow. The author suggests that the secret is always staying below the point where it feels like work.
Chapter Fourteen: How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible
As the conclusion of the 3rd law, the author provides us with its inversion – making it difficult. It’s important to make bad habits difficult in order to stop doing them. This is where the author introduces us to commitment devices.
Commitment devices are intentional actions we take to make it more difficult to engage in undesirable behaviors.
There are many ways to create a commitment device. For instance, placing fruit instead of candies in the middle of your kitchen.
Commitment devices are useful because they enable us to take advantage of good intentions before we can fall victim to temptation.
The key is to make the bad habit impractical to do. In the word of our author: After I removed the mental candy from my environment, it became much easier to eat healthy stuff.
Part Five: The 4th Law – Make it Satisfying
Chapter Fifteen – The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change
Chapter fifteen introduces us to the fourth and final law – making it satisfying. The key is: we are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is enjoyable.
Pleasure teaches your brain that behavior is worth remembering and repeating. Positive emotions cultivate habits. Negative emotions destroy them.
The fourth law of behavior change – making it satisfying increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time. It completes the habit loop.
There is a catch with the human mind – it seeks immediate satisfaction. Dopamine, as we described it previously. Due to seeking immediate satisfaction, the human brain tends to navigate towards immediate-reward actions.
The problem is the world today, unlike the one our ancestors lived in, is in a delayed rewards system.
We do not instantly see the result of our hard work. It gets tricky, especially taking in the following: With our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad.
We like to delay the negative outcome and enjoy the immediate satisfaction of a candy, TV show, or sleeping-in. In contrast to positive habits – the cost of them comes immediately – we switch the candy to an apple, we don’t watch our TV show to finish our work, and we get up to work out instead of sleeping in.
This is where we trick ourselves to gain instant satisfaction rather than the delayed one.
As a general rule – the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.
We need to make our non-enjoyable habits enjoyable and be grateful for every accomplished task. Immediate reinforcement helps us maintain motivation in the short term while we wait for the long-term rewards to arrive.
Chapter Sixteen – How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day
One of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of making progress. This is why our author introduces us to the concept of tracking our habits.
When we track our progress, even if it’s simple as putting a small X on our calendar every day, it brings us satisfaction and the urge not to break the chain.
Habit tracking is powerful because it leverages multiple Laws of Behavior Change. It makes it obvious, attractive, and satisfying at the same time.
Habit tracking keeps us honest and fixes our distorted view of how good or bad we are actually doing.
When we have the evidence in front of us, we’re less likely to lie to ourselves. Furthermore, by tracking the progress, we get a motivation boost. This makes the habit itself satisfying.
Tracking becomes the reward itself, which helps us stay on track with our pushing habits.
Even when on a streak, it’s possible to break down. Life can interrupt us very easily.
The author has a simple rule for this: never miss twice. Missing one is an accident. Missing twice is a start of a new habit. Getting back on track is important for the progress not to fade away.
Chapter Seventeen – How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything
At the end of the fifth part of the book, the author introduces us to the inverted version of the 4th and final rule – making it unsatisfying.
Just as we are likely to repeat an experience when the ending is satisfying, we are also more likely to avoid an experience when the ending is painful.
The author suggests having an accountability partner that tracks our progress and calls out on us whenever we are inconsistent with our desired behavior.
We care deeply about what others think of us and do not want them to have a lesser opinion about us. If we know we are being tracked or even agree on a punishment if we are not on track – we will likely be much more motivated to follow through.
Part Six: Advanced Tactics
Chapter Eighteen – The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don’t)
Through chapter eighteen, our author explains how our predispositions and personality affect the habits we are good or not good at.
When it comes to personality, the most proven scientific analysis is personality traits known as the “Big Five,” which breaks them down into five spectrums of behavior: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
Combined, they set the ground for our personality and what emerges from it.
It’s important to build habits that suit us, not those we see everyone else building. Habits need to be enjoyable if they are going to stick.
Furthermore, the author provides us with a set of questions to ask ourselves in order to narrow down the habits and areas that will be the most satisfying for us:
1. What feels like fun to me but work to others?
2. What makes me lose track of time?
3. Where do I get greater returns than the average person?
4. What comes naturally to me?
It’s more productive to focus on whether we are fulfilling our own potential than comparing ourselves to someone else.
Chapter Nineteen – The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work
The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities.
The human brain loves a challenge, but only if it’s in the optimal zone of difficulty. This means that after we establish a habit, we should continue to build up on it at a slow pace. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.
Scientists found that a task must be roughly 5 percent beyond our current ability to achieve a state of flow. Working on challenges of just manageable difficulty seems crucial for maintaining motivation.
This is why it’s boredom that is a bigger threat to our success rather than failure. This is why amateurs get bored and stop afterward. Professionals keep going even when the habit stops being exciting.
Chapter Twenty – The Downside of Creating Good Habits
The downside of habits is that you get used to doing things a certain way and stop paying attention to little errors. We can’t repeat the same things blindly and expect to become exceptional.
Alongside habits, we need deliberate practice to achieve mastery. When mastering a habit, we should add to it to unlock the next level of performance.
Repeating this cycle and aspiring to become at least 1% better, rather than static, provides big results in the long run. This is where self-reflection kicks in.
Whenever we form a habit, we shouldn’t consider it our whole identity. We should consider it a part of us that can shape, shift, and adjust to our future needs.
Connecting a habit to an identity and being demotivated if something affects it is easy.
We should always strive to improve and “keep our identity small” to make room for upcoming big things in life.
Conclusion: The Secret to Results That Last
At the end of our book, the author leaves us with key takeaways:
Each improvement is like adding a grain of sand on the positive side of the scale, slowly tilting things in your favor. The overall system will work on our behalf if we stick with it.
Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve and an endless process to refine. We should focus on the path itself, and the result will come.
The secret to getting results that last is never to stop making improvements. Our efforts and improvements compound and overall, greatly impact our lives slowly.
Most important keywords, sentences, quotes:
Introduction – My story
- “While my peers stayed up late and played video games, I built good sleep and went to bed early each night. In the messy world of a college dorm, I made a point to keep my room neat and tidy. These improvements were minor, but they gave me a sense of control over my life”.
- “A habit is a routine or behavior that is performed regularly – and in many cases, automatically. As each semester passed, I accumulated small but consistent habits that ultimately led to results that were unimaginable to me when I started”.
Part One: The Fundamentals – Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference
Chapter One – The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits
- The aggregation of marginal gains – the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin improvement in everything you do.
- “Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, writing a book, winning a championship, or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about.”
- “If you get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get one percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero.”
- “You get what you repeat.”
- “Mastery requires patience.”
- “We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results.”
Chapter Two – How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)
- “Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.”
- “Behind every system of actions are a system of beliefs.”
- “You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes a part of your identity.”
- What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are – either consciously or unconsciously.”
- “Progress requires unlearning.”
Chapter Three – How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps
- “With practice, the useless movements fade away and the useful actions get reinforced. That’s a habit forming.”
- “Your habits are just a series of automatic solutions that solve the problems and stresses your face regularly.”
- “Habits reduce cognitive load and free up menta capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks.”
- “Building habits in the present allows you to do more of what you want in the future.”
- “Every craving is linked to a desire to change your internal state.”
- “The purpose of every habit is to solve the problems you face.”
Part Two – The 1st Law – Make it Obvious
Chapter Four – The Man Who Didn’t Look Right
- “You don’t need to be aware of the cue for a habit to begin. You can notice an opportunity and take action without dedicating conscious attention to it. This is what makes habits useful. It’s also what makes them dangerous.”
- “Many of our failures in performance are largely attributed to a lack of self-awareness.”
Chapter Five – The Best Way to Start a New Habit
- “People who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through.”
- “When it comes to building new habits, you can use the connectedness of behavior to your advantage. One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking.”
Chapter Six – Motivation is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More
- “We mentally assign our habits to the locations in which they occur: the home, the office, the gym. Each location develops a connection to certain habits and routines.”
- “Habits can be easier to change in a new environment.”
Chapter Seven – The Secret to Self-Control
- “Once a habit has been encoded, the urge to act follows whenever the environmental cues reappear.”
- “In the short-run, you can choose to overpower temptation. In the long-run, we become a product of the environment that we live in.”
Part Three: The Second Law – Make it Attractive
Chapter Eight – How to Make a Habit Irresistible
- “The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.”
- “We need to make our habits attractive because it is the expectation of a rewarding experience that motivates us to act in the first place.”
Chapter Nine – The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits
- “We don’t choose our earliest habits, we imitate them. We follow the script handed down by our friends and family, our church or school, our local community and society at large.”
- “Behaviors are attractive when they help us fit in.”
- “One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.”
Chapter Ten – How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits
- “Your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face; they are just the methods you learned to use.”
- “Our behavior is heavily dependent on how we interpret the events that happen to us, not necessarily the objective reality of the events themselves.”
- “Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings, and we can use this insight to our advantage rather than our detriment.”
Part Four: The 3rd Law – Make it Easy
Chapter Eleven – Walk Slowly, but Never Backward
- “If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection. You don’t need to map out every feature of a new habit. You just need to practice it.”
- “Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition.”
Chapter Twelve – The Law of Least Effort
- “It’s human nature to follow the Law of Least Effort, which states that when deciding between two similar options, people will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.”
- “Habits are easier to build when they fit into the flow of your life.”
- “Successful companies design their products to automate, eliminate, or simplify as many steps as possible.”
Chapter Thirteen – How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule
- “A habit can be completed in just a few seconds, but it can also shape the actions that take you for minutes or hours afterwards.”
- “Two-Minute Rule states, ‘When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do’.”
- “A new habit should not feel like a challenge.”
- “Make it easy to start and the rest will follow.”
Chapter Fourteen – How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible
- “The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do.”
Part Five: The 4th Law – Make it Satisfying
Chapter Fifteen – The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change
- “Pleasure teaches your brain that a behavior is work remembering and repeating.”
- “With our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. With good habits, it is the reverse: the immediate outcome is unenjoyable, but the ultimate outcome feels good.”
- “As a general rule, the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.”
Chapter Sixteen – How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day
- “Habit tracking keeps you honest. Most of us have a distorted view of our own behavior. We think we act better than we do.”
- “Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.”
- “Going to the gym for five minutes a day may not improve your performance, but it reaffirms your identity.”
Chapter Seventeen – How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything
- “Just as we are more likely to repeat an experience when the ending is satisfying, we are also more likely to avoid an experience when the ending is painful.”
- “To make bad habits unsatisfying, your best option is to make them painful in the moment.”
Part Six: Advanced Tactics – How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great
Chapter Eighteen – The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don’t)
- “You don’t have to build the habits everyone tells you to build.
- Choose the habit that best suits you, not the one that is most popular.”
- “Habits need to be enjoyable if they are going to stick.”
- “It’s more productive to focus on whether you’re fulfilling your own potential than comparing yourself to someone else.”
Chapter Nineteen – The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work
- “The human brain loves a challenge, but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty.”
- “The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.”
- “The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.”
- “Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.”
Chapter Twenty – The Downside of Creating Good Habits
- “The downside of habits is that you get used to doing things a certain way and stop paying attention to little errors.”
- “You can’t repeat the same things blindly and expect to become exceptional. Habits are necessary, but not sufficient for mastery.”
- “Although habits are powerful, what you need is a way to remain conscious of your performance over time, so you can continue to refine and improve.”
Conclusion
- “The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1 percent improvement, but a thousand of them. It’s a bunch of atomic habits stacking up, each one a fundamental unit of the overall system.”
- “The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements.”
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Book Review (Personal Opinion):
It’s an incredible book, simple in its design and structure, but effective. The stories and real-life examples put the book into an “operations manual” instead of an “armchair philosophy” type of book. You can take the fairly simple system and implement it two-ways: creating good habits and eliminating bad habits.
This book is for (recommend):
- A 20-year-old student wanting to learn how to succeed in the real world
- A 50-year-old busy salesman figuring out how to change elements of their life without making major shifts
- A 40-year-old woman struggling to lead a healthy life
If you want to learn more
Here’s a video of James Clear talking about becoming 1% better every day at a ConvertKit conference.
1% Better Every Day – James Clear
How I’ve implemented the ideas from the book
I implemented quite a lot from this book, but my favorite thing was eliminating some of my bad habits from the environment. I don’t have a TV in my apartment and I’m not planning to buy one.
I realized that I used to sit on a couch and just watch TV in an automated mode. But if I don’t have a TV, I can do something productive instead. So I read books or write articles instead of watching Friends for the 8th time.
One small actionable step you can do
Start a habit using the two-minute rule: Implement a habit that only takes two minutes to do. Some examples might be:
- Walk for two minutes
- Learn a new language for two minutes
- Exercise for two minutes
- Read a book for two minutes
Get Atomic Habits on Amazon