BookLife Review: Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results, by James Clear
non-fiction, self-help, forming and changing habits, simple tips
New Year’s resolutions, anyone? Are you contemplating large or small habits you would like to tackle with the turn of the calendar to 2024? This short book could be your solution. It contains illuminating explanations of how and why we form habits and more importantly simple steps to form new habits or break bad ones.
If you want to make a change to become: a healthier eater, a person who is active, a person who has a daily (or weekly) yoga practice , a person who keeps a journal, a person who reads before bed, a person who is tidy, a person who spends less time watching tv, or scrolling through social media or checking texts or email, read this little book! First, you will believe you can succeed. Then, you will be equipped to make the changes you desire, one tiny, but mighty, step at a time.
Author James Clear explores (and cites in a readily understandable way) the extensive psychological and behavioral research behind how we form habits. He breaks down the habit forming elements (Cue, Craving, Response, Reward-think buzzing of your iphone signaling new message). More importantly, perhaps, he breaks down into manageable steps how we can we can break bad habits and form new ones. He walks the reader through his four steps or “laws” to ensure successfully establishing a new habit.
Make it Obvious
Make it Attractive
Make it Easy
Make it Satisfying
Within each of these sections, Clear gives concrete examples applying these tenets to your life or desired habit. For example, to make your habit obvious, you must make it (or its cues) visible. Put the healthy snack on the eye level shelf. You can also piggyback a desired action onto an established one, giving yourself a ready cue. To make it automatic, take your medication immediately after you brush your teeth every morning; floss immediately after your brush your teeth at night. Similarly, to make a behavior attractive, make it a condition for a habit you enjoy. After I finish my walk, I will take a nice hot bubble bath.
Throughout the book, Clear gives concrete examples of everyday, common behaviors that we can leverage to alter bad habits and form new ones. Many of these are not new concepts, but they are assembled in a manageable, actionable way that uplifts. Understanding the genesis for the habits, and having an achievable action plan to change or establish habits, can lead to consistent change. Small, atomically small even, steps can lead to change. Read this book, and hold on to it. I suspect you will revisit it regularly, because change, and habit-forming, are part of living.