Atomic Habits by James Clear – Book Summary

First published: January 12, 2023 @ 2:54 pm

Have you ever wondered what makes some people so successful, while others seem to flounder? If you’re thinking of starting your own business, building atomic habits is a key part of the puzzle.

James Clear‘s Atomic Habits is the definitive guide to creating successful habits. He covers the science of habit formation, how to create powerful incentives, and how to stick to your goals.

What are Habits?

Each of our habits is built on the four basic components that are described in this book:

• A cue – which signals to us, as we are about to do something different, to act on a cue.
• A craving – which is a strong desire when we try to respond to a cue, to avoid or to reach.
• A response – which increases the chance of us having the reward we desire.
• A reward – which satisfies the need and reinforce the cue.

When we try and experiment with new modern behaviors, we become more and more likely to do the ones that enable us to get the reward that we want, and this is especially true when we are in a time of need.

When we repeatedly respond to something that is cued, we become familiar with it. We do what we do automatically when current situation is presented.

Why Is Habit Building Important?

Changes in how we think affect the way we behave. Beliefs are like an expensive secret. When we decide to do something, we become something different. What we believe affects how we act. We behave as if we’ve always been this way.

But changing your beliefs requires you to prove that you are really changing your behaviour. And in order to show that you have changed your identity-based habits, you need to act a lot.

But if you consistently decide to do something, it will take a long time to become a success. Adding one more actual habit to your life could cause your behaviour to drastically shift and result in very different outcomes.

Some are obsessed with achieving goals; they ignore the systemic things that are much bigger than their goals. Goal setting is something that winners and losers share.

Goals create some momentous changes, but in the long term, goals will help us to get the results that we need. Habit stacking allows you to make small changes over a period of time.

It is as though being consistent with the same routines each day will help you to keep getting better. What little actions you take today will change your life dramatically and help you to have many successful years.

A rule: 1% improvements on daily habits in behavior means 37x more effective days in a year.

What Are Some Examples of Good Habits?

• Eating healthy, cooking well, simple exercise actions, taking medication, drinking enough water, and retiring early.
• Meditation, journaling, relaxing.
• Giving thank you notes.
• Practise a special skill (drawing, playing musical instrument).
• Declutter, get up early to do things and spend less money.
  Save money.

What Are Some Examples of Bad Habits?

• Eat too much food, smoke, bad workout.
• Stress, thinking negatively, becoming angry.
• Watch too many programmes on TV, play too many video games, procrastinate.
• Overworking.
• Overspending.

Which Habits Should I Build?

Because of your own future actions and your own motivation rituals, whatever business or work opportunity comes your way, success will happen. You are who you are, and you love what you do. Don’t try to change that central idea. You have your own unique gift. So don’t try to force anything. Just do what you enjoy doing.

Give up your need to constantly search for effective habits that will allow you to be more successful. Instead, ask yourself some common questions:

“What is fun?”
“What drives me to lose track of time?”
“What really interests me?”
“What seems easy to me?”

You will find daily habits and approaches that are more enjoyable and productive. They will be more in line with who you are and what you enjoy doing.

You will have to do the work and resist bad temptation bundling, but you will be more successful because of what you do. However, the more you can make it easy to develop difficult habits, the more successful you will become.

How Long Does It Take To Build a New Habit?

Every human behavior is unique, but all habits depend on gradually developing associations that give reward for doing what you want to do.

It takes 1 or even 10,000 repetitions to make a positive habit, but certain behaviours become automatic after a few repetitions. It is important to be:

• Easy – They are easy to learn and to repeatedly do.
• Connectease – They are easy to see immediately that a reward is associated with some type of behaviour or action.
• Strongly emotional – They can promise you huge rewards.

How to Make Taking Action Easy

The easiest way to get started is to just start. Do not be obsessed with planning or perfectionism. Start small and focus on winning first.

If doing something that’s easy, do it immediately. Then focus on building on the good behaviour you’ve already won. Engineer the disciplined environment of your home and workplace to enable you to easily engage in healthy habit loops.

It’s easy to begin by identifying and undertaking everyday actions to perform daily habits. This list can help you plan and manage your time well, and to easily monitor how well you are doing.

Schedule behaviours so that they are easy to perform at times and places that are easy to fit in with regular activities. Organising your current habits now will enable you to plan the behaviours that will be beneficial.

“Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.”

– James Clear, Atomic Habits

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