Today I’m giving you a book review about Atomic Habits by James Clear. I wasn’t always a fan of personal development books. They seemed to only contain obvious information to me. In recent years, however, I’ve become a big fan of the genre and have learned to take the information I can use and forget about the information that doesn’t apply. I can typically take something from just about every personal development book I read. Sometimes even the books that aren’t great still contain obvious tidbits that are helpful reminders.
A Little About the Author
The book first discusses James Clear’s background. He was a baseball player who got hit in the face with a bat in his sophomore year of high school. He ended up having a broken nose, multiple skull fractures, and shattered eye sockets. Now his story is longer and more intense than this, but the idea is that he did get back into baseball, but because he wasn’t starting on the college baseball team, he focused more on his habits that would help him excel in other areas and have control over his life.
The 4 Laws of Habits
This book focuses on the four laws about creating habits:
Make it Obvious
The author suggests tracking your habits (all of them, including the small things that you don’t even think about like taking a shower or brushing your teeth) so that you can then focus on integrating your new habits naturally within your daily routine.
For example, if I want to create a habit of drinking a big glass of water in the morning, I might have a glass of water sitting by my bed. I already have the habit of checking my inbox and scrolling social media between my first and second alarms, so I can drink my water while I’m relaxing in bed for a few more minutes.
Make it Attractive
Make the new habit more attractive by linking an action you want to make a habit with something you need to do. This can even be combined with the habit stacking tactic from the “Make it Obvious” section, where you take the habit you already have, add in the habit you need to acquire, then perform the habit you want after you finish the habit you are trying to solidify into your routine.
Habits that are attractive are more likely to be done. So, if I want to make exercise a habit, but I want to watch the newest episode of my favorite show, I might combine the two so that I can only watch the episode at the gym while I’m running.
Make it Easy
The idea here is that the more you practice something, the more likely it is to become a habit. As the author says, it may not be so much a question of how many days it takes to form a habit as much as how many times you perform the action.
In order for you to put the reps in and perform the new habit several times, it needs to be something very small and doable. It should be something you can build off of, but something that is ridiculously easy to do.
Clear uses the example of wanting to do pushups each day. You probably can’t do that many right now, and you would have a hard time keeping up the momentum when you’re sore and less excited than you were when you first started. However, one pushup is relatively easy (or certainly more doable!). Start there, and build your way up after you’re already in the habit of the action itself.
Make it Satisfying
As the author states, we are more likely to perform an action or behavior if the experience is satisfying. An example he gives is toothpaste with added flavor selling more because it makes the experience of brushing your teeth more enjoyable and customers enjoy the “clean mouth” feeling afterward. I know that there are specific types of toothpaste that I don’t want to buy because I don’t like the texture of the paste.
Focus on habits that offer immediate rewards. If I want to save money, I should open a savings account or line on the budget for something specific. For example, my husband and I are focusing on paying off our car. Every time we look at the budget and can focus on spending less money on eating out, we immediately put that money that we would have put in the eating out category toward the car payment. When we pass by Dairy Queen and I want a blizzard, we just have to think about how good it feels to make a car payment that is above our minimum balance due.
Final Thoughts
So what were my thoughts on the book? I thought the book was a phenomenal read that gave practical and easy to implement techniques to building new habits. It felt similar to High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard (one of my favorite personal development books!) in that it was straightforward and very clear. The book was both easy to read and listen to (I got the audiobook from my library) and the chapter summaries are incredibly useful to go back to. Regardless of where you are in your life, career, personal development journey, I think this book can offer something to everyone. I easily gave this book 5/5 stars for readability and practicality.
Have you read this book? Let me know what habit you would like to implement and how you might be able to use the four laws described in the book to make it part of your everyday life!
