Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

All too often the advice given to people is of the order: ‘To a depressed person – “Just Cheer Up”.’ Or perhaps to a person trying to lose weight, “Eat less and move more”. While ultimately correct, has no real benefit to the person hearing or reading the advice.

Atomic Habits is exactly the opposite. It provides many different ways to create those habits within you. When I bought the book about this time last year, it was supposed to be a Christmas present to myself – one gift among the clutter (isn’t that the correct collective noun for Christmas gifts?) just to surprise everyone else, i.e. Santa does make deliveries to adults. Anyway . . .

I opened the book during the holidays and could not find that lump of time to read it. Skimming through the book I got one essential point. Reading a book in one lump might not work so well for people, but could you find 15 minutes every morning to do this? At this moment in time, that made all the sense in the world to me. I simply can not find the time to read the book in a lump or two. This is actually something that has worked against me for years. It has limited my progress and my development for the past decade. I do read quickly and on occasion will find that lump of time, but nothing like the 15 minutes every morning. That 15 minutes is the time it takes to boil water for my pour-over coffee maker. I do cheat a little here because I could get my coffee in about 11 or 12 minutes, but let’s run with this habit creation.

Starting January 2, 2023, the book was completed by the end of the month. Doing the mathematics on this, I found 29 days with 1/4 of an hour each day. This works out to over 7 hours of reading. That was my first read, and I shared this with a friend. We work together on a political executive. Like the “Walking Dead”, he changed too. Looking at people who have not read or acquired the skills of Atomic Habits, is much like seeing a person from Mars with two heads. There is an oddity to blaming the lack of time.

Everyone reading this book will from the same common point develop their own habits, and develop along their own path, but it will not be for lack of time. Realize what I said, you will never be able to say that there is insufficient time.

Here is another example of what happened to me during the past year. I drive 33 minutes to see a dear friend. I treasure the time we have discussing things for he generates ideas and helps me generate those ideas. He does not really know how very important he is to me. But, I then need to drive 33 minutes back. In that hour, I listen to an Audible title – it is a new habit. My obvious caveat here is that the route I take is rather mundane and there are few traffic lights and the posted speeds are not that fast. It is a pleasant drive and now a productive one.

So, keeping up with these two habits, let’s see how much reading I get done now?

Waiting for coffee time: 0.25 hours x 365 = 91 hours of reading!
Driving to my buddy’s 60 minutes x 50 = 50 hours or reading !!
The total amount of reading is now 140 hours of reading in one year. Just those two atomic habits, and on average that could mean 28 books per year if I need 5 hours per book, but only 14 books if I read at the other end of average which is 10 hours per book. On average, a good approximate FOR YOU MIGHT be 7.5 hours per book and therefore 21 books per year.

If you have read my review this far, congratulations! You have exactly what it takes to master this one Atomic Habit and become a much better (I don’t mean moral) person. Buy the book! Read it in manageable chunks as I suggested. Get Audible (no! I do not work for Amazon) to find those times when you have wasted chunks of time.

Buy the book and make a positive difference in yourself. Let that difference infect others (there is that Walking Dead theme again) and together make a difference in your lives and your world.

Leo Oja, M.Ed.

I have not read the whole thing yet and only read the first few pages, despite that, I still found some information to be useful! Plus, it is not famous for no reason.

I’ve read a lot of books on changing behavior and building habits and James Clear’s Atomic Habits is my new favorite. This book is different from others in the way it covers an enormous amount of ground in the larger area of self-improvement while seamlessly tying all these ideas back into the central theme of habits.

One of the core concepts in Atomic Habits is to focus on the small improvement. The impact a 1% improvement per day can make may appear negligible at first, but Clear makes a compelling argument that in the case of habits, thinking small produces the biggest results over time. “Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement,” explains Clear.

Over the months and years, the accumulated effect of small habitual daily behaviors is staggering. Early in the book we are also warned that this compounding works both ways, so we’d better make sure we’re making it work in the positive direction, not for the negative.

This is a concept I was introduced to years ago under a different name – Kaizen – the Japanese term for continuous incremental improvement. What’s different and new in this book is how the concept is applied specifically to building habits.

I found the information introduced in chapter two about behavior change at the identity level to be spot-on. You’re also given a simple two-step process for changing your identity and this one idea alone is incredibly powerful.

In chapter three, we are introduced to the habit loop – cue, craving, response, reward – and we learn how to build good habits in 4 simple steps and break bad habits in 4 simple steps.

One of those steps to habit formation, which goes hand in hand with the 1% concept, is how to make it not only small, but easy. In the chapters that follow, this is exactly what you find out.

Other ideas of great value that stood out included, habit stacking (the best way to form a new habit), habit tracking, habit shaping and how to design your environment – physical and social – for habit building success. You learn the truth about self-control, how to stop procrastinating and how to use implementation intentions, temptation bundling and motivational rituals. The book is simply packed with actionable ideas, tactics and strategies.

Virtually every idea in the book is useful and resonated with me. While I may not agree that we should “forget about goals,” I agree with one of Clear’s core principles in the book – that we must develop systems for change. If we only focus on goals and don’t develop systems and a focus on the process, we risk falling into a number of goal-related traps which ultimately lead to stagnation. With the right systems, we’re rewarded with continuous improvement on a lifelong journey of success.

Another difference between Atomic Habits and other books in this genre is that while it’s based on science it doesn’t bog you down with unnecessary details of the research. Clear’s book is intensely practical, giving you a huge toolkit of organized and named strategies you can apply immediately to create and strengthen positive habits and stop the negative ones.

The book is conversational, and includes many interesting stories, making it easy to read – and hard to put down (I read it cover to cover in one day).

It’s possible this might become your most highlighted personal improvement book because every page is so chocked full of memorable and quotable gems of advice.

Gründlich recherchiert, gut strukturiert und sehr ausführlich beschrieben.
Mit Abstand das beste Buch zu diesem Thema, das ich gelesen habe.