User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
This book does a great job of laying down the framework of how habits are formed, and shares insightful strategies for building good habits and breaking bad ones. Even though I was already familiar with research behind habit formation, reading through this book helped me approach habits I’m trying to adopt or break in my own life from different angles.
But the book suffers from the same problems that seem to plague all self-help books. In the chapter about tracking habits, the author shares an anecdote about Benjamin Franklin’s habit of carrying a journal everywhere to track thirteen virtues. If you care to know more about that story, Franklin tried to make a habit of his thirteen virtues by turning it into a thirteen week course where he would work on a different virtue every week and track his progress. The author conveniently leaves out the fact that Franklin quickly found this method impractical and abandoned the project before getting through all thirteen virtues. There’s a lot of irony in including this anecdote in a chapter that talks about the importance of not “breaking the chain”. So while the author isn’t entirely wrong, I found it off-putting that he would retell this story in a manner that fit his narrative. This is a vice that is found all too commonly in self-help and pop science books that make you question the author’s intellectual rigour.
Another criticism I have of this book is that it could have been even shorter. The last few chapters under “Advanced Tactics” that deal with the topic of mastery were the weakest in the book. While there is an obvious connection between habits and mastery, trying to tie in a topic as complex as mastery was perhaps too ambitious.
The three star rating I am giving this book doesn’t reflect how important I consider habits to be. I completely agree with the author that habits are the cornerstone of your life. If you want to change your life in any meaningful way, the only dependable way I know is to build good habits. If you need convincing that habits are important, I would strongly recommend this book. If you are already convinced but struggling to adopt or break habits, racing through this book will give you some good ideas about how you can make changes stick.
Rating: really liked it
TLDR;
- "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."
- The best way of building a habit is making it part of your identity.
- Make it easy to start: Habits are the entry point - not the goal. "Read 30 books" ⇒ "Read before bed every night" ⇒ "Read one page". Reduce a habit into a 2-minute first step.
- Stick to the plan: "Professionals stick to the schedule, amateurs let life get in the way." Don't be a "fair weather runner" if you want to run a lot.
- Make it hard to do the things you want to avoid.
Most modern "American self-help books for engineers or entrepreneurs" (it is a category for me) are too repetitive and too long. Atomic Habits is not! It does have the category-required set of stories of American (mostly men) who built a great habit and got to the top - but just the right amount.
----- NOTES -----
*Identity*
The three levels of change - the lower the more "fundamental":
3. Outcomes = Your goals
2. Processes = Your system
1. Identity = Who you perceive yourself to be
Make every action is a vote for what kind of person you want to become. Building habits is becoming the version of yourself you want to be. Habits help you to trust yourself.
- Realize that "You don't _have to_ do anything, you _get to_."
- Ask "What would a healthy person do?".
- Ask "What feel like fun to you, but is work to others?"
*Engineer it so that:*
Things you want to achieve vs Things you want to avoid
Obvious —————————————— Invisible
Attractive ————————————Unattractive
Easy ————————————————— Hard
Satisfying ————————————- Satisfying
For example: if you want to watch less TV - keep it unplugged - only plugin if you can say out loud the name of the show you want to watch.
Rating: really liked it
The first great book about habits was the Power of Habit. That book was quite theoretical and difficult to apply. This book, Atomic Habits, has a completely different approach. James Clear focused on writing a book that goes deep into every single step of habit creation from a practical point of view. At the end of the day,
who we are and what we will achieve depends so much on these small habits that we do every day. James Clear argues, that focusing only on improving those habits will lead to much bigger changes and accomplishments.
My top 3 takeaways from this book are:
* Forget about goals,
focus on the system instead.
* Change your identity
to change your habits.
* Motivation is overrated.
Design the environment to support your habits.
From this book, I distilled
21 strategies and principles on habit creation, and also I wrote a detailed book summary that you can read here: https://www.mentorist.app/books/atomi...
Rating: really liked it
Almost everybody can relate. We make lofty goals: I’m going to run a marathon! I’m going to write a book! I’m going to lose weight! After a few weeks of intense effort (if we make it that far), we give up and go back to the way things were.
The only reason that I initially picked up this book was that someone was RAVING about it, and I was extremely skeptical. I honestly thought that this book was just going to be a bunch of rah rah feel good, you can do it, pep talk. However, it had an entire list of actionable steps you can take to help you make progress on your goals.
Little changes can make big differences over time. For example, when I lay out my sheet mask in the morning, I am much more likely to use it at night. This book made me want to write down goals for 2021 or at least start thinking of the things I wanted to make a priority.
If you have tried losing weight or training, I would highly recommend this book. I can definitely see myself reading this once every year—it really is that good!
2022 Reading Schedule
Jan Animal Farm
Feb Lord of the Flies
Mar The Da Vinci Code
Apr Of Mice and Men
May Memoirs of a Geisha
Jun Little Women
Jul The Lovely Bones
Aug Charlotte's Web
Sep Life of Pi
Oct Dracula
Nov Gone with the Wind
Dec The Secret Garden
Connect With Me!Blog Twitter BookTube Facebook Insta
Rating: really liked it
“The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it. If you’re proud of how your hair looks, you’ll develop all sorts of habits to care for and maintain it. If you’re proud of the size of your biceps, you’ll make sure you never skip an upper-body workout. If you’re proud of the scarves you knit, you’ll be more likely to spend hours knitting each week. Once your pride gets involved, you’ll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits.”
What a doozy of a quote. I guess it pays to be a prideful guy.
It's been quite an unlucky year when it comes to personal development. I keep picking up these tired pop-psychology books because of the hype, hoping that I'll at least be entertained but I just end up being disappointed. I should know better by now.
This one was no exception. It's the same superficial, regurgitated information I've been stumbling upon in the productivity blogosphere for the past 10 years. The main flaw of this was the execution: robotic writing, highly repetitive, anecdotes are taken out of context to conveniently prove the author's point, and even some shoddy "science". The main ideas in here are not bad but have already been covered by others, in greater depth, and with more skill (Kelly McGonigal or George Leonard for example). I didn't feel the material present in this required a book it could have easily been condensed into a blog post. There was a lot of fluff added in to have more pages which made me feel many times like I was reading an infomercial for his blog. This is essentially was this was, another platform to enhance his brand and add to his "passive income".
The world really needed to hear another privileged marketer with an A-type personality telling people they can become like him if they follow his 'secret formula'. Based on the way it's written, it caters, especially, to a very specific group of people, the lifestyle-hacker extraordinaire -
Tim Ferris wanna-bes.
P.S. I've met several people who adored this book and swore it changed their life only to find out years later that they did not in fact stick to any new habits they picked up after reading this book. What a surprise.
Rating: really liked it
I was prepared to dislike this book but I really enjoyed it!I've seen it on so many list of "life-changing non fiction" next to deeply misogynistic authors and it's popular with people promoting hustle culture so I didn't expect it to work for me.
While I can't say that the information in it is that different from other books I've read on the topic, it's definitely the best breakdown of said info that I've seen.
Super accessible, bitesize chapters... absolutely go with the audiobook if you enjoy them. I didn't want to sit while reading it because I was too busy reorganizing my space while listening to it!
Worth it
Rating: really liked it
“Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years. We all deal with setbacks but in the long run, the quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits."Did not live up to the hype. There’s good material here, and easy-to-follow strategies to improve our habits, but I found it a chore to wade through. My interest ebbed and flowed and ironically, I felt it could be the book to undo my healthy reading habits and routine.
Atomic Habits succeeded in bringing awareness to my daily habits and making me more 'present'. The likes of “habit stacking” and “habit tracking” are things that I have started implementing since reading this. But while it’s great to be self-aware and regularly analyse our behaviours, I found it tiresome after a while.
“Daily habits are powerful because of how they compound, but worrying too much about every daily choice is like looking at yourself in the mirror from an inch away. You can see every imperfection and lose sight of the bigger picture.”Tedious.
James Clear gives many examples of famous people who achieved success via their approach to habits. I enjoyed reading some of those, but far too often, content felt like it was being regurgitated from other books and work in the field of habits and human psychology. Sometimes it felt like he had simply thrown catchy new titles on pre-existing ideas and methods. Other times, it just seemed like common sense.
The book is not just about developing good habits and sticking to them, but about eliminating bad ones. I was pleased to see reference to
Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking – a book that already made a huge difference to my life! The importance of patience, the difference between 'motion'/'action' and the two-minute rule (when starting a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do) were all takeaways that resonated with me.
The chapter summaries were helpful to remember key points, but also made it clear there was substantial filler surrounding a couple of main ideas. These ideas are solid guidelines though, and no doubt helpful for building a better life - I guess time will tell.
It's perhaps worth noting that my grievances with
Atomic Habits are in the minority - many find this book amazing, so don't let my words prevent you reading this if you think it could be helpful. After all, I'm left wanting to eat healthier, improve my bedtime routines and embrace minimalism - so all this has to be good.
“Your actions reveal how badly you want something. If you keep saying something is a priority but you never act on it, then you don’t really want it. It’s time to have an honest conversation with yourself. Your actions reveal your true motivations.”
Rating: really liked it
The nuclear option for pimping, rebranding, fine-tuning, and perfecting grey cells.
Atomic also in one regard: As long as it works, it´s perfect down to the smallest part, each atom. If it fails, it´s radioactive and self cannibalizing, -destructing- and demotivating.
To exaggerate, we can develop great working, social. and creative habits or destroy ourselves with neuroticism going haywire, find great ways to optimate oneself or madness, just read anecdotal filled pop psychology/science/philosophy books one can read without the danger of the hard work of really changing something or choose the difficult way and this book.
The 1st Law Make it obvious
Repetition and consequence, as if it wasn´t so shamefully obvious, is one of the key elements to everything, a skill, foreign language, school, degrees,… and the funny thing is that successful people use learning, creativity, memo-, techniques to perfect their skills, but forget the motivational, critical thinking, analytic retrospection, optimization, meditation-,… techniques, and, most importantly, to recapitulate, criticize oneself, let others criticize oneself, reflect, and develop. There is always some space left toward top performance but without modifying or even changing habits, they won´t be possible and nothing is more painful than stopping a working, well known, perfected, but ineffective habit, using an oldfashioned program, modify a schedule, use knowledge and expertise in a new, complicated, unknown way, etc. The brain is a bit bitchy, nagging, and one´s worst enemy, because it´s a lazy manipulator, not wanting one to do something that means real work for it, trying to make it feel as uncomfortable as possible, wanting easy stagnation instead of sweaty evolution.
The 2nd Law and 3rd Law Make it attractive and easy
As if this wasn´t already painful and difficult enough, the self experimental subject now has to implement unused, and thereby for the crying, sobbing, angry brain very painful, new neuronal integrated circuits because, as one knows, reptile stem brain and monkeys social anxiety wants one to run far away from everything new, different, possibly dangerous. Here the inner demons have to been disguised as angels to make the whole agony as attractive as possible, a kind of hopeful masochism. Detecting the deficits has already wasted vast resources of willpower and now one doesn´t even have the legitimation to kill and destroy positive change with anger and negative emotions, but the new mind baby has to be raised next to the rascals one has to be tolerant and sympathetic towards.
The 4th Law Make it satisfying
Reaching this point is tricky, as one needs the stamina, perseverance, and resilience not to resign. As the old behaviors often aren´t directly harmful, just unproductive and used, they will come whispering and trying to get a hold of the subconscious mind to develop back towards the beginning. Humans are creatures of habit and whenever one just loses track and motivation for a second, their siren calls will try to lure you into old behaviors whose reminiscences are still lurking behind each screen, interaction, or working process.
And as if all of this wasn´t torture enough, it should come with personal development and vivisecting one´s personality, thoughts, memories, all these things that seemingly aren´t directly related to work, too. Because hidden in the chasms of each simulated reality lies the key to boosting the occupational performance even more by eliminating all the mental corpses of complexes, childhood traumas, anxieties, phobias,… As long they are not overcome, they keep holding one down, interrupting the workflow, reducing concentration, focus, the quality of sleep,… even changing the obvious problems won´t unleash the full potential.
A tip, after I´ve read a few of the most highly recommended DIY self brainwashing mind penetrating behavioral modification endeavor books for dummies, I´ve come to the conclusion that most of the theory, techniques, and schedules can easily be found during a longer google search, a Wikipedia or special wiki and Reddit, Quora walk, just using the essential keywords, bookmarking a few dozens to hundreds of pages of interest, copying the subjectively most essential and useful elements and still begin with the 1st law. But it would at least have cost you nothing.
It´s getting a bit anecdotally and subjective now, even personal (cause people seem to like that stuff for whatever reason) and, of course, misanthropic, so don´t be shy to stop reading here and saving time and eye power that could be focused on reading something profound. Seriously, I´ve warned you.
One of my main advantages is that I am naturally neurotic, a bit of still under control and productive, not negative elements of perfectionism, some might say soft OCD, but who listens to people, pedantic; a bit antisocial, and cold, rational, things very helpful when implementing new behavioral patterns because one doesn´t care about whatever other people think.
I am a bit biased here, because I have the, depending on the standpoint, positive or negative tendency to overachieve and excessively focus on one thing for weeks and months up to 12 or 14 hours a day, obsessive might be an understatement, let´s call it possession instead. Afterward, it´s often difficult to say how the final results, ideas, solutions paths developed, but conditioning oneself to combine focus and flow to hard fun and gamification, optional collaborative learning, yuck, might be a good alternative to just partying hard.
This leads me to the extroverts that might face massive deficits in this regard, as they have the unfortunate tendency to spent much unproductive time with other people, leading to excessive, exponentially growth of sympathy, friendship, contact, dangerous pheromones, endorphins, territorial alpha behavior,… manipulating logical thinking, in the worst case not just resulting in friendships, but love, relationships, and kids bringing the distraction in your home, permanently, reproducing and multiplying it and giving it names, all things that make one ineffective, cost time. So start avoiding people, feel cold, sad, and dead inside; and whenever you are doubting, compare what the introvert vs extrovert forever achieving score lists brings in comparison, all science and technical evolution that is human history vs all BS, war, extremism, tradition, all evil isms. Doesn´t an empty, lonely life seem a small price for helping primate progress? Don´t forget thanking me for ruining your socialization with these stupid tips, lol.
But seriously, social life is another prime example of habit, one becomes the people she/ he is in regular contact with and attracts more of these people, a dynamic one should not underestimate, and they all feed on you lifetime by craving for your attention, just compare how much one can get from articles and books in comparison to real life drivel filled with small talk, redundancies, errors,..., heck even the better memorization and internalization of content by social contact can be achieved with sophisticated learning techniques. To continue the isolationist standpoint (joke), it´s of course meanwhile absolutely unnecessary to make anything face to face and not in home office, VR, AR, psi transfer remote perception,... the technological singularity in general makes it more and more useless to leave the home castle.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positiv...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindful...
Rating: really liked it
Reading this book feels like reading a homework assignment. James Clear wanted to read a lot of books and make a summary of the concepts he would implement for self-improvement. He also made a point in improve himself in the most hacky way possible. Instead of keeping the summary as personal notes, he published it. The fact that the author boasts about being a writer only makes it worse. You can actually smell the cheap tools he uses to put words into text and build chapters out of thin air. I wanted this book to get better, but it doesn't, up to the very end the author repeats the same choice pattern:
* Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them.
* Simplify science to the border of being wrong.
* Abuse of "as such person said ___INSERT QUOTE HERE____"
* Build each chapter out of unacknowledged (stolen/refurbished) concepts, coming from other writings that predate this book.
The last point is particularly annoying and the book is plagued by them. He even uses the same graphics and plots as the originals! He includes verbatim whole poems by Lao Tse or writings by Seneca. At least these are attributed and not refurbished.
If you are somewhat familiar with the literature, avoid this book.
If you are thinking about reading this book, think about the books the author got the content from. Go and read those, you will get the original content without the coarse editing by James Clear. You will also get better foundations for growing a mindset instead of implementing hacks.
Start with Why - Simon Sinek
Mastery - George Leonard
Outliers - Malcom Gladwell
The Tipping Point - Malcom Gladwell
Getting Things Done - David Allen
The Element - Ken Robinson
Behave - Robert Sapolsky [Science communication written by experts in the field]
Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman [Science communication written by experts in the field]
Rating: really liked it
This book just climbed to the top as my most favourite self-help non-fiction of the year!
Totally engaging and quite convincing in how the book makes you want to change your bad habits and adopt good ones, this book doesn't talk in a way to make you feel overwhelmed or make you feel like everything you do is wrong or inadequate.
The book doesn't give you impractical tips yet it tells stories and what to learn in how to gradually maintain habits that would benefit you in the long run as well as how to start maintaining habits that you have been wanting to in small practical steps.
This book is life-changing for me.
I have already adopted some of these tips yet the book makes me realise that there are many things that we do that we consider harmless yet taking up most of our time which make us frustrated in real.
The tips are easy to understand and follow. The writing is amazing. I would highly recommend this book.
This one is already changing my year and the rest of everything else that's going to happen in how I make my future a better and a fulfilling one.
Too good to be true. Literally life changing 🍂
Rating: really liked it
This is the only book on 'habits' you should read.
It lays out all the rules of changing/developing habits in a simple, straightforward way and gets right to the point without a bunch of rambling and seemingly unrelated filler chapters like some other self development books i've read.
Rating: really liked it
I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway yesterday and immediately settled down to read it. I am always very skeptical of self help books because they often do no get to the root of issues. This one did. James Clear's main arguments are that habits are the compound interest of self improvement and that your identify emerges out of your habits. So, you must expereince a shift in identity for your habits to hold. This made a lot of sense to me, but I do think that Clear should have addresses deeper emotional issues and gave readers resources so as not to mislead them into believing that they can change their identity by action (repeating new habits) alone.
Rating: really liked it
Why do I keep doing this to myself? All I want is a productive little audiobook to listen to while I work, helpfully filled with tips to improve my life. All I get is priviledged white people recycling the same old advice over and over. This book is especially grating as it's filled with cute little platitudes like "the same boiling water will soften a potato and harden an egg". I already know how boiling water works, thanks, can we get to the part where you tell me something I haven't heard from seven other productivity books already?
At one point Clear writes, "I get my assistant to do this for me every week, but if you don't have an assistant..."
I love how some of these productivity authors neglect to mention all the outside help they hire. It's like that other woman who suggested hiring an au pair for when your primary nanny is taking her vacation days. He also suggests doing things like paying for grocery delivery instead of going to the store to save time. He tells the story of one guy who paid his personal trainer $500 every time he forgot to log his food for the day.
The real productivity hack seems to be to hire someone to do all the little day-to-day tasks for you so you can focus on other things. This is great if you're fabulously rich, but, if you're like me and don't currently have a full time assistant, and people to do your housework and your meal prep for you, then you may have to look elsewhere for more practical advice.
Rating: really liked it
I am in the mood for more non fiction lately, so I decided to read the books of Ali's book club. I wanted to read a book on habits for a long time now and Atomic Habits met all those criteria.
I am not gonna elaborate a lot since it is a well known book and there are a lot of YouTube videos that summed it up better than I can ever do including Abdaal's video here:
Check Video
Like all non-fiction books, I found most of the information in the book to be logical but the way it was written and ordered was pretty good. I found it engaging, easy to read and scientific. I enjoy it when authors provide data through real life stories and there was a lot of that here.
The book mostly discusses 4 laws to get into a habit or get out of one. These are: Make it Obvious, Make it Attractive, Make it Easy, Make it Satisfying. And if you inverse those you get a way to lose bad habits. A very intriguing read!
Rating: really liked it
"Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations." Goals are useful for charting a course, but systems are the most effective in moving forward. When you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time creating your systems, you'll run into a few issues. The antidote is a systems-first mentality. When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to permit yourself to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running.
My 3 major takeaways from this book are:
1. An atomic habit is a regular practice or routine that is small and easy to do and is also the source of incredible power; a component of the system of compound growth.
2. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.
3. Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.
Highly recommended to understand the science behind habit building and practically implement those baby steps to build or break a habit.
Grab your copy here.
