Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
The #1 New York Times bestseller. Over 3 million copies sold! Tiny Changes, Remarkable ResultsNo matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving-every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights. Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.
- Author - James Clear
- Publisher - Penguin Publishing Group
- Publication date - 10-16-2018
- Page count - 320
- Hardcover
- Adult
- Personal Growth and Development
- Product dimensions - 6 W x 9 H x 1.3 D
- ISBN-13 - 9780735211292
Web ID: 8511929
Best book!
This book is very well written. I would recommend it to anyone!
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My summary
Hope you find my notes below (also posted on Littler Books) helpful! 1. The easiest way to make positive changes in your life is to cultivate the right habits. 2. If a plane heading to New York from Los Angeles adjusted its path just 3.5 degrees south, the plane would end up in Washington, DC. However, no passenger on the plane would notice until it's too late. 3. It is difficult to notice small changes because their immediate effect is insignificant. However, if you make small changes to your behavior and repeat them over time, they will become habits and lead to significant results. "Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement." 4. If you decide today to start jogging for 15 minutes a day, you might not notice a difference in your body tomorrow, but if you continue to do so, you will be fitter and healthier. It is more important to focus on your trajectory than your present results. 5. A habit is a repeated behavior that becomes automatic. 6. Psychologist Edward Thorndike conducted an experiment in which he placed cats in a black box. The cats struggled to get out until they eventually found a lever that opened the box leading to their escape. Thorndike repeated the experiment with the same cats, and overtime the cats always went straight to the lever to open the box, thus forming a habit. Humans form habits in a similar way. 7. The stages of a habit are cue, craving, response, and reward. 8. In the cat example, cue is being inside a black box. Craving is the desire to get out. Response is pulling the lever. Reward is the escape. 9. If you drink coffee every morning, that's a habit. The cue is waking up. The craving is wanting to feel more awake. The response is making and drinking the coffee. The reward is feeling alert and energized to start the day. 10. To build a new habit, build strong cues to drive the behavior you want. 11. One way is to change your environment. For example, a Boston doctor wanted to improve her patients' dietary habits. She rearranged the hospital cafeteria so that there is more water in the refrigerators next to the cash registers. This change resulted in a 11% decrease of soda sales and a 25% increase in water sales. Her patients subconsciously made healthier choices simply because of a subtle change in the environment. 12. Other examples: if you want to play an instrument more often, leave the instrument in a prominent place in your living area. If you want to eat healthier snacks, place the better choices on the counter and hide the unhealthy alternatives. 13. A detailed implementation is another way to improve your cues. Instead of saying "I'm going to be fitter", it is far more effective to say, "I'm going to run on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 8:30AM when the alarm goes off. I will put on my running gear and run two miles around the park." You should also leave your running shoes in a visible location -- it will serve as another cue for you to run and build this habit. 14. Neuroscientists James Olds and Peter Milner conducted an experiment in which rats' dopamine, a neurotransmitter, was blocked from release. This resulted in the rats dying of thirst. This is because the rats lost the desire to live, and did not drink, eat, or do anything else. 15. Dopamine makes humans feel good. It is released during pleasurable things like eating and having sex. Dopamine is also released during the anticipation of pleasurable things. It is a way to encourage us to do the things that we need or want to do. 16. Temptation bundling is a method to help build a habit by grouping a behavior that is important but unappealing to you with a behavior that's attractive to you. For example, whenever you clean the house, reward yourself with a movie you might enjoy immediately afterwards. Soon you'll look forward to doing the unappealing task due to the dopamine released by the reward anticipation. 17. Another way to introduce habits is to stack the new habit on top of an existing habit. For example, if you already have a habit of drinking coffee in the morning, you can start reading (the new habit) while you drink the coffee. The coffee drinking will give you momentum to read. Eventually, this routine will become automatic. This is called habit stacking. 18. To turn behaviors into habits, it's important to make the behavior as easy to adapt as possible. We can easily waste time on social media because it's effortless to do. We have more difficulty doing things like studying Chinese because it takes effort. However, we can reduce the friction of the hard things to make them easier. 19. Know the difference between motion and action. Motion is reading articles on healthy eating. Action is actually eating healthy meals. Motion is watching tutorial videos. Action is doing them. We get stuck in motion because it feels like progress, but it's just a veiled way of procrastination. We delay action because we're scared of failure. Motion feels like making progress, but action is making progress. 20. The author is bad at sending greeting cards, but his wife always sends them consistently. Her secret is that she has a box of greeting cards already sorted by occasion. She's made sending greeting cards a habit by significantly reducing the fiction of the task. 21. To reduce bad habits, we can increase the friction. For example, to curtail TV watching, try unplugging the cables and removing the batteries from the remote. 22. Another technique to build good habits is the two-minute rule, which says any activity can be reduced into a habit that can be done within two minutes. If you want to read more, instead of setting a goal of 20 books a year, just try to read two pages a day. The momentum will carry you forward, and you'll likely end up reading more than two pages a day. 23. The two-minute rule works because getting started is the hardest part of doing unappealing tasks. Making the start unthreatening is crucial to achieving habits easily. 24. We are evolved to deal with an immediate-return environment, meaning we are more receptive to actions that reward us instantly (e.g., finding and eating a meal when hungry). 25. Immediate returns can induce bad habits like smoking -- it temporarily relieves stress from nicotine withdrawal, but can lead to lung cancer years later. 26. In the modern world, we mostly live in a delayed-return environment -- many of our actions don't see results until later. We work, but we don't get paid until the end of the month. We go to the gym, but we don't see a difference the next day. 27. To create good habits in a delayed-return environment, it's invaluable to attach something to the habits that will make them immediately satisfying. 28. A health researcher wanted to reduce illnesses in a Pakistani neighborhood . He simply introduced premium soap into the neighborhood. The soap smelled great and lathered nicely. This encouraged the residents to wash their hands significantly more often, because now the task was enjoyable. The result was 52% reduction in diarrhea in children, 48% reduction in pneumonia, and 35% reduction in skin infections. 29. Habit tracking is an effective technique to build and keep good habits. An example of habit tracking is listing in a calendar on a daily basis all the good habits you kept and bad habits you avoided that day. Habit tracking itself is a good and gratifying habit -- it builds anticipation and grants immediate satisfaction when you list your accomplishments. 30. Benjamin Franklin used habit tracking meticulously. He had a notebook in which he remarked on his daily successes in keeping his habits. 31. Another way to keep good habits is to create a habit contract and set negative consequences for when the contract is broken. For example, go to the gym every day, and if you miss a day, give $100 dollars to your trainer. 32. Letting others know about your contract and goals is also helpful, as we can use our aversion to failing others as motivation to succeed in building good habits. 33. Above methods all contribute to making habit building obvious (set up cues), attractive (create a craving), easy (simplify the response), and satisfying (reward yourself).
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Common Sense
While browsing the amazon popularity lists, I kept seeing Atomic Habits by James Clear pop up. Now, I typically don’t pick up self-help/motivational books because I never believed them to be worth it. But, I figured I might as well give it a shot seeing it was popular on amazon and apple books. It was a short listen (I picked up the audiobook version.) Still, it took me a month to finish. It was interesting at the beginning, the way Clear breaks down the different steps it takes for habits to form, and the rationale behind decision making. After that, there were no secrets. There was only common sense, which was disappointing. Yes, I’ll admit it. I was looking for some magic tips and tricks, something that would actually make habits stick. I already knew the tips and tricks Clear tries to stress the importance of. Yes, start small. Yes, break it down into smaller components. Yes, make it harder to avoid. Yes, make it more desirable to complete. These are all the things that I already knew and it was just basically reiterated with extra little science facts about why it works. I rated Atomic Habits by James Clear at three stars mainly because there was nothing new for me, but I think there might be for others. It may give me the push to try his tips again in the new year. I think might recommend this to folks that don’t know where to start on building new habits, but those that already know the tips and tricks, this might be a library loan type of book!
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Changing Your Life With A Book
I read this book for a school assignment and surprisingly enjoyed it. The author, James Clear, deep dives on all the methods he has researched to help readers understand which small habits will help you reach goals and how to stick to them. He explains why most people fail to stick to habits and how to avoid falling into the same cycle. I also like that Clear appeals to any audience who wants to know about the topic and those who want to apply these changes in their own lives. This book was very educational and I would absolutely recommend it to other people interested in reading.
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Just get it!!
Ive seen this all over social media and it was an amazing read!! Definitely recommend if youre on a growth journey and or trying to get rid old habits.
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Tiny Changes.. Remarkable Results!
I read this book with my book club and absolutely enjoyed it! I personally like self help type of books and give this a 5/5 star. The tiny changes for better results that are broken down in this book make the biggest of difference in everyday life no matter who you are or what you are trying to accomplish. This book is for everyone (even if you do not usually read self help)!
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Atomic Habits
I love this book ! I am only on page 27, but I love how easy the book is to understand. It's very organized, so if you're a busy minded person like me, it definitely is written in a way that helps you organize your thoughts.
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Recommend!
James did such a great job articulating the proposed methodologies and I appreciated the examples as well!
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com