Book Recommendation: Atomic Habits by James Clear
Hi everyone! I have not read a more realistic and eye-opening book on habit creation and maintenance than Atomic Habit. I find that habits ultimately dictate how successful you will be at doing what you want to do.
So let's look at a summary of the book. If you like it, please read the book for maximum benefit.
- Key Focus: Building good habits and breaking bad ones.
- Main Idea: Habits are formed through a four-step loop: cue, craving, response, and reward. This loop can be manipulated to create or remove habits.
Four Laws of Behavior Change:
- Make it obvious: Use triggers or cues to remind yourself to perform the desired habit.
- Make it attractive: Associate the habit with positive rewards to increase motivation.
- Make it easy: Reduce friction by simplifying the habit and removing roadblocks.
- Make it satisfying: Celebrate successes and provide immediate rewards to strengthen the habit loop.
Additional Takeaways:
- Identity drives behavior. Focus on becoming the person who has the desired habit, not just doing the habit itself.
- Progress, not perfection, is key. Celebrate small wins and keep moving forward.
- Environment matters. Design your surroundings to support your goals and avoid temptations.
- Systems trump goals. Focus on building sustainable systems for long-term change, not just achieving temporary goals.
Overall, Atomic Habits empowers you to understand your habits, take control of your behavior, and achieve lasting positive change
Two things that the book talked about that deserve a special mention are:
- Environment matters a lot more than you think it does so much that it can dictate whether or not you will form or maintain a new habit. If your environment supports a habit, it's like going with the flow of the river and if it does not then it is trying to swim against the current and no matter how strong your willpower is, it will only take you so far. So if you can, change your environment to support your new habit.
- Pair a habit with an existing established habit. For example, if you want to stretch every day, do it after brushing your teeth. If you always brush your teeth, now you can just do this new thing after. No need to think about it all day.
What habit are you trying for form and how can you apply the teachings of this book to help you with it?
@Hope
I know rightttt?! I looooooove this book, more like a handy-book guide that you can keep revisiting often.
Love the brief summary and key-takeaways, thank youu for sharing, Hope!
I've been trying to fix my routine plus lifestyle (which includes incorporating many positively impacting habits~ the bae-sics, from eating, eating right to sleeping and sleeping well etc and oof letting go of the ones that are not helpful, to say the least) a little lol, a lot of things will become better consequently, still in the process of it and there's a long way to go. (': Wish me luck! XD
How about youu?
@Sunisshiningandsoareyou
You are trying to get the foundations right! Eating right and moving more in itself is a challenge, add sleep to that! If anyone can do it, its you!
I am alongside you with optimistic goals relating to food and movement. Undesirable but important things to get in order!
@Hope
Aw thank you, Hope. And good luck to you too, foundations are the most important, yesss! We got this!🤝
@Hope
Excellent Book, read it last year and it changed my life with developing habits. 10/10 recommend
@Hope I had found this book again in my search results - I have yet to read it since every time I had looked to borrow it from my library, their copies are all out XD I’ll try again in reading it, but do u think it’s worth buying? Or should I borrow to see what it’s like first?
thanks for sharing it here!
@PandaK
I have read it online and personally just ended up re-reading the summaries/main points rather than the whole book to refresh my memory. So it really depends on how you like to read your books and if you like to collect good books!