DevCareer BookClub: A Review of James Clear’s ATOMIC HABITS : An Easy & Proven Way To Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

WITH CLEAR THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND FOR ASSUMPTIONS OR UNEDUCATED GUESSES FEATHERED AS FACTS. Being hit with the truth is supposed to be bitter, but when hit with the scientific facts that model your life, there is little else to do but believe what you are reading.

Habits — something we usually think about every January 1st and forget about thirty days later — are actually quite easy to make and break (the bad ones) if you have the right approach to them. But then, why do you need good habits at all in the first place? The reason why is in order to become a better person, the person you need to be for your life to work out.

                  Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery

One thing that slaps right while reading Atomic Habits is that the most effective changes do not occur by changing outcomes or changing processes. Real positive habit change comes from an identity change in which you focus more on how you do things rather than the end result or that big thing you want to have magicked away. Habits are not built by destroying and rebuilding yourself overnight, rather they are a compounding of the smallest most positive changes, the atomic nature of habits. Clear shows us something about this with the mathematics behind it looking great:

See?

Habits, both good and bad, are built on and perpetuated in 4 phases:

i. Cue — These things we encounter that trigger our habits. It could be a smell or the sight of something, maybe even just a random sweet wrapper blowing by in the wind. What it does is awaken you and make you…

ii. Crave— Our reaction to a cue is usually a subconscious or conscious desire to do something, a deep want we sometimes cannot explain, to take action, to do the habit and to do it as soon as possible

iii. Response — This is the habit itself, the thing we do that is either good or bad in response to our cravings

iv. Reward — The feel good or high after we have done that thing we were craving, that satisfaction after you have bought the shoes you may never wear

There are also laws that govern and help to better form and manage habits. Using these can improve your habits.

1st Law: Make it obvious — Make your cues obvious, learn what they are and be conscious of them. Do not put yourself into situations where you get negative cues, give yourself the right environmental cues to work with. Replace the bad cues with the good ones. Use commitment statements such as I will[] after lunch to help you.

2nd Law: Make it attractive — Anticipate how good it will feel when you have completed the good habit. Make it work for you by being around the right cues, the right people who embody who you want to become.

3rd Law: Make it Easy — The truth is that our habits follow the path of least resistance. Whatever you do, keep working at your habits. If you miss a day, resume the next. And make things easy for yourself: if a habit cannot be effectively carried out in 2 minutes, then it is likely something you may not be able to do in the long run. Use technology to make your commitment to habit change easy when technology is your downfall.

4th Law: Make it Satisfying — To change your habits there needs to be some satisfaction and the feeling of instant gratification. You can make your satisfaction more obvious and visual while you go about making it satisfying by keeping tally on your or whatever makes you acknowledge your habit has given you a win.

Ofworthy mention is what Clear referred to as the Goldilocks rule. It says to make your habit a challenge of manageable difficulty so that you will strive to win. If your habit is too easy and you do not evaluate it to make changes, you could fall into boredom and not stick with it. The same goes for if it is too difficult and leads to failure. The Goldilocks zone is somewhere between those two extremes.

                    Boredom > Goldilocks Zone > Failure

That is not all.

There are different strategies and tools that can be used to ensure your habits stay on track and give you good cravings, better responses and the best rewards. Clear taught about pointing-and-calling, habit implementation and stacking, making your habits SMART, using commitment devices, working with the 2 minute rule, the paper clip strategy, habit contracts, the Goldilocks rule.

Above all, reflect on your habits and your progress or lack of it. You can always re-strategize and come back better.

If you would like to know what all these are, your best bet is to read the book and don’t forget to tell me how it went here.

Join me on my next review.