Atomic Habits by James Clear — A Book With Great Practical Tips
A Summary of five practical tips from this book
Do you ever set a goal but never end up accomplishing it? Do you say you’re going to add something to your routine and only end up three steps backward from where you started after a few days or weeks? Do you feel like there is a gap between the person you are and the person you want to be? Have you been searching for effective ways to make your new habits automatic and ways to break free from bad habits? The book Atomic Habits by James Clear provides practical tips and answers to these deep questions. The author explains the concepts in the book through evidence from research, neuroscience, and psychology along with examples of business, education, sports, history, and simple math.
The aim of this blog is to stir up a feeling of inspiration by highlighting five practical tips from this book; the power of 1% change each day in the long term, why systems are more powerful than goals, the three layers of behavior change, the steps to build better habits, and the four laws of behavior change.
1. The Power of 1% Change in the Long term
James defined habits as the compound interest of self-improvement. Compounding can both work for or against your desired habits over time. For example, as the figure below illustrates, getting 1% better each day at something will produce almost (1.01^365 ) 37 times better results after one year. But if getting 1% worse every day, will take you down to (0.99^365) nearly zero. The effects of a habit get magnified the more we do it.
As humans, we often seek instant gratification and tend not to focus on small changes because it takes a long time to see the accumulated results. For example, you do not notice a difference in your body after exercising one day. However, over time the exercises you have been doing will compound to a significant and noticeable result in your body. In short, success in any endeavor is a product of your daily habits.
The author writes in the book some amazing words along the lines of this quote:
A slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a very different destination. Making a choice that is 1% better or worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments those choices make up a lifetime and determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. Success is the product of daily habits — not once-in-a-lifetime transformations. It does not matter how successful or unsuccessful you are right now. What matters is whether your habits are putting you on the path towards your desired success. You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory that with your current results.
Although it is not easy to maintain a good habit when you do not immediately get the rewards of your actions, progress always compounds after putting in much effort. We expect progress to be linear and get frustrated during the initial stages of putting in hard work. However, as the figure below shows, the most compelling outcomes are realized when we cross a critical threshold that allows us to get to breakthrough moments.
2. Why Systems are More Powerful than Goals
For many years my approach to anything I wanted to achieve in life was more concentrated on setting goals until I decided to focus on the systems I follow. James distinguishes the two concepts in the book; the first is about the results you want to achieve, while the latter is about the processes that lead to those results. Goals are not useless, the author writes, they are great for providing direction. But systems are best for making progress. To make this clear, James identifies four problems with goals.
(i) Winners and losers have the same goals
The problem with goals is that they suffer what the author calls “survivorship bias” — the assumption that goal setting leads to success while ignoring all of the people who had the same goal but did not succeed. Therefore, it cannot be the goal that differentiates you from every other candidate who wants the job, every other student who wants to achieve that same grade or every other olympian who wants to win the gold medal, or every other politician who wants to win the hearts of the voters.
(ii) Achieving a goal is only a momentary change
Imagine someone who has a habit of throwing stuff all over their office every day only to clean and organize when the mess gets unavoidable. They might be able to tidy up the space some days. But if they continue the habits and systems that led them to the dirty office in the first place, they will be left with the same mess. In the same way, achieving a goal changes our life only for the moment with temporary results. Instead, what we need to change is the system that initially causes those results if we want to enjoy the long-lasting benefits of our work.
(iii) Goals restrict your happiness
The author argues that behind any goal, most people assume that they will be happy once they achieve it which puts happiness on mute until later. Since we all have endless things that we want to do and get throughout our lives, such a thought process ties our happiness to a goal that might take a lifetime to achieve.
(iv) Goals are at odds with long-term progress
It is always good to look beyond your goals and ask yourself this powerful question from the book; “If I focus all my hard work on this particular goal, what will push me forward after I achieve it?”. Because, for example, you might exercise for months, but if you stop as soon as you hit your desired fitness goal, you will end up reversing the progress already made.
Amazing quote from the book;
The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. If you want results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
3. The Three Layers of Behavior Change
The three layers of behavior change are outcomes, process, and identity, as depicted in the figure below.
The first layer is concerned with changing our results. The second layer is about changing the process. It is related to our habits and systems. The third deepest is identity change which involves our beliefs.
Although all levels come in handy in different ways, we should focus on whom we want to become (the identity-based approach) to build a sustainable habit. Because our identity emerges out of what we repeatedly do and believe. Identity-based habits allow you to think about every action you take as a vote for or against the person you wish to become. James writes in the book; the ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. To say I am a person who wants to read or write is different from saying I am a reader and a writer. Similarly, saying I am a person who wants to eat healthily and exercise is different from saying I am a healthy person.
True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you will stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity. Anyone can convince themselves to visit the gym or eat healthy once or twice, but if you do not shift the belief behind the behavior, then it is hard to stick with long-term changes. Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who we are.
James Clear, Atomic Habits
4. The Steps to Build Better Habits
Now that you know that a 1% change in each day pays dividends in the long term, the reasons why you should focus more on setting systems once you know your goals and that your identity forms from what you repeatedly do, you might be asking yourself; how do I build habits?
Building a habit of any kind takes time and goes through a process before it becomes a ritual we effortlessly do. The author of this book divides the process of building habits into the following four-step patterns.
- Cue: what triggers our brains to initiate an action. It is a want or a need for a reward that triggers our brain to act at this stage. This step teaches us to design our environment around the cues of what we want to achieve. Also, do the opposite for the bad habits you want to break.
- Craving: the motivational force to act. This is the change you desire to see. The reason that keeps you going.
- Response: the thought, action, or habit we perform. This step teaches us to assess our ability to work towards what we desire and how we need to act accordingly.
- Reward: the end goal of our actions. For example, we eat food for the hunger it relieves us from and the feeling it leaves us with after eating it and not just for the sake of eating. Similarly, humans chase rewards because they give us a sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, and accomplishment.
5. The Four Laws of Behavior Change
James writes in the book the following four laws of behavior change which I found applicable. To build a good habit;
- Make it obvious.
- Make it attractive.
- Make it easy.
- Make it satisfying.
The author explains these laws through the steps of building habits, research findings, and fascinating concepts — such as an implementation intention, habit stacking, dopamine spikes, temptation bundling, finding your tribe, priming your environment, mastering decisive moments, commitment devices, a habit tracker, reinforcement techniques, habit contracts, and an accountability partner.
Finally, the inverse of the above laws becomes the laws of bad behavior change. So, to break free from a bad habit;
- Make it invisible.
- Make it unattractive.
- Make it difficult.
- Make it unsatisfying.
This book has changed my approach to habits in every aspect of my life, I hope you take something good away from this summary.
