Book: Atomic Habits by James Clear
Quick Review
I wrote about habits in my last post on Thursday (it’s called Transforming Habits) . This book is one of the main sources from which I draw upon. I read this book originally on kindle a couple of months ago. I liked the book so much I bought a physical copy and gave it a re-read now. I’ll explain the logic of re-reading on physical on a future post, but I wanted to revisit his ideas soon enough, but the main idea is the following further re-reads lets us focus on new details.
The author of Atomic Habits is James Clear. He is fully dedicated to writing about this topic and he has a great newsletter. You can check out his work at www.jamesclear.com. A motto he frequently repeats in Atomic Habits is to improve 1% each day.
How?
By focusing on systems not goals. You put forward goals to focus on the system you want to use to achieve them.
AH has 4 rules and their inversions. The 4 rules are:
Making it obvious / invisible
Making it attractive / Unattractive
Making it Easy / Difficult
Making it Satisfying / Unsatisfying
A key component that is frequently repeated in this book is the one of identity. Personally, this is one of the main aspects I come to once and again, as how we view ourselves play an important role in the way we start changing. By convincing ourselves that we are different, the process becomes easier.
As I mentioned in my previous post, why you want to change and to what plays a major role. One should try to aspire to become the best version of oneself. To manage that, James Clear tells us that it requires to continuously edit your beliefs having to upgrade and expand our identity. (p. 36)
He ends the book by visiting a quote by Lao Tsu on the importance of flexibility. The quote kept ringing in my head for days. The quote says the following:
Men are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.
Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.
The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.1
So, be flexible and convince yourself that it is not impossible, and you have what it takes to change. Be flexible.
What caught my eye to read this book?
It was recommended by Mark Manson. I can’t tell you where I heard him say it exactly. I see Mark Manson, Ryan Holiday and James Clear as a pretty triumvirate on the topics of self-improvement or “negative self-help” as Manson calls it. I admire their writing skills and the difficulty of the topics they write on.
Highlighted Quotes
Most people live in a world others have created for them. But you can alter the spaces where you live and work to increase your exposure to positive cues and reduce your exposure to negative ones. Environment design allows you to take back control and become the architect of your life. Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it.2
The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.3
Random Thoughts while reading this book
Environment starts playing a key environment when beginning to change. We have to be very conscious of our surroundings to identify what components are facilitating and which are getting in the way.
Goals are not as important as we sometimes make them to be. Focusing on the process and the system is a surefire way to have better success.
Be flexible and question the way we are doing things. If we want to improve we can’t see ourselves as a finished product.
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Clear, James. Atomic Habits (p. 249). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Ibid. (p. 87)
Ibid (p. 234)