The Atomic Habits book by James Clear is considered one of the top-notch books in the self-help genre. In this blog, I will be discussing why this book gets ranked so high in the genre of self-help. I will also reveal certain key principles on habit forming from the book.
I always believe that the real purpose of a book is to bring change. And why won’t we grade that book so high if there are thousands of people to acknowledge that the book revolutionized their lives? ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear is one such book. This blog is particularly important for people who love books, but can’t spare much time out of their busy lives to sit with a book in their lap.
‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear is one such book that has the power to bring instant change in day-to-day life. In the field of self-help or personality development, this is among the few such books which does not merely throw philosophies onto the face of readers. It guides the reader through practical steps towards better habit forming.
The book Atomic Habits can be termed as recent compared to other competitor books of the genre like ‘Think & Grow Rich’ and ‘How to Win Friends & Influence People’. The book was published in 2018. Astonishingly, it is a very small-sized book. It consists of only 306 pages, and if we exclude ‘Notes Section’ from the book, the book gets reduced to merely 207 pages. How would someone justify not reading a book that is only 207 pages, and can change their life significantly?
Having given the intro to the book ‘Atomic Habits’, now I will be sharing the things that impressed me most from the book.
The center of gravity of the book is ‘habit-forming’. The book relieves us from the pressure of believing that it takes lots of effort to develop a good habit. However, developing a good habit only requires a little understanding of how a habit is formed. For example, making your bed. Now this seems to be an insignificant work to be done at the morning. But once we consider that as the first achievement of the day, it would give a new angle of looking at the rest of the day. It would boost our confidence to follow the rest of the day in a disciplined way.
This one task done well would lead to reading a chapter of the book, or spending half an hour exercising. Thus an apparently insignificant task can be transformed into a catalyst to push the day to a disciplined routine.
As Warren Buffet had said that habit-forming works just like compounding. One habit builds on the next, and each good habit keeps assisting the next one. Moreover, the results are never linear in pattern. These work in a hockey-style pattern. At the start, results appear exciting due to high energy. With time, boredom starts taking over, and the results start declining. It is this phase of habit-forming that is very difficult to survive. If someone can get through this, then there appears to be a vertical upward trend in the path to progress.
Another aspect of good-habit forming, which has been projected by ‘Atomic Habits’ is that progress on the path of habit forming will not always be observable to the person changing. It is similar to going to the gym. In that, for initial weeks, months, or even years, there appear to be no visible changes. However, after considerable time has been spent doing that, people start observing the change in your physique. Similar is the case with reading books. One can’t become Aristotle after having read a couple of books. It takes time for the results to appear.
Another myth cleared by the Atomic Habits book is that of setting high aims. Since childhood, we have been hearing about having big, bold aims. James Clear suggests that having big goals is not significant. Thousands of people set big goals but can’t achieve anything significant. Instead of having tall goals, it is important to have better systems. The systems are the keys to achieving bigger targets, and merely big goals can’t achieve anything.
According to James Clear, habit forming needs a particular path. Without having created that path, the progress to that habit can’t be measured. Just, for example, you decide to eat healthy food from now on. The moment you decide that out of motivation, you need to sketch out the eating plan on a piece of paper. Having prepared that plan, you need to be assured that you follow that path. Without having a measured way of approaching the goals, progress is not be possible.
A brilliant trick that I learn from this book is regarding attaching our new habits to the existing habits. James Clear says that it would become far easier to develop a habit if we attach that habit to the thing that we are already doing. For example, we can do 20 push-ups before brushing our teeth. Now every time we would go for a toothbrush (which we often do effortlessly), we would be reminded of doing push-ups, and we are least likely to miss out on doing that. Over time, our new habit would also be as effortless as our former habit had been.
The Atomic Habits book gives so much importance to measured progress. James Clear suggests that measuring progress not only sets the parameters for accountability. But it also gives a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Nothing can be more relaxing than having the ability to measure the progress made on the path to success.
Moreover, another key aspect that no one escapes is that of boredom. The path towards progress is very slow and takes lots of courage to face continuous boredom with no apparent results in front of us. However, if one can cope with the boredom of forming good habits, the results of that habit will shock the rest of the world.
If you are someone who is into the field of reading self-help books. I highly recommend you read the book that I just finished. It was Jonathan Eig’s Ali: A Life. You will love the journey of Mohammad Ali’s life, and how he overcame the hurdles of life.
To conclude, Atomic Habits by James Clear is a powerful book on defining the science behind habit forming in the simplest and logical way. It empowers the reader to master the art of habit formation. If you are interested in reading this book, here is the Amazon link to order the book online: https://amzn.to/4kPxTQK
