Book 2, Post 2: Atomic Habits by James Clear
Atomic Habits by James Clear is such a life-changing book, and I’m only halfway through reading it! In my first book post regarding this book I talked about how Clear laid out the fundamentals of building better habits, but I failed to mention the four steps included in the habit loop: cue, craving, response, and reward.
Cue – triggers your brain to initiate a behavior
Craving – the motivational force behind every habit
Response – the actual habit you perform, taking the form of a thought or an action
Altogether, they become the backbone of EVERY habit. After defining habits and their ultimate purpose, Clear spends most of the book diving into the Four Laws of Behavior Change that he recommends we use to build better habits. They are to (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying. Pretty simple. Of these, my favorite law is the first one, “make it obvious.” The two most common cues to this law are time and location. Using the strategy of creating an implementation intention to pair a new habit with a specific time and location is such an easy way to build a successful habit. And habit stacking is a super strategy! Clear even provided formulas for it:
Implementation formula: I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]
Habit stacking formula: After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]
And while Clear provides details on building a habit, he also uses Atomic Habits to break bad habits. This part of the book is something else I really appreciated reading and learning about. So far it’s been pretty simple and has tied a lot to the Four Laws of Behavior Change. They’re actually the inversions of these laws! While the first law of creating good habits is to make it obvious, the inversion to break bad habits is to make it invisible by reducing exposure and removing cues of bad habits from your environment. The rest are the inversions are as follows: make it unattractive, make it difficult, and make it unsatisfying.
There are honestly SO many gems within Atomic Habits that I could go on and on about. The best thing I could really say though would be to give the book a read to really soak in the content all for yourself!
Hey Kennedy, very interesting post! It’s been over a year since I read Atomic Habits, but this post comprehensively covered a lot of the main points. I think everybody should read this book at least once in their life.
ReplyDeleteHi Kennedy, really enjoyed reading your post! I like how Clear simplifies the habit making process into concise steps so it can be applicable to everything. I'm going to keep the implementation formula in mind for practicing guitar, because I always tell myself I'd set aside time to do so but without a set time and location, I fail to build the habit. Great work!
ReplyDeleteHi Kennedy, I found your post to be an enjoyable and easy read. I loved how you broke it down into the bullet points to explain the different concepts while lacing your own opinions within them. This helped me see some parallels with some of my habits. Definitely an interesting read, possibly adding this to my reading list!
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