“No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving–every day. James Clear, one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you’ll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on ebook from my library.
Thoughts: I liked this and it does a great job of laying out a plan for developing good habits and getting rid of bad habits. Things are laid out step by step and very simply. I like that each chapter starts out with a historical anecdote about a historical figure and their habits. This made the book very fun and easy to read.

I was surprised at how readable this was. I speed right through it. It was entertaining and insightful. Nothing in here is rocket science and there are no huge revelations. However, there is some food for thought, especially around adapting your environment to support your habits. I realized I do a lot of that already without even realizing it. Just little things like laying out an outfit the night before so I can get going early in the morning without feeling stressed. Or laying my journal on my pillow in the morning so I don’t forget to write in it before I go to bed.

I think the most intriguing part of this book to me was the portion about mind set. How you need to say “I am a person who…” rather than “I would like to be a person who…” I never really thought about how that would change your mindset, so that was interesting to me.

I also liked the idea of laying out your day as a list of habits. It lets you see what you actually do in a day and analyze that in a more objective way to see which parts of your day are sabotaging habits you want to develop and which parts are enhancing habits.

There is a lot of focus on organizing your surroundings, friends, and lifestyle around habits you want to enforce. All of this makes a lot of sense and, in general, this is just good common sense to follow. I think the points made about how developing habits takes time and you need to forgive yourself if you lapse are also important ones.

I think the hard part for most people is actually putting some of these skills into action and not just forgetting about this book as they move forward in life. Sticking with something consistently and long-term is always hard. It’s especially hard with something like eating or exercise where you don’t get the immediate gratification of instant success. This is discussed in this book as well.

My Summary (5/5): Overall, while there is nothing really new or earth-shattering here, this does lay out an easy to follow process for developing good habits in simple steps. There are some intriguing suggestions to help you analyze your surrounds and life to pinpoint why you continue with bad habits and have trouble developing good ones. I found this to be an easy and entertaining read and I think everyone would benefit from reading this because it does really make you sit down and think about your life and how you could improve aspects of it. I find myself thinking back to this book a lot in the weeks following reading it.

Review – Atomic Habits by James Clear (5/5 stars)

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