Book review: atomic habits
Atomic Habits is a practical book to hone your small habit choices and their ability to make a big impact on your life. The first part of the book is dedicated to defining habits, specifically YOUR habits and not to change them right up but to be aware of them. The rest of the book is a guide on how to create good habits and break bad habits through Four Laws of Behavior Change which he describes as a “simple set of rules we can use to build better habits”: (1) make it obvious (2) make it attractive (3) make it easy (4) make it satisfying.
With any book like this, the ideas that you decide to try are going to be different for everyone, but here’s a snapshot of what I am now trying to incorporate into my daily habits.
Identity change:
I started with his idea of identity change: who do I want to become? I want to be a healthy person. I guess to most of my family, friends and clients I already am but I don’t think health is not a given, once and done; esp as we age, we gotta keep inspiring our own health! I put a daily reminder of who I want to be on a post -it -note near my phone charger that says, “I am a healthy person.”
New habits:
I use headspace app daily to meditate. I have done for 12 years I think? That’s crazy! I think I enjoy it haha.
In the 1st Law, Clear talks about habit sticking (over stacking, which sounds like overwhelm!), which is choosing a current habit and then performing the new habit alongside/right after the current one. Mine is “after lunch, I mediate”. I look forward to the feeling - I’m often my most creative just before (or at least I think I am hehe) so I have a notebook to write anything down too.
The 2nd Law is to “make it attractive”. After busting my acl frustrations have been running high. But one of the steps in the 2nd Law is to “join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior”. My family are still able to enjoy their activities even if I can’t so rather than fomo I’ve been joining them in the sidelines are adding my workouts (or more than ever, work-it-outs cos movement is pretty different with only one leg!) Thank you to my family for this.
“Make it easy” is the 3rd Law. My favorite idea here is the “Two-minute rule”. Start off by making your habit something you can do in 2 minutes and build from there. The next habit I wanted to do was to add a monthly challenge to uplevel what I could do rather than could no longer. I brush my teeth every day and so hang a doorframe chin-up bar right next to it - voila!
The 4th Law is “make it satisfying”. James Clear has an atomic habits website with some habit building tools and one is a Habit Tracker sheet and filleting it out for all of these habits and again oddly satisfying to see the x’s in the boxes.
I will need to continue to find other ways to make all these activities become true habits, but I have a start on them now and I’m excited to continue to use ideas from this book with these and other habits that I want to create and some I need to break.
