Atomic Habits, a masterpiece on the mechanism of acquiring new and healthy habits, and deleting bad ones is written by the famous author, entrepreneur and photographer James Clear.
The book contains 20 chapters, and each chapter deals with a different aspect of the mechanism of habits. From the first chapter to the last, he emphasizes the importance of tiny habits, and tiny improvements. According to him, one percent improvement in anything regularly for a pretty time pays off a big improvement in the end. He proves his statement with a simple mathematical calculation. If you worsen anything by 1 percent for a year, multiply 0.99 with itself for 365 times it results as 0.03, but if you improve anything by 1 percent for a year, multiply 1.01 by itself for 365 times it results as 37.78. That shows that improvement of 1 percent pays 37 times greater in the end. That’s how atomic habits work.
In the first three chapters of the book, James Clear gives a brief introduction to the atomic habits and tiny changes. He reminds readers that habits are what we repeatedly do each day. And also, our consistency in doing these particular acts depends highly on the results and rewards, in other words, the after experiences of doing that particular thing. Let us suppose, a heater is on and in front of you, you don’t know what will happen with your fingers if you place them on it. As you place your fingers on the heater, it burns your fingers, that is, you got a negative experience by touching the heater. And onwards, you will never do this act again because the result was negative. Contrary to this, you had a class test tomorrow, and you study and prepare yourself for the test. Next day you get A+ in your test and everyone including your classmates and teachers admire you for scoring A+. What will happen? You will repeat this process of studying for the test because the experience you got after preparing yourself for the test was nice, and that made you feel better and happy. This is how we repeat the things we do. And what we repeat continuously becomes a habit, either it is good or bad.
“Surround yourself with the people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You’ll rise together.” -James Clear
In the rest of the seventeen chapters of the book, James Clear talks about the simple and basic four laws of behaviour change to acquire new habits and to discard bad ones. These four laws are;
Make it Obvious
Make it Attractive
Make it Easy
Make it Satisfying
Let us talk about each law in detail.
“People do not decide their future, they decide their habits and their habits decide their future.” – F.M Alexander
Before starting the journey of habit changing, you must be aware of yourself. You must know what habits you wish to acquire and what habits do you want to discard. The very first law, that is “Make it Obvious”, says that, make cues for doing anything. It means that, if you want to build a habit of reading before going to sleep, you must keep a book adjacent to your pillow. By doing so, you are making obvious and that you want to read. It also serves as a cue to read. Because, when you will go to the bed, you will notice a book on your bed, that will remind you to read. And the inversion of this law is to make it invisible, that is used to discard a habit. Suppose, if you use the mobile phone too much then make your mobile invisible to you. Keep it somewhere that you can’t see it. This will help you to minimize the use of mobile, and eventually, it will take you to less use your mobile.
‘Surround yourself with the people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You’ll rise together’ — James Clear
“Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it.” – Confucius
The second law is “Make it Attractive”, and it says that, if you want to repeat an act that you perform to acquire any particular habit, then make it attractive, make it beautiful. Now, the best strategy to make a habit attractive is to link it with another habit that you do and you love doing it. Say you want to have a habit of doing 10 pushups each morning, and you love to have mango juice in the morning. You can link these two habits as, after having mango juice I will do 10 pushups in my kitchen. This is called habit stacking and it what helps you to repeat a habit regularly by linking it with a habit that you do regularly. And, the inversion of this law is “Make it Unattractive”, that is used to delete a habit. You can make a habit unattractive by highlighting the benefits of leaving that habit. If you use a mobile too much, then highlight the benefits that you will get after using mobile less. This is how you can make a habit unattractive to do.
“It is better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all.” -James Clear
The third law is “Make it Easy”, that means to make those habits easy for you that you want to have. If you want to read before sleeping, then start by reading for 5 minutes each night, and do it regularly. Because the amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it. So, make a habit so much easy for you to perform that it would become automatic. And, the reversal of this law is “Make it Difficult”, that is used to avoid any habit. If you want to avoid a habit, then make it too much difficult for you to perform. Let us say you watch TV too much and you want to avoid this habit. Then, take out the batteries of the remote of your TV and place them somewhere difficult to take. By doing so, whenever you will try to watch TV, you will recall that batteries are difficult to take, so, leave it, I’ll watch TV later. This is how you can make good habits easy for you to perform, and difficult to bad habits that you want to avoid.
“We are more likely to repeat a behaviour when the experience is satisfying.” – James Clear
The fourth and the last law is “Make it Satisfying”, that means make these habits satisfying that you want to have. Now, one of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of progress. You read 5 minutes each night before sleeping, you repeat it for two to three days, and when you feel like you are progressing, it satisfies you, and you are more likely to do it. So, this is one way to make any experience satisfying. And, the inversion of this law to delete any habit is “Make it Unsatisfying”, think about the bad experience you do after performing that harmful habit. This is how habits are formed and discarded.
This is how this book teaches and helps readers to be their best. The book solely talks about habits. So, you are unlikely to find something else on self-development in this book. The language and structure of the book are so much easy that you will hardly rush for any dictionary. I would say, this book is a sincere guide for those who want to have productive habits or delete harmful habits. Grab it if you want to change yourself, your habits, and your life.
The writer is a blogger and student at University of Engineering & Technology. He can be reached at [email protected]