This is not my first time reading Atomic Habits. I decided to read it again because I wanted to take a look at my current habits, how those have changed over the course of time and in this pandemic, and see how I could adjust them to optimize by day to day actions.
James Clear starts out the book by explaining why he became interested in habits, and how the habits that he has built have impacted his life. As a high schooler, he was playing baseball and was accidentally hit in the face, hard, with a baseball bat. This caused swelling in his brain, seizures, a medically induced coma, and rehabilitation to learn to walk in a straight line and be able to see normally. When he went to college, he used habits to become a better college athlete, as well as being a good student.
Clear makes the case for habits as being the compound interest of self improvement. I’m a personal finance nerd, so this analogy makes so much sense to me – a little bit, when compounded, adds up significantly. I’ve seen how this compounds in relationships too – since the pandemic started, almost every evening I’ve been going on a walk and calling my mom. She’ll usually go on a walk at around the same time, and I think that spending more time talking to my mom has improved our relationship. The same thing is true with teaching – working a bit each day to improve your practice is the way to make real improvements.
Clear argues that the path to success is focusing on systems, rather than goals – if you want to run a marathon, the marathon isn’t the thing that matters – what matters more is the five training runs you do every week, and what you put into them.
Identity based habits, Clear argues, are more successful than outcome based habits. If I know that I’m a tidy person, I will wash all the dishes before I go to bed every night – that’s something a tidy person does. If I’m a teacher who builds great relationships with students, I will make sure to check in with a scholar who seems a little off in the morning, and I’ll go to my kid’s football and basketball games. Every time we repeat those habits, it’s a vote for the type of person we are – it’s a vote for that identity.
Each habit, Clear writes, has four steps. Cue, craving, response, reward. I’ve built up a habit of calling my mom when I go on a walk every evening. When I’m done working for the day (cue) I want to do something to get out of the house and get a bit of light exercise (craving) so I go for a walk (response) and call my mom and tell her about every detail of my day (reward.) To build a good habit, Clear outlines four laws. “Make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying.”
The whole book is filled with practical, actionable steps to build good habits and break bad habits, and it’s really pushed me to examine the habits that I have right now, and how they impact my life.