Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

Atomic Habits

An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

2016 • 168 pages

Ratings888

Average rating4.2

15

The core of this book is 4 parts that are very straightforward: make habits obvious, make them easy, make them attractive, make them satisfying. Those four pillars are the foundations of making a good long-term habit, but Clear’s underlying point is that habits, like people, should be growing and responding to their environment. Clear’s habit forming system applies Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s anti-fragility to everyday life. Your everyday life and habits should improve, one percent every day. And if you can’t grow them 1%, then you need to tune the habit to make it easier, to make it achievable.

Clear tells us this at the start of the book. If you aren’t achieving your habits, it’s not a personal failure. Your habit system is failing you. So everything else comes from — you’ve built a habit system that doesn’t grow in the face of resistance. What can you change so that it does? And while not a long book, I think atomic habits answers this question quite nicely.

Definitely worth a reread

January 23, 2025