Atomic Habits

This book lays down the framework for forming habits and shares insightful strategies for building good and breaking bad habits. Reading this book helped me approach habits I'm trying to adopt or break from different angles. Atomic Habits is about shifting your dreams and wishful thinking into knowing exactly where you want to be and planning to get there. My key takeaway was changing our thoughts about attaining our goals to focusing on the system instead. We need to have an actionable framework on how we can move toward our goals; otherwise, we will never reach them. We must develop daily habits that allow us to achieve them. Our level of commitment to the process will determine our level of progress. Associating our habits with our identity is a great way to focus on how to transform our beliefs.

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”

I thought i already wrote a review for this. When i first listened to atomic habits I thought the fact that the author provided supplements to help you track habits and told you how to build systems was great. And it is on paper but his methods don't work for me. he has some good nuggets of information like how just because you find something boring doesn't mean you no longer want to do it. Like say you want to write a story but after the initial rush a motivation has left you it feels boring to work on your story. It doesn't mean you no longer want to write it, that feeling of boredom is normal and doesn't mean you should give up.

4.5 stars. Lots of useful information on habit formation that I have started implementing and intend to continue to use. The last few chapters, wherein the author attempts to connect his habit framework to mastery, are the weakest and should be taken with a grain of salt. The preceding 17 or so chapters still make this a more than worthwhile read.

Simple worded, structured and actionable book with relatable examples from my daily life.
The examples and practical solutions helped me realise that my implementation techniques were hazy and not clear. I was solving for way too many variables, solving for things I should not be, and expecting too much energy to be spent on too many habits. The examples and techniques are, I think, going to help me optimize and simplify the process.
Oh, and the stories of people who experimented were helpful reminders to me that experimentation is important.

The book excellently covers the topic of forming good habits and getting rid of bad ones. It contains a lot of insightful thoughts. But it also feels kind of narrow. I expected more high-level material on how to transform your life using habits. Maybe a review of habits of highly successful people. Maybe more real-life cases of how people in different areas used habits to achieve success.

Atomic Habits is the yang to Tiny Habits yin. They complement each other. Tiny Habits to get started, Atomic Habits to develop mastery.

From personal experience, the material on ensuring habits aren't stale and aren't producing outcomes is the most important part of the book. Building habits isn't difficult. Building the right habits requires considerably more effort. Habits which aren't ultimately producing desired outcomes are indistinguishable from “bad” habits, regardless of the moral content of the habit.

WHY: Was chatting to my cousin and we were looking for ways to better utilise our time as we go through university and working life, finally giving me motivation to pick one of the popular non-fiction books off of my ‘want to read' list. Atomic Habits is one of the more well-known, highly-read and rated books from that selection, and we thought why not start with the best one.
CONTENT: I really loved all of the content in Atomic Habits, revolving around the discussion of small changes accumulating in an almost non-quantifiable manner to make large differences. There were a lot of great gems within, especially relating to setting up systems rather than goals, chaining good actions together and being efficiently lazy. I also appreciated the advanced section, which explains what the Goldilocks Rule is (balancing difficulty and achievement), and the dangers that can arise when you live a habitual lifestyle and forget continual improvement.
WRITING: Clear has a great structured approach to the book, building upon the cue-craving-response-reward process across the book's sections. Each chapter is streamlined to the key information, which is dressed by anecdotes, diagrams, sub-headings and summaries that all work together in keeping the reader engaged and learning. I also appreciated how Clear pairs positive-leaning changes that build habits with negative ones that can break undesired behaviours.
WHO: Honestly, this is one of those books which I feel I need a physical copy of on my bookshelf, so that at different times of my life (and for different people who may need it) I can just pull it down and flick to the section that is relevant. This is definitely one I recommend anyone read at any age when attempting to improve any area of their life - along the way, you'll probably end up using at least one or two of these tips in other areas, and these little changes will assist in building the identity you want for yourself.

I have 2 things to say about this book. Firstly JC is a good writer. Engaging stories and a framework that he has refined over the years makes for easy reading. Secondly, it's a pity that the psychological fundations are 80 years old from the relative dark ages of psychological science. Operant conditioning from old BF Skinner is for training animals and naughty children from Charles Dickinson stories.

But overall a helpful book

4.5

I suppose some might argue that parts of this book were a little repetitive, but to me, it wasn't to an extent where I was too bothered by it.

The writing wasn't over complicated, and as far as I remember, everything was pretty much straight to the point, which is something I appreciate a lot, considering the plethora of self-help books out there which just add an extra 100 pages of really complicated fluff which just drags on.

Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot and got a tone of valuable information out of it. You would think that we already know an adequate amount about habits, but James Clear manages to include new information and perspectives that I would have otherwise never even considered. This is definitely something I'd consider re-reading every once in a while, just to get have all the information fresh in my mind.

A handy book to make a change in your life.

This book leads you through the steps and tricks you can use to make the most of your life. In essence, it teaches you how to create small habits that together make a significant influence.

Even though I think this book is so useful I have given it only 3 stars because the process of reading is tedious and very repetitive, which made me read even slower and procrastinate reading the book.

I like that this book doesn't become preachy with their formula of forming habits. The advice listed here are helpful, but the author is also careful to be aware of the limits of the prescriptions that he wrote. The tips are also useful and can be applied to other areas outside of personal development, such as business and parenting. If you have read Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit, this book can be a perfect companion because it gets more practical on how you can actually make habits work for you.

This is one of the few books of personal improvement that I had really enjoyed The way this book is write is very engaging and interesting but this book Don't have just that this book have a topic essential for everyone habits one of the hardest things to create right or to destroy and this one gives a lot of strategies to make the habits stick I read this book a long time ago and it help me a lot to create good habits and improve a lot myself but now with this re-read I can see more clearly a lot of things I didn't saw back then so in general if you don't know how to start self-improving books this is a recommendable one so give it a go