Book Review: Atomic Habits, by James Clear
What I Agreed With: Flipping the script. If you want to create a good habit, Clear recommends that you makes it: obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. Conversely, to discourage yourself from pursing undesired habits, make them not-obvious, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying.
The Cue/Craving/Reward/Response cycle is illuminative for everyone. I could say everyone who wants to improve, but I think that's short-sighted. Everyone fundamentally wants things to be better, but often they view the cost of change as too high. Implementing CCRR is a way to decrease the friction between "time to do it" and "doing it" in a way that can help the struggling find ease in accomplishing things they once thought beyond them. 0 reply
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What I Disagreed With:
Nothing. Perhaps this makes me appear to be a shallow thinker, incapable of finding contention, but it's an honest answer. I've implemented, at one time or another, in one form or another, everything in the book. Positive results came from all. One could potentially say that it becomes "too much" and that the danger exists that in falling short - failing to track habits, or "falling off the wagon" in some manner or another" - can result in a downward spiral that possibly takes the person lower than they were before.
I understand this danger. We fear our own capability, in part because we fear becoming great and losing greatness. In taking control of your environment, cues, and habits, you become a hero to yourself. As the saying goes - we die heros or live long enough to become villains. And the truth is we are both - hero and villain. Angel and devil. We can choose who to listen to, who to give attention to, and ulitimately - we choose our identity. 1 reply
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What New Ideas Arose:
I love the story of the young man who loses over 100 lbs by establishing a gym ritual from the molecular level - first doing nothing more than putting his gym clothes on for a week, then taking baby steps week by week to expand until he had done the entire workout.
Growth starts with a seed, and that planted a seed. I grew up in a chaotic household. It was messy, dirty, and crowded. Piles of dirty laundry and trash, dirty dishes, and carpets that were only cleaned when a traveling salesman showed up hawking a vaccum.
Those habits became mine b/c that environment was mine. After reading Atomic Habits, I built a "clean truck" habit. Each time I parked my truck, I took something out that didn't belong or put something back in place that did. ONE thing. One penny, straw wapper, empy can of soda. Within two weeks I was driving a spotless vehicle. There was nothing in it that did not belong, and I knew where everything was. I'm now a tidy person - turns out, I was all along. 0 reply
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