I have just retired for the second time and don’t think that I will be lured back into work again! Now that I have more of it, I want to make sure that I spend my time purposefully, so I took the time to re-read a book called Atomic Habits, to make sure that I ‘bake’ good habits into my new daily freedom.
James Clear has written an excellent, readable and practical book to help his readers plan how to set about acquiring new habits. It focuses on the way habits form and how we are creatures of habit, often unintentionally unaware of what we are doing (or not doing).
Clear demonstrates how we can turn this to our advantage and plan how to create good habits, building them into our daily routine. The book also contains several worksheets which are downloadable from the author’s website, enabling readers to plan their way to implementing new habits and breaking old unhelpful ones. There is also a weekly free email you can sign up to which contains useful reminders.
The anatomy of an atomic habit
The book starts with the idea of an atom as a very small thing and Clear highlights the impact of a relatively small change in behaviour if it is compounded repeatedly. If you get 1% better at an activity today and repeat it every day for a year, your results will be 37 times better at the end.
Clear begins by describing why habit-forming is more powerful than mere goal setting. We may set a new year’s resolution to lose weight but unless we implement a reliable system to make it happen, there will be no progress and we will give up. Clear identifies how creating a good habit starts with forming a clear inner belief about what you intend to become. (It’s more powerful to say “I am a non-smoker” than to say “I would like to give up smoking”.)
Having defined this new aspect of our identity, we then need to plan how to make it happen systematically.
Implementation tips
Clear talks about the four steps to build a new habit:
Make it obvious: We often fail to form habits because we forget! Making it obvious means planning when and where we will start practising the habit and linking it to a habit we already have.
Make it attractive: I normally make a coffee at around 10am every morning. I want to do more writing in my spare time, so I have resolved to do 30 minutes of writing every day as I drink that coffee. (I am doing it now.) The writing is now associated with enjoying the coffee.
Make it easy: I have reorganised some books and material to make them more easily accessible when I start to write.
Make it satisfying: When I’m done, I reward myself with another coffee (an unfortunate side effect of my new habits is increased coffee consumption).
Clear has also reversed the process for breaking a bad habit. Here the four principles are:
- Make it invisible
- Make it unattractive
- Make it difficult
- Make it unsatisfying
I haven’t used the process yet to try to break a bad habit, but I am confident it will be just as effective with a degree of thought. I am wondering whether I should move my wine out to the garage to make it less easily accessible!
My progress so far
I have currently inserted four new habits I want to form into my day. I know exactly when I will do them, and which existing habit they will be linked to. I have everything to hand to make it easy to start doing them and a reward for when they are completed (you guessed it!).
As the book suggests, I have created a tracker to record the days when I achieve them (still on 100% so far). When I am satisfied that these are fully integrated into my daily routine, I have three more planned which I will also gradually introduce.
On reading it again, I am struck by how practical and simple the book is. It’s relatively short and points out how much of our habitual behaviour is unconscious. The examples the author uses are highly practical and relatable, and clearly demonstrate how to build this thinking into a daily routine.
The thinking and planning part is the hard bit. Actually sitting down and planning the specific actions to make a goal a reality requires some head-scratching, but I have found that putting the time and effort in has given me a seamless process for changing my daily routine.
If you are trying to change the way you live your day, I can warmly recommend this book as a good investment.
