Why James Clear’s Atomic Habit Book Actually Works | by Dina Osman, CBAP, CAPM | Dec, 2021

Book summary for those in a rush.

James Clear’s book on building habits is probably by far the most sensical book on the market — it’s structured and organized in a way that makes it easy to read and to apply.

Some of the principles in the book were methods I was already using in my day-to-day, and some have greatly helped me reduce my social media consumption. The areas he touches on are: designing your life & your environment, not letting your day-to-day happen by accident, using positive and negative reinforcement concepts from psychology to help reprogram your behaviour, and adopting an identity that aligns with the habits you’re attempting to build.

This makes the entire approach more holistic, since it works outside-in by influencing behaviours through environment design, but also inside-out by influencing them through one’s inner perception of themselves.

Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.

Makes It Obvious

• Identify what habits you want to build.
• Identify current habits that you do everyday without failure (e.g., waking up, brushing teeth, drinking coffee, having breakfast etc.).
• Use implementation intentions: I will [behaviour] [frequency] at [time] in [location], and be specific “I will meditate every day at 7 AM in the living room”.
• Use habit stacking: “After I [current habit], I will [new habit]”. Be specific “After brushing my teeth every night, I will take my magnesium supplement”.
• Design your environment to make sure the things you want to do are easy to achieve. If you want to make sure you want to have your supplements every day, put them in a place where you can see them and easily access them.

Make It Attractive

• Use temptation bundling. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do. If for instance you enjoy listening to Gary Vee or Joe Rogan, only do it when you’re out for a run or cycling.
• Join a culture where your desired behaviour is a normal behaviour. I fell into this one by accident, when I wanted to run a half-marathon I started talking to co-workers who ran for tips and advice, before I knew it — they became my people, I felt that I fit as part of a new tribe and it helped form my identity as someone who runs and enjoys running.
• Create a motivation ritual. Do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit. For me, that’s coffee before a run, or dancing to my favorite songs as a warm up before a workout.

Make It Easy

• Reduce friction. Decrease the number of steps between you and your good habits. I keep my workout clothes as easily accessible as possible, my training shoes always next to the door, acting as a constant reminder and making it easy to slip into.
• Prime the environment. Prepare your environment to make future actions easier. If you want to do more of something, set up the environment that promotes that behaviour.
• Master the decisive moment. Optimize the small choices that deliver outsized impact. For me, that’s drinking water — I place a bottle of water next to my bed, I now automatically drink 1 litre every morning before my coffee.
• Use the 2-minute rule. Downscale your habits until they can be done in 2 minutes or less. This tip was super helpful when trying to get myself to write or read more. I made micro commitments that eventually allowed me to extend the time I spend reading and writing.
• Automate your habits. Invest in technology and onetime purchases that lock in future behaviour. For me, that was limiting the use of my iPad for reading. Now every time I hold my iPad the first thing I do is open my Kindle app.

Make It Satisfying

• Use reinforcement. Give yourself an immediate reward when you complete your habit. It could be a nice meal, a pat on the back , or crossing an item from your daily plans — whatever makes you feel good about the task you completed.
• Make “doing something” enjoyable. When avoiding a bad habit, design a way to see the benefits. Transitioning from a joyful physical activity like dancing to running was a tough transition, I had to make myself believe that I enjoy running, so I constantly remind myself that I’m not a dancer or a runner, but I’m someone who enjoys physical activities and challenges and that every time I run even if it’s -10 degrees outside, I’m reaffirming that identity and being grateful for having the ability to do it and enjoy it.
• Use a habit tracker. Keep track of your habit streak and don’t break the chain. I used a Strava Subscription for tracking my workouts and streaks, I love this app, a lot of people I know are on it and every time someone likes my activity I feel connected to that community even more. I use the format of 1/5 workouts to have a way to personally see how many workouts I’ve completed against my goal of 5 workouts a week.
• Never miss twice. When you forget to do a habit, make sure you get back on track immediately. Without regret, or guilting!

Make It Invisible

• Reduce exposure. Remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment. For a while, eating nuts was driving me nuts — every time I saw cashews it was a trigger for me to finish the entire pack, this was a dreadful time. I’ve made point to not look at cashews at the supermarket, don’t buy, or bring it home. If I was going to eat that thing it was going to be at a restaurant in a meal. Two years later, and I no longer have that craving or trigger, and when I see cashews I don’t react to them as I used to 2 years ago.

Make It Unattractive

• Reframe your mindset. Highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits. This wasn’t hard, I’ve always liked being active, my depression though got the best of me 3 years ago, I was doing all sorts of things that were harmful to my body, mind and spirit in attempt to seek answers for my non-sensical existence. One day, after my first and last LSD trip I decided that I never wanted to touch drugs or alcohol ever again. I wanted to be able to do things that bring me joy like working out and running — which I couldn’t do in the long run, if I was constantly pouring poison into my body and treating myself so poorly.

Make It Difficult

• Increase friction. Increase the number of steps between you and your bad habits. This tool has been very helpful for me to quit social media, I deleted my social media apps, and I removed any saved passwords from my phone. Now when I want to use IG or FB, I use the browser and I log out after — the poor phone browser experience along with having to login every time has made it more difficult for me to bother even to check it out. I can now go on for days without checking social media.
• Use a commitment device. Restrict your future choices to the ones that benefit you. A commitment device is a choice you make in the present moment to lock your future behaviour. For instance, if you know that you can watch Netflix for 5 hours straight till midnight, you can add an outlet timer that cuts off your router at 10 PM every night; or if you know you can overeat at a restaurant, you can ask the waiter to split the meal and box half of it for takeout so you can manage your intake.

Make It Unsatisfying

• Get an accountability partner. Ask someone to watch your behaviour. I’m personally not a big fan of this one cause I’m generally already hard on myself. But at some point, I did have a motivation partner for meditating every day and together we were able to meditate every day for 3 months.
• Create a habit contract. Make the costs of your bad habits public and painful. Again, not a big fan of this one — but one way it could be applied is to put a certain amount of money away every time you do a bad habit, at least you’ll benefit from it eventually.

In conclusion, a lot of our habits have less to do with our willpower and more about our environment and our perception of ourselves. Make your environment work for you, and use your energy to focus on who you want to be and believe you’re already that person.