Atomic Habits is a Must Read!

Atomic Habits

Buckle up this one is going to be a long one

I have always heard of this book; it is legendary among self-development podcasts. My girlfriend picked me up a copy for Christmas because she is aware of my self-development addiction and my curiosity with books. She is the top reader of this blog other than me, and she has always done a wonderful job supporting me. Before the first chapter could even kickoff, the introduction into James Clear’s (the author) life and why the heck he likes habits so much. I really didn’t know where he was going at first when he was describing a pretty gruesome injury that nearly took his life away with a baseball bat, but he was able to overcome and create a successful collegiate career when it comes to sports and academics. Later on, he would create blog articles about successful habit making and experimenting along with his readers, much like I am trying my best to do. Juggling academics, this blog, my health, a bunch of quality relationships and work. As a person whose biggest weakness is consistency which happens to be my word of the year 2023, he grabbed my attention immediately and his book about habits to build consistency is one of my favorite books already.

I have broken into more of the book, and it has had quite a few lessons already. The difference in habit making I found was especially inciteful. The outcome-based habit is when the goal needs to be reached first before the processes and your identity changes. Like when you go to the gym and don’t feel like you are a gym person until you finally get a six pack and that makes you go more. These types of habits are the easiest to give up on. The identity-based habits are when you wrap the habits into who you are. You say you are a golfer so you play golf every day and even if you suck, the reps in that pursuit will eventually pay off. For my entire schooling career probably starting in middle school I was not a school guy. I said I wasn’t a school guy; the only reason why I wanted to go to school was to see all my friends. This led to less than favorable results but because I HAD to finish high school I did. When school became optional, all I did was focus on the outcome, I still had no desire of school, I just did it because one day I would have a decent job and be able to finance my hobbies and other pursuits. Going to school became an outcome-based habit and since I was not making any real progress towards graduating in a particular field my schooling was going less than outstanding. I skipped class when things got difficult. I would rationalize my terrible schooling habits with its not important, you aren’t a school guy which led me to go extremely slow in school and in five years I was only able to get an associate degree, even with my school being pretty much 100% paid for. I took a lot of time off when my transcript was looking like I was typing it a website with all of the W’s in a row. My identity wasn’t ever a school guy. That’s the narrative I told myself which became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m not a school guy, why the hell should I write my feelings on a subject and respond to two other people on their feelings about a subject. I would call these assignments stupid which was what I did in high school and middle school. I still remember the days where I would not do my homework when we would check it in class. This led to one of my more embarrassing moments in my early teens when I came to tears in my math class because the teacher was getting extremely frustrated with me that I didn’t do my homework. Luckily, I found school very easily especially on test days where I would be able to get A’s on the tests but because I screwed around with the homework and easy grades I would end up with a B. My college days would continue this pattern but, in my experience, college professors aren’t really the greatest of teachers, so I wouldn’t be able to pick up as much in class. Pair that with the fact of my refusal for reading any textbook and skipping all sorts of easy assignments the schooling days got much more difficult. I would also have a low form of imposter syndrome anytime I walked on a college campus. Certain people look back on their college days as some of the best times of their lives. I am in the crowd that is counting the seconds in class so I can leave. Recently, I have come to the realization that part of these schooling woes had to do with the people I associated with. Most of my good friends went away into the military, and most of the others are not in any college. One of my good friends has been going to school for a master’s degree in physical therapy but other than that I was looking through my group chats and I saw no success in college. They are wonderful people, but school wasn’t a priority to them. No wonder why I didn’t put much stock in school. Even most of my girlfriends of the past weren’t involved in school. In the recent past I have finally flipped a switch—maybe I can be a school guy. If I get a habit of daily schoolwork, I will inevitably have good results which occurred the last semester. It is something I am very proud of. I finally feel as though I have figured my shit out. It took much longer than it should have but I arrived at the destination all the same. This is temporary and it is my life now. I am a college student.

An implementation intention is a key point that has been missing in my life. I have a daily planner with a to-do list, but it just has the habit on it. Things come up and the habit gets thrown out the window. On DAY, at TIME, at PLACE I will HABIT. I know for me my brain can sometimes wander into what I want for dinner, who do I need to text, what am I wearing tonight, when am I doing laundry, when am I going to take out the trash. All these decisions just fog up my brain display when it should be clear for the habit I am trying to replicate and make a part of my life. A to-do list is great, but I have often just brushed aside the habits until it is far too late and a bad place to have the habit start. Especially with new habits you are trying to implement you need to be explicit on what time you are starting and where you will be doing it. These instructions will make it much easier to stick to the plan because you know exactly what time, place, and day you can make this habit. On Monday January 9th, I will be going to my third floor of the college library right after class to do at least fifty minutes of schoolwork. The day is locked in, the time is locked in, and the place is locked in. I will check back in here after the fact and see if I am able to nail this task to keep up the schooling habit for success.

Habit stacking is a phenomenon that is discussed in this book as well. The logic is pretty sound, add a new habit on the back of an old reliable habit like brushing your teeth. If you want to start flossing, make sure it is very accessible for you to partake in the habit and floss every time immediately after you brush your teeth. After enough reps, the floss will be picked up automatically after the toothbrushing and the habit will improve your gum health.

I just wrote a single blog post dedicated to how cues work from this book. I have thrown up several different cues surrounding all sorts of habits. Designing my environment for more consistency which is my word for this new year. I am not going to dive too deep into this one here because it will just be beating you over the head with making cues for good habits very visible and cues for bad habits invisible. Hide the donuts in the cabinet. Don’t even bring them home. If ice cream is in my freezer, I will eat it. If it is not, I am not making a special trip to the grocery store just for ice cream. I once bought six cartons of ice cream which I ate in seven days. I would come home from work tired and the easiest way to get energy for the rest of the day was the easily accessible mountain of sugar and fat in my freezer.

Dopamine was explained into a singular chapter of this book in reference to the four stages of a habit. When a cue is recognized by us a large spike of dopamine hits us which is the craving section of the habit loop. Once we respond, our reward is given to us which cements the brain that this habit rewards us so continue pumping out dopamine once that cue is realized. The author then discusses the idea of temptation bundling. He brought up an example of an engineering student by the name of Ronan Byrne. He found himself—like a lot of us—watching Netflix way too often. He decided to put a stationary bike in his living room that powered Netflix. The only way to watch it was if he pedaled the bike quick enough. He used his dopamine spike for watching Netflix and paired it with working out. His brain made the exercise on the bike mean a reward was coming. This makes this good habit much more attractive in our brain.

This book is rapidly becoming a favorite of mine. A large lesson I picked up from the book is our habits are picked up from the close, the many, and the powerful. Looking back on my life I have had so many moments where I have gone along with the pack. Some were small and some were decisions that could have really messed my life up. I have already stated all about my school habits and how almost none of my closest friends cared about school, so I followed. When I got a girlfriend that was finally all about school my habits changed into a guy that looked at school on a daily basis. I still have a long way to go with that because even today I have pushed off my cues to start the school habit back. Adding on to these stranbge habits that I just pick up is using a napkin to pick up a sandwich. Very strange example but bear with me. I used to work with my grandfather and his brother fixing up houses. Almost every day I worked with him we would drive five minutes down the road to pick up some chicken sandwiches. They held their sandwich with a napkin as their hands weren’t washed very often. My hands needed to be washed every time I hit a stopping point next to a sink. Eventually, even though I had clean hands, I would start holding my chicken sandwich with a napkin. These days I don’t bother with the napkin anymore, but I found it so fascinating that my behavior changed so quick. Similarly, I got wrapped up in smoking weed behind the gym all of my friends used to go to in high school. This would become a weekly habit until I switched schools and left most of those friends there. The last two years of high school I believe I only smoked one time. Several members of my family are pretty big gamblers so when I was able to gamble on a cruise ship at 18 that was the place to be. I was maybe making ten dollars an hour at the time, but I would sit in that chair playing blackjack for hours. This happened during every cruise I went on after I turned the legal gambling age. The last one I went on; the casino was just a shortcut to cross the ship. My girlfriend was not a gambler, so I didn’t play a single hand of blackjack. Even though several years ago, I would play blackjack with my family at my house. Loved the game that would work out my math brain doing some simple probability problems. “One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where your desired behavior is norm.” I study better in a library than anywhere else. It is pretty incredible how fast you can change if your environment is designed for that change.

Finding the causes of your bad habits are key to stopping them is the next point I would like to discuss from this book. Some people itch for a cigarette when they see people smoking, others cough and hold their breath while passing them. Somewhere deep down in the smoking group’s brains has associated the feeling of relief after smoking a cigarette which makes them dig in their pockets when they see a cigarette. The brain doesn’t even register the smell. I have seen people smoke from their cigarettes and then take a bite of a sandwich immediately after. I get grossed out by that; I would rather not think about the flavor of a tobacco sandwich. When I pass a cigarette all my brain picks up is that awful smell. No feelings of possible relief from the anxiety I’m feeling so I am pretty confident I will never pick up a cigarette for as long as I live. Granted, I thought the same thing about cigars but all it took was a trip with the boys to the cigar shop that the smell eased up on those. Now, I associate cigars with good times with my friends and accomplishing something. Here are just a few athletes lighting up for you.

I know that was overkill but just think about one of the laws of making a good habit stick—make it attractive. As a big fan of sports, they look badass celebrating their hard-earned victories. Luckily, that is the only time I will smoke a cigar, when I feel like I accomplish something and want to feel like Joe burrow after winning the National Championship. This leads perfectly into a quote from the book, “the cause of your habits is actually the prediction that precedes them. The prediction leads to a feeling.” When I accomplish something awesome, I feel like my favorite athletes winning so I light up a cigar which gives me that feeling of satisfaction. I have tied my satisfaction of accomplishing something big with a lousy habit of smoking a cigar. If this doesn’t change when I graduate from college in 5-10 years I might have to smoke 10 cigars.

I just read one of my favorite chapters in the entire book. The chapter “Walk Slowly, but Never Backward”, explains the difference between motion and action among other things. I have come up with so many book ideas, business ideas, and many more ideas I have wanted to implement in my life. Sticking with these ideas I would like to add the next portion of this chapter which spoke about reps and Hebbs law, “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” Each repetition for the brain the cell to cell signaling improves and the neural connections tighter. Almost as if the habits were paving a roadway in your brain for easier completion of the habit. It also works the opposite way when you stop practicing the habit the roadway will close. Waiting and ready for you to pick it back up again, much like riding a bike. I would put these down on paper and most would stay there but some would turn into passion fueled days of hard work. There are several unfinished books in my word documents from all sorts of different parts of my life where I would have the huge charge of motivation just for it to burn out extremely quickly. It was no wonder that I could write short stories much easier than novels. I would churn out short story after short story but there was no habit surrounding it. These stories would just end before the motivation ran out. The only long piece of work I have finished are two screenplays each around 135 pages for around two hours of runtime on screen. When I was completing these I wouldn’t let myself be consumed by this motivation fuel that burns brightly but rather quickly. Instead, I wrote two to three pages every single day and without missing a day I churned through two feature length screenplays. During my short basketball career, in my earlier days I made a point to practice shooting all the time. The court was my happy place, and nothing was better than the sound a basketball hitting the net in an empty gym. I was putting in the reps, and each day my shot was improving. During summer basketball, my shot was also peak performance and it showed. I had a great shot; every make was evidence that I was taking the right course of action, so I continued to put up shots on a daily basis. Sadly, I told myself that I was mostly able to get these shots up while I was in summer but during the school year I would go to practices and most of those were made up of running and defense. Very few reps of shooting a basketball. So, my shot faded more and more and in games when I would miss a shot, I would lose more confidence until by the end of my career I wouldn’t ever shoot the ball. I became a talented facilitator because I had the most reps in that during practice without putting in the extra time.

The Law of Least Effort chapter really makes you feel hopeful about being lazy. It can provide you an easy way to perform sometimes difficult habits daily without as much friction or motivation. Let’s face it, we all have bad days that can take us off the path of bettering our lives. We get into a funk and the toilet begins developing stains, the sink begins to overflow with dishes, and you realize you haven’t taken the trash out in several days. It is much easier to push down the trash than to take it out. Sticking with that trash example there comes a point when you can’t push down the trash without adding quite a bit of effort to it or perhaps ripping the bag so then and only then does the trash go out. When starting a new habit, the motivation and excitement of tasting something new pushes you through the added energy needed to complete the habit. We have all had days where we would rather just sit on that couch and watch Netflix or scroll on social media for hours. I am having one of those days while writing this and this chapter hit me on the perfect day. I had an argument with my girlfriend last night which led to my sleep being pretty shitty. So the morning naturally went by pretty shitty and my motivation levels were so far down that I didn’t think about any of these habits or the blog post I needed to edit and publish today. I also didn’t want to eat healthy at all, I wanted pizza, ice cream, or anything with sugar I could find. This brings me to one of the largest takeaways I have gotten from this book. Today, I had no motivation to write, eat healthy, clean up anything. I was slow to start but I had no unhealthy foods in the fridge so instead of ice cream I had a salmon rice bowl. Annoying to make in the short term, I wanted something easy to do but that’s all I had so it is either starve or eat something healthy. My environment made the decision easy. I also have put all healthy foods center stage in my refrigerator—right at eye level. This has increased my daily veggie eating but I will start to add another wrinkle to this and chop up the veggies and make them even more accessible instead of them being in a bag. When my mom would chop up veggies and fruits in containers, we would start to eat more of them. It is much easier on hard days to grab a bowl of pineapple instead of dealing with those spikes. This is why grocery stores have precut fruit for sale at an added cost. They are taking advantage of our laziness on the path of least resistance. Which brings me into my daily habit cluster I kept putting off. I didn’t want to write, do schoolwork, clean, or cook after my rough night. I made the cues recognizable and the starts to them easy, so I am able to just crank them out one after another. If I didn’t start, I would have never remembered that I dedicated Tuesdays and Fridays as new blog days but because of my daily habits I was reminded in one way which made me look at my fridge to get reminded again. The momentum builds after the first domino falls and I still feel low energy. Even with this amount of motivation I am burning through all of my tasks throughout the day.

The two-minute rule was discussed in the most recent chapter. It makes a lot of sense and I have heard many stories of this working. One example he uses from the book, is one of the greatest dancers/choreographers named Twyla Tharp. Every morning she would put on her workout clothes, get a cab, and then go to the gym for two hours. If anyone did this, they would get into incredible shape, but how do we convince ourselves to go to the gym for two hours from binge eating ice cream and playing video games to get in the gym? My thought process was always to make exercise fun. I would usually go play basketball earlier on in life but now I either surf, play basketball, or play golf. These options are all things I enjoy doing but they are also at least a thirty-minute drive to get there. My apartment complex gym is down one flight of stairs and I have only gone there four or five times in six months. I never felt like a gym guy though, so my identity is wrapped up with all the times I got injured while lifting weights trying to impress my older brother. I was a skinny guy, so I just felt like it wasn’t for me. In the book, the author calls a process, habit shaping. It has a lot to do with the two-minute rule, if you want to start a new habit it should not take more than two minutes. I have heard of this example before on a podcast but once again, the book brings up a guy who wanted to lose weight and would drive to his gym, work out for five minutes, and leave. He did this every day and of course, five minutes of exercising isn’t going to make you lose weight but eventually his brain said hell, I am already here, might as well continue exercising. Make the entry point as easily accessible as possible. Find your goal, and then reverse engineer to the easiest point. Want to write a novel? Start by writing one sentence every day, and then you just scale to what you believe allows you to meet the goal. If you continue one sentence every day, that novel will have a completion date of fifty years so once you get that foot in the door you are able to kick it open. That one choice starts a domino effect that could last you an hour or more. I have been faced with the decision of either study or play my video game several times over the years. Most of the answers were pretty easy to make as long as no deadlines were the next day. Once that controller gets in your hand, it becomes “just one game” and then it turns into “one more” and then you look at the clock to see that three hours have passed. This works both ways because if I do pick school, I am able to continue that for a little while, definitely not three hours’ worth but I can get decently ahead…. Or catch up. There might be a blog article coming up about this two-minute rule because I have two habits I really want to perform daily.

I have now introduced this book to most of the people in my circle. I talk my girlfriend’s ear off about it as we had a thirty-minute conversation about the book last night. This is the second book that I introduced to my friends. Some had read it already. Some said, “they don’t read” classic.

Moving on to another point about making these habits impossible and making good habits stick. Victor Hugo was a French author in the 1800’s, he was planning to write a book in a year, but a year passed, and no book was even started. The publisher got angry and put a deadline for it of six months. Hugo told his assistant to lock up all clothes needed to go out socializing and all that he had left was an outfit unfit for social outings. In five months, he published The Hunchback of Notre Dame. This was the example the author gave to explain commitment devices. It is to make a decision that is best for your future in the present before future desires hit. Like my fat example of me eating the donuts on every trip to Walmart. Those desires don’t hit me anymore now that I don’t take a step inside the door. “After I removed all the mental candy from my environment, it became much easier to eat healthy stuff.” Like removing a television from the bedroom, setting a predetermined sleeping schedule, choosing homework over the PlayStation because you hid the HDMI cord in a safe deep in your closet. Deleting social media off your phone. The list of examples for these commitment devices go on and on.

Delayed and immediate return environments are types of environments that humans have both been a part of. Way back before we evolved into what we are today it was much harder to get all of our needs met. We were in an immediate-return environment that meant our actions delivered immediate and clear outcomes. If we gathered berries, we would be able to eat them and stay alive. Same thing when it comes to modern day animals, they want that immediate impact because it has a lot to do with surviving. Now, we have thousands of pounds of metal flying through the sky, zooming on the roads, and exploring the ocean. We have devices that can communicate immediately to anyone we want. There are golden arches on every street corner where we wait in line maybe five minutes to fill our needs. Fruits and veggies to pick right out of the hamper, everything is just so easy that we don’t really need to worry about surviving as much but our brains still have those needs to fulfill. That is why the ice cream in the freezer is so appetizing. It is the quickest way from the slightest feeling of hunger to being fulfilled. That is also why it is difficult to save money because we see that vacation we want to go on, we see that seven-dollar coffee right on our way to work, we see those beautiful gold arches on the way home from work or the easy access to a “healthy” chicken and rice bowl, so we don’t even have to bother with cooking. Being disciplined with driving past these establishments gives you very low feedback. There is a way to make this avoided temptation more satisfying which is a big thing that needs to happen to start a habit and make it stick. Use the money that you would have saved and move it into a savings account. If you go to the corner store every day for a pack of cigarettes. This has been a habit for years but the gratification for kicking cigarettes is extremely delayed. The cigarettes relieve stress and make you happier. Each time you pass that store on the way home from work, add the price of the cigarettes into that savings account. It will give you that rush of gratification especially when after a month of not stopping you will have around 165 dollars in that savings account that you titled: vacation fund, new shoes, concert ticket, or whatever you really would be focused on. Eventually, the habit will be kicked, and you got rewards along the way adding that money, in three months you could take a nice little cruise if you wanted. I have two other examples I would like to share. First, it is no secret that school has been hard for me, I hated every second of doing it, I didn’t even get that much satisfaction until I finished the class because my grades would be an A/B/F minefield. That is until last semester when I would go to class, and I would be able to help out the people that didn’t study for the class project material. Helping others always led to more satisfaction than my own personal grades for some reason. It seemed like I was helping out everybody just because I studied and helped myself first. It was able to give me more immediate returns on school because I always focused on, I got four more years of this shit, but I started to shift and get rewards more often. The last point I want to bring up is that the rewards shouldn’t be at odds with the habit you want to reinforce. A greasy burger and milkshake after a workout are conflicting to the identity you want the exercise habit to create. A reward is extremely necessary at first while the delayed results are compiling for six months down the road when you start getting muscle tone and it makes you WANT to go to the gym, it will be pulling you instead of having to push yourself. The reward could be a massage after a workout. It is rewarding and recovery is still in alignment with the identity you are creating of a healthy lifestyle. Eating a burger is great and all but it isn’t aligned.

In the next chapter, I have already read a good deal about but still is incredibly important. Tracking progress is a great way for your habits to stick. It gives you an example of your habits that you can see which just makes it so satisfying. You can see the days you missed and how many days you have completed in a row. This can be done with a simple calendar and just check off the days that you complete it. I personally have a bullet journal that has a habit tracker built in where I am able to visibly see the habit streaks. The most important thing for your confidence and your satisfaction is to never break the chain. This is also impossible so the next piece of advice that I have heard from several places, including this book, is to never miss twice. That is the best way to recover from missing, just don’t miss twice. Five pushups are better than a 0 because you are still on your path putting in votes for the healthy lifestyle you want to live.

Having an accountability partner is another lesson that I have heard before. I have told my girlfriend about my pursuits, and she has been able to hold me accountable. In school I have had so many of those accountability partners, but I never bought into it myself. Especially in high school when my mother was that accountability partner, oh lord was that a mess. School has always been such a problem and nowadays I have such a better relationship with it. I still have a long way to go but I am making steady progress because I go each day with some homework assignments.

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that its stupid.” Albert Einstein said this quote which ties in nicely with the viewpoints made in this chapter of the book. Play the game of life with the odds in your favor. Center your life habits around the things that you love doing, and if you don’t know what you love yet? Explore and exploit. Explore all sorts of new habits that you want to live your life with and exploit the current habits that you love doing and are catered for you. I have sort of had these revelations throughout my life. I loved football more than any sport in the world, I loved playing it back in the day, but I realized that I was five foot two inches and a hundred pounds soaking wet walking into my high school. Football could have been in the cards, but I could have gotten seriously injured with that body type. I loved basketball too but once again, five foot two is a little bit of a disadvantage. I have always been a skinny guy and my favorite way to exercise is still with sports even though I am not going to be great at any of them. Exploring different sports is a reason why I tried surfing and instantly fell in love. After high school I tried golf and even though I shank two to three shots every hole into the woods I still absolutely love playing. It is a sport where you can see improvements. You stand up on the board, you hit a great tee shot, you start making more and more shots. All of this while you are exercising. This is a large reason why the habit for the gym doesn’t stick for very long. You can see improvement, but I am constantly aware that I am working out. “People can get ripped working out like a bodybuilder, but if you prefer rock climbing, or cycling, or rowing then shape your exercise habit around your interests.” The book was screaming at me when it made this quote. Also, if you are trying to build a habit of reading each day, read the books that really set you on fire. I am pretty heavy in self-development books. I also like to write about them, so I combine these two in hopefully helping others out just like me. I did like to read fiction back in the day, but it doesn’t draw me in like it used to. Writing fiction has always been one of the few things where I can just become immersed in the action. In middle school I would write way more than the minimum amount, and even in college that continued. Sometimes I burn that passion fuel a little too much and stay up for hours working on a novel. That one isn’t sustainable but those are always good nights when I am just so caught up in what I am writing. This lets my creative mind flex its muscles.

Continuing on with the book, this will be the last lesson for this one. You have to embrace the boredom. There will be moments where these habits are the last thing in the world you want to do. One example for me is right at this moment. I don’t want to write, and I definitely don’t want to do schoolwork. But I am doing it. The greatest threat to success is not failure, but boredom. Which brings up the goldilocks rule. Something needs to be harder for you to chase it. In the beginning, just starting will be hard enough but soon that won’t be enough. It is harder to get into the coveted flow state. Just be sure to get started as easy as you can and then continue expanding. Fall in love with the process, even when you don’t want to do it.

This article is getting the length of a short story so I must wrap it up. I only have the conclusion left in the book, but I have learned so many great nuggets in this book that it has launched into one of my favorite books I have ever read. It came to me at the perfect moment too which just set my motivation to read through this book in a hurry. This blog was written a little bit along and it is finally ending. This will definitely be revisited in the future to see if I stuck with the habits that this book helped me create or if I slip back into my old ways with varying amounts of motivation. I love when books seem to be speaking to me. There are only two books that enter into this realm of impact. With that reason, I know many people would share the same love for this book that I do so please pick up a copy. It is so worth the price, even though mine was a gift to me. Incredible book. This book has sincerely changed my viewpoint in the world by messing with a little bit of my psychology.