Atomic Habits — James Clear
The Gist
Dude with a background in psychology and biology offers some pretty solid advice about how small habits compound into big things over time.
Read if you like
The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Psychology
Self-help
Productivity
Verdict: Borrow It. Maybe Read His Blog?
In Atomic Habits James Clear offers a four-pillar framework for building good habits and breaking bad ones. We all know that habits are important. Every January countless people vow to reach a number of goals. But by the middle of the month many people quit. Rather than offer cookie-cutter advice about how to not give up and stick to habits, Clear offers a more realistic approach. Through a combination of psycholgoy, biology, and nueroscience, Clear unpacks four steps to creating habits that stick:
Make It Obvious
Make It Attractive
Make It Easy
Make It Satisfying
In short, Atomic Habits focuses on the process of reaching goals and offers a number of strategies to get the habits that will help you achieve it stick. Clear’s ability to unpack complex topics and put it in a framework that makes them easy to talk about is what makes this books stand out. But none of the information around habit forming is necessarily groundbreaking. With that says it definitely cuts through a lot of the self-help/productivity noise. In short: Reaching your goals creating habits takes a lot of work, some trial and error, and time. So you’re looking for some reassurance this resolution season, Atomic Habits will fit the bill.
