• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Published: October 16, 2018
• Pages: 319
• Read: 6/7/2021 – 7/3/2021
• Rating: 5/5 Stars

The Lessons Learned series is different than standard book reviews.  There are hundreds of great book reviews for Atomic Habits, and I would be wasting your time creating another one.  Instead, I strive to give you the lessons I was able to extract from the book to improve my life and yours.

Control What You Can Control

When life gets hard, and you feel overwhelmed, the most important thing you can do is control what you can control. Start with something small like tidying up your room, combing your hair, and making yourself look presentable to face the day. This will give you control over your life and start you off in the right direction when facing your day. If you try to face all of life’s difficulties while rolling out of bed late, rushing through breakfast, and speeding to work, your mind will already be in panic mode instead of finding peace in your morning routine to face the day with calmness.

How To Make Progress With Your Habits

Don’t Always Be Preparing

James Clear talks about the dangers of always preparing to do something or work that feels productive but isn’t moving you closer to your goals. As an aspiring writer, I deal with this dilemma by constantly feeling like I need more research. Reading books is easy and fun, but sitting down to brainstorm my ideas, build an outline, and publish a new post is the work. Don’t trick yourself into thinking you’re being productive when, in reality, you are only preparing to be productive.

Don’t Only Do It When Motivated

Another flaw in human nature is relying on motivation to get things done. It feels great when you are inspired after a good night’s sleep, life is going your way, and all the circumstances are perfect for you to be productive. What about when you are running on 3 hours of sleep, work is a mess, and your kids are sick? That’s the flaw in relying on motivation; in those moments of despair, the motivation by your side earlier is nowhere to be found. This is when discipline steps up and supports you during difficult times. Motivation is excellent, and there’s nothing wrong with bathing in it when it’s around, but don’t rely on it entirely because it won’t always be there.

Crossing A Critical Threshold

You are no longer always preparing and are doing the work required to reach your goals; you’re also disciplined enough to power through the hard times when motivation is no longer around, but what will you do when you have been at it for weeks and you see no progress? It’s when one of the most challenging things to continue when you see no progress, you begin to second guess yourself if it’s all worth it or if you are doing the right thing. These are the moments you need to be patient. As James Clear says, “Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient.” It’s hard to be patient, but always remember that everybody would do it if it were easy.

Results Over Long Periods

Advice varies from person to person on being patient and having a sense of urgency. One person will tell you life is short and you have to go; another will tell you life is long and to be patient. While both are valid, they can be helpful or harmful depending on the situation in which you apply them. When dealing with procrastination and having difficulty starting a task, applying urgency is essential. When building habits that last, patience is critical. If you lack patience, you will give up when you don’t see instant results; building habits relies on delayed gratification. Be patient; the results will come if you are consistent for long periods.

The Plateau of Latent Potential

James Clear describes the plateau of latent potential as similar to melting an ice cube. When it’s at 25-31 degrees, you think there is no progress, but once it passes that 32-degree threshold, you see all the progress at once. The same happens when you make positive changes in your life and build good habits. When you pass that plateau, everyone will think you were an overnight success, but they don’t see all the work you put in before that wasn’t showing any results. Remember to keep chipping away at your goal; you will break through the plateau at some point, and your results will come pouring in.

Get started on your goals, stay disciplined even when unmotivated, and be patient; the work will pay off.

Surround Yourself With the Right People

Join A Culture

One of the critical components to success is surrounding yourself with people with the same goals or habits as you. If you want to identify yourself as someone who takes care of their health and works out regularly, then surrounding yourself with people who feel the same way will go a long way to helping you stick with your habits. Staying on the couch when your buddies go to the gym will be hard. On the other hand, if you are hanging around people with bad habits, such as sitting around watching TV all day, drinking beer, and eating junk food, do you think they will encourage you to eat healthy or go to the gym? They will likely try to convince you to take it easy and hang out. More than willpower alone is needed; you need to build systems to help you achieve your goals, and one of those systems is surrounding yourself with people that will assist you in your progress, not bring you down to their level.

Surround Yourself With Things That Encourage Your Good Habits

Don’t limit yourself to surrounding yourself with the right people; include surrounding yourself with the right things. James Clear emphasizes the importance of having the things that encourage you to stick to your habits within reach.

“Want to draw more? Put your pencils, pens, notebooks, and drawing tools on your desk, within easy reach. Want to exercise? Set out your workout clothes, shoes, gym bag, and water bottle beforehand. Want to improve your diet? Chop up a ton of fruits and vegetables on weekends and pack them in containers, so you have easy access to healthy, ready-to-eat options during the week.”

James Clear

Surrounding yourself with tools related to your goals will be constant reminders throughout the day of what you want to improve.

Optimize Your Brain

Free Up Resources For Your Mind

The human brain is the most powerful tool for what it thrives at. Before modern technology, the brain may have been the best tool for memorization. With so many tools today that function as much better memorizers, we can free up resources to allow our brains to think deeply, solve complex problems, and generate new ideas. A way habits can free up resources is that when a task becomes a habit, we can do it passively. If the basics of life are a constant struggle, you need to muster up your willpower to achieve them, and then your brain is using up valuable resources to help you overcome these tasks. If your habits are dialed in and the basics of life are taken care of, your brain can focus on the next set of challenges.

Knowledge Compounds

Saving $5 today won’t make you wealthy; living a life committed to financial responsibility will. The same goes for knowledge acquisition.

“Knowledge compounds. Learning one new idea won’t make you a genius, but a commitment to lifelong learning can be transformative.”

James Clear

Be the person who dedicates time every day to working on your goals. The compound interest of working at something every day over long periods of time will be transformative.

The Goldilocks Rule

Finding the balance between too complex and too easy is difficult, but when you see that sweet spot, you enter the coveted flow state and experience peak motivation. This feeling is called “The Goldilocks Rule”.

“The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.”

James Clear

This doesn’t mean we should only work on things that are in this perfect state, but it should be a reminder if something is too difficult or too easy.

Find Your Identity

Make Your Habits Part of Your Identity

Practicing good habits every day helps you identify as a person who practices those good habits. If you keep your home and workplace tidy, you begin to identify as an organized person. If you go to the gym every day and watch what you eat, you identify as healthy. Embodying the identity of what you want to become helps you accomplish these new habits more easily because you are that person, not trying to be that person.

Shifting Your Perspective

It feels like you are going against human nature when you try to look at the bright side of a negative situation; shifting your perspective can facilitate this. This is similar to the popular podcaster Jocko Willink’s strategy of saying “good” to anything bad that happens to you. Your business proposal was rejected? Good, now you know what you can improve on. You failed to reach your weightlifting goals? Good, now you know what muscles need extra work. James Clear talks about a similar story about a man confined to his wheelchair.

“I once heard a story about a man who uses a wheelchair. When asked if it was difficult being confined, he responded, ‘I’m not confined to my wheelchair—I am liberated by it. If it wasn’t for my wheelchair, I would be bed-bound and never able to leave my house.’ This shift in perspective completely transformed how he lived each day.”

James Clear

This is one of the most difficult practices to implement because when life gets hard, the last thing your brain thinks about is looking at the bright side. Shifting your perspective can help you feel optimistic and encourage you to continue working on your goals and maintaining good habits.

Become What You Want To Be

Many individuals make the mistake of labeling their goal as an action rather than an identity. If you want to get better at running, make your goal “I want to be a runner,” not “I want to go running more.” I had the same shift when I was dedicating my free time to improving my reading and writing. I started telling myself, “The goal is not to read a book; the goal is to become a reader.”

“The goal is not to write; the goal is to become a writer.”

Final Thoughts

I most likely don’t have to emphasize how good Atomic Habits is because it’s been the most popular self-improvement book for a couple of years now. I hope this post summarizes the lessons I extracted from the book. If you decide to read it, I would love to hear what you learned.

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