Atomic Habits
Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones
James Clear
Atomic Habits is one of those books that came into my life at the right time and it truly changed my path over the past few years! The author, James Clear, is an expert in habit formation and he packs his book with research and action steps toward living in alignment with who you want to be through your habitual behaviours. I do want to bring attention to the fact that his writing is from the perspective of a deeply neurotypical person, so if you are a neurodiverse person please read this post (and the book) with a himalayan-salt-lamp-sized-grain-of-salt!
This blog post will be outlining how a habit is different from a goal, and Clear’s Four Laws of Behaviour Change.
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What is a habit?
James Clear says that “Habits are the small decisions you make and actions you perform every day.” These small decisions may not seem like much in the moment, however, Clear argues that these small decisions are the foundation of your life and that these decisions have a compounding effect over time.
Due to these decisions being small, you don’t necessarily feel benefits from your efforts immediately, and this is why it is important to commit to long term small behavior change. The longer you can commit to whatever the small habit is, the greater the impact will be on your life. James Clear demonstrates the impact of a small behaviour change over time with an analogy of an airplane being just a couple degrees off course. This metaphorical airplane, though it may look like it is pointing toward Nova Scotia, those couple of degrees of being off course can land you in an entirely different place, like Newfoundland (pg. 17). When you make small degrees of change in your own life, in the moment it may not seem like much, however, over time these small degrees of change will land you in a very different place in your future.
How is a habit different from a goal?
A “goal is about the results you want to achieve”(pg. 23), whereas, a habit is the system that will lead you toward the goal. “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems (habits) are best for making progress.”(pg. 24)
Your habits are what build your identity and therefore when you believe certain things about yourself, your actions will follow suit. If you are open to believing different things about yourself, and changing the narrative, you start making movements toward the person you want to be. Clear demonstrates this beautifully with an example of two people turning down a cigarette:
“ When offered a smoke, the first person says, “No thanks, I’m trying to quit.” It sounds like a reasonable response, but this person still believes they are a smoker who is trying to be something else. They are hoping their behaviour will change while carrying around the same beliefs.
“The second person declines by saying “No thanks, I’m not a smoker.” It’s a small difference, but this statement signals a shift in identity. Smoking was part of their former life, not their current one.” (pg. 32)
Goals are based on getting something or getting somewhere, and habits are based on being someone. When you commit to habits that are in alignment with your identity, you become more aligned with the truest version of yourself, and this internal alignment helps to simplify the approach to continued habit.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems (habits).” (pg. 27)
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The Four Laws of Behaviour Change: Make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying
These 4 laws are in connection to the 4 parts of a habit loop: cue, craving, response, and reward. The role of the cue is to recognize when a reward is close. You develop cues based off of the context and meaning you give to them. Your cues lead you to cravings of the reward that the cue is anticipating. This craving is driven by desire, and is what moves you toward your response. Your response is the actual action (habit) you take to get the reward. And finally the reward is what reinforces this habit loop.
Make it Obvious (Cue)
The first step in managing your cues is to start recognizing where you shift into autopilot. When you bring awareness to your autopilot behaviours you might start to notice automatically reaching for your phone with no messages to respond to, habitually turning on the TV without the desire to watch anything, or opening the fridge without feeling hungry. Your cues for these actions might be waiting in line when you grab your phone, turning on the TV when you sit on the sofa, or opening the fridge when you walk into the kitchen. Awareness does not solve anything, however, it does give you information for where you can intervene to shift the habit loop.
Implementation Intention: When situation X (cue) arises, I will do Y (behaviour, location, time) This formula gives you a structure to choose differently. You can choose what behaviour you want to do when a certain situation arises. For example, When I am waiting in line at the grocery store, I will engage in box breathing until I am placing my items on the conveyor belt. Be clear on what the new behaviour will be, where you will do it, when you will do it, and for how long. The clearer you can be in your intention, the simpler the execution, as you have already done the leg work of decision making.
Habit Stacking: After I (CURRENT HABIT), I will (NEW HABIT). To start creating a habit stack, make a list of behaviours you do every single day, like brushing teeth, making coffee, feeding your pets, putting on clothes… you get the point. Choose one of these behaviours to stack a new behaviour onto, for example, when I am waiting for my coffee to brew I will meditate in my kitchen for 2 minutes, or, when I am brushing my teeth I will stand on one leg to work on my balance. This initial behaviour of making coffee or brushing teeth will now become the cue for meditating or balancing.
Change Your Environment: When you are creating new habits, it can be helpful to change your environment as it can prompt new ways of moving and behaving. For example, if you want to start to read before bed, it will help if you charge your phone on the other side of the room and leave a book on your bedside table. When your phone is out of reach, but your book is within reach, this will push you out of your automatic habit-loop.
Make it Attractive (Craving)
Next up in the 4 Laws of Behaviour Change is to work with your dopamine system. Dopamine gets released with the anticipation of a reward, it acts as the motivator to move you toward the reward. Some behaviours are easy to move toward because the craving is strong, for example: it is easy for me to walk across the street to enjoy a scoop of ice cream, but cleaning my kitchen is not nearly as rewarding. The reward of cleaning is generally just the satisfaction of completing the task, and for many of you, this is not nearly enough of a reward to initiate that behaviour. James Clear has some tips to help you make the tough tasks a bit more enticing…
Temptation Bundling: This is where you link a behaviour you want to be doing with a behaviour you need (I know, you are not going to die if you don’t do your chores, but it is very relieving when you do take care of your space) to be doing. For example, if you have a podcast you enjoy, you may save it for when you are cleaning, so you only get to listen to the podcast (what you want to be doing) while you are cleaning (what you need to be doing).
The People We Surround Ourselves With: James Clear goes into depth about the importance of spending time with people who have similar goals to you. For example, if you want to be more engaged with current events, but most of your close friends don’t care about the news, you may want to reach out to others who you know are engaged politically. Clear is not suggesting that you turn away from your friends that don’t talk about current events, rather, he suggests to begin investing into new friendships with people who are going to encourage you to do the behaviours that you want to be doing. Humans are wired to want to fit in, and the people and media you surround yourself with are going to influence what you subconsciously believe to be the “norm”.
You Don’t HAVE to, you GET to: Reframing how you speak of your approach to tasks makes all the difference. There is a natural infusion of gratitude when you reframe your behaviours from one of dread to one of acceptance. If you consider going for a walk as an annoying and laborious task, it takes away the opportunity to see it as a privilege to be in a place where you can move your body, while feeling safe, breathing clean air, and feeling the sun or rain on your skin. A simple reframe can go a long way!
Make it Easy (Response)
Next up in the Laws for Behaviour Change is to make it easy. This ease is not speaking to the task or behavior being easy, rather, it is about simplifying the approach and removing barriers so there is less resistance to engaging with the desired behaviour.
Repetition, Not Perfection: “Neurons that fire together, wire together” - Donald Hebb. James Clear explains how repetition is a deep form of change. Repetition builds on the foundation of our automatic processes, just like you have likely arrived at work and totally not remembered the car/bus/bike ride to get there (yikes!) You can start developing that same level of automation for new behaviors as well. Your brain is primed to make repeated actions more and more efficient, and you can use this natural efficiency as both a simplifier and a deterrent.
Simplifier: leave the book, reading glasses, blanket, and glass of water on the living room coffee table if you are aiming to read more.
Deterrent: take the batteries out of your remote and unplug your TV so rather than just clicking on the TV, you need to get up to plug it in, and put the batteries back in the remote. All of the sudden, you have simplified the approach to reading, and created barriers to watching TV.
The Two-Minute Rule: “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.” You can reduce some of the tendencies toward procrastination when you make the behaviour much more digestible. James Clear outlines that if a new behaviour will take only two minutes to do it can silence a lot of the internal resistance that shows up: e.g. “I don’t have time”, “I don’t have the energy”, “I don’t know where to start”. Clear suggests that you “master the habit of showing up” for two minutes and from there, the habit/behaviour can be improved upon.
Remove Mental Candy: This is simple… yet so damn challenging! If you are trying to write a paper for school but find yourself getting stuck on your phone or scrolling new sites, find ways to remove these temptations by deleting apps and blocking certain websites. By taking the “mental candy” out of your environment you are narrowing your choices to be in favour of the “healthy” options, like writing that paper!
Make it Satisfying (Reward)
This last step is all about reinforcement. When you do something and get a reward, such as feeling proud, recognition from a boss, or meeting a goal, this makes the behavior more likely to happen again. These meaningful rewards are great, however, they are also ones that will likely take place over a longer period of time doing the new habitual-behaviour. James Clear outlines how to seek instant gratification to keep you going for those bigger payoffs.
Track Your Habits: Through making a check list (habit tracker found here) you get an instant reward when ticking off the behaviour as completed. There are a few ways that this reinforces behaviour: one is that it feels great to physically scratch something off the to-do list, and another is you can see your progress over time. If you have been consistently flossing your teeth for the past 9 days, it will be more enticing to keep it going and commit to day 10. The visual aspect matters!
Find an Accountability Buddy: This accountability buddy is a friend that you can turn to to check in on how your behaviours have been going. Hopefully this friend is also someone who is interested in making behaviour changes (see step 2: The People We Surround Ourselves With). This does not mean you are checking in on each other every moment, however, being able to send a quick text saying “I went for a mental health walk today!” and having someone meet it with “way to go, dude!” makes a difference. These small moments of connection offer a major payoff in your reward system.
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Atomic Habits has been powerful for me, and as usual, I highly recommend reading this book with a highlighter and post-it notes in hand. I would also like to give thanks to a long time friend of mine, Executive Coach, Jenna Watson-Brawn for putting this book in my orbit to begin with!
***this blog post was written by me and my fallible human brain, please forgive any typos or awkward grammar!
