A life-changing read

If you want to change your life, the book ‘Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones’ is for you

First we form habits, then they form us. Written by James Clear, the book ‘Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones’ fits like a proverbial glove to the aforementioned quote, as the book encapsulates most of the essential habits, decision-making strategies, and ways for continuous improvement and personal growth. With millions of visitors thousands of subscribers and his popular email newsletter, the author James Clear has gone from strength to strength. His writings have appeared in New York Times, Entrepreneur, Time, and on CBS This Morning. Clear is also a regular speaker at Fortune 500 companies.

With a strong groundwork for forming good lifestyle habits, Clear shares several strategies that can help you to build good habits and get rid of the bad ones. We are what we repeatedly do. Habits are the cornerstone of our lives. Change might be gradual, and steady, and it isn’t always easy. But with time and perseverance, almost any habit can be reshaped. And if you intend to change your life in any meaningful way, the only dependable way I know is to build good habits. What sets the book ‘Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones’ by James Clear apart from the rest is the fact that it doesn’t pertain to entrepreneurship, engineering, or academia. This book is for all – a fisherman, a tax collector, a businessman, a student.

Clear’s writing style is crisp but profound. His words go deep into every single step of habit – right from creation to a practical point of view. So the book is as readable as it is practical. For instance, take this excerpt, “The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it. If you’re proud of how your hair looks, you’ll develop all sorts of habits to care for and maintain it. If you’re proud of the size of your biceps, you’ll make sure you never skip an upper-body workout. If you’re proud of the scarves you knit, you’ll be more likely to spend hours knitting each week. Once your pride gets involved, you’ll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits.” This maintains the stance that your habits will not bring you on the 50 Forbes list, but they will change the lens through which you look at your life.

Like every self-help book, Atomic Habits is brimmed with inspiring and motivating stories. For instance, in the chapter about tracking habits, Clear mentions an anecdote revolving around Benjamin Franklin and his habit of carrying a notebook wherever he went to keep a track of thirteen virtues. Some background: If you are remotely interested in Franklin, you would know that he struggled to develop 13 habits or virtues and he turned the rigorous struggle into a 13-week course, each week dedicated to one virtue, all the while tracking its progress. As motivating as it may sound, Clear has completely forgotten to mention that Franklin himself found this method impractical and abandoned the project before he maneuvered through to the last virtue. The irony is that the book emphasizes on the story in another chapter that highlights the importance of not “breaking the chain”. So while I agree with the author and I know what he wanted to say, but it seemed a tad underwhelming when he wraps around the narrative to fit his glove – a vice that is commonplace in many self-help books, that make you question the author’s intellectual stimulation. The book could’ve been cut short in terms of length, especially the chapters under the section ‘Advanced Tactics’, which deals with mastering the habits developed. Perhaps some tough decisions at the editing stage could’ve done the job.

Final verdict:

The last two years have been tough. The year 2023 is said to be tougher. All of us could use some internal reflection and personal development. If you need convincing that habits are crucial for this contemplation, I would strongly recommend Atomic Habits.