My Rating: 3 stars out of 5 stars
(Removed a star because of bad behavior, explained towards the end in review)
Format: kindle
My thoughts/review:
It's hard to give atomic habits a bad rating when it does deliver on a discussion of habits, and it made me think.
The book uses a kitchen sink approach to cover the topic of habits from many angles.
I do feel the book way too long in some places and not nearly enough in others.
Over half the book was devoted to fleshing out the statements made in this published cheat sheet.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Habits+Cheat+Sheet.pdf
Read the cheat sheet for yourself, do you really need a chapter dedicated to each strategy? They're not very complex to understand.
Maybe my viewpoint is skewed because I've been actively working on my lifestyle for years now in pursuit of health and the fastlane. Through that experience you naturally come across these strategies.
Take implementation intention and habit stacking for example. This is obvious stuff.
My implementation intention is basically when I wake up I will immediately do some breath yoga. The "Cue" for the habit is waking up.
My habit stacking is that after the breath yoga, i will do some meditation, then i will do some calisthenics, then some cardio, then ill take a shower.
I mean this stuff is just common sense, of course it's easier to do some cardio after calisthenics, and then hop in the shower. It's simply logical.
It makes sense to get this stuff done upon waking up so it doesn't hang over your head the rest of the day.
Anyways... moving on.
He uses a ton of anecdotes in every chapter as a real world example for each strategy in the cheat sheet. It's all padding for sure, but I am a sucker for cool stories so I don't mind and i can only imagine how much drier the book would be without the stories.
After the cheat sheet portion of the book, it delves into an "Advanced" discussion.
In this advanced section the author leaves the cheat sheet framework and the book opens up a bit to cover concepts ranging from the Lakers coach's "Career Best Effort" strategy for his team, all the way to some quotations of Tao Te Ching.
He also throws in a bit of the David Goggins mentality in there just in case all else fails, like "Fall in love with boredom", "accept suffering", that type of deal.
I feel like the advanced section should have been the meat of the book, and the cheat sheet portion should have stayed short.
How are you gonna have a whole chapter about habit stacking, and only like a page about Tao Te Ching.
The author clearly mentions that self awareness and identity are a crucial aspect in habit development. This is the first big point he makes in the book, but he barely mentions it again until far later in the book, and only briefly.
I wish the whole book was about how self awareness and desired identity influences lifestyle. That would have been more interesting to me.
Anyways... moving on.
At the very end of the book there was an Appendix section, where he went over random "wisdom like" statements and a paragraph or 2 explaining them to further fill in the cracks so to speak. I feel like this entire section should have just been integrated into the rest of the book.
For every statement, i kept thinking where in the cheat sheet it would fit.
Here's a few of them:
1)Awareness comes before desire.
2)Happiness is simply the absence of desire.
3)It is the idea of pleasure that we chase.
4)Emotions drive behavior.
5)Suffering drives progress.
I THINK YOU GET THE IDEA...
All in all i think there's a cognitive dissonance type of issue at play here.
The cheat sheet strategies for forming habits are all about making it obvious, attractive, easy, satisfying. But later the author concedes that sometimes inevitably you hit a point where it's not attractive, easy, satisfying, and not very obvious how to proceed. And that's where you just push through anyway, push through to greatness.
Towards the end in the "advanced" portion of the book, the author talks about the "Downsides of creating good habits", and that you must reflect periodically to see where you're at as a person overall.
So wouldn't it be better to cultivate an identity based on constant reflection and self awareness to achieve your goals versus implementing various strategies.
Maybe that was the author's ultimate message, i honestly don't know.
I'm gonna provide my own anecdote which made me start questioning the "easiness" approach to habit forming.
Whenever i do my 40 minute meditation, I set the timer on my phone to 40 minutes and put an ambient music track on youtube that plays a bell sound every 10 minutes.
I've found the 10 minute bell sound was very helpful in motivating me to stay meditating, and even though i've planned to eventually wean myself off that and meditate in silence, it wasn't a priority.
This time though, my phone battery was almost dead, it would be enough for the timer, but not enough for streaming the youtube video.
So i was like okay, no problem, ill charge the phone for an hour or 2 and read atomic habits for now.
While reading, i get to the section on motivation rituals.
In this chapter the author discusses an anecdote, in which some guy always put on headphones with music before focusing on work. Eventually the ritual of putting on headphones alone conditioned him to crave focused work.
So my phone was charged and I went back to my meditation activity. I put on the youtube video, set the timer, and began meditating.
5 minutes into it, my wifi signal bugged out the music suddenly stopped.
At that point the first though in my head was to stop meditating, fix the music and restart the timer.
Then i suddenly realized how absurd my behavior was for the past 2 hours. Because i conditioned myself to meditate with the ambient music and 10 minute bell, as soon as that was unavailable my whole habit collapsed on itself.
I immediately decided to continue meditating in silence, and although my brain was getting distracted more than usual with thoughts of how long i've been meditating, I pushed through and hit the 40 minute mark when my brain thought i was still at 25 minutes.
The next day i meditated again in silence, and always will from now on.
Maybe i feel so strongly about this because my epiphany came during meditation lol
This experience really made me wary of all these habit strategies in the book. All the tricks to make a habit obvious, attractive, easy, satisfying are also CRUTCHES. As soon as you lose the crutch, get ready to suffer.
Maybe it's better not to learn the crutch in the first place?
I don't know for sure, and neither does the book...
FINALLY, why did i remove a star?
After the appendix section, the author reveals that he wrote an extra short bonus chapter called "How to Apply These Ideas to Business", all you gotta do is go to Bonus Chapter: How to Apply These Ideas to Business | James Clear
to access it.
wow i thought, could be interesting, so i click on the link and... well see for yourself...
You gotta sign up for his email list first!!!
i bought ur damn book, now u gonna funnel me to your email newsletter? Put the chapter in the book!
lose a star.
All in all though, this book did make me think and it did provide some strategies whether you agree with them or not.
And it was only 15 bucks, so I'd probably give it around 4 stars, with 1 star off for that Appendix section that should have been spread out in the main book instead.
And 1 star off for that sleazy newsletter sign up bullshit.
I wish he talked more about identity, self awareness, self reflection, etc but oh well. maybe he just doesn't have the qualification to talk about that deeper stuff.
Favorite (or least favorite) chapter:
Least favorite chapter was "How to Apply These Ideas to Business", cause it wasn't even in the book.
Key takeaways:
(Removed a star because of bad behavior, explained towards the end in review)
Format: kindle
My thoughts/review:
It's hard to give atomic habits a bad rating when it does deliver on a discussion of habits, and it made me think.
The book uses a kitchen sink approach to cover the topic of habits from many angles.
I do feel the book way too long in some places and not nearly enough in others.
Over half the book was devoted to fleshing out the statements made in this published cheat sheet.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Habits+Cheat+Sheet.pdf
Read the cheat sheet for yourself, do you really need a chapter dedicated to each strategy? They're not very complex to understand.
Maybe my viewpoint is skewed because I've been actively working on my lifestyle for years now in pursuit of health and the fastlane. Through that experience you naturally come across these strategies.
Take implementation intention and habit stacking for example. This is obvious stuff.
My implementation intention is basically when I wake up I will immediately do some breath yoga. The "Cue" for the habit is waking up.
My habit stacking is that after the breath yoga, i will do some meditation, then i will do some calisthenics, then some cardio, then ill take a shower.
I mean this stuff is just common sense, of course it's easier to do some cardio after calisthenics, and then hop in the shower. It's simply logical.
It makes sense to get this stuff done upon waking up so it doesn't hang over your head the rest of the day.
Anyways... moving on.
He uses a ton of anecdotes in every chapter as a real world example for each strategy in the cheat sheet. It's all padding for sure, but I am a sucker for cool stories so I don't mind and i can only imagine how much drier the book would be without the stories.
After the cheat sheet portion of the book, it delves into an "Advanced" discussion.
In this advanced section the author leaves the cheat sheet framework and the book opens up a bit to cover concepts ranging from the Lakers coach's "Career Best Effort" strategy for his team, all the way to some quotations of Tao Te Ching.
He also throws in a bit of the David Goggins mentality in there just in case all else fails, like "Fall in love with boredom", "accept suffering", that type of deal.
I feel like the advanced section should have been the meat of the book, and the cheat sheet portion should have stayed short.
How are you gonna have a whole chapter about habit stacking, and only like a page about Tao Te Ching.
The author clearly mentions that self awareness and identity are a crucial aspect in habit development. This is the first big point he makes in the book, but he barely mentions it again until far later in the book, and only briefly.
I wish the whole book was about how self awareness and desired identity influences lifestyle. That would have been more interesting to me.
Anyways... moving on.
At the very end of the book there was an Appendix section, where he went over random "wisdom like" statements and a paragraph or 2 explaining them to further fill in the cracks so to speak. I feel like this entire section should have just been integrated into the rest of the book.
For every statement, i kept thinking where in the cheat sheet it would fit.
Here's a few of them:
1)Awareness comes before desire.
2)Happiness is simply the absence of desire.
3)It is the idea of pleasure that we chase.
4)Emotions drive behavior.
5)Suffering drives progress.
I THINK YOU GET THE IDEA...
All in all i think there's a cognitive dissonance type of issue at play here.
The cheat sheet strategies for forming habits are all about making it obvious, attractive, easy, satisfying. But later the author concedes that sometimes inevitably you hit a point where it's not attractive, easy, satisfying, and not very obvious how to proceed. And that's where you just push through anyway, push through to greatness.
Towards the end in the "advanced" portion of the book, the author talks about the "Downsides of creating good habits", and that you must reflect periodically to see where you're at as a person overall.
So wouldn't it be better to cultivate an identity based on constant reflection and self awareness to achieve your goals versus implementing various strategies.
Maybe that was the author's ultimate message, i honestly don't know.
I'm gonna provide my own anecdote which made me start questioning the "easiness" approach to habit forming.
Whenever i do my 40 minute meditation, I set the timer on my phone to 40 minutes and put an ambient music track on youtube that plays a bell sound every 10 minutes.
I've found the 10 minute bell sound was very helpful in motivating me to stay meditating, and even though i've planned to eventually wean myself off that and meditate in silence, it wasn't a priority.
This time though, my phone battery was almost dead, it would be enough for the timer, but not enough for streaming the youtube video.
So i was like okay, no problem, ill charge the phone for an hour or 2 and read atomic habits for now.
While reading, i get to the section on motivation rituals.
In this chapter the author discusses an anecdote, in which some guy always put on headphones with music before focusing on work. Eventually the ritual of putting on headphones alone conditioned him to crave focused work.
So my phone was charged and I went back to my meditation activity. I put on the youtube video, set the timer, and began meditating.
5 minutes into it, my wifi signal bugged out the music suddenly stopped.
At that point the first though in my head was to stop meditating, fix the music and restart the timer.
Then i suddenly realized how absurd my behavior was for the past 2 hours. Because i conditioned myself to meditate with the ambient music and 10 minute bell, as soon as that was unavailable my whole habit collapsed on itself.
I immediately decided to continue meditating in silence, and although my brain was getting distracted more than usual with thoughts of how long i've been meditating, I pushed through and hit the 40 minute mark when my brain thought i was still at 25 minutes.
The next day i meditated again in silence, and always will from now on.
Maybe i feel so strongly about this because my epiphany came during meditation lol
This experience really made me wary of all these habit strategies in the book. All the tricks to make a habit obvious, attractive, easy, satisfying are also CRUTCHES. As soon as you lose the crutch, get ready to suffer.
Maybe it's better not to learn the crutch in the first place?
I don't know for sure, and neither does the book...
FINALLY, why did i remove a star?
After the appendix section, the author reveals that he wrote an extra short bonus chapter called "How to Apply These Ideas to Business", all you gotta do is go to Bonus Chapter: How to Apply These Ideas to Business | James Clear
to access it.
wow i thought, could be interesting, so i click on the link and... well see for yourself...
You gotta sign up for his email list first!!!
i bought ur damn book, now u gonna funnel me to your email newsletter? Put the chapter in the book!
lose a star.
All in all though, this book did make me think and it did provide some strategies whether you agree with them or not.
And it was only 15 bucks, so I'd probably give it around 4 stars, with 1 star off for that Appendix section that should have been spread out in the main book instead.
And 1 star off for that sleazy newsletter sign up bullshit.
I wish he talked more about identity, self awareness, self reflection, etc but oh well. maybe he just doesn't have the qualification to talk about that deeper stuff.
Favorite (or least favorite) chapter:
Least favorite chapter was "How to Apply These Ideas to Business", cause it wasn't even in the book.
Key takeaways:
- find a balance between hard discipline and easy action?
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