‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear

Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

18 min readJan 8, 2021

About the author: James Clear is a writer and speaker focused on habits, decision-making, and continuous improvement. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits. His work has appeared in Entrepreneur magazine, Time magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and on CBS This Morning. He is a regular speaker at Fortune 500 companies and his work is used by coaches and players in the NFL, NBA, and MLB.

About the book: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

Genre: Self-help

THE FUNDAMENTALS — Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference

The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits

a strategy that he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains,” which was the philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do.
Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. That’s the counterintuitive thing about improvement. We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results. When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.
A systems-first mentality provides the antidote. When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running. And a system can be successful in many different forms, not just the one you first envision.
The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.
Focusing on the overall system, rather than a single goal, is one of the core themes of this book. It is also one of the deeper meanings behind the word atomic. By now, you’ve probably realized that an atomic habit refers to a tiny change, a marginal gain, a 1 percent improvement. But atomic habits are not just any old habits, however small. They are little habits that are part of a larger system. Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results.
This is the meaning of the phrase atomic habits — a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do, but also the source of incredible power; a component of the system of compound growth.

2. How Your Habits Shape Your Identity (and Vice Versa)

There are three layers of behavior change:
The first layer is changing your outcomes. This level is concerned with changing your results: losing weight, publishing a book, winning a championship. Most of the goals you set are associated with this level of change.
The second layer is changing your process. This level is concerned with changing your habits and systems: implementing a new routine at the gym, decluttering your desk for better workflow, developing a meditation practice. Most of the habits you build are associated with this level.
The third and deepest layer is changing your identity. This level is concerned with changing your beliefs: your worldview, your self-image, your judgments about yourself and others. Most of the beliefs, assumptions, and biases you hold are associated with this level.
Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe.
The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.
True behavior change is identity change.
The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader.
The goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner.
The goal is not to learn an instrument, the goal is to become a musician.
The more you repeat a behavior, the more you reinforce the identity associated with that behavior. In fact, the word identity was originally derived from the Latin words essentitas, which means being, and identidem, which means repeatedly. Your identity is literally your “repeated beingness.”
I didn’t start out as a writer. I became one through my habits.
This is a gradual evolution. We do not change by snapping our fingers and deciding to be someone entirely new. We change bit by bit, day by day, habit by habit. We are continually undergoing microevolutions of the self.
This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity.
You need to know who you want to be.
Habits can help you achieve all of these things, but fundamentally they are not about having something. They are about becoming someone.

3. How to Build Better Habits in 4 Simple Steps

This is the feedback loop behind all human behavior: try, fail, learn, try differently.
Conversely, when you have your habits dialed in and the basics of life are handled and done, your mind is free to focus on new challenges and master the next set of problems. Building habits in the present allows you to do more of what you want in the future.
Finally, the response delivers a reward. Rewards are the end goal of every habit. The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward. We chase rewards because they serve two purposes: (1) they satisfy us and (2) they teach us.
In summary, the cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop — cue, craving, response, reward; cue, craving, response, reward — that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits. This cycle is known as the habit loop.
Whenever you want to change your behavior, you can simply ask yourself:
1. How can I make it obvious?
2. How can I make it attractive?
3. How can I make it easy?
4. How can I make it satisfying?

THE 1st LAW — Make It Obvious

4. The Man Who Didn’t Look Right

With enough practice, you can pick up on the cues that predict certain outcomes without consciously thinking about it. Automatically, your brain encodes the lessons learned through experience. We can’t always explain what it is we are learning, but learning is happening all along the way, and your ability to notice the relevant cues in a given situation is the foundation for every habit you have.
psychologist Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
The first step to changing bad habits is to be on the lookout for them.

5. The Best Way to Start a New Habit

The sentence they filled out is what researchers refer to as an implementation intention, which is a plan you make beforehand about when and where to act. That is, how you intend to implement a particular habit.
but the two most common cues are time and location. Implementation intentions leverage both of these cues.
The simple way to apply this strategy to your habits is to fill out this sentence:
I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].
Meditation. I will meditate for one minute at 7 a.m. in my kitchen.
Studying. I will study Spanish for twenty minutes at 6 p.m. in my bedroom.
Exercise. I will exercise for one hour at 5 p.m. in my local gym.
Marriage. I will make my partner a cup of tea at 8 a.m. in the kitchen.
The habit stacking formula is:
After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].
Meditation. After I pour my cup of coffee each morning, I will meditate for one minute.
Exercise. After I take off my work shoes, I will immediately change into my workout clothes.
Gratitude. After I sit down to dinner, I will say one thing I’m grateful for that happened today.
Marriage. After I get into bed at night, I will give my partner a kiss.
Safety. After I put on my running shoes, I will text a friend or family member where I am running and how long it will take.
Minimalism. When I buy a new item, I will give something away. (“One in, one out.”)
Mood. When the phone rings, I will take one deep breath and smile before answering.
Habits like “read more” or “eat better” are worthy causes, but these goals do not provide instruction on how and when to act. Be specific and clear: After I close the door. After I brush my teeth. After I sit down at the table. The specificity is important. The more tightly bound your new habit is to a specific cue, the better the odds are that you will notice when the time comes to act.

6. Motivation Is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More

People often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are.
Your habits change depending on the room you are in and the cues in front of you.
the most common form of change is not internal, but external: we are changed by the world around us. Every habit is context dependent.
For this reason, a small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do.
Create a separate space for work, study, exercise, entertainment, and cooking. The mantra I find useful is “One space, one use.”

7. The Secret to Self-Control

Bad habits are autocatalytic: the process feeds itself. They foster the feelings they try to numb. You feel bad, so you eat junk food. Because you eat junk food, you feel bad. Watching television makes you feel sluggish, so you watch more television because you don’t have the energy to do anything else. Worrying about your health makes you feel anxious, which causes you to smoke to ease your anxiety, which makes your health even worse and soon you’re feeling more anxious. It’s a downward spiral, a runaway train of bad habits.
A more reliable approach is to cut bad habits off at the source. One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.
If you can’t seem to get any work done, leave your phone in another room for a few hours.
If you’re continually feeling like you’re not enough, stop following social media accounts that trigger jealousy and envy.
If you’re wasting too much time watching television, move the TV out of the bedroom.
If you’re spending too much money on electronics, quit reading reviews of the latest tech gear.
If you’re playing too many video games, unplug the console and put it in a closet after each use.
This practice is an inversion of the 1st Law of Behavior Change. Rather than make it obvious, you can make it invisible. I’m often surprised by how effective simple changes like these can be. Remove a single cue and the entire habit often fades away.

THE 2nd LAW — Make It Attractive

8. How to Make a Habit Irresistible

Look around. Society is filled with highly engineered versions of reality that are more attractive than the world our ancestors evolved in. Stores feature mannequins with exaggerated hips and breasts to sell clothes. Social media delivers more “likes” and praise in a few minutes than we could ever get in the office or at home. Online porn splices together stimulating scenes at a rate that would be impossible to replicate in real life. Advertisements are created with a combination of ideal lighting, professional makeup, and Photoshopped edits — even the model doesn’t look like the person in the final image. These are the supernormal stimuli of our modern world. They exaggerate features that are naturally attractive to us, and our instincts go wild as a result, driving us into excessive shopping habits, social media habits, porn habits, eating habits, and many others.
Temptation bundling works by linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
“more probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors.”
The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
The habit stacking + temptation bundling formula is:
1. After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [HABIT I NEED].
2. After [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].
If you want to read the news, but you need to express more gratitude:
1. After I get my morning coffee, I will say one thing I’m grateful for that happened yesterday (need).
2. After I say one thing I’m grateful for, I will read the news (want).

9. The Role of Family and Friends in Shaping Your Habits

“A genius is not born, but is educated and trained.”
We soak up the qualities and practices of those around us.
Nothing sustains motivation better than belonging to the tribe.
Once we fit in, we start looking for ways to stand out.
This is one reason we care so much about the habits of highly effective people. We try to copy the behavior of successful people because we desire success ourselves. Many of our daily habits are imitations of people we admire. You replicate the marketing strategies of the most successful firms in your industry. You make a recipe from your favorite baker. You borrow the storytelling strategies of your favorite writer. You mimic the communication style of your boss. We imitate people we envy.
We tend to imitate the habits of three social groups: the close (family and friends), the many (the tribe), and the powerful (those with status and prestige).

10. How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad Habits

Desire is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be in the future.
Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings, and we can use this insight to our advantage rather than to our detriment.
“Odd realization,” he wrote. “My focus and concentration goes up just by putting my headphones [on] while writing. I don’t even have to play any music.”

THE 3rd LAW — Make It Easy

11. Walk Slowly, but Never Backward

Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.”
When you’re in motion, you’re planning and strategizing and learning. Those are all good things, but they don’t produce a result.
Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will deliver an outcome. If I outline twenty ideas for articles I want to write, that’s motion. If I actually sit down and write an article, that’s action. If I search for a better diet plan and read a few books on the topic, that’s motion. If I actually eat a healthy meal, that’s action.
Motion makes you feel like you’re getting things done. But really, you’re just preparing to get something done. When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing.
Hebb’s Law: “Neurons that fire together wire together.”
a repetition is a form of change.
Automaticity is the ability to perform a behavior without thinking about each step, which occurs when the non-conscious mind takes over.

12. The Law of Least Effort

Maybe if you really wanted it, you’d actually do it. But the truth is, our real motivation is to be lazy and to do what is convenient. And despite what the latest productivity best seller will tell you, this is a smart strategy, not a dumb one.
And the less energy a habit requires, the more likely it is to occur.
The idea is to make it as easy as possible in the moment to do things that payoff in the long run.
I’m just proactively lazy.
“How can we design a world where it’s easy to do what’s right?”

13. How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the Two-Minute Rule

In this way, the habits you follow without thinking often determine the choices you make when you are thinking.
Habits are the entry point, not the end point. They are the cab, not the gym.
We rarely think about change this way because everyone is consumed by the end goal. But one push-up is better than not exercising. One minute of guitar practice is better than none at all. One minute of reading is better than never picking up a book. It’s better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all.

14. How to Make Good Habits Inevitable and Bad Habits Impossible

Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard.
A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future.
Unsubscribe from emails.
Turn off notifications and mute group chats.
Set your phone to silent.
Use email filters to clear up your inbox.
Delete games and social media apps on your phone.
After I removed the mental candy from my environment, it became much easier to eat the healthy stuff.

THE 4th LAW — Make It Satisfying

15. The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change

Now switch back to your human self. In modern society, many of the choices you make today will not benefit you immediately. If you do a good job at work, you’ll get a paycheck in a few weeks. If you exercise today, perhaps you won’t be overweight next year. If you save money now, maybe you’ll have enough for retirement decades from now. You live in what scientists call a delayed-return environment because you can work for years before your actions deliver the intended payoff.
“It almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. . . Often, the sweeter the first fruit of a habit, the more bitter are its later fruits.”

16. How to Stick with Good Habits Every Day

Habit tracking also keeps you honest. Most of us have a distorted view of our own behavior. We think we act better than we do. Measurement offers one way to overcome our blindness to our own behavior and notice what’s really going on each day. One glance at the paper clips in the container and you immediately know how much work you have (or haven’t) been putting in. When the evidence is right in front of you, you’re less likely to lie to yourself.
I think this principle is so important that I’ll stick to it even if I can’t do a habit as well or as completely as I would like. Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits. The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.
This is why the “bad” workouts are often the most important ones. Sluggish days and bad workouts maintain the compound gains you accrued from previous good days. Simply doing something — ten squats, five sprints, a push-up, anything really — is huge. Don’t put up a zero. Don’t let losses eat into your compounding.
The dark side of tracking a particular behavior is that we become driven by the number rather than the purpose behind it.
This pitfall is evident in many areas of life. We focus on working long hours instead of getting meaningful work done. We care more about getting ten thousand steps than we do about being healthy. We teach for standardized tests instead of emphasizing learning, curiosity, and critical thinking. In short, we optimize for what we measure. When we choose the wrong measurement, we get the wrong behavior.
In our data-driven world, we tend to overvalue numbers and undervalue anything ephemeral, soft, and difficult to quantify. We mistakenly think the factors we can measure are the only factors that exist. But just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing. And just because you can’t measure something doesn’t mean it’s not important at all.
Never miss twice. If you miss one day, try to get back on track as quickly as possible.

17. How an Accountability Partner Can Change Everything

The more immediate the pain, the less likely the behavior. If you want to prevent bad habits and eliminate unhealthy behaviors, then adding an instant cost to the action is a great way to reduce their odds.
To make bad habits unsatisfying, your best option is to make them painful in the moment. Creating a habit contract is a straightforward way to do exactly that.

ADVANCED TACTICS — How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great

18. The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don’t)

In short: genes do not determine your destiny. They determine your areas of opportunity.
You don’t have to build the habits everyone tells you to build. Choose the habit that best suits you, not the one that is most popular.
When you can’t win by being better, you can win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it easier to stand out.
A good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses.
Boiling water will soften a potato but harden an egg. You can’t control whether you’re a potato or an egg, but you can decide to play a game where it’s better to be hard or soft. If you can find a more favorable environment, you can transform the situation from one where the odds are against you to one where they are in your favor.
In summary, one of the best ways to ensure your habits remain satisfying over the long-run is to pick behaviors that align with your personality and skills. Work hard on the things that come easy.

19. The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work

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.
Improvement requires a delicate balance. You need to regularly search for challenges that push you to your edge while continuing to make enough progress to stay motivated. Behaviors need to remain novel in order for them to stay attractive and satisfying. Without variety, we get bored. And boredom is perhaps the greatest villain on the quest for self-improvement.
We all have goals that we would like to achieve and dreams that we would like to fulfill, but it doesn’t matter what you are trying to become better at, if you only do the work when it’s convenient or exciting, then you’ll never be consistent enough to achieve remarkable results.
The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.

20. The Downside of Creating Good Habits

However, the benefits of habits come at a cost. At first, each repetition develops fluency, speed, and skill. But then, as a habit becomes automatic, you become less sensitive to feedback. You fall into mindless repetition. It becomes easier to let mistakes slide. When you can do it “good enough” on autopilot, you stop thinking about how to do it better.
Habits are necessary, but not sufficient for mastery. What you need is a combination of automatic habits and deliberate practice.
Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
Sustaining an effort is the most important thing for any enterprise. The way to be successful is to learn how to do things right, then do them the same way every time.
Reflection and review enables the long-term improvement of all habits because it makes you aware of your mistakes and helps you consider possible paths for improvement. Without reflection, we can make excuses, create rationalizations, and lie to ourselves. We have no process for determining whether we are performing better or worse compared to yesterday.
Periodic reflection and review is like viewing yourself in the mirror from a conversational distance. You can see the important changes you should make without losing sight of the bigger picture. You want to view the entire mountain range, not obsess over each peak and valley.
The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.
Habits deliver numerous benefits, but the downside is that they can lock us into our previous patterns of thinking and acting — even when the world is shifting around us. Everything is impermanent. Life is constantly changing, so you need to periodically check in to see if your old habits and beliefs are still serving you.
A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.

The Secret to Results That Last

Can one coin make a person rich? If you give a person a pile of ten coins, you wouldn’t claim that he or she is rich. But what if you add another? And another? And another? At some point, you will have to admit that no one can be rich unless one coin can make him or her so.
“If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.”
Small habits don’t add up. They compound.