Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones is a guide to adopting good behaviors through incremental changes to your everyday routines. Avery first published the book in 2018, and this guide refers to the ebook edition. The book has unique pagination, with the page numbers beginning again at the start of each new chapter. Clear likely numbered his book this way because of his emphasis on “atomic,” or small habits, compounding into larger, positive changes over time. In the same way, each individual chapter is set apart by its own pagination and combines into a larger book.

In Atomic Habits, Clear suggests that bad habits are the result of unconscious cues triggering unproductive behavior. Drawing from neuroscience, sociology, psychology, sports, and the arts, Clear outlines strategies for reinforcing habits that enable you to reach your full potential. Success is not a singular goal, but a process of gradually improving and refining your craft. Establishing good systems is the best way to succeed.

The first section, “The Fundamentals: Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference,” explains why habits are so important to achieving your goals, especially small, incremental changes. Success requires long-term investments in growth, and the payoff isn’t immediate. Building good systems that support positive habits is the best way to achieve your goals. The following sections are structured around the Four Laws of Behavior Change: Make It Obvious, Make It Attractive, Make It Easy, and Make It Satisfying. Make It Obvious argues that behavior change starts with an awareness of your habits, both good and bad. For most of your day, you run on autopilot, and as a result, you often miss the cues that initiate the cravings that trigger action. Often, a lack of motivation is merely a lack of clarity. Making it obvious brings focus and transparency to your life which is knowledge you can apply to form better habits.

Make It Attractive charts how human brains respond to rewards, work, and punishment. You’re more likely to establish habits if there is some kind of reward that encourages you to keep the habit going. In Make It Easy, Clear posits that it is easier to remove temptation than to avoid it. Structuring your life so that the habit is easy to implement facilitates sustainable habit formation. The more your environment triggers positive habits, the more automatic your habit becomes. Make It Satisfying outlines the importance of making your habits as enjoyable as possible. Short-term rewards give the encouragement you need to reach your long-term goals. Clear concludes with “Advanced Tactics: How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great,” which outlines strategies to maximize advantages that correspond to your personality, genetics, and natural gifts.