Book Review: Atomic Habits by James Clear. My big takeaways from the book.
This blog will explore how you can achieve your potential and fulfill your goals by making small, positive changes that become habits. Making small positive changes in your life will start to add up to big results. These are the two biggest lessons I took from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.
#1. The Process is greater than the Goal
#2. Habit Stacking: Stack New Habits with Old Ones
#1. Process > Goal
It is often said that people who set a goal and stick to it, will be successful. That is true, to a certain extent. Goals help us to think big, dream big, and create a direction in our life. And if you stick to a goal, you will achieve it. However, we are human beings. We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with stimuli. And, just like a computer that is always connected to the internet, our brain is always thinking about the next thing to do. Through the years, our brain has evolved to be this way, to filter all the information and deal with the next step. But there is a downside to this evolution. When our brain is always thinking about the next step, we are not thinking about the task at hand. By setting a goal (and achieving it), we often forget about our goal and move on to the next. We become so focused on achieving our goal that we forget about the big picture. This is when we stop fulfilling our potential. Our potential is not limited to just achieving a goal, but it is the path we take to achieve a goal.
Last year, I made a New Year’s resolution to lose 30 pounds within 3 months. Being the determined person that I am, I did just that and ended up reaching my goal a month early. The downside? Instead of continuing on with my good habits and lifestyle choices, I let myself indulge in new bad ones and gained back the weight I had worked so hard to lose! The lesson learned here is that it’s very easy for you to reach your goals but if you are not careful about making lasting changes and avoiding unhealthy habits, then you may fall into old habits quickly which will only get them back to where they started from in no time.
#2. Habit Stacking
Habit stacking is an easy way to set goals and track them. It's an amalgamation of activities that you do regularly. For instance, you could set a goal to eat healthy, drink a certain amount of water, and exercise regularly. When you set goals for yourself, you're more likely to complete them. The best part about habit stacking is that it's easy, it's fun and it's a way to stay motivated while strengthening your willpower. Sticking to a routine means success and it's a great way to be healthy in all aspects of your life.
Habit stacking is a powerful way to build new habits and break old ones. It helps you to reframe your actions and make new habits subconscious by stacking habits on top of old ones. It’s easier to add a new habit on top of an existing one than it is to replace an old one with a new one. Habit stacking works best when you have something that you are already doing. For example, if you want to run more than you already do, use the existing habit of walking your dog to add on a running habit and make it stack. You can walk your dog and then, after walking for about 10 minutes, start to run for 10 minutes. This way, you can use the old habit of walking the dog to trigger your new habit of running.
Habits can be tough to form, but once you have them going it's easy to stick to them. The trick is to start small and build on top of it. For example, if you want to start writing every day, start small and make it your goal to write even a single sentence a day. Before you know it, you'll be writing multiple sentences a day, and before you know it you'll be writing healthy amounts of content everyday! If you want to go even bigger, you can even make a goal of writing for a certain amount of time every day! Look, I'm writing a blog! It works.
Conclusion
Everyone has a lot on their mind and time is short, but if you take the time to focus on the process of stacking habits in order to achieve your goals, you'll notice an improvement in both your health and your productivity. I hope that this blog has helped you realize that you can use the power of habits to achieve your goals and make changes to your life.
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Maurice Thomas is an entrepreneur, award-winning educator and nonprofit leader from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After losing his job, he launched a career as a successful entrepreneur helping companies to grow, while he learned to take things slow.
