7 Lessons From Atomics Habits That Will Inspire You

The book Atomic habits blew my mind. I guess it’s a type of book that everyone should read either for who wants to form a new habit or break a bad one. I guess that, by and large, it’s important for self-development. We can understand the psychology behind our human acts. It helps us to understand that we’re all human beings and have similar behaviors. Sometimes we think that our flaws are exclusive ours, but not, it’s more common than we think. This book brings this sense of similarity. That as a specie we are similar and have ways to handle behaviors that we want to change.

I reviewed this book here. In case you want to read more about it.

Better than read a lot of books is to learn from them. It’s not worth reading a lot if you cannot learn and apply the knowledge from books into your daily life.

Lesson 1 – You don’t need unanimous vote to win

In any election, there are going to be votes for both sides. You don’t need a unanimous vote to win an election; you just need a majority.

Usually, when we start developing a new habit or skill, we’re bound to let perfectionism to be enemy of the good enough. What’s a mistake. The author talks about the balance of taking good and bad actions, in other word. In this balance, the good actions should win. This is what really matters. This is enough to build a habit. For example, let’s suppose that you’re trying to lose weight. You are on track doing everything right for days in a row, but if you fail one weekend, you might say to yourself that everything goes down the drain, and you are likely to stop your fitness project. But what you must take into account is the votes you cast for the good or for the bad. If during one day you vote for eating more unprocessed than processed food, if you vote for walking rather than taking the escalator, if you vote for drinking juice rather than drinking soda, it’s not a workout missed that will drop your fitness progress. You should think that between right and wrong decisions you are making your way up taking good decisions in the majority to win.

As Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.” So, don’t let the good be enemy of the best!

Lesson 2 – Pair your new habit with your current habit

No behavior happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior.

I simply loved this strategy, called habit stacking. It seems obvious but I’ve never heard about it, and it totally makes sense. Each action triggers the next actions. It’s easier to stick to a new habit if you implement it immediately after one which is already rooted in your routine. For instance, I want to do journaling, and I’m used to meditating every day in the morning, so I thought I can do my journaling after meditating. It’s been working.

Lesson 3 – The power of the environment

Every habit is initiated by a cue, and we are more likely to notice cues that stand out.

Your surround affects you more than you imagine. If you want to form a new habit make it obvious. The same logic is applied if you want to break a bad habit, you should make cues that trigger this bad habit invisible, by reducing the exposure.

For example, If you want to eat healthier, hide unhealthy snacks in the pantry, don’t let visible on the table. If you want to read more, let your book on your bed, sofa, or coffee table. If you want to do more exercises let your sports gears visible.

Lesson 4 – Specific space and time for each activity

You can train yourself to link a particular habit with a particular context.

At first glance, it seems weird to have different places and time for every activity, but it totally makes sense. It’s easier you create a new habit with different triggers and stimulation. If you have one specific place to read, another one to write, another one to exercise, another one to chat with friends on social media, it’s easier not to get caught with overwhelming stimulation because you’re going to have one space and time for each activity.

After reading the book, I decided to read laid in a hammock on my kindle in the evening and to meditate on the sofa in the morning.

It’s helped me to have conditional behavior, it’s kind of automatically. In the blink of an eye, I feel like doing such activities.

Lesson 5 – What matters is frequency, not time.

Habits form based on frequency, not time.

We try to do our best doing what we have planned, but when we can’t follow the scheduled plan we feel like a failure. So, if I planned to write for 30 minutes 5 times a week, I used to feel frustrated if I do it for 10 to 15 minutes 5 times a week. Chances are that next week I’ll feel demotivated to keep it up because I couldn’t stick to what I had planned. But now I have a new perspective: time doesn’t matter, what matters is the frequency. For sure, it’s much better to write for 10 minutes 5 times a week than nothing. This lesson is intrinsically connected to the next one.

Lesson 6 – First show up a habit than master it.

A habit must be established before it can be improved

I’m the kind of person who wants to do always the correct and complete thing. I’ve been struggling to write more, so I had planned to do it every day for at least 30 minutes, but when I’m lazy, or I have no idea about what to write about, I stuck. I go nowhere. That sucks. Then, I simply give up or slack on. So, I learned that first I need to make it constant, to make it frequently, then I should master it.

Lesson 7 – Life is like a credit card, one day the bill arrives

The costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.

No matter what you do, whether is good or bad, one day the results will come directly proportional to your good or bad actions. It’s kind of on the nose. The seeds you plant now you’ll reap in the future.

Usually, bad habits bring satisfaction immediately, but in the long run, the ultimate outcomes are bad. On the other hand, good habits bring an uncomfortable feeling, but in the long run, the ultimate outcomes are good.

That’s it. These are my 7 lessons from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Please, tell me which one(s) you already knew and which one(s) you learned. I’d love to hear from you.

If you think that any friend would learn from one of these lessons please share this post with them.