Harness Your Habits: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Having trouble reaching your goals? The problem may be that you’re focusing only on goals. Without a strong system to do the work necessary to achieve those goals, they’re only wishes.?

In Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, author James Clear breaks down systematic ways of approaching habits to make them more effective and sustainable. As Clear points out, what separates the successful from the non-successful isn’t the will to succeed but rather the processes that make success possible.?

Anyone who’s ever started an ambitious weight loss goal on January 1 knows what a recipe for failure that is. Without a strong, habit-creating plan, you’ll be back to Netflix and Doritos by mid-February. Instead of diving headlong toward the goal of weight loss, it’s better to start slowly, learn to love the process, and make incremental progress for long-term benefits.?

Many of Clear’s recommendations are based on psychology, recognizing the mental barriers we need to overcome to build good habits and break bad ones. For example, he writes that outcome-based habits (focusing on what you want to achieve) are not as effective as identity-based habits (focusing on who you want to become). Managing habits isn’t just about willpower. It’s about understanding the human mind so you can set yourself up for success.

The core of Clear’s advice involves making beneficial behaviors effortless and harmful behaviors difficult. He gives multiple strategies for making this happen. For example, an implementation intention specifies a time and location to implement a habit, thus creating a visual cue to make engaging in that behavior obvious: “I will [behavior] at [time] in [location].” Once that habit is in place, you can use it as part of “habit stacking” to build new ones: “After I [current habit], I will [new habit].”

If you’re frustrated about a goal that feels out of reach—whether in business, health, relationships—ask yourself whether your habits are holding you back. Then pick up Atomic Habits, a practical, research-backed, easy to understand guide for making habits work to your advantage.