"Atomic Habits"

Recently, I bought James Clear's Atomic Habits, a book about easy and proven methods of building good habits and breaking bad ones - just what I wanted to hear.

James opened the book with a riveting story about an accident he had when playing baseball in high school. Though he underwent surgery, he recovered fully and formed good habits that made him excel at university.

But he turned boring when he started explaining the fundamentals of habit formation. I didn't like the way he laced his explanations with graphs and diagrams.

All the same, I gleaned four valuable insights from the book. The first is how tiny changes done over a long time make a big difference as this equation shows:

1% better daily for one year 1.01³⁶⁵=37.78

The second is that habits don't limit freedom; they create it. If we don't have good health habits, we will always be short on energy. And if we don't have good financial habits, we will always be struggling for the next dollar.

The third is that repetition is the key to forming good habits. Put another way, we need to practice a habit till it becomes second nature. That reminds me of the saying "repetition is the mother of skill".

The fourth is that for us to form a habit easily, we need to enjoy it. We should therefore find ways of making our desired habits exciting as we cultivate them. If we want to form a reading habit for instance, we should read what excites us.

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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed this review, you might also enjoy one for Ben Carson's "Think Big".