BOOK REPORT: Atomic Habits
By James Clear
“If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.” James Clear
A lot of people I know have read and raved about this book, and for good reason. It’s a very accessible on-ramp to understanding human behavior and how to change it. Clear’s formula for success is to use the “Four Laws of Behavioral Change” to build strong systems – i.e., to break bad habits and build good ones.
He describes our brains as reward detectors and simplifies the habit-forming process as a repetition of these 4 things: Cue, Craving, Response, Reward.
CUE: The trigger. (Setting, circumstance, time…)
CRAVING: A desire for a change in state (I like Clear’s point that we don’t crave the object; we crave the change in state it provides.).
RESPONSE: What we do to resolve the craving (for the change in state).
REWARD: What happens afterward either reinforces that behavior or deters it.
To build or break any habit, we have to:
1 - Create environments that help sustain good habits and hinder the bad ones;
2 - Get clear about what it is that we truly crave;
3 - Be intentional about how to address the real craving; and
4 - Create our own systems of rewards/consequences to make the good stuff repeatable and the bad stuff aversive.
Or something like that.
We do the same thing in schools with kids who have tough behaviors, except we call it “Functional Behavior Assessment”. We do Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence (ABC) observations and analyses and then use environmental changes ( A ) and targeted response strategies ( C ) to break a maladaptive chain and create an ADaptive one in its place.
Whatever we call it, when you really break it down, nothing about us should be terribly mystifying, and I like that.
Another thing I like about Clear’s system is that it doesn’t require any giant leaps. Success is a product of very small improvements that compound over time, and it always starts with mastering the habit of just showing up. I liked his example of the man who wanted to improve his fitness who started by simply showing up at the gym every day. Didn’t necessarily work out. Just drove there. Walked in. Put on his gym shoes. Left. Once he’d formed the habit of getting himself there, he added a little exercise. Then a little more. And a little more after that.
There is opportunity to apply these micro-steps (for the individual) to the macro (for the community). He discusses the human evolutionary need to BELONG to a tribe – that it is an ingrained survival tactic. This need for belonging means we sometimes imitate the habits of others – those who are close to us, those in the communities around us, and those we deem powerful. It’s not hard to see this in our current toxic political climate. The rude, mean-spirited dialog on the campaign trail has seeped into how we talk to and about each other.
I thought of this again when Clear described the importance of reviewing and reflecting on our habits – and being willing to adjust when we need to. He wrote:
“Without reflection, we can make excuses, create rationalizations, and lie to ourselves.”
And in the process of systematic reflections and integrity-checks, we have to be willing to course correct when we’ve fallen out of alignment. To this end, we have to hold identity (or belonging) loosely: “The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.”
Lots of very practical tools and strategies and highly worth the study.