James Clear’s Atomic Habits review

In my Atomic Habits review, some of the discussion points contain spoilers about a handful of lessons in the book. I have only shared my favourites, but if you would like to skip them, please read up to ‘Lessons from Atomic Habits’.

I’ve been trying to build healthy habits for years. While I have improved my consistency over time in sticking to them, I still fall victim to not setting out what I intend to do on all of them. When life gets busy, certain habits can get thrown to the bottom of the pile. It’s never that I actively don’t want to have the habit any longer – it’s that I fall out of the habit, with no discipline to get back to it. One example of this is waking up at 5 AM. I do it for a month, then accidentally sleep in for a few days on the trot until I have completely ignored the habit for the rest of the month. It can be a vicious circle.

I speak to people out there who prefer to go with the flow in life. I trust that if you’re reading this, you’re not that type of person, either. While a slower pace is something I wholeheartedly recommend, habits are still imperative to me, for my mental health, physical health (when it comes to maintaining habits like drinking water, eating well, exercising and consuming less alcohol), and working on my dreams. Without habits, I am simply not living intentionally or by my true values. If I’m eating chocolate for breakfast, walking 1,000 steps a day and ignoring my creative outlet, I don’t feel like the person I was born to be.

As I alluded to, recovering from a perfectionist mindset has meant that I have to put in the work to continue my habits, and this was the reason I decided to read Atomic Habits by James Clear. It was on my ‘to read’ list for years until my fiancé bought a copy that sat in his basket of books, untouched. I claimed it and read one chapter a day. Honestly, haven’t looked back.

Since I read the book, I created a blogging habit, including a blogging schedule, which has led to the Atomic Habits review you’re reading today. This is the biggest transformation of all, given that blogging is my biggest passion of all. I’ve adopted a new cleaning system, FlyLady, that empowers habits over perfectionism for homemaking activities. If I miss a day, the FlyLady system allows me to still carry out a little bit of housework the next day, without adding the previous day’s workload. It’s a beautiful example of Atomic Habits in action to make things easy and deserves a blog post of its own in the future.

I’m not perfect. But, I’m making micro improvements that will propel me to becoming the person I’ve always dreamed of being. Here’s my Atomic Habits review, including my favourite lessons from the book.

Atomic Habits review

I think the learnings from this book will change my life, and that’s exactly what I had hoped for when I first picked it up. Atomic Habits shares proven ways to form habits, focusing on behaviour change. To cover the basics, James Clear’s writing is clear, broken down into digestible sections, and backed up by research in psychology and examples from highly successful people. In my opinion, it struck an excellent balance – there isn’t a breadth of homework to complete in each chapter to put his concepts into practice, which means the book can be read quickly. Even so, it still provides practical, hands-on advice that can be implemented straight away. I looked forward to reading it every morning, and truthfully, have found myself struggling to choose what to read next.

Lessons from Atomic Habits

This isn’t an exhaustive list of the lessons I’ve learned from Atomic Habits; rather, the biggest takeaways that will stay with me.

Habit stacking

From hearing other readers’ views of Atomic Habits, habit stacking seems to be the book’s most loved principle, and with good reason. James Clear explains that the first law of behaviour change is to make it obvious, and a good way to do this is to build a habit on top of a pre-existing habit. For example, if you make a cup of coffee as soon as you wake up in the morning (guilty!), you could add the habit of unloading the dishwasher while it’s brewing. I use this example because it’s one of my most successful habit stacks to date.

As part of the FlyLady system I mentioned earlier, I’m in the process of introducing new habits on top of pre-existing habits, which I’m sharing for inspiration:
– When I’ve got myself ready for the day and I’m ready to go downstairs, I get a load of laundry from the washing basket and put it in the washing machine
– When I’ve finished my breakfast and loaded my bowl into the dishwasher, I take the wipes from the cleaning cupboard and do a 5-minute wipe-down of the bathrooms
– When I’ve finished cleaning the kitchen after dinner and have turned the dishwasher on, I prepare my bag for the next day and put it on the kitchen counter

You might notice that the habits I’ve shared are specific. This is James Clear’s advice for being successful with habit stacking. He uses the example of, “When I take a break for lunch, I will do 10 push-ups”. He explains that, while it sounds reasonable, it’s not clear whether the push-ups are to be done before or after eating, or where they’d be carried out. Instead, he recommends making it more specific to, “When I close my laptop for lunch, I will do 10 push-ups next to my desk”.

While I’d heard of habit stacking from other readers of Atomic Habits, I agree that it’s a standout learning for those who struggle with implementing habits.

Motion versus action

Motion versus action is, by far, my favourite discovery from the book, and the lesson that I’ve been speaking to others about the most. The realisation was so profound that after I’d read it, I felt the effects of shock for the rest of the day.

James Clear explains that when you’re in motion, you’re planning, strategising and learning. When you’re taking action, you’re delivering an outcome. The lesson is that motion doesn’t produce results – action does. For example, in blogging, motion could be learning strategies for monetisation, building project trackers, or populating a content calendar with blog post ideas. Action, on the other hand, would be writing and publishing the blog posts. Sometimes, motion is necessary. But, the line from the book that hit home for me was, “…motion allows us to feel like we’re making progress without running the risk of failure”. It spoke to me more than anything I’d heard in a long time on my self-development journey.

It was this lesson that sparked me to build the habit of writing a weekly blog post and set up a schedule of time to take action on my blog. Sure, there are days when I need to plan. But, keeping motion tasks limited to two a week and doing action tasks more frequently has helped me to feel more at peace than I ever have on my blogging journey.

The two-minute rule

The two-minute rule is a brilliant concept for those who, like me, might have a perfectionist mindset. If I go to the gym, I must complete my workout. If I have a 10,000-step target, the steps must be recorded as complete on my Apple Watch…

A story in the book about one of James Clear’s readers stopped me in my tracks and gave me clarity about the lack of progress on my goals. The person in the story consistently showed up to the gym for just five minutes a day and, after a few weeks, made the choice to stay longer than five minutes, because he was there anyway. He went on to lose over 100 pounds.

It gave me the realisation that it’s not about how long or how much I do, but about showing up. The two-minute rule reinforces my identity as the person I want to become (a person who goes to the gym), rather than the person I was previously (a person who talks about going to the gym).

Atomic Habits review summary

I recommend Atomic Habits to anyone who is struggling to build or sustain habits. I’ve been on a journey to combat perfectionism for years, and it’s a mindset I need to consistently work on. Atomic habits provided me with yet more proof points for letting go of perfectionism, and for that, I am deeply grateful.

Now, I am continuing to implement habits, slowly but surely. I’m not making them grand or excessive, but small and manageable during an exceptionally busy period of my life. I don’t get it right all the time, and some habits need work, but I’m making an effort on things in my life that I have neglected for years. It’s such an accomplishment for me.

I hope my Atomic Habits review has been helpful, especially if you were on the fence about purchasing the book. You can buy it on Amazon*.

If you’ve read Atomic Habits, what was your favourite lesson?

*As an Amazon Associate, I earn a small amount from qualifying purchases.