Atomic Habits - Overhyped ?

I remember the days when I wanted to read this book but kept procrastinating as I would end up thinking that this is just another self help book which will go down the drain post reading. I have never really liked following the crowd and it’s especially true when it comes to books. Things add up when it’s a self help book you are researching as I always used to turn against them. If you are thinking like me at this point, then this read is definitely for you.

Atomics Habits is clearly one of those books that I would defend at any cost. I try to list the pros and cons of each book that I read but I couldn’t find any con for this book. Despite having read this book six months ago, the ideas and techniques illustrated in this book still holds true and has had a great impact in my everyday life. I would strongly suggest you to just order this book and read your way through it slowly. That exactly what I did. I read merely 10-15 pages a day and once the quota for the day was done, I used to reflect my thoughts on the ideas that’s been presented in today’s read and try to associate that with what I do and how I do things everyday.

I’ve always fancied the idea of building goals and clearly who doesn’t ? At some point in life, we would’ve made a list of things we want to achieve, call it goals and then work our way through it. But eventually, we take a small break and forget it all together. I have also tried creating short-term and long-term goals but couldn’t stick to that either. This book presents the idea of building systems over goals and helps us understand how creating and working around tiny habits everyday becomes our identity and reduces the distance we have with the goal we have already listed.

What this book says :

• Change is clearly inevitable but the real change you’d want to see comes from hundreds of small decisions that we accumulate over time.
• Listing goals and working on them usually doesn’t help. It’s advisable to build systems which contain atomic habits that would help close the gap between our current state of being and the state of being after we achieve our goal.
• Habits have a compound effect on life, be it good or bad. What we do everyday creates an identity for yourself. And thus, it’s important to carefully analyze what we do and how we do things.

If you don’t understand the difference between goals and systems, here’s a quote from the book to help you :

Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.

3 Key Ideas Learnt :

• Changing your identity is changing your habits

If you want to build a good reading habit, tell yourself and others that you are a good reader. This subconsciously creates an identity for you, which in this case is being a good reader and then lets you act accordingly.

• Habit Stacking : Building new habits from old

Let’s suppose you take an afternoon nap daily, now you might want to couple up this habit with something else such as drinking water after you wake up or reading 10 pages before bed.

Environment matters (for the better or worse)

'Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.’

Setting up your environment is very crucial to develop your system. If you are in an environment where everybody around you is partying, you’ll ultimately end up partying. I personally leveraged this idea by leaving some books to read on my bed before night. By doing so, I ended up reading a couple of pages before switching the lights off. I also started sticking To-Do notes on my desk before night so that once I wake up, I can easily enter into a comfortable productive zone.

Can I read this book ?

Absolutely. This book doesn’t target any specific audience. Anybody can read this book at ease, and develop a mindset to make oneself better or to get rid of those practices you’ve always wanted to.

Now, my answer to the question “Is Atomic Habits just another hyped up self-help book ?” is a big fat NO.