Atomic Habits
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Unconsciously, but I had done it.
I heard about Atomic Habits from my friend Andrés soon after the book was published in 2018. With my current curiosity 🧐 for building (and also breaking) habits, I got myself to follow the buzz.
Clear provides strategies ♟️ on how to create good habits based on four 4️⃣ fundamental laws of behavioral change: make it obvious; make it attractive; make it easy; make it satisfying. The reverse framework would lead to break a bad habit, making it invisible, unattractive, hard, and unsatisfying. Each rule includes scientific 🔬evidence and stories of top performers that prove how sustainable small increments lead to unforeseeable improvements.
1% better every day for a year -> 1.01^365 = 37.78 📈
1% worse every day for a year -> 0.99^365 = 0.03 📉
My “aha!” moment came when I read: “building good habits starts by mastering showing up. Repeatability leads to automatism.” Without knowing I had done that while forming my reading habit.
I started by reading five pages in the morning. I made it…
1. Obvious - Leaving the book on my desk every morning
2. Attractive - Reading content I was interested in
3. Easy - Keeping the habit to five pages a day
4. Rewarding - Satisfying my curiosity
“If I am reading five pages a day, I might as well read 10”. Along with extending my daily page count, I started to track ✅ how many days in a row I read 10 pages. A total 31 days I “showed up” to reading. From my habit tracker, there were never two✖️✖️consecutive days, on which I missed my 10-page habit. “Don’t break the streak, and if you do, return to it as fast as possible,” Clear recommends. Been there, done that! I have scaled up to read for 50 minutes most mornings. Repeatability, led to automatism. Unconsciously, but I had done it.
The book is neither a complicated set of laws, nor the panacea to bad habits. It provides a guide on how to become purposeful and deliberate when building small habits that could appear insignificant to make a difference, until a certain threshold is crossed unleashing a new level of performance.
🤔 Questions for you: What habit would you like to build and what could be the daily “showing up” you could start with?
