Power To The Small Habits: How the book “Atomic Habits” has impacted my life

Sitting at my kitchen table after my siblings relocated to the living room, I was using all of my strength not to cry. My dad could see right through me and asked what was wrong. Immediately, the flood gates opened.

Through my tears, I was rambling on and on about all the strenuous things I’d have to deal with this school year as my siblings looked on from the living room with silent curiosity, avoiding eye contact at all costs.

After airing out all my concerns, my dad did the most dad thing ever and started preaching about a book. He described the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear which discusses how to make little changes in your life to streamline efficiency and reach your goals. 

Since reading, he’s started doing little tasks like making his bed every morning — which is very out of character for him — so I decided it was worth my time. At only two chapters in, I began to preach it like my dad did to me.

I’ve integrated some of my dad’s favorite habit-building techniques the book talks about even before I started reading. The biggest thing he took away from “Atomic Habits” was doing the small things. Everything works in one percent increases until life becomes streamlined and efficient, as described in the book’s first few chapters.

Clear’s first transformative analogy will integrate itself into your mind. It begins with someone sitting in a below-freezing room with a table in front of them, and an ice cube on the table. The room temperature increases by one degree and is now at 29 degrees. Then 30. 31. Then, all of a sudden, at 32, the ice begins to melt. 

The temperature of the room seemingly hasn’t changed to this person, but the 1% increases all lead to a great change in state. I’ve been implementing this analogy into habits and goals every time I drag myself to swim practice or need to get my schoolwork done, and it reassures me that all of my effort will lead to a big payoff — a change in state. These 1% increases are small things that I try to make more efficient, like 

Change in state is something that everyone strives for by doing their best to be the person they want to be and reaching their goals, which is another prominent theme of the book. He emphasizes that thinking of yourself as someone who does something, like playing the drums for example, is not an effective way to have a strong personal identity. Instead of saying “I play the drums,” say, “I am a drummer.” This reinforces what you want to be and not who you are right now.

Organizing your habits to reach a “change in state” all starts with a “cue.”  A cue is the first stage of a habit, followed by completing the action and the reward for that behavior (whether this be a long term beneficial reward or not). Like if a gambler saw a billboard for a casino nearby, they could have the urge to go gamble. 

The same can go for good habits. Setting up your environment with cues for good behaviors and habits is the first step towards making a difference.

I typically do everything at one desk in my room — homework, Netflix, games, calls, research, the list goes on. What “Atomic Habits” helped me realize was thatI had trained my brain to think that I can watch Netflix instead of doing homework while in my room. To combat this, I started doing my work solely in the in the kitchen and living room.

Optimizing your environment is the best way to create new habits, but a great way to stick with them is to make them “immediately satisfying,” as Clear puts it. 

Many good habits people wish to form are more long-term and don’t immediately seem like they’re worth the time and energy. But if you reward yourself for completing these habits, then it becomes satisfying to continue even after your goal is completed.

For example, I was recently moved up to a higher practice group on my swim team and was nervous about how difficult practices would be, so I started using this book as my reward to completing a practice. By going to practice, I was able to do something I enjoyed right after — I listened to the audiobook of “Atomic Habits” narrated by Clear himself on my drives home.

The reason I so heavily invested in this book was because of my extreme problems with time management, procrastination and motivation. Constantly being pulled from one obligation to the next has created these problems for me and over a lifetime of poor decisions with work ethic, my current state is one of disorganization and chaos. 

Bringing back that controlled environment and schedule is something I strive for. The strategies and principles of habit making and sticking with a habit, verbalized in a clear manner changed my outlook on how I run my life.