Atomic Habits

This thing was churned out of a productivity book factory. A paint by numbers self-help book.

Step one: Open the chapter with a bit of anecdata.

“It's 1940 and Dutch scientist Niko Tinbergen would win the Nobel Prize for his research on herring gulls... ““Or, 1965 and Laszlo Polgar is embarking on a grand experiment in creating a squad of child chess geniuses... “

This segues into a habit shaping method reinforced with a few requisite paragraphs and then a bullet-pointed chapter summary while noting our ongoing progress on the 3 laws of creating a good habit. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I get it, it's a self-help book, repetition is important but it feels like the bookish equivalent of someone speaking slower and louder to me after assuming that English isn't my first language.

Still I like the idea of “you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems” and the simple rule “never miss twice.” That's enough to make me gloss over some of the more painful habit tropes gussied up with fancy terms like “temptation bundling”. The “I will do 10 burpees, THEN I will check Facebook” which manifests in so many futile ways when you're trying to quit smoking and does nothing to eliminate the bad habit itself as a long-time quitter will tell you.