Atomic Habits

3.5 stars

pros:
- very insightful practical strategies on how to form good habits and break bad ones
- I did feel inspired to be more productive and found myself integrating some tips (allocate spaces to certain behaviours, change environment, verbalize actions)

cons:
- lots of self promo (at least in the audiobook) (“go to website to see graphs/media/template/etc.” and the only way to view the graphs/media/template is to enter email and sign up to newsletter)
- couldn't really stay focused during some info dumping over audio, probably would be better if I read the physical copy
TW: can trigger people with eating disorders (offhand comments about diets, cutting calories, food and weight tracking as “good habit” examples)

I thought this book had some great ideas on how to make small changes in your life.  I absolutely will annotate this book so I can have easy access to motivational sections etc.  The reason it only has four stars is.... 1: It could absolutely be shorter.  I don't know if it's me but oi feel most books I read could be condensed down.  2: This book is male dominated (surprise surprise!..not) it's a book FULL of males making changes in their lives and the story behind them....blah blah blah. ugh, a bit foreseen but annoying.

Took a while because I only read a chapter a month. Very interesting and definitely shows some things that I can work on to have better habits on it.

A handy book to make a change in your life.

This book leads you through the steps and tricks you can use to make the most of your life. In essence, it teaches you how to create small habits that together make a significant influence.

Even though I think this book is so useful I have given it only 3 stars because the process of reading is tedious and very repetitive, which made me read even slower and procrastinate reading the book.

Este libro comienza con una historia muy emocional e interesante de como el autor dejo el deporte en el que estaba involucrado.

Y como él fue encontrando con los años formas de mejorar sus hábitos.

Describe bastante bien como se separan los hábitos y qué ángulos debe uno de probar para ir adaptando los esfuerzos para generar buenos hábitos.

Definitivamente, lo volveré a leer en el futuro.

This was a really satisfying book to say the least. After some of the initial chapters, I raced off to finish the book. The word “habits” in the title might have been a turn off for me initially. Who wants to read a big book about developing good habits? And maybe I only persisted after the first few chapters because Meera recommended this. Throughout the book, Clear uses the term Habits quite generously to include any repetitive action that we might do in our lives and which is basically a learnt response to any situation or problem in our life that we have to face more than once. That is what makes this book so useful. It teaches you one thing and one thing well. A general framework for habit engineering and through that - engineering your own life. Willpower is something like a bottle of water on a desert journey that you should be conserving every ounce of. “Engineer your life so that you won't have to use your will power”, is one of the key takeaways of the book. The idea that it is not the lack of motivation that has been holding you back from doing a lot of things, that you have always wanted to do but just couldn't get around to doing, is indeed a refreshing one. It really is a must read for someone who is starting off on the journey to self improvement.

This is one of the few books of personal improvement that I had really enjoyed The way this book is write is very engaging and interesting but this book Don't have just that this book have a topic essential for everyone habits one of the hardest things to create right or to destroy and this one gives a lot of strategies to make the habits stick I read this book a long time ago and it help me a lot to create good habits and improve a lot myself but now with this re-read I can see more clearly a lot of things I didn't saw back then so in general if you don't know how to start self-improving books this is a recommendable one so give it a go

Meh. There were a few useful ideas – namely that of creating/optimizing an environment for habits and the 2 minute idea that the trigger action is the habit rather than a whole performance. A lot of it was self helpy fluff or stuff you'll have heard before. There were a lot of references to weight loss as a goal (cw I guess) and overall it felt like a bit of a bro-ey book but there were some interesting anecdotes. It probably could've been a blog post instead.

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.

Phenomenal book, a book I could probably recommend to anyone and they would have some use for it. The book isn't exactly advanced in its psychology and most likely if you have had an interest in building habits you would already know a lot of these tips.

Nonetheless, fantastic book and really easy to read.

Simple worded, structured and actionable book with relatable examples from my daily life.
The examples and practical solutions helped me realise that my implementation techniques were hazy and not clear. I was solving for way too many variables, solving for things I should not be, and expecting too much energy to be spent on too many habits. The examples and techniques are, I think, going to help me optimize and simplify the process.
Oh, and the stories of people who experimented were helpful reminders to me that experimentation is important.

I thought i already wrote a review for this. When i first listened to atomic habits I thought the fact that the author provided supplements to help you track habits and told you how to build systems was great. And it is on paper but his methods don't work for me. he has some good nuggets of information like how just because you find something boring doesn't mean you no longer want to do it. Like say you want to write a story but after the initial rush a motivation has left you it feels boring to work on your story. It doesn't mean you no longer want to write it, that feeling of boredom is normal and doesn't mean you should give up.

There were some parts of this book that really compelled me, but I admit the grand majority was just “be consistent” worded differently everywhere. I didn't dislike it, I definitely feel compelled to try some more disciplined approaches, but... I also don't necessarily recommend it.

Will need to refer to the atomic habits.com website for additional tips and information. But over, a really good book with great ideas. Different ways to think about changing your current habits and becoming who you would like to be.

Purchased the Kindle version of the book as well.

Pretty clear and well structured guide on how to get better at sticking to habits. A bunch of things you might have heard before, but that are definitely worth repeating. Design your environment for success. I should have maybe had an actual specific goal in mind while listening to this, but hey, it's still the start of the new year and so not bad timing.

3.5

Fairly derivative but Clear knows his audience. I just happened to pick it up at a time I really needed to read it. Worked out well.

This book was informative. It gave me knew ways to think about my habits, both good and bad. It can also be used with a workbook to help change habits if wanted.

Audiobook.
Very good principles in easy to follow steps with free online resources for easy implementation. He used real life examples to make the principles easy to follow and remember. Very good! Definitely recommend.

The book is good except for the endless sports analogies. I should have known this would happen since the book opens with the tale of a major injury the author suffered while playing baseball, but most of the examples in the book are about sports. That gets tiresome for those of us who aren't sports fans or athletes.

The information presented is useful, though not necessarily new or groundbreaking. It's very well-organized and the additional resources offered via Clear's website are very helpful.

This is the first time I tried using the Kindle/Audible Whispersync feature. It works like a charm!

One of the top 5 personal development books I've ever read. Absolutely going on my list of recommended for folks.

GET THIS BOOK NOW.

It was a solid book on how to improve habits but I would've liked to see more real world examples of the methods applied in scenarios whether it would be reading more books or practicing a musical instrument. Would also like to see how much practice would help someone become a better musician or writer too.

The format was easy to follow and self-help books should use scientific evidence to back up their claims like this one.

Great, great, great. I'm a big believer in habits and read plenty of books, articles and listened to many podcasts on the subject, plus I constantly do a lot of personal experimentation. So it was very exciting to listen to this audiobooks and to find so many new ideas on the topic and some ideas that I already knew but explained in a more insightful and actionable way. Definitely the most useful book I read in 2021.

Atomic Habits is the yang to Tiny Habits yin. They complement each other. Tiny Habits to get started, Atomic Habits to develop mastery.

From personal experience, the material on ensuring habits aren't stale and aren't producing outcomes is the most important part of the book. Building habits isn't difficult. Building the right habits requires considerably more effort. Habits which aren't ultimately producing desired outcomes are indistinguishable from “bad” habits, regardless of the moral content of the habit.

Awesome. Helping me get back on track and show myself some love by trusting in tiny changes over time.