Book Review - “Atomic Habits” by James Clear

“Million Copy Bestseller”

“Must-read”

“life-changing”

The book has received great reviews and enthusiastic feedback all over the world. Of course, we have committed ourselves accordingly to read and review the book for you.

That is what it is about

In this book, James Clear explains how to break your patterns of habits. In doing so, he particularly emphasizes the importance of tiny changes that we can incorporate into our lives more easily than major transformations. How a daily improvement of 1% can become something bigger than a one-off 50% improvement and how small habits (“Atomic Habits”) have a big impact — that is the secret of the book. James Clear gives specific tips on how we can free ourselves from our bad behavior, develop good habits and eventually become the architect of our lives.

Here is our personal impression in brief:

• Could have been more compressed
• Repeats to really get into everyone's heads
• The summaries at the end of the chapters are great
• Sometimes very “American”, lurid
• Practical approaches that can be implemented directly in everyday life
• Inspires to question themselves and also teach children the importance of habits
• The model is compact and understandable
• Recommended for anyone who is willing to develop

That surprises

We found the following approaches particularly exciting, and we noticed for ourselves that we focused the tips more on our private life than our professional life:

‍

ben: Don't just think about the goal, but make conscious decisions to change the system every day, even in small steps!

Example: Instead of setting out to do more sports on New Year's Eve, try running 2 km every day. Later, it automatically increases, creeps in and becomes a habit.

paul: Create social pressure yourself to keep your motivation high!

Example: Challenge with friends via fitness app to track progress and meet friends' expectations.

lena: Your habits shape your identity! This makes it easier to display certain behaviors when they are linked to one's own identity.

Example: “I'm a vegetarian” makes it easier to avoid meat.

anne: Design your environment according to your desired behaviors, instead of just passively consuming them.
Example: A visible water dispenser at work can make you drink more and a visit to a new supermarket can make you shop more consciously.

With regard to the current situation

But now, in the unusual times of COVID-19, we find the following question particularly exciting:

What significance does the book “Atomic Habits” gain in times of corona isolation, home office and the introduction of a new, daily rhythm?

What opportunities do these days, some of which are perceived as “informal”, open up in which previous habits are broken? Now that trained routines are becoming unnecessary, fixed appointments are being cancelled and established habits are being questioned, let's take a look at the tips from James Clears Scorecard together:

The scorecard should be a simple exercise to find out which habits you should or want to change. Try it out:

1. Make a list of your daily habits
2. Evaluate each individual behavior and ask yourself, “Is this a good habit, a bad habit, or a neutral habit? “and write +, - or = next to it. If that's hard to answer, ask yourself, “Does this behavior help me become the type of person I want to be? ”

In this way, you can categorize your habits according to how they benefit you in the long term.

We have started this as an example for you - using the fictitious example of people A, B and C, who usually had the same morning routine, Corona produces a wide variety of behavior:

‍

In conclusion, we can only agree with James Clear's quote:

“Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”

We recognize this not only in our personal everyday lives, but also in the transformation of companies. We also believe in the validity of this statement in organizational development and change projects.

How do you see that? We are looking forward to the exchange!

We support local bookstores and order our books online and offline from Stojan Bookstore

‍

‍