Self Improvement - Atomic Habits

Self Improvement - Atomic Habits                                                                                         By:Robert Tu

Habit: a routine of practice performed regularly; an automatic response to a specific situation (defined in the book)

Atomic habits is a book I reread because the term self-improvement gets thrown out a lot. People think to jump into self-improvement, one has to drastically change their beliefs or lifestyle, but it is not. What I learned in Atomic habits is counterintuitive then what most people think about how a person can improve. The book helps form good habits and get rid of bad ones. The author also tells his story of how habits impacted his life after a life-threatening baseball injury, and teaching people about habits is his passion. 

The title of the book, for instance, is well thought out. Defined in the book, Atomic is 1. an extremely small amount of a thing; the single irreducible unit of a larger system, and 2. the source of immense energy or power. Combined with the definition of habit, it creates a double meaning where atomic is both minuscule and a source of immense power. The title emphasizes the point in the book where small steps will compound tremendous results. The task of making one's bed every day could determine if a person is more successful or not. 

There was a lot of thought about the material covered in the book. James Clear, the author, is one of the most influential people to talk about habits. He builds his book on the process of cue, craving, response, reward, and then the four laws of behavior change. The laws are to make habits obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. For example, a trick is to design an environment to minimalize cues of bad habits and trigger cues of good ones. if one always has a water bottle in sight, there is a sudden urge to drink more water and keep distractions out of site in need of focus. These actions will yield drastic results and shows how an environment affects the thought process. 

This idea was a small snippet of the material covered in the novel, as there is much more that I do not want to cover, but I do want to mention the examples. The examples are each enjoyable. One of my favorite and first examples to support that tiny changes spark remarkable results in the book is when the author uses the British cycling team, who has been mediocre in the last century. He says that the coach would do anything to marginally better the team. He says the coach hired a surgeon to teach the players the best way to wash hands to minimize the chance of getting sick. This example shows the extent of the precautions taken to maximize their performance. These changes paid off because, in the 2008 Olympics, they won %60 of the gold medals. Then in 2012, they broke nine Olympic records and seven world records. In their ten-year timespan from 2007 to 2017, they won 178 world championships, 66 Olympic or Paralympic gold medals, and the Tour de France five separate times. This run of the British cycling team gets regarded as the most successful period in cycling. This example proves what small measures can do because of the team's success. 

 I read this book around two years ago and still learn more about self-improvement on every page of Atomic Habits. The author says the book is like a tool a reader can keep coming back to for reference. Some small actions, such as the author providing chapter summaries and footnotes, make you feel like he is right there with you while reading. The voice of this book is unique because you can tell when an author, teacher, or anyone is super passionate about a topic like James Clear to habits.