Book Summary: Atomic Habits in 2 mins
On a recent trip to Stockholm, I downloaded Atomic Habits by James Clear on my Kindle.
Here’s a 2 minute summary of what I learned.
Make your wanna-be-habits dead EASY to start!
If you want to start something, make it as simple as absolutely possible to start.
Instead of becoming a full-blown yogi, start with the habit of getting into your yoga clothes daily.
Personally, I started doing 2 sun salutations a day.
Easy? Yep.
Once something becomes a habit you can build, make it bigger and actually start working towards your long-term goal.
I’m still on 2 sun salutations a day for the past week.
At some point I’ll extend it to 3 or 4, or maybe even a 5 min yoga YouTube video, but for now, I’m building the habit, not worried about achieving some far-off goal.
Make your bad habits invisible.
The book tells a story about the cafeteria at a hospital. They wanted to make the employees eat healthier.
Without telling any of the employees what was happening, they started rearranging the food.
Soft drinks went on a high up shelf, harder to see & reach.
Water was put right by the cash register and in a convenient display near every food station.
Water sales rose.
In order to break habits you don’t want to partake in, make them difficult to do.
I delete Instagram from my phone frequently.
Without it there, I don’t click on it.
Sometimes I genuinely want to go on for some reason or post, so I reinstall the app.
In my kitchen I have sweets hidden up on a high shelf, and a big bowl of fruits & vegetables sits easy-to-reach on my counter.
There’s 2 big takeaways for you from the book in 2 mins.
Atomic Habits was solid, a book I’d genuinely recommend if you have some bad habits you’re looking to break or good ones you want to adopt.
