Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

by James Clear

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.

We make a few changes, but the results never seem to come quickly and so we slide back into our previous routines.

Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. You get what you repeat.

Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.

Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.

Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Most of us have a distorted view of our own behavior.

We think we act better than we do. Measurement offers one way to overcome our blindness to our own behavior and notice what’s really going on each day.

The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors.

The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.

As Aristotle noted, “Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.” Perhaps this can be revised to “Youth is easily deceived because it only hopes.” There is no experience to root the expectation in. In the beginning, hope is all you have.