The Book You Need To Read If You Want To Build (Or Break) Habits

Summary

This is an international bestselling book written by James Clear. It is all about making small changes to create significant changes (hence the title).

I discovered the book purely by seeing it in the shop and being grabbed by the title. I read the blurb and it grabbed my attention and I needed to find out more about it.

We all have habits, some good and some bad, and we would all love to break the bad ones and create new good ones. However, it always seems easier to lose our way and a positive habit not sticking.

Whilst reading this book I was amazed at how much sense it made when breaking habits down in to a few key drivers and once you understand them better you understand how you can adjust certain things to help you with those habits.

Key Points

The book starts with the fundamentals of habits and how tiny changes can make a big difference. This is a good intro into the subject of habits and also gives you an intro of the format of the book.

The main chunk of the book is split into what the author calls the 4 laws:

1st law, Make it obvious: This talks about how it is becomes a lot easier to create a habit if you make it obvious to yourself. If you want to make a habit of reading before you go to bed. Just by doing something as simple as leaving your book on your pillow when you make your bed in the morning can make it obvious to your brain and you will be more likely to continue that habit.
2nd Law, Make it Attractive: This section is about how if you make a habit more attractive you are more likely to do it. Again, it talks about the science of a habit and how you easily form a habit if you feel like a reward will come as a result of it. The anticipation of the reward causes you to act. Therefore, if you can link something you want to do with something you need to do you are more likely to do it.
3rd law, Make it easy: Sounds pretty obvious but if the easier something is, the more likely you are to do it. Most of us don't run 5k a day as the thought of doing that turns us off it as it feel too difficult. However, if you tell yourself you will walk down the road and back you are more likely to do it. Once you are in the process of doing it you can add to it and do more but if you want to just get started it is worth making it easy first.
4th law, Make it satisfying: If you get an instant reward for something that is better than a delayed reward. That's why recording progress can be so beneficial to keeping a habit going. When you work out you are not likely to see the physical results until at least a couple of months but if you record how many reps you did one day and the next and the next, the likelihood is that you will see the improvement and it will enforce the habit.

The book then finishes with a section on advanced tactics with some further tips and watch outs from creating habits.

My Personal Likes

The thing I liked most about how the book is written is that each chapter seems to start with a story to bring to life the point that the author wants to make for that particular chapter. I think this is such a powerful way of keeping you interested as a reader and helps you understand it further, especially when they are real life examples.
Each chapter finishes with a chapter summary which is really useful to enforce what you have just read and is helpful when you want to look back at the book after reading it.
It explains complex scientific behaviours in a really simple way and in a way that feels like anyone can read it and understand it.
Gives you some actionable insight that everyone can try in their lives to make a difference to themselves.

What I Have Done Differently As A Result

I am in the process of listing some habits I really want to start and using the book to make sure I follow the 4 laws to help me stick to these habits.

The book has a really good table that has the 4 laws split up into different sections that I am going through for each of my habits.

I would highly recommend this book and would love to know how you find it too so please let me know what you have got from reading it.

If you have found this post interesting, please share with others via the social media links below and Sign up so you receive my weekly newsletter (Sunday Snapshot) which has links to my new posts.

Thanks for reading,

Gav

*For full transparency, the post above has affiliate links. If you click on affiliate links and make a purchase it is of no extra cost to you but I will receive a small commission from it.