Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
James Clear
I made the decision to focus on my health by quitting alcohol and adopting a slower pace to life. I purchased the book Atomic Habits by James Clear as my starting point. To make big changes in my life, I needed help. I knew the path to these changes was in what I do everyday.
As I read the book, I was amazed at how much just shifting my mindset could help me. I focused on my growth rather than the problem to help break bad habits and start good ones.
The Four Laws of Habits
Atomic Habits outlines habit forming into 4 laws: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. I will give you a quick overview of each law.
Atomic Habits Law 1: Make it Obvious
First we have to become aware of what our habits are and whether they are good, bad, or neutral. Clear suggests a habit scorecard. As you go about your day track everything you do and then rank it as positive, negative, or neutral. Your goal would be to increase the positive and decrease the negative habits.
Secondly, be intentional. Tell yourself I will do a certain behavior at a certain time in a certain location. I use this method for remembering to take my medication. I set an alarm on my phone for the same time everyday to remind me to take my medication, which I keep in the same place on my nightstand.
Next is habit stacking. This is the method I am using most to create better habits. The thought is to connect a new habit with a current habit. For me, I use the cue of waking up in the morning to start my new habit of filling my 2 liter water bottle that tracks my water intake for the day. My previous habit was to wake up and make coffee right away. So, I am trying to get in the better habit of drinking water first thing in the morning.
Lastly, designing your environment. Make it easy to follow your good habits and harder to stick with your negative habits. For example, by me putting my water bottle on the kitchen counter at night, it is the first thing I see in the morning. By putting the coffee in the cupboard rather than on the kitchen counter makes it easier for me to start my day with water than coffee.
Atomic Habits Law 2: Make it Attractive
Clear suggests using temptation building to get you to want to make new habits. By pairing an action you want to do with an action you need to do you are more likely to develop the habit. An example of this might be only listening to your favorite podcast while doing the dishes. This is what really helped me when I was in a particularly lazy mood at the end of this past winter.
Another concept I adopted from the book was joining a group where the new behavior is the norm. When I was first trying to get sober, hearing other peoples sober stories really helped me to stick with sobriety. Another example might be joining a book club if your goal it to make a habit of reading more. They will keep you accountable and you will get the bonus of being able to share what you are reading with others.
The last suggestion in this law is to create a ritual for motivation. The idea is to do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit so that you begin to associate that habit with the enjoyable action you did before. The example given in the book suggests if you want to be a happier person in general find something you truly love doing like petting your dog and make a short routine of taking three deep breaths and smiling before petting your dog. Eventually you will associate the routine of three breaths and a smile with being in a good mood and can draw on that whenever something stressful comes up in your daily life.
Atomic Habits Law 3: Make it Easy
By decreasing the number of steps between you and your good habits, your good habits will stick. This is how I am able to drink my daily recommended amount of water each day. I fill my water bottle once with all the water I am supposed to drink and bring it around with me where ever I go. My old method of filling a jug and keeping it in the fridge did not work for me because I would have to remember to drink water, walk to the cupboard, get a glass, go to the fridge, pour the water all before actually drinking the water. Not a very efficient system.
Secondly, adjust your environment to make doing the right thing as easy as possible. In order for me to quit drinking, I just did not go to the store and buy alcohol. I made my home an alcohol free environment and thus the easy choice was to not drink. And then, when I did go to the store, I avoided the aisles that sold alcohol all together.
Clear suggest using a two-minute rule for making the right decisions when you struggle to start a good habit. “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.” That way you cannot say you don’t have time to do it and convince yourself it is easier not to start. By starting with just two minutes it will snowball and you will eventually be doing more. For example, if you want to start reading before bed you can tell yourself you will just read one page but putting the book down at that point will feel pointless so you finish the chapter.
Use technology to make future behavior inevitable. As mentioned before I have used my phone alarm as a cue to my remembering to take my medication. I also used a tracking app to track my sober days in the beginning as motivation.
Atomic Habits Law 4: Make it Satisfying
The last law, make it satisfying, points us toward rewarding ourselves for a job well done. We do this with our pets all the time – giving them a treat after a trick for example. You can do this by tracking progress with habit trackers.
And lastly, never miss twice. Forming habits is a process and you will not be perfect but Clear suggests by at least committing to not missing your goal habit twice in a row you will avoid the downward trend that inevitably sends us back to the beginning.
My Thoughts
There is so much more in the book than what I covered. He also dives into the reverse of each of the laws for breaking bad habits. I found it really easy to read and it is formatted in a way that you can flip back to sections for re-reading easily. I had a lot of Aha! moments while reading and kept a notepad with me to write down quotes I wanted to remember. It literally changed the way I think about structuring my day.
It is definitely a book I can see myself coming back to time and time again for motivation when I feel stuck in a rut. I think it will be an integral part to my retraining myself to cultivate a slower life. While many might use this book to become more productive I can see how I can apply the concepts to developing slow living habits.
Cultivate a Slow Living Practice Using Atomic Habits
Step One: Choose your habit
Pick a slow living principle you would like to adopt. It can be journaling, eating real food, gardening, or tending to your hobbies. For my example I am going to use journaling.
Step Two: Make it Obvious
To make my journaling habit obvious I am going to purchase a journal and keep it and a pen on the table next to where I drink my morning coffee.
Step Three: Make it Attractive
By tying my new journaling practice to my morning coffee (a habit I already have and enjoy) I am making the habit attractive.
Step Four: Make it Easy
The journal and plenty of pretty pens live on the table next to my spot on the sofa. I quite literally just have to reach over and begin journaling. It can’t get much easier than that. When I feel stuck for what to write I have a deck of journal prompt cards I can use for inspiration as well.
Step Five: Make it Satisfying
With the popularity of the bullet journal, there is lots of inspiration out there for setting up a habit tracker right in your journal.
Have your read James Clear’s Atomic Habits? Did you enjoy it as much as I did? How have you implemented the principles in your life?