James Clear’s Atomic Habits is a book that not everyone loves, but the people who love it, really love it.

I’m one of those people. It’s not that I now have some magical cure to all that ails me, but it helps me apply routine and systems to helping me work toward my goals. It also helps me put into words things that I already know work and don’t work for me, as well as coordinating goals with other people in my house. There were few “ah-ha!” moments in the book for me, but a whole lot of “yes, I can identify and explain this now!”

I feel like I should re-read it every year. I’ve only read it once so far, but I think it would continue to help keep me on a road that I want to be on, with regular revisits. Maybe the next time I read it, I should take more detailed notes, and then I could just refer to those notes instead of re-reading the whole book.

In any case, if you are a systems person, a “set it and forget it” person, a person who knows that analyzing the small things will give you answers for how to achieve the big ones, Atomic Habits is a good book for you. It’s all about how you can put systems in place to help you achieve your goals. And they don’t need to be complicated systems. Truly. Once you devise and implement your systems, the goals are much easier to reach, with fewer decisions to make along the way, and less “will power” to conjure up.

Here’s a great James Clear blog post based on his book that relates to this topic. It’s a great read, even if you don’t want to read the whole book.


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