Reviewed by Sue Scott

I know it is a cliché but growing up I wanted to be a writer. Instead, I became a Compliance Officer and more recently a Leadership Coach. More on that some other time, but what piqued my interest in the introduction to Atomic Habits was James Clear’s explanation of how he came to write Atomic Habits.

He began by writing notes on his experiments with habits and then publishing regular articles which led to an email subscribers list growing to 100,000 in two years. In setting up my business in March this year, I have had to learn all about marketing, using social media and how to grow a subscribers list (still on the ‘to do’ list). James Clear developed the habit of writing, then regularly publishing, which eventually led to a book deal for Atomic Habits, published 2018. The book ‘grew’ out of a habit of ongoing experiments! 

For any aspiring writer, this book is a framework for how to write a book, for everyone else, it’s a guide to creating a better set of habits in your life.  Clear sets out his four-step model of cue, craving, response, reward, to explain how our habits work. The book then divides these up in to the ‘four laws for making changes’: make it obvious; make it attractive; make it easy and make it satisfying. Take note dear reader: this book is about the slow process of making small sustainable changes, tweaks to your daily routine rather than a crash diet to lose a stone in ten days.

My key takeaways from this book:

Focus on who you want to become rather than what you want to achieve and then work on the process (habits) that support the new you.  For example. ‘the goal is not to read a book, it is to become a reader’.  This is music to my ears, after years of doing pointless and soul-destroying annual objective setting at work.  In my corporate life, the focus was always on achieving some task or project goal. The behavioural element was the backup - the cherry on top for a top performer, or the stink bomb to move to the exit for the poor performer. I do wonder what impact there might be on culture and conduct if the corporate world flipped the prevailing model and put role model behaviour as a prerequisite for achieving a good performance rating?

The model starts with a cue or trigger – the thing that signals to the brain the potential for a reward of some kind. It can be a positive or negative cue, but it is the thing that happens before the behaviour. This made me think about how a significant proportion of my coaching is helping clients to notice their negative internal dialogue, and to stop its influence on behaviour. Noticing what sets off the internal dialogue is key to choosing a change to something more positive. The cues or triggers are set through past experience and are the starting point for all our good and bad habits. So, the first step is to notice what those cues are.

Atomic Habits sets out a framework, for how to build in better habits, or change or remove bad habits, using the four laws referred to above. I liked the approach; it appealed to the list-making planner in me, so I downloaded the Habit Stacking Template, becoming yet another subscriber (I find freebies irresistible).  My aim is to do an audit of my good and bad habits. I have not yet started the audit, but I definitely want to; I just need to get out of the habit of procrastinating first….

Sue Scott is a Leadership Coach, Mentor & Advisor based in the UK. 
Website: ssensecoaching.com  (Company Website)