Atomic Habits, by James Clear (and a whole lot of other people!)
My daughter gave me this book for my birthday, as she knows I'm interested in productivity and self-improvement. It's getting a lot of press right now. He's a consultant on productivity, sort of an inspirational speaker. I assume he has a blog and/or podcast, because this reads largely like a bunch of his posts cobbled together. Actually, it reads mostly like a college paper written after doing all the assigned reading in a course.
As it happens, I've read nearly all the books he has, plus a few others. So, for example, when he starts talking about cues trigger a craving which motivates a response, which provides a reward, it's straight out of Charles Duhigg's book "The Power of Habit" (Duhigg calls it cue/routine/reward.) He also references Nir Eyal's book "Hooked", which I haven't yet read. But it also mirrors the Pema Chodron/Buddhist idea of getting hooked, and Dr. Deb Butler's model of noticing that a thought becomes a feeling and the action you take is evidence of the thought.
He takes the "how to build better habits" theme through the entire book, which was useful (if derivative). But along the way he stops to lift Habit Stacking by S.J. Scott (I have that sitting next to me to read next). He talks about something called the "Two Minute Rule", but leaves out Stephen Guise's Mini-Habits by name. He never mentions Miracle Morning: I think he'd like that application.
His lack of specific application made it feel like too much a survey of the literature. He talks about the "plateau of latent potential" where you're spending the time and effort to achieve breakthroughs, he talks about habit-tracking (like moving a paperclip to a cup each time you make a phone call) to turn things without any rewards into something with an immediate reward. Ive done that when I put a calendar up on the wall to cross off the days I exercised.
He references Guns, Germs & Steel (that was a HUGE book, I wonder how long it took him to read it) along with Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast & Thinking Slow, of course. (Behavior psychology wouldn't exist without him!) He mentions Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. He read Atul Guwande's Checklist Manifesto. All of these, along with Duhigg's Power of Habit, are core literature in the field that you might read in a college course.
In addition, he appears to have heard the same Freakanomics podcasts as I have (regarding pre-implementation strategies and virtue bundling, the Didorot Effect, etc). He references conversations on twitter and podcasts quite often. He likes Jason Zweig and various podcasts. One to look up later: www.fs.blog/2015/10/jason-zweig-knowledge-project. He has a lot of links to reddit, but also to a lot of psychology journals I wouldn't have read.
A few more tidbits: I liked the idea of "pointing and calling". This is where I stop an automatic action and say outloud what I'm about to do. "I'm getting on Facebook for five minutes, so I'll set my timer first." Don't try to slip anything by me, say it out loud.
He talks about outcomes, processes and identity having to change for a new habit, but that it goes in the other direction. Don't say, "I'm trying to stop smoking", say "I don't smoke anymore." Shift the focus to what you want to become. Decide the type of person you want to be and prove it to yourself that you're becoming that with many small wins.
All in all, this is a really quick survey of a lot of things. If you aren't going to read a year's worth of books on these subjects this is a good place to at least pick up the concepts and habits. But if you want to apply it, well, that's why I got a coach.
My next step after this is to do some work figuring out where I can hang some new responses to old triggers. I need to list out all the things I already routinely do and see if I can build a habit stack around those, similar to a Miracle Morning habit stack around getting up each morning. Triggers might include: pulling into the garage when I drive home. Walking into the house when I walk home. Getting up to go pee. Sitting down to dinner. Getting up to get the mail. I need to think about this, as there are many many small moments through the day that could be tweaked to get 1% better. Anytime I lock in one of these things it makes my life better for the rest of my life, so I like thinking about this sort of thing.
As it happens, I've read nearly all the books he has, plus a few others. So, for example, when he starts talking about cues trigger a craving which motivates a response, which provides a reward, it's straight out of Charles Duhigg's book "The Power of Habit" (Duhigg calls it cue/routine/reward.) He also references Nir Eyal's book "Hooked", which I haven't yet read. But it also mirrors the Pema Chodron/Buddhist idea of getting hooked, and Dr. Deb Butler's model of noticing that a thought becomes a feeling and the action you take is evidence of the thought.
He takes the "how to build better habits" theme through the entire book, which was useful (if derivative). But along the way he stops to lift Habit Stacking by S.J. Scott (I have that sitting next to me to read next). He talks about something called the "Two Minute Rule", but leaves out Stephen Guise's Mini-Habits by name. He never mentions Miracle Morning: I think he'd like that application.
His lack of specific application made it feel like too much a survey of the literature. He talks about the "plateau of latent potential" where you're spending the time and effort to achieve breakthroughs, he talks about habit-tracking (like moving a paperclip to a cup each time you make a phone call) to turn things without any rewards into something with an immediate reward. Ive done that when I put a calendar up on the wall to cross off the days I exercised.
He references Guns, Germs & Steel (that was a HUGE book, I wonder how long it took him to read it) along with Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast & Thinking Slow, of course. (Behavior psychology wouldn't exist without him!) He mentions Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. He read Atul Guwande's Checklist Manifesto. All of these, along with Duhigg's Power of Habit, are core literature in the field that you might read in a college course.
In addition, he appears to have heard the same Freakanomics podcasts as I have (regarding pre-implementation strategies and virtue bundling, the Didorot Effect, etc). He references conversations on twitter and podcasts quite often. He likes Jason Zweig and various podcasts. One to look up later: www.fs.blog/2015/10/jason-zweig-knowledge-project. He has a lot of links to reddit, but also to a lot of psychology journals I wouldn't have read.
A few more tidbits: I liked the idea of "pointing and calling". This is where I stop an automatic action and say outloud what I'm about to do. "I'm getting on Facebook for five minutes, so I'll set my timer first." Don't try to slip anything by me, say it out loud.
He talks about outcomes, processes and identity having to change for a new habit, but that it goes in the other direction. Don't say, "I'm trying to stop smoking", say "I don't smoke anymore." Shift the focus to what you want to become. Decide the type of person you want to be and prove it to yourself that you're becoming that with many small wins.
All in all, this is a really quick survey of a lot of things. If you aren't going to read a year's worth of books on these subjects this is a good place to at least pick up the concepts and habits. But if you want to apply it, well, that's why I got a coach.
My next step after this is to do some work figuring out where I can hang some new responses to old triggers. I need to list out all the things I already routinely do and see if I can build a habit stack around those, similar to a Miracle Morning habit stack around getting up each morning. Triggers might include: pulling into the garage when I drive home. Walking into the house when I walk home. Getting up to go pee. Sitting down to dinner. Getting up to get the mail. I need to think about this, as there are many many small moments through the day that could be tweaked to get 1% better. Anytime I lock in one of these things it makes my life better for the rest of my life, so I like thinking about this sort of thing.