Why it’s essential
Want to build better habits? This easy-to-understand listen written and performed by James Clear distills complex information from psychology, biology, and neuroscience into actionable advice.
Featured in The Top 100 Well-Being Listens of All Time.
What is Atomic Habits about?
Atomic Habits is a step-by-step guide to breaking bad habits and implementing more positive habits by way of small, incremental changes. The book's main thesis is that tiny actions, which may seem unimportant in the moment, actually have tremendous effects on a person’s life when compounded over time.
Editor's review
Editor Madeline loves memoir, literary fiction that tackles the existential, and all the sapphic stories she can get her hands on.
As anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m a person who tends to get caught up in emotion. I feel sometimes like a walking whirlwind of feelings, an open nerve, my days often changing drastically depending on the rise and tide of my moods. I pay attention to my intuition and believe deeply in the things we cannot see. It is for all of these reasons, that despite this book being recommended by friend after friend in the year following its release date, I avoided reading it. "It’s too practical," I thought. "It’s too X + Y equals Z." Snooze.
Fast forward to April of 2020—a few years since the book’s initial boom—and I am feeling sluggish and supremely unproductive in a pandemic-induced haze. In my now-virtual writers' group, we chat about what we are all reading. One member perks up, looking a bit more alert than the rest of us, and credits Atomic Habits by James Clear for taking her out of her creative slump and helping her feel a sense of control in this eerie moment we all found ourselves living in.
I can’t say what it was, exactly, about this particular recommendation that drew me in. Was it the time frame or the sense of calm I felt emanating from this usually chaotic person on the other end of the screen? Or was it just that I finally decided to listen to what people were telling me? Either way, the next night I decided to download the audiobook, which is narrated by the author. About 20 minutes after pressing "play" on this book that seemed to have been following me for years, popping up all over the place like meerkats in the jungle, I wished deeply that I had listened sooner.
Surprisingly, the practicality of Atomic Habits turned out to be just what I needed. The small steps suddenly felt important. Clear’s analogies—particularly. one about not getting mad at ice that doesn’t melt when you heat it to 29 and 30 degrees because it will melt entirely at 32—resonated with me as a writer who works on her craft daily, and who regularly submits to publications only to be rejected a very high percentage of the time. Things started to click. One day the ice will melt. Getting up every day at 5:30 to write for a precious few hours in the solitude of the early morning is not for nothing.
The concrete steps a person can take daily to achieve their goals and the processes that are needed in order to realize dreams are just as important as the overarching, emotional vision we all have for our successes. And being practical doesn’t mean to stop listening to your heart. All it means is that now, in addition to your spirit, you also have tangible steps you can take every day that will bring you just a little bit closer to the reality you have always imagined.
Inside this listen
Learn the 1% rule for incrementally improving at something, day after day.
Learn how to start and stick to better habits.
Understand the systems and processes to put in place that will get you on a path towards ultimate growth.
Learn how to accomplish more in less time.
Deconstruct the myth of the "overnight success" and learn which small changes you can make daily that have the power to transform your life.
Did you know?
Author James Clear first became obsessed with the power of tiny changes as a teen, after a baseball accident that left him in a coma.
What listeners said
"I have listened to this book several times now. I love the way Clear breaks down every step of the skill building process for making life altering changes that stick." –Tiffany, Audible listener
"I liked that it wasn’t too overbearing with "how to" but rather a fluid way of understanding human tendencies and how we shape our behaviors." –Anjeli, Audible listener
"Great combination of practical advice and strategies with deeply profound insights about human nature." –Kim, Audible listener
"Do not miss this book. Your future self will thank you. A must read for those struggling to understand why they can't accomplish what they set out to accomplish." –Dan, Audible listener
Listen if you loved
Quotes from Atomic Habits
"Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become."
"Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement."
"The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom."
"Good habits can make rational sense, but if they conflict with your identity, you will fail to put them into action."
"Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit. This is a distinguishing feature between winners and losers. Anyone can have a bad performance, a bad workout, or a bad day at work. But when successful people fail, they rebound quickly. The breaking of a habit doesn’t matter if the reclaiming of it is fast."
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
About the author and performer
James Clear is a writer and speaker focused on habits, decision making, and continuous improvement. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits, which has been translated into more than 50 languages and sold over five million copies worldwide. Clear is a regular speaker at Fortune 500 companies and his work has been featured in Time magazine, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, and on CBS This Morning. His popular "3-2-1" email newsletter is sent out each week to more than one million subscribers.
