Revolutionizing My Routine with James Clear’s Atomic Habits
For most of my life, I struggled to maintain healthy habits and consistent productivity. Without clear techniques to change my behavior, I felt at the mercy of my impulses, accomplishing my goals only when I happened to muster the right motivation. Fortunately, I stumbled on a podcast that introduced me to James Clear and his book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. In Atomic Habits, James Clear outlines four laws of habit change: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. Using these four laws and their associated techniques, I took a good hard look at my habits and restructured them to be maximally effective. As a result, I have revolutionized my routine, engineering my life to be productive, healthy, and satisfying.
The first law, make it obvious, is about setting up the right cues so the behavior you want to do is regularly invoked. Two of the techniques Clear recommends are implementation intentions and habit stacking. Implementation intentions are phrases that specify the action, time, and location for where you will perform the desired behavior. The given formula is: “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].” Before reading this book, I was inconsistent about when I would start tasks. Without the specificity of how I would tackle my workload, there were some days I would get distracted and fail to get important things done. Using this formula, I now better specify when and where I will start working each day. For example, “I will start schoolwork at 11 am in my desk chair.” After setting this intention, my behavior became more consistent, and my productivity increased.
Habit stacking, which involves placing one habit after another, is useful for systemizing your habits. The habit stacking formula is “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].” This technique has completely changed how I organize my life each day. Previously, I had a checklist of things I wanted to do: if they all got done, I was happy. However, I was inconsistently practicing healthy behaviors like meditation and exercise. After reading the book, I wrote down all the habits I wanted to maintain each day and systemized them, so they always follow the same order. Now, it is a rare day when I fail to complete all my planned activities. Writing down my implementation intentions and systemizing them using habit stacking has helped me engineer a more consistent routine that is productive and satisfying.
The second law, make it attractive, involves making a desired behavior more exciting to perform. One useful technique is temptation bundling, where you pair up the desired behavior with an action you enjoy doing. This increases the likelihood that you will adopt that new behavior. For example, I wanted to start taking vitamin supplements to improve my health. Following the first law, I kept my vitamins on my bedside table where they were obvious. However, because I did not have any water in my bedroom, this habit didn’t stick. After reading about temptation bundling, I decided to pair taking my vitamins with an activity that I enjoy – eating breakfast. As a result, I began taking my vitamins every morning. Re-designing my habits by pairing new habits with enjoyable, already established habits has improved my effectiveness, happiness, and health.
The third law, make it easy, is about removing some of the steps it takes to perform a desirable behavior. This can be done by priming your environment – changing the way your space is organized to remove obstacles and make chosen behaviors more likely to occur. For example, since the pandemic began, I have been exercising at home instead of going to the gym. However, I have found it difficult to motivate myself to work out. Instead of slacking off and letting my health suffer, I chose to prime my environment instead. I took my weight set out of my closet and placed it in the center of my room to make it easily accessible. It now serves as a daily reminder to exercise, and my health has improved with the increased activity.
Another technique for making it easy is the two-minute rule, where you commit to doing a new habit for two minutes every day. Only two minutes? Precisely. When trying to form a habit, consistency is key, and it is easier to stick to a small commitment than a large one. James Clear put it perfectly: “You have to standardize before you optimize.” Forcing myself to be consistent (even if I am only doing the activity for two minutes) has made my desired behaviors more likely to occur and thus improved my productivity, health, and happiness.
The fourth law, make it satisfying, involves making your habits have a payoff. One technique Clear outlines is immediate rewards – giving yourself a reward as soon as you finish the desired behavior. A reward will make the behavior more enjoyable – and this makes it more likely you will repeat the desired behavior. For example, each evening before bed, I plan out my schedule for the next day. In the past, I used to structure a day full of work, asking myself to slave away with no compensation. I thought if I could only finish all my work in one day, I could take a couple of days off. When the next day came, instead of actually doing the rigorous schedule I set out for myself, I would usually fall apart after a couple of hours and waste the rest of the day playing video games. I was getting burned out because there was no incentive for me to follow my planned schedule. This cycle of creating a strict schedule and falling short persisted off and on until I read Atomic Habits. Since then, I changed how I plan my days, adding immediate rewards to my schedule. I started asking myself, “what does my ideal day look like?” I implemented more frequent breaks and made deals with myself – if I work on this project for an hour, I can take a 20-minute break and watch a YouTube video, or if I complete this one big task, I can stop working for the day and hang out virtually with friends. I made my routine satisfying by promising an immediate reward for good behavior, making it more likely that I will stay on task, complete my objectives, and avoid burnout. Thus, with these systems in place, my time is both productive and fulfilling.
Using these four laws, I revolutionized my routine from top to bottom and improved my daily life. I am practicing healthy behaviors, staying on task, and getting things done more consistently – including enjoyable things I want to do. I would highly recommend grabbing a copy of Atomic Habits, so you, too, can revolutionize your routine and engineer the life you want.
J.D. Watt joined the Interactive Measurement Group in the summer of 2019. He is majoring in psychology and is set to graduate in the spring of 2021. In the lab, he is currently serving as Lab Manager and Action Editor for the newsletter. After graduation, he hopes to complete a coding bootcamp to become a software developer.