Atomic Habits by James Clear has sold over 8 million copies globally, and four years after its release, it’s still one of the best books to buy. It’s ranked first in Apple’s best-paid books as of this date. So why is a four-year-old book with only three hundred twenty pages about habits so successful? Atomic Habits is a book designed to maximize your potential by developing small habits that unlock potent outcomes.
However, instead of having this vast book full of five hundred pages, James Clear decided that the most effortless approach to helping his readers learn and apply his strategies is by making the book as direct, short, and easy to read as possible. However, unlike most short books, Atomic Habits is full of incredible knowledge supported by scientific research and James Clear’s experience. So without further ado, welcome to James Clear’s Atomic Habits Book Review.
Book Information and Rating
Author: James Clear
Cover Art by: James Clear
Published by: Penguin Random House LLC
Genre: Self Help
Print Length: 320 Pages
Cinemabooks rating: 9/10
About The Author:
James Clear is a man of many talents, discipline, and consistency. Before becoming a successful writer, entrepreneur, and photographer, he was a college athlete selected as the top male athlete at Denison University. He also appeared on the ESPN Academic All-American team. The ESPN Academic All- American team is an honor given to just thirty-three players in the country. Just when you thought the awards were over, James Clear was awarded the university’s highest academic prize: The President’s Medal.
After he graduated, he started publishing articles on his webpage: jamesclear.com, in 2012. A year after publishing his writings, he had more than thirty thousand people, and in 2016 his articles began appearing regularly in Time, Entrepreneur, and Forbes. Over eight million people read his texts at this point.
Soon afterward, James Clear created The Habits Academy, a training platform for organizations and individuals looking to upgrade their life and work by creating better habits. The secret to all of James Clear’s success lies in the small habits he has developed over the years. His experience and success with developing habits and reaching his potential are why he wrote Atomic Habits. His mission with the book is to help others reach their full potential by developing small yet powerful habits.
Plot Summary
Atomic Habits is all about understanding the power of habits and how you can use them to change your life. This book talks in great detail about creating excellent habits and destroying negative ones. James Clear uses four easy laws that promote the formation of your desired habits and the destruction of your bad ones. These four laws are easy to implement and easy to remember. Each one of the laws includes methods, techniques, and scientific research that supports or facilitates their desired objective. Additionally, my ebook gives us insights into some of his thoughts and process in the asterisks.
What You’ll Learn in This Book
In this book, you will learn in great detail about the four laws to creating and destroying habits. In particular, you will learn:
- The reason why these four laws work.
- The techniques, methods, and formulas to use
- The reason why it’s hard to create a good habit and maintain it
- The reason it’s easy to fall into bad habits.
- Why we develop habits in the first place.
- The role your environment and family have on your habits.
- An easy and practical way to make good habit stay and bad habits disappear.
You can find a sneak pick of the laws, techniques, and formulas in my blog post How To Create Habits using James Clear’s; Atomic Habits. Keep in mind that my blog post is not a substitution for the book, and you will find even more excellent knowledge when reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits.
Structure
Atomic Habits is divided into four laws. Within these laws, there are chapters composed of lessons. The first three or four lessons of the chapter are designed to learn, understand and apply the law, and the fourth is about breaking a habit using the inverted version of the law.
The whole book is about the four laws, and it doesn’t get boring because, within these laws, there are several examples, stories, and methods that will help you reach your desired outcome. After learning about the rules, James Clear shows how the inverted version is the key to destroying your habits. Each chapter has a short but effective summary of what you learned. You can quickly go back to the overview instead of looking for the page to find the definition or the technique. These summaries are one of the many reasons I loved the book.
Atmosphere
The book’s atmosphere or general “feel” is positive, bright, and humble. It almost always has a vibe that is very much like a “sunshine and rainbow” story. Unlike many other self-help books that may put their focus on sounding assertive and highly competitive, James Clear’s book has a more natural feeling to it. It shows growth in a way that every reader can relate to. A great example is that James Clear frequently uses underdog stories that result in unimaginable success.
Such stories often leave a sense of wonder that can continue throughout the story. James Clear also shares his journey and doubts that you probably may have experienced. College students, athletes, and entrepreneurs can feel at home at this because he understands the importance and desire to be successful. Another thing about the book’s atmosphere is that it never sounds prideful or superior. It has a humble feeling, almost as if it’s a good teacher who wants to see his students succeed. Combining the rich environment of the stories with the desire to facilitate your learning, you can see why this book is a best seller.
The Good
Atomic Habits has many significant attributes that give the reader an easy time reading the book. I struggled to put the book down because of its outstanding knowledge, great stories, and easy wording. Another reason why I enjoyed the book was that the text was full of easy graphs and pictures that helped me understand how habits worked. I also enjoyed that James Clear dedicated time to an accessible chapter summary highlighting the chapter’s most important aspects. These summaries are easy to copy, and you can take all the value with you everywhere with a quick picture.
Another of this ebook’s great highlights is that the book has notes made by the author in which he sometimes shares his thoughts, gives credit to, or links the articles or studies he uses to demonstrate his point. As someone who loves science, I could quickly look for the research instead of wasting time trying to look for it was terrific. However, with all of these great reasons to enjoy, the book’s most outstanding feature is its ability to answer questions fast and how it helps you answer questions you didn’t know you had.
With James Clear’s Atomic Habits, you can create your first habits without finishing the book. It goes directly to the point, and just a few pages in, I could understand why I couldn’t break my bad habits and how I could create good ones. That’s something that most books don’t do. Usually, books promote reading until the end page, but James Clear doesn’t do that. Instead, he prefers to give you the answers fast, and when a new question arises, you can find the answer relatively quickly. James Clear also uses questions that you probably had to give honest, clear answers to in his book.
The Bad
Atomic Habits is such a good book that it was hard to find a negative quality. However, one of the reasons why some people may not fully enjoy the book is that it has a “sunshine and rainbows” vibe in which everything is primarily light and cheerful, and life isn’t always like that. On the contrary, life tends to get very uncomfortable and, at times, miserable. So, someone with that viewpoint may find that the book paints the world entirely out of reality. To those who prefer a more assertive and dominant atmosphere, you may struggle to finish reading it. If you can get past this or the atmosphere isn’t a big deal, I guarantee you will enjoy it without even noticing the bad parts.
Another thing that may influence your reading here is that James Clear doesn’t necessarily create a need to continue reading. Instead, you tend to read because the book is delightful, easy, and knowledgeable. So unless you have a strong desire to learn, this book can take longer.
Conclusion
Cinemabook’s rating for Atomic Habits is 9 out of 10. The book doesn’t get a ten because it doesn’t always emphasize the need to continue reading it. As such, some readers can find it hard to stay consistently reading for long periods. However, since most of the stories presented are filled with extraordinary results, it should be sufficient to maintain reading them for short or medium periods.
However, Atomic Habits is one of the best self-help books out there. Its easy-to-read formula, vast knowledge, stories, and the soft-spoken manner in which it is presented make it an ideal read for readers who can appreciate its atmosphere and positive influence. The book answers the questions many of us seek and creates powerful questions that give rise to even better answers. Additionally, you can find some bonus chapters targeted at parents and business owners on James Clear’s webpage.
