Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

Audiobook. Overall reiterated information from other sources on the subject, but likely a popular choice because the book provides a simple and easy-to-follow approach to creating new habits.

Good for starting on self “help”

Reread this as of May 17 2025

Honestly if you wanna be different from the rest don’t follow the rules outlined here. The environment one is really good but a lot of it doesn’t work in practice

DNF @ 46%.

So,

so bloated. This should have been a blog post, not a book. (The problem, of course, is that you can't sell a blog post for $29.99 in hardcover.) If I'd finished,

Atomic Habits would have almost certainly been a 2-star book.

The actual advice isn't bad. It's not exactly groundbreaking—most of it is "no duh" advice that we've all heard, like set small goals, make your habit enjoyable, just show up, etc.—but I do think there is some value in having all that in one place.

The problem is that the book is

way too long. There are charts and graphs for things that do not need charts and graphs. It's bloated with repetition and stories/examples/anecdotes, often of historical figures that usually feel like something the author quickly googled because he needed an inspirational story to start the next chapter. In other words, it's the self-help-book version of starting a college paper with the first tangentially related quote from Plato you found on BrainyQuote—or opening with the dictionary definition of a relevant word, which is, incidentally, literally how this book begins. The author applies these stories in ways that seem questionable (the Polgar sisters are used as an example of how a welcoming environment can shape your habits…really?), and in some cases the stories themselves feel dubious. If he wanted to include anecdotes, they needed to be fleshed out more.

In short, there just wasn't enough substance: if the author wanted to drag this out into a book, he should have spent more time digging into the behavioral science of why his advice works, presenting studies that demonstrate that his ideas are effective, delving into the philosophy of why cultivating habits that enable one to live a good life is worthwhile, etc.

To top it all off, the writing is just not good. Reading more nonfiction this year has shown me that prose in nonfiction can be just as electric and captivating and literary as that in fiction;

Atomic Habits isn't that. It may be easy to read, but it's dry and inelegant and just plain boring. I read almost half this book and, looking back through my highlights, there wasn't a single passage I found worth highlighting for its prose.

I really wanted to finish this just so that I could say I gave self-help a fair shot. But I think half of this book was enough for me to decide that self-help is

really not for me.

read a little like a textbook but did have some good advice

I rarely read books of this type, they are not quite for me. This one was fine, but still I don't think I'm the right reader.

I don't like self-help books in general, and in particular, I don't like books that tell me how I can change my life and achieve happiness in ten easy steps. It's not exactly that kind of book, but it doesn't differ much from these personal development guides either. Which bothered me sometimes. I am in the habit of automatically ignoring good advice from someone who believes they have found the only effective recipe for success and that anyone can do so by following their advice. And so I ignored it in this case.

I wish this book was more research based. I found these fragments the most interesting. The results of some of the studies and experiments were really fascinating and I would love to read more about them. Of course, the author has included an extensive bibliography, so I can do that. But I would like to find more information in this book about the scientific research that supports the author's various theories.

I am also not entirely sure if this author's writing style suits me. Even though this book seems very structured, to me it does feel chaotic at times. I was not quite able to separate one concept presented by the author from another. But that might just be my problem.

Overall it was a nice book, but rather for people who are already interested in this topic and those who like this type of books. To the rest, I recommend [b:When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing|35412097|When The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing|Daniel H. Pink|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1502223427l/35412097._SY75_.jpg|56779991].

Habits are “small decisions you make and actions you perform every day.”

That’s the definition from James Clear, who authors Atomic Habits, which has sold over 3 million copies.

I read this in 2019 and it did not change my life.

What it did do was reinforce all the good habits I’d picked up in my full-time employed career and confirmed I was ready to go it alone as a freelancer.

Little Habits affect your life. It's important that if you want to change yourself and your lifestyle, you start acting like it.

In this day and age , it has become so easy to have your life stuck in the same old rut. Some times it is your own fault, other times, it was the circumstances of life. Regardless of what makes you this way... It is time to replace the bad habits with good ones.