James Clear's Atomic Habits teaches habit stacking (attach new habits to existing routines like coffee plus push-ups), identity-based habits (each action votes for who you want to become), and the 1% daily improvement principle that compounds into massive change over years.
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In today's video, I'm going to go over my three biggest takeaways from the massive book Atomic Habits. Number one, the first thing that's really important that I got from this book is something called habit stacking. Habit stacking is where you take a habit that you already have and you stack a new habit that you want to put on the backside of it. So let me give you an example. Let's say that you drink coffee every single morning. And also another thing that you want to start doing every morning is 100 pushups. Well, what you would do is you would habit stack your coffee with your push ups. So while your coffee is brewing, you would then take that time to then do your 100 pushups to make sure that you get it completed for the day. Another example of what this would look like is you brush your teeth every single day, right? Hopefully twice a day. Well, let's say you also want to have affirmations that you're starting to ingrain into your subconscious. The way that this would look is you would take those affirmations and while you're brushing your teeth in the morning, you would repeat your affirmations in your head over and over and over again for the entire two or three minutes of brushing your teeth. And then every single evening you would do the exact same thing. So with both of these examples, what you're doing is you're stacking a new habit and a behavior that you're trying to ingrain into yourself on the back end of a habit that you do every single day. My second biggest takeaway from this book is something called identity based habits. Identity based habits means that we will take action towards the identity of who we think we are. And so one of the quotes that I really love from this book, instead of saying I want to run a marathon, think I am a runner. This shift makes the habit more integral to your self image and thus more sustainable. He says the goal is not to read a book. The goal is to become a reader. The goal is not to run a marathon. The goal is to become a runner. And another one of the quotes that he says inside this book, which is probably my favorite, that has to do with identity based habits is this. He says every action that you take is a vote for the person that you wish to become. And this is really important because when you think about voting, in order to win an election, you don't have to get 100% of the votes, you just have to have the majority of the votes. I think this is really important to think about because most of us think I need to be perfect in order to build habits, in order to hit my goals. When in reality we just need to realize that we need to get the majority of the actions that heading in the right direction. So every action that you take is a vote for the person that you wish to become then my third biggest takeaway from Atomic Habits is this 1% improvements every single day. Your life is not going to change massively from day to day, but what you're trying to focus on is when your head hits the bed Tonight, were you 1% better than you were when you first woke up? All of these tiny little changes, these tiny little habits, AKA atomic habits that are so small, will compound over time. So it's so important for you to think about the small incremental changes that you continue to do day in, day out that over the next five years, 10 years, 20 years, will massively change your life. So those are my three biggest takeaways from Atomic Habits. If you haven't read it yet, I recommend that you do. I'm curious if you've read Atomic Habits. Let me know down below and let me know some of your biggest takeaways.
