If you’ve read my previous entry on this topic, you’ll know I’m a big fan of habits. Charles Duhigg’s book offered a lot of background and detail on why habits worked, but more than once, I was found wishing that he had more practical advice in his book.
I came upon James Clear’s Atomic Habits tearing up the non-fiction charts and my interest was piqued. I loved the book so much that I’ve picked up the audiobook version as well. This is a book that acts as the perfect complement to The Power of Habit. Atomic Habits is almost completely practice-oriented and offers up a step-by-step, detailed method to build a good suite of habits in one’s life. It holds advice on how to build new habits as well as on how to break bad ones, and in doing so, incorporates several of the key developments in the field to make the process simpler and stickier.
I want to gift this book to people; that’s how much I love it. Some of the key concepts he goes into are:-
- Habit stacking to easily add new habits and to chain habits into a system or a routine
- Temptation bundling to make harder habits stickier
- The habit loop, and why our minds work the way they do
- Habit shaping to make our environment work for us
and so much more.
I’ve been using Alinson Xavier’s open source Habit Tracking app since the beginning of the year. This is a very thoughtfully designed, full-featured app that makes it effortless to set up, track and review habits.
Starting with around four simple habits, I now track nearly a dozen across a variety of facets. Habit stacking has helped manage this large number, and I find that watching the strength of each habit grow acts as its own motivation.
So, this is what works for me today.
If you have any thoughts, tips or alternatives, I’d love to hear from you.
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