Identity: This one is about changing your beliefs.įocus on who you wish to become instead of who you are right now.This one is much more effective than the first one but the aim is to reach the 3rd layer which is… This happens when you implement a new routine of cleaning up your desk every evening before going to bed. Processes: This is about changing your processes and systems.But soon after you’ll end up with a messy desk again. Outcomes: This is when you decide to clean up your desk so that you can be more productive.James Clear identifies 3 layers of behavior change. Instead of focusing on the marathon which is the goal, we should focus on becoming a runner which is the identity. “You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems!” If running a marathon is the goal, what happens after you’ve finished? You either pick a new marathon to run or cross it off of your bucket list and hang up your running shoes. James Clear brings up the example of marathon running. My goal was to lose weight, but since the result didn’t come immediately, I went back to my old habits. The problem with a goal-oriented mindset is that it leads to a yo-yo effect. Instead of setting weight loss as a goal, I should focus on showing up at the gym 3x/week.

This happened to me so many times, until my friend Sarah introduced me to the rule of showing up. By the end of March, you only go every once in a while but not on a regular basis. One month in, busting your ass, you don’t see any results. Let’s assume you made a new year’s resolution to lose some weight next year by going to the gym. I mentioned in my previous video that goals are important, however, goals alone are not enough. This is the part that really blew me away. Problem with a Goal-oriented MindsetĪlright, now that we know this, I will tell you one more key insight before we get to the how. While good ones have the opposite effect. The only problem is that bad habits offer an outcome that feels good immediately but feels bad in the long long-run. So we need to be aware of this process if we want a new habit to stick or if we want to break bad ones. James Clear argues that without all of these steps the behavior will not occur. Reward: The smell of freshly brewed coffee immediately signals to me that I can start the day now.Whenever you build a habit you go through these 4 stages. Okay, but how do we build those habits? There are 4 stages of every habit building process.

Forget about overnight success, success is the product of the small improvements that you make on a daily basis. James Clear argues that if you just improve 1% every day you’ll end up 37 times better by the end of the year. Think about it, do you ever make a conscious decision about which shoe you tie first or how you brush your teeth? I hope not, because that would mean that your energy is depleted by the time you reach breakfast.Īnd the second thing is that habits compound. The first thing that you need to know is that habits are mental shortcuts for a recurring problem that you repeated so many times that it became automatic. James Clear is an expert in building habits and his new book Atomic Habits is already on the NY Times’ best sellers list for a good reason. So read this post of watch my animated book review on YouTube if you want to learn more. I will also explain to you what went wrong so many times in the past when you wanted to reach a new goal in terms of your health, career, social life and so on. Specifically, about how you can finally keep the promises you will make to yourself in 2019. As the new year’s approaching, I thought this would be the perfect time to talk about habits.

Atomic habits by james clear