Description

Kicking off Humility Month in the U.S., it seems good to me to do a review of James Clear's 2018 book 'Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.'

If ever there was one, this is a work that belongs solidly in the self-help, psychology, and productivity genres. To use another word, this is a book about self-control.

Nothing says more about whether we have control and discipline over ourselves quite like our ability to form and break habits as the need arises. But this is definitely a work that lends itself to a morally neutral overview of the science behind willpower.

Some quotes I liked here include the following most popular from the Goodreads.com page for this book:

• “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
• “You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.”
• “You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.”
• “Good habits can make rational sense, but if they conflict with your identity, you will fail to put them into action.”

Alternatively, some quotes I loved least include the following:

• “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.”
• “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
• “If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.”

If you're wondering why the first set of quotes resonated with me but the second set failed to, I think the common denominator is systems, and an unspoken assumption regarding human will. It reminds me too much of what Cassius says to Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

That is, we are as the great Reformers would say in bondage to our own will and nature. What do we say we want, and what do we actually want? The two are not necessarily one and the same. 

Putting it another way, what more besides what we wish to share of our desires do we also want which makes it difficult or else impossible to achieve what we happily admit of our intentions? In short, we are slaves to our own passions and desires, and that fact is always interfering with pursuing wisdom and virtue or their attendant routines.

To some extent, James Clear hints at this without directly dealing with it when he recommends at various points that the secret to both forming and breaking habits has a lot to do with whether we make them easy, attractive, highly visible, and enjoyable.

If you want to get yourself to start doing something, pair that repetitive action with a reward which you are drawn to. Subject yourself to intentional operant conditioning. Ring the bell as you give yourself the treat, then salivate. 

But here is where I would give my biggest caution and encouragement, in correctly defining what are good or bad habits. How do you know what to put into one category or the other?

Such requires the conviction that knowing good from evil is both possible and desirable, and that something of our mode of life, thoughts, and feelings should be affected thereby. Don't misunderstand me. I don't mean to suggest this is faulty. Quite the opposite. And it is therefore because I believe this to be the case that I would say the first habit we should form is to know what is good and to reject what is evil - not least in the month of June here in the United States of America.