I have always been a bookworm and as a child, I used to cycle many kilometers to the library to borrow a backpack full of books. The adventure and detective books of my childhood have now been replaced by business books. One book that has changed my life is James Clear’s “Atomic Habits”. Thanks to the advice in “Atomic Habits” the trauma of writing left over from my school days is a thing of the past. I have succesfully utilized the things I learnt from the book and have no fear anymore for sharing my thoughts by writing. Next I will tell you more about what the book is about and how it changed my life.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” -James Clear
As the year is ending soon, most of us will set some goals for our upcoming year. However, instead of setting goals, we should actually be focusing on our systems according to James Clear. Winners and losers can have exactly the same goals, what differentiates them is the action, the small habits that you create and systematically repeat time after time. The effect of small habits compound over time. If you can just get better 1% per day, what will that be after one year?
If you only focus on goals, what happens when you reach them? That’s it, you are done and can forget about the whole thing? Achieving a goal only changes your life for a moment. Goals can also restrict your happiness. There is a conflict with goals since they are always either-or. Either you achieve them and are successful or you fail and are disappointed. When you fall in love with your system, your process, you can be satisfied anytime your system is running.
Rather than setting goals, focus on your systems
Outcome-based vs identity-based habits
The saying man is a slave of his habits, couldn’t be more true. We all have both good and bad habits and presumably you would like to decrease the bad ones and increase the good ones. Why is it so difficult to change your habits? Changing our habits is challenging because 1. we try to change the wrong thing and 2. in the wrong way.
Many people start changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve, whether it is losing x kilos of weight, making x amout of money or writing a book. Those are all outcome-based habits that won’t last. The other option is to start with who do you want to be, i.e start building identity-based habits.
Outcomes are about what you get, processes are what you do, identity is about what you believe. The deepest level of changing habits is changing your identity. It is all about changing your beliefs, your worldview, your self-image and judgements about yourself and others. Behind every action there is a belief-system. According to Clear, “the biggest barrier to positive change at any level — individual, team, society — is identity conflict.” If you never change your belief-system that led to your past behavior, it is really challenging to change your habits. You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven’t changed who you are.
Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every single belief including the ones about yourself is learned and conditioned through experience. Your habits are how you embody your identity. The more you repeat a behavior, the more you reinforce the identity associated with that behavior. You get results with each habit, but it also makes you trust yourself. Change doesn’t happen overnight. We change bit by bit, habit by habit.
Outcome-based vs identity-based habits
The 4 stages of the habit loop
When formulating any habit, our brains run through 4 different stages: 1. Cue, 2. Cravings, 3. Response and 4. Reward:
1. Cue: Information that predicts the reward. Our mind analyzes our environment for both internal and external hints about the possible rewards.
2. Cravings: Motivational forces behind every habit. You crave the change in state it delivers, for instance you don’t crave a cigarette itself, but you crave the feeling of relief.
3. Response: How much friction is associated with the behavior. If it requires more physical or mental effort that you are willing to expend, they you don’t do it.
4. Reward: Reward is the end goal of every habit. We chase rewards, because they either satisfy or teach us something.
All behavior is driven by the desire to solve a problem. You notice something good → you want to have it. You feel a pain → you want to relieve it. If you eliminate the cue, your habit will never start. Reduce the craving and you won’t have enough motivation to act. Add friction, i.e make the behavior difficult and you won’t be able to do it. If the reward fails to satisfy your desire, you’ll have no reason to do it again in the future.
How to create good and break bad habits?
The stages of habit creation can be utilized to create good, but also break bad habits. In his book, Clear divides behavior change into 4 laws:
1st law (Cue) — Make it obvious: The process of behavior change always starts with awareness. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them. A good tool is to take a habit scorecard into use. A habit scorecard is kind of an as-is analysis of your current behaviors. When you list all of your current behaviors think about, which ones are good, bad and if some are neutral. Then decide what change do you want to have.
The best way to create a new habit is to set an implementation intention, which is a plan when and where to act. You can simply follow this formula I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION], eg. I will study French for 10 minutes every morning at 8.00 in my livingroom. You can also do habit stacking by integrating the new habit to an existing one. For instance, the previous example of habit could be stacked with the following: After I pour myself a cup of tea, I will start studying French. The habit stacking formula is :After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]. Once a habit is formed.
2nd law (craving) — Make it attractive: Habits are dopamine-driven feedback loop. When dopamine rises, it also rises our motivation to act. Dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it. What gets us to take action is the anticipation of a reward, not the fulfillment of it. You can make habits more attractive by temptation bundling. In temptation bundling you link an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
Humans are herd animals. We want to belong to a tribe and want to be seen, heard and get appraisal. The culture we live in determines whether the behavior is attractive to us. The normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual. Most days we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves. So think about your surroundings, the tribe you live in. Is it something that lifts you up or puts-down? One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a tribe, culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior and you already have something common with the group.
3rd law (response) — Make it easy: Well planned is still undone. It is easy to stay in the planning phase and just strategize the change itself, but never start acting. Action is the one that produces outcomes. When you repeat an action, you also activate a particular neural circuit associated with that habit. So instead of thinking how long does it take to form a new habit, you should be focusing on the reps you put on forming the habit. According to Clear, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.” So make it easy, focus on repeating it regularly and start small.
4th law (reward) — Make it satisfying: Our brains still live in the stone age and we prefer instant gratification instead of delaying the reward to the future. The cardinal rule of behavior change is this: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided. How do we make our habits rewarding instantly so that they will stick? On of the most satisfying feelings of success is seeing the progress. In his book Clear gives an example where you start habit tracking and mark X to a calendar every time you performed the habit. With the visual cues it makes the habit obvious, you are able to follow the progress and it feels attractive. In addition that little X mark you are allowed to make in the calendar every time you perform the habit also gives you that instant reward and makes it satisfying.
How to create good and break bad habits
How I have taken into use the learnings from the book?
So what is the verdict after reading the book Atomic Habits?
Is it worth spending the time reading it? Most definitely yes.
The book was really inspiring and at the same time very practical. It gave simple tips that you can take into use right away. I wanted to see if these things actually work in real life, so I decided to be my own guinea-pig and try them out.
I had carried a belief about writing with me for a really long time. As a small kid in elementary school, my essays were full of imagination and often read out loud in class. Later in high school everything became more formal and grammar-focused, and my texts came back full of red pen marks. Slowly my creative side was buried somewhere deep and I started thinking that I’m actually not a good writer. My identity related to writing changed.
In order to change the habit, I first had to change the identity behind it.
Instead of making a goal that I will write x number of blog posts per month, I started with a different question: how do writers behave? Well, they write. So I focused on building a system instead of chasing a goal.
I used habit implementation intention and habit stacking. I defined the exact days and time when I will write and attached it to an existing habit. So after I pour myself a cup of tea in the morning, I write. It doesn’t matter if I write a whole blog post or just a paragraph. The most important thing is just to do it, always at the same time. Repetition was more important than the amount of text.
I also bought a paper calendar. Every time I wrote, I drew an X to the page. That small X felt surprisingly rewarding and helped me see the progress. Over time, writing started to feel easier and more natural. I started trusting myself again and writing didn’t feel scary anymore. It actually started to feel fun.
When thinking about this afterwards, I realized how similar this is to work life and organizations.
Companies often set ambitious goals and strategies, but very often nothing really changes in everyday work. Meetings, ways of working, decision-making and priorities, the system how company works, stay the same. Often times the strategy is impossible to execute since the system itself prevents it to become reality. Just like with individuals, organizations don’t change because of goals alone. They change when daily habits, systems and ways of working start to change.
In the end, both people and organizations become what they repeatedly do.
Not what they plan or say, but what their habits reinforce day after day.
For me, the biggest learning was simple: action is everything. Small actions, repeated over time, can change not only what we do, but who we become.
This post was originally published in Medium 2023. Updated and expanded for Substack readers on 2025.