The Wonder of Atomic Habits: How Five Minutes of Effort Can Turn Your Life Around

Atomic Habits is a book packed with wonder. How can something as ordinary as a habit have explosive potential? Who would think tiny changes could yield remarkable results? It's a mystery worth unraveling, and James Clear helps us do it.

Clear relates stories of people whose small habits, applied over time, produce massive results. One of the more striking examples is his account of the British cycling team, which in 2003 had won almost no major international competitions in a century. By executing a number of small changes over the course of four years—down to the way team members washed their hands and the kind of pillows they slept on—the British cycling team rocketed to the top of the sport, winning multiple Olympic and Tour de France championships for ten straight years.

The compounding effect of habits is astonishing. Yet the deeper magic of Clear’s book lies in the principle that undergirds the whole: anyone, at any moment, can resolve to change the trajectory of their entire life and immediately embark on a course to do it. In an age of overwhelm and paralysis, we can decide in an instant to begin turning our lives around, right here and now. Action does not have to be drastic to be effective. We don’t need an apocalyptic insight order to change our lives for the better. To rescue a day gone wrong, Clear says, “It only takes five minutes to break the cycle. Five minutes of exercise and you are back on the path. Five minutes of writing and the manuscript is moving forward again. Five minutes of conversation and the relationship is restored. It doesn’t take much to feel good again.” So long as you’re investing in the new habit, even minimally but with consistency, you’re contributing to and building towards the new trajectory for your life. 

We're giving energy to our existing habits all of the time. The key to positive change is becoming conscious of these habits and discerning whether they’re the ones we want. Our powers of evaluation enable us to step into the infrastructure comprised by our current habits, assess its directionality and outcomes, and discern whether it supports our desired vision of ourselves and our lives. At this critical moment, we can resolve to begin the journey towards a new habit or set of habits. We can think through the sequential steps it would take to act on our resolution, anticipate snafus that might short-circuit our success—gym too crowded, running shoes too old, traffic too heavy at the chosen workout time—and then line up our tools and workarounds.

At the same time, Clear keeps us grounded in realism. The initial resolution and planning are only the first step, however momentous this step may be. We must follow up our resolution with hundreds, if not thousands of repeated small efforts, outwitting our own fear and boredom, in order to make a new course of action fully habitual. Resistance to effort is rarely absent, even in relation to robust habits formed over time.

But it doesn’t take much effort to start with the first small step, and then to follow up that step with another. Each time we overcome resistance and devote energy to the desired habit—maybe we only managed to put the running shoes on at first—we feel the exhilaration of victory over the forces that would keep us from living our true potential. We need to let ourselves feel the elation of these small victories! The small act of putting on the running shoes may have helped us prove to ourselves that we could chip away at a long-held dread of exercise. By the fifth time we put them on, we might actually have developed the courage to run. We wore down our resistance through repeated acts in the opposite direction. Down the road we can look back and take joy in how all of our tiny efforts added up to remarkable results.

Watching the process unfold in little ways—experiencing the rewards of overcoming resistance to working through a stack of dirty dishes, or of putting down our phones long enough to spend a few minutes reading a book to a young child—helps give us the courage and actionability to approach larger goals. The sequential swipes of the sponge led to a set of gleaming plates. The time spent reading to the child led to a deeper connection and great conversation later on. Taking pleasure in minor accomplishments helps us develop stamina for the major ones—a consistently clean house, or a happy teenager who still loves to learn.

A consummate everyman who resists adulation despite his achievements, Clear models the kind of humility required for staying the course. From his mastery of the science of habit formation, Clear knows that fixating on his accomplishments, no matter how impressive, might hamper his creativity. His discipline in staying humble keeps Clear focused on his refreshingly generous goal of being useful to others as they work to achieve their goals. Clear’s synthesis of wonder and realism makes Atomic Habits a classic.