Atomic Habits-James Clear

February 26th of 2020 was Ash Wednesday. At my church, Pastor Tom gave a sermon centered around leveling up beyond the sacrifice of harmless vices like sweets and video games to somewhat replicate what Christ had given up for us as sinners. Now, he wasn't asking us to take a hammer and nails and find the nearest tree to spill our blood. But to take the time and fully digest the passion of Jesus's love for us by examining our own lives and willfully inducing a throe that would cause a certain amount of discomfort.

It was in that pew where I made the decision to give up drinking for lent. I waffled back and forth between the decision, making amends like giving up shots but allowing beer, or, just drinking one round on league night. But I knew these were only small measures that were doomed to fail. It was all or nothing, and I walked out of the service that night determined to see it through.

If you were to rewind the tape of my life to the previous weekend, it may help you to understand why I was so willing to make this decision.

It really wasn't much different from the previous weekends of my life. Bowling, drinks, drinks after bowling at some hole in the wall with other friends who were going about their lives in a likewise desultory direction. We had after hours at my apartment and when I woke up the following morning the place was a mess. I allowed them to smoke and my house reeked like cigarettes and there were empty beer cans everywhere.

While I was hungover and cleaning up, I started to become even more disgusted with my life than usual. I was 36, barely living above paycheck to paycheck, drinking every week, out of shape, and working in a career that I hated. Any change I made that was authored in determination would easily fall apart thanks to destructive habits.

I felt as if the life I was living at the time was an insult to the potential I had inside and that—provided the proper amount of attention given—I could excel in doing something more appropriate to my passions. In order to get to that place though would require a drastic measure. And as goofy as it may sound—giving up drinking for 40-plus days absent of being encumbered by outside circumstances—is a drastic measure.

At least in this neck of the woods it is.

At the time, I had no clue of the impact such a decision would make, but it ended up becoming a preemptive tremor to a tectonic shift in my life.

Within six months of Pastor Toms fateful sermon I had saved up enough money through the generosity of Covid benefits to quit my job in the casino industry and become an author.

Fast forward to April 29th, 2024 and one year has eclipsed since the release of my first published novel. On the heels of successfully publishing a novel I also have a credit as editor on a different book and am in the process of editing one more. On May 22nd I will be the featured speaker at a Meet The Author event at my local library and I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 copies of my novel floating around the United States with a couple of dedicated article mentions in various newspapers.

It sounds more glamorous than it is.

So far as direct income stemming from the novel is concerned, I am still largely residing in the red. Sales on Amazon have plateaued to almost a flat line and the majority of my novels that I mailed out to various reachable celebrities more than likely never reached the intended recipient. And if it did, it was probably disregarded as bulky fan mail.

But as Kurtis Blow once rapped so eloquently "These are the Breaks!"

The starting line has to be etched somewhere and very few are able to bypass the hurdles that pop up after the referee licks off a shot. Even fewer are those who possess the courage to lace up and take a spot at the line to begin with.

Fortunately, I belong to one of those exclusive groups.

But in order to write down these aforementioned statements with an eye of experience requires tremendous discipline and determination to get to that point.

This means tempered spending. Dieting. Weekend nights at home. Cooking. A severe reduction in time killing activities like binge watching television shows and addled app browsing. Saying no to every invite out to the bar. Prolonged absences of drinking. Among many other short-term pleasure triggers that may be fun for the moment but act detrimentally to progress.

I knew that the life I wanted to lead was out there and would take more than 40 days of sobriety to achieve. For the most part, all of the things I mentioned are largely under my control and I suppose that if you were to account for the actual hours of the days that I work, it would come to be about 12-12.5.

But my definition of work is drastically different from the average Joe.

Through incremental blocks that act together to form a foundation, every moment of every day coagulates as momentum that pushes me closer to the finish line.

Take today for instance.

When I woke up at 7 AM I did the dishes and put on a pot of coffee. Afterwards I intended to spend thirty minutes on editing a novel and ended up working on it for 50. After that I edited another review for about an hour. Then I sat down to read one chapter of the Old Testament and one from the New. I showered, ate breakfast, then threw a load of laundry in and headed to the post office to drop off a few books I sold then went to the park to continue reading a book that I was hoping to finish by the end of this week. After that I walked down to the grocery store for a few things then came back to begin a zoom call (that never happened) and then began this review of Atomic Habits.

If you read through that all you will see that I gained sufficient exercise for the day by walking 4.6 miles in total (and got a salubrious serving of Vitamin D), got a decent amount of both writing and reading in, maintained my hygiene to personally acceptable levels, and invested in the growth of my money as well. The time is now 5:30 and I still have plans of further reading and then will eat dinner and wind down around 10:30 PM. From 7 AM until 10 PM is 15 hours. Of those fifteen I would say that roughly an hour and a half will be spent on leisure as I like to watch television while I eat my meals. So that is around 13 and a half of the day spent on "work".

The days usually aren't regimented and organized but they fly by and I can generally lay my head to rest at night with the full comfort of knowing that I produced and received more value from the minutes afforded to me than I let go to waste.

This is the basis for what is known as Atomic Habits.

If you are serious about breaking free from a life that you may feel is holding you hostage, then this book is essential reading. And if you couple this book along with The Six Pillars of Self Esteem, How To Make Friends and Influence People, Flow, Introducing NLP, and Solomon's Book of Proverbs and then put the methods into action, the sky will truly become the limit to your achievements.

Atomic Habits may work in different ways for different people. For some, that are having trouble conquering addiction, you may want to search for professional help first. Or, this book may be the necessary collection of words that helps to ultimately shed that cloak. I really cannot say for sure. But what I can give testimony to is what it did for me.

Before I read Atomic Habits, I had managed to collect a wide array of monetary pokers that were sitting in the embers of prosperity that I hoped would blossom into a bonfire.

I have over 900 books listed on Pango that accumulate funds on almost a daily basis. I do paralegal work for my brothers law firm. I write reviews that I hope will one day serve as the gateway to a lucrative publishing contract. I am editing a novel for a friend. Perform dealing gigs on the weekend. Thrift books and various other items for profit on Ebay.

There are a few others as well, but this is the main list of activities I engage in that help to support, or, are in the works of supporting the life that I lead.

It can be a lot at times and presents a unique issue of compounding self-eviscerating thoughts when I would fall behind in any area. Especially when it came to editing the novel, which would sit sometimes for a week without being touched as I would put it off for days at a time with the assumption that I would dedicate a full few days in a row to finishing it. And that would only achieve stagnation.

James Clear's book really helped me out in compartmentalizing these efforts to produce amazing results in just about every area. Mostly with simple techniques combined with easy rules to set for yourself.

Next to my computer there sits a tiny hill of books that I designate to be sold online for profit. They act as monetary seeds that produce steady income. Whenever I neglect to upload them in preference of editing the novel, the size of the hill begins to grow. As it grows, it irritates me. Then I shift my focus to decimating the hill and neglect editing for days and weeks at a time, and this only serves to shift the irritation.

Through the suggested action plans of Atomic Habits, I learned to maintain a steady balance of concentrated effort to both and, in turn, saw progress begin to expand.

By downsizing my ambition to manageable numbers—spending thirty minutes daily on editing and aiming to upload a paltry five books a day—I saw completed chapters, a diminished hill, and satisfaction in place of frustration.

James offers many other suggestions, but this is one that proved to be most effective for myself and helped to reconfigure the filter of my days to produce longer lasting and more effective results.

Even if you are starting out at the beginning of your journey, this book will provide you with enormous benefits, and I know I am doing a disservice to James by not expanding upon the wealth of knowledge within the pages.

But basically, it is the establishment of tiny goals at the beginning of your day through very easy techniques that will eventually add up to provide you with a sustained feeling of satisfaction that you cannot find through the simple exchange of money or online perusing.

Bottom line: If you are serious about making this cup of coffee we are here for known as life to be the richest you ever tasted, then order this book as soon as you can.

Grade: A

Verdict: Read