Joker25:
Mouau
400level
Economics

RustyKub1:
My biggest weakness with money has always been that I can't manage it properly and waste it on unnecessary stuff. At some point, I even started looking for more jobs to make ends meet. However, now I'm trying to make my financial situation better. Therefore, I started to sell my business ideas to companies that buy ideas. I hope your post will help me since I dream of saving enough money to open my own business and not just sell my ideas to others.

You do not need many books; just this one book will change your life.

As a diverse reader, I have read a handful of books that greatly affected my life. I have read different genres, but I am yet to find another book whose impact on my life can be compared to that of this one book.
All over the internet, you will find many people saying the same. This book is practical, life-changing, and tailored just for you.
The book that has changed millions of lives, the only book you need to read to see the changes you desire in your life is ATOMIC HABITS by James clear.

I will be giving some insights on this book as well as sharing what and what to expect from it.

“A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. They are actions taken to solve a personal or environmental problem that leads to a reward. It usually requires effort initially, but because they are repeated regularly, it becomes automatic. By automating it, your brain allocates your conscious mind to other activities while you do those actions voluntarily.”

Because you do not struggle to do those things over and over again, you gain freedom.

“What starts as a small win or minor setback accumulates into something much more.”

In this award-winning book, James Clear shared with us the single thing that differentiates the winners from the losers — THE SYSTEM. The winners and the losers are set apart by the system they each follow.

“Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to that result.”

The easiest way to achieve a goal is to build a system around it. Goals in themselves are huge and a bit scary. It requires grinding and taking huge actions for it to be achieved. But building a system is simpler. According to James Clear,

“Success is the product of daily habits, not once-in-a-lifetime transformation.”

A system is a collection of related processes which are geared toward producing a single result or goal. It consists of smaller tiny changes at each node that progress toward the final result when accumulated.

Systems are the way to go because the change at each node is usually simpler and tiny. It takes way too less stress to do, and the effect is barely noticed. But each effect all combined leads to a more significant product, a massive result, or your entire goal.

One thing about systems is, if you completely ignore the GOALS and go about the system, you would still get to the end product. A system is not a system if there is no end product. The small changes in each node, the small improvements will always amount to something. Hence if you hit a goal directly by aiming at making massive changes at a time, you might end up tired and leave your progress hanging. But if you follow a system of simple atomic changes that takes little energy to get done and gradually build a system of “a small change every day,” you will get your final result at the process end.

Goals sometimes restrict progress and hold back happiness. This is true as the notion is:

“When I achieve this or that, when I reach a certain point in life, I will rest. I will be happy. I will be satisfied.”

When you eventually reach that point, that will be all. No further progress, no motivation because you put your all in and your goal has been achieved. The question becomes, “What next?” Coupled with the fact that human wants are insatiable. You will always want more. But when you follow a system of building habits, you not only attain your goal, you form a positive habit along the way and learn to be happy in the present and small achievements. But it is a habit already, so you can’t stop.

“The purpose of setting goals is to win the game, the purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.”

Atomic Habits will teach you that habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Becoming 1% better every day at something compounds over time into a vast improvement. You will not see the result when you start. You might not even see it for a long time ( depending on the goal that the system is working toward), but when it eventually starts paying off, you will be glad that it takes less than when you started. It is because habits always become easier over time.

You must start the process of building your habit with awareness. Do not leave it to fate. Instead, you should consciously begin a habit, make it obvious, and devise ways to make it attractive and easy. Then, keep on repeating it deliberately until it transforms into the unconscious mind.

HABITS AS RELATED TO BELIEFS AND IDENTITY.
Atomic Habits will also teach you how your beliefs and identity are connected to the kind of habits you are likely to develop. Every system of action is accompanied by a system of beliefs and identity.

In developing habits, to change actions requires you to change your beliefs. For instance, if you are trying to build a cooking habit, you have to change your belief of “I don’t usually have the time or strength because I’m busy” to “I’m making breakfast every morning because I need to eat to get myself ready for work.” It would help if you also changed your identity from someone who skips breakfast or eats out to one who eats homemade breakfast.

To make maximum changes, you have to identify yourself with your habits.

“You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you will stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity.”

Changing your identity works for both good and bad habits. They can skyrocket your self-improvement or deter them depending on what you identify yourself with. For instance, when you say “I’m not a book person” or “I don’t so much like reading,” and you keep repeating that to yourself and the people around you, it becomes your belief and identity.

Then, this internal pressure begins to build in you to maintain that self-image and throw away any lifestyle that is not consistent with that identity in order not to contradict yourself. You stop touching anything that has pages. You block your mind when a good book is recommended to you. Little by little, you grow that adhesion that will align with your beliefs and what you identify yourself with. Then one day, you realize that it has become you!

This goes with building good habits too. Your habits tend to stand in solidarity with who you have identified yourself to be and your beliefs. For this reason, it is unhealthy to get attached to one version of your identity.

“Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs and to upgrade and expand your identity.”

Your identity can be changed through habits. For instance, when you listen to music all the time, you tend to identify as a “music person,” a music lover. When you pray often and delight in attending religious activities, you tend to identify yourself as a “religious person.”

To begin building habits, you have to find out who you want to be. For instance, if you want to be a copywriter, to build the habit of writing good copies, you have to ask yourself in every instance:

What will a good copywriter do?
Will a good copywriter write copy samples to improve on their skill?
Will a good copywriter read copies written in other products?
Will a good copywriter take up courses to improve their skill?
Will a good copywriter sleep early or late?

Then start doing things that a good copywriter would do.
Doing these will not make you a good copywriter instantly, but it will build systems that lead to good habits that will make you a good copywriter.

Habits and identity are close friends. Because building a habit is more than achieving a particular goal. It is about becoming a specific person(which is identity.)

You will also learn how pride helps in improvement. When you are proud of your work, you put in the effort to make it up to standard.

4 STAGES OF HABITS
From this book, you will learn the four stages from which habits proceed.
CUE — CRAVING — RESPONSE — REWARD
These four stages make up a feedback loop system. Our brain is continuously searching our environment for activities that satisfy us. The four stages need themselves for the habit to be repeated.

If there is no cue, there will be no craving. If there is not enough motivation to respond to the craving, there will be no reward. If the reward is not satisfying enough, the loop won’t repeat. It is the anticipation of a reward, not its fulfillment, that gets us to take action.

James Clear, in this book, also gave us four laws that make it easy to build new habits and four other laws that make it easy to break bad ones.
You will also learn habits formulation and implementation techniques, the TWO MINUTE RULE, and how to break bad habits easily.
You will learn about the vital role that the environment plays in habit formation. We tend to respond to cues that are in our environment.

“The most common form of change is not internal but external. We are changed by the world around us.”

You will learn how to arrange visual cues to make use of the environment to change your habit. You don’t necessarily have to be a victim of your environment. You can be the architect of it too.
You can learn to associate an already existing context or object in the environment with a new habit. Like, associate your couch with reading. But you have to be sincere and realistic about them. If you stay on the same couch to play video games, it is probably a bad idea to turn it into a reading couch because you will end up abandoning the book and playing video games instead.

You will learn about the roles that groups have to play in building habits.
James Clear said;

“One of the most effective things you can do to build a better habit is to join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. New habits seem achievable when you see others doing them every day.”

That is why you are likely to study more when you apply for a course or join a class. You have to join a group of people who do the same activity you want to do; a community whose regular activity is your desired activity.

Another example is when you join a gym class. You are likely to be consistent with your workout because you joined a community of people who work out.

“Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You’ll rise together.”
Join a community that does what you already do.

Do not waste time trying to develop the best plan for something. Voltaire once said
“The best is the enemy of the good.”

You only waste more time. The key to mastering a habit is repetition, not perfection.
Habit is a game of repetition. Therefore, you should be more concerned with how many times you perform a habit than how well you perform it because habit becomes automatic with repetition.


CONCLUSION.
One thing that makes the ATOMIC HABITS lovable is that each chapter has a summary which is basically a few bullet points of everything the chapter was talking about. This will help you to see the whole chapter in one glance and review something you want to have a second look at.

James Clear also did well summarizing the laws into specific actions after they were explained. This makes it all the more enticing to read and easy to understand. You should get this book for yourself. Will you?

dingbang:
how will kids know how to perform neurosurgery. It is expected that we adults have an idea how to help our kids with their assignment and teach them.

CharleyBright:
Good Compilation.
But OP failed to include Max Solliun Oil, Politics and Violence which was the first book before Soldiers of Fortune.