Atomic Habits Illustrated Book Summary
Smash those 2025 resolutions
Atomic Habits:
One of the best-selling productivity books of all time — where James Clear talks you through the process of building habits you’ll actually stick with long term.
This is a one-off free visual book summary as a special gift to help you ace your New Year’s resolutions this year.
To get access to all of my future book summaries and lots of other exclusives, you’ll need to sign up for the paid plan.
Reminder: All subscription revenue in 2025 will go to charity.
88% of resolutions are abandoned within the first two weeks of the new year.
Don’t let that be you.
The Habit Loop
Throughout the book, James discusses the four laws of behaviour change:
Cue — Make it obvious
Craving — Make it attractive
Response — Make it easy
Reward — Make it satisfying
If you want to make a new habit stick, you’ll need to remove friction.
The Reverse Habit Loop
As with the habit loop, the reverse habit loop also targets the four laws of behaviour change — but this time they are flipped on their heads:
Cue — Make it invisible
Craving — Make it ugly
Response — Make it hard
Reward — Make it annoying
If you want to make a old habit die, you’ll need to add friction.
Systems Thinking
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems”
— James Clear
A goal is your target
A system is how you intend to hit that target
Compound Growth
Much like the stock market, our habits can also grow exponentially over time.
If you improve by just 1% every day, you’ll end up 3778% better at that skill by the end of the year — that’s nearly a 40x return on investment!
This shows the power of showing up every day, even if it’s only a very small effort.
Consistency is key — and motivation is a myth.
Habit Stacking
The most powerful method from the book that I keep coming back to is ‘chunking’.
Essentially, this just means stacking two or more habits on top of each other to make them feel more enjoyable or more natural.
The way I use this is by only listening to podcasts when I’m travelling.
I have a long daily commute, so I’m in the car for a long time every day, which gives me the perfect opportunity to combine these two tasks into one!
Now every time I get into the car, that’s my cue to stick on a podcast or audiobook.
Identity-Based Habits
The last concept I’ve decided to illustrate today is the idea of identity-based habits.
This is more of a mindset-shift than a practical tip, but I think it’s an important one to consider going into the new year.
Reframe your habits in your mind.
For example, if you want to get into running this year:
You are no longer someone who runs.
You are now a runner.
Although incomplete (the full thing will be coming soon to paid subscribers), I hope this was helpful and gave you a taste of what to expect in future visual book summaries this coming year.
A quick reminder to sign up for the paid tier to get access to all future book summaries as I won’t be doing any more freebies this year.
All subscription revenue in 2025 is going to charity, so it’s for a good cause:
What are your New Years resolutions this year?
Let me know by using the buttons below to join the conversation.
Happy New Year!
Love this visual summary so much I have upgraded to paid subscription. I’m inspired to finish reading atomic habits. Only 1/4 of the way last year as ‘life’ happened. This is my year for finishing books.