Book Review: Atomic Habits by James Clear

It has been a while since my last book review. While I haven't made a post for quite some time, my learning hasn't stopped. I typically switch back and forth between audiobooks and podcasts. Recently, it's been the former. As always, I aim to have one key takeaway each time I listen to a book. With that said, here's my takeaway on Atomic Habits by James Clear.

I think this book is a great extension to Scott Adams' How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. The common theme is that you shouldn't be setting goals. Not only is it rather difficult to determine how realistic or achievable they are, goals set you up for failure. You're not inadequate simply because you failed to reach your goal. This can be demotivating.

While I won't talk too much about why Scott Adams believes you should have systems instead, there is an extension to be made here. One thing that stood out to me in Atomic Habits was this concept of shaping your identity.

One example made in this book was wanting to learn a new instrument. Instead of saying I want to play the guitar, say I want to become a musician. Instead of focusing on what you want to achieve, focus on who you wish to become. That's my takeaway.

I can relate this to myself. Rather than saying I want to make $100,000, I would say I want to become a professional trader. My habits would be geared towards doing what a professional trader does rather than having this constant aim to make $100K.

Once you've established who you wish to become, I think this is where Scott Adams' book can be quite useful. How do you systematize your habits and routine so that you can reach the state of who you wish to become?

To systematize my habits to becoming a professional trader, we jump back to this concept of habit stacking mentioned in Atomic Habits. In addition to having this development system in place, I believe that habit stacking helps you get into the routine to do what needs to be done. I think I do this already, but not as clear cut as described in this book.

The habit stacking formula consists of this phrasing: After [ current habit ], I will [ new habit ]. I see this as a planning exercise, which I did back when I formed my own system to improve my trading. For example, after I eat dinner, I will review the key economic events that have occurred for the day. After I review these key economic events, I will scan through my main watchlist to review the daily structures of the currency pairs I'm watching.

I believe that habit stacking will help you form and refine the system that you have in place to advance your development. In the most basic sense, habit stacking helps you get into a routine by outlining each action step.

Of course, this book goes much deeper into reinforcing desired habits. This book is rather short but  concisely communicates all the key concepts. I do think this is an important read, which I'll likely revisit it more than once in order to capture all the key concepts.