Atomic Habits by James Clear

I recommend Atomic Habits if you’re looking for:

• Building positive habits that will leverage your efforts as a founder
• Getting rid of bad habits that may harm your venture
• Become a better person in business and in life

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The lack of consistency can kill your startup dream.

The efforts to validate your hypothesis happen through a continuous process based on “build-measure-learn” cycles.

You build something and test it with potential customers. Next, you measure the results of this interaction. Then, you generate insights from what you’ve measured. Finally, from the insights, you build something new and restart the process.

But, what if you don’t perform one of the stages above? Yep, you’ll stop making progress.

The same progress blockage happens in other areas when you don’t nurture the right habits:

• Fund Raising: what if you stop reaching potential investors, after receiving some ‘no’s?
• Content Production: what if you pause producing content because no one’s reading it?
• Productivity: what if you keep scrolling your IG feed for hours, instead of working on your product?
• Mental Health: what if you can’t keep a mindfulness routine?

That’s why I’ve included Atomic Habits on the bookshelf.

The Atomic Habits Framework

In the book, James Clear presents his habit-forming framework, based on 4 different stages: cue, craving, response, and reward.

It all starts with the “cue”— You know that very moment when you start feeling compelled to do something? This desire was sparked by the elements (visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, or olfactory) that were present in that context. So, they worked as cues.

Next, you feel the “craving”. It’s the desire to act. You may recall this feeling from moments when you were compelled to drink, smoke, buy, check your emails, open social media apps, scroll your feed, etc.

The third stage in James’s framework is called “response”. That’s when you actually perform the action. It’s what you do in order to get rid of the craving.

Finally, the fourth stage is the “reward”. It’s about what you really get after performing the action.

But, what I liked the most is that Atomic Habits is also very practical. It uses these four stages to develop strategies to form and change one’s habits. It’s all about pulling the right levers.

So, in order to improve your habits you must find ways of making:

• The cue:
  • obvious (to form good habits)
  • invisible (to break bad habits)
• The craving:
  • attractive (to form good habits)
  • unattractive (to break bad habits)
• The response:
  • easy (to form good habits)
  • difficult (to break bad habits)
• the reward:
  • satisfying (to form good habits)
  • unsatisfying (to break bad habits)

Through all over the book, James gives clear strategies on how to pull these levers.

Hence, if you want to develop the right habits to support your startup development efforts, this is your next book.

Enjoy your reading. 😉

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• Title: Atomic Habits – An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
• Author: James Clear
• Year: 2018
• Publisher: Ambient Press
• Buy it on Amazon

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