Section: “The Fundamentals: Why Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference”
Chapter: 1. The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits
In this second post of the multi-part Atomic Habits series, we’re getting into “The Fundamentals” of atomic habits. This section of the book discusses so many profound and insightful analogies and models to help us better understand the implications of our behavior and atomic habits. We’ll discuss one of those models (One Percent Better) in this post and more will certainly follow. But first, let’s break down what “atomic habits” actually are.
“Atomic Habits” & British Cyclists
Quite simply, James Clear describes “atomic habits” as the aggregation of marginal progress that culminates into remarkable changes over time. Moreover, an atomic habit “is a little habit that is part of a larger system.” Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of our behaviors, characteristics, and in some sense, life circumstances.
As an excellent example of the power of atomic habits, James Clear begins with a description of the British national road cycling team and their head coach at the time, Dave Brailsford. As the story of British cycling goes, they were an awful team throughout much of their existence. They were so bad, in fact, that some bicycle and gear manufacturers refused to sell products to them for fear that doing so would result in their diminished product sales. That was the case, at least, until 2005 when Dave Brailsford was hired as the team’s new head coach. Brailsford began his tenure with the immediate implementation of a principle known as “the aggregation of marginal gains,” or philosophy of searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything the team did (or did not do).
In doing so, Brailsford and the team became maniacal about the finest of details. In one such example, they went so far as to hire surgeons to teach the riders how to wash their hands properly so as to reduce the likelihood of riders getting sick and performing poorly or resulting in missing events altogether (a quick Google search will yield several other somewhat over-the-top things this team did in their transformation!.
This extreme level of attention to detail paid off, however, as between 2007 and 2017, the Brits amassed more accolades, championships, and Olympic medals and became more successful than arguably any other cycling team in history.
So, does this mean you have to become equally as obsessive as the British Cyclists over the fine details of your diet to achieve nutrition success? Thankfully, not quite. But this example does at least represent the “tip of the spear” in elite performers. It exhibits the potential of how accounting for the seemingly insignificant “atomic habits” can produce remarkable results!
To further support the claim that taking ownership of your atomic habits is genuinely the best way to achieve long-term, sustainable behavior change, James Clear describes a significant myth about success in general.
That is, far too often, people want a singular, monumental event to catalyze their progress. They want to be able to point to and state, “’X is where my turning point was; that’s where I made all of my progress.” However, this is rarely how reality plays out. Instead, our lasting outcomes are predicated on our decisions and their compound effects over months, years, and decades – not a few moments or an instance.
Suppose instead, people were to focus on the atomic habits in their lives and began to make just one percent improvements on them every day. In that case, they could find themselves up to thirty-seven times improved after 365 days than when they started (see figure below). On the contrary, a one percent decline per day would result in a drop to almost zero from baseline after one full year.
Atomic Habits Media
The massive success (up to 37x growth in one year!) of the “one percent better principle” is predicated on the notion that percentage change occurs exponentially. While a 1% increase seems to make no difference initially, the changes eventually accumulate and yield profound outcomes.
In what ways might you be able to improve your nutrition, or life in general, by 1% today? One simple improvement may not feel like it matters much, but it might have remarkable outcomes over a year.
If something as seemingly inconspicuous as hand washing and illness reduction was a 1% tactic that helped the British Cyclists turn from the laughingstock of their sport to one of the most successful teams in cycling history, then what might be something you can change, nutritionally, to begin turning the tides on your health and fitness trajectory?
1% In Your Daily Life
As you proceed throughout the remainder of this week, a great first step to begin a personal habit transformation would be to become self-observant and conscious of as many routines and decisions about your diet as you can. Whether the decisions you detect are perceived as positive, negative, or neutral, take note of them.
Then as you begin to accumulate these habits, sort them into the aforementioned buckets. Label those you perceive as being favorable to your nutrition goals as “positive” and those that may inhibit those goals as “negative”. If you are not sure about a habit or decision, then label it “neutral”.
In later posts, we will elaborate on The Four Laws of Behavior Change. Having a pre-organized set of habits that you gathered over the previous couple of weeks will be hugely supportive as you begin to interpret the Laws and try to apply them to your own diet and nutrition.
As an aside, this is not to say that you should delay making behavior change now if you can readily identify a negative habit and implement a formidable solution to it. Instead, I encourage you to adjust any behavior you feel you are capable of immediately. Habits, both positive and negative, are momentum generating; they build on themselves like an avalanche. If you can get your “decision-making snowball” rolling in a positive direction, or at least begin to halt a negative habit now, then your future atomic habit endeavors will certainly be easier and yield even greater outcomes. Do realize, however, that there will be some less obvious and more difficult to change habits that you won’t have immediate resolutions to. This is OK and we’ll leverage the Four Laws in future posts to help overcome them.
The Trajectory of 1%
Finally, I hope the 1% principle has sparked some self-reflection and given a new perspective to your journey to better understanding your personal, nutrition-related behavior. I want to close with a bit of content directly from Atomic Habits. When describing the longitudinal implications of habits, James Clear notes the following:
“It’s only after looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent… we often dismiss small changes because they don’t seem to matter in the moment. If you save a little money now, you’re still not a millionaire. If you If you got to the gym three days in a row, you’re still not out of shape…”.
A lack of perceived change over the short term can be discouraging and lead you to give up on your endeavors all too soon. However, you must persist. Don’t underestimate the power of small changes and compound interest. They matter.
In the next post, I’ll highlight two amazing illustrations of just how important atomic habits are and playing the long game is to achieve sustainable behavior change: The Airplane and The Ice Cube analogies.