Up & atom

Forget the grand New Year’s resolutions. Making little changes that go the distance is how to achieve big results.

- DEAN WATSON

If you had to name the best-selling book of the past few years, chances are you might pick EL James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. And you’d be right that people are still snapping up the erotic potboiler, even though it first came out over a decade ago,

More recently, however, another title has been flying off the shelves. Atomic Habits by James Clear has already sold more than 9 million copies, and I can honestly say it’s changed my life. Yet its underlying message is remarkably simple: small habits make a huge difference.

It was Aristotle who said: “Ninety-five per cent of everything you do is the result of habit.” Habits make us who we are. But according to Clear, we need to flip that on its head. Before we decide which habits to form and which to break, we must first decide who we want to be, he suggests.

Another way of thinking about habits is to think of them like interest on your savings, says Clear. Yes, the magic of compounding works for habits, just like it does for money. There is a simple equation that sums this up: new identity = good habits + time. The “new identity” part of the equation is what kind of person we want to be, and the best foundation for any good habit, says Clear, is coming up with a compelling idea for who that person is.