I read this book by James Clear because a bunch of people in one of my networking groups kept raving about how great it is.
If only it had lived up to the hype.
I should clarify that it’s not that the book is bad, it’s just that I have a BA in Psychology, so I already knew about most of these tricks and have implemented many of them to get myself to do things I don’t always want to do.
That said, if you have not studied Psychology, then you’ll probably find a lot of useful tips in this book. It is well written and engaging so I never felt bored while listening to the audiobook, even though, as I mentioned, I already knew a lot of these tips and was able to predict what he would say next based on his introduction to a topic. I should also mention that he narrated the audiobook himself and did a pretty good job, so if you’re into audiobooks and self-help books, I do recommend this one on audio.
I especially liked that Clear opened the book with a story of his own head trauma in high school and how he eventually overcame the limitations he had to deal with from that. It’s a great introduction to the book because the whole book is like that. Rather than just a list of tips and strategies for building good habits and reducing bad habits (which this book easily could have been), he provides real-world examples of each tip and strategy and how they helped catapult the person using it into success, from chess masters to incredibly wealthy salespeople. Not only do they make the book more interesting to read, I also found them to be motivational.
I should also mention that I did still learn a few things from this book. While I was familiar with (and have used) some of these strategies to form my own habits, there were others that this book taught me and studies I had not heard about that I found fascinating. I’m always up for a story about a good psychology study, especially when it’s told in an engaging way, as Clear manages to do, rather than the dry and boring text of a study’s analysis.
I’m not normally one for self-help books, and maybe this is why. I’m far from perfect, but for the most part, I feel like I have a pretty good system that works well for me, so the next time I check out a self-help book from the library, I might stick to a business book with more specific examples of how I can improve one aspect of my life instead of a book with tips that can be applied to any aspect of your life for improvement.