Atomic Habits of Desire

Developing the Habit of Knowing What You Want—A Conversation with James Clear

Books are always in conversation with other books. In the case of James Clear and I, I’m grateful that this conversation has extended beyond the books to a personal chat. Below I’ll explain one of the many important connections I seen between his book, Atomic Habits, and my book, Wanting. James weighs in with a few words of his own in response to a few questions from me. I hope you enjoy.

The Power of Habit-Forming Books

Some books seep into our lives over a long period of time. They may not hit us in an instant with force of an intellectual tsunami, but they end up filling up our inner reservoirs with the kind of wisdom that doesn’t recede back into the nearest ocean of content.

Atomic Habits by James Clear is one of those books. I realized its relevance in a particular way last year when, after getting married in July 2021, I noticed my wife Claire and I picking up and imitating the habits of one another with extreme ease.

One of our many examples: I like to cook, but I’m terrible about making the time to do so. Not Claire. When the clock hits about 6pm, she closes her laptop, puts on some good music in the kitchen, and starts prepping. It doesn’t take long before I am drawn there by the smells and sounds, and I roll up my sleeves and get to work. We talk about our day; we laugh; I usually get into some sort of trouble.

The beauty of it is that Claire’s healthy habit breaks me out of my habit of not knowing when enough-is-enough at my desk.

Cooking together has become a healthy end-of-day ritual for us that checks multiple boxes: we spend quality time together, we cook healthy food rather than ordering in every night (a bad habit that I got into during certain phases of the pandemic), and we put down off our devices.

Each good habit reinforces another good habit, and a positive flywheel of desire is set in motion.

Flywheels of Desire

What do I mean by “positive flywheel’“ of desire? It means doing one thing that naturally leads into a greater desire to do the next thing, which works as one…