James Clear, a promising High School baseball player, suffered a fractured skull and brain damage in a baseball bat accident while at High School. In his bestselling book, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, he explains how he reconstructed his life while at college through building good habits in every area of his life. This started in small ways by tidying his room, but eventually spread into his studies, resulting in straight A’s in his first year.
He eventually achieved remarkable sporting and academic honors in his final year. Although he never fulfilled his dream of playing professional baseball, he says that in these college years, “I accomplished something just as rare: I fulfilled my potential” (6). His book is based on the belief that good habits can help us fulfill our potential as well.
Clear defines a habit as “a routine or behavior that is performed regularly—and, in many cases, automatically” (6). These changes, he says, “that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years” (7). His basic thesis is, start small, make small steps of progress, and big challenges can be met and big obstacles overcome.
This might seem like a really obvious point, but in a day when so many are trying to achieve overnight success, or take shortcuts to achievement, it’s a healthy dose of realism. It’s also encouraging to those of us who are plodders, because it says, “Take multiple small steps, and over time you will eventually cover big distances.”
I was enticed into reading the book by a seminary student who told me how much the book had changed his life. I ordered it with a view to reading it through a biblical lens. My primary interest, of course, was not so much about how to be successful but how to be sanctified. And, as sanctification is so much concerned with changing habits (as well as hearts), I wondered if this book might help advance personal sanctification?
Now that I’m well into the book, I’ve identified a number of ways in which this book can help us live the Christian life better. For example, there’s the basic point about aiming for steady progress over time through small steps rather than overnight success by a great leap into holiness. In my early Christian life, I remember going on a solo camping trip in the middle of Hungary with the plan to read the whole Bible in five days. I think I gave up after one hour. I was deeply disappointed for a time. But then I read a quote (can’t remember now who said it): “The way to increase in holiness is to slowly increase your ordinary daily devotions rather than to attempt one-off extraordinary devotions.” I’ve found this to be 100% true.
Clear also challenges his readers to break down everything they do into small components and then improve each part by 1%. The end result when all the 1%’s are added up is a significant increase. We can apply this to many areas of Christian service, such as preaching a sermon or even writing a blog post. Clear’s case is that instead of massive success requiring massive action, we should see the importance of making small improvements on a daily basis. Although improving by 1% is not especially noticeable, if continued over the long run, the end result will be a massive difference: “If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done” he asserts (15).
Can this not be applied to sanctification? Think of 1% improvements in specific graces such as trust, kindness, patience, love, etc., which is especially possible when the Christian depends on the Holy Spirit for this. Habits, says Clear, “are the compound interest of self-improvement” (substitute “spiritual progress” or “growth in grace” for “self-improvement”). There seems to be little difference on any given day, but these small changes deliver huge impact over the long run.
And remember, this also works in the opposite direction!
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
