Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear has an average rating of 4.33 on Goodreads, where there are 1,147,117 ratings and 69,816 reviews, more than enough to satisfy your curiosity, hence, this note is irrelevant and pointless, it could be ended by saying that indeed, it is remarkable, useful, perhaps even life changing, if the principles are applied – there are other books on the subject, such as The Power of Habit, and they are reviewed on my blog, this is the moment when I plug my work https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear has an average rating of 4.33 on Goodreads, where there are 1,147,117 ratings and 69,816 reviews, more than enough to satisfy your curiosity, hence, this note is irrelevant and pointless, it could be ended by saying that indeed, it is remarkable, useful, perhaps even life changing, if the principles are applied – there are other books on the subject, such as The Power of Habit, and they are reviewed on my blog, this is the moment when I plug my work https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

 

 9 out of 10

 

I have read somewhere that the Talmud says ‘be careful with your thoughts, for they become words, pay attention to your words, because they become acts, mind your acts, they will turn into habits, habits form character and character is you’ – however, when trying to have this confirmed on the net, it does not check, maybe my source is not accurate

 

Then there is the quote attributed to Aristotle https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/aristotle-in-ninety-minutes-by-paul.html ‘We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”

This brings us to Atomic Habits, which has scores of examples, good rules, methods to change the and eventually eliminate the bad behaviors, while creating good ones ‘tiny changes bring remarkable results’ we are told about the British cycling Olympic team, there marvelous results, obtained by insisting on gradual improvements

 

Steve Martin and his phenomenal career are offered as an inspiration model, and the way the Goldilocks rule functions ‘In cognitive science and developmental psychology, the Goldilocks effect or principle refers to an infant's preference to attend events that are neither too simple nor too complex according to their current representation of the world’

We get this in the classic Flow https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/flow-by-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi.html where one of the rules of Being in The Zone (incidentally flow is explained in Atomic Habits too) is to be between burnout and boredom, the latter being a serious enemy we meet when forming habits

 

Michael Phelps and another Olympic champion are mentioned, in relation to the genes that make one so fit for swimming glory, and the other a formidable runner, we need to choose the habits that are good for us in other words; the environment is crucial, with healthy food in prominent places we get a good diet, the same for practicing the guitar, or other good habits

We should try deleting apps from the phone, when we get too busy with social networks, some radical measures are mentioned, such as unplugging the television, even placing it in a cupboard to be taken out just for a specific, desired show, about 50% of what we do daily is habits, if I have this figure right, we do have to get many things done on autopilot

 

Eliminating unpleasant habits is a drastic solution – this man found his employees had been stealing, so cash registers were the solution, then he went on to build a big business, the idea of having the American president pass this serious phase, before pushing the nuclear button is also exposed in the book

I think of this Orange Woland, it is unbelievable that humans can vote for something like that – we will have to see next Sunday what voters decide in my own land, where we have a replica of that fool, with the bigger chance, alas – so before pushing the atomic button, the leader would have to kill a man himself, with a knife, in this scenario

 

Outliers https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-malcolm-gladwell-quicklet-bundle-by.html is another psychology classic, by magnificent Malcolm Gladwell, and we get from this what happens when we practice this Habit for ten years, three hours every day, that is a total of ten thousand hours of practice, exercise, which bring us to the very top

Tal Ben Shahar talks about Rituals, this is what he calls good habits, in his positive psychology class (available for free on YouTube) which has been the most popular in the history of Harvard, you also have The Power of Habit https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-power-of-habit-by-charles-duhigg.html

A few of my side notes are these Associate one activity with another’ Seinfeld has the habit of creating a joke daily, they put the more expensive items at eye level, in shops, because we buy more from there…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’