When Habits Feel Impossible: Why I Needed Atomic Habits to Talk About Systems Instead
I've always struggled with habits. Not in the "oh, I forget to floss sometimes" way, but in the "my ADHD brain views the word 'habit' as a personal attack" kind of way. Habits feel like those things other people have: the friend who runs every morning without thinking about it, the colleague who meal preps on Sundays like it's a reflex, the person who somehow remembers to water their plants. For years, I assumed I was simply bad at being a functional human.
Then I read Atomic Habits by James Clear a few years ago, and something shifted. I just re-read it for a professional book club here in Wichita (shoutout to Grant Bickell for pulling this group together, seriously, come join us! Email me for info), and the second time through, I finally understood why this book landed differently than every other self-help tome gathering dust on my shelf.
Clear doesn't just tell you to build better habits. He tells you to build better systems. And for my brain, that one-word swap changes everything.
The Story That Made It Click
Clear opens with the story of Dave Brailsford and the British cycling team, and it's the kind of example that makes you sit up straighter. In 2003, Brailsford took over a British cycling program that had been mediocre for a century. British riders had won just a single gold medal in 76 years. Brailsford's approach? He called it "the aggregation of marginal gains," the philosophy of searching for tiny improvements in everything you do.
They redesigned bike seats for comfort. They tested fabrics in wind tunnels. They taught riders the best way to wash their hands to avoid getting sick. They even painted the inside of the team truck white to spot dust that might degrade bike performance. None of these changes alone would win a race. But collectively? Five years later, British cyclists dominated the Olympics. They won 60% of all gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games.
This is the insight that grabbed me by the throat: you don't need one massive transformation. You need a hundred tiny ones. You don't need willpower. You need a system that makes good choices inevitable.
Why "Systems" Works When "Habits" Doesn't
Here's what my ADHD brain hears when someone says "build a habit": You need to do the same thing, the same way, at the same time, every single day, forever, and if you miss once, you've failed.
Here's what my brain hears when someone says "build a system": You need to design an environment where the right choice is the easiest choice.
The difference is everything.
Clear writes, "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems." Goals are the what. Systems are the how. And if you're anything like me, the how is where everything falls apart because the how requires consistency, and consistency requires a brain that doesn't get distracted by a shiny thought mid-routine.
But systems? Systems account for distraction. Systems assume you'll forget. Systems don't rely on you remembering to be disciplined. They make discipline unnecessary.
The Four Laws (and Why They're Actually System Design)
Clear breaks down habit formation into four laws, but I'm going to reframe them the way I wish I'd read them the first time: as instructions for building a system, not willpower exercises for building habits.
Make It Obvious: Design your environment so good behaviors are visible and bad ones are hidden. This isn't about remembering to go for a walk. This is about laying out my shorts and sneakers the night before so when I get home from work, the path of least resistance is putting them on instead of changing into sweatpants. (Well, okay, still sweatpants in this Kansas winter, but you get the idea.) The decision is made before willpower ever enters the equation.
Make It Attractive: Pair something you need to do with something you want to do. I try to walk at least two miles a day, and what makes it work is knowing I get extended time with my audiobooks. Walking becomes the excuse to dive into whatever book has me hooked that week. The walk isn't interrupting my listening. It's enabling it.
Make It Easy: The Two-Minute Rule says to scale habits down so they take less than two minutes to start. But for me, "easy" also means removing the mental load of remembering. I take health supplements daily, and I used to forget for days at a time, or worse, forget whether I'd already taken them and risk doubling up. So I added an NFC tag to the cap of one of the bottles. When I touch my phone to it, it timestamps my calendar. Now I can see at a glance whether I've done it, which prevents both the extended forgetting and the anxious "did I already take this today?" loop. The system thinks for me so I don't have to.
And then there's the wallet and keys problem. Anyone with ADHD knows this one intimately. I used to lose my wallet and keys constantly. Multiple times a day. My wife and I went through a ridiculous amount of trial and error before we figured out the solution: a table right next to the front door where I can come in and dump everything out of my pockets. That's it. That's the whole system. I won't say I never lose my keys or wallet anymore, but it's gone from a multiple-times-daily crisis to maybe once a year over the last decade. The table doesn't require me to remember anything. It just has to be there, in the right spot, doing its job.
Make It Satisfying: Track your progress and give yourself immediate rewards. For me, it's that calendar timestamp for supplements. Seeing the record of consistency gives my brain a little dopamine hit. But it's also the dozens of other feedback systems I've built, both personal and professional, that let me see whether the system is working. The tracking isn't about shame when I miss. It's about data that helps me redesign when something isn't working.
The Identity Shift I Wasn't Expecting
The part of the book that haunts me in the best way is Clear's focus on identity-based habits. He writes, "Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become."
This flipped my entire approach. Instead of saying "I want to write more" (an outcome I've failed at repeatedly), I started saying "I am a writer" (an identity that pulls me forward). The shift is subtle but seismic. Outcomes feel far away and abstract. Identity feels present and concrete.
I'll be honest: this works brilliantly when you're in a season of life where you have the bandwidth to think about who you want to become. It's harder when you're in survival mode, juggling crises, or facing external barriers that have nothing to do with your habits. Clear's framework is powerful, but it's also quietly individualistic. It assumes you have the mental space and structural privilege to redesign your life one marginal gain at a time.
But for those of us who do have that space and just need a better blueprint? This book is the blueprint.
Why This Matters for the ADHD Brain (and Maybe Yours Too)
If you've ever felt like you're the only person who can't seem to stick with anything, Atomic Habits offers a way out that doesn't rely on shaming yourself into compliance. It's not about being better at discipline. It's about being better at design.
The aggregation of marginal gains isn't just for British cyclists. It's for those of us who need to trick our brains into doing the things we know we should do. It's for those of us who've tried and failed a hundred times and wondered if we're broken.
You're not broken. Your system is.
And systems, unlike habits, can be rebuilt.
Book: Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
Author: James Clear
Genre: Self-help, Psychology, Personal Development
Recommended By: Most recently, Grant Bickell
What system (not habit, system!) have you built that actually stuck? And what made the difference?
About Enthusiastic Generalist: This blog explores ideas across disciplines: science, leadership, faith, parenting, book reviews, personal essays, and the occasional deep dive into why some of us need to redesign our entire lives just to remember to drink water. It's an eclectic mix of whatever I find interesting about the world, filtered through the lens of someone who thinks better when things are systems instead of shoulds. If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more deep dives into the unexpected connections that make life worth paying attention to.
