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Summary of Atomic Habits

chrisbehan.ca

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Re: Summary of Atomic Habits

#51

Post by gcanyon »

azemetre wrote: post #2

Somewhat related but I find many nonfiction books could easily be condensed down an immense amount (talking 20 to 50% here). I don't know if it's me getting older or simply not wanting to put up with filler content anymore. A book that does this terribly is the "The Checklist Manifesto." ~250 pages of filler when the original article was 20 pages, the exact same information but distilled down to its essence: https://…

I think most self-development and business process books break down as roughly 10% actual content, 30% description to make sure you understand, and 60% descriptions of implementation to show how it works in different circumstances and help you internalize the main points.

Re: Summary of Atomic Habits

#52

Post by seanhunter »

azemetre wrote: post #2

Somewhat related but I find many nonfiction books could easily be condensed down an immense amount (talking 20 to 50% here). I don't know if it's me getting older or simply not wanting to put up with filler content anymore. A book that does this terribly is the "The Checklist Manifesto." ~250 pages of filler when the original article was 20 pages, the exact same information but distilled down to its essence: https://…

My favourite example of this is "Essentialism", which has so much filler that really (if fully following its own philosophy) could easily have been less than 5 pages in total.

Re: Summary of Atomic Habits

#53

Post by pramodbiligiri »

santa_boy wrote: post #24

I've been having major issues reading books (mainly non-fiction and strategy and personal development oriented) due to what I feel to be "filler content" as mentioned in the thread above. I'd be very interested in authors (I mean book authors) to provide direction on the mindset and shortcomings of the summary culture (e.g. Blinkist et-al) Surely, every 10th article on my FB feed is about reading books and there is p…

I tried Blinkist but gave up quickly. Their summaries are not high quality. I don't know who writes them. When I looked up summaries of books I'd already read (Deep Work, Startup of You and some others) they didn't match my sense of the book.

I wish someone would fill this niche. There's definitely a need for a good book summarization service. The service shouldn't try to replace the book-read. They only need to help you decide whether you should buy/borrow the book.

Re: Summary of Atomic Habits

#54

Post by digital_voodoo »

azemetre wrote: post #2

Somewhat related but I find many nonfiction books could easily be condensed down an immense amount (talking 20 to 50% here). I don't know if it's me getting older or simply not wanting to put up with filler content anymore. A book that does this terribly is the "The Checklist Manifesto." ~250 pages of filler when the original article was 20 pages, the exact same information but distilled down to its essence: https://…

I feel exactly the way you described. And considering that I'm on a self-improvement track and have a few books like this to read, adding the day to day life (job, family, other skills, etc) to the mix makes me wonder what's the best way to ingurgitate 250 pages or 11 hours-long audio. Especially when you quickly notice the (almost) same thing is being repeated over and over.

Summaries like this one are a godsend, I'll look for the same for other similar books.

Re: Summary of Atomic Habits

#55

Post by noobly »

azemetre wrote: post #2

Somewhat related but I find many nonfiction books could easily be condensed down an immense amount (talking 20 to 50% here). I don't know if it's me getting older or simply not wanting to put up with filler content anymore. A book that does this terribly is the "The Checklist Manifesto." ~250 pages of filler when the original article was 20 pages, the exact same information but distilled down to its essence: https://…

Fiction books could likely be compressed the same way, but what's the fun in that? Non-fiction books shouldn't necassarily aim for being as concise as possible, there's value in a more enduring lecture even if the core content is the same, imo.

For books like Atomic Habits in particular, I enjoyed the length, as it allowed me to read that book for a longer period of time, and practice what it was teaching (which lead to habit development). Had been a 50 word tweet, I would've never bothered - but it being interspersed with motivational tales and other filler, I found it far more effective in actually getting me practicing what it taught.

Re: Summary of Atomic Habits

#56

Post by andrei_says_ »

personjerry wrote: post #37

I'm not sure this is really a summary with this much content. Even the examples are left in. Here's the cheatsheet published with the book if you want an actually short read: https://s3.amazonaws.com/jamesclear/Atomic+Habits/Habits+Che...

I do, and thank you. The amount of fluff in pop-sci books is absolutely killing me.

Does anybody ever really read them cover to cover? Does anybody retain all these words?

For me the volume of filler in most books is overwhelming.

Re: Summary of Atomic Habits

#57

Post by jallbrit »

Excellent content, this stuff is life-changing. I haven't read Atomic Habits but it was on my reading list. It appears based on other comments that the full read is mostly unnecessary compared to a summary like this or the one at the end of the book.

However, it's hard to learn without spending time committing content to memory, which reading a book does well due to the apparent large amount of filler content. Perhaps re-reading a summary multiple times can have a similar effect.

Re: Summary of Atomic Habits

#58

Post by andrei_says_ »

noobly wrote: post #55
azemetre wrote: post #2

Somewhat related but I find many nonfiction books could easily be condensed down an immense amount (talking 20 to 50% here). I don't know if it's me getting older or simply not wanting to put up with filler content anymore. A book that does this terribly is the "The Checklist Manifesto." ~250 pages of filler when the original article was 20 pages, the exact same information but distilled down to its essence: https://…

Fiction books could likely be compressed the same way, but what's the fun in that? Non-fiction books shouldn't necassarily aim for being as concise as possible, there's value in a more enduring lecture even if the core content is the same, imo. For books like Atomic Habits in particular, I enjoyed the length, as it allowed me to read that book for a longer period of time, and practice what it was teaching (which lead…

Fiction books are something to savor. Nonfiction books are a necessary evil needed to get to an understanding.

I don’t need 30 made up fake sounding anecdotes to understand a principle. I can tell when someone is making shit up to prove a preconceived conclusion and to sound more convincing. Also I’m a slow reader and get annoyed easily.

I find interviews with writers pitching their book a good example of acceptable information density.

Re: Summary of Atomic Habits

#59

Post by jatins »

This is great, most self-help content is overly repetitive so definitely good to have summaries like this.

Tangential: Is the whole good habits thing not a bit overdone at this point? I meant "Practice maketh perfect" isn't a new message -- every new generation is taught the value of discipline in schools by teachers and sports coaches, Outliers popularised the 10000 hours rule more than a decade ago.

Why do then people still find books repeating obvious advice like this life changing when all it's doing is giving you momentarily high? I am people.

Re: Summary of Atomic Habits

#60

Post by imnitishng »

scaraffe wrote: post #49

what habit tracking application has worked for you?

I use TickTick to manage my daily tasks, it also comes with a habit tracker and you can even set reminders for your habits, for ex. Workout time, diet check, meditation time, everything is synced to cloud and the free tier has enough features for a normal user. Moreover the pomodoro timer and time tracking features it offers are a plus and it just gets so easy having all these features in a single application.
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