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My review of Atomic Habits — a.k.a fundamental dog training principles applied to human behaviour change
I’ve just finished reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits — an international bestseller that was recommended by many people when I recently asked about which behaviour change methods people had found to be effective in their own life. Among other things, I noticed that the most important concepts in the book are actually straight out of dog training manuals… applied to humans.
I spend a lot of time working with my two spaniels in dog sports like agility and detection dog practice so I think about canine behaviour almost as much as I do humans. That’s probably why James Clear’s internationally acclaimed book Atomic Habits sounded so remarkably familiar: many of the behaviour change mechanisms he describes in the book are also used in dog training, and based on fundamental psychology concepts like operant conditioning — just packaged in really nice a way that helps us apply them to change our own behaviour.
I’ve picked out some quotes from the book to show you how they are similar to dog training.
“Who’s a good boy?”
To start with, the book is structured around what the author calls four laws of behaviour change: make it obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying. In other words, if you…
