How to Build Atomic Habits As A College Student (11 Crucial Tips)

Did you know that it can take anywhere from 18-254 days to properly form an atomic habit?

In a 2009 study done by researchers at the University College London, researchers tracked 96 volunteers for 12 weeks to see how long it took for a certain behavior to become automatic.

Their conclusion?

The amount of time that it takes to form a habit can vary immensely depending on both the habit and the individual.

The average time to develop a fully automatic habit came down to 66 days.

What’s that have to do with Atomic Habits by James Clear?

With James Clear’s formula, you’ll discover the most scientifically efficient way to build the habits you want, while eliminating the rest.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links for the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. Purchasing the book via the Amazon Affiliate Link will contribute to supporting Chris Dismissed. Thank you!

Should I Read Atomic Habits?

You should 100% read Atomic Habits by James Clear if you are looking to build positive habits and crush negative habits with a proven framework.

Chris Dismissed Rating: (8.5/10)

• Pros
  • Gives simple framework for making and breaking habits.
  • Displays all of the basics of habit building in a clear and concise way.
  • Includes plenty of templates and actionables.
  • Writes its own summary at the end of each chapter.
• Cons
  • Doesn’t have its own original research.
  • Is not extensive with examples and applications.

Conclusion: Read Atomic Habits if you’re looking to change the building blocks of your life. Don’t read it if you’re completely satisfied with your current life status.

4 Steps to Atomic Habit Success

Without boring you with a chapter-by-chapter summary, here’s what you need to know about Atomic Habits.

There are four steps to making/breaking a habit:

1. Cue-Make it obvious/invisible
2. Craving-Make it attractive/unattractive
3. Response-Make it easy/difficult
4. Reward-Make it satisfying/unsatisfying

You can change your bad habits into good habits by developing a 4-step framework for encoding habits.

However, this framework doesn’t work by itself, you have to put work into developing the habits.

If you’re looking to learn more about this framework check out James Clear’s blog post on building new habits.

Ready to build your Atomic habits?

Here are the top 11 tips for building and using Atomic Habits as a college student.

Related: 5 Solid Steps To Building Unbreakable Habits

1. Break Down 3 of Your Current Bad Habits

Take 10 minutes and write down the top 3 worst habits that you currently exhibit.

For me the list went:

1. Hit the snooze button
2. Check social media before getting out of bed
3. Eat a large meal at lunch that physically debilitates me from getting any more work done during the rest of the day

What are your 3 worst habits?

Write them down then analyze the actions that you take directly before and after those habits.

Doing this will help you develop acute awareness of your habits which is the first step to changing those habits.

2. Clean Your Dang Dorm Room

As the highly-controversial Professor Jordan Peterson puts it, “If you can’t even clean up your room, who the hell are you to give advice to the world?”

If you’re anything like me you know how dirty your room can get.

Laundry starts piling up, old class notes from 3 semesters ago lie unused, and disposable water bottles lie everywhere on your work space.

Yikes.

Clean your physical environment and set it in order. You can think of this as wiping your mental and physical slate clean.

After you clean your room, you’ll have an awesome canvas for building your ideal habits.

3. Make Your New Atomic Habits Tempting

In chapter 8 of Atomic Habits, James Clear states that building habits is largely dependent on a strong dopamine feedback loop.

This means that you only take action on a habit if you believe that it will be rewarding.

So how do you hack your brain into doing what you want it to?

You make the habit you’re trying to achieve super tempting.

For me, this meant pairing certain habits with my favorite rewards.

As a music-lover I only let myself listen to my favorite music after I completed 1 successful pomodoro of work for the day.

How will you make your new habit more tempting?

4. Change Your Social Environment

The culture and the people around us play a large role in the attractiveness of certain habits.

This means that it’s extremely important to deliberately choose your inner circle of friends and mentors.

Furthermore, it’s crucial to surround yourself with people that you want to become like.

I learned the hard way that if you hang out with people that are the opposite of what you want to become, you’ll find it excruciatingly difficult to change.

Change is hard enough on its own, but when you spend time with people who resist your change, you’re basically climbing Mt. Everest with a 200 lb backpack weighing you down.

Find your positive peer group, jive with your clique, and then build your atomic habits.

Related: 9 Things I’ve Learned Quitting Social Media As A College Student

5. Make Your Bad Habits Uglier

In addition to making your positive habits alluring, you want to make your bad habits extra repulsing.

Pair your bad habits with tasks and actions that make you never want to do them again.

One way to start this process is to detach a bad habit with its current reward.

If you’re having trouble spending too much time on social media then delete all of the social media apps on your phone and only use them on another device.

Find the triggers that bring you into the bad habits in the first place.

Is it the location of your phone? Or perhaps it’s the extra cup of coffee in the morning that causes you to crash in the late afternoon.

Identify the triggers to your bad habits and make them as ugly as possible.

6. Start With Micro-Habits (Atomic Habits)

Don’t try to start a reading habit by reading an hour a day, it flat out isn’t going to happen.

It’s not that you’re incapable of reading or an hour a day, it’s that you won’t be able to stick to a new habit consistently if the habit is too difficult.

Instead, start with 2 minutes or even 1 minute.

Start by reading one page, one paragraph, one sentence.

The most you can break down your ideal habits into their atomically sized counterparts, the easier it will be for you to stick to them.

You should also remember to leverage the power of the 1% rule.

If you get 1% better every single day for a year, you’ll be over 37x better by the end of the year.

7. Set Up Your Habit Tracker

You need to create a system that supports your growth as you build your atomic habits.

While you don’t need to track every single day that you complete a given habit, (I certainly don’t), you want to make sure you schedule your habits as tasks so you actually complete them.

Personally I like to use a combination of Notion, a bullet journal/full focus planner, as a well as a calendar.

Test and experiment with which habit trackers best suit you and use them consistently.

8. Learn the Power of Your Roommate

There is power in direct accountability, especially from someone you see every day.

I had an incredible roommate who would push me and inspire me to become a better student day and night through his continual dedication to his craft.

Ask your roommate or close friend if they can keep you accountable so both of you can build better habits.

As I mentioned in point 4, you are who you surround yourself with.

Activate the power of those around you to keep yourself locked in to your new habits.

Related: Quarantine Tips for College Students (How to Make the Most of 2021)

9. Choose Wisely Young Padawan

When choosing a new habit to pursue, you don’t want to grab any random habit off the shelf.

Don’t take cold showers because it’s the hip thing to do.

Stop reading a book a week because a random Youtube video (or blog post) told you to.

Instead take the time to connect with your goal, your why, and your values, then choose habits that align with those goals.

Picture yourself 3-5 years down the line, what does your life look like? What are the things that you do every day? What do your habits look like?

Then start building them today.

10. Commit For 18-254 Days

Building a habit takes a certain degree of commitment (66 days on average).

Different habits vary with difficulty, the amount of time it takes to make them depends on the difficulty and the intensity.

Mentally prepare yourself for commitment to a habit. Rest assured, you can change and shift your habits whenever necessary.

However, the most consistent you are with your habits, the more they will stick.

Optimize the cue, craving, response, and reward of each new habit you build over the time of your habit-building process.

Most importantly: Start small (point 6).

11. Start With One Then Build Up

Once you start thinking about building new habits and planning for your future you may find yourself getting sucked into a personal development black hole.

You may attempt to change way too many habits at once to turn your life around faster.

If this sounds like you, take a step back.

You need to work smarter, not harder when building habits.

Leverage the power of keystone habits to build habit chains.

Choose one habit that will move the needle on all the other aspects of your life. That way you can accomplish more while changing less.

Related: How to Set Goals That You’ll Stick To (Step-by-Step Guide)

How to Use Atomic Habits As A College Student

As a student and a young adult, I’ve found that building proper habits that serve me has been one of the most valuable investments of my time and energy.

Doing so has allowed me (and can allow you) to:

• Pay better attention and retain more information during lectures.
• Set up a framework for a proper exploration of different subject matters.
• Gain the momentum and consistency needed to start a business/side-hustle
• Puts the power of shaping my own destiny back into my hands.
• Develop learning new skills in the context of university and my career.
• Spend less time in infinity pools (social media) and more time deliberately living.

Want to get started? Purchase a copy of Atomic Habits today!

Thanks again for reading!

Class Dismissed,

Chris Chan