This book wasn’t what I hoped for. I had hoped for literally what’s in the title, lots of habits to implement to feel happier and healthier, and the tools to implement them. Instead, it’s more about how important it is to do healthy habits and how doing lots of one minute habits throughout the day can change your life. There’s lots of science and quoting other authors. Each chapter is very short.

It talks about the importance of reminders and repetition in implementing the habits but his main advice is to download his app. I did (it’s free and called VIVID) but I found it confusing and incomplete. Throughout the book, instead of giving lists of suggested habits, he says to scan the QR code into his app for the lists. There are no QR codes in my ARC, just empty boxes. If there are suggested lists in the app, they’re well hidden.

I strongly dislike books that don’t give you everything you need to implement them and instead direct you to their websites or apps. It’s not hard to put lists of healthy habits in a book that’s literally about healthy habits. There is an example day of habits at the end of the book, but most of them were not relevant to my life (there’s lots of bursts of running up the office stairs, for instance, and how many of us work in an office with stairs these days? Certainly not everyone, and not everyone is able to run stairs either.)

He did convince me that incorporating more short daily habits like two minutes of journaling or three minutes of meditation could bring about real changes. I already do lots of short physical habits, like squats while my coffee brews, one minute planks, and walking the dog twice a day. I try to do more though and had hoped the book would help me with that. He lists 6 stretches but otherwise he just directs you to the app, where I couldn’t find anything helpful.

This is a quick read if you’re new to the idea of habits (but who is?) and a good primer on why they matter and the science behind them. I felt that he has a very specific reader in mind though (white, male, Jewish, middle or upper class, without physical limitations or illness, devout, middle aged or younger, raised in stereotypical childhoods….) and that I was overhearing a conversation with someone else rather than feeling included or seen by the author. There were a lot of statements that did not seem as inclusive as they could have been or certainly showed his perspective, like when talking about how to talk to a child he uses he, saying we all learned to routinely brush our teeth because our mothers reminded us every day, saying that Jewish people value books more and win more Nobel prizes because it’s built into the culture, and saying that religious people are automatically generous in giving to charity, as a few examples.

All that said, it’s a good motivational book, especially if you’re not in the habit (ahem) of doing little daily practices for physical and mental health.

I read a digital ARC of this book via netgalley.