How James Clear Accidentally Taught Me to Write 12 Books in 12 Months

How They Claimed It — Vol. 01

Hey Revenue Writers,

I’m doing a new feature this week.

I’ll be highlighting each week how an author has claimed their own category by writing a book on it.

Category Publishing is the act of writing a book to claim your category.

Some of these people didn’t intentionally do it to “Claim a Category” but that is exactly what they did.

I did a post last week highlighting this first one and people told me it was the best post they’ve ever seen me do… so here we go with the expanded version.

Let me know in the comments if you like this.

How They Claimed It — Vol. 01: Atomic Habits

James Clear didn’t invent the habits category.

BJ Fogg also wrote a book called Tiny Habits. There were dozens of habit books before Atomic Habits.

So why does James Clear own the category?

I’ll get to that.

But first let me tell you what his book did to me.

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4:30am. Every morning. For six months straight.

I had a goal.

12 books in 12 months.

I woke up every morning at 4:30. Wrote until 7:30. Three hours before my family woke up. Before the bus moved. Before the day had a chance to steal my focus.

It worked.

I published six books in six months.

Then I hit a wall.

I was exhausted. Burnt out. Running on empty. The goal that had driven me out of bed every morning suddenly felt like a weight around my neck.

So I gave up on it.

I stopped chasing 12 books in 12 months.

But here’s what I didn’t stop doing.

I kept waking up at 4:30. I kept writing for three hours. Not because of the goal. Just because that’s what I did in the morning now.

The goal was gone. The habit remained.

And at the end of that year I counted my books.

Twelve.

I hit the goal I gave up on because I kept the habit I built chasing it.

That was Atomic Habits working exactly as James Clear said it would.

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He said something in that book I’ve never forgotten.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

I had built a system without realizing it.

4:30am wasn’t a goal anymore.
It was just what I did.
It was who I was.

A writer who writes in the morning.

The goal of 12 books was irrelevant. The identity of morning writer was everything.

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Now here’s what James Clear did that nobody else did.

He didn’t just write about habits.

He named the category.

Atomic.

Not tiny.
Not small.
Not micro.

Atomic, implying explosive power from something microscopic.

That one word created a new mental category in the reader’s mind.

Then he framed it with a system anyone could remember.

The Four Laws of Behavior Change.

1. Make it obvious.

2. Make it attractive.

3. Make it easy.

4. Make it satisfying.

Four laws.
Any habit.
Any person.
Any life.

Then he wrote the book that claimed it.

Before Atomic Habits, James Clear had a popular blog and newsletter.
After Atomic Habits, James Clear owned the habits category.

25 million copies sold. Not because the ideas were new. Because the book made him the obvious choice.

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That’s what a category claiming book does.

It names something people already feel. It frames it so anyone can use it. It claims the territory permanently.

I felt the power of habits before I read Atomic Habits.

I just didn’t have the language for it.

James Clear gave me the language.

The book gave him the category.

That’s Category Publishing in action… that’s how he claimed it.

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Name your category.
Frame it with a system.
Claim it with a book.

The person who writes the book on a category gets remembered as the leader of it.

What category are you not claiming?

Chris
Founder of CategoryPublishers.com | The Mini Book Guy