James Clear Quotes

“A good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses.”

“A habit is a routine or behavior that is performed regularly — and, in many cases, automatically.”

“A habit must be established before it can be improved.”

“A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.”

“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots entrench themselves and branches grow. The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.”

“As Voltaire once wrote: 'The best is the enemy of the good'.”

“Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it.”

“Before we can effectively build new habits, we need to get a handle on our current ones.”

“Being specific about what you want and how you will achieve it helps you say no to things that derail progress, distract your attention, and pull you off course.”

“Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.”

“Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?

Habits that reinforce your desired identity are usually good. Habits that conflict with your desired identity are usually bad.”

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”

“Genes do not determine your destiny. They determine your areas of opportunity.”

“Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run.”

“Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.”

“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.”

“Goals create an 'either-or' conflict: either you achieve your goal and are successful or you fail and you are a disappointment. You mentally box yourself into a narrow version of happiness. This is misguided. It is unlikely that your actual path through life will match the exact journey you had in mind when you set out. It makes no sense to restrict your satisfaction to one scenario when there are many paths to success.”

“Good habits can make rational sense, but if they conflict with your identity, you will fail to put them into action.”

“Habits are like the atoms of our lives. Each one is a fundamental unit that contributes to your overall improvement.”

“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.”

“Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks.”

“I began to realize that my results had very little to do with the goals I set and nearly everything to do with the systems I followed.”

“If you can't learn the basic skill of showing up, then you have little hope of mastering the fine details.”

“If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still succeed?”

“If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.”

“Improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable—sometimes it isn’t even noticeable—but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. Here’s how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.”

“In fact, the tendency for one purchase to lead to another one has a name: the Diderot Effect. The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption.”

“In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.”

“Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. You have to standardize before you can optimize.”

“It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change: the fastest way to lose weight, the best program to build muscle, the perfect idea for a side hustle. We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action.”