Top 200 James Clear Quotes (2024 Update)

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

— James Clear

2. “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.”

— James Clear

3. “Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine.”

— James Clear

4. “You get what you repeat.”

— James Clear

5. “Success is the product of daily habits – not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”

— James Clear

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

— James Clear

7. “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress. A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems.”

— James Clear

8. “Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It’s the ability to keep going when work isn’t exciting that makes the difference.”

— James Clear

9. “The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.”

— James Clear

10. “The process of behavior change always starts with awareness. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them.”

— James Clear

11. “The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do.”

— James Clear

12. “This is the meaning of the phrase atomic habits – a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do, but also the source of incredible power; a component of the system of compound growth.”

— James Clear

13. “A genius is not born, but is educated and trained.”

— James Clear

14. “Habits Are Compound Interest of Self Improvement.”

— James Clear

15. “The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.”

— James Clear

16. “What comes naturally to me? For just a moment, ignore what you have been taught. Ignore what society has told you. Ignore what others expect of you. Look inside yourself and ask, “What feels natural to me? When have I felt alive? When have I felt like the real me?” No internal judgments or people-pleasing. No second-guessing or self-criticism. Just feelings of engagement and enjoyment. Whenever you feel authentic and genuine, you are headed in the right direction.”

— James Clear

17. “The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.”

— James Clear

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

— James Clear

19. “Your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity.”

— James Clear

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

— James Clear

21. “Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits.”

— James Clear

22. “With outcome-based habits, the focus is on what you want to achieve. With identity-based habits, the focus is on who you wish to become.”

— James Clear

23. “The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty.”

— James Clear

24. “If you want to predict where you’ll end up in life, all you have to do is follow the curve of tiny gains or tiny losses, and see how your daily choices will compound ten or twenty years down the line. Are you spending less than you earn each month? Are you making it into the gym each week? Are you reading books and learning something new each day? Tiny battles like these are the ones that will define your future self.”

— James Clear

25. “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.”

— James Clear

26. “Every Olympian wants to win a gold medal. Every candidate wants to get the job. And if successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers.”

— James Clear

27. “Your actions reveal how badly you want something. If you keep saying something is a priority but you never act on it, then you don’t really want it. It’s time to have an honest conversation with yourself. Your actions reveal your true motivations.”

— James Clear

28. “When you make your bed each day, you embody the identity of an organized person. When you write each day, you embody the identity of a creative person. When you train each day, you embody the identity of an athletic person.”

— James Clear

29. “Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way. Professionals know what is important to them and work toward it with purpose; amateurs get pulled off course by the urgencies of life.”

— James Clear

30. “Motivation is overrated, environment often matters more.”

— James Clear

31. “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.”

— James Clear

32. “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Measurement is only useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you. Each number is simply one piece of feedback in the overall system.”

— James Clear

33. “Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You’ll rise together.”

— James Clear

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

— James Clear

35. “Put another way, the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.”

— James Clear

36. “Habits are mental shortcuts learned from experience. In a sense, a habit is just a memory of the steps you previously followed to solve a problem in the past.”

— James Clear

37. “What do you want to stand for? What are your principles and values? Who do you wish to become?”

— James Clear

38. “True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.”

— James Clear

39. “A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems.”

— James Clear

40. “Redesign your life so the actions that matter most are also the actions that are easiest to do.”

— James Clear

41. “The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements.”

— James Clear

42. “When you lose track of time, you are either living your best life or wasting it.”

— James Clear

43. “The normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual. Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves.”

— James Clear

44. “Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.”

— James Clear

45. “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.”

— James Clear

46. “Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Find a way to get started in less than two minutes.”

— James Clear

47. “If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection. You don’t need to map out every feature of a new habit. You just need to practice it. This is the first takeaway of the 3rd Law: you just need to get your reps in.”

— James Clear

48. “At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over.”

— James Clear

49. “Reflection and review enables the long-term improvement of all habits because it makes you aware of your mistakes and helps you consider possible paths for improvement. Without reflection, we can make excuses, create rationalizations, and lie to ourselves. We have no process for determining whether we are performing better or worse compared to yesterday.”

— James Clear

50. “The score always takes care of itself.”

— James Clear