Top 200 James Clear Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Finally, reflection and review offers an ideal time to revisit one of the most important aspects of behavior change: identity.”

— James Clear

102. “Periodic reflection and review are like viewing yourself in the mirror from a conversational distance. You can see the important changes you should make without losing sight of the bigger picture. You want to view the entire mountain range, not obsess over each peak and valley.”

— James Clear

103. “Environment design allows you to take back control and become the architect of your life.”

— James Clear

104. “I know of executives and investors who keep a “decision journal” in which they record the major decisions they make each week, why they made them, and what they expect the outcome to be. They review their choices at the end of each month or year to see where they were correct and where they went wrong.”

— James Clear

105. “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. As Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.”

— James Clear

106. “Unfortunately, the slow pace of transformation also makes it easy to let a bad habit slide.”

— James Clear

107. “When you finally break through the Plateau of Latent Potential, people will call it an overnight success. The outside world only sees the most dramatic event rather than all that preceded it. But you know that it’s the work you did long ago – when it seemed that you weren’t making any progress – that makes the jump today possible.”

— James Clear

108. “You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.”

— James Clear

109. “One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking.”

— James Clear

110. “When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing.”

— James Clear

111. “It’s hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior. You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven’t changed who you are.”

— James Clear

112. “This is why remaining part of a group after achieving a goal is crucial to maintaining your habits. It’s friendship and community that embed a new identity and help behaviors last over the long run.”

— James Clear

113. “When the consequences are severe, people learn quickly.”

— James Clear

114. “What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are – either consciously or nonconsciously.”

— James Clear

115. “The work that hurts you less than it hurts others is the work you were made to do.”

— James Clear

116. “The human body has about eleven million sensory receptors.7 Approximately ten million of those are dedicated to sight. Some experts estimate that half of the brain’s resources are used on vision.8 Given that we are more dependent on vision than on any other sense, it should come as no surprise that visual cues are the greatest catalyst of our behavior.”

— James Clear

117. “We are continually undergoing microevolutions of the self.”

— James Clear

118. “What are the core values that drive my life and work? How am I living and working with integrity right now? How can I set a higher standard in the future?”

— James Clear

119. “But perhaps the best way to measure your progress is with a habit tracker.”

— James Clear

120. “WHY IS IT so easy to repeat bad habits and so hard to form good ones?”

— James Clear

121. “Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.”

— James Clear

122. “Problem phase 1. Cue: You are answering emails. 2. Craving: You begin to feel stressed and overwhelmed by work. You want to feel in control. Solution phase 3. Response: You bite your nails. 4. Reward: You satisfy your craving to reduce stress. Biting your nails becomes associated with answering email.”

— James Clear

123. “Research has shown that once a person believes in a particular aspect of their identity, they are more likely to act in alignment with that belief.”

— James Clear

124. “Your culture sets your expectation for what is “normal.” Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself.”

— James Clear

125. “Desire is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be in the future.”

— James Clear

126. “If we have hope, we have a reason to take action.”

— James Clear

127. “In the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh, “The score takes care of itself.” The same is true for other areas of life. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.”

— James Clear

128. “It is human nature to follow the Law of Least Effort, which states that when deciding between two similar options, people will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.2 fn1.”

— James Clear

129. “Here’s the powerful part: there are many different ways to address the same underlying motive. One person might learn to reduce stress by smoking a cigarette. Another person learns to ease their anxiety by going for a run. Your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face; they are just the methods you learned to use. Once you associate a solution with the problem you need to solve, you keep coming back to it.”

— James Clear

130. “The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you.”

— James Clear

131. “Your culture sets your expectation for what is “normal.”

— James Clear

132. “The goal in any sport is to finish with the best score, but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard. The only way to actually win is to get better each day. In the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh, “The score takes care of itself.” The same is true for other areas of life. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.”

— James Clear

133. “Most of us are experts at avoiding criticism. It doesn’t feel good to fail or to be judged publicly, so we tend to avoid situations where that might happen. And that’s the biggest reason why you slip into motion rather than taking action: you want to delay failure.”

— James Clear

134. “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

135. “No behavior happens in isolation.”

— James Clear

136. “The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside of habits is that you get used to doing things a certain way and stop paying attention to little errors. You assume you’re getting better because you’re gaining experience. In reality, you are merely reinforcing your current habits – not improving them. In fact, some research has shown that once a skill has been mastered there is usually a slight decline in performance over time.”

— James Clear

137. “Most people live in a world others have created for them. But you can alter the spaces where you live and work to increase your exposure to positive cues and reduce your exposure to negative ones. Environment design allows you to take back control and become the architect of your life. Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it.”

— James Clear

138. “It is not always obvious when and where to take action. Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.”

— James Clear

139. “Every time you choose to perform a bad habit, it’s a vote for that identity. The good news is that you don’t need to be perfect. In any election, there are going to be votes for both sides. You don’t need a unanimous vote to win an election; you just need a majority. It doesn’t matter if you cast a few votes for a bad behavior or an unproductive habit. Your goal is simply to win the majority of the time.”

— James Clear

140. “For most of my young life, being an athlete was a major part of my identity. After my baseball career ended, I struggled to find myself. When you spend your whole life defining yourself in one way and that disappears, who are you now?”

— James Clear

141. “There will never be a perfect time to do something that stretches you. If you were ready for it, it wouldn’t be growth.”

— James Clear

142. “You may not be able to automate the whole process, but you can make the first action mindless. Make it easy to start and the rest will follow.”

— James Clear

143. “Decisive moments set the options available to your future self. For instance, walking into a restaurant is a decisive moment because it determines what you’ll be eating for lunch.”

— James Clear

144. “In the beginning, repeating a habit is essential to build up evidence of your desired identity. As you latch on to that new identity, however, those same beliefs can hold you back from the next level of growth. When working against you, your identity creates a kind of “pride” that encourages you to deny your weak spots and prevents you from truly growing. This is one of the greatest downsides of building habits.”

— James Clear

145. “Once your pride gets involved, you’ll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits.”

— James Clear

146. “One of the most common questions I hear is, “How long does it take to build a new habit?” But what people really should be asking is, “How many does it take to form a new habit?” That is, how many repetitions are required to make a habit automatic?”

— James Clear

147. “The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.”

— James Clear

148. “People get so caught up in the fact that they have limits that they rarely exert the effort required to get close to them.”

— James Clear

149. “You need to know who you want to be.”

— James Clear

150. “The backbone of this book is my four-step model of habits – cue, craving, response, and reward – and the four laws of behavior change that evolve out of these steps.”

— James Clear