Top 200 James Clear Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “I have a friend who lost over 100 pounds by asking herself, “What would a healthy person do?” All day long, she would use this question as a guide. Would a healthy person walk or take a cab? Would a healthy person order a burrito or a salad? She figured if she acted like a healthy person long enough, eventually she would become that person. She was right.”

— James Clear

152. “No matter how you use this strategy, the secret to creating a successful habit stack is selecting the right cue to kick things off. Unlike an implementation intention, which specifically states the time and location for a given behavior, habit stacking implicitly has the time and location built into it.”

— James Clear

153. “Extroversion, for instance, can be tracked from birth. If scientists play a loud noise in the nursing ward, some babies turn toward it while others turn away. When the researchers tracked these children through life, they found that the babies who turned toward the noise were more likely to grow up to be extroverts. Those who turned away were more likely to become introverts.”

— James Clear

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

— James Clear

155. “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. For this reason, a small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in.”

— James Clear

156. “If you show up at the gym five days in a row – even if it’s just for two minutes – you are casting votes for your new identity. You’re not worried about getting in shape. You’re focused on becoming the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts. You’re taking the smallest action that confirms the type of person you want to be.”

— James Clear

157. “Furthermore, it’s not always about what happens during the workout. It’s about being the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts. It’s easy to train when you feel good, but it’s crucial to show up when you don’t feel like it – even if you do less than you hope. Going to the gym for five minutes may not improve your performance, but it reaffirms your identity.”

— James Clear

158. “Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.”

— James Clear

159. “Life feels reactive, but it is actually predictive. All day long, you are making your best guess of how to act given what you’ve just seen and what has worked for you in the past.”

— James Clear

160. “If you find yourself struggling to build a good habit or break a bad one, it is not because you have lost your ability to improve. It is often because you have not yet crossed what James calls, “Plateau of Latent Potential.” When you finally break through the Plateau of Latent Potential, people will call it an overnight success.”

— James Clear

161. “There wasn’t one defining moment on my journey from medically induced coma to Academic All-American; there were many. It was a gradual evolution, a long series of small wins and tiny breakthroughs. The only way I made progress – the only choice I had – was to start small.”

— James Clear

162. “Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it. In fact, the people who don’t have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom.”

— James Clear

163. “No behavior happens in isolation.”

— James Clear

164. “Outrage compounds. Riots, protests, and mass movements are rarely the result of a single event. Instead, a long series of microaggressions and daily aggravations slowly multiply until one event tips the scales and outrage spreads like wildfire.”

— James Clear

165. “First, decide who you want to be. This holds at any level – as an individual, as a team, as a community, as a nation. What do you want to stand for? What are your principles and values? Who do you wish to become?”

— James Clear

166. “This process, known as Pointing-and-Calling, is a safety system designed to reduce mistakes. It seems silly, but it works incredibly well. Pointing-and-Calling reduces errors by up to 85 percent and cuts accidents by 30 percent. The MTA subway system in New York City adopted a modified version that is “point-only,” and “within two years of implementation, incidents of incorrectly berthed subways fell 57 percent.”

— James Clear

167. “If someone has the courage to admit they were wrong, you should have the grace to give them credit for admitting it. Rubbing it in encourages them to never admit being wrong again.”

— James Clear

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

— James Clear

169. “Now for the interesting question: If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still succeed? For example, if you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal to win a championship and focused only on what your team does at practice each day, would you still get results? I think you would.”

— James Clear

170. “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

171. “You don’t have to build the habits everyone tells you to build. Choose the habit that best suits you, not the one that is most popular.”

— James Clear

172. “People think I work hard but I’m actually really lazy. I’m just proactively lazy. It gives you so much time back.”

— James Clear

173. “We tend to adopt habits that are praised and approved of by our culture because we have a strong desire to fit in and belong to the tribe.”

— James Clear

174. “Our genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it. They tell us what to work hard on.”

— James Clear

175. “The human brain evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards.”

— James Clear

176. “Once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry, unjust, or selfish, you see those kind of people everywhere.”

— James Clear

177. “Over the long run, however, the real reason you fail to stick with habits is that your self-image gets in the way. This is why you can’t get too attached to one version of your identity. Progress requires unlearning. Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.”

— James Clear

178. “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

179. “Whenever you’re looking to improve, you can rotate through the Four Laws of Behavior Change until you find the next bottleneck. Make it obvious. Make it attractive. Make it easy. Make it satisfying. Round and round. Always looking for the next way to get 1 percent better.”

— James Clear

180. “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

181. “Sometimes a habit will be hard to remember and you’ll need to make it obvious. Other times you won’t feel like starting and you’ll need to make it attractive. In many cases, you may find that a habit will be too difficult and you’ll need to make it easy. And sometimes, you won’t feel like sticking with it and you’ll need to make it satisfying.”

— James Clear

182. “The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward.”

— James Clear

183. “If motion doesn’t lead to results, why do we do it? Sometimes we do it because we actually need to plan or learn more. But more often than not, we do it because motion allows us to feel like we’re making progress without running the risk of failure.”

— James Clear

184. “We rarely think about change this way because everyone is consumed by the end goal. But one push-up is better than not exercising. One minute of guitar practice is better than none at all. One minute of reading is better than never picking up a book. It’s better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all.”

— James Clear

185. “Whenever you feel authentic and genuine, you are headed in the right direction.”

— James Clear

186. “Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it. In fact, the people who don’t have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom. Without good financial habits, you will always be struggling for the next dollar. Without good health habits, you will always seem to be short on energy. Without good learning habits, you will always feel like you’re behind the curve.”

— James Clear

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

— James Clear

188. “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

189. “One of my readers and his wife used a similar setup. They wanted to stop eating out so much and start cooking together more. They labeled their savings account “Trip to Europe.” Whenever they skipped going out to eat, they transferred $50 into the account. At the end of the year, they put the money toward the vacation.”

— James Clear

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

— James Clear

191. “As behavioral scientist Jason Hreha writes, “Habits are, simply, reliable solutions to recurring problems in our environment.”

— James Clear

192. “Your brain has far more neural circuitry allocated for wanting rewards than for liking them.”

— James Clear

193. “Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.”

— James Clear

194. “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

195. “Stop thinking about your environment as filled with objects. Start thinking about it as filled with relationships. Think in terms of how you interact with the spaces around you. For one person, her couch is the place where she reads for an hour each night. For someone else, the couch is where he watches television and eats a bowl of ice cream after work. Different people can have different memories – and thus different habits – associated with the same place.”

— James Clear

196. “Yes, a habit can be completed in just a few seconds, but it can also shape the actions that you take for minutes or hours afterward. Habits are like the entrance ramp to a highway. They lead you down a path and, before you know it, you’re speeding toward the next behavior. It seems to be easier to continue what you are already doing than to start doing something different. You sit through a bad movie for two hours. You keep snacking even when you’re already full.”

— James Clear

197. “Our genes do not eliminate the need for hard work. They clarify it.”

— James Clear

198. “You do it because it’s who you are and it feels good to be you. The more a habit becomes part of your life, the less you need outside encouragement to follow through. Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.”

— James Clear

199. “Becoming the type of person you want to become – someone who lives by a stronger standard, someone who believes in themselves, someone who can be counted on by the people that matter to them – is about the daily process you follow and not the ultimate product you achieve.”

— James Clear

200. “We are limited by where our habits lead us. This is why mastering the decisive moments throughout your day is so important. Each day is made up of many moments, but it is really a few habitual choices that determine the path you take. These little choices stack up, each one setting the trajectory for how you spend the next chunk of time. Habits are the entry point, not the end point. They are the cab, not the gym.”

— James Clear