How to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones | James Clear

“Every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become. When you show up at the gym today, you are casting a vote for being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. When you write one sentence, you are casting a vote for being a writer. No, doing one push-up does not transform your body, but it does cast a vote for that identity. Eventually, as you build up that body of evidence, you start to take pride in being that way.”— James Clear

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Small actions accumulate as identity evidence

“Habits are like an ice cube in a cold room. You start heating the room up one degree, another degree, another degree. Ice cube still there. Eventually you get to this tipping point, this phase transition. The ice cube starts to melt. One degree shift, no different than the shifts that had come before, but you hit this transition and things change. You'll hear people say I've been running for a month, I can't see a change in my body. That work is not being wasted, it's just being stored.”— James Clear

Psychology & Behavior · Biology, Ecology & Systems

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Work is stored, not wasted, before breakthrough

“Positioning is critical. Any product, the way that it is positioned and packaged is probably 50% of its success. Atomic Habits has a chapter on deliberate practice. It could have been a book about deliberate practice where I talk about habits, but instead it's a book about habits where I talk about deliberate practice. The difference is enormous. If you don't know what deliberate practice is, it takes 30 seconds to explain. You don't get 30 seconds when somebody is thinking about buying a book.”— James Clear

Business & Entrepreneurship · Strategy & Decision Making · Creativity & Innovation

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Packaging determines 50% of product success

“There are 4 things you should do if you want to build a habit. Make it obvious. You want it to be easy to see, easy to notice, easy to get your attention. Make it attractive. Something that's appealing or fun to you. Make it easy. Simple, frictionless, easy to apply and install. Make it satisfying. The more enjoyable or satisfying a habit is, the more likely you are to stick with it in the future.”— James Clear

Psychology & Behavior

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Four laws: obvious, attractive, easy, satisfying

“I do a weekly review every Friday. I look at metrics, subscribers, revenue, expenses. It's a quick check-in. Most weeks nothing happens, but occasionally you see a trend that's been going down for weeks straight. It's a way to notice red flags. The more important one is an annual review. It's more about values. What do I say is important to me? Who am I trying to be as a person? Then I look at how I spent my last year and say, well, did that match up or not? I go through my calendar in detail.”— James Clear

Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making

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Weekly metrics, annual values-calendar alignment

“A habit must be established before it can be improved. You need to standardize before you optimize. The 2-minute rule says take whatever habit you're trying to focus on and scale it down to something that takes 2 minutes or less to do. One reader lost over 100 pounds by following a rule where he wasn't allowed to stay at the gym for longer than 5 minutes. He was mastering the art of showing up, becoming the type of person who went to the gym 4 days a week even if only for 5 minutes.”— James Clear

Psychology & Behavior · Operations & Execution

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Master showing up before optimizing performance

“A habit of reflection and review is probably the single most important habit. It is so unlikely that whatever you are working on now is the best use of your time. Sam Altman has some line where he says you should have a very high bar for working on anything other than thinking about what to work on, because that's going to be the biggest point of leverage is choosing a better thing to focus your attention on.”— James Clear

Strategy & Decision Making · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Can't outwork someone working on better thing

“The explore-exploit tradeoff. Early in the process you need to explore more and experiment more, and then eventually you start to discover, okay, of the 10 things I've tried, these are the 2 that work best. Now you need to double down on what's working and start exploiting. We underestimate when something's working, we underestimate how long it can go for and how powerful it can be. Often we change habits that are working or we tinker with things that are working.”— James Clear

Strategy & Decision Making · Creativity & Innovation

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Explore, double down, exploit, repeat when stalls

“How can I create the conditions for success? How can I design an environment where my desired change is easy? A lot of surface-level conversations about habits are about discipline and willpower. But I talked to one guy who played for the Philadelphia Eagles, and he said during my career, everything was designed for us. Professional trainers, nutritionists, food prepared, workouts designed, coaches on us every day. After I retired, that was the hardest time for me to stick to it.”— James Clear

Psychology & Behavior · Operations & Execution

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Discipline myth: environment matters more than willpower

“I take my phone and leave it in another room until lunch each day. That gives me from 9 to noon where I can work on my own agenda and not respond to everybody else's agenda. If I have my phone next to me, I'll check it every 3 minutes just because it's there. But I put it in a different room. It's only like 30 seconds away, but I never go get it. So many behaviors are like that. Did you want it or not? In one sense you wanted it so bad you would check it every 3 minutes when it was next to you.”— James Clear

Psychology & Behavior · Operations & Execution

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30 seconds of friction eliminates compulsion

“Small changes can really matter, but only if they're oriented in the right way. Are your small actions accumulating or are they evaporating? Are you doing small things each day that are oriented toward a larger outcome, or are you doing small things each day that are just kind of like one-offs and don't really add up? The two time frames that matter most in life are 10 years and 1 hour. Don't let a day pass without doing something that will benefit you in a decade.”— James Clear

Strategy & Decision Making · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Accumulating actions compound; one-offs evaporate

“Just because improvements aren't noticeable doesn't mean improvement isn't happening. The tricky part is if something's not working, it also takes a while. How do you know when you need to be patient and how do you know when you need to try something different? Try, try, try differently. You need to keep trying different lines of attack. It's not 10,000 attempts, it's 10,000 iterations. An iteration is a different way of doing it.”— James Clear

Creativity & Innovation · Strategy & Decision Making

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Iterations, not just attempts; find what comes easy

“Any time you do something new, by definition, you are doing something you're unqualified for. If you already have some qualification or skill set or experience, then it's not new. It's just something you're repeating. You have to realize that there is some level of uncertainty that comes with anything new. The second thing is you don't need to figure it all out today. A-B-Z framework: A is an honest assessment of your current situation. Z is where you ultimately want to end up.”— James Clear

Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior

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Know current, goal, next step; not entire path

“Positive mental attitude. In any scenario, you try to have a positive outlook regardless of the current circumstances. One way to practice it is when you run up against something difficult, you try to rehearse it visually and emphasize the good portions of what could happen. My son was having tough drop-offs at preschool. On the third day, before we went, I asked him: You like your teachers, right? What did you do yesterday with the crayons? You have snack time and lunch, those are good things.”— James Clear

Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management

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Emphasize good details before hard moments

“Walk into the rooms where you spend most of your time each day and ask yourself: what is this space designed to encourage? What behaviors are obvious here? What behaviors are easy here? If you put the healthy food out on the counter and it's visible, you're much more likely to eat it. I used to buy apples and put them in the crisper in the bottom of the fridge, and I would forget they were there. Instead, I bought a display bowl and put them on the counter, just visible.”— James Clear

Psychology & Behavior · Operations & Execution

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Visibility drives action; friction prevents it

“Good book titles usually have 3 or 4 qualities. First, they address a timeless or enduring desire. Second, they tell you what the book is actually about. Third, they are an unmistakable or ownable phrase. Atomic Habits: before the book came out, you would not describe a habit as atomic. You might say it was little or small or tiny, but you wouldn't say atomic. It's a weird way to describe a small habit, but that's good because you can own that phrase.”— James Clear

Business & Entrepreneurship · Creativity & Innovation

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Four elements: timeless desire, clarity, ownable, contrast

“The goal is not to read a book. The goal is to become a reader. The goal is not to run a marathon, it's to become a runner. The goal is not to do some silent meditation retreats, to become a meditator. It's to install and adopt this identity that this is the type of person that I am. Behavior and belief is like a two-way street. What you believe will influence the actions that you take, but the actions that you take can also influence what you believe about yourself.”— James Clear

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Outcomes vs identity: be, not just do

“The tighter you cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it. You simultaneously need two things. You need to be casting votes for the type of person you wish to become, building up evidence of that identity. But you also need to realize that your identity does not have to be fixed. Identity is an interesting word because there are pieces you can't change: I am a male, a father, tall. But there are other aspects that can be adjusted and refined. I'm a writer.”— James Clear

Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Identity drives habits but can trap growth

“You need something frictionless to fill that gap. What do you do when you have nothing to do? Most people pull out their phone. Every single person waiting for a table at the restaurant pulled their phone out. I moved Audible to the home screen and just said I'll listen to an audiobook when I'm usually checking social media. I've deleted all social media apps off my phone for the last year. If I really want to use them, I can just download them and log in. But it's not obvious anymore.”— James Clear

Psychology & Behavior · Operations & Execution

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Replace default action with frictionless alternative

“Intensity makes for a good story. Consistency makes progress. It's not about I did a silent meditation for a week. It's I have a meditation practice. I do it for 5 minutes each morning. That's when it's part of your identity. The great thing is that if you do a good job with the consistency, it develops your capacity to manage the intensity. Consistency enlarges ability.”— James Clear

Psychology & Behavior · Operations & Execution

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Consistency enlarges ability for intensity