James Clear Quotes

Just start.

Start slow if you have to. Start small if you have to. Start privately if you have to.

Just start.

A critical quality to develop in life is the willingness to try. You simply must find enough confidence to give it a go. The human mind is fabulous at learning. You will get better at whatever you practice. But before you can develop the skill to succeed, you must find the courage to attempt.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

Two competing truths:

– The more prepared person usually wins.

– You get credit for action, not preparation.

Books for mindset.

Quiet time to think for strategy.

Conversations with successful peers for tactics.

Greatness takes guts. And often, it's the courage to eliminate the things you can do fairly well so you have the capacity to do one thing exceptionally well. Have the courage to take more off your plate.

When people say they don't want to change what they really mean is they don't have an incentive to change.

Change the incentives and the behavior follows suit.

The bad workouts are the most important ones. 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 15 minutes might not improve your performance, but it reaffirms your identity. It's not always about what happens during the workout. It's about becoming the type of person who doesn't miss workouts.

New goals don't deliver new results. New lifestyles do. And a lifestyle is a process, not an outcome. For this reason, all of your energy should go into building better habits, not chasing better results.

When making plans, think big.

When making progress, think small.

The connective tissue between your failures and your successes is the lessons you learn along the way.

It is only by going through your early attempts (usually failures in some form) that you accumulate the insights, skills, and understanding required for success.

Everything is a lesson. Learn enough lessons and the failures become useful.

The greatest rewards in life are often delayed. The financial benefits of work and investing. The emotional benefits of marriage and friendship. The psychological benefits of creating something that matters. Meaningful outcomes take a long time to grow and compound.

Furthermore, most pursuits involve other people: coworkers, spouses, children, peers. If you want your results to continue to grow, then you need relationships that last.

One of the essential ingredients for success is being pleasant and trustworthy because it allows whatever you are building—a business, a relationship, a project—to continue. Many relationships disintegrate before the rewards accumulate.

People who jump from project to project are always dividing their effort, and producing high quality work becomes difficult without intense effort.

Meanwhile, your average work day can be leisurely, yet also productive, if you return to the same project each day.

Do one thing well and watch it compound.

You can be relaxed and dedicated. Just because you worry more, doesn't mean you care more.

Some people need more focus. Others need to broaden their perspective.

Some people need to try harder. Others need to stress less.

Some people need to care more. Others need to let it go.

The secret is you are both people. The key is to know which one you are in this moment.