James Clear writes about habits and health on his website JamesClear.com. He spends his time writing articles, doing travel photography to document habits in different cultures, and weightlifting. He discusses focusing on systems rather than goals, as goals can be unpredictable but systems of small, consistent improvements each day will lead to significant results over time. The key is maintaining an average speed through consistency rather than trying to work at a maximum speed which is unsustainable. Micro-goals and a focus on continuous self-improvement are effective approaches.

1. ARI: My guest now is James Clear, and he writes about changing habits and health at JamesClear.com.
James, thank you so much for talking to me.
JAMES: Hey, thanks so much for having me. It’s great to be here.
ARI: You actually write about all sorts of stuff that really, really jives with a lot of stuff that I write about
and believe in about productivity and health. But I want to focus today on goals. But before that, you’re
a weightlifter, you’re a photojournalist, basically – what do you spend your time on? What do you like
doing?
JAMES: Yeah, sure. I guess my time is divided among three main areas right now. The majority of my
time is spent writing. I write new articles every Monday and Thursday on JamesClear.com, mostly about
health and behavior change and all the stuff we’re going to talk about today.
But then also, every 3 months, I try to go on a photography trip to do some travel photography work and
sort of highlight the rituals and routines, and the habits and behaviors and the culture and traditions of
whatever the particular area is that I’m going to. The last one I did was Morocco; I’m going to Colorado
in a week, so that’ll be the next one. Anyway, wherever I’m going, my hope is to try to tell the story
visually as well, about what our habits and rituals and routines look like. What does it feel like to be on
the ground in that particular place?
And then the third thing is weightlifting. I was a baseball player out of college, I was an athlete for a long
time, and then once I graduated, I was looking for a way to join another team and something to be a
part of, and weightlifting was kind of that outlet. And now it’s nice, too, to be a practitioner of the stuff
that I talk about. So weightlifting’s a way for me to share the habits and routines that I write about each
week and let that out and talk about what it looks like in practice. Because sometimes things sound
good in theory, but they’re much different in the real world.
ARI: Sure. Are we talking about Olympic style lifting or power lifting or everything? What do you like?
JAMES: Yeah, when I first got started, my dad did a little bit of Olympic lifting, so that’s what I was
introduced to. Through college and as I was playing sports, most of the stuff we did was more power
lifting routines. But then now, the last 2 years in particular, 2 or 3 years, have been pretty much Olympic
lifting focus for me. I still do squat, dead lift, bench, foundational strength things. But yeah, it’s mostly
Olympic.
ARI: This is sort of a sidebar, but I did my first Olympic lift probably 3 years ago, I want to say, and I never
did anything like that before in my life. I was never really into weights much in general; I was a sprinter
through high school, and I did triathlon after. Olympic lifting is so fascinating because of the skill
involved, and I think people just don’t realize that it’s so much more skill than strength.
JAMES: Yeah, absolutely. You have to have the raw power, but the technique will always hold you back if
you don’t have it. Honestly, I think that’s one of the things I like about it so much, is that it’s similar to
some of the other topics I write about, like writing, for example. There’s always a way to improve your
writing. Well, there’s always a way to improve as an Olympic weightlifter as well. I love that continual
focus on incremental gains and gradual improvement. There’s always something I can work on when I
show up.

2. ARI: I think it’s a good lead-in, actually, to this discussion I want to have with you on goals, because I’ve
had several occasions where I was getting up to a certain weight – the clean is my particular one. I really
like to work on my clean. I’ve had so many times where I’ve tried a weight, failed; couple minutes later,
tried it again, failed; and then a couple minutes later, tried it and hit it, and it felt easy. It’s just kind of
amazing. It’s like a different approach, very quickly resetting yourself, remembering what you’re
supposed to be doing, and then you can hit those goals. I love that.
But okay, I want to talk about goals. I recently wrote an article on my blog, but I’ve talked about this
before: I get almost annoyed when I have people come to me who have these really big long-term goals
that don’t really make sense to me. It doesn’t matter if it’s a weight loss goal or a business goal. My
favorite business goal was when someone’s like, “I want to sell my company for $100 million in 3 years.”
My problem with that is that – and people are going to say I’m being nit-picky, but what if you sell it for
$110 million? Does that mean that you didn’t do something according to your plan? And why is that the
goal anyway, and why 3 years? A lot of business coaches push people to set these lofty goals, and then
there’s no path to get to them.
So before I talk about my theory about how you should really get there, what are you thoughts on that?
JAMES: I was very goal-oriented for a long time. Going through school, I would set goals for the grades I
wanted to get each year and goals for the weights I wanted to hit in the gym, and goals for all sorts of
things. What was interesting is that the areas where I really made progress in my life often ended up not
being an area where I set a particular goal for myself. Often, the performance, even if I did set a goal, did
not match the goal that I set, either way. It was either much better, much worse. The act of setting the
goal had very little bearing on whether or not I achieved it or made progress in that area.
Now, here’s the distinction that I think I’ve come to realize and has worked well for me. One of the
problems when you talk about setting goals is that the word “goal” is pretty ambiguous. It can mean
many different things to different people. Some people say “I have a goal to get in shape.” I think that’s
okay; that’s just a general direction for yourself.
Other people would say, “I have a goal of losing 25 pounds in the next 12 weeks.” Well, that is like trying
to predict an outcome, and I find that when goals try to predict outcomes, that’s where the problem
comes in. Because it’s completely made up. If you really break it down, there’s actually nothing it’s
based on. That’s where I think it’s less useful.
So what I think is really useful, and the pattern that works well for me, is figure out the direction that is
important to you, like develop a little bit of clarity and a sense of purpose around what you’re working
on, what you’re working toward, and why you’re focused in that direction. And then once you’ve
developed a sense of clarity and a sense of purpose, then you can focus on the system that you put into
practice each day.
The difference or the distinction I like to draw is between systems and goals. If you’re a coach, your goal
is to win the championship, but your system is what your team does at practice each day. If you just
focused on the system, would you still make progress? Probably. I think that, based on my experience,
you might get just as far or even farther if you just put your energy into the system that you focus on
each day rather than worrying about the goal and trying to predict an outcome.

3. ARI: Okay, that is very similar to my approach. The two ways that I like to approach goals, really, is
micro-goals, for one – so I’m really into setting very short, small, attainable goals, not only because they
are more achievable, but because I believe that progress begets progress, and as you hit a micro-goal,
you’re going to want to hit the next one. It’s just like – you know the website DailyLit?
JAMES: No.
ARI: Okay, so DailyLit, like literature. DailyLit, they have thousands and thousands of books, most of the
classics that people know about, and I always have a real problem reading fiction. I can go through three
or four nonfiction books a week, but fiction, which I really believe is important, I just have a hard time
focusing on.
So DailyLit sends you one page a day of any of these books by email, and it does two things: one, I can
read a page – and you can immediately click at the end and get another one if you want to keep going.
But I can read a page in 5 or 10 minutes, and then what happens is that I want to keep that chain going,
so I want to read every single day now, and I don’t want to miss it. And even if I have to wait an hour or
wait a few hours to read that one page, I’m likely going to get it during the day. So that’s one thing
about the micro-goals.
But the other thing is that I’m really big on self-improvement, and I believe that if you are constantly
working to improve everything you do, all the time, eventually you’re going to get to that goal, and tons
of other goals along the way.
JAMES: Yeah. The reading is an interesting example. It’s something I’ve been playing with personally a
little bit more right now, and what I’ve been doing, I noticed that – I enjoy reading; I read a lot, but I felt
like I was reading more online than actual books. I don’t know if that’s beneficial, because I think a lot of
better writing is in books, usually.
Anyway, to figure out how I could read more, the little thing that I did was I took a page out of my book
from lifting. When I wanted to add more pushups to my workout routine, I just started with a really low
number that wasn’t intimidating at all, like 10. Then I did 10 the first day, and then I did 11 the next day,
and then 12 the next day, and just continued going up.
To do the reading, I figured I’d start with a number that was very unintimidating as well. I was like,
“Okay, I can read 20 pages. I can fit that into my day. It’s less than 30 minutes. I’m just going to read 20
pages when I wake up.” And I’ve stuck to that for the last few weeks now. I’ve already gone through
three books and I’m on to the next one. It’s interesting how quickly those small gains add up.
I think that’s another one of the lessons for me, is that very tiny incremental gains, when done
consistently, add up to pretty significant improvements, relatively quickly.
ARI: Right. If this is not your quote, I apologize, but I think that this was something that you said, about
average speed?
JAMES: Yeah.
ARI: Yeah, okay.

4. JAMES: A buddy of mine named Nathan Barry [sp] wrote three books in a little over 10 months, and the
way that he did it was by writing 1,000 words a day for 259 straight days. A thousand words is not really
that much – the interesting thing for me is that a lot of times, the conversation is about “Oh, you need
to out-hustle everybody, you need to out-work – you need to burn the midnight oil. Work constantly.”
This is especially an entrepreneurial thing.
ARI: Head down. I hate that.
JAMES: Yeah. Well, if you looked at Nathan, at no one single point would you say “Wow, he’s out
hustling everyone so much.” He only wrote a thousand words that day. You could do that in about 20 or
30 minutes. It’s a little over two pages. It’s not that much. But by doing it every single day, you turn
around and all of a sudden he has three books written in 10 months.
It’s way more progress than most people would make. And even more progress, probably, than the
people who out-hustle everybody make, because that’s only sustainable for a short amount of time and
then you crash. So by picking a decent average speed, rather than a really high maximum speed, Nathan
was able to continue over and over and over again and make significant process.
ARI: Sorry, because you put it so elegantly; it was “average speed produces better than average
results”? Or what was it?
JAMES: Yeah, it’s just the average speed, when maintained consistently, produces significant results
over a relatively short amount of time. It’s a surprisingly small amount of time that it takes for those
average gains to add up to a significant improvement.
ARI: I love that. Really, actually, I want to focus on that for a second, because I want people to really take
note of that. It’s the tortoise and the hare thing. You can go all-out and burn out very quickly, which is
what society sort of pushes people to do, and it’s part of the reason why every day, I’m dealing with
somebody who’s telling me that they’re overwhelmed. Whereas if you just stay consistent, just stay the
course and do your best in the moment, all the time, you’re going to get all these things and more.
JAMES: Yeah. And figuring out – actually, this comes right back – I mean, Nathan’s system to write –
think about the difference between this. Nathan’s system was to write 1,000 words a day, and by doing
that for 259 straight days, he had three books. If we take the goal approach, he could’ve said “My goal is
to write three books in the next year.” Just saying that sentence sounds overwhelming, doesn’t it? That
kind of stresses me out just thinking about trying to take that task on.
But most people would approach it from the goal side, not from the system side. So if you just focus on
that system of writing 1,000 words a day, the results come anyway, so you don’t have to worry so much
about the goal and predicting the outcome and when it’s going to occur.
This is one of the problems with goals. If you asked anybody, separately, “Hey, can you predict the
future?”, people are going to be like “No, of course I can’t.” But every time you set a goal and some type
of outcome like that, that’s basically what you try to do. It’s like, “Oh, I’m going to predict the future. I’ll
write three books in the next 10 months.” But it doesn’t work that way. It’s also completely
unnecessary, because you can just focus on the system and the incremental improvement and it’ll take
you there anyway.

5. ARI: Right. My actual feeling about success is that if I am better today in any way than I was yesterday,
then I’m being successful, essentially. That’s how I like to look at it. It’s true, figuring out what this goal
is.
And the other problem with a goal, in my opinion, is that you set your sights so far in the future that you
don’t see everything that’s coming at you right now. I think it almost perpetuates this problem where
people cannot be present, which is a thing that’s so important, as far as I’m concerned.
JAMES: Absolutely, it’s huge. Being in the moment is a way to improve performance anyway. If you just
think about – actually this is part of the concept of Inbox Zero, the email management system. The idea
is to have your mental inbox at zero, so that you’re giving 100% of your effort to whatever the task is at
hand right now.
And if your mind, whatever percentage of your mind, is somewhere else at this moment, working on a
different problem that’s in your actual email inbox or something that you’re focused on in the future,
something you’re stressed about, then you don’t have your best energy to give that task. So by
removing some of the things that are puling you outside of the moment, you get to focus more on the
task at hand right now.
ARI: Right. I may not be surprised, but what do you find to be the hardest habits to change for people?
JAMES: It’s going to differ based on each person, but the constant things that come up are
procrastination, lack of focus, “I’ve tried every diet known to mankind but I can’t seem to get one to
work,” all these type of things. But if you really boil it down, habits for the most part are just getting
started and teaching yourself to be able to get started again each day.
If you can figure out ways to automate starting the routine or starting the behavior – and actually, this
brings me to an important point about semantics and word choice, which is that for habits, we often use
the word “habit” to encapsulate a lot of different things, but what we might mean is actually like a
routine.
People say things like “Oh, I’m going to make a habit of working out,” but in the research, in the
literature, a habit is like an automatic behavior. And you’re not going to automate and go unconscious
for an entire hour while you’re at the gym. Working out’s more of a routine rather than a habit, whereas
scratching your arm or biting your nails or smoking a cigarette, something you do automatically without
thinking, that might be more of a habit.
This also comes into the goal conversation we had, where I use the word “system,” like Nathan wrote
1,000 words a day, and that was his system. For you, you might call it a micro-goal. It’s like his micro-
goal might’ve been to write 1,000 words that day. Some people get hung up on this; they’re like, “Well,
the system is really a goal.” I don’t really care what words you use; the idea is focus on the continual
improvement of those incremental small gains, that average speed, rather than trying to predict a large
goal in the future.
But to bring it back to habits and routines, habits are just getting started over and over and over again. If
you can figure out a way to mindlessly initiate the task that you’re working on, whether it’s trying to
stick to a better diet or lose weight or stop procrastinating and work on the project you need to work
on, whatever it is, if you figure out a way to mindlessly initiate that, then it’s like an onramp for your

6. behavior. It kick-starts the routine, and it makes it easier for you to do that larger, complex thing that
comes later.
One of the rules – I have a couple different frameworks I use for this. One is – it comes from David
Allen’s book Getting Things Done. It’s called the 2 Minute Rule, and I modified it a little bit. His rule is, if
the task takes less than 2 minutes, do it now.
ARI: Do it now.
JAMES: It’s like a productivity thing, like that phone call you’ve been putting off or washing the dishes or
throwing the laundry in or whatever, if it takes less than 2 minutes, do it right now. Well, I think you can
take a similar approach for initiating new habits and behaviors. Most habits are probably going to take
longer than 2 minutes to do. It takes longer than 2 minutes to go run 3 miles today or something like
that.
But any habit can be initiated in less than 2 minutes, and figuring out a way to automate that initiation
piece, that’s what gets you going and starts this behavioral inertia that takes you through to the end of
the routines. Little things like if you want to set your gym clothes out before you go to work, and that
makes it easier for you to do that.
Or if you want to go for a run, just put your shoes on and step out the front door. You can do that in
under 2 minutes, and if you do, then you’ve succeeded. You don’t have to run a single step, but what
happens, of course, is that there’s usually this behavioral inertia. It’s like, “All right, got my shoes on, I’m
out the door; might as well run a little bit.”
You can also take the opposite approach, which is providing a constraint for yourself that is so small that
you can’t say no to it. For example, I had lunch with a reader who was telling me about he lost over 100
pounds. Took him like 2 years or so, and one of the things that he did when he started working out or
adding exercise into his routine is he told himself, he set a rule, “I’m not allowed to stay at the gym for
longer than 5 minutes.” So he went, but he could not stay for 6 minutes. He did that for over 4 or 5
weeks.
Then eventually, he was like, “I’m coming here all the time. I kind of feel like staying longer.” So by
setting a constraint that wasn’t intimidating at all, he was able to build the habit of starting the
behavior. Then after he had the habit of “Okay, I’m going to the gym all the time,” then he focused on
the performance and the improvement piece. But he focused on building the ability to start over and
over again, and then moved on to the improvement later.
Usually we bite off more than we can chew, and then we have trouble getting started because we’re
trying to do something that intimidates us or that’s a really big change or a big shift.
ARI: Sure, okay. The system – as you’re referring to them now, these systems – what is your system for
writing, for instance? Because I mean, doing an article every Monday and Thursday – it’s Thursday,
right? Monday and Thursday?
JAMES: Yep.

7. ARI: That’s a commitment, honestly. So what’s your system? How do you just get into that groove and
write?
JAMES: I find that the hardest thing for me, or the single thing that will hold me back the most, is not
having decided what my article will be about that day. So if the day before, I already choose, “Okay, this
is the title, this is the topic,” that’s all I need. Then I can wake up and I have a place to start; then that
removes the friction and then I can just start researching and typing or whatever.
But literally, on days that I have not done that, I have spent over 4 hours before trying to decide what
article I’m going to write. So just by removing that, I save myself a ton of time and friction. That’s the
one thing that I do.
And then I have little stuff too, like I write first thing in the morning, so I’ll wake up, get a glass of water,
and then sit down in the same chair, blah blah blah, clear the screen, nothing else except for the writing.
So I do a couple little things to initiate that. But choosing what I’m going to write about is the biggest
thing that reduces friction.
ARI: Do you sit down, you’re like, “I’m going to try to think about what I want to write”? How do you
encourage that creative process? Or has the creative process become a habit now?
JAMES: Yeah, I do try to build systems around each thing. If you think about it as a stack, I have
information coming in at the top of the funnel; then I have, from that information, I get certain ideas.
Then from those ideas, I decide on certain titles and potential articles, and then I write the article itself.
So at the top of the stack are books I read. I have a system that I’m building now for recording notes
from the books I read, so that’s distilling that information into the idea phase. And then I have a
spreadsheet of over 200 potential ideas that could become topics.
So I’m always just adding little things in there. A snippet from a conversation or an idea from a chapter
in a book. Then I also have titles, where I basically keep a long list of potential titles for articles, and then
I try to match up good titles with good ideas, and then that’s the starting piece for an article.
ARI: Gotcha.
JAMES: So that’s sort of the onramp for my writing process. I do something similar for working out.
When I show up at the gym, I have a routine, and I got this from – I first learned this when I was playing
baseball, because the thing about baseball is that there’s a lot of games. We would play like 40 games in
2 months or whatever, so you’re always at the ballpark. Coach will say things like “You need to find a
way to get motivated. You’ve got a find a way to get up for the game today.”
Well, if you’re always playing, it can be hard – you’re not going to naturally show up at the ballpark
every single day like, “Wow, I’m so excited to play today.” There’s just going to be days where you’re
down.
So I needed to figure out a routine that could get me motivated and get me into game mode before the
game started, even if I didn’t show up feeling that way. So I had this whole pre-game routine I would do,
with running and stretching and throwing from different distances. By the time I got done with that, I

8. did it the same way every single time, and so it was like a signal, like a trigger to my brain, “Hey, it’s time
to play now.” By the time I got done with that, I was in game mode.
Well, I do the same thing with lifting. I show up at the gym, I take out my bag, I put on my lifting shoes, I
put on my knee sleeves, wrist wraps, get a drink of water, do 10 squats without the bar, 10 squats with
the bar. By the time I get done with that routine, I do it the same way every time, and it’s like “Oh,” a
switch flips in my brain. It’s like, “Okay, it’s time to train now.”
So even if I don’t show up feeling really motivated to do it, by the time I get done with that, the
sequence has started, and it’s like an onramp for me mentally so that I can initiate the behavior. I also
don’t have to show up at the gym wondering, “Man, what am I motivated to do today?” I just do the
same thing, and then everything flows naturally from that.
ARI: That makes a lot of sense. Are there some habits that you’re working on now, new things?
JAMES: Reading is the new one, the 20 pages a day. I’m at 50 pushups a day right now. I’m trying to
decide whether I should continue to increase that, or if I just want to use that as a maintenance level
thing. So that’s like trying to figure out – take Nathan’s example. He wrote 1,000 words a day; does he
try to increase that to 1,100 or 1,200 or 1,500, or does he just continue at 1,000 words a day and then
focus on doing better work there?
The things that I’m thinking about now are that balance between continual improvement versus trying
to get to a level where I’m satisfied with each thing. So balancing that out is something I’m thinking
about.
ARI: That’s funny, actually. You know who Steven Kotler is, right?
JAMES: Yeah.
ARI: In Rise of Superman, he talks about how you have to challenge yourself, but there’s a perfect
amount of challenge, and it’s 4% harder than what you’re used to. So that would suggest that you
should go from 1,000 words to 1,040 if you really want to push those limits. Just kind of funny.
JAMES: Yeah, that’s interesting. I haven’t read that book yet, but it prompts this idea in my head of the
whole world, and especially the human body, thrives on balance. There’s constant feedback loops that
are there to keep – everything from the amount of liquid in your cells to the hormones that your body
has, it’s all designed to keep you within this balance, within this safety margin, one way or the other.
But the body also has this amazing ability to expand and grow, and that’s why when you lift weights, if
you do it consistently and gradually over time, you get stronger, you get bigger. The body has this ability
to adapt to change. But if you try to do too much at once, if you try to put 200 pounds on the bar more
than what you’re used to lifting, you break down. You injure yourself. It’s too big of a stretch.
So figuring out where that safety margin is, where it’s just enough to prompt growth but it’s still within
the bounds of without injuring you and causing inflammation and undue stress, that’s an interesting
area to live. I haven’t heard that 4% number, but yeah.

9. ARI: Yeah, I thought that was cool. It can be basically applied to almost anything, whether it’s lifting a
weight or writing more or faster or running or all that stuff.
Okay, we’re basically out of time here, but I want to ask you this last question, which I love asking
people at the end, which is what are your top 3 tips for being more effective? Anything that you know or
do or like. What are the top 3 things for being more effective?
JAMES: One that I try to keep in mind and practice relatively consistently is reduce the scope but stick to
the schedule. If your plan is to run 3 miles a day and you look up at the clock and you only have 10
minutes left, and it’s like, “Okay, that’s not enough time to put my shoes on and go run 3 miles,” rather
than saying something like – and this is what I would’ve done in the past, where I would be like, “Well, I
don’t want to waste that time, so maybe I’ll just send an important email or manage something else,
make sure I use productive use of that time.”
Rather than saying that, I would rather now say, “Okay, 10 minutes isn’t enough time for me to change
and run 3 miles, but I could put my shoes on and run half a mile or do 10 sprints” or something like that.
So you reduce the scope of what you’re working on, but you stick to the schedule and maintain the
habit.
On an individual basis that’s not going to make a big impact, but on a cumulative basis of proving to
yourself, “The situation wasn’t perfect, but I still figured out a way to make this work. The circumstances
weren’t ideal, but I’m still the type of person who sticks to the schedule that I set for myself,” that is
much more significant over the long term, because you prove to yourself that you’re capable of doing
what you said you would do, and that you’re capable of building this identity of being the type of person
who works out regardless of the circumstances being ideal or not.
I practice that a lot with my articles. I’m going to judge the article I write, and I probably think it isn’t
good enough, but I’m going to publish it anyway, so that I’m sticking to the schedule in some way. So
that’s one.
The second thing is find a way to improve by an intimidating amount. A 1% gain, for example. One of the
popular stories I tell is about Dave Brailsford, the British cycling coach who, when he took over Team
Great Britain, they had never won a Tour de France, and that was the goal for bringing him in. He said,
“Okay, what we’re going to do is focus on improving every single thing we do by 1%.”
That includes the stuff that you would expect, like the weight of the bike tires or the type of the suit the
riders would wear or their training program, but it also included stuff that most people wouldn’t expect,
like the type of hand soap they used to reduce infection, the pillow that gave a rider the best night’s
sleep and they would take that with them to hotels, the best massage gel to use for recovery. All types
of stuff. They tried to improve every single thing by 1%.
He said, “If we do that, I think we’ll win the Tour de France in 5 years.” They ended up winning it in 3
years, and then they repeated with a different rider and won it the next year again. And then when they
went to the Olympics and brought Team Great Britain there, they won 70% of the gold medals available.
ARI: That’s amazing.

10. JAMES: Yeah, so the whole theory behind his stuff is let’s find these 1% gains and then let’s aggregate
them in every area we can. I love it because one, it’s not intimidating at all, and two, there’s this
compound growth effect. You’re not just adding 1 plus 1 plus 1. It’s like compound interest in finance,
like as you continue to add all these 1% gains, they end up adding up to much more. There’s some type
of synergy between them that gives you a significant growth boost. So that I would say is another one
that is really useful for me.
And then the third one… for me, honestly, one of the best things I do – the idea behind this is focus on
keystone habits. But for me, my keystone habit is health and weightlifting. So if I train, if I go to the gym,
everything else in my life tends to fall in line. When I get back, I have better focus, so I can do better
work. I tend to eat better naturally, just because, I don’t know, it’s like “Oh, I worked out, I don’t want to
waste it,” so my nutrition improves. I sleep better at night, which means I wake up the next day and I
feel better. I have more focus the next day because of that.
All of this stuff reduces stress. I didn’t think about trying to improve all these different things at once; I
just focused on training, and there was this natural ripple effect that happened from focusing on that
one keystone habit. So I would say figure out what the keystone habit is for you, and just focus on that
rather than trying to get overwhelmed and fix a lot of things at once.
And it can be different things for different people, like CEOs often say meditation is their keystone habit,
and if they get their 15 minutes of meditation in a day, they tend to solve problems better and things
tend to flow in a better manner. So you’ll have to take some time and experiment to figure out what it is
for you.
But I think those three things: reducing the scope but sticking to the schedule, making small,
incremental 1% gains, and figuring out what your keystone habit is and focusing on that rather than
getting overwhelmed with all sorts of other stuff.
ARI: Love it. James, thank you so much for all that. Where is the best place for people to find out more
about you and see those Monday and Thursday articles?
JAMES: Yeah, for sure. JamesClear.com is where I write. They can see everything listed there. Also, a lot
of the things we talked about, I summarized and synthesized and added some more information into
this habits guide that I put together. It’s about 46 pages, and people can download it for free. So if they
want to get that, they can get that at JamesClear.com/habits.
ARI: We’ll link to both websites and all your stuff on the show notes as well. James, thank you again. It
was really fun talking to you.
JAMES: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.