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We imitate the habits of three groups in particular: The close. The many. The powerful.

James Clear

Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.
JAMES CLEAR

Inspirational Life Professional Schedule
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

Best Build Choice Habit Popular Yourself
Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.
JAMES CLEAR

Enemy Friendship Goodness Habit Time Yourself
Your culture sets your expectation for what is normal. Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself.
JAMES CLEAR

Culture Expectation Habit Normal People Surround Yourself
A genius is not born, but is educated and trained.
JAMES CLEAR

Born Education Genius Training
Being motivated and curious counts for more than being smart because it leads to action.
JAMES CLEAR

Action Count Leadership Motivational Smart
Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death.
JAMES CLEAR

Born Death Discipline Man Soft
At some point, everyone faces the same challenge on the journey of self-improvement: you have to fall in love with boredom.
JAMES CLEAR

Boredom Face Fall In Love Improvement Point Yourself
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
JAMES CLEAR

Action Person Type Vote Yourself
As a general rule, the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.
JAMES CLEAR

Action Goal Happiness Rule Strong Yourself
Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.
JAMES CLEAR

Change Improvement Live People Right Time Wait
You need to know who you want to be.
JAMES CLEAR

Identity Personality Yourself
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.
JAMES CLEAR

Encouragement Feeling Habit Need Yourself
We imitate the habits of three groups in particular: The close. The many. The powerful.
JAMES CLEAR

Group Habit Imitation Myself Particular Powerful
Being specific about what you want and how you will achieve it helps you say no to things that derail progress, distract your attention, and pull you off course.
JAMES CLEAR

Achievement Attention Course Distract Help Specific Yourself
Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient.
JAMES CLEAR

Appearance Change Need Patience Process Small Yourself
Redesign your life so the actions that matter most are also the actions that are easiest to do.
JAMES CLEAR

Action Design Easy Life Yourself
The problem with a goals-first mentality is that you’re continually putting happiness off until the next milestone.
JAMES CLEAR

Goal Happiness Mentality Problem Yourself
The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.
JAMES CLEAR

Boredom End Excellence Fall In Love Fascinate Yourself
You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.
JAMES CLEAR

Architect Choice Environment Inspirational Job Victim Yourself
At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over.
JAMES CLEAR

Boredom Point Training
Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks.
JAMES CLEAR

Attention Freedom Habit Load Mental Work Yourself
Put another way, the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.
JAMES CLEAR

Bad Cost Future Goodness Habit Present
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement
JAMES CLEAR

Habit Improvement Interest
With outcome-based habits, the focus is on what you want to achieve. With identity-based habits, the focus is on who you wish to become.
JAMES CLEAR

Achievement Focus Habit Identity Result
We all deal with setbacks but in the long run, the quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits
JAMES CLEAR

Deal Habit Live Ourselves Quality Run
Your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity.
JAMES CLEAR

Identity Reflection Yourself

We imitate the habits of three groups in particular: The close. The many. The powerful.

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We imitate the habits of three groups in particular: The close. The many. The powerful.

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