The 100 Most Impactful Quotes From The Book Atomic Habits That Lead To Remarkable Results
Tiny changes, remarkable results.
The Promise by James Clear. And it works. Like he said, it’s an easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones. These 100 quotes had the most impact on me.
They improved my motivation, productivity, and happiness.
1. “[…] If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.”
2. “Success is the product of daily habits — not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”
3. “Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits.”
4. “[…] the most powerful outcomes are delayed.”
5. “Mastery requires patience.”
6. “All big things come from small beginnings.”
7. “Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.”
8. “If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.”
9. “[…] if successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers. “
10. “It makes no sense to restrict your satisfaction to one scenario when there are many paths to success.”
11. “When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.”
12. “When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?”
13. “The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.”
14. “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
15. “When offered a smoke, the first person says, “No thanks. I’m trying to quit.” […] this person still believes they are a smoker who is trying to be something else. […] The second person declines by saying, “No thanks. I’m not a smoker.” It’s a small difference, but this statement signals a shift in identity. […] They no longer identify as someone who smokes.”
16. “You may want more money, but if your identity is someone who consumes rather than creates, then you’ll continue to be pulled toward spending rather than earning.”
17. “It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.”
18. “Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are.”
19. “Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.”
20. “When you make your bed each day, you embody the identity of an organized person. When you write each day, you embody the identity of a creative person. When you train each day, you embody the identity of an athletic person.”
21. “I didn’t start out as a writer. I became one through my habits.”
22. “[…] the process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself.”
23. “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
24. “Who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want?”
25. “Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits.”
26. “Are you becoming the type of person you want to become?”
27. “You need to know who you want to be. Otherwise, your quest for change is like a boat without a rudder.”
28. “The people who don’t have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom.”
29. “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
30. “Does this behavior help me to become the type of person I wish to be?”
31. “The process of behavior change always starts with awareness.”
32. “People who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through.
33. “Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.”
34. “Being specific about what you want and how you will achieve it helps you to say no to things that derail progress, distract your attention, and pull you off course.”
35. “Give your habits a time and a space to live in the world.”
36. “If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment.”
37. “Most people live in a world others have created for them. […] Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it.”
38. “You feel bad, so you eat junk food. Because you eat junk food, you feel bad. Watching television makes you feel sluggish, so you watch more television because you don’t have the energy to do anything else.”
39. “Make the cues of your good habits obvious and the cues of your bad habits invisible.”
40. “Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself.”
41. “Many of our daily habits are imitations of people we admire.”
42. “Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires.
43. “Your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face; they are just the methods you learned to use.”
44. “Desire is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be in the future.”
45. “Now, imagine changing just one word: You don’t “have” to. You “get” to.”
46. “Highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits.”
47. “We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action.”
48. “Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will deliver an outcome.”
49. “And that’s the biggest reason why you slip into motion rather than taking action: you want to delay failure.”
50. “When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something.”
51. “It’s the frequency that makes the difference.”
52. “What matters is that you take the actions you need to take to make progress.”
53. “The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning.”
54. “Habits like scrolling on our phones, checking email, and watching television steal so much of our time because they can be performed almost without effort.”
55. “[…] make your habits so easy that you’ll do them even when you don’t feel like it.”
56. “Habits are easier to build when they fit into the flow of your life.”
57. “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”
58. “[…] once you’ve started doing the right thing, it is much easier to continue doing it.”
59. “[…] master the habit of showing up.”
60. “[…] a habit must be established before it can be improved.”
61. “The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do.”
62. “The average person spends over two hours per day on social media. What could you do with an extra six hundred hours per year?”
63. “The consequences of bad habits are delayed while the rewards are immediate.”
64. “The costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.”
65. “[…] the more immediate pleasure you get from an action, the more strongly you should question whether it aligns with your long-term goals.”
66. “If you’re willing to wait for the rewards, you’ll face less competition and often get a bigger payoff.”
67. “[…] success in nearly every field requires you to ignore an immediate reward in favor of a delayed reward.”
68. “The most effective form of motivation is progress.”
69. “Never miss twice.”
70. “You don’t realize how valuable it is to just show up on your bad (or busy) days.”
71. “To make bad habits unsatisfying, your best option is to make them painful in the moment.
72. “Knowing that someone is watching can be a powerful motivator. You are less likely to procrastinate or give up because there is an immediate cost.”
73. “Choose the habit that best suits you, not the one that is most popular.”
74. “If you are currently winning, you exploit, exploit, exploit. If you are currently losing, you continue to explore, explore, explore.”
75. “What feels like fun to me, but work to others?”
76. “What makes me lose track of time?”
77. “When do I get greater returns than the average person?”
78. “What feels natural to me? When have I felt alive? When have I felt like the real me?”
79. “Whenever you feel authentic and genuine, you are headed in the right direction.”
80. “Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort.”
81. “When you can’t win by being better, you can win by being different.”
82. “Once we realize our strengths, we know where to spend our time and energy.”
83. “Until you work as hard as those you admire, don’t explain away their success as luck.”
84. “Work hard on the things that come easy.”
85. “[…] humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.
86. “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.”
87. “[…] successful people feel the same lack of motivation as everyone else. The difference is that they still find a way to show up despite the feelings of boredom.
88. “You have to fall in love with boredom.”
89. “There have been a lot of days I’ve felt like relaxing, but I’ve never regretted showing up and working on something that was important to me.”
90. “Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.”
91. “Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tine element of success […]”
92. “A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.”
93. “The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1 percent improvement, but a thousand of them.”
94. “Success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine.
95. “The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements. It’s remarkable what you can build if you just don’t stop.”
96. “Happiness is the space between one desire being fulfilled and a new desire forming.”
97. “Suffering drives progress.”
98. “Your actions reveal how badly you want something.”
99. “How we feel influences how we act, and how we act influences how we feel.”
100. “There is no experience to root the expectation in. In the beginning, hope is all you have.”
