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James Clear

lines on the record: 150
first: 2025-12-11
most recent: 2025-12-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Thank you. And thank you so much for saying those kind things. That's a very nice view. I have been incredibly lucky and blown away by the reception to the book. And it just feels great to know that people are finding it useful. You know, all I wanted to do was to try to be useful and helpful. And I appreciate you saying that, and I'm grateful that many other people have found it helpful as well.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Moment. So I don't know that you should necessarily optimize for any of that all the time. I don't think your habits will lead you to some place where you are just permanently happy. Will definitely take you on a journey where happiness is part of it and where meaning can be part of it. And there are lots of other things that are parts of life too. But yeah, I think that you will be well served to invest in them for sure.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First of all, I think we should distinguish between happiness and meaning, or happiness and purpose or something fulfillment. I don't think they're necessarily the same. There are many moments in my life when I am happy, and that can be in the moment. And a lot of the most meaningful things that I worked on, you know, atomic habits is one of the most meaningful projects that I've worked on. It seems to have made a big difference for a lot of people or helped a lot of people. I feel great about that. But I wasn't necessarily happy every minute that I was working on it. You know, like it was quite difficult in lots of different times. And it took a long time and it was arduous and so on. But it provides a lot of meaning. So I definitely think it was worth it, even if I wasn't always happy.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And collectively, you get this powerful, remarkable result as a process. And so as a consequence, and that is the idea behind atomic habits, you make these small changes, and it's not just one, it's like a hundred or a thousand of them, and collectively they come together to create this powerful, impressive life.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is also true for your personal life. Each unit of time, each little habit is connected. You put your habits together and you kind of end up with this system of behaviors that influence your day and your week. So mastering this hour makes the next hour a little bit better as well. I ultimately chose the phrase atomic habits for three reasons. There's three meanings to the word atomic. The first is tiny or small like an atom, which obviously I think your habits should be small and easy to do. The second meaning is the one we're talking about now and the one people often forget, which is an atom is a fundamentally unit in a larger system. So atoms build in molecules, molecules build in compounds, and so on. And your habits are kind of like the little units of your day. Collectively you put them together and you have your daily routine. And then the third meaning is the source of immense energy or power. And so if you put all three of these together, you kind of understand the narrative arc of the book, which is you make changes that are small and easy to do, you layer them together like units in a larger system.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How can I have a good next hour? How can I make this minute as perfect as possible? Well, those levels are much more achievable. And so I think if you scale your habits down to a level that's more solvable, you'll often see that there's a path forward there.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think the best way is to scale it down. You know, if you say, How can we have a more unified nation? It's big, it's vague, it's almost impossible. It's like an intractable level. But if you scale it down, now you can come up with things. How can you have a more unified neighborhood? You could start a book club or do a block party, or you can come up with all kinds of things that you could do. And what you find is that in many cases in life, problems are intractable at a certain level, at a certain scale. And if you shift what level you're at, suddenly it reveals itself and there's a new solution. And so I think that is obviously true with big picture things like the question I was asked, but it's also true for your habits. If you think about your life in general and you say, how can I have a better life or how can I figure out my purpose? How can I figure out how to have a life of meaning? These are big hard questions. Sometimes they're almost intractable. They're too vague. They're too broad. But if you can scale it down, say, how can I live a good day today? Or how can I have a good week?”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. That's actually a great summary of it. I think it makes you more aware of your habits and your environment and what you're trying to do specifically rather than just understanding the concepts.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The exercises in the workbook are intended to help you do that. They help you look at your environment and figure out how to optimize it. They help you look at your goals and how do I translate it into a system. They help you look at your desired identity and how are my habits reinforcing it. So it's just a series of exercises that help you apply and implement the ideas from atomic habits.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Him, but all right. So Atomic habits is It is the culmination of basically 10 years of work and effort for me. It's like my objective was to write the best book that's ever been written on habits. Now, I don't know that I achieved that or not. That's for the readers to decide. But I don't think you're ever going to just stumble into that result. You know, like you have to at least strive for it. And so that was the hope, is that everything that you could possibly need to know about building good habits and breaking bad ones should be in atomic habits. So then you're like, okay, why would I need a workbook? But what I've learned over the last seven years of this being out and selling 25 million copies is that people always need more tangible, practical help with implementing their habits. So atomic habits is the full guide and the philosopher and the approach on how to do it. Then you finish this book and you sit there and you say, all right, great. I have some habits I want to build. How do I do that?”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of priming yourself to start the day in the right way I don't know. I didn't think that I would be excited about a calendar, but I'm kind of excited about it. I kind of feel like it could be good.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I had this thought that One time I had this thought that it would be cool to be able to hire a mental performance coach who just did one thing. So you hired this coach and then they call you up each morning like 8 a.m. or something and they give you like a five minute pep talks, just something little, kind of like what you said to your friend, you know, and just like you get this little mindset shift to reset your day and go into it with momentum and they hang up and you just go do your thing. And I couldn't find anybody who could do that. But I've been working on this little project where I've been trying to figure out how to do it. And so I came up with, it sounds almost kind of silly, but I'm really excited about it. I came up with this atomic habits daily calendar. And the idea is just, it's actually like a blend of atomic habits principles and three, two, one, which is my weekly newsletter. And I just have like one little mindset shift that's on each page. And it's just one page for each day of the year. You just look at it, read that page, boom, go into your day. And like, it's just intended to be a little mindset shift. Anyway, it's just a small thing, but I like, I like the idea.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I feel like a lot of this is, there's a great book, Inner Game of Tennis, that came out many, many years ago. Might even be 50 at this point. But it's basically all about this. It's about not getting in your head. And it's. Specifically for tennis, but it applies to life. It's just about moving on and having this next play mentality.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love those mindset shifts. It's living life with a next play mentality. It's like you don't let the last play dictate you or like ruin you. You have to move on to make the next best choice now. We have to live for the next play.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think it's important to have something in life that's like that, that's teaching you how to respond to failure, that you're learning how to lose and how to bounce back from a loss so that you can ultimately win. I got to the point at the end of my career, my senior year, where I was basically like, listen, I don't want to lose, but if we're going to lose, I'd rather it be me. I'd rather be out there. Put it on my shoulders. I can take the loss. I can handle it. I'll give you everything I have to try to get us to win. But if we lose, I'll be able to bounce back from it. And I think that that ended up serving me really well in my entrepreneurial career because stuff is never going to go your way all the time. And you need to be able to try, be willing to try things and be willing to sometimes look foolish because of them and still find a way to show back up the next time.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I have this little theory that the secret to winning is actually learning how to lose. It's that the secret to winning is knowing how to lose. And what I mean is that it's knowing how to handle a loss. It's knowing how to rebound and bounce back from that. I think that I learned it through sports. I don't think sports is the only way you can learn it. I think probably anything that you do with some level of public visibility could teach you, you know, musical performance or being in a fitness group with your friends, or there's lots of ways you do it. Speaking publicly. One thing about sports is that you're going to fail in front of the rest of the team. The ball will come to you. You'll make the strike out to end the game. Or you go into the gym and work out with the team and you miss a lift or you're the weak one or whatever. That doesn't feel good, but then you realize life moves on and you got to go on to the next set and you have to show up again the next time. And each little instance where there's like a little failure like that is practice for you to bounce back again.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You see this a lot with top performers in many different domains, which is it's not that they don't make mistakes or they don't slip up. Everybody slips up, but they tend to get back on track quickly. And so really what you need is not a perfect plan or like a system that never fails. What you need is a good plan for getting back on track. If the reclaiming of a habit is fast, the breaking of it doesn't matter that much. You get to the end of the year and it's just like a little blip on the radar, but you need a good plan for getting back on track quickly. So I think that some of the balance, some of the strategy is actually knowing what to do when you fail. And if you figure that out, then you're in a good position to bounce back quickly.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The storm came, the oak tree fought it and broke, but the willow bent and survived. And so it's like you need a way to manage the storms of life. While still showing up, if you purely fight against it, you think that being tough, that being mentally tough is like, I'm going to make sure this happens, but it actually makes you somewhat brittle. You know, you need it to be a certain way. And when you need life to be a certain way to succeed, you become held hostage by the situation. You need it to be just like that. But if in fact you can be adaptable and you can be flexible, now you are actually more resilient. And so I think there's a balance to strike there and it feeds into the consistency that will ultimately enlarge your ability.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Deep, important lesson that comes from appreciating consistency in what's required there. Consistency is often adaptability. It's flexibility. There's this story about mental toughness and being a disciplined person that we tell ourselves that something like, you know, I grind to make sure this happens. I will make it happen no matter what the circumstance is. The mentally tough person pushes through regardless of what they face. But I think that in real life, a lot of the time, consistency is actually being flexible. It's being adaptable. If you don't have enough energy, you do the easier version. If you don't have enough time, you do the short version. You find a way to not throw up a zero that day. You find a way to show up even if it's not ideal. And that is actually being very mentally tough. And so the adaptable person is the one that, what's that line?”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Consistency enlarges ability. Consistency enlarges ability. It's the act of showing up consistently that builds your capacity to do something, that fosters the skill development and growth that you want. And so showing up, even if it's just in a small way, is the way that you actually create the opportunity to do something more intense or more impressive down the line. I also think that there's this”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel like there's the story that people tell themselves a lot, which is they want to do the big impressive thing. You know, like you want to do a marathon. You want to do a week-long silent meditation retreat. You want to write the best-selling book, whatever. And I think about it as this balance between consistency and intensity. So intensity is a good story. I ran the marathon. I did the silent meditation retreat. Consistency actually makes progress. I meditate for five minutes each day. I run, you know, three days a week or whatever. And so people need consistency more than they need intensity. And in fact, what I would say is...”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Yeah, I think in general that's right. It's so tricky when you have multiple things that really matter to you. It's like, all right, you're choosing between family, you're choosing between work, you're choosing between personal pursuits and these new habits you're trying to build. Like everything's got to kind of work together. And so it's a balance of shaping all of that.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I think that's an interesting thing too, is to map your day out and look at this and say, all right, which hours is my energy the best and which hours are most under my control? And then you can start to see ultimately what I think you're getting to is what are the good hours for me? Like where do those live throughout the day? And then the next step is to ask, what is getting my best hours and what's getting my leftovers? And I have had a couple different times where I've looked at things and said, I say this is important to me, but really it's only getting my leftover hours. And so then you're like, okay, something might need to change. So I think about all of that. I think about where's how much time do I have in general? Where are the pockets where I have the most energy or the best energy? And then also where are the pockets where I have the most control. And then you try to figure out how to slot stuff in.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would layer. So, yes, I do think about this a little bit, and I've heard this like you want energy management, not time management construct. The other thing that I would add to it that I don't know that I've ever heard anybody talk about is control. The standard thing that everybody says is, oh, we all only have 24 hours in a day, which obviously is true. But if you were to break that into like 24 one hour chunks and just look at your day laid out that way, you have different levels of control over certain one hour chunks than others. So for example, what I said a minute ago, like if you have a bunch of kids and you're getting them dressed from like seven to eight AM, that hour isn't that much under your control. It's not a good time to meditate. It's not a good time to work out. There's other responsibilities that tend to happen in that hour.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's great. I had your reminding me I had a woman who came up to me after a talk one time and told me that she, when she brushes, she wanted to work on her balance. She's getting older, she's getting into her 60s. And she said, Each day when I brush my teeth, I brush on one leg and I do like 10 little kind of half squats on that leg, and then I switch to the other leg and I do 10 more on that. And she was like I'm my balance is better, my legs are stronger, and my teeth are very clean. It takes a while. You can pair it up in all kinds of ways.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, I like in general. I like the idea of maybe doing meditation in the morning. So you make your cup of coffee and then you meditate. But if you have like three little toddlers that you're chasing around and you're trying to get pants on your kids, then maybe that's not a good time to meditate, right? It's not a good space for that habit to live. I think once you've done that habit scorecard and you have like all of your normal habits laid out there, you can start to think about the new habit that you want to build and look at that list and then say, okay, what's the appropriate place to insert this new habit? Where should that new habit stack live? What's a good trigger for that new behavior to occur? And so you create these little stacks and then it just eventually it doesn't take that long, but eventually you get used to just doing it in the same order each time. You know, like I've one woman who she's like every day I walk into my office, I hang up my purse, I hang up my jacket, I go fill up my water bottle, I sit down the desk and I answer the first email. And that's like she just does that sequence every time she comes in.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As a general rule, as a very broad stroke rule, it tends to be better to do habits earlier in the day rather than later because the later it gets in the day, the less your day is under your control, right? Like more things interrupt. There's just, you know, you run lower on time, lower on energy, and so on.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kinds of habit stacks. One of the funny ones that I remember is one guy, he was really into working out and he was always drinking protein shakes, but his finances were kind of a mess. And so anytime that he would make a protein shake, he would like check his finances and check his budget for the day. He would like, when I make a protein shake, I fill out my daily budget. That was like his habit stack. But you can do it for anything, right? And the idea is that you want to find a good place for this new habit to live. You know, sometimes like let's say let's take the meditation example.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Habits that were performing each day. And those can become anchors. They can become cues that prompt the new behaviors that we're going to perform. So let's say that your current habit is you make a cup of coffee, right? So you're already doing this. You're going to start each day. You're going to make a cup of coffee. And the new habit that you want to build is you want to start meditating. So then you could say, all right, after I make my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds. So this is just like a basic habit stack, right? So you start with coffee and then you meditate after. Now once you get good at this, you can start to chain them together. So for example, you could say, after I make my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds, and then I will write my to-do list for the day. After I write my to-do list for the day, I will prioritize them and start working on my first task or whatever. And now you have this little stack that you do the same way each morning, each time. And just as a way to build simple momentum and get you in. I've got readers who have made like all.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look at this. I like these props. This is great. All right. So first, let me just unpack the idea. Habit stacking is this concept that came from Stanford professors named BJ Fogg. And his insight, which I think is great, is that it's easier to build a new habit if you layer it or stack it on top of an old habit, a habit you're already doing. He calls it the tiny habits recipe, I think, but the insight is just that we all have”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whatever. Just put an equal sign. And the idea is not to judge yourself for it. It's more like sometimes I tell people it's almost like imagine when you like go to the zoo and you like, you know, look at the lions and you're like, oh, wow, how interesting that they would do that. You kind of like do that with yourself. And you're like, oh, how interesting that I spend my time that way. You know, you're not trying to judge yourself or analyze it. It's just, let me see what I'm actually spending my time on. And then once you have that list, I think that, and this is like later in the book, but there's it becomes very useful for building habit stacks for layering your new habits on top of the things that you're already doing. And so some of it's self-awareness, some of it is priming for habit stacking.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The act of journaling about it changed what people ate and reduced the number of calories that they had and so on. Just because they were aware of what was happening. This is true for most habits, which is once you start to notice them, then you start to notice ways that you can improve them or ways that you could refine them or ways that maybe you want to do things differently. You're not operating as on autopilot in quite the same way. So the habit scorecard is just a simple way to do this. It's very simple. You just write down all the habits that you're doing each day. So you can start usually there's like a package of behaviors in the beginning and maybe around lunch and then like a power down routine at the end of the day. But it could be something like wake up, drink a glass of water, take a shower, you know, check my phone, get dressed, whatever. Like you just, you know, go through the list of what your normal day looks like. And then once you have the behaviors written down, you give them a score. And the score is just, if it's a good habit or a habit that you like that's contributing to your life, you put a plus sign. It's a habit that you feel like you want to get rid of, like maybe say I wake up and then I scroll on my phone for 10 minutes before I get out of bed. You're like, well, do I really want to be doing that? Maybe not. I'll give out a minus sign. And then some stuff's just neutral, you know, like get dressed.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the habit scorecard, this is just a simple assessment. The insight behind this practice is that intentional behavior change starts with self-awareness. You will change your habits all the time whether you think about them or not. You're building habits, whether you focus on it or whatever. Like your brain and body is built for it. Now, the more interesting question is, can you design your behavior? Can you shape your habits in the way that you want? And that's where self-awareness comes in. It's very hard to shape your habits without being aware of them. And so there have actually been some studies that have found that just the act of becoming more aware of a behavior will change it on its own. For example, there was one study that looked at people who journaled about their, they created food journals for what they were eating, no tracking of anything. They were not on a diet. They're not trying to eat certain way. They don't care about how many calories you have. There's no tracking or anything. All they did was simply write down what they ate each day.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of the game of building better habits is finding ways to pull the rewards of your good habits into the present moment so you feel good now. You don't have to wait three years for it to happen. And pulling the consequences of your bad habits into the present moment so that you feel a little bit of the pain right now and you realize this isn't actually serving me.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The cost of your good habits is in the present. The cost of your bad habits is in the future. And so for a lot of your quote-unquote bad habits, it feels good in the moment, you know, like eating a donut feels great now, playing the video game feels great now, you know, whatever. Like it's only later that you realize, oh, there was a cost associated with this. Even something like the classic bad habit of smoking, maybe you get to stand with friends outside and socialize, or maybe you reduce stress in the moment after a long day of work. It's only, you know, five or ten or twenty years later that you have this consequence.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So pervasive of a teacher, which is behaviors that get immediately rewarded get repeated, and behaviors that get immediately punished get avoided. And so obvious, but you have to ask yourself, do you have a good feeling when you do the thing that you want to do, the habit that you want to build? Are you getting immediately rewarded for that? And if you have a habit you're trying to avoid, what is the cost? What is the consequence? Is there something that feels like a punishment there? If so, then you're more likely to avoid it. If not, it gets tricky.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I found that a lot of habits are like that if you just introduce a little bit of friction, they kind of curtail themselves to the desired degree. So beer is another one. I don't think this would work if you actually have an addiction or something. But I've noticed that if I get like a six-pack of beer and I put it in the front of the fridge and I open it up and it's like right there and I can see it, I'll have one at dinner just because it's there. But if I put it like on the lowest shelf in the fridge, like all the way in the back, I kind of got to bend down to even see it. Sometimes I'll forget I'll have it, it'll be there for two weeks. I won't even remember that it's in there. And so I think that's all about like, you know, inversion of the first law, make it invisible, and inversion of the third law make it difficult. The less likely you are to see it, the harder it is to do, the more steps that are involved, the less likely it is to occur. And then the final piece is the inversion of the last law, which is rather than make it satisfying, make it unsatisfying. So layer on some kind of cost or a consequence. And I, in atomic habits, I call this the cardinal rule of behavior change.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Unsubscribe from emails. Don't keep junk food in the house. Reduce exposure to the queue. Rather than making it attractive, make it unattractive. That's the hardest one we can talk about in a second. Rather than making it easy, make it difficult, so increase friction, add steps between you and the behavior. I find, like, here's two examples for me. I've tried this new thing where I keep my phone in another room until lunch each day. So usually it's like 9 to 11 or so in the morning. My phone is down the hall, it's in a different room, and I'm in my office. And it's just a chance for me to work on my own priorities rather than whatever's, you know, coming in through the phone. I'm like everybody else. If my phone is right next to me, I will check it every three minutes just because it's there. But if it's down the hall, it's only thirty seconds away, but I never go get it. And I always think that's interesting. You know, it's like, did I want it or not? In the one sense, I wanted it badly enough that I would check it every three minutes when it was right by me, but I never wanted it so bad that I'd go work thirty seconds to go get.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So for each of these, there are many ways to do each of these things. There's many ways to make habits obvious. There are many ways to make them attractive and so on. And what I'm giving you is just kind of the overview of how to build a good habit or how to install a new behavior. If you want to break a bad habit, then you just invert these four. So rather than making it obvious, make it invisible.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I need to get my workout in today. I don't want to forget. So that's a cue that triggers the behavior. There's something attractive about being part of it as a group. You know that once you post your screenshot, that other people are going to see it and you might get kind of rewarded for it or you did your thing. So that's kind of exciting and feels motivating that motivates you to show up and do it. Sometimes you may work out with somebody Right. And so there's something there that's improving the response. It's more fun to do it together, but it also gets you moving. And then finally, there's the reward of sticking to the streak or being part of it or not getting the reward.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it influences all of the behaviors. So the fact that you see other people working out is a cue. So like you might get a text of somebody else's screenshot on your phone. You're like, oh.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first time that you take a bite of a pancake, and then you're like, oh, that's kind of tasty. Maybe I should take another bite. And other times you try things and you're like, I don't really like that that much, or it didn't really do anything. It was kind of neutral. And your brain's like, well, maybe try something different next time. So the behaviors that are rewarded, the behaviors that are satisfying, the behaviors that are enjoyable are likely to stick.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's satisfying is about increasing the odds that you do it next time. Because by the time you get to this step, the habit's already occurred. It's already over now. But was it rewarding or not? Was it beneficial or not? Did it serve you in some way? If it serves you, if you feel like it benefits you somehow, that marks the experience in your brain and says, hey, this was useful. Let's come back to this next time. Next time you're in a similar situation, let's repeat this again. And so make it satisfying the reward is kind of, it closes the feedback loop of learning. You know, it increases the odds that you're going to follow through on it. I use that word learning intentionally. We're talking about building habits, but in a way what we're really talking about is the process of learning. It's the process of how your brain and body learn what to do as you go through life. You know, you go throughout life and you experience different things and you come across different strategies and you try them out. You know, at some point there's”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then the fourth and final law is to make it satisfying. The more satisfying your habits are, the more likely you are to stick to them in the future and return to them again. The first three laws make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy, are all about making your habit more likely to occur this time.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, all right, I'm in the habit of bringing luncheon. How can I start to make lunch healthier? So find a way to make your habit attractive. The third law is to make it easy. This is all about making it simple, frictionless, easy to do. The more convenient or frictionless your habits are, the more likely they are to occur. We've talked about this a lot already, but scaling your habits down, it's using the two-minute rule to make it as easy as you can. But the easier a habit is to perform, the more likely it is to happen. Daniel Kahneman, the famous psychologist, I think he once said that If you were to boil behavior down to like a single principle, a single thing that drives human behavior, it's convenience, it's ease. You know, what is the easy thing to do? We are biological organisms and we expend energy to live, and it is in your best interest to try to conserve energy whenever you can. You're always looking for it. In fact, many of the largest businesses in the world basically just take a human desire that we already want to.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now he passes it thirty times a day, much more likely to pick it up and play for five minutes. So it's just making your habits obvious. The second law is about the craving, and it's all about making it attractive. And this is where I mentioned earlier, like that question of what would this look like if it was fun? You want your habits to be fun, compelling, attractive, interesting to you. And the more engaging or exciting it is, the more likely you are to stick with it. So like I had one woman who she wanted to stop going out to eat for lunch at work every day and start bringing her lunch in because she felt like it would be healthy. But the idea of making like a salad for lunch wasn't that exciting to her. So she came up with this phrase of a party in a bowl. And so in the beginning she would do all kinds of stuff. She would like take potato chips and crumble them up and put them in there or she would like chop up snickers bars and put them in with the salad or whatever. She was just trying to find a way to make it fun. And then once she was already bringing luncheon every day, you know, after she did this for a month or so, then she was like,”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have a reader who he would go to his guitar lessons and he would practice with his teacher and then he'd give him some homework to practice certain scales or whatever and then he would come back and he would take his guitar, put it in the case at the end of each session and put it in the closet. Well, he'd forget it was there for a week and then the next week would roll around and he'd pick it out and go to practice and he'd be like you weren't, you know, you didn't do this throughout the week. So he bought a guitar stand and put it in the center of the living room.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's like, where's the creatine in the kitchen? Is it tucked up in a high shelf and it's behind a cabinet door and you don't really see it? Or is it like out on the counter? It's one of the first things that you see. So there are varying degrees of what you want to do here and like what you want to place out. But you're just trying to make the good habit obvious. You want to make it easy to notice.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I call these the four laws of behavior change, right? So for the Q, the first law is you want to make it obvious. You want the cues of your good habits to be obvious available visible, easy to see, easier it is to see or get your attention, the more likely you are to act on it. So a lot of that's about environment. It's about making things obvious, but the cue get your attention something you notice.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you get the little. Jingle in your ear of the paperclip hitting, and it adds to the reward effect. What I think is most interesting is how do we take this, how do we take these four steps that basically all behaviors go through, and then translate it into something that we can use and apply in daily life and work. So I call this the four laws of behavior change. There's one for each step. Yeah, you got them right here.”
2025-12-11 · The Diary of a CEO · Discipline Expert: The Habit That Will Make Or Break Your Entire 2026! James Clear · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT