Bamboo can barely be seen for the first five years as it builds extensive root systems underground before exploding ninety feet into the air within six weeks. Cancer spends 80 percent of its life undetectable, then takes over the body in months. The one-degree shift, no different from the temperature increases before it, unlocks a huge change.īreakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change. Then suddenly at 32 degrees, it begins to melt. If you slowly raise the temperature to 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, and then 32 degrees, you won’t see any change in the ice cube. They fail to understand why they don’t see improvement.Ĭlear shares a story about an ice cube in a room at 26 degrees. I see this frequently with customers, who start, stop, start, stop. We can get started on a new habit, motivated to make it stick, yet when we fail to see any tangible results inevitably, we decide to stop. Why it’s so HARD to Build Habits That Last Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits.

Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Conversely, if you’re broke, but you save a little bit every month, then you’re on the path toward financial freedom-even if you’re moving slower than you’d like.

If your spending habits don’t change, it’s not going to end well. If you’re a millionaire but you spend more than you earn each month, then you’re on a bad trajectory. You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results. What matters is whether your habits are putting you on the path toward success. See Chart: The effects of small habits compound over time.Ĭlear notes, “ it doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful you are right now. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more. Suppose you can get just 1 percent better each day? You’d end up with results nearly 37 times better after one year.Ĭonversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. Watch James Clear explain in 8 minutes how, and why environment helps to achieve success: Only when you look back two, five, or perhaps ten years later do the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones become significant. On any given day they seem to make little difference, and yet the impact these small habits deliver over the months and years can be enormous. The same way money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. In Atomic Habits, James Clear shares this story in much greater detail, as well as his own recovery from a damaging face/brain injury to show how small habits can make a significant difference. In Measuring ROI - Create Marginal Gains we shared the remarkable story of Sir David Brailsford, formerly performance director of British Cycling, who turned Great Britain’s cycling team from one of the worst to the best in just 2 years.

“It’s true that I was 44 when we opened our first Walmart in 1962…and like most other overnight successes, it was about 20 years in the making.” ~ Sam Walton

Our progress requires slow, steady, progress to achieve success. See 12 QUESTIONS to Take You From Good To Great - #1 & 2 for Collins' definition of Greatness. It took slow, steady momentum, continuous, consistent pushes on their flywheel, eventually leading to breakthrough. It’s easy to forget Jim Collins in Good to Great shared great companies didn’t become great overnight.

Atomic habits quotes