James Clear
jamesclear.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, writes about habits, decision making, mental models and self-improvement.
What HN saysCommenters recommend his writing on processes over goals and mention Atomic Habits as a bestseller; HN also links the speeches he hosts.
301HN people shared it
149linked it in comments
219stories submitted
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Most-shared posts
- 1Atomic habits15 people · first shared 2019
- 2Facts don’t change our minds (2018)11 people · 185 points · first shared 2018 · 201 comments on HN
- 3Systems are greater than goals11 people · 13 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 4Why Trying to Be Perfect Won’t Help You Achieve Your Goals (and What Will)10 people · 35 points · first shared 2014 · 3 comments on HN
- 5First Principles: Elon Musk on the Power of Thinking for Yourself9 people · 12 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 6This Coach Improved Every Tiny Thing by 1 Percent and Here’s What Happened9 people · 7 points · first shared 2014 · 2 comments on HN
- 7Inversion: The Crucial Thinking Skill Nobody Ever Taught You8 people · 25 points · first shared 2017 · 2 comments on HN
- 8Warren Buffett’s “2 List” Strategy: How to Maximize Your Focus8 people · 12 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 9How to Stop Procrastinating on Your Goals by Using the “Seinfeld Strategy”7 people · 183 points · first shared 2013 · 93 comments on HN
- 10Great Talks Most People Have Never Heard7 people · 87 points · first shared 2018 · 5 comments on HN
- 11The Diderot Effect: Why We Want Things We Don’t Need6 people · 7 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 12How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the “2-Minute Rule”6 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 13Heroin habits6 people · first shared 2017
- 1440 Yr Stanford Study Found People with Delayed Gratification More Likely Succeed5 people · 41 points · first shared 2015 · 26 comments on HN
- 15The Mistake Smart People Make: Being in Motion vs. Taking Action5 people · 6 points · first shared 2015 · 2 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
voiper1 · 2018-05-28
James Clear writes quite a bit about processes over goals, he has some great stuff. https://jamesclear.com/
tveita · 2026-05-21
I think https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/finding-your-own-vision-by-arno-… is a better take.
What gives you an unique perspective and your own voice can be sticking to your thing for a long time and exploring your exact path more deeply than anyone else has. You don't need to take a million random stabs to become "improbable", and there's no reason that should lead to anything authentic.
chthonicdaemon · 2024-12-28
Tell that to Richard Hamming: "Instead of attacking isolated problems, I made the resolution that I would never again solve an isolated problem except as characteristic of a class." [1]
I have seen this "premature abstraction" warning creep through our discourse lately, but I don't clearly understand it. I feel like I'm making calls all the time about when to introduce functions or classes that will save you time or effort in the future without forcing yourself to see the repetition before you do. Not only that but Hamming's advice has rung true in my career. Solving the general problem is often easier than solving a specific case and can be re-used for later instances, too.
[1] https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/you-and-your-research-by-richard…
deanc · 2024-08-09
I'm surprised in the context of this discussion, that nobody has yet brought up James Clear's fantastic book: Atomic Habits [1] - one of the best selling non-fiction books worldwide over the last few years.
I read this book over the summer, and it's an incredibly easy to digest breakdown of all the reasons why people fail at their goals, and very simple mind hacks to change the way you approach achieving them through good habits and avoiding bad ones.
[1] https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
msolujic · 2023-11-29
A transcript of the original speech at Harvard, June 1995, should be e.g. at
https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/psychology-of-human-mi...
A recording of the original speech is at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv7sLrON7QY
mdp2021 · 2023-11-28
That linked is the revised version
A transcript of the original speech at Harvard, June 1995, should be e.g. at
https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/psychology-of-human-misjudgment-…
A recording of the original speech is at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv7sLrON7QY
captn3m0 · 2023-07-14
The closest to a citation I could find is that this is an anecdote from a speech that Charlie Munger have at Harvard in 1995.
https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/psychology-of-human-misjudgment-…
The 6th paragraph has the anecdote.
probably_wrong · 2023-03-30
In his "Make good art" speech [1] Neil Gaiman mentions a third axis in the good-bad/nice-jerk graph, namely, "delivers the work on time".
I'm not sure how good it would work for software development, but the comic book world has plenty of successful artists like that - their art is okay at best, but they have plenty of work because they reliably hit their deadlines.
Assuming your worker is not entirely terrible, I always thought this made for a reasonable tie breaker.
[1] https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/make-good-art-by-neil-gaiman
robocat · 2023-02-13
Charlie used a quote from George Bernard Shaw's play “In the last analysis, every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.”
I personally wonder how many therapists say “you’re fixed, I don’t need any more of your money”.
The quote on management consultants was just one example of how many professionals act this way towards businesses, and how it wasn't only about money but also a subconscious, psychological tendency.
“The guy tells you what is good for him, and he doesn’t recognize that he’s doing anything wrong any more than that doctor did when he was pulling out all those normal gallbladders.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv7sLrON7QY
Transcript: https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/psychology-of-human-misjudgment-…
ohadron · 2022-11-14
I started this habit by getting a kindle, putting it next to my bed, and promising myself that no matter how tired I am, I need to read at least one page before I go to sleep. Which is easy - it takes 1 minute. But it gets the ball rolling. I've finished 30+ books since I started doing this, and more importantly I'm reading every single day.
In general I recommend reading [Atomic Habits](https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits) to learn how to pick up habits. Maybe that could be your first book.
themisto · 2022-07-29
I haven't read any books by David Foster Wallace, though every time he comes up I feel obliged to share a fantastic speech of his about finding joy in the monotony of life. I heard it years ago and it's always stuck with me. Video[1], transcript[2]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI
[2] https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/this-is-water-by-david-foster-wa…
Invictus0 · 2021-07-31
Great read. I feel like task lists are really a coping mechanism we resort to when we are placed in a somewhat natural situation--that is, having an overwhelming load of tasks to complete. Once the tasks are "out of mind" and on the list, then they can be completed sequentially--sort the tasks by priority, and then do them in that order. If to do lists were really about our life goals and dreams, then the Seinfeld method still reigns supreme; that is, do the most important thing you need to do every day, even just a little bit of it, and note how many days in a row you've done it.
https://jamesclear.com/stop-procrastinating-seinfeld-strategy
rickitan · 2021-07-06
I loved every single one here:
Great Talks Most People Have Never Heard
https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches
adrianmsmith · 2021-01-02
It might be worth considering that if you start too much, you might finish nothing. If the payoffs only come after finishing something, that would be a lot of effort for not achieving much.
It might be better to put the same (total) effort into fewer things. If those things get finished, leading to payoff, there might be more payoff in total for the same total effort invested.
This is my interpretation of Warren Buffet’s idea of “focus” as described here: https://jamesclear.com/buffett-focus
pgt · 2020-11-05
To understand Why Modes Are Wrong™, consider Bret Victor's Inventing on Principle:
https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/inventing-on-principle-by-bret-v…
An app is the Ultimate Mode, of course, and there is a contextual sweet spot where you can draw the line between universality and contextual exclusivity.
This line depends on "nearness" (or familiarity) and your short & long-term working memory, but in general humans seem to enjoy universal modalities like Select/Cut/Copy/Paste that do not require you to switch into "Cut Mode" or "Copy Mode" while you are working with text, i.e. heritable context should provide heritable modes.
And yet, religious Vim users champion granular modes above all, including Selection and Edit modes. My conclusion is that they are either very wrong, or serious users have different neural architectures.
arcticbull · 2020-08-06
This is your regular reminder that Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and usage did not go up but the health effects and negative societal effects of drug use all but vanished [1]. They went from worst in the EU to among the best in the EU in the decade that followed on pretty much every metric.
Addiction has a huge situational component. 20% of US GIs in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. When they returned home 90% of them stopped using heroin overnight, indefinitely [2].
We're doing this all wrong.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radical-drugs-p…
[2] https://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits
e1g · 2020-07-31
Just FYI this story originally was about photography as clarified by the author at https://jamesclear.com/repetitions
In photography, you can get lucky. When I come back from holidays and review a thousand of random snapshots, a couple of them look great. Take 200 shots of a single thing, and one of them might be pro-level due to pure chance. Yet I'm not sure how well this "randomly great" percentage would translate to me playing the violin, dancing ballet, or writing a song.
paulhodge · 2020-06-15
For all the people who don't like this change, here's an analogy. Try thinking of it like you're making your bed. Admiral William H. McRaven has a terrific speech (link: https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/make-your-bed-by-admiral-william… ) about making your bed, with some excellent quotes:
"Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right."
"If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed."
No one really thinks that renaming "master" branches is going to save the world, or really, do much of anything. I'm going to do it because it's a little thing that takes less than a day. After that I'll move on to something else.
raghavankl · 2020-04-20
James Clear in book `Atomic Habits` talks about the Goldilocks rule,
https://jamesclear.com/goldilocks-rule
which recommends to work on problems slightly higher than your capability
nestorherre · 2020-01-23
I can recommend reading the books Atomic Habits, Deep Work and Digital Minimalism. The biggest takeaway from all 3 imho is environment design [1] [2], explained best in Atomic Habits (but also "used" in the other 2).
Also I'd recommend the Pomodoro technique, which is quite useful for me.
[1] https://jamesclear.com/power-of-environment
[2] https://jamesclear.com/environment-design-organ-donation
jumbopapa · 2019-11-20
One of my favorite Charlie Munger speeches seems relevant [1].
> I have a friend who carried a big stack of linen cards about this thick, and when somebody would make a comment that reflected self-pity, he would take out one of the cards, take the top one off the stack and hand it to the person, and the card said, “Your story has touched my heart. Never have I heard of anyone with as many misfortunes as you.
Sure, you might not start with as much as someone else. That doesn't change the effects of compound interest - you can still have have an exponential return.
[1] - https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/2007-usc-law-school-commencement…
perl4ever · 2019-09-02
"It reminds me of the inversion technique that James Clear wrote so well about: https://jamesclear.com/inversion"
This seems to be vaguer than what I thought of before clicking on the link. I generally react to any proposition that seems compelling and obvious and motivational by asking myself "what if the opposite were true and how would one determine that?" If the opposite could be defended equally well, then the original statement doesn't mean much. Sometimes it seems to me like it's most of what people talk about. Instead of debating, perhaps it's best to just put it aside as non-productive. Apparently that's a subset?
nefitty · 2019-09-02
These are great suggestions. It reminds me of the inversion technique that James Clear wrote so well about: https://jamesclear.com/inversion
My question is, what should I do when I'm on the not-receiving-recognition end? I've tried to think of ways of maybe giving myself positive feedback, etc. but haven't really fleshed it out yet. I'm basically in a situation where I don't want to give up the fight to succeed in my role, but it feels like all that is ever visible are my and my team's failures...
jonnyburch · 2019-08-11
This is great. I've always found it really hard to remember what I did a month ago, let alone 5 months ago for my bi-annual (if that) perf review. Even worse as a manager. Building more of a habit around this stuff would be awesome. (BTW really recommend James Clear 'Atomic Habits'[0], found it really interesting.)
We're thinking about building something like this for people to track personal growth more easily at Progression [0]. Thinking nice pretty exports, benchmarking, all sorts of other stuff too.
Genuine request, if anyone does this regularly I'd love to speak to you.
[0] https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
[1] https://www.progressionapp.com/solo
iyn · 2019-07-30
1. Already mentioned Benedict's Newsletter (https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter)
2. James Clear's (https://jamesclear.com/newsletter), author of the Atomic Habits, which is a fantastic book about... habits (https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits)
Both are no-bullshit and consistently provide value.
octosphere · 2019-07-18
I always thought of 10x engineers as a specific type of engineer that follow the 10x rule, as detailed and discussed by Grant Cardone in his book `The 10x rule`. More on that book here: https://jamesclear.com/book-summaries/10x-rule
> The 10X Rule says that 1) you should set targets for yourself that are 10X greater than what you believe you can achieve and 2) you should take actions that are 10X greater than what you believe are necessary to achieve your goals. The biggest mistake most people make in life is not setting goals high enough. Taking massive action is the only way to fulfill your true potential.
taneq · 2019-05-28
This reminds me of the "make your bed" advice: https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/make-your-bed-by-admiral-william…
melling · 2019-05-23
It’s not even speed. Most humans waste most of their days on minutiae. We spend a lot of time entertaining and amusing ourselves. Watch everyone trying to be clever in a Reddit thread, for example; a complete waste of time.
We’re also full of biases.
https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/psychology-of-human-misjudgment-…
8611m · 2019-04-30
I'd highly recommend reading Atomic Habits. One of the key concepts in the book regarding changing habits is developing or changing how you identify yourself. From your post, it appears you like starting things. More details from authors blog here:
https://jamesclear.com/identity-based-habits
For me, I started diligently tracking what new interests I develop. Before I picked up a new topic of research or area of interest, I would put it in a note and evaluate if this would take me closer or further from my overall goal. I stopped spending too much time on a new interest if it did not align with my overall goal. "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." It is really important to be self-aware of this trend, and you have shown that you want to improve.
Good luck!
summerdown2 · 2019-04-05
Actually, the S&P has delivered 7% after inflation over its history, not 5%, so the returns are even larger than this.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average-annual-re…
The real thing the article misses, though, is the mindset that giving up a latte is meant to symbolise. That's best expressed in this article:
https://jamesclear.com/marginal-gains
The point isn't to just drop the latte and see a massive gain. It's to understand that a set of marginal gains made across your life can, together, have a huge cumulative effect.