James Clear
54 statements across 3 episodes · 15 bullish · 2 bearish · 3 people on the record · first statement May 17, 2022 by Justin Su'a · said 24 times in 10 episodes since 2020 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: James Clear's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Charlie Hoehn (8), Shane Parrish (6), Luke Burgess (2), Justin Su'a (2), Jim Murphy (2), Derek Sivers (2), Ryan Holiday (1), Morgan Housel (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2025 2 mentions in 1 episode
2024 13 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
2022 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2020 2 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about James Clear, oldest first
May 17, 2022 positive
Su'a: Environment is the invisible hand shaping human behavior
“The environment is the invisible hand that shapes behavior. If you want to take a look at someone's behavior, take a look at the system in which they function in, take a look at their morning routine, take a look at their home, take a look at everything.”
Dec 10, 2024 neutral
James Clear Lost Roughly 3x Per Copy Traditionally Publishing 'Atomic Habits'
“I remember talking to James Clear and we were talking about how much he would have made had he gone the self-publishing route with Atomic Habits, and I did the math, and it was like, ah, it's about three X more per copy.”
Jan 1, 2026
James Clear: Success means time autonomy and contributing to humanity's knowledge
“I think the short version is success is having power over my days. That's, you know, if I have the freedom and the ability to choose how I'm spending my days, that sounds great. What more could you want than that? You know, that means I would get to choose to …”
Jan 1, 2026
Clear: Let the world say no first instead of being your own bottleneck
“I try to not be my own bottleneck. You know, I don't want to have, I don't want to be the first person to tell myself, no, I want the world to tell me no first, and then I'll adjust based on the feedback that I get, but I don't want to talk myself out of it.”
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Clear: Publishing work openly is more effective than traditional networking
“I like to say that sharing your work publicly is like a magnet and it just draws other people to you who are interested in the same thing. It's probably one of the most useful things you can do for networking. Is it's not actually networking. It's just sharing…”
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
Clear: Early unrewarded habit effort is stored until reaching a phase transition
“That work is not being wasted. It's just being stored. You know, it's kind of like complaining about heating an ice cube up a little bit and not melting yet. It's like, well, you just haven't hit the phase transition.”
Jan 1, 2026 neutral
Clear: Starting a company in your 40s or 50s is 'harder mode'
“It seems that responsibilities and obligations tend to increase throughout life. Each day that goes by is an opportunity for A responsibility to come into play or an obligation or an obstacle that you didn't foresee to come up. And so if you're waiting till yo…”
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Clear: Atomic Habits Bestseller Status Was Five Years of Accumulated Leverage
“Really what you're seeing when the book comes out is the release of potential energy that was built over like five years prior. You know, it's not like it happened overnight. It was The five years of building an audience of hundreds of thousands of people, mee…”
Jan 1, 2026 neutral
Clear: Social media's short half-life disqualifies it as a core business focus
“Social media, you Has a very short half-life and that's fine. It can serve a role in the business, but I'm never going to make it my central thing because something like a blog post has a little bit longer half-life, but a book really has a long half-life.”
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
Clear: Writing improves thinking only because the difficulty forces mental reorganization
“The act of writing is forcing you to clarify your thoughts. The act of lifting the weight is forcing your muscles to get stronger. And so it only works because it is hard. If it was easy, it would not require much thought. Which means it also doesn't require m…”
Jan 1, 2026 neutral
Clear: Increasing Annual Margin of Safety Matters More Than Net Worth
“And I just, I don't really even care about our net worth that much. What I care about is, am I in a stronger position this year? You know, like as long as each year it's getting a little bit stronger, the margin of safety gets a little bit larger. The ability …”
Jan 1, 2026
Clear: Default early-life habits are mathematically unlikely to be optimal
“And what you find is that like early in your life, a lot of the solutions that you come up with are just things that you either inherited from your parents or saw modeled and started to repeat. And you get to be about 22 or 25 or something like that. And what …”
Jan 1, 2026
Clear: The two timeframes that matter most in life are 10 years and one hour
“I feel like the two timeframes that matter most in life are 10 years and one hour, you know, so like 10 years is just shorthand for the big, meaningful things that you want to do in life. Where do you want to be in a decade? You know, I, sometimes I like to en…”
Jan 1, 2026
Clear: Starting anything truly new means you are inherently unqualified for it
“Anytime you do something new, by definition, you are doing something you're unqualified for. It can't be, if you've already done it, if you already have some type of qualification or skillset or experience, then you're qualified for it. It can't be new. It's j…”
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026 negative
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026 neutral
Jan 1, 2026
Clear relies on his assistant's phone for social media 2FA codes
“I also have tried to install some additional barriers, which is I can't log in to any of my social accounts on my own. I have to text my assistant to send me the login cause it's tied to a separate phone. It's, I can't even get past the two factor cause it doe…”
Jan 1, 2026
Clear: Co-founded publishing venture Authors Equity to cross-pollinate his brand
“Like I have my business as a writer, you know, I'm an author and I have my platforms, but I also co-founded a publishing company authors equity. And so now the brand that I have as an author helps me meet other authors and talk to them. And if it's a good fit,…”
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Jan 1, 2026
Clear: Growing success requires continuously saying no to past priorities
“If you're really successful and things are going well, then every year your opportunity cost should increase. But what that also means is every year you should be saying no to things that you were saying yes to the previous year.”
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Clear: Four laws of behavior change are obvious, attractive, easy, satisfying
“Broadly speaking, I think there are four things that you should do if you want to build a habit... So roughly speaking, what you want is your habit to be obvious... You want it to be attractive... You want it to be easy, simple, frictionless... And you want it…”
Jan 1, 2026
Clear: Intense effort applied to natural strengths creates unbeatable advantage
“One of the big quests for life is to experiment enough to find what comes easy for you and then work really hard on what comes easy. Because if you work hard on the thing that you have some skill set for some strength for some natural aptitude for, then you're…”
Jan 1, 2026 neutral
Jan 1, 2026 negative
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Clear: Stick with what works until it stops working before seeking novelty
“Try a number of things, right? So experiment with a number of things, run a number of small experiments. Once you find something that works, double down on it and then keep doing it until it stops working, which is the step that a lot of people skip. And then …”
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
Clear: Executing two or three obvious basics delivers 80% of initial results
“Especially in the beginning, the primary bottleneck to results are you doing the obvious things? You know, do, do the obvious stuff first. There's probably only two or three pieces that you just need to do. Like, are you showing up consistently? Are you doing,…”
Jan 1, 2026
Clear spent 15 to 20 hours writing twice-weekly articles for three years
“And so for the first three years, I wrote a new article every Monday and Thursday, and I would spend on average, I would spend between like 15 and 20 hours on each article. The short, the fastest I ever did one was eight hours. The longest was like 40 somethin…”
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
Clear: Working on the right objective yields 100x results; pure effort scales 20%
“You cannot outwork the person who's working on a better thing. And so it is possible if you really grind, maybe you can work 10% harder or 20% harder than you are now. But if you work on the right thing, you get a hundred X of the results or a thousand X of th…”
Jan 1, 2026
Clear keeps his phone in another room until noon to avoid distractions
“Another little rule that I follow is I'd take my phone and I try to leave it in another room until lunch each day. So that just gives me from like nine to noon ish where I can work on my own agenda and not respond to everybody else's agenda.”
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026 positive
James Clear: Letting Go of Professional Labels Unlocks More Career Options
“If you need that label, then you are beholden to doing it that way. But if you can release yourself from the label and instead ask yourself, what type of lifestyle do I want? Or what type of impact do I want to make? Regardless of what the actual label is now,…”
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Clear: 3-star Amazon reviews offer the best actionable feedback on competitor books
“I went to the three star reviews on Amazon, one star review. Everybody hates it often for some stupid reason, like the book showed up and it was dirty on the dust jacket or whatever. Five-star review. Everybody loves it. But the three-star reviews or the four-…”
Jan 1, 2026 positive
Clear restricts his Instagram to plain text as a creative forcing function
“I do this with my Instagram account. It's like a very weird Instagram account. You know, there's no photos of me. It's just text. But it's kind of like a peacock's tail, you know, in the sense that it's a very useful hindrance. Like it's very visual visual and…”
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
Clear: Key life priorities are endless battles with no rollover credit
“One of the, there are a lot of things in life that are like this, but one of the challenging things about the really important stuff in life is that they're endless battles. You know, if you do a good job focusing today and prioritizing today, you pick the rig…”