You might not spend much time thinking about your habits. They are, after all, mindless. James Clear, on the other hand, has made something of a living on it. His newsletter on human behavior has nearly 500,000 subscribers and more than 10,000 people have enrolled in The Habits Academy, a course he designed for people trying to incorporate better routines and practices into their lives. He's also the author of the new book Atomic Habits.

One of his big takeaways is a bit unsettling when you consider all the habits you’ve sworn to kick (but haven’t), and all the habits you’ve really been meaning to start (but haven’t): habits, multiplied by time, equal the person you eventually become. That sounds dramatic, but think about it. In a year, the difference between a person who does 10 push ups a day and a person who eats one bag of Doritos a day is that one person has done 3650 push ups and one person is sad. The point is: habits compound. Which is great if you have good habits—and not so good if you have bad habits.

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One of the things you get at in the book is why a goal is maybe not the motivating force we believe it to be. What are some of the shortcomings of goals?

For many years, I was a very goal-oriented person. So this is coming from someone who set a lot of goals and thought that was the way to try to achieve things. What I think they are is directionally accurate: good for determining where you wanna direct your attention and energy. But after that's been decided, it's more useful, usually, to put the goal on the shelf.

Even if you set a goal and you achieve it, [it] only really changes your life for the moment. For many years I thought, "Oh if my business just could get featured in the New York Times, then I'd be set." And then that ended up happening a couple times, and it was in a spike for a week, and then everything went back to normal.

Part of that is a natural outcome of living in a society where results are the focus. The news cycle is always going to be about results. You're never going to see a story that's like, "Man Eats Chicken and Salad for Lunch Today." It's only a news story when six months later: “Man Loses 100 Pounds.” Social media just exacerbates that problem with everybody sharing their results and highlights of their life.

The results are not what we need to change—it’s the process behind the results. And it's the habits and systems that naturally lead those outcomes that is the more effective place to direct our time, attention, and energy. True long-term thinking is goalless thinking. Goals are about winning this instance of a game. Systems are about continuing to play the game. And I think any master, whether it's in sports or elsewhere, has this deep commitment to continuing to play the game.

"True long-term thinking is goalless thinking. Goals are about winning this instance of a game. Systems are about continuing to play the game."

One of the most common questions I get is, “How long does it take to build a habit?" And the assumption behind that question is, "How long does it take until I can stop working? How long until I don't have to put effort in anymore?” The honest answer is forever. Because if you stop doing it, then it's no longer a habit. And so we need to start looking at changes like this as a lifestyle to be lived, and not a finish line to be crossed.

What would you say to people who do have a system in place, who then don't achieve the type of success they’d hoped to?

Yeah. So luck and randomness play a role in life. [But] you really need to close the feedback loop on a lot of stuff. You need a process of reflection and review, so that you can refine it. I broadly lump habits into two categories. The first category are things that I guess we’d call daily fundamentals. Once you build them, you don't really need to think about it anymore. Tying your shoes, or brushing your teeth, or unplugging the toaster after each time you use it. I don't need a process of continuous improvement for tying my shoes, right?