In today’s world of business, every small action and decision carries the weight of success or failure. For business leaders, both personal and professional habits require careful consideration to maximize their own potential and that of their teams.
In this article, bestselling author and renowned speaker James Clear shares practical insights and strategies to help leaders form habits that align with their goals and unlock the power of tiny gains for a sustainable future.
James Clear is a world-renowned speaker and bestselling author of the Atomic Habits, one of the most consequential books on habit formation in recent history. Focusing on habits, decision-making, and continuous improvement, Atomic Habits has sold over 15 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 50 languages. James is a regular speaker at Fortune 500 companies and his work has been featured in TIME magazine, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
This idea was put forth by the performance director for the British Cycling Team, Dave Brailsford. When he was hired in 2003, the team had never won the Tour de France, which had been around for 110 years.
What set Brailsford apart was the idea of the aggregation of marginal gains – the 1% improvement in nearly everything the team was doing related to cycling. This included getting lighter tires and more ergonomic seats, finding the right massage gels, painting the inside of the bike tire white to better spot dust that would get into the gears, hiring a surgeon to teach the team how to properly wash their hands to avoid getting sick, and even finding the best pillow for each rider.
The British Cycling Team ended up winning the Tour de France 3 years later. They then won another 4 times over the next five years.
James notes: “1% improvements are not just nice to have, they’re not just a bonus on top of your performance, but they can be the pathway to unlocking exceptional levels of performance and elite levels of success.”
Excellence is not about radical change; it’s usually about accruing small improvements over time.
Visualizing this power of tiny gains, James explains the compounding effect that small behavioral changes can have over time.
It’s important to remember that habits are a double-edged sword – they can build you up or cut you down.
Time will magnify what you feed it. If you have good habits, time becomes your ally. If you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy.
James notes: “The idea of getting 1% better each day is about emphasizing trajectory rather than position. Ask yourself, ‘Am I getting 1% better or worse? Is the arrow pointed in the right direction?’ Because if you’re on a good trajectory, all you need is time. But if you’re on a bad trajectory, even if you’re in a strong position right now, it’s not going to end well.”
James also emphasizes that if you’re struggling to improve, the problem isn’t you; the problem is your system.
You don’t rise to the level of your goals; you fall to the level of your systems.
The difficult part isn’t the goal itself; it’s building the system of behaviors or a collection of habits that would inevitably carry you to that desired outcome. When there is a gap between a goal and the collection of habits, habits always win.
Accounting for the possibility of luck and randomness in life, James’ advice is that habits are under our control whereas luck and randomness are not.
James adds: “So the only reasonable approach in life is to focus on the elements of the situation that are within your control. You want alignment between your desired outcome and daily habits.”
On how to identify where to make these 1% improvements, James explains that it’s usually the things that seem trivial or a waste of time. However, it’s important to remember that these small improvements and adjustments accumulate and can compound to make a meaningful difference over time.
The questions to ask are:
James elaborates: “If you take that [last] question seriously, you start to realize where you should be directing those 1% improvements or little adjustments. You should be directly pointing them toward the things that accumulate.”
On how to change a habit, James walked through the four stages of habit formation. Understanding these foundations will inform the process of making and breaking habits.
An addendum about reward: Not every behavior is rewarding. Some things come with a cost or consequence, sometimes it’s neutral. But if a behavior is not rewarding or doesn’t feel positive or enjoyable in some way, it will be difficult to sustain it as a habit.
Each stage of habit formation comes with a corresponding law. This is how each stage can be operationalized:
These laws will help you form a habit. However, if you’re looking to break a habit, James suggests inverting the four laws:
When asked about how to deal with set backs when it comes to habit formation, James pointed out that falling off course of a habit is usually indicative of something – perhaps you’re in a different season or different place in life. This could mean adjusting the habit a little to accommodate.
However, if you still want to stick to a habit but just happened to be distracted for a day or two, James offers this mantra:
Never miss twice.
He notes: “If the reclaiming of a habit is fast, the breaking of it doesn’t matter that much. I think we have all seen this in our lives, which is it’s very rarely the first mistake that ruins you. It’s the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. It’s letting slipping up become a new habit. That’s the real problem. So if you can reclaim a habit quickly, then mistakes doesn’t matter that much. So never miss twice.”
James outlines the importance of creating a physical and social environment that would sustain your desired habits because the spaces in which you live and work each day influence your actions.
James suggests: “One interesting thing you can do is hold a habit in the back of your mind that you’re trying to build, and then walk into the rooms where you spend most of your time each day. Look around those spaces and ask yourself, ‘What is this space designed to encourage? What behaviors are obvious here? What behaviors are easy here?’”
If you want a habit to be a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment.
In terms of social environment, James suggests that you consider the people you surround yourself with.
He says: “From a practical standpoint, join groups where your desired behaviors and habits are normal. Because if you join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior, you’re going to be much more likely to stick with it yourself.”
He points out that people have a need to fit in, so we tend to stick to behaviors that are “normal” for our social environment. If that is in opposition to the habits you want to build, it is less likely to stick.
James explains: “A lot of the time the desire to belong will overpower the desire to improve. So as best as possible, you want to get those two things aligned.”
As James explains in his book, The Power of Atomic Habits, scaling it down is key. This means taking a habit you want to create and scaling it down to something that takes two minutes or less.
For example, wanting to read 30 books a year can become reading one page. Trying to do yoga four times a week becomes taking out the yoga mat.
James explains: “Something that often gets overlooked is that a habit must be established before it can be improved. It has to become the standard in your life before you can scale it up and optimize it.”
It’s often said that the heaviest action is the first one and the hardest step is the first movement. The two-minute rule pushes back on the perfectionist tendency or desire to have it all figured out ahead of time. It encourages you to master the art of showing up, scaling down, and getting started today. Once you’ve gained that foothold, you can use it to advance to the next level.
The core to the idea of atomic habits is that it’s not about little habits – it’s about believing in something new about yourself. It’s about shifting the story you have about who you are, what is normal for you, and why you do the things you do.
True behavior change is identity change.
James points out: “Where we’re trying to get to is this place where you take pride in being that kind of person. We want to get to this point where you feel like [you] want to embody this identity with [your] behavior.”
While it’s true that habits can be driven by external results like making money or being more productive or losing weight, James argues that the real reason habits matter is that every habit is a vote for the type of person you want to be.
For example, writing one sentence won’t finish a novel, but it casts a vote that you’re a writer. Individually, these are small actions but collectively, you start to build up this body of evidence that shifts the weight of the story of you.
James adds: “My suggestion is to let the behavior lead the way to start with one sales call or one-minute meditation, or one email or one page, or whatever it is, and let that small action, be evidence that at that moment you are that kind of person.”
When it comes to implementing these insights toward collective habits and tapping into the power of tiny gains within the business environment, James suggests getting the incentives aligned.
Giving the example of Boeing’s strategy in the early 90s requiring software engineers to be on the first test flights, James explained the power of having the outcome of someone’s work impact them in a certain way.
The questions to ask here are:
James notes: When the incentives aren’t that well aligned, somebody else is doing the work, somebody else is bearing the consequences, and somebody else is reaping the rewards. So, you have to think about how your business is designed and adjust the model so that the incentives are aligned. If they are, people’s behavior naturally falls in line. People naturally want to do the same things because that’s how they get the incentives and avoid the consequences.
