People think of change as coming in the form of sudden, watershed moments. James Clear argues just the opposite: that our most dramatic transformations come from maintaining tiny changes over time.

British Cycling was a joke for almost a century. From its founding in 1908 until the early 2000s, the Brits won just one Olympic gold and never won the Tour de France. They were so bad that one cycling brand refused to export its products to Great Britain, fearing that Great Britain’s reputation would tarnish the brand’s reputation.

In 2003, British Cycling brought on a new performance director, David Brailsford. Cycling enthusiasts in Britain hoped Brailsford would be able to reverse Britain’s abysmal record. He adopted a style utterly different than that of his predecessors—one he referred to as “the aggregation of marginal gains.” 

Brailsford identified hundreds of factors that, in isolation, would be dismissed as having no serious impact on cyclist performance. He had more comfortable seats developed, swapped out old outdoor cyclist wear for the more aerodynamic indoor outfits, and outfitted athletes with electrically heated shorts that would maintain the ideal temperature for optimal muscular output. He had the insides of transport trucks painted white, so that the dust (which might disrupt the bikes’ precise modifications and settings) would be readily noticeable and easily eliminated. He took athletes to labs to test their sleep patterns and determine which mattresses and pillows would maximize each cyclist’s rest. He had tests run on everything. Even most obsessive compulsives would have been satisfied by Brailsford’s rigor and attention to seemingly superfluous details.

These minor improvements seemed absurd, but within five years of Brailsford’s leadership, something strange happened: British Cycling started winning. A lot. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, they won more than half of the indoor and outdoor cycling events in which they competed. At the 2012 London Olympics, the Brits broke nine Olympic records and seven world records for cycling. Not long after, a British man won the coveted Tour de France title for the first time in the competition’s history. Another Brit won the Tour de France in 2013—and in 2015, 2016, and 2017. In the space of a decade, British Cycling took home almost 180 world championships and 66 Olympic golds. Many consider British Cycling’s recent success the most notable win streak in the sport’s history.

Something remarkable happened in Great Britain’s cycling program. The coach implemented hundreds of changes that, in isolation, would deliver negligible payoffs. But all these one percent changes began to add up. We are under the mistaken impression that a major success requires major action. The pressure to do so is soul-crushing and leaves us stymied. Attempting something monumental in one gargantuan effort, getting exhausted and overwhelmed, and then quitting: that’s one option. Most people take this path. But another option is accruing one percent wins that yield shockingly significant improvements over time. David Brailsford’s “aggregation of marginal gains” doesn’t just work wonders for floundering cyclists—it’s applicable to you and every aspect of your life.

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If you have an ice cube in a room set to 26 degrees Fahrenheit, and then slowly raise the temperature, nothing happens for a while: 27…28…29…30…31…still nothing. But once it hits 32, something starts to happen. As the temperature continues to increase, a puddle forms around the cube, and grows as the change becomes even more dramatic.

When we begin to develop new habits or try to kick bad ones, there is usually a dormant period, where nothing appears to be happening. This is the Plateau of Latent Potential. It can be discouraging traversing this Plateau because it “feels” like you don’t have much to show for your efforts. Don’t worry. You haven’t stopped improving. One percent changes don’t seem significant, but time reveals the power of habits. The more time that passes, the clearer the impact of habitual actions becomes—for better or worse. Atomic habits is a fitting concept. Any object is comprised of much smaller parts—atoms. They’re small, but they can unleash incredible power. 

The difference between eating a burger and eating a salad today may not be that significant, but what about 30 years of opting for burgers over salads? That’s a different story—and a sadder, fatter one. Or think of a transcontinental flight from Los Angeles to New York. If the pilot bears just three degrees to the right at the start of the flight, the plane will touch down in Washington D.C., instead of New York. Habits are like existential compound interest. Just as your money grows exponentially in a retirement account if you just leave it in the vaults, so habits can help you grow without getting completely exhausted.

The reason most people don’t cultivate habits is because change in their lives isn’t immediately apparent. They throw in the towel too soon. They expect their self-improvement to be linear, but at the beginning and middle of a new endeavor, there’s often a Valley of Disappointment for a time, where expectations and reality clash and get you down.

The term “overnight success” is a misnomer. Breakthrough is simply the moment when the temperature rose to 32 degrees, but the habit was gaining momentum well before the results became apparent. Getting the temperature from 27 to 31 degrees was no less significant than getting it from 31 to 32. For a while, you’re crossing the Plateau of Latent Potential, a period where you feel like you have nothing to show for your efforts. Far from wasted, it’s potential energy that builds for that 32-degree moment.

A common theme in conventional self-improvement wisdom is clear, actionable goals. Forget about goals. Systems are what will change your life. Goals can provide a destination, which is important, but systems are the vehicles that get you there. When you forget systems and emphasize goals, problems start creeping in.

One problem with goals is that everyone, in a broad sense, is going for the same things—including those who fail. We suffer from survivorship bias: we look at life’s winners and forget that there are far more people who set the same ambitious goals and didn’t make it. Obviously, British Cycling wanted to win for the entire twentieth century, but they failed. They didn’t get better results until they had a better system full of atomic improvements.

Another problem with goals is that the change goals bring is short-lived. How many people who get in shape for a marathon or a triathlon continue to train after the race? Very few. If you don’t have a system, you’ll return to whatever your habits were before the momentary mountaintop accomplishment. We impulsively try to effect immediate results, but we don’t sustain the high of a goal accomplished. The outputs take care of themselves when we pay more attention to the system of inputs.

Goals also minimize opportunities for happiness. When you make goals, you postpone happiness until you’ve reached a certain level. You’re super disappointed if you don’t get there, and the rush of excitement is brief even if you do. You play a high-stakes game and there’s not much happiness with either outcome, because the preoccupation is with product rather than process.

You’ll never climb to the level of your goals. You’ll always sink to the level of your systems. Get your systems right, and everything else will begin to fall into place.

In Latin, the word for identity came from a combination of two words: being and repeatedly. Identity was understood as “beingness” on loop. Habits are the embodiment of your identity. They form the conduit through which your beliefs about yourself flow. If you study French half an hour every day, you are a studious person. If you volunteer several times a week and give regularly to organizations that care for the poor, you are a generous person. There’s a painfully wide chasm between wishing you were something and being something, but it’s habits that, slowly, often imperceptibly, bridge the gap.

If you think of your life as three concentric circles (like a target), your identity is at the center, your systems are the second ring, and your behaviors are the third ring. People usually start with the outermost ring, hoping their behaviors will be different and somehow stay different. Don’t think in terms of what you want to achieve. Think in terms of who you want to be.

Self-improvement comes less from enormous, life-changing moments and more to do with tiny improvements over time. Worry less about current outcomes than current trajectory. 

It’s a two-step process to settle what you’re going for:

First, choose the kind of person you want to be.

Then, prove to yourself that you are that person with one percent wins.

I am the kind of person who shows genuine interest in others.

I am the kind of person who responds thoughtfully instead of reacting immediately.

I am the kind of teacher who builds up her students.

I am the kind of boss who cares about his employees’ passions.

These statements establish a baseline for changing your identity. Finding ways to add one percent wins starts a system to get you there. Keep the system going for a period of time, and your behavior will begin to match your identity statements. Starting a new habit may begin with motivation, but motivation won’t make it stick. Make it part of your identity, however, and you’ll fiercely guard it and want to maintain it. 

Do you tie your right shoe first or your left? Do you stir your drink clockwise or counterclockwise? You may not know. Habits relieve us of the stress of consciously responding to the millions of stimuli we encounter on a daily basis. If none of our problem-solving strategies were reflexive, we’d go insane trying to keep all the plates spinning. All the habits we do form, from typing to tying our shoes to looking both ways before crossing streets, preserve the brain’s processing power and are contained in the brain’s neural networks in the form of loops.

These habit loops are made up of four parts: a cue, a craving, a response, and a reward. They always begin and proceed in the same order. They’re all attempts to solve problems. Cue and craving are the problem phase and response and reward are the solution phase.

Here are some examples of the habit loop at work:

You enter a dark room (cue); you want to see where you’re going (craving); you flip on a light switch (response); you can see (reward). Being in a dark room and turning on the lights become linked in your brain.

You feel sleepy (cue); you want to feel energized (craving); you drink some coffee (response); your feel more awake (reward). Feeling tired and drinking coffee become associated.

These are perfectly fine habits. Here’s another less constructive one:

You get stuck in a work project (cue); you want to distract yourself from the frustration of being stuck (craving); you start browsing your social media and texts—again (response); you take the edge off the feelings (reward). Mental blocks at work and pulling out your phone become linked. 

This is the structure of habits, both good and bad. This is how we’re wired. It’s good to know, so we fight our bad habits instead of fighting our biology. 

To make an atomic habit stick,

Make it obvious.

Make it attractive.

Make it easy.

Make it satisfying.

Each of these steps corresponds to a component of the habit loop: making it obvious relates to the cue; making it attractive relates to the craving; making it easy relates to the response; making it satisfying relates to the reward.

Getting rid of bad habits is just the inverse of these steps. To drop a bad habit,

Make the cue invisible.

Make the craving unattractive.

Make the response difficult.

Make the reward unsatisfying.

Make it obvious. Become aware of your daily habits. Write them down. Reduce exposure to the cues that trigger bad habits. Create an environment that exposes you to positive cues. To start new habits, use intentional agenda setting: I will do action a at time b in location c. Most people don’t suffer from lack of motivation, but lack of clarity. People who set up their intentions in this way are far more likely to stick with it. Once you get one habit down, you can begin habit stacking: make the reward of one habit the cue for the next habit. If having a cup of coffee in the morning is the cue for meditating for two minutes, then meditating for two minutes can become the cue for writing out the plan for the day. Writing out the plan for the day can become the cue for getting to work on the first item of business.

Make it attractive. The more attractive something is, the more likely you are going to want to integrate it. Get your dopamine involved in atomic habits you’re building. Dopamine doesn’t get tripped once you perform a habitual activity—the mere anticipation of an activity gets the dopamine flowing. Make the new habit something you crave. Try grouping an action you want to do with an action you need to do. Surround yourself with people and cultures that are already doing the things you hope to make part of your life. Our deep desires to fit in and belong to a tribe will bend us into the mold we see around us. We imitate friends and family, social norms, and society’s powerful and influential.

Make it easy. The natural human proclivity is to drift towards the least demanding option. This is why attempting to change too much too soon won’t stick. Respect the Law of Least Effort by creating an environment that makes executing positive behaviors as effortless as possible. Each new habit should be doable in under two minutes. Reduce the excess friction that makes it difficult to perform the desired action. The reason we gravitate toward social media and Netflix is because there is minimal friction involved in making it happen: just press a few buttons and you’re there. It’s the reason we spend so much time on low-level activities of which we aren’t especially proud. On the tough days where you’re tired and stressed, too many obstacles between you and that desired behavior will keep you from sticking with it. It’s an uphill battle. Make it so easy that you don’t have to draw from head space you don’t have when life throws curveballs. It’s not about doing easy things, but greasing the rails so that important things come naturally.

Remember that it’s more important to show up and perform a good behavior consistently than doing it for a long time every once in a while. So if you’re hoping to form a habit of journaling, keep your notebook and pen next to the coffee machine so you can write while your coffee brews. Commit to writing three lines rather than three pages. This removes many of the obstacles that would block you from forming that habit, and makes it a ritual.

Make it satisfying. Making a behavior obvious, attractive, and easy increases the odds that you’ll do that behavior. Making it satisfying increases the chance that you’ll do that behavior again in the future. We are more likely to repeat something when the association is positive. Rule Number One of behavior change is that, “What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.” Create a chain of positive behavior and refuse to break the chain. If you miss something once, get back on the horse immediately. Get an accountability partner to add some social pressure. Consider making your failures public. One entrepreneur had his Twitter account configured in such a way that, if he didn’t get up at 5:55 AM, his account would automatically send a tweet saying, “It’s 6:10 and I’m not up because I’m lazy! Respond to this for $5 via PayPal (limit 5), assuming my alarm didn’t malfunction.” Accountability helps. So does tracking habits. Putting a chart on your fridge and marking Xs for everyday you perform your habits delivers a feeling of satisfaction and progress.