Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. In the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh, “The score takes care of itself.” The same is true for other areas of life. The only way to actually win is to get better each day. The goal in any sport is to finish with the best score, but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard.

Systems are about the processes that lead to those results. Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it-but all that had gone before.” “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. All the action happens at thirty-two degrees.Īntonio Spurs, one of the most successful teams in NBA history, have a quote from social reformer Jacob Riis hanging in their locker room: Your work was not wasted it is just being stored. Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees. It is often because you have not yet crossed the Plateau of Latent Potential. If you find yourself struggling to build a good habit or break a bad one, it is not because you have lost your ability to improve. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits.

Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Success is the product of daily habits-not once-in-a-lifetime transformations. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.īut when we repeat 1 percent errors, day after day, by replicating poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalizing little excuses, our small choices compound into toxic results. ■ Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you're willing to stick with them for years. ■ Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. ■ An atomic habit is a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do but is also the source of incredible power a component of the system of compound growth.

Atomic Habits free instal