When James Clear set out to become a million copy best selling author, did the world really need another book on habits? Probably not, there were already dozens of books written on the topic, a handful of which were best sellers, with some of those being mega best sellers. 

When you stop and think about it, does the world really need another, “anything?” The reasonable response to that question is always going to be no. Everything’s been done. Nothing’s new! Yet every year someone manages to push past all that reason and present us with a way better version of the same old thing. Something remarkable! 

The world is always looking for something worth talking about and that’s exactly what James set out to do. James knew he needed to create something worthy of remark, because if he was going to achieve his ambitious goal of selling a million copies at some point he was going to need word of mouth to help him get there.

James' story reveals a highly accessible means to designing your life to optimize the likelihood of achieving your desired results. Both his book and his lifestyle design present us with a practical path to becoming the type of person you’d like to be. We all so desperately need to be exposed to things like this, because we spend far too much time convincing ourselves of all the things we’re not, shouldn’t do, or can’t be. Most of us are operating somewhere along the spectrum of dealing with subtle feelings of inferiority to down right suffering from Imposter Phenomenon. We live in a perpetual state of feeling fraudulent, inadequate, or unworthy. 

These feelings tend to rise and fall to the level of our current circumstance, where we find ourselves attributing achievements to external factors and citing personal shortcomings as the cause for all of our mishaps. Meaning no matter what we accomplish in life we never accumulate the confidence necessary to boldly step into the next challenge life presents us with, and eventually we convince ourselves to stop showing up. James intentionally focused the design of his life around preventing just that. He was committed to mastering the art of showing up. He poured everything he had into designing an environment that was deliberate, thoughtful, and optimal for what he was trying to accomplish.  

He was wise enough to realize that everything eventually comes back to consistently doing small things well, so his design tweaks were often centered around making it more conducive to produce the necessary inputs knowing that in time the outputs would meet his expectations. He made his journey his own, by knowing the game he was playing, understanding what it would take to win, determining it was worth winning, and following these three steps to ensure he always ended up where we wanted to be On Purpose.

• STEP 1: IDENTIFY YOUR STRATEGY

• STEP 2: ALIGN YOUR STRUCTURE

• STEP 3: BUILD YOUR SYSTEMS 

STEP 1: IDENTIFY YOUR STRATEGY

What game are you playing? Outside of athletics, the answer to this question isn’t always obvious and as a result it is something that most people never take the time to consider. Which is unfortunate, because at the end of the day regardless of the industry you’re in there is a game being played. Meaning, there are rules for engagement, forces opposing you, scores being kept, there will be winners, and there will be losers.  So, at the end of the day, we need to be able to answer one question. What’s the win? 

The answer to this question gets to the fundamental heart of strategy. Strategy is a clearly defined means to win the game you’re playing. It’s how you organize and use your current advantages to achieve and gain new advantages. It’s the development and alignment of activities to make full use of existing resources in a way that will increase the likelihood of winning.  James would say, “There are almost no excuses if you have the right strategy.”

James’ story shows us that in the game of life, we must clarify the win and identify our strategy. Otherwise we’re opting to play a game that we may not even be interested in winning, with ill-defined rules chasing outcomes that feel good, but turn out to be meaningless. Strategy shapes design by constantly reminding us what exactly we’re aiming to accomplish. 

Take some time to identify your strategy for living On Purpose by contemplating these questions. 

What game am I playing?

Why is it worth winning?

What is the win?

STEP 2: BUILD YOUR STRUCTURE

In the realms of organizational economics and strategy development the dominating philosophy has been based on what is referred to as the structure-conduct-performance paradigm. According to this way of thinking, an organization's performance depends on its conduct, which in turn depends on basic structural factors. Put simply, structure shapes strategy execution. The underlying logic here is that our strategic options are limited by our structural conditions. Structure drives function. Structure is vital to long-term success. You can try to out work, out innovate, out motivate, and out communicate a poorly designed structure but those efforts won’t be sustainable. 

In the context of the individual this can be translated to desired outcome achievement depends on our habits, which are heavily influenced by environmental influences. Environment design matters! To emphasize this importance James likes to evaluate an environment by assessing the answer to this question, “What behaviors are obvious here?” If the responses aren’t aligned with his strategic objectives he makes the necessary adjustments. Make it your own by designing your environment in a way that optimizes your structural conditions, resources, and capabilities. 

Or in James’ words, “If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, you need to make the cue a big part of your environment. Make sure the best choice is the most obvious one. In the long-run (and often in the short-run), your willpower will not beat your environment.” Spend some time reflecting on your structural conditions by reflecting on the following questions.

How tightly do my stated goals align with my structure-conduct-performance? Why is that?

Evaluate the environments by asking the question, “what behaviors are obvious here?”

What is one thing I can do to better align my strategy and structure?

STEP 3: BUILD YOUR SYSTEMS

James is often quoted for saying, “we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems”.  Good intentions guarantee nothing. If you truly want to end up somewhere On Purpose you must consistently be living On Purpose.  Prevailing wisdom claims that the best way to achieve what we want in life is to set SMART goals. Make it specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and timely and you’re all set. Sounds simple enough, but in most instances, winners and losers started with the exact same goals. 

The reality is, our results have very little to do with the goals we set and nearly everything to do with the systems we follow. Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. Again, good intentions can’t overcome bad systems. Success comes when the right things happen by default. Goals are good for planning your progress. Systems are great for actually achieving progress. 

Accomplishing a goal only changes things for the moment. James’ work illuminates the counterintuitive nature of improvement. We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause the results. When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.

Conceptually this is universal, but at the level of execution this should become very individualized. James Clear’s story is unequivocally one of individuality. From the beginning he has been designing and evaluating his systems at the individual level to make them his own.

What systems are your systems? How effective are they? Do they need to be individualized?

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