When you can't win by being better, you can win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it easier to stand out. You can shortcut the need for a genetic advantage (or for years of practice) by rewriting the rules. A good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses.
Tags: success, motivation, habits, career, advice

Other Quotes by "James Clear"

Focus on whether you are fulfilling your own potential than comparing yourself to someone else. The fact that you have a natural limit to any specific ability has nothing too do with whether you are reaching the ceiling of your capabilities. People get so caught up in the fact that they have limits that they rarely exert the effort required to get close to them. Genes can not make you successful if you’re not doing the work. Until you work as hard as those you admire, don’t explain away their success as luck.
Tags: success, potential, effort, do-the-work, comparison
Modern society is defined by an excess of opportunity. We have more information, more products, and more options than ever before. As a result, curating, filtering, and refining are more important skills than ever before. Those who edit best will find the signal in the noise.
Tags: life-lessons
When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren't all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, 'disciplined' people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations. The people with the best self-control are typically the ones who need to use it the least. It's easier to practice self-restraint when you don't have to use it very often.
Tags: self-control, self-care, inspiration, human-behavior, habits, environment, awareness
Happiness is simply the absence of desire.- When you observe a cue, but do not desire to change your state, you are content with the current situation. Happiness is not about the achievement of pleasure, but about the lack of desire. It arrives when you have no urge to feel differently. Happiness is the state you enter when you no longer want to change your state. As Caed Budris says, “Happiness is the space between on desire being fulfilled and a new desire forming.
Tags: happiness, desire
View More by "James Clear"