We are going to talk about how to build good habits and break bad ones, the science of habits and behavior change, and putting all those ideas together for getting 1 percent better each day.

Your habits cannot guarantee a particular outcome, but they can help you influence the trajectory of your life regardless of the misfortunes that come your way. For that reason, habits are important to master. They are not the only thing that influences your success, but they play a very big part. They are under your control, and the only reasonable approach is to focus on what you can control. The lesson is that habits are not about radical change. Excellence is about small improvements accruing over time.

I’d like to share a story of the British cycling team. The team had never won a Tour de France. They hired a performance director who had a concept that he referred to as the “aggregation of marginal gains.” He described it as the 1 percent improvement in nearly everything we do. So they put slightly lighter tires on the bikes. They asked their riders to wear biofeedback sensors. They did things that you wouldn’t expect a cycling team to do. And they won the Tour de France in three years.

One percent changes can be the master key to unlocking elite levels of success. So, excellence is not really about radical change. It’s about accruing small improvements over time.

I like to refer to “habits” as the “compound interest of self-improvement.” The effects of your habits multiply; you repeat them across time. If you have good habits, time becomes your ally. All you need is patience. But if you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy. And this is a deeper truth about habits: Habits are a double-edged sword. They can either build you up or cut you down. That’s one reason why it’s so crucial to understand what a habit is and how it works because then you can become the architect of your habits and not the victim of them.

If you think this is important, if you agree that 1 percent changes matter, then the natural question is “Why is it so hard to change your behavior and build better habits?” I would answer that if you’re struggling to improve, the problem isn’t you; the problem is your system. We don’t change because we have the wrong system for change.

Your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results. We all so badly want the results to change, but it's actually not the outcome that needs to change. It's the system that precedes it. It's fix the inputs.

Ultimately, we are trying to align your system with your goals. The good news is, you don’t have to choose between these two. You’re going to build these habits to create a better system. By building a system that gets 1 percent better each day, you can ultimately achieve your outcome.

The technical definition of “habit” is “a behavior that’s been repeated enough times to be more or less automatic,” but we use the word in a different way. A habit, something you do automatically like brushing your teeth or tying your shoes, is almost mindless.

Many of the things that are most meaningful for us to do require effort or concentration, but they also require us to be consistent. Focus on the entry point, not the endpoint. The idea here is that there is some kind of lead domino that opens up this new habit you’re trying to build.

Make the first action easy. I refer to these kinds of initial movements as “decisive moments.” The question to ask yourself is, What is that decisive moment? An exercise I’d like to recommend that helps master the idea that habits are entrance ramps to bigger routines is called the “two-minute rule,” which means that whatever habit you want to establish in your life, you scale it down to something that takes two minutes or less. For example, reading 30 books a year becomes reading one page, or doing yoga four days a week becomes taking out the yoga mat.

We are so focused on finding the perfect business idea, the best workout program, the ideal diet plan. We’re so focused on optimizing that we don’t give ourselves permission to show up, even if it’s just in a small way. But if you can’t master the art of showing up, if you can’t master the small improvements, there’s nothing to optimize.

The secret is that it’s not actually about little habits. It’s not about doing two minutes of yoga or putting a book on your pillow. It’s actually about believing something new about yourself.

A concept I call identity-based habits is the idea that true behavior change is really identity change. It’s about finding some new way to look at yourself. If you are focused on achieving an outcome, then you think, Once I do that, then I’ll be the kind of person that I want to be. But it’s more powerful to focus on how your habits right now reinforce the identity that you want to have. It’s important to focus on being it rather than doing it. The real goal is not to read a book; the goal is to become a reader. The goal is not to run a marathon; the goal is to become a runner.

It is by reinforcing that new identity that you experience true behavior change. I think this is the ultimate reason that habits matter. Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become.

Eventually, as you cast these votes, you build up evidence of being a certain type of person. And that quality of building up evidence is incredibly crucial. It separates this from things you often hear like, “Fake it till you make it,” which asks you to believe something positive without having evidence for it. And we have a word for beliefs that don’t have evidence: “delusions.”

Beliefs influence behavior, and behavior influences beliefs. And the best way to start is to let the behavior lead the way. When you do one pushup or write one sentence or meditate for one minute, you cannot deny that in that moment you were that kind of person. You were an athlete; a writer; a meditator. By building up those votes and that evidence, you have every reason to believe that this is the kind of person you are.

I often get asked, “How long does it take for a habit to stick?” One study showed that, on average, it took 66 days to build a new habit. Something easy, like drinking a glass of water at lunch each day, might take a couple of weeks. Something difficult, like going for a run after work every day, might take seven or eight months. So, I don’t know if that number tells you very much.

But I think the true answer to how long it takes to build a habit is forever. Because if you stop doing it, it’s no longer a habit. A habit is not a finish line to be crossed; it’s a lifestyle to be lived. You’re looking for a small change, a nonthreatening change, a change that you can integrate into your new normal and make part of your ongoing lifestyle.

I hope that the three core ideas and every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become. I hope that the two-minute rule and this idea of scaling your habits down gives you something practical, an exercise and action step that you can take to get started today.

I have one final question to leave you with: How can you get 1% better today?

James Clear is an entrepreneur, writer, personal development keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling author. His entertaining talks teach audiences about small habits, decision-making and continuous improvement. His book “Atomic Habits” has sold more than 800,000 copies worldwide, enjoyed nine straight months on the New York Times bestseller list and spent 33 weeks on the Wall Street Journal bestselling list. His thought leadership regularly appears in the New York Times, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, Medium and Time, and he is a regular guest for “CBS This Morning.”