Author, speaker, habit and behavior change researcher.
Contemporary · Ohio, United States
Install James's frameworks in Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add adamtpang/summon.guide
/plugin install james-clearInstalls 0 skills from James, plus the rest of summon.guide. Source on GitHub.
Clear grew up partly on his grandparents' farm before settling in Hamilton, Ohio. In high school he was struck in the face by an errant baseball bat during a game, an injury severe enough to put him in a medically induced coma with a shattered nose, a fractured skull, and permanent damage to one eye. He recovered slowly through physical therapy and returned to competitive baseball, later serving as captain of the team at Denison University, where he earned a degree in biomechanics in 2008. He went on to complete an MBA at Ohio State University.
Clear began publishing articles on his own website on November 12, 2012, writing consistently about habits, decision making, and deliberate practice, much of it drawn from his own recovery and return to athletic performance after the injury. The site's growing readership, built through the weekly newsletter he still writes today, eventually drew the attention of Penguin Random House, which signed him to write Atomic Habits. Published in October 2018 under the Avery imprint, the book laid out the Four Laws of Behavior Change, make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying, along with the idea that habits function as votes for the type of person someone wishes to become. It became a number one New York Times bestseller and, by 2024, had spent roughly five years on that list and sold close to 20 million copies worldwide in more than 60 languages.
Clear remains one of the best selling nonfiction authors of the past decade, and the Four Laws of Behavior Change have become standard vocabulary in coaching, corporate training, and everyday conversation about self improvement. He continues to write his weekly 3-2-1 Thursday newsletter, speak publicly on habits and performance, and lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Each Claude Code skill above is grounded in a specific passage of a specific book. These are the primary sources we drew from for James.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.”
“You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.”
“Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”
Their voice on summon.guide is grounded in:
Further reading: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clear
Other guides
