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00:00:00Procrastinating is choosing to delay a better future.
00:00:03It's choosing to ignore the results that you could be having,
00:00:07the potential that you could be fulfilling.
00:00:08Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.
00:00:11Fix the daily habits and you'll be led to a different destination.
00:00:14Time is precious.
00:00:16Today, you and I are getting to learn from the incredible James Clear.
00:00:20He's widely regarded as one of the top experts in the world
00:00:24on habit formation and behavior change,
00:00:26whose book on habits has sold 25 million copies.
00:00:32I'm talking about none other than Atomic Habits.
00:00:36I feel like if I sit there and I ruminate about something,
00:00:39it just gets worse.
00:00:40It gets bigger in my head.
00:00:41But if I take one small action on it, if I just get started on it,
00:00:44now I'm influencing the outcome.
00:00:46You know, now I'm shaping what's going to happen.
00:00:48Action relieves anxiety.
00:00:49You said at the very beginning is that the secret to winning is knowing how to lose.
00:00:53How do you start the engine up again and what's the mistake you see people making?
00:00:58There's just a period where you just got to get through.
00:01:00Life might be bad now, but that doesn't mean it's always going to be that way.
00:01:04Life might be hard now, but it's not always going to be hard.
00:01:06And you're going to be okay.
00:01:08You're going to make it out the other side.
00:01:09I think we should all give ourselves permission for our habits to shift
00:01:12based on the season that we're facing.
00:01:16Explain the four laws of behavior change.
00:01:19The first law is to make it obvious.
00:01:20The second law is to make it attractive.
00:01:22The third law is to make it easy.
00:01:24The easier, more convenient, frictionless, simple a habit is,
00:01:29the more likely it is to be performed.
00:01:31And the fourth and final law is to make it easy.
00:01:33That's amazing.
00:01:35Hey, it's your buddy Mel.
00:01:36And before we jump into this unbelievable conversation with James Clear,
00:01:42you're about to learn that you're not the problem.
00:01:44The fact that you don't have systems is the problem.
00:01:46You're going to learn these systems.
00:01:48We're going to get right into it.
00:01:48You're going to love this.
00:01:50It's going to help you achieve your goals.
00:01:51But I have a goal too.
00:01:52My goal is that 50% of you who watch here on YouTube are subscribers.
00:01:57And right before we were about to start this episode, my team showed me this.
00:02:0257% of you who watch the Mel Robbins podcast here on YouTube are not subscribers.
00:02:07You're the kind of person who likes supporting people who support you.
00:02:10My goal is that we get to 50%.
00:02:13So please, if that subscribe button is lit up, it means you're not a subscriber.
00:02:17Please hit subscribe.
00:02:18It's free.
00:02:19That's how you can show your support to your friend Mel Robbins.
00:02:21And that way you don't miss a thing.
00:02:22It also tells me and the team, oh my gosh, you love the guests that we're bringing you,
00:02:26the content that we're putting here, and an attempt to support you in creating a better life.
00:02:31All right.
00:02:31Thanks for doing that.
00:02:32You're ready to break bad habits and lock in new ones using James Clear's research.
00:02:36I bet you are.
00:02:37So let's jump in.
00:02:39James Clear, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.
00:02:42Hello, Mel.
00:02:43How are you?
00:02:44I am fantastic.
00:02:45I am so excited to be able to have this conversation with you because your work has made such a
00:02:53big
00:02:53difference in my life.
00:02:54I have bought Atomic Habits and pressed it into people's hands more times than I can count.
00:03:01And to be able to unpack the simple but powerful insights today, I've just been looking forward
00:03:08to this since I started the podcast.
00:03:09No, thank you so much.
00:03:10That's very nice of you to say.
00:03:11Well, it's true.
00:03:13And here's where I want to start.
00:03:15What will I experience in my life that could be different, James, if I take everything that
00:03:20you're about to share with us and teach us today to heart and I apply it to my life?
00:03:25Well, I'll give you three things right off the bat.
00:03:27So first is action relieves anxiety.
00:03:30Action relieves anxiety.
00:03:31So if you're feeling stressed about something, you fear something, there's a problem that's
00:03:35kind of bothering you, taking action on it reduces the fear that you feel about the
00:03:40problem because now you're influencing the outcome.
00:03:43Second thing is it builds resilience.
00:03:45So in a lot of ways, I feel like the secret to winning is knowing how to lose.
00:03:50And what I mean is it's knowing how to bounce back from a loss.
00:03:53And so many of the things that we'll talk about today are about getting started and about
00:03:59making it easier for yourself to get started, particularly after you fail, after you suffer
00:04:04something.
00:04:05And so the secret to winning is knowing how to lose.
00:04:08And these strategies will teach you how to be more resilient and bounce back from those
00:04:12losses.
00:04:13And then the third thing is better results.
00:04:15You know, in a way, procrastinating is choosing to delay a better future.
00:04:21It's choosing to ignore the results that you could be having, the potential that you could
00:04:26be fulfilling.
00:04:28And most of our outcomes in life are a lagging measure of the habits that precede them.
00:04:34So your bank account is a lagging measure of your financial habits.
00:04:39Your physical fitness is a lagging measure of your training habits.
00:04:43Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your reading habits.
00:04:46It's the thing that is the result of the action.
00:04:50You're basically saying the bank account I see today is a result of the habits that I
00:04:55had like a year ago?
00:04:56Almost all things that we have now are a result of the daily life, the daily system that we've
00:05:02been following for the last, say, six months or a year or two years.
00:05:05You know, it's the things that you do each day that lead you to the outcomes that you
00:05:08have right now.
00:05:09Now, look, I'm not saying that habits are the only thing that matter in life, right?
00:05:13You have luck and randomness.
00:05:14You've got misfortune.
00:05:15There are all sorts of things that can influence the final outcome.
00:05:20But by definition, luck and randomness are not under your control and your habits are.
00:05:25And the only reasonable, rational approach in life is focus on the pieces of the situation
00:05:29that are within your control.
00:05:30And so we also badly, this is an interesting thing in life.
00:05:34We also badly want better results.
00:05:36You know, we also badly want to make more money or double productivity or be fit or reduce
00:05:41stress.
00:05:41But the irony is the results are not actually the thing that needs to change.
00:05:45It's like fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.
00:05:49Fix the daily habits and you'll be led to a different destination.
00:05:52You know, in some ways, I feel like the two timeframes that matter most in life are like
00:05:5610 years and one hour.
00:05:58So 10 years is shorthand for like, what are the big meaningful things you really care about
00:06:03in life?
00:06:04I mean, sit there and think about most of us.
00:06:06Like, what do we really want to do?
00:06:07You know, we want to have a marriage that we're proud of or raise kids that are successful
00:06:11or to build a business that thrives or to get in the best shape of your life.
00:06:15Whatever it is, whatever that big thing is, it's almost always a multi-year, sometimes
00:06:20a multi-decade process.
00:06:22So 10 years is shorthand for like, what's that big vision?
00:06:25And then one hour is shorthand for what can I do in the next hour that contributes to where
00:06:30I want to be in 10 years?
00:06:31You know, like never let a day pass without doing something that is going to benefit you in
00:06:35a decade.
00:06:36And if you can live in those two mindframes, if you can have like both this long-term vision
00:06:40and this bias for short-term action, you don't let a day pass without doing something that's
00:06:45going to benefit you 10 years from now, you don't even need to wait 10 years usually.
00:06:50Usually it's like a year or two and you're shocked by how much progress you've made.
00:06:53Well, already you are dropping very clear, very simple and very powerful truths, I'm going
00:07:01to call them, that action relieves anxiety, which we're going to dig into, that the secret
00:07:07to winning is knowing how to lose.
00:07:09And tell me the third one again about procrastination.
00:07:12Procrastinating on something important is choosing to delay a better future.
00:07:16So, you know, this is important to you, you know, this is important to your life, but
00:07:19not taking action on it.
00:07:20Now you're just pushing, kicking the can down the road, right?
00:07:22Pushing the results further and further out.
00:07:24And so by you, the question you asked me was, if I take this seriously and I follow through
00:07:29on these things, how will life change?
00:07:30Yes.
00:07:31And the answer is, you'll no longer be delaying a better future.
00:07:33You'll be working toward it.
00:07:34You'll be contributing to it.
00:07:37Interview's over.
00:07:38I mean, that right there was absolutely, I cannot wait to dig into this.
00:07:44What I would love to talk about first, though, in case the person who is listening right now
00:07:49or who's watching on YouTube doesn't know what a habit is, what is the simplest definition
00:07:55for how to think about a habit and why are they so important?
00:07:58Sure.
00:07:58Okay.
00:07:58So good question.
00:07:59I'm going to define a habit in a couple of different ways.
00:08:01So first way, if you were to talk to an academic or researcher, they're going to tell
00:08:05you habits are these automatic, mindless routines, things you do without even really
00:08:09thinking about it.
00:08:09Okay.
00:08:10So like how you pull your pants off.
00:08:11Brush your teeth, tie your shoes, put your pants on the same leg each time.
00:08:14Like, you know, it's just these automatic, mindless behaviors.
00:08:17Okay.
00:08:17And it is true that there are many habits that are like that throughout the day.
00:08:20But there's, I think, a different type of way that we use the word habit to describe
00:08:25most things.
00:08:26Like if I were to ask you, Mel, what are some habits you're going to work on?
00:08:28You're not going to say stuff like that.
00:08:29You're going to say, I'm trying to get in the habit of meditating every morning, or I want
00:08:33to get in the habit of writing every day, or going to the gym three days a week, or
00:08:36whatever.
00:08:37Yes.
00:08:37And that is more.
00:08:38All of them, James.
00:08:39All of them.
00:08:41That's more like a routine.
00:08:43You know, in a technical academic sense, it's not automatic the way that brushing your
00:08:46teeth might be.
00:08:47But what you mean is, I want to do it consistently and, you know, regularly.
00:08:51And so most of Atomic Habits is about that stuff.
00:08:54It's about how do we pick these big, important things in our lives and do them with greater
00:08:58consistency and frequency.
00:08:59There are these simple systems and things and rules that you're going to teach us today
00:09:04that I love because I think when you're somebody that's struggling to make changes stick in
00:09:10your life or to even get started, you see it as a deficit in your personality.
00:09:16You beat yourself up and say, I have no willpower.
00:09:19I'm the only loser on the planet who doesn't have a morning routine.
00:09:23And what I love so much about your work is you're about to show us, no, no, no, no,
00:09:27no, no, it's not a failure in you.
00:09:29It's a failure in the things that you're going to teach us.
00:09:32Well, you know, a lot of the conversation about habits kind of frames things that way.
00:09:35You know, like if you hear people say, oh, you know, oh, I wish I just had the discipline
00:09:38to follow through on this.
00:09:39Or, hey, maybe if you really wanted to do it, then you would follow through.
00:09:43You know, maybe if you really wanted to do it, you would have more willpower, discipline,
00:09:45or grit.
00:09:47And, you know, I don't want to totally dismiss discipline and willpower and grit.
00:09:50Like, they're all very important qualities in life.
00:09:52But I don't know that that answer is quite right.
00:09:55You know, I think many people, I bet, you know, most people genuinely do want to improve,
00:10:01genuinely do want to perform at a higher level, genuinely would like to have better results.
00:10:04So what I would say is, look, if you're struggling to improve, the problem isn't you.
00:10:09The problem is your system.
00:10:11You know, we don't change not because we don't want to change, but because we have the wrong
00:10:15system for change.
00:10:16And if you can have the right system, the right elements in place, then improving becomes
00:10:21much easier.
00:10:22Well, I flagged that exact quote.
00:10:25I'm going to read to you from Atomic Habits, page 27.
00:10:30If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you.
00:10:32The problem is your system.
00:10:34Bad habits repeat themselves again and again, not because you don't want to change, but because
00:10:38you have the wrong system for change.
00:10:41You do not rise to the level of your goals.
00:10:43You fall to the level of your systems.
00:10:47And one of the core themes that you're going to teach us today is how to stop focusing on
00:10:53the goal or the change we want to make and really focus on the system that helps us create
00:11:00that goal.
00:11:02Would you define what exactly is a system?
00:11:07A system is just a collection of habits.
00:11:09So it can be really small habits, but it's just, it's a collection of habits that are
00:11:12all oriented toward the same outcome.
00:11:15Oh, I'm thinking about how to make the habit stick.
00:11:17So you're first talking about, okay, you've got this result that you want, you have this
00:11:21goal, but what is the system, the daily things that you're going to be doing in order to make
00:11:27this result happen in the future?
00:11:28Now, before we get into goals versus system, for somebody who hasn't read the book, could
00:11:33you talk about that concept in Atomic Habits, getting 1% better every day?
00:11:41This is one of the key ideas in the book.
00:11:43And it's just this idea that tiny changes add up to a surprising or remarkable degree.
00:11:48So the math of this, if you get 1% better each day for a year, so 1.01 to
00:11:54the 365th power,
00:11:55you get 37.78 times better by the end of the year.
00:11:59If you get 1% worse, so 0.99 to the 365th power, you drive yourself almost all the way
00:12:05down to zero.
00:12:06I think it's 0.03.
00:12:08And so you have these results that are shockingly large or shockingly small based on little tiny
00:12:14actions that you do each day.
00:12:16And I think it's interesting because, you know, like, what is the difference between a choice
00:12:20that's 1% better, 1% worse?
00:12:22I mean, on any given day, not a whole lot.
00:12:24I mean, what is the difference between somebody who reads for 10 minutes today and somebody
00:12:27who doesn't read at all?
00:12:29Basically nothing.
00:12:30You know, like reading for 10 minutes does not make you a genius.
00:12:34But if you're the type of person who always goes to bed a little bit smarter than they
00:12:37were when they woke up, the person who always finds a little bit of time to learn something
00:12:40new, yeah, that can be a pretty meaningful difference in wisdom and insight, especially
00:12:44over a 10, 20, 30-year period.
00:12:47So we all have these habits that we're doing each day, and it's easy to overlook them,
00:12:52but time will magnify whatever you feed it.
00:12:56So if you have good habits, time becomes your ally.
00:12:59And every day that goes by, you put yourself in a stronger position.
00:13:01If you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy.
00:13:03And every day that goes by, you dig the hole a little bit deeper.
00:13:06And that's really what getting 1% better is about.
00:13:09It's this emphasis on trajectory rather than position.
00:13:12Now, if you had a 747 that was sitting on the runway in Los Angeles, and it takes off
00:13:17and it's going to go to New York, if you nudge the nose of the plane six feet at the
00:13:21start, when it takes off, you land in Washington, D.C., rather than New York City.
00:13:26And it's just about this difference that a tiny change can make, the difference that a
00:13:31small improvement or being on a slightly different trajectory can result in.
00:13:35Small changes, when they're compounded over a great distance or a long time, can lead
00:13:40you to a very different result.
00:13:42It's hard to wrap your mind around the fact that if I just focus on getting 1% better
00:13:49every day for a year that I end up 37.7 times better.
00:13:55Can you give me like, what, if I do like a push-up every day, then maybe at the end
00:13:59of
00:13:59the day, like, no, I'm serious.
00:14:00I want to visualize what this is because that's amazing.
00:14:04I think first of all, it's not really about getting caught up in the exact number.
00:14:07It's more about the philosophy.
00:14:08It's like an attitude, an approach of, can I try to find some small way to get better
00:14:12each day?
00:14:13Yeah.
00:14:13The math of it is just compound interest.
00:14:16You know, like, it's just a compounding curve.
00:14:18And compound interest is almost always surprising what it turns into in the long run.
00:14:22And the effects of your habits can also almost always be surprising what they can turn into.
00:14:26Now, your habits are not exactly like a mathematical formula, right?
00:14:30Like, your life is not exactly like some equation that you're going to calculate.
00:14:33But the principle of trying to find some small way to improve and trusting how that can accumulate
00:14:39and compound over time, that is very true.
00:14:41And it also, I think, is very much how it feels on a given day, which is the actions feel
00:14:48kind of insignificant on a daily basis.
00:14:50They're very easy to overlook on a daily basis and very surprising what they turn into, good
00:14:55and bad, a year or two or three from now.
00:14:58And so, it's really about mastering those small daily actions and what that can lead us
00:15:02to in the long run.
00:15:03What are the top two or three surprising ones that if you did 1% better every day, you'd
00:15:07be shocked at where you ended up in a year?
00:15:09You'd be surprised.
00:15:10If you work on almost anything consistently for, say, two years, you're almost guaranteed
00:15:15to be in the top, you know, 1% to 5% of the population on it.
00:15:19I mean, nobody else is spending that amount of time on it.
00:15:22So, that doesn't mean that you're going to play in the NBA if you practice basketball
00:15:25for two years, but it does mean you will be a much better basketball player.
00:15:29You know, James, let's talk more about this.
00:15:32There's a deeply personal story, something that happened to you, that explains the 1% rule.
00:15:38Yeah.
00:15:39So, you know, I grew up in a family, played lots of different sports, and I played baseball
00:15:43for a long time.
00:15:44And when I was in high school, I suffered this really serious baseball injury, where
00:15:47I was hit in the face with a baseball bat.
00:15:48And it was an accident.
00:15:50You know, a classmate of mine took a swing and kind of a bat came out of his hands and
00:15:54rotated through the air and struck me right between the eyes, broke my nose, shattered
00:15:59both eye sockets, broke the bone behind my nose, kind of deeper inside your skull.
00:16:03I was air-cared to the hospital, and I was in a medically induced coma overnight.
00:16:08And then the next day, my vitals had kind of stabilized to the point where they could
00:16:11release me from the coma. And it was a really long road back.
00:16:15You know, I couldn't drive a car for the next nine months.
00:16:18When I went to my first physical therapy session, I was practicing basic motor patterns, like
00:16:22walking in a straight line, had double vision for weeks.
00:16:25So, it took a while.
00:16:29And all I wanted, you know, I was a teenager, I was 16, 17 years old.
00:16:33All I wanted was to get back to being this normal, young, healthy kid before, you know,
00:16:37be able to drive a car and go to baseball and play and whatever.
00:16:41But it was a time in my life when I was forced to start small.
00:16:45You know, I had to just focus on what can I do at this physical therapy session?
00:16:48Am I making any progress from the last session to this one?
00:16:51And, you know, if I can't do anything physically, couldn't play baseball for about a year, then,
00:16:56you know, can I study and do well on this test?
00:16:58Or try to find some small win, some small improvement that I can make.
00:17:03And all the things that we're about to talk about today, I would never have said it that
00:17:06way then.
00:17:07Like, I wouldn't have said, oh, I'm just trying to get 1% better.
00:17:09You know, like, I didn't have a language for it.
00:17:12But it was an experience that forced me to realize how small actions can be and still
00:17:19be meaningful.
00:17:20Yes.
00:17:20And that progress can take a long arc.
00:17:25I barely played baseball in high school.
00:17:26After the injury, I basically missed my whole the whole next year.
00:17:29I went to college.
00:17:30First year, I came off the bench.
00:17:32Second season, I was a starter.
00:17:34Third season, I was team captain.
00:17:35Then fourth year, I was an academic All-American.
00:17:37And that's like a five or six year arc from that stuff.
00:17:40And I never played professionally.
00:17:43But I look back on that and I feel like I was able to maximize my potential.
00:17:48And, you know, we all have things in life that we don't ask for.
00:17:51And this was one for me.
00:17:52It was one of the first things I said when I woke up the next day was, I never asked
00:17:55for
00:17:55this.
00:17:55But you have to get out of that self-pity loop.
00:17:58It just does not serve you.
00:18:00A bad attitude and self-pity makes every problem harder.
00:18:04And so you're just layering on another challenge to the already challenging situation.
00:18:09And so instead, I'd try to be as positive as I could about it, you know, and try to
00:18:13find things to improve each day.
00:18:14And again, it took five or six years.
00:18:16But I think that process taught me a lot about building small habits and bouncing back from
00:18:21challenges.
00:18:22And so eventually, 10 years later, when it came time to write the book, I think the book
00:18:27is better because I struggled.
00:18:29It was better because I had to go through that process.
00:18:32And now I know, just like everybody else, how hard it is to build habits, how long it
00:18:37takes to make progress and, you know, how challenging it can be to see the improvement that you've
00:18:41been wishing for.
00:18:42And so I think those struggles ended up resulting in better material.
00:18:45Wow, that story really struck me when I read the book.
00:18:49And I'm so glad you shared it because it does illustrate the power of the 1% rule.
00:18:54The human mind is a learning machine.
00:18:56Almost every skill that you have today was previously unknown to you.
00:19:00When you were born, you didn't know how to tie your shoes or cut a tomato or make spaghetti
00:19:05or whatever.
00:19:06But you know all that stuff now because you practiced it.
00:19:09And you can get better at anything that you practice.
00:19:12And I think it's interesting if you look at people, what are people spending their time
00:19:17practicing each day?
00:19:18You know, like a lot of people are practicing the art of getting mad on social media.
00:19:22People are practicing the fine craft of being fearful and reading about all the ways that
00:19:26the world is falling apart.
00:19:28They're practicing scrolling their phone.
00:19:30You know, like, what are you trying to get good at?
00:19:32I think it's worth to ask, like, what am I practicing each day?
00:19:36What am I training for?
00:19:36And every moment is a repetition and your brain will automatically get better at the things
00:19:42that you repeat.
00:19:43Whatever you repeat, you reinforce.
00:19:46And so you want to make sure you're reinforcing the right things.
00:19:48What I love about what you just said is that oftentimes when you're thinking about habits,
00:19:54you're thinking about the new ones.
00:19:56And we don't often have that moment of honest reflection with ourselves where we say, wait
00:20:03a minute, I already have a lot of habits.
00:20:05And if I don't like how my life looks and feels right now, whether that's the balance of my bank
00:20:10account or the way that I feel in my body or the kind of relationship I'm in or my drinking
00:20:16habits or what I'm doing with my free time, then changing my habits is the way I change the
00:20:24circumstances of my life.
00:20:25Here's an interesting one for you.
00:20:28Something like scrolling your phone or whatever.
00:20:29Most people would be like, yeah, that's probably one I don't want to do as much.
00:20:33But what I find interesting are the habits that used to serve me well, but don't serve
00:20:38me as well now.
00:20:40Those have been much harder for me to give up.
00:20:42The way that I think about it is I like to ask myself this question of what season am
00:20:46I in right now?
00:20:47You know, and life has a lot of different seasons.
00:20:50Sometimes there can be all kinds of reasons that seasons shift.
00:20:52You know, maybe it's you get married or you have a kid or maybe you move to a
00:20:55city or start a new job.
00:20:57I was just talking to a mom who she just became an empty nester.
00:21:00And she's like, you know, for 25 years, I've been taking care of these kids.
00:21:02Now, all of a sudden, nobody's here.
00:21:04Like, what season am I in?
00:21:05And what I've slowly learned, I can be a slow learner in a lot of ways, is when your
00:21:11seasons change, your habits often need to change.
00:21:13And I found, you know, for me, a lot of the time I'll have a season shift and then I
00:21:18keep
00:21:18trying to force fit my old habits into this new season.
00:21:22It takes me 18 months to realize, hey, something needs to change.
00:21:26And I think this is an important conversation to have about habits because people don't say
00:21:31this explicitly.
00:21:33But a lot of the time when people are focused on their habits and they start something new,
00:21:37they don't say it to themselves, but they're kind of thinking in the back of their mind,
00:21:40what would it look like to be successful with this?
00:21:42Oh, well, I would just do this habit forever.
00:21:44And if I'd stop doing it at some point, that must mean that I failed or I quit or something
00:21:50like that.
00:21:50I don't think it has to be like that at all.
00:21:52You know, like take my writing habit, for example.
00:21:55For the first three years, I wrote two articles a week.
00:21:57Those are about 2000 words each.
00:21:59Then I signed the book deal for Atomic Habits, season changes.
00:22:02Can't write those anymore.
00:22:04So that shifted.
00:22:04Then I worked on the book for three years.
00:22:06Now, for the last five years, I've been writing a newsletter once a week that's much shorter.
00:22:12But at no point in there do I feel like my writing habit failed.
00:22:16Just because I'm not writing two articles a week anymore doesn't mean that, I don't know,
00:22:20I screwed up or something.
00:22:21The habit just needed to change shape based on the season that I was in.
00:22:25And I think we should all give ourselves permission for our habits to shift.
00:22:29Based on the season that we're facing.
00:22:30That's so relatable and helpful because as you were talking about writing, I was thinking,
00:22:34well, that's just happened for me around exercise and around nutrition.
00:22:39The more that I learn about the difference between men and women physiologically, the
00:22:44more I learn about hormone changes in women, the more I'm like, oh, wait a minute, running,
00:22:49yoga, that's not going to help me the way that it used to.
00:22:52I got to focus on protein and I got to focus on resistance training.
00:22:57Different season, different habits.
00:22:59Makes a lot of sense.
00:23:00Yeah.
00:23:01I think knowing which season you're in right now is a really helpful thing.
00:23:04There's a certain, there are like some questions I like to ask just for self-awareness.
00:23:08They help bubble up some insights about yourself that then lead to some discoveries about maybe
00:23:14how I should shift my habits or whatever.
00:23:15So some of the questions I like, one is, what am I optimizing for?
00:23:20Different people optimize for different things.
00:23:22You will probably optimize for different things at different points in your life.
00:23:25Sometimes you optimize for making money.
00:23:27Sometimes you optimize for free time or creative freedom.
00:23:30Sometimes you optimize for family.
00:23:32But whatever it is, the answer is probably very personal to you and the season that you're
00:23:36in.
00:23:36So what am I optimizing for?
00:23:38Second question is, what season am I in right now?
00:23:40So we already talked about that.
00:23:42The third one can be a little bit cutting, but it's, if I call it like the, it's kind
00:23:47of like the alien test or something.
00:23:48Imagine, imagine that an alien comes down from outer space, right?
00:23:51It's going to follow you around throughout your day.
00:23:53Can't speak your language.
00:23:54Can't communicate to you.
00:23:56If it could only see your actions and not hear your words, what would it say your priorities
00:24:00are?
00:24:01The interesting thing, I think, especially about smart people is you can come up with a
00:24:06good excuse for most things.
00:24:07You have very good reason for why things aren't happening.
00:24:10And so it's very easy for you to talk your way out of why things didn't occur.
00:24:15But the alien can't hear you.
00:24:17It doesn't care.
00:24:18It's only looking at what you're spending your time on.
00:24:20And it's just a nice way to kind of level set and, you know, see, okay, I say things
00:24:25are a priority, but how am I actually spending my time?
00:24:27Tell me why these tiny changes create such massive transformation and why it's frankly
00:24:33the only way.
00:24:33First of all, it matters because it's doable.
00:24:36You know, you really only have a certain amount of time each day that you can work with.
00:24:39Everybody says, oh, you have the same 24 hours in a day, but it's even less than that.
00:24:43I think a more useful way to frame it is how many hours per day are under your control?
00:24:47Oh, I love that.
00:24:48How many hours?
00:24:49There's very few, you know, there's very few.
00:24:51Thank you for telling the truth.
00:24:52And so really, it's about what do you do with those one or two hours?
00:24:56You know, maybe three.
00:24:57I don't know.
00:24:57But there's, you know, how many are really under your control?
00:25:00And so that amount of time is what you have to work with.
00:25:03And so for that reason, starting small makes sense.
00:25:06But the bigger thing, and I think that this is something I've learned over time, and especially
00:25:11through that injury, is how fun it can be to make a small amount of progress.
00:25:16Even if you aren't where you wanted to be yet, you feel good.
00:25:19You know, you have something to look back on and be like, I got a little bit better today.
00:25:22So much of life has lived in this gray zone.
00:25:25Am I a better spouse today than I was yesterday?
00:25:27Am I a better friend?
00:25:28Did I improve in my career?
00:25:29I, you know, I don't know.
00:25:30It's hard to know on any given day.
00:25:31And so any time that you can make a little bit of progress and be able to look back on
00:25:34that and be like, you know what?
00:25:35That was better than yesterday.
00:25:37That feels really nice.
00:25:38Yes.
00:25:39And so I think that, that's another reason.
00:25:41And then the third thing, and this is really what getting 1% better is actually about.
00:25:46Okay.
00:25:46It's about an emphasis on trajectory rather than position.
00:25:51And tell me what that means.
00:25:52Well, there's a lot of discussion about position in life.
00:25:54You know, what's the number on the scale?
00:25:56How much money is in the bank account?
00:25:58What's the current stock price?
00:25:59What are the quarterly earnings?
00:26:00We have all these measurements, all these metrics for determining our current position.
00:26:04And then if the position isn't what we wanted it to be, if the number isn't what we like,
00:26:08then we get frustrated or we feel guilty or we start to judge ourselves.
00:26:12I'm not there yet.
00:26:12Why isn't this working?
00:26:13I haven't made it.
00:26:14I don't have the money.
00:26:15I'm never going to get out of debt.
00:26:16And you hear people say things like this all the time.
00:26:18I've been running for a month.
00:26:19Why can't I see a change in my body?
00:26:21Our team has been meeting every Friday for the last six months.
00:26:24We still haven't shipped this feature.
00:26:25And that's when like the frustration starts to build.
00:26:28And so it is not actually about your current position.
00:26:32What instead it is about is your current trajectory.
00:26:34Am I getting 1% better or 1% worse?
00:26:36How do you know?
00:26:38One of the things, and I love that your last name's clear.
00:26:40You have the best on-brand name for the way that your brain thinks.
00:26:45But one of the biggest things that I see from the folks that listen around the world is not being
00:26:54clear about what you want and not knowing what you want.
00:26:58And so is there any way that you think about how to even understand this concept of trajectory, right?
00:27:08So I don't think there's one answer.
00:27:10I think there are many to this.
00:27:12But first thing is, yes, you're right.
00:27:14Many people think what they lack is motivation, but what they really lack is clarity.
00:27:18You know, you feel like, oh, I just need to get more motivated.
00:27:21But what you really need to know is what is the most important thing?
00:27:23What am I working on?
00:27:24The motivation is actually quite easy if you're very clear about what the most important thing is.
00:27:29But usually people have seven things that they say are important to them.
00:27:32And then it's not easy because you're being pulled in all these different directions.
00:27:36The second thing is, some of the best advice that I got early on in my business career was try
00:27:41things until something comes easily.
00:27:43And I think you can apply that advice to almost anything.
00:27:46Try things until something comes easily.
00:27:48And the point is, there's this common refrain of try, try, try again.
00:27:54You know, if things don't work, try, try, try again.
00:27:56I think instead it would be better if it was phrased, if things don't work, try, try, try differently.
00:28:02You need to keep trying.
00:28:04You need to keep showing up.
00:28:05But you need to try different lines of attack.
00:28:07You know, different things work better than others.
00:28:09And so by trying a range of options, especially early in a process, you put yourself in a much better
00:28:15position to succeed.
00:28:16So here, I'm going to try to tie all this together.
00:28:18So if I could add one thing to Atomic Habits that wasn't in the book, it would be this question
00:28:22of what would this look like if it was fun?
00:28:25What would this look like if it was fun?
00:28:26What would it look like if meditating was fun?
00:28:28What would it look like if going to the gym was fun?
00:28:31What would it look like if, you know, making a sales call each morning was fun?
00:28:35And that doesn't mean that your habits are going to feel like the most fun thing in your life.
00:28:40You know, it's not like, oh, this will feel like going to a concert or something.
00:28:43But let's take just like a common one like exercise.
00:28:46A lot of people go to the gym in January, and I feel like they kind of are going because
00:28:50they feel like they should go or society wants them to go or something.
00:28:54But if we just take 10 minutes and write out what are ways that we could live a healthy, active
00:29:00lifestyle, there's dozens, you know, go to the gym, kayak, rock climb, do yoga.
00:29:05You can come up with a lot of things, right?
00:29:06And I think you should just write that list out for whatever the habit is that you're working on, and
00:29:11then look at the 10 or 20 or 50 things that you have, and then say, which one of these
00:29:16sounds like the most fun to me?
00:29:17You know, which one of these sounds most engaging?
00:29:19And you're much more likely to follow through on that than you are on something else.
00:29:23Okay, can I give you an example?
00:29:25Because this is such an important nuance that could truly change your ability to make something meaningful stick.
00:29:36Because when you started talking about the fact that, you know, as you're trying exercise, let's say, I have the
00:29:42hardest time motivating myself.
00:29:44I'm very clear that I want to exercise four or five days a week because I want to live a
00:29:51healthy, vibrant life.
00:29:51I want to be hiking into my 90s and 100s.
00:29:55I want to be able to dance at all my kids' and grandkids' weddings.
00:29:58Like, that's the why.
00:29:59And I know that that means today I got to do this annoying thing called exercise.
00:30:03And it's always befuddled me that my husband, with zero resistance, zero friction, can just walk right into a gym,
00:30:10motivate himself.
00:30:11My daughter's like that too.
00:30:13Not me.
00:30:13I wander around like an idiot.
00:30:15I get bored.
00:30:15I can't stay motivated.
00:30:16I don't know.
00:30:17So, what I've discovered is that if I go to a class, it's fun.
00:30:23And so, that question, how could I make this fun?
00:30:27What if this were fun?
00:30:27What would that look like?
00:30:29That changes everything.
00:30:30The first key, the first hurdle to clear is to find things that are genuinely interesting to you, that are
00:30:37genuinely fun to you.
00:30:38You know, the person who felt like it was a hassle at the start or it kind of feels like
00:30:42it's a chore and they're sort of making themselves do it, as soon as it gets hard, they're going to
00:30:46stop.
00:30:47They didn't want to do it to begin with.
00:30:48But the person who is having fun, the person who's engaged and interested, the person who's curious and excited about
00:30:53it, they're way more likely to stick with it when it gets hard.
00:30:57You know, one of the things that I'd love to have you unpack for us is, you know, when someone's
00:31:03sitting around waiting for motivation and they're struggling to either get started or they're struggling as they're waking up today
00:31:10to do the thing they say that they want to do.
00:31:12And could you unpack for the person listening why you have to take the action first and how motivation shows
00:31:21up after the action, not before?
00:31:25So, a habit is a behavior that you want to do consistently, right?
00:31:29That you want to do consistently.
00:31:30That you want to do consistently.
00:31:32Okay.
00:31:33Motivation, we all know, sometimes you're motivated, sometimes you're not.
00:31:36Motivation rises and falls throughout the day.
00:31:38So, why would you want a behavior that you want to do consistently to rely on something that fluctuates?
00:31:44It doesn't make sense.
00:31:46And so, this is a good reason why you want to scale habits down to a level where they're so
00:31:51easy to do, getting into it is so simple,
00:31:53that you'll do it even when motivation is low.
00:31:57And so, this is another reason for the phrase atomic habits, right?
00:32:00It's about making it tiny and small so that you stick to it even when motivation isn't there.
00:32:04What does that mean to scale down if I'm trying to meditate or I'm trying to exercise or I'm trying
00:32:08to make that sales call?
00:32:10I'll give you two examples.
00:32:12So, there's this concept in chemistry called activation energy.
00:32:15It's how much energy is required to activate a reaction.
00:32:18So, you can think about like striking a match.
00:32:20There's a certain amount of effort that you have to put in to strike the match and for the flame
00:32:24to start, okay?
00:32:25Your habits are kind of like that.
00:32:27Some habits have really big activation energy.
00:32:29If you want to do 100 push-ups a day, that requires a certain amount of motivation.
00:32:32You got to keep doing sets of 5 and 10 throughout the day or whatever.
00:32:35And if it gets to 9 o'clock one day and it's time to go to bed and you haven't
00:32:39done your 100 push-ups yet,
00:32:41I got to kind of motivate yourself quite a bit to get that in before you go to sleep.
00:32:44I need gasoline for the bonfire in that case.
00:32:46So, if your objective instead is to do 10 push-ups a day, well, then it's 9 o'clock and
00:32:52you still haven't got them in yet.
00:32:53But you're like, I can probably do 10 before I go to sleep.
00:32:55That's probably doable.
00:32:57Yeah.
00:32:57And so, you can see these two habits have very different activation energies.
00:33:01They have a very different amount of effort that they're requiring from you.
00:33:03So, scaling it down is choosing the thing that's easy to do that has small activation energy.
00:33:07So, that'd be 10 push-ups a day?
00:33:09Do 10 instead of 100.
00:33:10Instead of reading 30 books a year, it's read one page, right?
00:33:13It's like stuff like that.
00:33:14Scale it down.
00:33:15Okay.
00:33:15There is something that can be tied to this or is related to this,
00:33:19which is a phrase that I feel like I remind myself of a lot,
00:33:22which is reduce the scope but stick to the schedule.
00:33:24So, there's so many times where the day kind of gets away from you.
00:33:28You know, like things get busy.
00:33:29Let's say you wanted to work out today and then you look up the clock and, you know,
00:33:33you were planning on doing an hour workout or 45 minutes and you only have 15 or 20 minutes.
00:33:39In that moment, the conversation I used to have with myself was,
00:33:43well, I guess I don't have time to work out today.
00:33:45And then you move on.
00:33:46But instead, what I'm trying is to say reduce the scope but stick to the schedule.
00:33:50And so, I'll go down.
00:33:52I'll change in my workout clothes and go down to my basement and go down to this little home gym
00:33:56area that I have.
00:33:57And maybe I only have 15 minutes and I can only do one set of squats, but that's what I
00:34:01do.
00:34:02And in some ways, I feel like the bad days matter more than the good days.
00:34:07You know, it's showing up on the days when it's not ideal.
00:34:10It's showing up on the days when you don't have energy or time or capacity that keeps the habit alive.
00:34:15And if you keep the habit alive, all you need is time.
00:34:18But if you throw up a zero, now the streak is broken.
00:34:23And sometimes one day can turn into five days and can turn into three months.
00:34:26And then you find yourself wanting to get back on track.
00:34:28And I think rather than asking yourself, what can I do on my best day?
00:34:33You should start by asking, what can I stick to even on the bad days?
00:34:36Oh, I love that.
00:34:37And that becomes your baseline.
00:34:38Okay, so you've already given us two incredible things, which is, what if this were fun?
00:34:42What would it look like if it were fun?
00:34:44And as you're thinking about the beginning of a habit, defining it by what could I actually stick to even
00:34:53on my worst day?
00:34:53Right.
00:34:54How is it that motivation shows up after the action?
00:34:59Because you have this feeling of progress.
00:35:00Now you have something that you, oh, look, I've made some movement forward.
00:35:05You know, you have something to look at.
00:35:06It's the difference between hope and evidence.
00:35:10Now you have some evidence.
00:35:12And so you have a reason to believe it.
00:35:14Say, oh, look, you know, look at myself moving forward.
00:35:16And that starts to feel really good once you stack a couple days together.
00:35:20You know, it doesn't, I think this is one of the lessons of my work, which is it doesn't take
00:35:24much to feel good again.
00:35:26You'd be surprised what you can do with five good minutes.
00:35:29You know, five good minutes of conversation can restore a relationship.
00:35:32Five good minutes of exercise will leave you winded and like reset your energy and mood for the day.
00:35:36Five good minutes of writing will make you feel like the manuscript is moving forward again.
00:35:40It doesn't take much to feel good.
00:35:42And so you just need a little bit to get yourself back on the path.
00:35:47That's the entire premise of this podcast, that it takes so little to make you feel good again.
00:35:56And once you do, the progress and the momentum kicks in.
00:35:58If you're the kind of person who's listening and you're like, God, I've just failed too many times.
00:36:07And so you feel discouraged about starting again, whether it's putting yourself back out there on the dating scene, or
00:36:14it's dusting off your resume after getting laid off and feeling like, what value do I have to offer?
00:36:21Or you tried yet again to lose the weight or to stick to the meditation and you failed again.
00:36:26So what is the failure premortem?
00:36:29Okay, so first you want optimism.
00:36:31My little shorthand is I don't want to be my own bottleneck.
00:36:35Okay, so I try to work backwards from magic at the start.
00:36:40What would the magical outcome be?
00:36:41What would the thing that I really want to achieve look like?
00:36:44What's the optimal outcome look like?
00:36:46Then the next phase, this is where the failure premortem comes in.
00:36:49So you switch from optimism to pessimism.
00:36:51All right, I know where I want to go.
00:36:53So now let's be my own critic for a minute.
00:36:55The failure premortems, it's just this simple question of, if we look back six months from now, and this has
00:37:01failed, where does it fail?
00:37:03So it's just you're pre-analyzing where the potential points of failure are.
00:37:07Oh, so this is before you even get started.
00:37:08You haven't done anything.
00:37:09You haven't done anything yet.
00:37:10But you're trying to be the one to figure out what are the flaws in what I'm about to do.
00:37:14Okay.
00:37:14And so the failure premortem just says, if this fails, where does it fail?
00:37:18And you can come up with all kinds of things like that.
00:37:20Let me give you an example for habits.
00:37:22So like, let's say that you want to start going to the gym.
00:37:24Yes.
00:37:24And you're like, well, if this plan fails, where does it fail?
00:37:28And it might fail because you don't know which gym you're going to use.
00:37:31So you're like, all right, I'll pick one that's on the route of my commute each day.
00:37:34So then you say, okay, it might fail because I don't have my gym clothes ready.
00:37:38So you're like, all right, I need to set my clothes out the night before or have my gym bag
00:37:41ready early.
00:37:42I had one person who they were like, I am going to the gym and I wish I could stick
00:37:46to it more.
00:37:47But this gym doesn't have a water fountain.
00:37:49And so when I go there, I'm like, oh, I always forget to bring my water bottle.
00:37:53And that's enough to make me be like, I'm not going to go because they don't have a water fountain
00:37:57there.
00:37:57And little points of friction like that sound kind of silly when you say it.
00:38:01But you're like, yeah, that's a potential point of failure.
00:38:03And you need to have a plan for getting a water bottle full and make sure that you bring that
00:38:07each day.
00:38:07And so you start to check off these boxes of what are the things that could hold you back from
00:38:12this plan working.
00:38:13And then you switch back to optimism because what you don't want is to go into this process feeling like
00:38:19you're doubting yourself to begin with.
00:38:21Right, I'm screwed.
00:38:21Why am I even doing this?
00:38:22That attitude is just going to make it harder.
00:38:24So you start with optimism.
00:38:25You switch to pessimism.
00:38:27Try to poke the holes in your argument.
00:38:28And then we're back to optimism again.
00:38:29We want everybody on board and feel like we've got the right attitude going into it.
00:38:32Okay, I love this because one of the things that I immediately thought as you were using the gym example
00:38:38is I immediately could pop into the pessimism mindset.
00:38:43And I think I'm a good problem solver, but I was like, okay, well, I don't know what to do
00:38:47at a gym.
00:38:47And so I walk around and then feel overwhelmed and intimidated because I'm not quite sure what the routine should
00:38:52be.
00:38:52And then I leave.
00:38:53The other one is I would immediately see that I would have shot the goal too high and would have
00:38:59started with an hour every day for the next six months.
00:39:02And so now I'm like, oh, wait a minute.
00:39:04I got to reduce the time and stick to the schedule.
00:39:06And what could I get done on my worst day?
00:39:09So what could the goal be?
00:39:10So now I'm using your tools.
00:39:12And then I finally am now saying, well, I would about a weekend go, this isn't fun anymore.
00:39:18And so I can see how you can anticipate ways in which you would break your own ability to make
00:39:28it happen.
00:39:29So two things here.
00:39:30The first is some of this depends on how you're measuring things.
00:39:34It can really be helpful to pick a different form of measurement.
00:39:37So if you take like going to the gym, what's the common measurement?
00:39:41Everybody's like, what's the scale say?
00:39:42And how do you look in the mirror?
00:39:43That's what everybody's measuring.
00:39:44But let's forget about that.
00:39:46Measure it in a totally different way.
00:39:47So this reader, his name's Mitch, and I mentioned him in Atomic Habits.
00:39:52When he first started going to the gym, all right, so he lost over 100 pounds.
00:39:55He's kept off for more than a decade now.
00:39:57And when he first started going, he had this strange little rule for himself where he wasn't allowed to stay
00:40:02for longer than five minutes.
00:40:03So he'd get in the car, drive to the gym, get out, do half an exercise, get back in the
00:40:08car, drive home.
00:40:09And it sounds silly.
00:40:10You know, you're like, this is not going to get him the results that you want.
00:40:13But if you take a step back, what you realize is he was mastering the art of showing up.
00:40:19He was becoming the type of person that went to the gym four days a week, even if it was
00:40:23only for five minutes.
00:40:24And that's the different form of measurement there.
00:40:27He's not measuring the results.
00:40:28He's measuring, did I show up or not?
00:40:30And that gives him something else to win on in the early days.
00:40:35I think this is a pretty deep truth about habits, something that people like often overlook, which is a habit
00:40:41must be established before it can be improved.
00:40:44It has to become a second.
00:40:46A habit must be established before it can be improved.
00:40:49A habit must be established before it can be improved.
00:40:51You have to standardize before you optimize.
00:40:53I mean, how often in our lives do we try to optimize things before we get started?
00:40:57You know, you're so busy finding the perfect sales strategy, the best workout plan, the ideal diet to follow.
00:41:03The best journal.
00:41:04You're right.
00:41:04You want to optimize everything from the start.
00:41:08Because it makes me think I'm doing it, James.
00:41:10Right.
00:41:10That's exactly it.
00:41:11It's a form of procrastination for me.
00:41:13I call it the difference between motion and action.
00:41:16So motion are things that make you feel like you're making progress.
00:41:20So I'm going to look up a trainer that maybe could help me at the gym.
00:41:23Doesn't matter how many times you look up trainers in your area, it's not going to do anything to get
00:41:27you fit.
00:41:28Doesn't mean you don't need a trainer.
00:41:30Doesn't mean you shouldn't use one.
00:41:31I'm not saying that.
00:41:31I'm just saying that action is never going to result in the outcome that you want.
00:41:36Doing a set of squats or doing five push-ups, now that's something that could get the results that you
00:41:41want.
00:41:42And so researching business names.
00:41:45I want to launch a business.
00:41:46Or designing a logo.
00:41:47Doesn't matter how many times you design your business logo, it's never going to result in a paying customer.
00:41:53Doesn't mean a business doesn't need a logo, but it's just one is motion, one is action.
00:41:57So action is a behavior that can get the result that you want.
00:42:01Motion is a behavior that makes you feel like you're making progress.
00:42:05One of the things that I love about the way that you think about habits and behavior change is you
00:42:11talk about the connection between identity and behavior.
00:42:17And you write, you know, who do I want to become is a way better question to ask yourself than
00:42:23what do I want to achieve?
00:42:25Why?
00:42:25I think it's very natural to start with results and outcomes, but the results are not the thing that you
00:42:31really need to change.
00:42:32You know, what you need is to be consistent, to stick with it.
00:42:35You need to show up consistently.
00:42:36You need to follow through on, you know, the actions that are going to lead to that outcome.
00:42:40So I kind of think of it almost like the layers of an onion.
00:42:43Okay.
00:42:44So the outermost layer of the onion are the results that you want the outcome.
00:42:47So let's say lose 40 pounds.
00:42:49Okay.
00:42:49The next layer in is the action, the plan that you have, the actions that you take.
00:42:54Like most of the time when people want to make a change, they're like, yeah, I, you know, I want
00:42:59this result.
00:43:00So I need to do follow through on this plan.
00:43:01I need to go to the gym four days a week and eat on this diet or whatever.
00:43:04And the implicit assumption is if I do those things and get that result, then I'll be who I want
00:43:10to be.
00:43:11I'll be happy with who I am.
00:43:12I'll be more like the person that I hope to be.
00:43:15But the innermost layer of the onion, the core is who you are, your identity, who you become.
00:43:21And so it's like, what, how, and who?
00:43:25And instead of starting with what you want and figuring out how to do it and assuming that I will
00:43:31then be the person I want to be,
00:43:32I think it is better to invert that process and start by saying, who do I wish to become?
00:43:38Or in this example, who is the type of person that could lose 40 pounds?
00:43:42Well, maybe it's the type of person who doesn't miss workouts.
00:43:46And then you're focused on that, not on the weight.
00:43:49And so what it does is by focusing on the identity, it kind of inverts how you think about the
00:43:53habit.
00:43:54Rather than it being about hitting a certain number on the scale, it becomes about becoming a certain type of
00:43:59person,
00:44:00being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts in this example.
00:44:03Your habits are how you embody a particular identity.
00:44:07So every day that you make your bed, you embody the identity of someone who's clean and organized.
00:44:13If you study biology for 20 minutes on Tuesday night, you embody the identity of someone who is studious.
00:44:19Your habits provide evidence of who you are.
00:44:21This is the real reason, the deeper reason that habits matter.
00:44:25We often talk about habits as mattering because of the external results that they get you.
00:44:30Hey, habits will help you be more productive or make more money or reduce stress.
00:44:33Yes, and like, look, habits can do all that stuff, and that's great.
00:44:36But the real reason, the true reason that habits matter is that every action you take is like a vote
00:44:42for the type of person you wish to become.
00:44:45So no, doing one push-up does not transform your body, but it does cast a vote for I'm the
00:44:50type of person that doesn't miss workouts.
00:44:52And no, giving one bit of positive feedback to somebody on your team does not make you the world's best
00:44:57leader,
00:44:57but it does cast a vote for I'm the type of team member who cares about the people around them.
00:45:02And I think this is a little bit different than what you often hear.
00:45:05You often hear something like, fake it till you make it.
00:45:07And I don't necessarily have anything wrong with fake it till you make it.
00:45:11It's asking you to believe something positive about yourself.
00:45:15However, it's asking you to believe something positive without having evidence for it.
00:45:19And we have a word for beliefs that don't have evidence called that delusion, right?
00:45:23Like we have this mismatch between what you say you are and what you're actually doing.
00:45:26And so my encouragement is to let the behavior lead the way, to let sending one email or writing
00:45:34one sentence or meditating for five minutes, to let that small action be evidence that in
00:45:38that moment you were that kind of person.
00:45:40And then as you start to cast votes for that identity, you have every reason in the world
00:45:44to believe it.
00:45:45And so I think this is what really gets habits to stick.
00:45:48It is the reinforcement of your story.
00:45:52It's the reinforcement of how you see yourself and the identity that you're trying to build.
00:45:56And that's why I say, I think we should often start by asking not what do I wish to achieve,
00:46:01but who do I wish to become?
00:46:03And how are my actions reinforcing that?
00:46:06And if you can get those two things aligned, now you have a really deep through line from
00:46:10your daily actions to this bigger, larger identity that you want to build.
00:46:14And if you can connect the things that you do each day, the small choices with the person
00:46:18that you want to be in the long run, you can see how important they are even when they're
00:46:22little.
00:46:22I want to make sure that as you're listening or watching, you really got that question.
00:46:28Who do I want to become?
00:46:31If you start there and you start with a vision for the kind of person you want to become,
00:46:37and then we invert that onion that you were talking about so you know who you want to become,
00:46:42then you ask yourself, well, how do I become that kind of person and what do I need to do?
00:46:46Now we have a roadmap that leads you to the small daily habits that cast the vote to get
00:46:52you there.
00:46:53I think what we're ultimately trying to get to is a place where you take pride in being
00:46:56that kind of person.
00:46:57Well, this brings us to one of my absolute favorite parts of Atomic Habits in your research.
00:47:02This changed my entire mindset and honestly changed the type of person I am.
00:47:09And it's the difference between setting goals versus focusing on systems.
00:47:16And so I want to read to you from this section titled, Forget About Goals, Focus on Systems
00:47:23Instead.
00:47:24And you write, for many years, this was how I approached my habits.
00:47:29Each one was a goal to be reached.
00:47:31I set goals for the grades I wanted to get in school, for the weights I wanted to lift in
00:47:35the gym, for the profits I wanted to earn in business.
00:47:37I succeeded at a few, but I failed at a lot of them.
00:47:41The results had very little to do with the goals I set and nearly everything to do with
00:47:48the systems I followed.
00:47:50What's the difference between systems and goals?
00:47:53It's a distinction I first learned from Scott Adams, a cartoonist behind the Dilbert comic.
00:47:58Goals are about the results you want to achieve.
00:48:01Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
00:48:06And you write about this, just one example that made so much sense.
00:48:10If you're a coach, your goal might be to win a championship, but your system is the way you
00:48:16recruit players, manage your assistant coaches, and conduct practice.
00:48:21And you pose this interesting question.
00:48:25What if you completely ignored your goals and you focused on your system?
00:48:30And I'd love to unpack this because I do think that this is where I got things wrong for so
00:48:37long.
00:48:38I was very focused on defining goals and I spent little to no time really looking at the
00:48:46systems that create progress toward those goals.
00:48:49Can you unpack this for us?
00:48:50I was like that too.
00:48:51I think of my nature is I'm naturally very goal-oriented and outcome-oriented and we all
00:48:57want better results, right?
00:48:58Um, so I don't think goals are ever going to be like a zero in your life and you're never
00:49:02going to think about them.
00:49:03It's just so natural to focus on them.
00:49:05What I'm trying to encourage here is to focus on the other side of the equation, which is
00:49:09the daily habits that you are following.
00:49:11If I was going to put a little finer point on the language there, what do I mean by goal
00:49:15and system?
00:49:16Yes.
00:49:16Your goal is your desired outcome, the target, the thing you're shooting for.
00:49:21What is your system?
00:49:21Um, it's the collection of daily habits that you follow.
00:49:25And if there is ever a gap between your goal and your system, if there's ever a gap between
00:49:30your desired outcome and your daily habits, your daily habits will always win.
00:49:35I mean, almost by definition, your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your
00:49:40current results.
00:49:41Whatever habits you've been following for the last six months or year or two years, it's
00:49:46carried you almost inevitably to the outcomes that you have right now.
00:49:48Well, so where I've kind of come down on this after thinking about it for a little
00:49:52while is goals are good for clarity.
00:49:55They're good for setting a sense of direction, get everybody rowing the boat in the same
00:49:58same direction.
00:49:59They can be good for filtering.
00:50:00So if somebody comes to you with an opportunity and they say, hey, do you want to do this?
00:50:03You can run it through your list of goals and say, well, does this get me closer to what
00:50:07I want or not?
00:50:09Maybe it makes it easier to say yes or no to that.
00:50:11But the vast majority of your time should be spent focused on building a better system.
00:50:17Goals are good for people who care about winning once.
00:50:20Systems are best for people who care about winning repeatedly.
00:50:23If you really want to make progress and make it again and again, if you want to get high
00:50:27performance and keep the performance high, you need some set of systems, some collection
00:50:32of daily habits to keep you up there.
00:50:34The other interesting thing that I realized is that the winners and the losers often have
00:50:38the same goals.
00:50:39You know, if you have a job opening and 100 people apply, presumably every candidate has the
00:50:45goal of getting the job.
00:50:46The goal is not the thing that determines the outcome.
00:50:49It's presentation skills in the interview, who they know at the company, education, experience,
00:50:53like all sorts of things, right?
00:50:55Or, you know, at the Olympics.
00:50:58Presumably, every athlete who's competing has the goal of winning the gold medal.
00:51:02You know, the goal is not the thing that determines the outcome.
00:51:04Again, it's genetic ability, talent, coaching, strategy, how much sleep they got the night
00:51:09before, like all sorts of factors.
00:51:11And so if the winners and the losers have the same goals, the goal cannot be the thing
00:51:16that makes a difference in their performance.
00:51:18It has to be something else.
00:51:19And that something else is the system.
00:51:21It's their daily habits.
00:51:23So you've talked a lot about this word systems.
00:51:26I would love to have you just break down some for some of the habits that people tend to
00:51:34take on a lot.
00:51:36What about for saving money?
00:51:37What might be a system just to jog the person who's listening?
00:51:40So here's an interesting one that one of my readers uses.
00:51:43Saving money is an interesting and there's an interesting category of habits, which are things
00:51:48that you basically don't do, and then you need to feel good about it.
00:51:52Like saving money is basically when I don't spend is when I'm achieving this goal.
00:51:56And, you know, it's like not playing video games or don't drink wine.
00:51:59Like things like that are tricky to feel good about because you're just resisting doing something.
00:52:05So I thought this was a clever solution.
00:52:07I have this one reader.
00:52:08He and his wife wanted to eat out less, spend less money eating out at restaurants and cook
00:52:13at home more.
00:52:14But again, if you just, well, we're not going to go out to eat tonight.
00:52:17That doesn't really feel great.
00:52:18So what they came up with was they opened a separate savings account and they labeled
00:52:23it trip to Europe.
00:52:24And then anytime that they stayed home, they would move 20 or 50 bucks or whatever over
00:52:29that they were going to spend that night.
00:52:30They move that over to the account.
00:52:32And what they get in the moment is the feeling of, oh, we're building toward this vacation
00:52:38that we want to go on.
00:52:40And then at the end of the year, they took the money and put it toward the trip.
00:52:43And so they found a way to take something that usually doesn't have much of a benefit
00:52:48and give it a positive association, a positive feeling.
00:52:51And so that was part of their system for saving money or for not eating out was, well, first,
00:52:56we're going to move the money over.
00:52:58And then we're going to choose what recipe are we making tonight.
00:53:01And then we go into the kitchen and prep it or whatever.
00:53:03And so it's just a simple couple of steps, but it makes it a lot more enjoyable.
00:53:07What about a system for eating healthier?
00:53:11Eating healthier is interesting and it's a tricky one.
00:53:14I think it provides a good example of people will say something that they think is simple,
00:53:20but it's actually not that simple.
00:53:22They think they're making it easy and simple, but they need to scale it down even more.
00:53:26So like, let's say somebody says, all right, I'm just going to focus on one habit.
00:53:29I'm just going to try to eat healthy.
00:53:31Well, you know, what is involved in that, right?
00:53:33Like if you're currently eating a lot of meals out or ordering a lot of meals,
00:53:37well, first you need to decide what you're going to make.
00:53:39You need a grocery shopping habit.
00:53:41So you got to get the stuff.
00:53:42You need some meal prep habits.
00:53:45Maybe you even need new skills.
00:53:46Like do you need knife skills or like learn how to do some stuff that maybe you didn't
00:53:49know how to do before.
00:53:50After you make the meal, you have a bunch of dishes that need to be cleaned.
00:53:53So now you need to develop like a cleaning habit of washing those.
00:53:56There's actually like six or seven things that are all separate habits.
00:54:00So I would say you can try to scale this down.
00:54:03Okay.
00:54:03And start easy on yourself.
00:54:05And maybe, you know, for like, let's take doing the dishes, for example, maybe for the
00:54:09first week, you just eat off of paper plates and no, it's not super sustainable.
00:54:13And it's not the thing that you want to do forever, but you're trying to take one element
00:54:16out of the equation so that you make it easier for yourself to do it.
00:54:20Another example that I thought was interesting.
00:54:22I talked to one woman who she took this idea of, we talked about earlier, what would this
00:54:26look like if it was fun?
00:54:27So she wanted to start eating healthier and bring her lunch into work each day.
00:54:31But she realized the making a salad didn't sound that fun to her.
00:54:35And so she came up with this phrase that she called a party in a bowl.
00:54:39And so she would make a salad, but she would do like all kinds of wild things at the start.
00:54:43Like she would chop up Snickers bars and throw them in, or she would like crumble potato chips
00:54:47on top or whatever.
00:54:48She just wanted it to feel like a party in a bowl.
00:54:50And she did that for the first like two weeks or month.
00:54:53And then after a month of bringing her lunch in, she was like, okay, now I'm actually making
00:54:57it every morning.
00:54:59Then she was like, how can I make this healthier?
00:55:01How can I improve the quality of this?
00:55:03And so-
00:55:04I love, by the way, the potato chips on the salad.
00:55:07That sounds great.
00:55:07That sounds fantastic.
00:55:09What a great idea.
00:55:10A little crunch.
00:55:11Right.
00:55:11A little salt.
00:55:12Texture.
00:55:12Yes.
00:55:12Seems good.
00:55:15But how do you make it fun?
00:55:16How do you increase the odds that you master the art of showing up?
00:55:19That's kind of, that's the like first hurdle to clear.
00:55:22And what I also loved is that you're identifying for us the fact that we trip over ourselves
00:55:28because we make the results that we want either too big or too vague that we underestimate
00:55:35the complexity of the amount of change we're asking ourselves to make.
00:55:38If you start with perfection as the bar, it becomes really hard to get started.
00:55:42How do you think, or what have some of your readers said about the systems and habits
00:55:46related to cutting back on something like drinking or vaping or one of those things?
00:55:50Yes.
00:55:50Let's talk a little bit about breaking bad habits.
00:55:52So there's kind of, there's, if, if you want to break a bad habit,
00:55:55there are three different things you could do.
00:55:57So first thing is you could eliminate it entirely.
00:55:59So cut it out cold turkey.
00:56:00All right.
00:56:01Second way to break a bad habit is you could reduce it.
00:56:03So you don't necessarily stop it.
00:56:05You just reduce it to your desired degree.
00:56:07I would say a lot of people probably feel this way about their phones.
00:56:10It's not that I never want to use my phone.
00:56:11I just want to use it a little bit less or scroll a little bit less or whatever.
00:56:14Yes.
00:56:15And then the third category is you could replace it.
00:56:17So you can eliminate, you can reduce, or you can replace.
00:56:20Those are really your three options if you want to break a bad habit.
00:56:22And if you replace it, then you're substituting a new habit in its place.
00:56:26Hopefully one that's more healthy or more productive.
00:56:29Let me kind of answer these in reverse order.
00:56:32All right.
00:56:32So replace it.
00:56:34Habits, we talked a little bit early on about some ways to define a habit.
00:56:38Here's another way to define it.
00:56:39A habit is a solution to a recurring problem in your environment, right?
00:56:44So it's a solution to a recurring problem that you face.
00:56:47Let's say, for example, you come home from work and it's 530 and you're feeling exhausted and tired from a
00:56:52long day, right?
00:56:53That is a recurring problem that is going to happen throughout the weeks and months that your brain has to
00:56:59figure out how to solve.
00:57:00And for one person, maybe they solve it by scrolling on Instagram for 30 minutes.
00:57:04For another person, the way that they solve it is maybe they smoke a cigarette.
00:57:07For a third person, maybe the way they solve it is they go for a run.
00:57:11And you can see that some of these solutions are healthier than others.
00:57:15But they're all solving the same root problem, which is I feel stressed and exhausted and tired after a long
00:57:20day.
00:57:20And I want to find a way to reset and kind of change my energy.
00:57:25Early in your life, I think particularly in your 20s, you may have this realization where the solutions that you
00:57:32have to the problems that you face are kind of things that you inherited or you picked up from your
00:57:36parents.
00:57:37What are the odds that the first way that you learn to solve this problem is the best way?
00:57:44Mathematically speaking, it's very unlikely that the way that your current solutions to the problems that you face are the
00:57:49best solutions.
00:57:50So let me just give you an example.
00:57:51So if you grew up in a household where you saw a mom or dad come home from a long
00:57:56day at work and they poured themselves a glass of wine as a way to unwind, turn off their brain,
00:58:01step into the evening.
00:58:03If you inherited that habit as the way you solve the problem of, I've had a long day at work,
00:58:10I'm totally stressed, I want a quick way to de-stress, and the habit is pour a glass of wine
00:58:14or pour a drink, that's an example of the type of thing you're talking about.
00:58:20Yeah. And I think the first step is not to judge yourself for it or to feel guilty about it.
00:58:24You don't need to feel bad about it. It's just, it's almost like, sometimes I try to look at my
00:58:28habits, almost like I'm going to the zoo. You know how you like go and look at an animal, you're
00:58:31like, oh, how interesting that they would do that. You know, like, oh, oh, isn't that silly that they behave
00:58:36in that way? Like you kind of look at yourself with that lens. You're like, oh, okay, interesting that I'm
00:58:40doing this.
00:58:40Yeah. And you just want to see things clearly. And then once you see how you're actually behaving, well, then
00:58:46there are adjustments that you can make. And I think at that point, you realize, all right, it's not my
00:58:50fault necessarily that I'm doing these things or that I learned this way to do it. But now it is
00:58:56my responsibility to make the change.
00:58:58The next level is you say, all right, I'm going to try to reduce the amount of time that I
00:59:03do this. One way that I try to practice this. So I have a home office, and I have this
00:59:08little rule where I try to keep my phone in another room until lunch each day. Usually it ends up
00:59:13being like nine to 11, nine to noon, something like that. And I can't do it all the time, but
00:59:17I can do it maybe 70% of the time. And whenever I do it, I think it's interesting because
00:59:22it's like, the phone is just down the hallway. It's only 30 seconds away, but I never go get it.
00:59:27And so I'm like, did I want it or not? On the one hand, I wanted it so bad that
00:59:32when it was next to me, I would check it every three minutes. And on the other hand, I never
00:59:36wanted it badly enough that I would be willing to work 30 seconds and go down the hall and get
00:59:40it. And a lot of your habits are like that. They will curtail themselves to the desired degree if you
00:59:45just introduce a little bit of distance or a little bit of friction. The more that you increase friction between
00:59:52you and the behavior, the more likely it is to reduce itself.
00:59:56So there are a lot of environmental changes that could potentially work there.
00:59:59Talk to us about the environment and the role that environment plays in terms of sticking to habits.
01:00:08There's a chapter in Atomic Habits that's called The Secret to Self-Control.
01:00:12And there's a story that many of us tell ourselves, which is, oh, you know, if I was just more
01:00:16disciplined, if I just had more self-control, then I would be able to do these things.
01:00:20But the big takeaway from the research in that chapter, the surprising insight, is that when you look at people
01:00:27who exhibit high levels of self-control, the common pattern across them is not that they have higher discipline than
01:00:34the average person.
01:00:35The common pattern is that they are in situations where they're tempted less frequently.
01:00:39Tempted.
01:00:40Tempted less frequently.
01:00:42Fewer temptations is the single biggest driver of exhibiting high self-control.
01:00:46And so the lesson is you don't need to try to be more disciplined.
01:00:51You don't need to wish that you were a person with more willpower.
01:00:54You need to take a little bit of time to design an environment where you're not tempted as frequently.
01:00:59So that could mean simple things like not having chips in the house or not having cigarettes in the house
01:01:03or things like that.
01:01:04But it could mean more complicated things like looking at your relationships and saying, who are the people that have
01:01:10the behaviors that I want to have?
01:01:11You know, what are the common habits of my friend group or my peer group?
01:01:14And that's not necessarily saying I never see these people again.
01:01:18Yeah.
01:01:18But maybe I only see them in pockets or, you know, or in certain situations.
01:01:21And then other people I'm trying to expose myself to more and hang out with more.
01:01:25And so those are all ways that you can start to think about where are the temptations in my life
01:01:31or where am I having to, where do I need to go against the grain of the situation to have
01:01:37the habits that I want to have?
01:01:38And where am I working with the gradient of the situation?
01:01:41And working with because it's actually taking me in the direction of the kind of person I want to become
01:01:47and working against is you recognize you're in an environment that is taking you away from the kind of person
01:01:54you want to become.
01:01:55Let's stay for a second on people.
01:01:59What are the systems or changes or ways that that you think about being surrounded by people that are supporting
01:02:10who you want to become?
01:02:12It's a huge driver of our habits.
01:02:14There's a chapter in Atomic Habits about the influence of friends and family on our behaviors.
01:02:19And I think if I could write it again, I would even expand it because it's even bigger than I
01:02:23think I realized.
01:02:24So humans are very social creatures.
01:02:27We all have a deep desire to bond and connect, to be part of something.
01:02:32And if people have to choose between, you know, I have habits that I don't really love, but I fit
01:02:40in.
01:02:41I belong.
01:02:41I'm part of something.
01:02:42I'm supported.
01:02:43Or I have the habits that I want to have, but I'm cast out.
01:02:47I'm ostracized.
01:02:48I'm criticized.
01:02:50A lot of the time, the desire to belong will overpower the desire to improve.
01:02:55And so as best as possible, you need to get those two things aligned.
01:02:59And I think the way to do it is you want to join groups where your desired behavior is the
01:03:05normal behavior.
01:03:06Because if your desired behavior is normal, as you make friendships and build relationships in that group, you're going to
01:03:12soak up so many big and little habits from the people that are part of that group.
01:03:17We all belong to multiple groups or multiple tribes.
01:03:21Some of them are large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be French.
01:03:24Some of them are small, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street or a member of
01:03:28the local CrossFit gym or a volunteer at the elementary school.
01:03:31But all of those groups, large and small, have a set of expectations for how you act.
01:03:36You know, like take the neighbor on the street example.
01:03:38If I walk outside and look at my neighbor's house and they're mowing the lawn, I might think, oh, I
01:03:43need to cut the grass too.
01:03:44And you might stick to that habit for five years or 10 years, however long you live in the house.
01:03:49Like we wish we had that level of consistency with our other habits.
01:03:53And why do you do it?
01:03:55Partially you do it because it feels good to have a clean lawn, but mostly you do it because you
01:03:59don't want to be the sloppy one who's like ruining how the neighborhood looks.
01:04:02So you want to join groups where your desired habits align with the expectations of the group so that you
01:04:08don't have to run against that friction.
01:04:10One of the best things that I ever did in my entrepreneurial career, so I have no authors in my
01:04:14family, no entrepreneurs in my family.
01:04:17But I looked around and I said, who are some other people that are doing the thing that I want
01:04:22to do?
01:04:22You know, they're like two or three years ahead of me.
01:04:24This is like maybe 10 years ago.
01:04:26And I started hosting these retreats where I would get other authors together, six or eight people.
01:04:30And I say, let's just split the cost of an Airbnb, get together for like two days, and we'll talk
01:04:34about how to build an audience and how to write a book and how to launch a book.
01:04:39So anyway, the point being, that requires a little bit of courage.
01:04:42You know, like I reached out to people.
01:04:45I was always worried that I was going to look like a dummy and, you know, be like, you want
01:04:47to go hang out for two days?
01:04:48And everybody would be like, no, you know.
01:04:50But everybody says yes because they're waiting for the same thing, which is people want like-minded people to get
01:04:56together.
01:04:57They're waiting for somebody to gather people together.
01:04:59So sometimes the spaces are ready for you.
01:05:02Sometimes it requires a little bit of courage to create it.
01:05:04But the outcome is the same, which is you're trying to put yourself in a room with people who have
01:05:09your desired behaviors.
01:05:10James, what are the four stages of building habits?
01:05:13Well, all habits go through this kind of four-step loop here.
01:05:16I can draw it out.
01:05:17Great.
01:05:18So he's grabbing a quick whiteboard if you're listening.
01:05:20So you have these four stages.
01:05:21It's almost like a quadrant.
01:05:23But you start and the beginning of it is there's some kind of Q.
01:05:27Okay.
01:05:28So I'll just put a C there for Q.
01:05:29Okay.
01:05:30Right.
01:05:30So you have the Q and that leads to a craving, which then drives a response.
01:05:35And then ultimately you get a reward.
01:05:37And so you kind of go around the loop like this.
01:05:40Q?
01:05:40Q, craving, response, reward.
01:05:42Q, craving, response, reward.
01:05:43Okay.
01:05:44And it's true for little things.
01:05:45Like, let's say that you walk into a room.
01:05:49The room is dark.
01:05:50And the Q is, oh, the room's dark.
01:05:52I want to be able to see.
01:05:53The craving is, I want to be able to see.
01:05:56The response is, I flip the light switch.
01:05:58And then the reward is, oh, now the lights are on.
01:06:00I can see.
01:06:01But it's true for other stuff too.
01:06:02Like the Q might be, you're driving down the road and you hear an ambulance come up from behind you.
01:06:08The siren is an auditory Q.
01:06:09Okay.
01:06:10Or your phone buzzes in your pocket.
01:06:11That's a physical Q that starts the habit of checking your phone.
01:06:15Or you see a plate of cookies on the counter in the kitchen.
01:06:18That's a visual Q that starts happening to be a cookie.
01:06:20So you have the Q that leads to the craving.
01:06:24You hear the siren from the ambulance.
01:06:26Oh, now I need to pull to the side of the road.
01:06:28Oh, and the craving is just the impulse to do something.
01:06:30The desire.
01:06:31The desire to do something.
01:06:33So Q, craving, response, reward.
01:06:36And you know what's interesting is now I'm understanding as you're explaining a habit is that you're not even really
01:06:42thinking about those things.
01:06:43They're just all kind of sandwiched together in that loop you just drew.
01:06:47It can happen almost instantaneously, like inside of a whole second.
01:06:51You know, like it's, but it's very rapid and it's, once a habit is established, it's almost entirely non-conscious.
01:06:57How does that connect to the four laws that you created around behavior change?
01:07:02So we have this scientific backbone, these four stages, Q, craving, response, reward.
01:07:07And we know that our behaviors are going through that cycle each day.
01:07:10And what I care about is how do I operationalize that?
01:07:13How do I translate this into something actionable for daily life and work?
01:07:16And so that's why I came up with what I call the four laws of behavior change.
01:07:20All right, well, let's go into the four laws.
01:07:22So the first law is to make it obvious.
01:07:24Yes, you want the cues of your habits to be obvious, available, visible, easy to see.
01:07:29The easier it is for a habit to be noticed and for it to get your attention, the more likely
01:07:34you are to act on it.
01:07:35The second law is to make it attractive.
01:07:38So this comes back to that question we asked earlier about what would this look like if it was fun?
01:07:42The more fun, the more engaging, the more motivating or enticing a habit is, the more likely you are to
01:07:50fall through on it.
01:07:51All right, so make it attractive.
01:07:52The third law is to make it easy.
01:07:55The easier, more convenient, frictionless, simple a habit is, the more likely it is to be performed.
01:08:02And the fourth and final law is to make it satisfying.
01:08:04So the more satisfying or enjoyable a habit is, the more rewarding or pleasurable it is, the more likely you
01:08:09are to feel compelled to do it.
01:08:11But the first three laws, make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy.
01:08:15Those three are about priming you to get started.
01:08:19They're about making it easy to get into the habit this time.
01:08:21The fourth law, make it satisfying.
01:08:24That like closes the feedback loop.
01:08:26The behavior has already happened at that point.
01:08:28But the reward is important because it helps you feel good.
01:08:32And that gets you to show up again the next time.
01:08:34Make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying.
01:08:38If you're trying to build a new habit, if you're sitting there and you're thinking, you know, I have this
01:08:43habit that I want to do, but I keep procrastinating on it.
01:08:46Let's take exercising since that's the number one thing people want to do.
01:08:50I wish I could get to the gym, but I just haven't been doing that.
01:08:53You can just go through these four laws and ask yourself, how can I make the habit more obvious?
01:08:58How can I make it more attractive?
01:09:00How can I make it easier?
01:09:01How can I make it more satisfying?
01:09:02And the answers to those four questions will reveal different steps that you can take.
01:09:08They're naturally going to generate answers for things that you could do.
01:09:11They're kind of like levers.
01:09:12And when the levers are in the right positions, building habits is easier.
01:09:16And when they're in the wrong positions, building habits is harder.
01:09:19I want to see if this example maps to those four steps.
01:09:25And it's related to making exercise stick.
01:09:28So making it obvious, one of the things that I did that made a difference is laying my clothes
01:09:35out the night before so that when I wake up in the morning, I see the clothes and that's
01:09:41the cue.
01:09:41Yep.
01:09:42Uh-oh, I said I would exercise today.
01:09:45I make it attractive by saying I'm going to go somewhere outside my house, like to a yoga
01:09:51studio or something.
01:09:52I think that's what you did earlier.
01:09:54Didn't you say you didn't like working out on your own, but you do like a class?
01:09:57So it's choosing a version of that habit that is fun and attractive to you.
01:10:02A class is more attractive.
01:10:03The third one is I picked it the night before.
01:10:06So now it's easy to know.
01:10:08I don't have to stop and think.
01:10:09I don't have to look at a schedule.
01:10:11I don't have to fit it in because I made it easy because I picked it the night before.
01:10:15And satisfying, there's a coffee shop next door that makes a great ice latte.
01:10:20And I have it when I'm done.
01:10:23That's your reward for when you get done.
01:10:25Yes.
01:10:25So, yeah, I think it definitely maps.
01:10:28And you can imagine lots of versions of this.
01:10:30I do think the obvious piece is often about knowing exactly when you're going to go or
01:10:34setting your clothes out the night before or having, you know, there's some kind of
01:10:37obvious element in your environment there.
01:10:39The attractive piece is usually choosing a version of exercise that you're really excited
01:10:43about.
01:10:43The easy piece, I think, can often be about scaling it down.
01:10:47Oh, so make it 10 minutes.
01:10:48Or make it 10 push-ups instead of the other one.
01:10:50Exactly.
01:10:51Rather than an hour, it can be for 10 minutes or whatever.
01:10:52It's, you know, scaling down the scope of it.
01:10:55And if you can do more, great.
01:10:56Go ahead and do more.
01:10:57But what you consider a success is the smaller version.
01:11:01And then the reward in the beginning, a lot of the time, I think it looks like what you
01:11:06just described, which is it's the latte or it's the, you know, whatever the thing is
01:11:10that you want.
01:11:10I actually crave it as I'm driving to the yoga studio.
01:11:13I'm not thinking about getting on the mat.
01:11:14I'm like, oh, I get a latte after that.
01:11:16Sure.
01:11:16Which is great.
01:11:17In the long run, sometimes it takes a decade or more.
01:11:20It can become the reinforcement of the identity that you want to have.
01:11:24So for me, I work out now because I, yeah, I like the results everybody else wants, right?
01:11:31Like you want to look good and stay fit and be able to move when you're 70 and all that
01:11:34stuff.
01:11:37But I also do it because I like who I am when I'm doing it.
01:11:41Steven Pressfield has this concept where he says, he's talking about writing, but he says,
01:11:47in the beginning, you start creating and you feel kind of like an imposter.
01:11:50You sit down to write.
01:11:51It's kind of hard.
01:11:52It's difficult.
01:11:52You don't really feel like you fit.
01:11:55But a wolf has its territory and the way that it becomes its territory is by walking it,
01:12:01by showing up every day, by being there.
01:12:03And it's not its territory the first day, but eventually after it's been there for a while,
01:12:06it starts to feel like home.
01:12:08And all of your habits are kind of like that too.
01:12:10You know, the first day you go to the gym, you feel kind of stupid and foolish.
01:12:14You're like, are people, you know, looking at me?
01:12:15Am I doing this the wrong way?
01:12:17You feel out of place.
01:12:18You go for six months or a year.
01:12:20You start to get a little bit more comfortable.
01:12:22Maybe it still doesn't feel like home yet.
01:12:23Turn around two or three or five years later and you're like, this is just part of what I do.
01:12:28This is my territory now.
01:12:29And the only way you develop that level of comfort
01:12:32is by being willing to go through a little bit of discomfort early on.
01:12:37You know, like sometimes I try to remind myself,
01:12:40am I willing to look foolish for five minutes?
01:12:42Or am I willing to be uncomfortable for five minutes?
01:12:45That's really all you're talking about.
01:12:48So I've been working with a trainer recently.
01:12:50He told me this story.
01:12:51He was teaching a class in the morning and it was a bad weather day.
01:12:54It was just rainy and really gross.
01:12:56It was kind of cold and just gray.
01:12:58It was just kind of nasty.
01:12:59And he was supposed to have eight people in his class.
01:13:02And he showed up and only two were there.
01:13:06And we were talking about, I think that's kind of interesting, you know,
01:13:08because the workout's indoors, right?
01:13:11The workout, once you get to the gym, the workout's the same as it always is.
01:13:14It's so different as when it's sunny and the sky is blue.
01:13:17It's so true.
01:13:18But what you really notice there is just how little bit of an edge you need
01:13:23to gain an advantage or to have a different outcome than most people.
01:13:28Six of those eight people didn't show up, not because of the workout.
01:13:32The workout's the same as always.
01:13:33It's because they didn't want to be uncomfortable for like five or 10 minutes,
01:13:37getting ready, getting through the rain, getting in the car.
01:13:39It was just kind of gross enough that it let them ignore it.
01:13:43And so in a lot of ways, what this all boils down to is getting started.
01:13:50It's being, are you willing to get started?
01:13:53Are you willing to be uncomfortable for three minutes?
01:13:56And if you can get over that hump, then the rest of it kind of cascades naturally.
01:14:00You write about the two minute rule.
01:14:02What is that?
01:14:03It's a really easy way to force yourself to get started.
01:14:08I hope that you find all the ideas interesting and useful that we talk about today.
01:14:11But if you can only remember one thing, the two minute rule is a good thing to remember.
01:14:14And I say that because it can be applied to pretty much any habit.
01:14:18So you take whatever habit you're trying to build and you scale it down
01:14:22to something that takes two minutes or less to do.
01:14:27Meditation.
01:14:28Yeah, meditate for 20 minutes becomes meditate for one minute.
01:14:33Read 30 books a year becomes read one page.
01:14:35Do yoga four days a week becomes take out my yoga mat.
01:14:39And sometimes when I tell people this, they resisted a little bit.
01:14:42They're like, okay, buddy, you know, I know the real goal isn't just to take my yoga mat out.
01:14:47I know I'm actually trying to do the workout, you know?
01:14:49So you're like, okay, if I know it's a trick and why would I fall for it basically?
01:14:54But there's this great quote from Ed Lattimore where he says,
01:14:57the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door.
01:14:59And man, there are a lot of things in life that are like that.
01:15:02You know, the hardest action is the first movement.
01:15:04The most difficult step is the first one.
01:15:06And once getting, when you're in the work, once you've already started, it's often easier to keep
01:15:11going.
01:15:12It's starting the work that is the hard part.
01:15:14All the frictions at the beginning.
01:15:16There's this concept in physics, coefficient of friction.
01:15:18The friction is highest when you're not moving.
01:15:20It's once you're moving that things start to go a little bit easier.
01:15:24Momentum works in both ways.
01:15:26You know, like if you sit on the couch and you ruminate on, you know, how things aren't going
01:15:30well in your life, you feel kind of lethargic, like that's easy to be low energy and for things
01:15:34to not go well right then.
01:15:35But you start moving a little bit, even if it's just stretched on the floor for five
01:15:38minutes.
01:15:39Now you start to move forward and things go, you know, go a little bit faster.
01:15:42You know, speaking of friction, there's a concept that is floating around called habit stacking.
01:15:49What is that?
01:15:51Habit stacking.
01:15:51I think habit stacking is a great approach for building habits.
01:15:56It's a concept that comes from BJ Fogg.
01:15:57He's a professor at Stanford and he had a great insight, which is habits tend to be easier
01:16:05to build or stick to if they're tied to a behavior that you're already doing.
01:16:11So we all have habits that we already do.
01:16:14Okay.
01:16:14Like maybe you already make a cup of coffee every morning.
01:16:17Yep.
01:16:18And your new habit that you want to build is you want to start meditating.
01:16:21So you can stack that new habit on top of the old one.
01:16:24So your habit stack could be something like, after I make my morning cup of coffee, I will
01:16:30meditate for 60 seconds.
01:16:31And then, you know, you can start to chain this together.
01:16:34You could like create multiple.
01:16:35So you could say, after I make my cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds.
01:16:38After I meditate for 60 seconds, I will write my to-do list for the day.
01:16:42After I write my to-do list for the day, I will prioritize them and start working on the
01:16:46first one or whatever.
01:16:47And now you've got a little stack, a little package of behaviors that happens the same way
01:16:50every time and you do it each morning.
01:16:54And from talking with a lot of readers, people like to use these at certain moments throughout
01:16:58their day.
01:16:58People like habit stacks in the morning.
01:17:00I have a lot of readers who they'll come up with one for what they do when they get
01:17:03into the office.
01:17:04They'll be like, I go into the office, I hang up my jacket, I set my purse on the desk,
01:17:08I take my water bottle and I fill it up.
01:17:10And then I sit down and I answer the first email.
01:17:12And I always do it in the same order.
01:17:14And that like helps me get into the day.
01:17:15And I just know exactly what I'm going to do when I get there.
01:17:17Um, sometimes you'll see people have one like a power down routine at the end of the day,
01:17:22uh, to kind of help them, you know, wrap the day up and get ready for bed and whatever.
01:17:26So you can use it anywhere.
01:17:27Um, I have some readers who have come up with very creative ones.
01:17:30I had one guy who was, he was such a bro and really liked going to the gym and, um,
01:17:35he was not managing his finance as well.
01:17:38And so his new habit stack was whenever I drink a protein shake, I will check my finances.
01:17:43Um, and it just, it happened frequently enough that it would force him to check in on his
01:17:47budget and stay more on top of it.
01:17:49Um, so you can do, you can do strange ones like that.
01:17:52You have to be willing to experiment.
01:17:55Um, you know, I, atomic habits, I've, I've tried to lay everything out that I can.
01:18:00Like I wanted it.
01:18:01I don't know whether I reached or not, but my objective when I was writing was I want to
01:18:04write the single best book that's ever been written about habits.
01:18:07But even so, even if in some magical world, I achieved that outcome, you as an individual
01:18:13still have to be willing to experiment because what matters is, does it work for your life?
01:18:17You know?
01:18:18And so you got to, maybe you need to rearrange the habit stack.
01:18:20Maybe you need to change when you're inserting things.
01:18:23You know, for one person putting the, uh, meditating right after a cup of coffee makes a lot of sense.
01:18:28If you have three toddlers and you're trying to get pants on your four-year-old,
01:18:32that's not a good time to meditate, you know?
01:18:34So you need to find the right time of day to insert, um, your habits and behaviors.
01:18:39And that requires a little bit of experimentation.
01:18:41So for somebody who has a goal that's really big, whether it's, I want to write a novel,
01:18:48I want to start a business, I want to take on a big project.
01:18:52And they're clear about that.
01:18:54What would you recommend is the one habit to build first?
01:19:00Since that's such a big goal out there.
01:19:04Interestingly, I would say, so I'd say there's probably two things to focus on first.
01:19:08The first is you probably need a habit of reflection and review.
01:19:11What does that mean?
01:19:12Well, what are the odds that if you keep your head down and you work really hard,
01:19:19that you're going to be working on the heart, the highest and best thing.
01:19:22It's just so unlikely that out of all the things that you could be doing,
01:19:25that you're working on the best thing right now.
01:19:27And so it's this interesting tension because on the one hand,
01:19:31having a great work ethic and working hard is really valuable in life.
01:19:35And, um, it does pay off in some sense.
01:19:37Like you can't get results without working on things, but it can also become a crutch
01:19:43where if you like for myself, a lot of the time, I know for many years,
01:19:46like if I had a problem, my solution was I'll just work my way out of it.
01:19:50And that works for a little while, but at some point it breaks, you know,
01:19:53like you break yourself down and then also you can only work so much.
01:19:57Like maybe if you really grinded, you could work 10% harder than you are right now,
01:20:01but you can't work a hundred percent harder or like a hundred X harder.
01:20:05Yeah.
01:20:05It's not possible.
01:20:06Yeah.
01:20:06Um, but you could work on something else that gets you a hundred X the result
01:20:10if you're working on the right thing.
01:20:12Um, and so for any project, you know, this hypothetical question that you asked is,
01:20:16what if I have this big goal?
01:20:18I have a business I want to launch.
01:20:19I have, you know, an initiative I want to start.
01:20:21I have, you know, whatever, um, there's going to be many ways to do it and you need to have
01:20:27at least some time to sit and think each week and come back to saying, are we doing this
01:20:32the right way?
01:20:33You know, if we, I think if you, if you have two things in life, if you have a bias
01:20:37toward
01:20:38action and you really move fast and you continually revisit this question of what are we really
01:20:43trying to do here?
01:20:44And is this the best way to do it?
01:20:46If you can do those two things and you just keep doing them on repeat, you can really get
01:20:50a lot done in life.
01:20:51But, but you need both.
01:20:52Um, and so that, that's the second thing that I was going to mention is, uh, this bias toward
01:20:56actions, getting started.
01:20:57It's finding some small way to move now.
01:20:59Um, my little saying that I try to remind myself of is don't rush, but don't wait.
01:21:05You know, I find that if I am in the mix, if I'm taking action, if I'm working on things,
01:21:11then that's great.
01:21:12I'd need to be patient.
01:21:13I need to let the results accumulate.
01:21:14But if I'm not actually taking action, I'm not being patient.
01:21:18I'm just waiting and, uh, nothing's going to happen in that case.
01:21:22So both thinking big picture, what are we really trying to do here?
01:21:27And is this the best way to accomplish it?
01:21:29And then having a bias toward action and moving fast.
01:21:32Those two things work really well together.
01:21:34Amazing advice.
01:21:35You know, one of the things you said at the very beginning is that the secret to winning
01:21:39is knowing how to lose.
01:21:41What do you do and how do you pick yourself back up if you've had a little bit of a
01:21:46good
01:21:46streak and then you don't go to the gym or you don't write or you start to drink again
01:21:53like those, like, how do you start the engine up again?
01:21:56And what's the mistake you see people making?
01:21:59So I try to keep this little mantra in mind, which is never miss twice.
01:22:02And so, you know, maybe I show up and I, you know, do the right thing.
01:22:07I've been writing for six days in a row and then the seventh day I miss.
01:22:10Well, you know, I wish I hadn't missed, but that's okay.
01:22:14Let me pour all my energy into getting back on track the next day.
01:22:17And what you realize is that at the end of the year, those mistakes are just like a little
01:22:21blip on the radar.
01:22:22But that's only true if you never miss twice.
01:22:24It's only true if you get back on track quickly.
01:22:26And I think you see this in many domains, which is the top performers have this interesting
01:22:32quality.
01:22:32They're all human.
01:22:33They all make mistakes like everybody else.
01:22:36But the thing that they share is they tend to get back on track quickly.
01:22:40And if the reclaiming of a habit is fast, the breaking of it doesn't matter that much.
01:22:45But it's all about getting back on track that matters.
01:22:48So it's again, it's this concept of bouncing back from a loss that that is really critical.
01:22:53James Clear, what are your parting words?
01:22:55No matter what the habit is that you're trying to build, it's easy to talk yourself out of
01:22:59it because you know that the results aren't going to be good right away.
01:23:02But like your favorite athlete's first workout was just as bad as yours.
01:23:08You know, your favorite chef's first meal was just as bad as yours.
01:23:11Your favorite writer's first sentence was just as bad as yours.
01:23:14You need to keep going.
01:23:16You need to do the early low stakes stuff to prepare for the high stakes stuff, to build
01:23:22the capacity and the ability to do the other things.
01:23:25And so don't overlook the small moments that you have each day.
01:23:29Every day has an opportunity built into it.
01:23:32You know, whatever age you are right now, your future self would love to be it.
01:23:38When you're 70, you would give anything to go back and be 60 again and have the opportunity
01:23:43of those next 10 years.
01:23:44And you should use that as best as you can.
01:23:47And whether that's a small moment, like a little dance recital or some stupid little
01:23:52speech that you're going to give to your friends or whatever it is, try to do it well.
01:23:56You know, whatever thing that you have in front of you, try to do it well.
01:23:59If you do it well, if you take advantage of the moment that you have, you earn the right
01:24:04to do more things.
01:24:07You proved to yourself that you have high standards and that you take advantage of the opportunities
01:24:12that are in front of you.
01:24:13And you put yourself in a better position to gain more opportunities.
01:24:16We all have varying degrees of luck or circumstances or misfortune or whatever that come to us
01:24:21in life.
01:24:22A lot of things that we ask for and a lot of things that we don't ask for.
01:24:25But all you can do is try to use the moments that you have to the best of your ability.
01:24:29And the better you do that, the better positioned you are to not only build good habits, but
01:24:33have a good life.
01:24:35James, clear.
01:24:37I don't even have words.
01:24:38I am so proud of you.
01:24:41I'm so grateful for the work that you do.
01:24:43Thank you so much, Mel.
01:24:44I appreciate it.
01:24:45It's great to have you as a fan and as a supporter of the work.
01:24:47And yeah, I hope the audience loves it too.
01:24:49I'm sure they will.
01:24:51And I also want to thank you for finding time and making time to listen to this episode
01:24:57in particular and to share it with people that you care about.
01:25:00But the amount of takeaways, the amount of just advice and tools that James just gave
01:25:07you, I want you to ask that question.
01:25:09Who do I want to become?
01:25:10And then I want you to follow every single thing he told you because it will work.
01:25:15I'm going to keep listening to this.
01:25:17I'm going to share this with all three of my adult kids and our entire team.
01:25:21This is one of the best episodes we've ever done.
01:25:24So I'm absolutely thrilled that you're here.
01:25:26And in case no one else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you as your friend that
01:25:30I love you and I believe in you.
01:25:31And I believe in your ability to create a better life because James Clear just gave you
01:25:36the roadmap for how you do it.
01:25:38So go do it.
01:25:40And I'll be waiting to welcome you into the very next episode, the moment you hit play.
01:25:43I'll see you there.
01:25:44And thank you for watching all the way to the end here on YouTube.
01:25:49I love that.
01:25:50I love that.
01:25:51And thank you, by the way, for hitting subscribe.
01:25:53If it's lit up, it means you're not subscribed.
01:25:55Just take a second.
01:25:57Hit that.
01:25:57It's free.
01:25:58It's a way that you can say, hey, thanks, Mel.
01:26:00Thanks for showing up here and doing your best to support me in creating a better life.
01:26:04And that way, by the way, if you're a subscriber, you're not going to miss a thing.
01:26:07Okay, we just dug into habits.
01:26:10So you're probably thinking, Mel, what should I watch next?
01:26:12Oh, you're going to love this one.
01:26:14And I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play.
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