Speaker 1: I've tried habit tracking on my phone and it has
Speaker 1: not ever worked. Maybe I've done like a week or two,
Speaker 1: but it just doesn't work because that's a place of
Speaker 1: distraction for me.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed They're good Wolf. We
Speaker 2: hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for
Speaker 2: joining us. Our guest on this episode is Stephen Guys,
Speaker 2: an international best selling author, blogger, and entrepreneur. His books
Speaker 2: have been translated into seventeen languages, and he's the author
Speaker 2: of many of them, including the one him and Eric
Speaker 2: discuss here Elastic Habits, how to Create Smarter habits that
Speaker 2: adapt to your day.
Speaker 3: Hi Stephen, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey Eric, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: As I was telling you in the pre show conversation,
Speaker 3: I'm really excited to talk with you. Your book is
Speaker 3: called Elastic Habits, How to Create Smarter Habits that adapt
Speaker 3: to your Day, And I was saying that so much
Speaker 3: of what you have so well articulated in this book
Speaker 3: I've sort of learned over my coaching years, but never
Speaker 3: put it together as concisely as I think you have.
Speaker 3: So I think this is gonna be a great conversation.
Speaker 3: But before we get to that, we'll start like we
Speaker 3: always do, with the parable. There is a grandfather who's
Speaker 3: talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are
Speaker 3: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 3: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 3: and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 3: He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 3: which one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Well, Being that I've written about habits for the last decade,
Speaker 1: that's where my mind instantly goes, because you can definitely
Speaker 1: think about good habits and bad habits being two metaphorical
Speaker 1: wolves inside of you, because when you feed a habit,
Speaker 1: it grows, and like the parable says, you feed the
Speaker 1: good wolf that grows if you need the bad wolf
Speaker 1: that grows. And every single person in this world has
Speaker 1: both good and bad habits, and every day we are
Speaker 1: tasked with the choice of which of those are going
Speaker 1: to feed. And I think something that a lot of
Speaker 1: people miss is that bad habits also serve us in
Speaker 1: some way there's a benefit or else we wouldn't ever
Speaker 1: do a bad habit because it would just be bad.
Speaker 1: But bad habits do serve certain needs or at least once,
Speaker 1: So it's actually a more difficult choice than it should be.
Speaker 3: Most of your writing, at least in this book, and
Speaker 3: I think in the mini Habits before that is on
Speaker 3: positive habits that we can do. But while we're on
Speaker 3: the subject of bad habits, say a little bit more
Speaker 3: about if somebody wants to look at, you know, breaking
Speaker 3: a bad habit, whether it be something like too much
Speaker 3: time on their iPhone or playing video games to or
Speaker 3: biting their nails or any number of things, where's the
Speaker 3: place to start, you know, what's kind of the entry point.
Speaker 1: That's a great and difficult question. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: I've written primarily about good habits is because they're a
Speaker 1: lot simpler than bad habits. Like it's hard to give
Speaker 1: just broad bad habit advice because I mean, some bad
Speaker 1: habits you could say, are like life threatening addictions and
Speaker 1: those that require clinical care. So yes, yeah, that's one
Speaker 1: reason why I hesitate to give you know, specific but
Speaker 1: general advice. However, my approach is first to establish good
Speaker 1: habits that especially ones that can substitute for bad habits
Speaker 1: in areas that you struggle with, because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people their instinct is to just try to
Speaker 1: cut something out of their lives, and just like that
Speaker 1: sounds like they're cutting something out of their lives and
Speaker 1: leaving a big hole there. Because, as I said in
Speaker 1: the beginning of the podcast, bad habits do fill some needs.
Speaker 1: So in my first book Many Habits. That was kind
Speaker 1: of my approach to say, if we can form a
Speaker 1: lot of good habits that fulfill a lot of our needs,
Speaker 1: they will naturally push out a lot of the bad habits,
Speaker 1: especially passive ones such as you know, laziness or inactivity,
Speaker 1: maybe watching TV.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. That all makes total sense. I have a
Speaker 3: history in addiction, as many listeners will know, and I'll
Speaker 3: go on podcasts and somebody will be like, well, if
Speaker 3: somebody wants to get over their addiction, what do they
Speaker 3: need to do? And I'm like, well, that's a pretty
Speaker 3: complex conversation, like you know, and you're right, because bad
Speaker 3: habits are on the spectrum of something that is a
Speaker 3: minor challenge to as you said, life threatening addiction. Everything
Speaker 3: gets summed up in that habit. But I also agree
Speaker 3: very much with what you said about they're serving some need,
Speaker 3: So we've got to figure out if we're going to
Speaker 3: take them away, what is the need that at least
Speaker 3: they want served. They often don't anymore that they want served,
Speaker 3: and how do we meet that. But let's move into
Speaker 3: your latest book, Elastic Habits, because I think what you've
Speaker 3: written in this book is really valuable and I said
Speaker 3: to you before the show. I often say to clients,
Speaker 3: if you want to maintain something over the long term,
Speaker 3: you have to have a curious mix of stubbornness and flexibility.
Speaker 3: The stubbornness is like, I'm going to do this, I'm
Speaker 3: going to stick with it. The flexibility is all right,
Speaker 3: life throws a lot of different things at us, and
Speaker 3: so we've got to be flexible. But you take this
Speaker 3: to a different level and you get us into both
Speaker 3: vertical and lateral flexibility with habits, which allows us to
Speaker 3: really accommodate for the changing things in life, our time,
Speaker 3: how much time we have, where we are, our location.
Speaker 3: But you also in your vertical talk about how we
Speaker 3: handle movements and motivation, and I think this is a
Speaker 3: really powerful idea that I'd like to explore. But let's
Speaker 3: start by sort of talking about what do you mean
Speaker 3: by elastic habits.
Speaker 1: Well maybe not everyone knows this, but one of the
Speaker 1: first synonyms for elastic is resilient, and that's what elastic
Speaker 1: habits really means. Resilient habits. Typically people do what they'll say,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do one hundred push ups a day
Speaker 1: for thirty days or whatever. They generally pick a static
Speaker 1: target and they try to hit that target every single day,
Speaker 1: and if something goes wrong, if they're not able to
Speaker 1: hit that specific target, what happens They fail? The habit's
Speaker 1: gone and they know they'll try again a month later
Speaker 1: or maybe next year for a new year's resolution. So
Speaker 1: in elastic habits kind of ditches that whole mindset of
Speaker 1: we have to pick this one habit and even even
Speaker 1: one queue. But that's more technical. I don't know if
Speaker 1: we want to get into that elastic habits, say, instead
Speaker 1: of having one wind condition, why don't we have nine?
Speaker 1: Like why are we limiting ourselves to this one specific
Speaker 1: point of progress as if it's magical, Like it's generally
Speaker 1: just an arbitrary number that people have picked for no
Speaker 1: other reason than it's like an even number like ten
Speaker 1: or fifty or one hundred.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you talk about flexibility being so important. You say
Speaker 3: flexibility is strength. So in what ways is flexibility strength?
Speaker 1: One of the main ways is it enables improvisation, which
Speaker 1: is absolutely key in life, because whose life goes exactly
Speaker 1: a according to plan? And yet we'd still plan, which
Speaker 1: is fine, But I think it's better to plan to
Speaker 1: be flexible if that makes sense to plan to have
Speaker 1: different like, oh, if this happens, this is what I'm
Speaker 1: going to do. If this happens, this is what I'm
Speaker 1: going to do. So in that way, flexibility is strength
Speaker 1: because you're not easily stopped if you're prepared for the
Speaker 1: different types and levels of obstacles that you're going to face.
Speaker 3: So when we talk about flexibility, let's talk about the
Speaker 3: first type of flexibility, which you call lateral flexibility. Explain
Speaker 3: to us what lateral flexibility means.
Speaker 1: Well, I have a really good story. It's a short story,
Speaker 1: but it's a good story about lateral flexibility.
Speaker 3: Please.
Speaker 1: I was on a cruise ship one time and I
Speaker 1: went into the gym. Cruise ships or like miniature cities,
Speaker 1: so they have gyms and basically anything you can need.
Speaker 1: You can even get a haircut. So I went into
Speaker 1: the gym and you know, I'm there working out and
Speaker 1: I look over. I see a girl with her entire
Speaker 1: leg is in a cast and she's over there working
Speaker 1: out harder than I am, And I'm like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: she's incredible, Like who works out with their leg in
Speaker 1: a cast? But it makes sense because you know, she
Speaker 1: still has her upper body. She can work out with
Speaker 1: that In a nutshell, That's what lateral flexibility is. She
Speaker 1: broke her leg, so she said, Okay, I was gonna
Speaker 1: do squats today, but clearly that's not happening, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna work out my upper body. Lateral flexibility is giving
Speaker 1: yourself several different options to achieve the same general goal,
Speaker 1: which in that case is exercise.
Speaker 3: I've shared this before, I think, on the show. But
Speaker 3: an example of lateral flexibility in my own life was
Speaker 3: I used to travel for work, and the places I
Speaker 3: worked I did software, but we implemented the software in
Speaker 3: these huge warehouses. And so you know, my goal or
Speaker 3: my habit is movement, right, So if I could, I'd
Speaker 3: go to the gym in the morning, and if they
Speaker 3: had a pool, i'd swim. If they had a workout room,
Speaker 3: I might get on the treadmill as sort of My
Speaker 3: other option was I would just walk as much as
Speaker 3: I could in this giant warehouse all day, you know.
Speaker 3: So I had different ways to meet that goal because
Speaker 3: my conditions were always changing. Right, what hotel am I at.
Speaker 3: It's a different hotel, What do they have, What time
Speaker 3: does the workday start? When you're on site? Sometimes it
Speaker 3: starts at nine, sometimes it starts at six. So that
Speaker 3: was the lateral flexibility for me was all right, I'm
Speaker 3: committed to moving my body today, but I've got lots
Speaker 3: of different ways I can do it.
Speaker 1: A lot of habits are naturally great for lateral flexibility anyway.
Speaker 1: Like if you think about trying to learn an instrument,
Speaker 1: you have the actual practicing of the instrument, say guitar,
Speaker 1: but then you also have things like learning music theory.
Speaker 1: And I don't I'm not very musical, but you know
Speaker 1: there's a whole study aspect of it as well. So
Speaker 1: on days where your fingers are bleeding because you've played
Speaker 1: too much yesterday, then you can use that day to study.
Speaker 1: And if you plan ahead for that, it's not like,
Speaker 1: oh no, my fingers are bleeding, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to make any guitar progress. You're ready for it, You're
Speaker 1: you just okay, it's time to study.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think what you said there is important.
Speaker 3: It's some degree of the planning ahead. And I think
Speaker 3: lateral flexibility is also really important, as you said for injury.
Speaker 3: Lots of clients I've had over the years and myself,
Speaker 3: you know you're committed to physical movement. But your knees
Speaker 3: bad today, your shoulders bad today, what else can you do?
Speaker 3: Or weather? I'd prefer to run outside, but if it's
Speaker 3: pouring down rain, I have a fallback planet to use
Speaker 3: your terminology. I have a lateral move I can make here. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: So that's lateral flexibility, which is really really important and
Speaker 3: really valuable. What really kind of blew me away about
Speaker 3: your work was you take this to the next level,
Speaker 3: which is vertical flexibility. So talk to me about what
Speaker 3: is vertical flexibility and why do we need it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So vertical flexibility gives us the option to move
Speaker 1: that intensity meter up or down and in a dynamic
Speaker 1: life where we get sick and injured and distracted, you
Speaker 1: name it. That's really useful. Again, people typically just pick
Speaker 1: that one level of intensity and regardless of what happens
Speaker 1: in their life, they're just trying to hit that same point.
Speaker 1: It's like, what if you have an excess of energy,
Speaker 1: why can't you go higher than that point? Or what
Speaker 1: if you're having the worst day of your life, why
Speaker 1: can't you do a little bit lower. Yes, So there's
Speaker 1: that aspect of it. There's also, which I find fascinating
Speaker 1: different goal sizes have different pros and cons, So a
Speaker 1: small goal size is obviously very easy to accomplish. The
Speaker 1: downside is you don't accomplish that much in you know, results,
Speaker 1: at least for that day consistently. Obviously over time, it's
Speaker 1: still a massive result, which is why we have so
Speaker 1: many small habit books out there. Let me cover the
Speaker 1: elite level, as I call it, the top level. That's
Speaker 1: obviously amazing if you accomplish it. It's super satisfying if
Speaker 1: you can reach that high level, but the downside is
Speaker 1: it's difficult to do so. In the book, I make
Speaker 1: a case that by having three levels small, medium, large,
Speaker 1: you could say you actually leverage the pros and cons
Speaker 1: of each level. So if you are, say tired and
Speaker 1: having the worst day of your life, you can leverage
Speaker 1: the appeal of the small level. If you're ready to
Speaker 1: do a lot, then you can leverage the appeal of
Speaker 1: the big goal. So right, regardless of what you need
Speaker 1: for the day, there's something appealing there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this really solves a lot of different issues that
Speaker 3: you kind of pointed to. And there's two big ones
Speaker 3: I think of with this. One is it's the time
Speaker 3: and how I feel issue, Right, So if my goal
Speaker 3: is to walk for thirty minutes and I get tied
Speaker 3: up coming out of a meeting and I only have
Speaker 3: fifteen minutes, one inclination is just to say give up.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So I have always said a little bit of something
Speaker 3: is better than a lot of nothing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: You had another quote in your book. I don't quite remember,
Speaker 3: but it was something similar to that that was said
Speaker 3: very well. So what you're saying is, I could be
Speaker 3: if we're talking about walking, I could say, all right,
Speaker 3: I could walk ten minutes, I could walk thirty minutes,
Speaker 3: I could walk an hour. Right, So it solves that
Speaker 3: for the time. But the other thing that it solves for,
Speaker 3: and this is why I'm kind of gushing about it,
Speaker 3: is that it solves for what you just said, which
Speaker 3: is motivation. And as somebody who is promoted, you've got
Speaker 3: many habits bj Fogg as tiny habits. The concept is
Speaker 3: the same, do one push up, meditate for one minute.
Speaker 3: That's a great strategy for establishing consistency. But as anybody
Speaker 3: who does that for a little while will then go
Speaker 3: and then who cares? Right, Like, my life did not
Speaker 3: change from doing a single push up, right, So what
Speaker 3: you were I think you call it small, medium, large.
Speaker 3: Actually that's not the terms.
Speaker 1: You use mini plus elite.
Speaker 3: Mini plus an elite. These different levels for the habit
Speaker 3: means that I can look at what my what my
Speaker 3: motivation is, and if I can go Okay, I'm not
Speaker 3: motivated at all day a matter of fact, I don't
Speaker 3: care about this habit, this goal at all today. So
Speaker 3: I've got a mini minimum level I can do. Or conversely,
Speaker 3: I am feeling really inspired about meditation, So instead of
Speaker 3: doing my mini which would be say ten minutes, or
Speaker 3: my standard which would be thirty, I'm going to sit
Speaker 3: for an hour because I'm really into it. I just
Speaker 3: heard this talk about how all the benefits of meditation.
Speaker 3: I want to go for it today, and I just
Speaker 3: love this ability for our motivation to be honored. And
Speaker 3: you talk about this in the book where you talk
Speaker 3: about feelings, the role that our feelings play in this.
Speaker 3: Can you say a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean feelings are basically what determine our motivation.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're not motivated to do something, it's
Speaker 1: you don't feel like doing it. Well, if you rely
Speaker 1: upon that, you're just not going to get anywhere consistently.
Speaker 1: You'll have good days and you'll have bad days. So
Speaker 1: the idea of any good habit system is to kind
Speaker 1: of eliminate that issue and figure out ways to stay
Speaker 1: consistent on those days that you're not feeling it. The
Speaker 1: Mini level is obviously the least impressive, but it's the
Speaker 1: glue that holds this system together. It's why this is
Speaker 1: an expansion of my first book, Mini Habits. Many Habits
Speaker 1: is super successful in practice with just the Mini level,
Speaker 1: Like one push up a day actually did change my life.
Speaker 1: I could say I work out all the time easily
Speaker 1: without resistance nine years later because I did one push
Speaker 1: up in twenty twelve and kind of parlayed that down
Speaker 1: the line. But the Mini level serves as the safety net.
Speaker 1: That's basically its role, and each of the levels does
Speaker 1: have a role. You have the safety net at the
Speaker 1: mini level. At the higher level that's your like, your dreams,
Speaker 1: that's your inspiration. You could say that's the level you
Speaker 1: hope to be at consistently if you keep at it,
Speaker 1: and then the mid level is in the middle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, And actually I should have been a little
Speaker 3: bit clearer because I agree with you, doing one push
Speaker 3: up can change your life in that it is a
Speaker 3: place to build from for dramatic change. What I meant
Speaker 3: was doing one push up a day is not going
Speaker 3: to make a huge difference to your physical well being
Speaker 3: if that's where you just stay. But I've talked on
Speaker 3: this show all the time about I was a on again,
Speaker 3: off again meditator for twenty years. I fought this thing
Speaker 3: on off, on off because I was trying to do
Speaker 3: thirty minutes. I heard thirty minutes is what you should do.
Speaker 3: So I would try thirty minutes and I could gut
Speaker 3: it out for a few days, a week, maybe a month.
Speaker 3: But it was really hard for me when I went
Speaker 3: to saying, all right, I'm going to only do three minutes,
Speaker 3: but I'm going to do it every day. That built
Speaker 3: a eight year pretty deep meditation practice off, you know,
Speaker 3: three minutes of meditation. So I totally agree with you
Speaker 3: that that mini habit, that consistency is the springboard to
Speaker 3: many other things. What I'm was that for a lot
Speaker 3: of us, if we just stay there after a while,
Speaker 3: we go, well, the value I'm getting is not as high.
Speaker 3: And I love the way you kind of break that
Speaker 3: out in the book. You say, well, you know you've
Speaker 3: got sort of this almost inverse. Maybe it's not an inverse.
Speaker 3: I'm terrible with my algebraic functions. There's a relationship between
Speaker 3: how easy something is and how much value you get
Speaker 3: out of it. Right, the easier it is to do
Speaker 3: that's positive, you get less value. You describe this in
Speaker 3: different pies in the book. But that's the power of
Speaker 3: this vertical flexibility, is that I can adjust based on
Speaker 3: my goal at the time.
Speaker 1: I definitely understand where you're coming from. I would say
Speaker 1: that whereas you do have that easiness to value relationship,
Speaker 1: I think people vastly underestimate what even one pushup a
Speaker 1: day can do. And the very early days of the
Speaker 1: one Push Up Challenge, as I called it, I was
Speaker 1: actually surprised because I was coming from basically a place
Speaker 1: of zero. Yeah, when you're starting at zero and you
Speaker 1: do even just a little bit of something like I
Speaker 1: actually noticed I got stronger, and at least I got
Speaker 1: better at doing push ups. Like the first push up,
Speaker 1: I think I heard like my bones creaking and you know,
Speaker 1: things popping, and I was like, oh, gosh.
Speaker 3: Right, well that is what happens right when you start
Speaker 3: really small like that. Before long you're able to do
Speaker 3: just a little bit more with the same amount of output,
Speaker 3: right because you are building at every level.
Speaker 1: I do want to also say a key part of
Speaker 1: this in the mini Habit system is that part of
Speaker 1: the reason you aim for, say one push up instead
Speaker 1: of one hundred, is one push up is not an
Speaker 1: end point. It's it's a beginning. Whereas one hundred push
Speaker 1: ups you hit that you're done. Yes, when you do
Speaker 1: one push up, it's more like, well, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: already in push up position. I could do more that.
Speaker 1: More often than not, I did more than one push
Speaker 1: up even in the early days.
Speaker 3: I think Many Habits is a brilliant place to start,
Speaker 3: and I just love the way you've expanded on it
Speaker 3: for where we go next. So what we end up
Speaker 3: with in essence, based on what we're talking about is
Speaker 3: basically a nine by nine grid if we were to
Speaker 3: fill in all aspects of it, and we might not
Speaker 3: for everything, and this would be hard for listeners to see,
Speaker 3: but you might see, you know, going across the top,
Speaker 3: would be different ways that I could fulfill a movement goal.
Speaker 3: So say my lateral might be to walk one block,
Speaker 3: to do two push ups, or dance to one song. Yes,
Speaker 3: there you go. People who are watching on the show
Speaker 3: or watching on YouTube will see it. Most of our
Speaker 3: listeners will not. But so I've got three different ways
Speaker 3: that i can do it, and I've got three different
Speaker 3: levels that I can do it at, giving me essentially
Speaker 3: nine choices for how I do that that day. I
Speaker 3: want to ask you a question though about that, because choice,
Speaker 3: while a wonderful thing, sometimes is a paralyzing thing. I
Speaker 3: can see myself someday looking at this grid and going hmm, well,
Speaker 3: I could do twenty push ups, but maybe I should
Speaker 3: just walk one block. The weather's not that great. Maybe
Speaker 3: I should dance, but if I put on one song
Speaker 3: like I can see myself getting lost in that, particularly
Speaker 3: in my struggles with depression. And one of the things
Speaker 3: that goes for me with depression or low mood is
Speaker 3: an inability to decide. So talk about how this grid
Speaker 3: serves us versus becomes paralyzing to us.
Speaker 1: Well, one time at the grocery store, I spent twenty
Speaker 1: minutes picking out rice, so I'm very familiar with the
Speaker 1: concepts you're talking about. It can be difficult to decide.
Speaker 1: That's one reason why if you're going to go with
Speaker 1: elastic habits, it's very important to display it in a
Speaker 1: very clear way. For one, like just having like if
Speaker 1: you're pursuing three habits and each of them has nine
Speaker 1: different wind conditions, that's twenty seven things to keep in
Speaker 1: your mind. That's a bit much and it kind of
Speaker 1: defeats the purpose of the system. But as far as
Speaker 1: getting to a decision, there are a few techniques you
Speaker 1: can use that will overcome the downside of that, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense. One is you either start with an
Speaker 1: intensity or you start with a task, so don't try
Speaker 1: to solve both lateral and vertical flexibility at the same time.
Speaker 1: You can go based on what you feel, like how
Speaker 1: much energy do I have. If it's an exercise habit,
Speaker 1: you can say I'm feeling like I could do the
Speaker 1: middle level, so then you just look at the middle
Speaker 1: row and then you pick one of those three options.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is you don't have to use
Speaker 1: all nine slots. Like the posters I showed, some of
Speaker 1: them only had one slot. You can just do one
Speaker 1: one one and have no lateral flexibility, which would make
Speaker 1: sense in something like meditation, I think, because there's really
Speaker 1: only one way to meditate, right, you could maybe do
Speaker 1: yoga or meditation. Yeah, but that's the first thing I
Speaker 1: would recommend. Try to pick lateral or vertical option first.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're saying, if you're a writer that involves writing, editing, marketing,
Speaker 1: you could say, I want to write today, and at
Speaker 1: that point then you pick your intensity or you don't
Speaker 1: even have to do that. You can just start and
Speaker 1: see what intensity you end up achieving.
Speaker 3: Yep. And I think this speaks to the elastic nature
Speaker 3: of it, which is that knowing ourselves is helpful and
Speaker 3: knowing Okay, do I need a little bit more constraint
Speaker 3: and a little bit more rigid structure or can I
Speaker 3: do with a broader constraint less structure and knowing yourself
Speaker 3: can be very important. And you know, I often find
Speaker 3: in the early days of starting something new, more constraint
Speaker 3: tends to all often be helpful because it can often
Speaker 3: just make it very clear what to do, and as
Speaker 3: we become a little bit more established, we can broaden.
Speaker 3: That's not a hard and fast rule. Again, everybody's a
Speaker 3: little bit different. I often use this quote from the
Speaker 3: spiritual teacher Ajuanshai. He said, if I see somebody walking
Speaker 3: down the road about to fall in the road to
Speaker 3: the ditch on the left, I push them to the
Speaker 3: center of the road. If they're walking down the road
Speaker 3: and they're about to fall to the ditch to the right,
Speaker 3: I push them to the left right. So, depending on
Speaker 3: where you are, you may need to adjust this, which
Speaker 3: is again what it's so powerful about your system. So
Speaker 3: I think in the same way that if we're talking
Speaker 3: about can I handle twenty seven choices? Maybe not right now,
Speaker 3: I think it's a really important thing to know about ourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the system itself is flexible because everyone is different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had to write this book with type A people
Speaker 1: in mind. I'm not a type A person like that
Speaker 1: plans their whole life out. I'm more of the what
Speaker 1: am I going to do today kind of person? Right,
Speaker 1: But type A people can do extremely well with this
Speaker 1: system as well, because they if they write it down,
Speaker 1: they can have a very clear plan and you can
Speaker 1: simplify it, you can make it really complicated. I guess
Speaker 1: listeners can't see this, but this one has actually twelve
Speaker 1: different options and something I call modular habits where you
Speaker 1: can like combine different But you know, for some people
Speaker 1: they'll like that. Other people will prefer simpler stuff.
Speaker 3: You said that it might be a little bit too
Speaker 3: detailed or technical to talk about queues, but I would
Speaker 3: like to talk about them because I think it's another
Speaker 3: important and nuanced discussion. So by Q, what we really
Speaker 3: mean is when you do it, right? Is that how
Speaker 3: you define a queue?
Speaker 1: A Q or a trigger is whatever prompts you to
Speaker 1: do the behavior.
Speaker 3: So you've got a few different kinds here, right. You've
Speaker 3: got one that everybody's familiar with, right, which is the
Speaker 3: timete prompt time based queue, right, which is you do
Speaker 3: the behavior at the same time every day. Your examples,
Speaker 3: I garden at three pm. Mine for a long time
Speaker 3: was I sit with my zen group at nine am, Like,
Speaker 3: it's just that's what time I do it. I have
Speaker 3: a little thing that goes off on my phone, I
Speaker 3: take medicine at a certain time. A little alarm goes
Speaker 3: off on my phone. I take it. Very simple prompt queue.
Speaker 3: What are some other types?
Speaker 1: So besides that, you have the activity based queue, which
Speaker 1: is simply beginning a habit directly after a different behavior,
Speaker 1: likely another habit. My friend Steve Scott calls this habit stacking,
Speaker 1: where one habit leads to the next habit, and it
Speaker 1: works very well because if you're introducing a new habit,
Speaker 1: that can rely on the old habit to be a
Speaker 1: que because if the old habit is already established, say
Speaker 1: brushing your teeth, which most of us have down, right
Speaker 1: after you do that, you can do pushups or whatever,
Speaker 1: and that can be very useful. A third one that
Speaker 1: I think I introduced that I've never seen anyone else
Speaker 1: talk about is not having a specific queue. And I
Speaker 1: sometimes call that like a daily queue, where you don't
Speaker 1: have a specific time or place or activity, but you
Speaker 1: just commit to getting it done at some point during
Speaker 1: the day. And aside from the freedom and flexibility that
Speaker 1: that offers, I think one of the biggest benefits is
Speaker 1: that it more resembles a bad habit structure than the
Speaker 1: typical good habit structure because most people, when they develop
Speaker 1: a good habit, they do pick a queue. Because we
Speaker 1: learned about how habits work with the que behavior reward.
Speaker 1: We know that cycle, so everyone's like, Okay, I got
Speaker 1: to pick my queue. Bad habits don't work that way,
Speaker 1: We just do them. Think about a smoker, how many
Speaker 1: queues do they have if they're smoking a pack a day.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many cigarettes are in a pack,
Speaker 1: but that's possibly ten different queues in a day. They
Speaker 1: probably have hundreds or dozens at least, And there's a
Speaker 1: huge advantage of that for the habit. Yeah, as far
Speaker 1: as staying power, because it's like a tree having one
Speaker 1: root versus a tree having a sprawling root system. All
Speaker 1: these different roots can lead to this habit. That just
Speaker 1: makes a habit so much stronger in my opinion, because
Speaker 1: let me see if I can give an example. If
Speaker 1: your queue is based on where you live or something
Speaker 1: in your home, and you move, you just removed your queue.
Speaker 1: So is your habit going to die? Maybe maybe not,
Speaker 1: but you're certainly going to have to make a big
Speaker 1: effort to adjust to your new environment. If you do
Speaker 1: a multi que daily habit where you're just learning to
Speaker 1: do this behavior after various different cues, it's going to
Speaker 1: be more resilient to change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so the daily queue is essentially I'm going
Speaker 3: to do the behavior sometime before I go to bed tonight,
Speaker 3: you know, sometime in this day, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's interesting you talk about the cues that a smoker has,
Speaker 3: you know, in the spiritual Habits program that I developed.
Speaker 3: We talk about different types of cues and triggers, and
Speaker 3: the one that I would refer to this is and
Speaker 3: again it's mostly now in our lives tied to bad
Speaker 3: habits is it's the emotional based cue. It's there's something
Speaker 3: inside of me that happens that usually cues us towards
Speaker 3: a bad behavior. I'm bored, I grab my phone, I'm stressed,
Speaker 3: I smoke a cigarette. But if we can learn to
Speaker 3: flip that and use those emotional based cues to trigger
Speaker 3: good habits, that becomes incredibly powerful. And I think that's
Speaker 3: kind of what your speed to here is you let
Speaker 3: your internal motivation to want to do this thing surface.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a beautiful phrase. You pulled out, emotional cueue,
Speaker 1: because honestly, that probably deserves its own chapter in a
Speaker 1: book somewhere. Like, if we could figure out a way
Speaker 1: to generate good habits based on emotional cues, that just
Speaker 1: seems genius to me.
Speaker 3: Well, it's incredibly powerful. It's challenge is you need a
Speaker 3: lot of self awareness to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, true.
Speaker 3: Which can be developed, right, I mean, you know, I
Speaker 3: think that's one of the benefits of mindfulness practice in general,
Speaker 3: and by that I don't just mean meditation, but mindfulness
Speaker 3: practice in general is becoming more aware of my internal states,
Speaker 3: because then I have more flexibility and choice. So the
Speaker 3: daily queue, again, I think, can be really powerful and
Speaker 3: for some people. For me, tends to be a difficult
Speaker 3: one because I will debate all day long weather I'm
Speaker 3: going to should I do it now? Should do guitar?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: But maybe I should go to the gym now. That's
Speaker 3: just kind of my internal state. You've got another type
Speaker 3: of queue that I really like, though, which you call
Speaker 3: a window Q. Describe the window Q to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the window Q is the time based queue,
Speaker 1: just with a bit more flexibility. Instead of saying I'm
Speaker 1: going to garden at three, you're gonna say I'm going
Speaker 1: to garden between three and five. So the advantage of
Speaker 1: that is it's not as restrictive if you're the type
Speaker 1: like me who kind of resists very specific hard like.
Speaker 1: That's that's why I write these books, is because I
Speaker 1: I can't operate in the like just you know, strict discipline.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get up at four am every day
Speaker 1: and do this, this, this that Like I that's not me.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't enjoy that even if I could force myself
Speaker 1: to do it. So the window Q is kind of
Speaker 1: a compromise between the strict time based queue and the
Speaker 1: full daily queue. It's saying I'm going to do this
Speaker 1: in this window. Yeah, you get a little bit of
Speaker 1: the best of each. I think.
Speaker 3: I've started sending a couple of text messages after each
Speaker 3: podcast listener with positive reminders about what's discussed and invitations
Speaker 3: to apply the wisdom to your life. It's free, and
Speaker 3: listeners have told me that these texts really help to
Speaker 3: pull them out of autopilot and reconnect them with what's important.
Speaker 3: When you get a text for me during your day
Speaker 3: to day life, it's one more thing that helps you
Speaker 3: further bridge that gap between what you know and what
Speaker 3: you do. Positive messages when you need them from me
Speaker 3: to you. So if you'd like to hear from me
Speaker 3: a few times a week via text, go to oneufeed
Speaker 3: dot net slash text and sign up for free. It's interesting.
Speaker 3: I have done over the years a fair amount of
Speaker 3: coaching with people who have recently retired. Because they retire
Speaker 3: and they're like, I've got all these things I want
Speaker 3: to do, all these interests, all these goals, and then
Speaker 3: they go and all I'm doing is sitting around all day,
Speaker 3: semi paralyzed, not knowing what to do. There's an interesting
Speaker 3: challenge with them because after a lifetime of working and
Speaker 3: being on a beach, be here at this time, be
Speaker 3: here at that time, be here at that time, they
Speaker 3: do not want that in retirement. And they're like, I
Speaker 3: don't want to have to do something every day at
Speaker 3: nine am, and yet the daily queue isn't working for them.
Speaker 3: And so I do think the window Q is really
Speaker 3: great for that because it gives you some degree of flexibility.
Speaker 3: If I'm moving a little bit slower today, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: I'll get to it in a little while, but it
Speaker 3: just doesn't have the chance to sort of just spread
Speaker 3: out all day. And so I found the window Q
Speaker 3: be a pretty helpful cueue for a lot of people
Speaker 3: that are in that sort of situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, I did
Speaker 1: come up with that idea. I think I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit blind to it because I do very well with
Speaker 1: the daily cue myself. But I will admit on some
Speaker 1: days the daily queue, when I was doing the daily
Speaker 1: push up, sometimes I would do that in bed at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, be I just do my
Speaker 1: one push up in my bed and sleep. So you know, yep,
Speaker 1: which is fine. Like I kept the streak alive and
Speaker 1: obviously it worked. But with the window Q, I think
Speaker 1: I would have gotten it done earlier.
Speaker 3: Well, I was the same way. There was a period
Speaker 3: when I was doing a smaller amount of meditation and
Speaker 3: it was a more nascent habit. I was really like
Speaker 3: every day without exception. I've gotten a little bit more
Speaker 3: flexible with that because I'm like, oh, now, I know,
Speaker 3: after about eight years of it, if I miss a
Speaker 3: day or two, the world's not going to end. But
Speaker 3: back then I was so focused on consistency. Same thing.
Speaker 3: I'm like laying in bed going, oh, oh, I guess
Speaker 3: it's time to meditate, you know, which again is better
Speaker 3: than not doing it. But the reason I'm going into
Speaker 3: these cues is back to our point before. Everybody's a
Speaker 3: little bit different, and so this gives you some different ways.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're the person who goes, I don't
Speaker 3: need a lot of structure to do this, Like, I
Speaker 3: just am going to commit to doing it. If I
Speaker 3: commit to doing it, I'll do it sometime today I'll
Speaker 3: figure it out. There are people that are like that,
Speaker 3: and then there are other people who really need like
Speaker 3: I need to know that I do it at seven am.
Speaker 3: And so I think it gets back to this knowing
Speaker 3: yourself or having someone who can help you know yourself
Speaker 3: well enough to sort of figure these things out. I
Speaker 3: want to talk about some of the principles that elastic
Speaker 3: habits abides by. I don't think we need to go
Speaker 3: through all nine of them. We've hit a few of
Speaker 3: them already, but I'd love to talk about a couple
Speaker 3: of them. And one of them is intelligent tracking. Talk
Speaker 3: to me about intelligent tracking, and then talk to me
Speaker 3: about if I've got twenty seven different options, actually, let's
Speaker 3: just keep it to one habit. If I got nine
Speaker 3: different options, what's the way I track that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I actually showed the habit posters I created earlier,
Speaker 1: and I also created like a tracking calendar with stickers.
Speaker 1: I think either stickers or markings are the best way
Speaker 1: to track an elastic habit. And the main concept there
Speaker 1: is you have three different levels of success, right. I
Speaker 1: call them mini plus Elite. You could say Bronze, silver,
Speaker 1: gold if you want. So, if you use a sticker
Speaker 1: to track it. Say you start out you do five
Speaker 1: pushups and that's your mini good job, but then later
Speaker 1: in the day you're like, no, I can do more,
Speaker 1: and you do twenty more. Then you can actually upgrade
Speaker 1: that by placing another sticker over top of it, a
Speaker 1: silver sticker that works. You can also use like a
Speaker 1: triangle for the first one, and then you color in
Speaker 1: the triangle for the next level, and then maybe color
Speaker 1: in the whole square if you do the elite top level.
Speaker 3: Why is tracking important?
Speaker 1: Tracking is important? For one, it reinforces that you're succeeding.
Speaker 1: You see that you're having success, and when we see
Speaker 1: a streak of winds, we generally try to keep that up.
Speaker 1: It tells you that the habit is important to you.
Speaker 1: That's a big one because if you're taking the time
Speaker 1: or spending money on a calendar to put something on
Speaker 1: your wall, that says I'm serious about this. Because if
Speaker 1: you're not very serious about something, you might be like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe i'll do this, and you'll just have it in
Speaker 1: your head and probably not do it. Tracking keeps you
Speaker 1: accountable to that goal of actually wanting to get it done.
Speaker 3: For you in your life. Does a point come where
Speaker 3: something is so embedded that you don't need to track
Speaker 3: it anymore.
Speaker 1: Yep, I'm there now. I don't track my habits anymore,
Speaker 1: not the ones I started with, you know, working out
Speaker 1: as a part of my life. Now this was ten
Speaker 1: years ago, well let's say twenty years ago. I had
Speaker 1: wanted to do it, and then for the next ten
Speaker 1: years I couldn't get it done. And then many habits
Speaker 1: kind of changed my relationship with exercise over the last decade,
Speaker 1: and elastic habits helped even more. And yeah, I have
Speaker 1: no need to track it. It's like, would you track
Speaker 1: brushing your teeth? Probably not, because why would you do that.
Speaker 1: It does get to that level, and that's it's really
Speaker 1: exciting and fulfilling because basically you've made it. At that point,
Speaker 1: your brain has accepted this new behavior as a part
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, there are certain habits for me that I
Speaker 3: don't really track anymore. And if I'm trying to do
Speaker 3: something new, I might track it, or if I'm trying
Speaker 3: to upgrade one of them in a way that's somewhat significant,
Speaker 3: I may go back to track. You know, movement and
Speaker 3: exercises just a part of my life. It just happens.
Speaker 3: But if I am trying to do something that's a
Speaker 3: little bit more challenging. For example, I was doing these
Speaker 3: Peloton power Zone rides and the challenge was certainly an
Speaker 3: upgrade above where I was, So I found tracking for
Speaker 3: that was good to go back to because I was like,
Speaker 3: all right, I'm kind of trying to upgrade this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense. And I could also say that
Speaker 1: while I stopped tracking exercise and writing, I also stopped
Speaker 1: tracking reading and I wasn't ready for that one because
Speaker 1: I kind of stopped reading. So you have to be careful.
Speaker 1: You have to look for the signs that it's truly habit.
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about it falling off like
Speaker 1: my reading did. Yep.
Speaker 3: Another of the principles you talk about, you say, goal
Speaker 3: and intention, tangibility, habit formation is typically lacking in one
Speaker 3: area of the sensus. Say a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think that that's referring to like the
Speaker 1: habit posters, where usually if you're tracking your habits, which
Speaker 1: is good, usually it's just this little thing on a
Speaker 1: line in a journal or something. You have to open
Speaker 1: the journal and then focus on that little line and oh,
Speaker 1: there's my habit with something like a habit poster. It's
Speaker 1: like bam, it's on your wall. It's very visible, and
Speaker 1: it's more tangible than just an idea. And I think
Speaker 1: that's just very valuable, especially in today's world where the
Speaker 1: digital space is so crowded, Like how many apps do
Speaker 1: you have on your phone? One hundred, two hundred?
Speaker 3: Too many?
Speaker 1: So if you put your habit in there, it can
Speaker 1: absolutely get lost. And I've tried. I've tried habit tracking
Speaker 1: on my phone and it has not ever worked. Maybe
Speaker 1: I've done like a week or two, but it just
Speaker 1: doesn't work because that's a place of distraction for.
Speaker 3: Me, right absolutely. Although there was a website that I
Speaker 3: used for a lot of years. It was called Joe's
Speaker 3: Goals and yeah, very simple, and I loved it because
Speaker 3: you could give different habits different point values and gamified
Speaker 3: it in a kind of fun way for me. And
Speaker 3: it was a very very simple app. So that was
Speaker 3: the one digital version of tracking that actually did work
Speaker 3: for me. But I agree with you, I tried countless
Speaker 3: ones on my phone and it just never sticks.
Speaker 1: There's something about also, just like writing a check mark
Speaker 1: or an X, or even placing a sticker. That's a
Speaker 1: lot more satisfying than tapping your phone in a spot
Speaker 1: because it's more tangible.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely, Okay, So let's talk about the overall approach.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: You list a variety of different steps, So maybe I'll
Speaker 3: just sort of lay out each step and then you
Speaker 3: can add a little comment if you want to it,
Speaker 3: if you say, you know, start by choosing about. I
Speaker 3: love the about because everything's flexible and elastic. First you
Speaker 3: choose up to three habits.
Speaker 1: I like three habits in particular. You can succeed with one.
Speaker 1: I started with one push up and that changed my life.
Speaker 1: That was the only habit I had for like a year,
Speaker 1: and then I added writing in later. Some people have
Speaker 1: told me they've had success with like six, but it's
Speaker 1: just so risky to have that many things at once,
Speaker 1: I think, especially with elastic habits, which is more complex
Speaker 1: than a mini habit system. So I recommend three maximum
Speaker 1: for elastic habits. For mini habits, four is fine, and
Speaker 1: less is always fine too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think some of it also just depends on time.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: One of the things that when I'm working with somebody
Speaker 3: and we're going to start adding new things in I
Speaker 3: go Okay, well, what aren't you going to do that
Speaker 3: you have been doing? Because that time's going to come
Speaker 3: from somewhere. Now, it may come from a place that
Speaker 3: you've got too much of, like four hours of screen time.
Speaker 3: You might go, it's easy, I'm going to grab fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes back from my phone. But for other people, we
Speaker 3: really do need to think about like the limit to
Speaker 3: what we can do. You eventually hit a time limit.
Speaker 3: You just hit a point where you're like, well any
Speaker 3: more than that and I can't reasonably do it.
Speaker 1: You kind of have to think about having like one
Speaker 1: hundred points to spend. If you pick one habit, you
Speaker 1: can allocate all those points to that one habit. If
Speaker 1: you have three, they each get thirty three and a
Speaker 1: third points. It's a matter of how important each habit
Speaker 1: is to you.
Speaker 3: Yep, for you, Steven, and for listeners. There is outside
Speaker 3: my window, my least favorite thing on the planet, a
Speaker 3: gas powered leaf blower is going.
Speaker 1: So I can barely hear it.
Speaker 3: Well, that's good, that's good. Chris is editing it right now,
Speaker 3: probably with the blood running out of his ears because
Speaker 3: he's so frustrated by it. But anyway, I can't do
Speaker 3: anything about it right now, and we're nearly at the end.
Speaker 3: So we've chosen our up to three habits. Say choose
Speaker 3: about three lateral options per habit. So describe the lateral
Speaker 3: option what you mean by that? Give us an example.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, with exercise, the most common habit people try
Speaker 1: to form. You can go to the gym, you can
Speaker 1: do a home workout, and then within each of those
Speaker 1: you also have additional lateral options. So you're going to
Speaker 1: look at your favorite ways to exercise and pick three four.
Speaker 1: You can maybe add another one for this one if
Speaker 1: if you do, you know yoga, strength training, running, walking,
Speaker 1: walking is a good one.
Speaker 3: Walking's a great one, especially.
Speaker 1: For rest days. That's what I do, is I say, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to walk like I'll go to a theme
Speaker 1: park and just walk around. Yeah, and then some of
Speaker 1: them won't have lateral options. I think we discussed meditation.
Speaker 1: There's one way to meditate that I know of. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's more, maybe different types.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's actually countless types, but you may not mix them.
Speaker 3: So yeah, right right.
Speaker 1: Drinking water is another one. You're not gonna say, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll drink milk today. Is it?
Speaker 3: Is it through the ear, through the mouth which water
Speaker 3: into Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, reading you could do either I'm going to
Speaker 1: read a book or I'm gonna research what book to buy.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's it's kind of a stretch, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or fiction or nonfiction I suppose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but music is a really good one study music
Speaker 1: versus practicing, So I think there are a few there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I liked you had an example in the book
Speaker 3: of like a salesperson. They could cold call, they could
Speaker 3: do online networking, they could improve their sales script. I
Speaker 3: thought that was a useful way to kind of think
Speaker 3: through it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, most business related stuff has a lot of lateral options. Yep.
Speaker 3: So then choose our cues and commit. We kind of
Speaker 3: talked about the cues before. We talked about daily window,
Speaker 3: time based, action based. Actually we did not talk about
Speaker 3: one of them, which we could hit really quick, which
Speaker 3: I love. Actually, I think is oftentimes the best of
Speaker 3: many different worlds is the morning plan que.
Speaker 1: We did skip the vertical options though.
Speaker 3: Oh did we did. Thank you for keeping me on track.
Speaker 3: You know your system. Let's go back to vertical. We
Speaker 3: don't have to spend a lot of time here.
Speaker 1: It's basically setting each level for each of the lateral
Speaker 1: options you've chosen. So for fitness, instead of giving specific examples,
Speaker 1: let me just generally suggest what to set each level.
Speaker 1: At the mini level, the lowest level, that's your safety net.
Speaker 1: To set this. Think what could I do on the
Speaker 1: worst day of my life? That's the standard. If you
Speaker 1: can do it on the worst day of your life,
Speaker 1: you can do it every single day, and that's the
Speaker 1: purpose it serves. So don't make this one too high.
Speaker 1: And if you do size these incorrectly, they're going to
Speaker 1: kind of mesh into the other's territory and it's just
Speaker 1: not going to work as well. So many worst day
Speaker 1: of your life, what can you do? Plus that's something
Speaker 1: that you would be okay with, satisfied with, like, oh
Speaker 1: that's decent, it's it's right in the middle. And then
Speaker 1: elite that's what you're aiming for, Like that's where you
Speaker 1: want to be. It's something where if you do this,
Speaker 1: you're going to be really happy with yourself satisfied.
Speaker 3: Got it. So for each of my lateral options, I
Speaker 3: choose vertical targets for each one. If it makes sense, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: then I move on to queues and commit and we
Speaker 3: can circle back to my question for you about what
Speaker 3: the morning plan queue is.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, for the morning queue, every morning, set your
Speaker 1: elastic habit plans for the day, choose a lateral option
Speaker 1: for each habit, and optionally choose what level of success
Speaker 1: to achieve. So, for example, I'm going to the gym
Speaker 1: at seven thirty am before work. I'll do at least
Speaker 1: one mini upgrade at lunch that's like a weight loss
Speaker 1: or food habit where you upgrade to a slightly healthier option,
Speaker 1: and I'll clean the kitchen tonight. That will satisfy all
Speaker 1: three of my elastic habits for the day. I just
Speaker 1: read that from the book. You can tell Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love it though, because what it does is I
Speaker 3: think it brings together a little of the specificity of
Speaker 3: having a window or a time based queue perhaps, but
Speaker 3: it's flexible enough that you can pick it each day.
Speaker 3: A lot of people if they're trying to do something like, well,
Speaker 3: I'll do it every day at nine am. Well, that
Speaker 3: may not work because Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I take
Speaker 3: the kids to school at seven thirty and so it
Speaker 3: won't work then. But Tuesday and Thursday I do this,
Speaker 3: and some days I have a meeting at that time,
Speaker 3: so that you just take a moment in the morning
Speaker 3: and go, what's my day actually look like? Okay, now
Speaker 3: let me think a little bit about where these things
Speaker 3: might fit. I think it's a great, great choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can design it based on the texture of
Speaker 1: your day.
Speaker 3: That's right, That's right. I love this book so much,
Speaker 3: and I'm loving this conversation because you're right. Most of
Speaker 3: the writings on habits talk about assuming that somebody is
Speaker 3: going to feel the same every day, is going to
Speaker 3: have the same schedule every day, and that is not reality.
Speaker 3: That is simply not reality for most people. You know,
Speaker 3: most people. There's too much variability in life, and so
Speaker 3: this elasticity or flexibility is really critical. So now we've
Speaker 3: chosen our cues and commit now we display our habits.
Speaker 3: We talked a little bit about that, but this is
Speaker 3: a little different than tracking. This is actually getting them
Speaker 3: out in front of us where we see them. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is pretty unique to this particular way of
Speaker 1: going about habits because most habit systems, you have just
Speaker 1: the one habit, like I'm going to run a mile
Speaker 1: every day, that's it. You don't necessarily have to display that, certainly,
Speaker 1: not prominently maybe just a line on your tracker, but
Speaker 1: when you have nine different ways to complete a habit,
Speaker 1: you're going to want to be able to see all
Speaker 1: of those nine options. You can't just have them in
Speaker 1: your head. Got it? Yep, So you know a whiteboard
Speaker 1: works perfectly fine. I sell these habit posters. I had
Speaker 1: to make them because obviously no one else did, so
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I might as well sell them too.
Speaker 1: If I'm going to make the have them designed and
Speaker 1: what rights right?
Speaker 3: And then we talked about tracking your habits. Your last
Speaker 3: one is score and evaluate your performance, and you put
Speaker 3: optional after that, say a little bit more about what
Speaker 3: that might look like and why I might want to
Speaker 3: do it or not want to do it given that
Speaker 3: it's optional.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this isn't for me personally, but I know
Speaker 1: that it will be a good thing for some other
Speaker 1: people who I'm very analytical. But I don't want to
Speaker 1: put in the world to have to track this as well.
Speaker 1: I like to keep it simple. But since you do
Speaker 1: have three different levels of success, that opens up a
Speaker 1: lot of new data for you to look at. You
Speaker 1: can compare your habit performance month to month. Overall, you
Speaker 1: compare individual habits from month to month. So the scoring
Speaker 1: is like many as one point plus is two points,
Speaker 1: elite is three points. So you can give yourself a
Speaker 1: score and yeah, you know, for some people it's going
Speaker 1: to motivate them to beat their score from the previous month,
Speaker 1: and that can be a very good thing.
Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, we know that for some people that sort
Speaker 3: of thing is really motivating. You know, the fitness tracker
Speaker 3: on your wrist, and you know, get in a certain
Speaker 3: number of steps. That's again, that's kind of what I
Speaker 3: liked about that Joe's Goals thing was I could have
Speaker 3: a whole suite of different things, each one has a
Speaker 3: different value, and I could click in the box one,
Speaker 3: two or three times. I wouldn't have called it in
Speaker 3: the same way you did, but I sort of knew
Speaker 3: intuitively there was sort of like, Okay, I kept it going.
Speaker 3: I did it at its minimum level. Okay, I did
Speaker 3: pretty good, sort of average two or three, and it
Speaker 3: changed the score, and I found that helpful. What I
Speaker 3: did was I realized that I had it. Was I
Speaker 3: used it sort of as a depression support tool. I
Speaker 3: realized there were a suite of activities that contributed to
Speaker 3: my well being. But I wasn't going to do all
Speaker 3: of them every day. Yeah right, That's just not the
Speaker 3: way it was going to work. So what I wanted
Speaker 3: was a way of knowing am I doing enough of it?
Speaker 3: So I could put them in. Something like exercise would
Speaker 3: get three points because it was critical and I did
Speaker 3: want to do it pretty much every day, but other
Speaker 3: ones might be less. You know, walking in nature it's,
Speaker 3: you know, something I want to do. But i'd get
Speaker 3: a total score for the day, and I could just
Speaker 3: kind of look and go and I just over time
Speaker 3: kind of went. As long as I'm sort of above
Speaker 3: ten points, I tend to do pretty well, you know.
Speaker 3: So I haven't used this in years, but it was
Speaker 3: something I sort of cobbled together years ago that I
Speaker 3: found really helpful.
Speaker 1: So I like that. That's pretty cool. It's a cool system,
Speaker 1: like going for a certain point level per day with Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's clever.
Speaker 3: Thanks. All right, well, Steven, we are at the end
Speaker 3: of our time here again. I really love the book.
Speaker 3: I love the work that you're doing on habits. You've
Speaker 3: got a whole bunch of other aspects of your life
Speaker 3: that are also fascinating that we simply don't have time for.
Speaker 3: But Thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: Thanks Eric, that was fun.
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