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