Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Eric from the one you feed. Happy
Speaker 1: Holidays to you. Whether you enjoy them or you hate them,
Speaker 1: I hope you're making the best of them. As a
Speaker 1: holiday gift and as preparation for the new year, we
Speaker 1: are rereleasing seven of the older episodes. If you're new
Speaker 1: to the show, all these episodes are over a year old,
Speaker 1: so you may not have heard these yet if you've
Speaker 1: only been listening for a year. I picked the episodes
Speaker 1: because either a I think it's a really great episode
Speaker 1: or B I think it talks about behavior change, which
Speaker 1: we're heading into the new year, and that's on a
Speaker 1: lot of people's mind. Speaking of which, we are going
Speaker 1: to try something this new year. We're going to try
Speaker 1: the first one You Feed Group Transformation program. It will
Speaker 1: be a hundred dollars for a month. We're gonna limit
Speaker 1: it to ten people. We will meet online four times
Speaker 1: that month, will discuss tips and tricks and different ways
Speaker 1: to ensure that you stay on track behavior wise. You'll
Speaker 1: be able to ask questions of me, and we'll do
Speaker 1: some things where you're paired up as a group so
Speaker 1: that you can get some support outside of the calls
Speaker 1: as well to make sure you get the new year
Speaker 1: off to a great start. So if you're interested, just
Speaker 1: send an email to me Eric at one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net. I hope you enjoy these episodes. I listened
Speaker 1: back to a couple of them, and um, let's just
Speaker 1: leave it at we are getting better at what we do.
Speaker 1: In the very first one, I sound very nervous and
Speaker 1: I was so. Anyway, it's still a great interview. Enjoy these,
Speaker 1: have a happy new year. Thank you for listening, and
Speaker 1: we will talk to you soon. Bye. We often think that, oh,
Speaker 1: if I start with something so small that it isn't
Speaker 1: gonna make a difference, it's not gonna matter. But the
Speaker 1: truth is, because that momentum builds after you get going,
Speaker 1: you can often start with something very tiny and then
Speaker 1: it will blossom into something much bigger afterward. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do, we think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Hi, everybody. We have
Speaker 1: received so many questions about habits lately that we thought
Speaker 1: we should re release one of our episodes from two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, which was our interview with James Clear. This
Speaker 1: was one of our most popular episodes at the time,
Speaker 1: and with good reason, because it contains classic pieces of
Speaker 1: advice like never missed twice and one of the wisest
Speaker 1: pieces of information I've ever heard, which is reduced the
Speaker 1: scope stick to the schedule. With that in mind, this
Speaker 1: episode is worth hearing again or for the first time.
Speaker 1: If you're newer to the show, here's the original run
Speaker 1: of the episode. We hope you'll enjoy it. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us. Our guest today is James Clear, entrepreneur, weightlifter,
Speaker 1: and travel photographer. His work can be found at James
Speaker 1: Clear dot com, where he writes about scientific research and
Speaker 1: real world experiences that help you rethink your health and
Speaker 1: improve your life. His blog gets millions of visitors per year.
Speaker 1: Here's the interview. Hi James, welcome to the show. Hey Eric,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's great to get you on. I think
Speaker 1: the listeners are really going to enjoy this one. I have.
Speaker 1: Your writing on the web is very compelling, and I
Speaker 1: think we actually talk about a lot of the same things.
Speaker 1: I think you might be a bit more eloquent about it,
Speaker 1: but you're there's just a real common sense approach to
Speaker 1: everything you do, which is something that always resonates with me. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you. I really appreciate that. So our podcast is
Speaker 1: called The One You Feed, and it's based on the
Speaker 1: parable of Two Wolves, where there is a grandfather who's
Speaker 1: talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are engaged in
Speaker 1: an epic battle. One is a good wolf, which represents
Speaker 1: things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other
Speaker 1: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second, and he looks up at
Speaker 1: his grandfather, and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Yeah, it's a good thing to think about.
Speaker 1: It's it's an interesting concept because I think often uh,
Speaker 1: society pushes us to feed um, maybe the evil wolf
Speaker 1: in some ways, or we at least reward that inside
Speaker 1: and society in many ways, you know, if you think
Speaker 1: about it, money and UH and wealth is the only
Speaker 1: addiction that we applaud, you know, um, millionaires around the
Speaker 1: on the covers of magazines. But people who are addicted
Speaker 1: to drugs rather than money, or alcohol rather than money
Speaker 1: or um, you know, have needing disorder or whatever else,
Speaker 1: they aren't you know, they aren't applauded for that. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's interesting how the a similar mindset
Speaker 1: and obsessive mindset can be positive or at least seen
Speaker 1: positively in one way and and very negatively in another. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that was just a thought that popped in my mind.
Speaker 1: But as far as my own work I I have,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm in a fortunate position now. So I've
Speaker 1: been an entrepreneur for four years. During the first two years,
Speaker 1: I started a bunch of different things that you know,
Speaker 1: failed or flopped in one way or another, and then
Speaker 1: eventually found my way to building a business that succeeded
Speaker 1: and did well. UM. One of the best piece of
Speaker 1: of advice that I got early on was to try
Speaker 1: things until something comes easily. So in that first year
Speaker 1: I tried probably I don't know five or six different
Speaker 1: business ideas just to see what would stick. And then eventually,
Speaker 1: like I said, I sort of made my way toward
Speaker 1: towards building a business around UM teaching people how to
Speaker 1: travel for free with freedom Flyer miles and UM, you know,
Speaker 1: different works. I've done travel photography, working over twenty countries now,
Speaker 1: so it was something that was like top of mind
Speaker 1: for me as well. And uh, after I built that
Speaker 1: up over the first two years, I was able to
Speaker 1: transition a little bit so that the businesses run mostly
Speaker 1: by employees now and I check in every week or so.
Speaker 1: But the last two years I focused pretty much exclusively
Speaker 1: on writing at James Clear dot com, which is how
Speaker 1: we got in touch. And so I guess what I'm
Speaker 1: getting to is I don't have to worry about money now,
Speaker 1: which is very different than where I was when I
Speaker 1: was starting, um, you know, four years ago, and so
Speaker 1: I don't have to worry about feeding that wolf as much.
Speaker 1: And so all the work that I do at James
Speaker 1: scare dot com is focused. The phrase that I use
Speaker 1: a lot is mission first, business second. So you know,
Speaker 1: I'm working on my first book right now, and I
Speaker 1: have a habits workshop that I'll sell and um, I'll
Speaker 1: be paid to go speak at different conferences and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But the business model is secondary. The primary thing that
Speaker 1: I care about is spreading the message and trying to
Speaker 1: build a platform where I can help as many people
Speaker 1: as possible. UM. Last year, my articles are read by
Speaker 1: over two million people. This year that doubled over five
Speaker 1: million UM. And so that's like, that's probably the most
Speaker 1: important metric for me at this point is growth and
Speaker 1: reach and impact in some way, UM, And I feel
Speaker 1: lucky that I am able to feed that wolf of
Speaker 1: integrity and value and meaningfulness and UM and impact and
Speaker 1: sort of do work that focuses on that rather than
Speaker 1: work that focuses on the bottom line. Right. Well, what
Speaker 1: I think is really interesting about that However, and we'll
Speaker 1: get into this a lot as we talk through the show,
Speaker 1: is what we're doing here is is very similar. I
Speaker 1: think our business model is certainly secondary. This isn't a
Speaker 1: show where the goal is to is to make a
Speaker 1: lot of money, so that so that means there are
Speaker 1: other things that that I still do for for money.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I think is interesting is
Speaker 1: a lot of people tend to have this, well, I
Speaker 1: can't really do the thing that matters to me until
Speaker 1: I can do it all the time or completely, versus
Speaker 1: the ability to sort of start where you are. And
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of what you talk about
Speaker 1: from creating habits perspective and being successful talks a lot
Speaker 1: about that all or nothing mentality. Yeah, I think this
Speaker 1: is one of the biggest pitfalls we've we uh, we
Speaker 1: find ourselves then when it comes to building new habits,
Speaker 1: are really just making a behavior change of any type?
Speaker 1: Is that we think? You know, it's so easy to
Speaker 1: overestimate the idea of one defining moment or you know,
Speaker 1: overnight success or this massive transformation or change like flipping
Speaker 1: a switch and becoming a new person um And so
Speaker 1: we see things in very black and white terms, but
Speaker 1: it's not that way at all. Um too to share
Speaker 1: a story about this. One of the stories I like
Speaker 1: telling us about this guy named Dave Brailsford. And Brailsford
Speaker 1: was hired by Great Britain's professional cycling team. They're called
Speaker 1: Team Sky and when they hired him, they had never
Speaker 1: wanted tour to France and they said, Mr Brailsford will
Speaker 1: bring you because you want to win tour to France.
Speaker 1: What's your plan for doing this? And he believes in
Speaker 1: this concept called the aggregation of marginal gains, and the
Speaker 1: way that he describes it is it's the one percent
Speaker 1: improvement and nearly everything that you do. And so they
Speaker 1: started by looking for improvements that you would expect of
Speaker 1: a professional cycling team. They got bite tires that were
Speaker 1: slightly lighter, They had their outdoor riders where indoor racing
Speaker 1: suits because they were lighter weight. They had their writers
Speaker 1: were biofeedback sensors to see how they were responding to
Speaker 1: the training. You know, they did all these things that
Speaker 1: are associated with cycling performance. But they also made a
Speaker 1: bunch of changes that you wouldn't expect. So they figured
Speaker 1: out the type of pillow that led to the best
Speaker 1: night's sleep and had their writers bring it with them
Speaker 1: on the road to hotels. I wish I knew. They
Speaker 1: taught their writers how to wash their hands to reduce
Speaker 1: the risk of infection and UH and try to promote
Speaker 1: health in the best way possible and help them recover.
Speaker 1: They figured out the massage gel that led to the
Speaker 1: best recovery over time, and so they use that every
Speaker 1: day after practice. So they made all these little changes,
Speaker 1: and Brailsford said, I think if we if we can
Speaker 1: execute on this strategy, we can actually make this happen.
Speaker 1: I think we can win a tour to France in
Speaker 1: five years. He ended up being wrong. They won the
Speaker 1: tour to France in three years, and then they won
Speaker 1: again in the fourth year with a different writer. And
Speaker 1: when the professional cycling team from Britain went to the
Speaker 1: Olympics in London in two thousand twelve, Team Grade Britain
Speaker 1: won seventy percent of the gold medal available to them.
Speaker 1: So the moral of the story here is that one
Speaker 1: percent gains actually can add up to something very significant
Speaker 1: over the long run. It doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: major switch or some like, you know, incredible change that
Speaker 1: leads to significant results and I think that this is
Speaker 1: important because we often when we talk. You know, your
Speaker 1: original question was about this idea of the all or
Speaker 1: nothing mindset, or you know, if I if I just
Speaker 1: do a little bit and make a mistake every now
Speaker 1: and then, does that actually add up to anything? And
Speaker 1: the answer is yes, it does add up to something
Speaker 1: significant if you can just maintain it consistently. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you have to be perfect by any means, but
Speaker 1: if you can aggregate these little one percent choices and
Speaker 1: tiny improvements day after day, even if it's only three
Speaker 1: days or four days or five days a week, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be seven, then it can actually lead
Speaker 1: to a very significant result in the long run. Yeah,
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of different things that that touch
Speaker 1: on it. There's something that I say a lot on
Speaker 1: the show, which is, uh, a little of something is
Speaker 1: better than a lot of nothing, which I think reflects
Speaker 1: a phrase that you have which is reduced the scope,
Speaker 1: stick to the schedule. So I've been an athlete pretty
Speaker 1: much all my life. I played baseball through college, and
Speaker 1: I compete in Olympic weightlifting now and um when I
Speaker 1: first started training in the gym, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: I just thought like, if I couldn't get the perfect
Speaker 1: workout in, then it wasn't like I wasn't doing enough. Basically,
Speaker 1: it was it was very much all or nothing mentality.
Speaker 1: So as an example, you could say something like, if
Speaker 1: your goal is to run three miles after work today,
Speaker 1: you look up at the clock and you know it
Speaker 1: turns out that you were going to run for this
Speaker 1: next hour, but time's gotten away from you a little bit,
Speaker 1: and you only have twenty five minutes left, and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: twenty five minutes is enough time for me to get
Speaker 1: changed and run three miles and you know, get back.
Speaker 1: So what I would have said in a situation like
Speaker 1: that in the past is, well, let me not waste
Speaker 1: this time, right, Like, maybe I don't have enough time
Speaker 1: to to get my workout in, so I'll answer, you know,
Speaker 1: some emails that are important, I'll make that phone call
Speaker 1: had been putting off, or I'll do something else like
Speaker 1: productive right at rational lies using the time in a
Speaker 1: better way. But what I think is actually more useful
Speaker 1: now is to reduce the scope of what you're planning
Speaker 1: to do, but always stick to the schedule of doing it.
Speaker 1: So maybe running through miles isn't possible in twenty five minutes,
Speaker 1: but you could run one mile, for example, or you
Speaker 1: could get your shoes on and run tense sprints, whatever
Speaker 1: is actually feasible within that that amount of time. And
Speaker 1: I got this idea from a software company called thirty
Speaker 1: seven Signals, which has been very successful that they are
Speaker 1: of a hundred million dollar company at this point, and
Speaker 1: one of their main principles is that they always ship
Speaker 1: software updates on time. It doesn't matter if it's as
Speaker 1: big as what they were hoping like. It may not
Speaker 1: be the full feature that they were hoping to launch,
Speaker 1: but it's going to get out at the deadline. And
Speaker 1: I've seen this to be very useful in a variety
Speaker 1: of different areas. It's useful in the health example as
Speaker 1: I just gave, but it also is very helpful for
Speaker 1: work related habits. So when it comes to my writing,
Speaker 1: I published new articles every Monday and Thursday. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter how long or how short they are, how good
Speaker 1: or how bad they are, it doesn't matter how I
Speaker 1: feel about the work. The main thing is that I
Speaker 1: ship something every Monday and Thursday, and of course I'm
Speaker 1: going to try my best each time. But what I've
Speaker 1: realized is that occasionally there'll be a dud of an article.
Speaker 1: But that's a cost that I'm willing to pay because
Speaker 1: I know that if I stick to the schedule every
Speaker 1: Monday and Thursday, if I show up consistently, then there
Speaker 1: are going to be some gems in there. That's on average,
Speaker 1: eight or nine articles a month for me, and I
Speaker 1: know that if I try my best on those eight
Speaker 1: or nine, there's gonna be two or three decent ones.
Speaker 1: Now I can't predict what they're going to be, just
Speaker 1: as I can't predict when my best lifts are going
Speaker 1: to be in the gym. Right like, I train every Monday,
Speaker 1: one day and Friday. If I only went to the
Speaker 1: gym when I felt motivated, when I felt inspired to go,
Speaker 1: then you know, I would never be able to show
Speaker 1: up consistently enough to put up a decent number. But
Speaker 1: I know that if I show up three days a week,
Speaker 1: every week, then sometimes there's you know, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a good number on the board. There's so much good
Speaker 1: stuff in what you just said there, and I think
Speaker 1: that idea. I like that phrase reduced the scope. Stick
Speaker 1: to this schedule, or as I said, a little if
Speaker 1: something is better than a lot of them nothing, because
Speaker 1: at least, you know, my life is very and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of our listeners and a lot of
Speaker 1: people in the modern world to their lives are very chaotic,
Speaker 1: and routines are harder to come by than they used
Speaker 1: to be. You know, you've got a kid who's got
Speaker 1: this on this night and this on that night, and
Speaker 1: then the next week it's here, and and I've just
Speaker 1: found that ability to say, Okay, I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: be flexible on what it is that I do. Um,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be five minutes versus ten minutes or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, but that that you stick with that schedule.
Speaker 1: I think that's really important. The next thing that you
Speaker 1: led into in there is something we've talked about a
Speaker 1: lot on the show, and it's the idea of doing
Speaker 1: what you've committed to doing regardless of what your mood
Speaker 1: or not letting your mood be your decision making tool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I the way I phrase it a lot is don't
Speaker 1: let your emotion drive your behavior. So I when I
Speaker 1: started writing, I actually wrote in private for over a
Speaker 1: year before I published anything, and I was coming up
Speaker 1: with all sorts of excuses for why that was. You know,
Speaker 1: my ideas aren't fully formulated yet, my marketing skills aren't
Speaker 1: good enough. I you know, I don't I'm not a
Speaker 1: great writer, I haven't figured out my voice whatever, all
Speaker 1: these different things. And eventually I talked to a friend
Speaker 1: of mine named Todd Henry, and Todd's a published author
Speaker 1: and much better writer than I am, and so I
Speaker 1: was talking to him and I said, Todd, I I
Speaker 1: feel like I only right when I get this burst
Speaker 1: of motivation or this you know, the spark of inspiration,
Speaker 1: this creative music. That's when I get my best ideas.
Speaker 1: So all right then, and he was like, well, that
Speaker 1: makes sense silently, right when I feel motivated to it
Speaker 1: just happens to be every day at eight am. And
Speaker 1: like when he said that, I was like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is the difference between professionals and amateurs, right. Amateurs do
Speaker 1: things when they feel motivated or when it's easy for them,
Speaker 1: when they feel inspired, and professionals do things on a schedule. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that was when I decided to set my
Speaker 1: Monday Thursday publishing schedule. And I've been able. November twelve,
Speaker 1: two twelve, was the first day, the first Monday that
Speaker 1: I published, and I've been able to stick to that
Speaker 1: schedule ever since. The caveat here is that you have
Speaker 1: to choose a schedule a pace that you can sustain. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the stories I like held about this is
Speaker 1: about Southwest Airlines. So in the mid nineties, Southwest had
Speaker 1: been growing very rapidly for almost twenty years at this point,
Speaker 1: and this was a period of time when most airline
Speaker 1: companies were either losing money or going bankrupt, at least
Speaker 1: in the United States and in I believe it was.
Speaker 1: Southwest had offers to expand to over a hundred different cities,
Speaker 1: and if you're a business, this is a great problem
Speaker 1: to have right there, like, Okay, we have tons of
Speaker 1: options for growth. But what Southwest did was they turned
Speaker 1: down almost all of them. They only expanded to four
Speaker 1: new locations in and Jim Collins, the author of Good
Speaker 1: to Great, I think he's the one who originally found
Speaker 1: the story, and one of the reasons that he says
Speaker 1: Southwest was so successful is that they they set like
Speaker 1: an upper bound for their growth, like an upper limit
Speaker 1: for what they were gonna do. Right, they had a
Speaker 1: hundred options, but they said, we're only going to grow
Speaker 1: to four new places, and sometimes I like to keep
Speaker 1: that in mind when it comes to behavior change and
Speaker 1: building new habits as well. You know, so often we
Speaker 1: think about the lower limit for what we want to do.
Speaker 1: I want to work out for at least forty five minutes,
Speaker 1: or I want to write at least a thousand words today,
Speaker 1: or you know, I want to lose at least fifteen
Speaker 1: pounds in the next four months. But I think in
Speaker 1: many ways it would be much more useful to set
Speaker 1: an upper limit for our behavior, especially in the beginning,
Speaker 1: because the only thing that matters is the consistency of
Speaker 1: the habit. It's not the result that matters in the beginning,
Speaker 1: because if you don't do the action consistently, then you're
Speaker 1: never going to get the result anyway. So if you
Speaker 1: can check your ego a little bit and set an
Speaker 1: upper limit for yourself, you could say something like like,
Speaker 1: I had a reader the name as Mitch. He lost
Speaker 1: over a hundred pounds over the course of two years,
Speaker 1: and when he was adding exercise into his routine, he
Speaker 1: told himself, I'm not allowed to stay at the gym
Speaker 1: for more than five minutes. So he would go to
Speaker 1: the gym he dies for over four weeks. First four
Speaker 1: weeks he went to the gym for five minutes a day,
Speaker 1: five days a week, and then when he got to
Speaker 1: six minutes, he left and he was like, after four
Speaker 1: or five weeks, I kind of, you know, felt like
Speaker 1: I'm coming here all the time. I sort of want
Speaker 1: to stay longer. Right, And the important thing there is
Speaker 1: he wasn't worried at all about the result or the
Speaker 1: outcome in the beginning, right, He was only focused on
Speaker 1: the behavior. How do I make it a habit? How
Speaker 1: do I become the type of person that shows up
Speaker 1: at the gym every day? How to become the type
Speaker 1: of person that doesn't miss workouts? And once I know
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna be here consistently, then I'll worry about
Speaker 1: improving the performance. But so often we flip it. So
Speaker 1: often we're so obsessed with the idea of the outcome
Speaker 1: or the result that we want that we never think
Speaker 1: about how can we actually build this into a behavior
Speaker 1: that's habitual and repeated. Yeah, we had todd On is
Speaker 1: one of our first guests, and and he's amazing. And
Speaker 1: one of the things one of the earlier guests we
Speaker 1: also had was a guy named Dan Millman who wrote
Speaker 1: um a book, The Way the Peaceful Warrior. But he
Speaker 1: talked in our interview about this idea. It's very similar.
Speaker 1: He called it, you know, start small and connect the dots.
Speaker 1: But you know, exercise for two minutes a day, but
Speaker 1: do it for you know, do it every day for
Speaker 1: a week or two weeks, and then if you if
Speaker 1: you exercise for four you've just you've doubled it. But
Speaker 1: I think it's it's back to that idea of all
Speaker 1: or nothing. It's really it's easy to get into that.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna go forty five minutes a day
Speaker 1: every day, and then when I when I fall off,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to maybe stick to that, which I
Speaker 1: think is what you're saying is to keep keep the
Speaker 1: scope at what we can do. The podcast, for example,
Speaker 1: we do once a week. I occasionally put out a
Speaker 1: mini episode on the weekends. And the data is clear
Speaker 1: that if you want to grow a podcast, you put
Speaker 1: one out, you know, as frequently as you can. But
Speaker 1: the reality is it's not a pace we could keep.
Speaker 1: And so it's more about the slow and steady. Every
Speaker 1: week on Tuesday, an episode goes out well and the
Speaker 1: data is also clear that podcasts that put something out
Speaker 1: every week succeed more than one's to do five in
Speaker 1: a row and then don't do anything exactly. You know.
Speaker 1: That's so I would say, yeah, that's a great story.
Speaker 1: So that idea of breaking things into smaller, smaller chunks
Speaker 1: is um one that that I'm a big fan of.
Speaker 1: And you have something you call the two minute rule.
Speaker 1: I think I call it the five minute rule. I
Speaker 1: think they're very much a very similar thing. Can you
Speaker 1: tell us about the two minute rule? Sure? So the
Speaker 1: original and two minute rule comes from David Allen's about
Speaker 1: getting things done, and it's just a productivity strategy that
Speaker 1: he uses to try to do things that you keep
Speaker 1: putting off. So for example, um, making the phone call
Speaker 1: that you've been wanting to make for the last week,
Speaker 1: or responding to that email that's been sitting in your inbox,
Speaker 1: or washing the dishes that are in the sink, throwing
Speaker 1: a load of laundry, whatever, if it takes less than
Speaker 1: two minutes, do it right away. That's his two minute rule.
Speaker 1: But I think we can adjust that rule for building
Speaker 1: new habits and behaviors. And the basic idea is nearly
Speaker 1: any habit that we want to do, for the most part,
Speaker 1: is going to require some conscious effort. They're they're actually
Speaker 1: bigger in scope than what academic researchers would define as
Speaker 1: a habit. Academic researchers would say a habit is something
Speaker 1: you do automatically, like scratching your head or biting your
Speaker 1: nails or flossing your teeth. But a lot of times
Speaker 1: when we talk about building new habits, we're talking about
Speaker 1: things that are you know, I want to make a
Speaker 1: habit of eating healthy, or I want to make a
Speaker 1: habit of going to the gym, or I want to
Speaker 1: make a habit of making five sales calls a day,
Speaker 1: whatever it happens to be, And these are things that
Speaker 1: are going to require conscious effort. But the thing that
Speaker 1: often happens is that when we think about the whole
Speaker 1: habit that we're trying to build in scope, it seems
Speaker 1: like too much. You know, It's kind of like what
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier. If you want to run three miles,
Speaker 1: maybe you get home from work at the end of
Speaker 1: the day and you feel exhausted, and the thought of
Speaker 1: running three whole miles sounds like too much for you. Right,
Speaker 1: It's it's more than the motivation or whelpower that you
Speaker 1: have available at that time. So rather than focus on
Speaker 1: the entire event, on the whole scope of the project,
Speaker 1: focus just on the first two minutes of it. So
Speaker 1: not most habits cannot be completed in under two minutes,
Speaker 1: but nearly any habit can be started in less than
Speaker 1: two minutes. And so the idea behind this is put
Speaker 1: all of your motivation and willpower into starting the behavior,
Speaker 1: and trust that in many ways, motivation comes after starting,
Speaker 1: not the for you know, we have this this sort
Speaker 1: of myth in our head that we the reason that
Speaker 1: we don't get started on things is because we don't
Speaker 1: have enough willpower. We weren't born with enough willpower. It's
Speaker 1: not this innate, I don't know trait that we with
Speaker 1: something we lack for one reason or another, and that
Speaker 1: if we only had more willpower then that would be
Speaker 1: the solution to you know, to to accomplishing these tasks.
Speaker 1: But what often happens is that the willpower shows up
Speaker 1: not before we begin, but after. And pretty much anyone
Speaker 1: has experienced this in one way or another. When you
Speaker 1: started behavior and all of a sudden, it's much easier
Speaker 1: to finish it. You know a lot of times, like
Speaker 1: if you're it may be hard for you to get
Speaker 1: your workout going. But if you can simply get to
Speaker 1: the gym and start your first exercise, you're going to
Speaker 1: follow through with it at the end um to the end.
Speaker 1: So the idea behind the two minute rule is focus
Speaker 1: all your intensity and motivation on the first two minutes.
Speaker 1: So for example, if we take the running thing, then
Speaker 1: it's just get your shoes on, get out the door,
Speaker 1: close the door, knob right, something like that. And then
Speaker 1: after that, if you don't run at all, find no
Speaker 1: big deal. Only need to judge yourself. But often you'll
Speaker 1: find that you feel motivated enough to finish the task. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I do it for five minutes, and
Speaker 1: I'm very deliberate about setting a timer, but it's usually
Speaker 1: I can trick myself into starting for five minutes. And
Speaker 1: then momentum is a is a particularly powerful force. You know,
Speaker 1: nine times out of ten, you're right, it's sufficient to
Speaker 1: to get the thing done. And I think the corollarity
Speaker 1: of that too, and I've seen you reference it is
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that I tend to put
Speaker 1: off feel overwhelming to me and breaking them down to
Speaker 1: two minutes doesn't feel overwhelming, or if it's an overwhelming thing,
Speaker 1: breaking that thing into so many small tasks that I
Speaker 1: can find one that's easy to start on. This is
Speaker 1: the classic phrase that Leo be about to use is
Speaker 1: all the time, right, like, starts with something so easy
Speaker 1: you can't say no to it. And if you you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the time this is some of this
Speaker 1: comes back, weaves back in with the one percent gains
Speaker 1: story that I mentioned in the beginning. We often think that, oh,
Speaker 1: if I start with something so small that it isn't
Speaker 1: going to make a difference, it's not gonna matter. Um.
Speaker 1: But the truth is, because that momentum builds after you
Speaker 1: get going, you can often start with something very tiny
Speaker 1: and then it will blossom into something much bigger afterward.
Speaker 1: You talk about not needing to be fantastic at the start,
Speaker 1: you just need to be there at the start. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this idea that we're we have to be
Speaker 1: an expert to some degree I think is is uh
Speaker 1: is incorrect. So the phrase that I've been taught by
Speaker 1: a friend of mine named Beck Tench. She she worked
Speaker 1: at a science museum, but she wasn't a scientist, and
Speaker 1: she said, one of the interesting things I learned when
Speaker 1: I was there was about how scientists treat failure. You know,
Speaker 1: when a scientist runs an experiment, there are many pieces
Speaker 1: of data. Some of them agree with the hypothesis they have,
Speaker 1: some of them may not. But they don't necessarily see
Speaker 1: the pieces of data that don't agree with the hypothesis
Speaker 1: as a failure. Um, it's just a piece of data.
Speaker 1: It's just another data point. So there may be a
Speaker 1: positive result, there may be a negative result, but it's
Speaker 1: just a data point to them. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a much more powerful a to look at failure in
Speaker 1: our own life. You know, you don't need to show
Speaker 1: up and have positive, positive string of data points from
Speaker 1: the very beginning when you start a habit. You could
Speaker 1: try to start a habit fail and then say, huh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, what a useful data point. Let me take
Speaker 1: that and turn that into something right, use that as
Speaker 1: fuel for the next adjustment that I need to make,
Speaker 1: rather than as an indication of who I am. So
Speaker 1: often we make the mistake of sealing seeing failure as
Speaker 1: an indication of our identity, of our self worth, of
Speaker 1: the type of person that we are the talent that
Speaker 1: we have or what we're capable of. But that's not
Speaker 1: true at all. Um. You know, if you went to
Speaker 1: if you went to a restaurant and ordered, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: an entree and it came out and you ate it
Speaker 1: and it was bad, you wouldn't accuse yourself of being
Speaker 1: like a terrible food order. Right. It's not like it's
Speaker 1: not a reference to the quality of you as an
Speaker 1: individual just because the result is negative. Um. Instead, you
Speaker 1: would just see it as a data point of Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't like this food, or this is something I'm
Speaker 1: not going to order again in the future. And I
Speaker 1: think would be much more useful if we took that
Speaker 1: same approach to creative tasks that we have in our work,
Speaker 1: to health and personal tasks and other growth tasks that
Speaker 1: we have in our life. Yeah, you say that. A
Speaker 1: lot of people see failures like you just said, it's
Speaker 1: an indication of who they are. But mentally tough people
Speaker 1: define themselves more by their perseverance. There's a you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's interesting there. I mental toughness is
Speaker 1: a topic that I've been thinking about more recently, and
Speaker 1: I'll probably write write a lot more about it at
Speaker 1: some point. But one of the articles that I've written
Speaker 1: recently that I enjoyed is about this finished concept called
Speaker 1: see sue and there's a there's no direct translation for
Speaker 1: the word in in English, but see sue and finishes
Speaker 1: sort of this quality that that the fins are proud
Speaker 1: of having, this idea that they persevere even after their
Speaker 1: out of options, even after there's you know, no necessarily
Speaker 1: um forward or way to succeed in a particular task.
Speaker 1: Yet still they find a way to to move forward.
Speaker 1: And I find that that a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are really successful, whether it's entrepreneurs and CEOs or at
Speaker 1: lead athletes at some level, um really successful comedians or entertainers,
Speaker 1: whoever happens to be. In the very beginning, they keep
Speaker 1: getting riddle with these failures, but they have this this
Speaker 1: like quality of c sue in the beginning, this ability
Speaker 1: to persevere and continue to move forward even when they're
Speaker 1: not getting positive results. You know, sometimes it's so hard
Speaker 1: to continue moving forward if you don't have an indication
Speaker 1: that you're making progress. But there's this, I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's this magical quality of learning that requires failure in
Speaker 1: the beginning, and the people who embrace that are the
Speaker 1: ones who end up, you know, developing a significant skill
Speaker 1: set in the long run. I know it's something you've
Speaker 1: been writing more about, and it's a the idea of
Speaker 1: grit or mental toughness. Do you have any thoughts on
Speaker 1: how people go about acquiring more of that? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good question. That's the main thing that I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about UM as I'm as I've been working on
Speaker 1: this recently. I think the the idea of starting small
Speaker 1: makes sense in this particular case as well, because one
Speaker 1: of the I think in many cases one of the
Speaker 1: most dangerous things you can have is actually to grow
Speaker 1: very fast or really quickly. Like most of the trouble
Speaker 1: that I've gotten myself into or troubles maybe the wrong word.
Speaker 1: Most of the the setbacks that I've had um have
Speaker 1: happened when I've tried to do too much too fast,
Speaker 1: and or or when I've gotten to a level that
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not prepared for too quickly. And so in
Speaker 1: other words, it's kind of like training yourself with small
Speaker 1: failures to develop the ability to overcome those. And once
Speaker 1: you develop the ability to overcome something small, you can
Speaker 1: step up to the next level. And take a slightly
Speaker 1: greater risk and then fail there, but still be able
Speaker 1: to handle it because now you have a new skill set.
Speaker 1: And then take a slightly greater risk and again be
Speaker 1: able to handle that because now you're a little bit
Speaker 1: better than you were before. And um, I think that
Speaker 1: idea of progression works really well here, um as well,
Speaker 1: because if you can prove yourself, prove to yourself that
Speaker 1: you're mentally tough in a small way, then maybe you
Speaker 1: can take that and leverage it into proving it again
Speaker 1: to yourself in a slightly bigger way. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: really inter esting It is about how do we define
Speaker 1: failure and how do we define success? And one of
Speaker 1: the things that you you talk about and I am
Speaker 1: I've learned, you know, I've learned so many of these
Speaker 1: things through what can only be described as bitter experience.
Speaker 1: But is the idea of don't make the second mistake? Well,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll back this one up with a little
Speaker 1: bit of research. So there was a study done at
Speaker 1: University College London in uh in England, and they they
Speaker 1: were looking at the length of time that it took
Speaker 1: to actually build a new habit and there's all these
Speaker 1: miss out there it takes twenty one days when you
Speaker 1: habit our thirty days or whatever. What they found was
Speaker 1: that on average it took about sixty six days. But
Speaker 1: that's even that number is is largely unhelpful, I guess,
Speaker 1: because it's of huge range, you know, and as you
Speaker 1: would expect, it depends on the habit, right, Little things
Speaker 1: like drinking a glass of water at lunch may only
Speaker 1: take three weeks, whereas big things, um, like going for
Speaker 1: a run three days a week, or you know, some
Speaker 1: other habit that's much larger and requires more effort and
Speaker 1: um and willpower may require eight months before it becomes routine.
Speaker 1: And so the range that they saw was anywhere from
Speaker 1: like eighteen days to two fifty something days UM. But
Speaker 1: the message that the exact numbers aren't important. The messages
Speaker 1: it's going to take months probably to build a new habit.
Speaker 1: But the the second finding of the study, which I
Speaker 1: thought was very interesting, is that they looked at the
Speaker 1: people who stuck with habits over the long run and
Speaker 1: the consistency that they had, and what they found was
Speaker 1: that different people failed at different points along the curve,
Speaker 1: but at no point did missing one day, whether it
Speaker 1: was the first day, the tenth day, the hundredth day,
Speaker 1: the thousandth day. Missing one day had no measurable impact
Speaker 1: whatsoever on your ability to stick to a habit over
Speaker 1: the long run. And so this goes back one to
Speaker 1: the the all or nothing mentality, right, But it also
Speaker 1: triggered this idea in my mind, which is that top
Speaker 1: performers in many different industries make mistakes just like everybody else.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, they're not perfect. They're just like
Speaker 1: you and I. They make errors, they slip up, they
Speaker 1: have a bad day. There's urgency these and emergencies of
Speaker 1: life they have to deal with that prevent them from
Speaker 1: doing their habits consistently every now and then. But the
Speaker 1: key is when they get off track, they find a
Speaker 1: way to get back on track as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: So the phrase that I like to keep in mind
Speaker 1: is never missed twice, or don't make the second mistake,
Speaker 1: as you said. And so if I can figure out
Speaker 1: a way that once I get off track, I can
Speaker 1: get myself back on track as quickly as possible, I
Speaker 1: know that that's not going to hurt me in the
Speaker 1: long run. I don't need to be perfect, and there's
Speaker 1: no measurable impact that missing yesterday will have if I
Speaker 1: can get back on track today. And so for that reason,
Speaker 1: I think one of the most useful exercises you can
Speaker 1: go through when it comes to building new habits is uh.
Speaker 1: Then this is an idea from a book called The
Speaker 1: Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonagall. She's a professor from Stanford
Speaker 1: and her idea or her strategy is the main thing
Speaker 1: that takes your willpower off course or that depletes your
Speaker 1: willpower is not understanding how and when you lose willpower,
Speaker 1: how and when you get off track. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: if you get a piece of paper and list out
Speaker 1: all the things that could take you off track with
Speaker 1: your habits. You know, my kid gets sick, or I
Speaker 1: you know I'm ill, or I um, you know, I
Speaker 1: forget I didn't set a reminder on my phone, or
Speaker 1: you know a thousand other things that could take you
Speaker 1: off course. I my friends asked me to go out
Speaker 1: to eat when I'm trying to stick to my diet,
Speaker 1: whatever it happens to be. For the habit that you're
Speaker 1: working on, list out all the possible scenarios you can
Speaker 1: think of that could take you off course. If you
Speaker 1: can prevent those things, great, go ahead and prevent them.
Speaker 1: But if you can't, then come up with an if
Speaker 1: then scenario for what you're going to do to get
Speaker 1: back on track as quickly as possible, because then it
Speaker 1: becomes less a story of oh, I'm a victim. That
Speaker 1: happened to me. Um, now I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: It takes me two weeks to get back on track
Speaker 1: or two months before I feel motivated again to do this.
Speaker 1: It's less about that victims story of this happened to
Speaker 1: me and this is why I got of course, and
Speaker 1: more about Okay, this happened. Here's my plan to get
Speaker 1: back on track. And if you can develop the strategy
Speaker 1: to never missed twice, then you'll probably have much more
Speaker 1: success of a long run, and the little airs that
Speaker 1: occur every now and then you're going to happen to
Speaker 1: all of us won't have a measurable impact on your results. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's such a big one. And the bitter experience I
Speaker 1: was talking about is that seems to be the thing
Speaker 1: in the past that would always derail me, is I
Speaker 1: would fall off the wagon, whatever that wagon might be, um,
Speaker 1: and then just give up. And I think A lot
Speaker 1: of it gets back to the stories we tell ourselves
Speaker 1: about what that stuff means. And you just you touched
Speaker 1: on in a minute ago that that the idea of
Speaker 1: failure is a is not an indication of who we are.
Speaker 1: But I think it's so easy for us to start
Speaker 1: telling ourselves stories when we miss a day or we
Speaker 1: fail to get into oh well, this means I'm just
Speaker 1: not cut out to do this, or I always do
Speaker 1: this thing, or what's the point and those are all
Speaker 1: just they're nothing but stories. Yeah. A great book to
Speaker 1: read on this particular topic is called Mindset by Carol Dweck.
Speaker 1: She also has a researcher at Stanford and the strategy
Speaker 1: that she lays out of the um the discovery that
Speaker 1: she lays out from her research and that book is
Speaker 1: that there are two types of mindsets. The first type
Speaker 1: of mindset is a fixed mindset, and the fixed mindset
Speaker 1: believes that talent matters, and that you know, we're very
Speaker 1: focused on the outcome, the result that we get. We
Speaker 1: tend to avoid challenges that are faced to us because
Speaker 1: we think our skill set is fixed to some degree.
Speaker 1: I was born this way. These are the this is
Speaker 1: the talent that I have. This is the type of
Speaker 1: person that I am, um, and it looks at outcomes
Speaker 1: as an indication of who we are. So what you're
Speaker 1: mentioning there, Oh, I slipped on on this habit. I
Speaker 1: always do this. I'm a failure. I'm the type of
Speaker 1: person who you know isn't good at working out, or
Speaker 1: I'm the type of person who isn't natural at sales
Speaker 1: or whatever. It happens to be the growth mindset. So
Speaker 1: this first mindset is the fixed mindset. The second mindsets
Speaker 1: the growth mindset. Growth mindset is very focused on effort
Speaker 1: rather than outcome. I worked really hard on this. This
Speaker 1: is why I did a good job. Your process focused
Speaker 1: how can I commit to the system and continually get
Speaker 1: better rather than worrying about a particular outcome, And you
Speaker 1: embrace challenges that come your way because you see them
Speaker 1: as ways to develop your skill set. So the growth
Speaker 1: mindset says, my abilities are not fixed. It's not a
Speaker 1: talent question. I can improve in some way even if
Speaker 1: I'm not good at it now. And the key to
Speaker 1: realize here is that you don't have a fixed mindset
Speaker 1: or a growth mindset. We have that we but we
Speaker 1: all have both in certain areas. So if you take
Speaker 1: my writing for example, I'm very growth mindset oriented. I'm
Speaker 1: always looking for ways to improve. I think, okay, I
Speaker 1: can look at my progress of the last year or two,
Speaker 1: I've definitely become a better writer. Let me, you know,
Speaker 1: look at other writers who are great at the aircraft
Speaker 1: and see what I can learn from them and try
Speaker 1: to develop my skill set. Always focused on moving forward.
Speaker 1: But with sales and selling, I would always tell myself
Speaker 1: the story of I'm not a natural salesman. I prefer
Speaker 1: to be really high integrity. This isn't something that you
Speaker 1: know I'm good at for that reason all these other things.
Speaker 1: And so I was hamstring myself saying, oh, this isn't
Speaker 1: who I am. Right, I was just saying, oh, this
Speaker 1: is a fixed thing. It's just not me. And so
Speaker 1: we can do this to ourselves in many different areas
Speaker 1: where we say we're fixed in a certain area, but
Speaker 1: we may be growth in another area. And when you
Speaker 1: notice yourself having that fixed mindset of you know, using
Speaker 1: failure as an indication of who you are, or using
Speaker 1: an outcome them as an indication of what you're good
Speaker 1: at or how talented you are, you need to remind
Speaker 1: yourself that the growth mindset is what is true, right.
Speaker 1: This is the approach that we need to take. That
Speaker 1: skills can be developed and cultivated, that you have the
Speaker 1: ability to improve in some way, even if you failed
Speaker 1: in the past. It's not an indication of the outcome
Speaker 1: that you're destined to have. It's just something that has
Speaker 1: happened in the past. I've got two last areas i'd
Speaker 1: like to cover with you, which tend to be too
Speaker 1: of themes that I always like to explore, and luckily
Speaker 1: you've written about them a little bit. One of them
Speaker 1: is the idea of comparison. So you've got an article
Speaker 1: where you talk about a show choreographer who puts out
Speaker 1: a bunch of work that she doesn't feel as great,
Speaker 1: and then or that she does feel as great, and
Speaker 1: then something she puts out that she doesn't think as
Speaker 1: good becomes very successful. But you talked through that that
Speaker 1: article about the idea of comparison, and comparison is one
Speaker 1: of those things that I think can be potentially very
Speaker 1: painful to us, and I'm interested to hear more about
Speaker 1: it from you. Yeah. So the story is about this
Speaker 1: choreographer named Agnes Demil who she choreographed a bunch of
Speaker 1: different shows that she thought you were great, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: and then she did the choreography for Oklahoma, which is
Speaker 1: a blockbuster hit on Broadway, performed over two thousand times
Speaker 1: and had all the success, and she thought her work
Speaker 1: was average. And so she was talking to Martha Graham,
Speaker 1: who is one of the most famous dance choreographers of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, and she was like, Martha, I, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like maybe I'm not cut out for this work,
Speaker 1: because my whole concept of what is good work and
Speaker 1: what is bad work seems off. I you know, the
Speaker 1: work that I thought was great, nobody cared about. The
Speaker 1: work that I thought was very average. People loved. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm not cut out for this. And Martha Graham just
Speaker 1: looked at her and said, you have something inside of you,
Speaker 1: a unique set of skills, set of circumstances and experiences
Speaker 1: and ideas that if you don't put it out there,
Speaker 1: if you don't deliver it to the world, it will
Speaker 1: never it will never be, it will never exist in
Speaker 1: any other way no one else can produce that. Your
Speaker 1: job is not to determine whether or not that is valuable.
Speaker 1: Your job is not to compare it to someone else
Speaker 1: or try to measure how good or how bad it is.
Speaker 1: Your job is simply to create the work, is simply
Speaker 1: to put it out in the world, and then you
Speaker 1: can let the world decide whether it's good or not.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's a great way to think
Speaker 1: about comparison, for for all of our our our own
Speaker 1: work and the you know, the comparison trap that we
Speaker 1: often fall into when comparing our lives and um and
Speaker 1: our our choices to other people. You know, like your
Speaker 1: job is not to determine whether your life is more
Speaker 1: valuable than someone else's, or your work is more creative
Speaker 1: or more compelling than someone else's. Your job is simply
Speaker 1: to live out the path that you have because if
Speaker 1: you don't live it out, nobody else will be able to.
Speaker 1: There's no one else that can put out this unique
Speaker 1: set of creative output, this unique set of circumstances and
Speaker 1: ideas and experiences, this unique set of conversations and stories
Speaker 1: and pieces of advice. Whatever it happens to be that
Speaker 1: you want to deliver to the world, it's your job
Speaker 1: simply to deliver it, not to try to measure it,
Speaker 1: and then you can let the world decide whether they
Speaker 1: love it or not. Yeah. I think that's such a great,
Speaker 1: a great piece of advice on this because it's so
Speaker 1: easy to get into comparing and one of the other
Speaker 1: things that listeners might be tired of hearing me talk
Speaker 1: about it. But the the other thing I've noticed about
Speaker 1: comparing is that you know, there's always somebody who you
Speaker 1: could think is better than you in certain things, somebody
Speaker 1: who could think is worse than you in certain things.
Speaker 1: But the thing I've noticed in both those cases is
Speaker 1: I'm not connecting to the two people at all. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of often my own isolated world. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're kind of in the theater of your
Speaker 1: mind rather than in the you know, the real world
Speaker 1: producing something. And one of the phrases that I keep
Speaker 1: in mind on this sometimes is it's it's very easy
Speaker 1: to judge from the crowd. It's much harder to be
Speaker 1: in the arena and actually do the work. And as
Speaker 1: much as possible, I think we should try to keep
Speaker 1: ourselves in the arena rather than up in the crowd
Speaker 1: judging what's going on in the field. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: just on somebody else's show earlier today, doing an interview,
Speaker 1: and he's somebody who's also in the UM bodybuilding world,
Speaker 1: which I thought it was interesting to have me on UM. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about that, and I'd just
Speaker 1: be curious about your perspective because in the bodybuilding weightlifting world,
Speaker 1: there certainly is a great degree of comparison in physique,
Speaker 1: for example, or things like that. And it's easy to
Speaker 1: see how that quote from Martha Graham makes sense in
Speaker 1: a creative expression. How would you handle comparison in a
Speaker 1: more um physical sense like that. Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: As as someone who was an athlete, I feel like
Speaker 1: comparison and competitiveness often get confused, you know, And so
Speaker 1: for a long time, for most of my athletic career,
Speaker 1: I was very comparison focused, right like, how am I
Speaker 1: outperforming the person next to me? Or how am I
Speaker 1: performing against the team that I'm playing against. But competitiveness
Speaker 1: does not necessarily require you to compare. You can compete
Speaker 1: against yourself, you can compete at the highest level possible,
Speaker 1: you can try to improve and be as ambitious as possible.
Speaker 1: But the judgment of whether or not it's good or
Speaker 1: whether or not you're better actually if you think about
Speaker 1: it does not help you perform. It's not the performance.
Speaker 1: The performance itself is what matters, not the judgment of it.
Speaker 1: Um from your from your side, and if you're If
Speaker 1: we take the body building example, comparing yourself is not
Speaker 1: what makes you a better bodybuilder, right. It's like doing
Speaker 1: more reps, or focusing on a new type of exercise
Speaker 1: that maybe you've neglected in the past, or optimizing your
Speaker 1: nutrition to a certain degree. You know, it's like spending
Speaker 1: time in the arena of doing the work that makes
Speaker 1: the difference. It's being more focused and missing fewer workouts.
Speaker 1: These are the things that actually drive better results, not
Speaker 1: how much time you spend comparing yourself to someone else. Um.
Speaker 1: The comparison is not the work, but we often confuse
Speaker 1: it with being associated with the work or motivating the work,
Speaker 1: and so we we spend too much time focused on it.
Speaker 1: If you were able to relieve yourself of all comparison
Speaker 1: but do more work than you had before, you would
Speaker 1: probably get better results. So I think I think oftentimes
Speaker 1: we use comparison as a crutch by saying, oh, this
Speaker 1: is what motivates me, or this is what you know.
Speaker 1: I'm always thirsting to get to the next level or whatever.
Speaker 1: But being focused on comparison and judgment is not the
Speaker 1: same as being competitive. And being competitive is great, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't require you to compare yourself to others. I
Speaker 1: think that can be similar to worrying, right. A lot
Speaker 1: of people think that worrying about something is the same
Speaker 1: as doing something about it. And one of the rules
Speaker 1: I tried to put in place for myself and I
Speaker 1: do with varying degrees of success, though, is that if
Speaker 1: I start to worry about something, I asked myself, is
Speaker 1: there any positive action I can take that would improve
Speaker 1: this outcome whatever that thing is? And if so, I
Speaker 1: try and do it, and almost instantly upon that, the
Speaker 1: worry or the comparison or all that stuff vanishes once
Speaker 1: I'm engaged in some sort of positive action. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: actually one of the main reasons why I tend to
Speaker 1: not watch any news or television really unless it's an
Speaker 1: Ohio State football game. Um. But uh, I I found
Speaker 1: that after a while, I was like, watching the news
Speaker 1: didn't give me any particular action to take to become
Speaker 1: a better person. It didn't allow me to do anything
Speaker 1: positive or to to make the world a better place
Speaker 1: in any way. And this is different. The criticism that
Speaker 1: I'll get sometimes when I talk about this is people
Speaker 1: are like, oh, well, you're an uninformed citizen. Well this
Speaker 1: is different than saying that I don't want to learn
Speaker 1: or that I'm uninformed. Right. If it's something that's important
Speaker 1: to me or that I want to get better at,
Speaker 1: or an action that I actually want to take to
Speaker 1: to make the world a better place, then of course
Speaker 1: I'm going to seek out information to become better on it.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is I I found that watching
Speaker 1: the news is relatively useless for me because getting that
Speaker 1: information pushed on me doesn't prompt me to make any
Speaker 1: better action. All it does is just prompt me to
Speaker 1: worry or think about things that that don't allow me
Speaker 1: to become a better person anyway. Yeah, I agree. I
Speaker 1: think that's I've been doing in a course for some
Speaker 1: of the listeners on the seven Habits of Highly Effective People,
Speaker 1: and that falls right into that um circle of concern
Speaker 1: versus circle of influence kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. So.
Speaker 1: The last thing that I'd like to talk about is
Speaker 1: and I love the way you phrased it because it's
Speaker 1: but It's something I'm always talking about and always wrestling within.
Speaker 1: It's and you say, ambition and contentment are not opposites,
Speaker 1: but we often make the mistake of thinking that they
Speaker 1: are incompatible. Can you talk a little bit more about that,
Speaker 1: because that's a fascinating topic for me, is how do
Speaker 1: you be ambitious and content at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, and this is something I certainly haven't
Speaker 1: mastered to I need degree. It's it's something I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about a lot recently, and that you know, you
Speaker 1: look at on one hand, competitiveness and drive is something
Speaker 1: that is central for me. I mean, it's the the
Speaker 1: athlete in me is like, yes, I love this um
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, you see people who
Speaker 1: are you know I we're talking about. I was talking
Speaker 1: with some friends the other day about a particular entrepreneur
Speaker 1: that we know, and he said, he's literally the only
Speaker 1: person I know who does not want more. And when
Speaker 1: you think about that, it's like, wow, that is a
Speaker 1: really powerful thing. Right to not want more. That has
Speaker 1: to be the ultimate definition of success, right to be
Speaker 1: completely satisfied with with where you're at. And so on
Speaker 1: one hand, you're like, oh, if I'm satisfied with where
Speaker 1: I'm at, then why would I feel driven or ambitious
Speaker 1: to move to the next level. But then on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you're like, well, I want to get to
Speaker 1: the next level, like growth is something that's very important
Speaker 1: to me. So how do I how do I emerge
Speaker 1: these two How do I make these two things connect?
Speaker 1: And the best metaphor that I had heard of it
Speaker 1: came from this book I was reading, called The Inner
Speaker 1: Game of Tennis by tim Timothy Galway, and he talks
Speaker 1: about a rose seed and basically says, when rose seed
Speaker 1: is planted, we don't criticize it for not having roots
Speaker 1: or not having stems or whatever. And then it grows
Speaker 1: and sprouts into you know, a bud and a stem,
Speaker 1: and you know, at that point we don't criticize it
Speaker 1: for not being a full grown tree or you know,
Speaker 1: not having branches or more leaves um. And then it
Speaker 1: continues to grow and it you know, develops more leaves
Speaker 1: and strong and so on. And at no point during
Speaker 1: this this uh sequence do we criticize the roads for
Speaker 1: being immature or underdeveloped or not you know, fulfilling its
Speaker 1: full potential or not being ready yet. Right. But but
Speaker 1: it also never stops growing, So it's perfectly. It's perfect
Speaker 1: the way that it is at any given time. It's
Speaker 1: what it's supposed to be. It's content, it's happy, but
Speaker 1: it's also ambitious. It never stops growing. And so I
Speaker 1: think that that's the type of metaphor and approach that
Speaker 1: I would love to take with my own life. It's like,
Speaker 1: I am perfectly happy with who I am now, satisfied
Speaker 1: with the type person. I am, satisfied with what I've achieved.
Speaker 1: I feel self confident. I don't feel like I have
Speaker 1: to prove myself to others or justify myself in some way.
Speaker 1: I don't feel a need to compare myself. I simply
Speaker 1: feel present and at peace. But I'm also never going
Speaker 1: to stop growing simply because that's what I do. Not
Speaker 1: because it requires me to be unhappy with my life
Speaker 1: or the current state that I have, not because it
Speaker 1: requires me to constantly question whether I'm doing enough or
Speaker 1: whether I am enough, but simply because growing is what
Speaker 1: I do. Just as a rose seed grows, so do I.
Speaker 1: And I think that that that idea of being both
Speaker 1: content and ambitious is a really powerful thing that that
Speaker 1: I would love to be able to you know, to
Speaker 1: master or at least um do on a on a
Speaker 1: consistent basis. Yeah, that is such a great analogy. And
Speaker 1: I almost intended to end the interview with what you
Speaker 1: just said because it was so powerful. But I think
Speaker 1: it is that so many of us have this idea
Speaker 1: that it's dissatisfaction or unhappiness that provides the impetus for
Speaker 1: for growth or change, and that certainly is true. You
Speaker 1: can't deny that that is one of them. But I
Speaker 1: like what you said. I think I actually go further,
Speaker 1: and I think it's not just what you do or
Speaker 1: what a rose does, but I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: what the universe does. Right. It's there is a clear
Speaker 1: bias towards growth and change and move forward that seems
Speaker 1: embedded in everything. And that's why I always get sort
Speaker 1: of because you've got sort of the contemplative practices like
Speaker 1: Buddhism that say, well, you know, desire or craving is
Speaker 1: the is the problem. And on one hand, I go, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of see that, and then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I see that that idea of growth is seems inherent,
Speaker 1: and I love the way you put that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. It's it's a very interesting balance to strike,
Speaker 1: and it's also I think a very difficult balance to
Speaker 1: maintain over the long run, you know, like in any
Speaker 1: given moment maybe we feel that way, but it's it's
Speaker 1: a challenge to maintain that day after day. Well, James,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for coming on the show. This has
Speaker 1: been a wonderful conversation. And I'll have links to your
Speaker 1: website and I will you know, I do and will
Speaker 1: continue to encourage anybody to go read them because I
Speaker 1: think you're very, like I said, very common sense, very practical,
Speaker 1: and and things are presented in a in a in
Speaker 1: a way that it's easy to take something powerful away.
Speaker 1: So thanks so much for coming on the show. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me. I um, I
Speaker 1: hate to leave people without anything. So if they you know,
Speaker 1: obviously they're welcome to stop by the website if they like,
Speaker 1: but if they want more information about some of the
Speaker 1: habit stuff that we talked about, specifically, like I have
Speaker 1: a couple of exercises. There's this tea chart exercise. It's
Speaker 1: relatively useful for building new habits um and a couple
Speaker 1: other ideas. I put them all on a little guide
Speaker 1: and slowly free. They can download it at James clear
Speaker 1: dot com slash habits, so if you feel like checking
Speaker 1: out more, yeah, feel free to pop over there and
Speaker 1: give it a look. Excellent and I'll link to that
Speaker 1: also in our show notes. Well, thanks, James, have a
Speaker 1: great afternoon, sure thing, all right? Take care bye? All right,
Speaker 1: you bet bye. You can learn more about James Clear
Speaker 1: and this podcast at one you feed dot net slash
Speaker 1: Clear