Speaker 1: It was a few years ago, and suddenly a bunch
Speaker 1: of people I knew, entrepreneurs, creative types, coaches, and players
Speaker 1: were all quoting from the same book, Atomic Habits, about
Speaker 1: tiny changes producing remarkable results. Ideas like that really connect
Speaker 1: with me because consistent, continuous improvement and growth. That's a
Speaker 1: huge daily focus for me. So my guest today is
Speaker 1: the author of Atomic Habits, number one New York Times bestseller,
Speaker 1: close to ten million copies sold in fifty languages. James
Speaker 1: Clear is a brilliant guy, great communicator, and an ex
Speaker 1: college athlete. This conversation with James was a year in
Speaker 1: the making, but worth the way. James has the best
Speaker 1: advice I've ever heard. Specific ways to gradually build good
Speaker 1: habits that can age beliefs about ourselves who we are
Speaker 1: or want to become, and how to recognize and reverse
Speaker 1: bad habits, specific ways to reshape behaviors. We also talk
Speaker 1: about altering social media habits, something a lot of us
Speaker 1: wrestle with. How curating your social feeds helps direct your
Speaker 1: future thoughts in positive ways. And James is an expert
Speaker 1: on productivity hacks, on doing more in less time and
Speaker 1: not feeling overwhelmed. There's so many ideas and tools in
Speaker 1: his book and on James clear dot com. So, with
Speaker 1: the year wrapping up and a new one approaching, all
Speaker 1: the evaluation and pledges to improve yourself that go with that,
Speaker 1: there's no better way to wrap up season five of
Speaker 1: Fouler Who You Got than a fun, far ranging, fast
Speaker 1: moving conversation with James Clear. Well, James, I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: for your time. The next five minutes that can to
Speaker 1: be very useful and important for people, But more importantly,
Speaker 1: they're also going to get people to go to your
Speaker 1: weekly email newsletter and your Instagram feed and of course
Speaker 1: read or reread atomic habits. There's so much to cover
Speaker 1: that we'll try to hit the highlights. But but let's
Speaker 1: start with the new year that's approaching means that people
Speaker 1: are going to be focusing on self improvement. But new
Speaker 1: year's resolutions, I speak to myself too notoriously ineffective. They
Speaker 1: don't last long. So give us some some concrete tools
Speaker 1: and tips for how to make new habits stick in
Speaker 1: the new year. Sure, so, um well, first pleasure to
Speaker 1: talk to you, Thanks the opportunity. I uh so, I
Speaker 1: kind of have two things that come to mind immediately
Speaker 1: So the first is that a lot of the time
Speaker 1: when we start with making behavior change or trying to
Speaker 1: make some kind of improvement, we think about and I
Speaker 1: think it's a fairly natural way to do it. We
Speaker 1: think about the results we want to achieve. So I
Speaker 1: want to lose forty pounds, or I want to make
Speaker 1: more money or be more productive or whatever finishing a
Speaker 1: half marathon, and then we come up with a plan
Speaker 1: for doing that, so you've got results, and then you
Speaker 1: have a plan, a strategy, and we kind of implicitly assume,
Speaker 1: you know, if I'm able to achieve this thing, or
Speaker 1: if I can follow through on this, then I'll be
Speaker 1: the kind of person that I want to be, or
Speaker 1: I'll you know, I'll be more of the person I
Speaker 1: hope I could be. And my encouragement is often to
Speaker 1: flip that on its head and to start and say,
Speaker 1: let's start by asking ourselves who is the type of
Speaker 1: person that I wish to become or what is the
Speaker 1: type of identity that I hope to reinforce? And you
Speaker 1: start there and then you build habits that reinforce that
Speaker 1: desired identity. So, no, doing one push up does not
Speaker 1: transform your body, but it does cast a vote for
Speaker 1: on the type of person who doesn't miss workouts and
Speaker 1: no writing one sentences not finished the novel, but it
Speaker 1: does cast a vote for I'm a writer. And I
Speaker 1: think this is the real reason that habits matter. Like
Speaker 1: the truer, deeper reason is that every action you take
Speaker 1: is like a vote for the type of person you
Speaker 1: wish to become. And so small habits seem fairly insignificant
Speaker 1: on any given day or any particular instant, but they
Speaker 1: actually reinforce being that kind of person, and they give
Speaker 1: you evidence that this is part of your story. They
Speaker 1: give you something to take pride in, and once you
Speaker 1: take pride in that aspect of your identity, it becomes
Speaker 1: easier to fall through on it. You know, like, if
Speaker 1: you're the kind of person who takes pride in the
Speaker 1: size of your biceps, you like never skip ourm day
Speaker 1: at the gym, you know, if you take pride in
Speaker 1: how your hair looks, you have like this really complicated
Speaker 1: hair routine that you follow every day. And so what
Speaker 1: you're really hoping to do is to try to encourage
Speaker 1: that process a little bit, and maybe this year, rather
Speaker 1: than worrying so much about the results, we can focus
Speaker 1: a little bit more on the identity that we want
Speaker 1: to reinforce in the habits that can help us get there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what the world needs as much as anything right now
Speaker 1: is kindness, compassion, empathy. So if I want to shape
Speaker 1: my identity to improve the habit of I want to
Speaker 1: be a person that listens better, is more tuned in,
Speaker 1: is more kind, is more compassionate. Doing the things that
Speaker 1: people have those quality do is what you write about
Speaker 1: being very important. It's sort of what would a kind,
Speaker 1: compassionate person do, Let's do more of that. I actually
Speaker 1: think questions like that are useful to carry around in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. I find questions more powerful than advice.
Speaker 1: You know, advice is kind of brittle because it's very
Speaker 1: context dependent. It's even somebody who's been there and done
Speaker 1: exactly what you want to do, their situation was different
Speaker 1: or the timing was different, and so you know, it's
Speaker 1: easy for that advice to fall flat or to not
Speaker 1: work quite as well as you had hoped. But if
Speaker 1: you have the right question, then you can walk around
Speaker 1: and you can ask yourself, like you said, you know,
Speaker 1: what does a kind person does a compassionate person do? Well?
Speaker 1: The answer will arise naturally as you go through the situation,
Speaker 1: or what would a healthy person do? That's an interesting
Speaker 1: question to kind of carry around with you if you're
Speaker 1: trying to build a better fitness habit and so on,
Speaker 1: um on that same theme of questions, I think, and
Speaker 1: this is kind of where you're getting at or the
Speaker 1: direction you're moving in. Any way, we start by asking ourselves,
Speaker 1: who's the type of person I want to be? What
Speaker 1: is the kind of identity I want to reinforce? And
Speaker 1: then the natural next question is like, Okay, I kind
Speaker 1: of have a better idea of that, or I know
Speaker 1: what I'd like to achieve, but how do I actually
Speaker 1: do that? And this is one of my kind of
Speaker 1: like gripes or complaints about a lot of self help
Speaker 1: books or a lot of how two books, is that
Speaker 1: they say they're how to, but they're actually what to.
Speaker 1: They tell you what to think, like don't doubt yourself,
Speaker 1: believe in your greatness, you know, fall through, show up,
Speaker 1: work out four times a week, but they don't actually
Speaker 1: to tell you how to do those things. And um,
Speaker 1: I wanted a time of habits to be both a
Speaker 1: how to and a what to book. And I think
Speaker 1: if we're asking that question, how do I actually do this?
Speaker 1: How do I actually fall through? They're roughly like four
Speaker 1: things that you want working for you if you're trying
Speaker 1: to build a good habit or break a bad one.
Speaker 1: So you want the habit to be obvious, like you
Speaker 1: want the cues that sparked to be obvious, available, visible,
Speaker 1: easy to see. You want the habit to be attractive.
Speaker 1: Some more attractive or appealing appealing a habit is the
Speaker 1: more motivating or enticing it is, more you feel compel
Speaker 1: to do it. You wanted to be easy, The easier,
Speaker 1: more convenient, frictionless, simple habit is, the more likely it
Speaker 1: is to be performed. And then the fourth and final
Speaker 1: thing is you wanted to be satisfying, more satisfying or
Speaker 1: enjoyable habit is. The more pleasurable or rewarding it is,
Speaker 1: the more likely are to fall through on it. And
Speaker 1: I call those the four laws of behavior. Change, make
Speaker 1: it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, to make
Speaker 1: it satisfying. And if you're sitting there and you're thinking, man,
Speaker 1: you know, I how this habit? I've just been procrastinating
Speaker 1: on it, or I got this thing I keep trying
Speaker 1: to do it, but I, you know, only do it
Speaker 1: every now and then I'm not falling through very consistently.
Speaker 1: You can just go through those four steps and ask yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, how can I make the behavior more obvious?
Speaker 1: How can I make this more attractive? How can I
Speaker 1: make it easier? How can I make it more satisfying?
Speaker 1: And the answers to those questions again a good question
Speaker 1: to carry around with you will reveal the answer as
Speaker 1: you're kind of going through life. So, um, I think
Speaker 1: start with identity, and then how do we actually do that?
Speaker 1: We kind of have these four different stages or four
Speaker 1: phases that we can implement and apply. I cringe. Whant
Speaker 1: to hear someone say with my luck filling the blank
Speaker 1: and they catastrophize and sort of expect the worst to happen.
Speaker 1: And that kind of a mindset can lead to bad habits.
Speaker 1: And what you write about in Atomic Habits It's so
Speaker 1: important is that positive habits are great, but avoiding negative
Speaker 1: habits might be even more important, in the way that
Speaker 1: avoiding terrible decisions might be even more important than making
Speaker 1: a bunch of good ones because they're so life altering,
Speaker 1: and that bad habits can can increase by one percent
Speaker 1: and send you way off course in a hurry. So
Speaker 1: what's the best way to check that, be aware of
Speaker 1: it and prevent it. Yeah, that's a good question. You know,
Speaker 1: some of the things you mentioned there are really difficult,
Speaker 1: because there I would kind of have two buckets. There's
Speaker 1: like habits of thought and habits of action. Habits of
Speaker 1: action you know, doing to push up or meditating for
Speaker 1: one minute or whatever the stuff like that. Um, you
Speaker 1: can plan for it a little bit more. Habits of thought, Man,
Speaker 1: they're so rapid. They arise so quickly. You're having to
Speaker 1: come station with somebody and they make an off and
Speaker 1: comment and suddenly you're you know, judgmental or self loathing
Speaker 1: or you know, just like these feelings arise like pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: And I don't have a great way to like stop
Speaker 1: a thought from happening. But I do think that there
Speaker 1: are ways that you can optimize your environment to try
Speaker 1: to prime things to be in a better position, to
Speaker 1: try to like stack the deck, so to speak, in
Speaker 1: your favor. And one thing you can do is just
Speaker 1: walk into the rooms where you spend most of your
Speaker 1: time each day, your office, you're living room, in your kitchen,
Speaker 1: and look around and ask yourself, what behaviors are obvious here,
Speaker 1: what behaviors are easy here? What is this space design
Speaker 1: to encourage? And you'll start to notice a few things
Speaker 1: that you could tweak and design and improve, you know,
Speaker 1: like when I um one bad habit, for example, that
Speaker 1: a lot of people feel like they have is checking
Speaker 1: their phone too much, or maybe browsing Instagram or Twitter
Speaker 1: all the time or whatever. And I fall into that
Speaker 1: just like everybody else. And so when I wanted to
Speaker 1: start reading a little bit more where I did two things.
Speaker 1: The first thing I did was I downloaded Audible for
Speaker 1: audio books, and I moved it to the home screen
Speaker 1: on my phone. I put it kind of in the
Speaker 1: home bar, and I took all the other apps and
Speaker 1: moved into the second screen. Now that's a really minor thing.
Speaker 1: It's not going to radically transform your behavior, but it's
Speaker 1: a subtle reminder each time I opened up my phone, Hey,
Speaker 1: the one thing I want to be doing is spending
Speaker 1: more time reading. And I sprinkled books around like the
Speaker 1: physical environment, you know. I had a bunch of my
Speaker 1: desk and some by the bed, and some of the
Speaker 1: living room and so on. But then the second thing
Speaker 1: that I did was I started to leave my phone
Speaker 1: in another room until lunch each day. And that doesn't
Speaker 1: work for everybody's job. And I can't do it all
Speaker 1: the time, you know, I can't do I probably do
Speaker 1: it maybe eight percent of days, but man, whenever I
Speaker 1: do it, I almost always have a better morning. And
Speaker 1: the thing that's funny is that if it's next to me,
Speaker 1: I'll check my phone every three minutes, just like everybody else.
Speaker 1: But if I have a home office, and so if
Speaker 1: I leave it in another room, it's only like thirty
Speaker 1: seconds away, but I never go get it, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: did I want it or not? You know, Like, in
Speaker 1: one sense, I wanted it bad enough to check it
Speaker 1: every three seconds when it was next to me, But
Speaker 1: in another sense, I never wanted it so bad that
Speaker 1: I would walk thirty seconds down the hallway and go
Speaker 1: get it. And there are a lot of behaviors in
Speaker 1: life that are like that. They'll kind of curtail themselves
Speaker 1: to the desired degree if you just increase a little
Speaker 1: bit of friction between you and the action, increase the
Speaker 1: number of the number of steps. And so I think
Speaker 1: that's one thing that you can do when you're thinking
Speaker 1: about some of your bad habits are just maybe some
Speaker 1: of the time that you're spending in a way that
Speaker 1: you'd prefer to spend it in a different way. How
Speaker 1: do you increase a little bit of friction, how do
Speaker 1: you introduce a little bit of distance between you and
Speaker 1: the behavior. That's a great point. Um, Yeah, I try
Speaker 1: to furiously protect I don't know the succeed the first
Speaker 1: minutes of the day. I can't go till lunch without
Speaker 1: checking the phone. But when I get up in the morning,
Speaker 1: whether it's breathing, drinking water, stretching, and certainly not bombarding
Speaker 1: my senses with with devices and input, I don't turn
Speaker 1: on the TV things like that. And now many people
Speaker 1: listening or going to find that's the most radical confrontational
Speaker 1: suggestion you could possibly. I can't do it out my phone,
Speaker 1: but you you've actually practiced that. You you will uninstalled
Speaker 1: the Instagram app. I've heard you say, just to avoid
Speaker 1: scrolling and falling prey to the evil algorithms that dictator
Speaker 1: patterns of right now. Actually, I uninstalled Instagram about six
Speaker 1: months ago and I haven't put it back on, and
Speaker 1: it's been really good. I uh, I used the desktop
Speaker 1: app so I can log on like when I'm on
Speaker 1: you know, my computer or something, but I'm not sitting
Speaker 1: at my desk all the time, whereas my phone is
Speaker 1: with me constantly, and so I don't know it. Just
Speaker 1: for some reason, that little shift, it feels like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm using the service the amount that I would
Speaker 1: like to use it, rather than just checking it all
Speaker 1: the time. You're an athlete. We'll get to your college
Speaker 1: baseball career and how that puts you on this path.
Speaker 1: Athletes connect with atomic habits and coaches maybe coaches first
Speaker 1: and then athletes. But when the book came out around
Speaker 1: ninety and I kept running into teams and coaches who
Speaker 1: were referring to your book and encouraging their players to
Speaker 1: read it. I mean week after week on the college
Speaker 1: football circuit every end of this and the players would
Speaker 1: talk about it because I had read it, and we
Speaker 1: would have part of our little production meeting would be
Speaker 1: about your book and what they were getting out of it.
Speaker 1: So that has to be very gratifying to you that
Speaker 1: in a world of sports where or habits are are
Speaker 1: so much and it's a result oriented thing, but really
Speaker 1: the smart people focus on the process and not the
Speaker 1: results that you're connected with so many coaches and athletes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for sharing that. It's fun. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: get to hear all the stories a lot of the time,
Speaker 1: they like don't make their way back to me or whatever.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's cool. It's really kind of wild and surprising,
Speaker 1: and it really nice to be able to create something
Speaker 1: people find useful. Um, you know, like that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of my ultimate objective is is this contributing is my
Speaker 1: little contribution to the you know, pile of knowledge for humanity?
Speaker 1: Is that doing something? You know? Is it like carving
Speaker 1: out a little niche in the universe and making a
Speaker 1: positive difference. And it's fun to see the book doing that.
Speaker 1: And as a former athlete, um that it feels cool
Speaker 1: to be able to contribute to that particular sphere. What
Speaker 1: kinds of work have you done with athletes or teams?
Speaker 1: And what's what's the most powerful thing you've heard back
Speaker 1: from from someone about how it's it's helped them in
Speaker 1: a really tough, challenging competitive world. Well, I spoke with
Speaker 1: the now the Cleveland Guardians. They were the Indians back
Speaker 1: when I went talked to them, and they've had one
Speaker 1: of the best records in the American League for the
Speaker 1: last couple of years now, and I don't think we
Speaker 1: can attribute very much of that to my book universe,
Speaker 1: so I know, right, yeah, but it's fun. You know,
Speaker 1: it's fun to contribute to a winning program and to
Speaker 1: see kind of where they've been in the path they're on.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I've you know, most of the most of
Speaker 1: the teams have received copies of the book at this point.
Speaker 1: A lot of those sports performance or mental performance coaches
Speaker 1: that work with some of the professional teams, they love
Speaker 1: the book, and I talked to them like fairly frequently. Um,
Speaker 1: you're right, it it's kind of it's funny. It's like
Speaker 1: the coaches like it, and then the players like kind
Speaker 1: of asked to read it, or like parents like it
Speaker 1: and their kids are kind of asked to read it.
Speaker 1: Whether they enjoy it or not, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it's uh, I don't know, it's fun. You mentioned something
Speaker 1: a minute ago about how it's a very results oriented business,
Speaker 1: and sports is perhaps more that than almost anything else
Speaker 1: because it's so easy to measure did you win or
Speaker 1: did you lose? And I am a very results oriented
Speaker 1: person and pretty much everything that's in the book is
Speaker 1: written as a reminder to me to stop for focusing
Speaker 1: so much or worrying so much about the results. Think
Speaker 1: of a little bit more about the system, Stop worrying
Speaker 1: so much about the goals, think a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the type of person you're trying to become. And um,
Speaker 1: it helps to kind of pull myself back to center.
Speaker 1: And I do think it's true that if you genuinely
Speaker 1: care about the goal, if you really care about the results,
Speaker 1: you'll focus on the system. You know, this is one
Speaker 1: of the core ideas of the book, is that you
Speaker 1: don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall
Speaker 1: to the level of your systems. And so often in life, man,
Speaker 1: it's so easy to focus on the outcome. It's so
Speaker 1: easy to focus on the result. And results do matter,
Speaker 1: but they aren't the thing that you'd be getting most
Speaker 1: of your focus. I mean, that's like Bill Walsh's famous line,
Speaker 1: you know he wants multiple Super Bowls. In his line
Speaker 1: is always the score takes care of itself. And that's true.
Speaker 1: If you're committed to the system, if you're focused on
Speaker 1: building a better process day in and day out, you
Speaker 1: end up with much better outputs. It's one of these
Speaker 1: like interesting or almost ironic things about life. Our outcomes
Speaker 1: in life are offering a lagging measure of the habits
Speaker 1: that precede them. So your knowledge is like a lagging
Speaker 1: measure of your reading and learning habits, or your bank
Speaker 1: account is a lagging measure of your financial habits, or
Speaker 1: even like stupid stuff like you know the amount of
Speaker 1: clutter in your garage the lagging measure of your cleaning habits.
Speaker 1: And we also badly want our results to change, but
Speaker 1: the results are not actually the thing that needs to change.
Speaker 1: It's like fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you if you think about like your goals
Speaker 1: are what you're optimizing for. That's like the target, the
Speaker 1: thing you're shooting for. And then your system is the
Speaker 1: collection of daily habits that you follow. If there's ever
Speaker 1: a gap between your goal and your system, if there's
Speaker 1: ever a gap between your desired outcome and your daily habits,
Speaker 1: your daily habits will always win. Like almost by definition,
Speaker 1: your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results.
Speaker 1: So whatever system you're running, whatever collection of habits you're following,
Speaker 1: they're kind of carrying you almost inevitably to the outcomes
Speaker 1: that you have. And it's not that habits are the
Speaker 1: only thing that influence outcomes in life. You know, you
Speaker 1: got luck and randomness. Sometimes the bul just takes a
Speaker 1: bad bounce, but they are the element of the situation
Speaker 1: that's under your control, and by definition, luck and randomness
Speaker 1: are not in your control. And the only reasonable rational
Speaker 1: approach in life is to focus on the element to
Speaker 1: the situation that you can control. So for all of
Speaker 1: those reasons, I think the collection of habits that you
Speaker 1: have is the system you're running, and that's the thing
Speaker 1: that deserves most of your attention day in and day out.
Speaker 1: I want to repeat that because it's one of the
Speaker 1: core principles, and for a lot of people who read
Speaker 1: Atomic Habits, it is kind of an aha moment. You
Speaker 1: do not rise to the level of your goals. You
Speaker 1: fall to the level of your systems. And I'm surprised
Speaker 1: to hear that you're you're that goal oriented and that
Speaker 1: that not that system orient and that the book helps
Speaker 1: remind yourself that I kind of preach against goals, James.
Speaker 1: I think I just don't value concrete goals as much
Speaker 1: as I do the path the process. I think that
Speaker 1: that if you think about paths and that destinations or
Speaker 1: not even paths, but just directions instead of destinations, because
Speaker 1: the path is sometimes hard to define or even find.
Speaker 1: But if you had any direction, to me, that's always
Speaker 1: been more powerful than than the end result. And uh
Speaker 1: I get that. You come from from that sports world
Speaker 1: where it's all about the score. You are what the
Speaker 1: score is. You know, you're not defined by anything else
Speaker 1: than that. But how cool that you've you've come to
Speaker 1: this and it's a reminder for yourself what's important. Pretty
Speaker 1: much everything I write is a reminder to me. Um I,
Speaker 1: uh I like the term. I like how you phrase
Speaker 1: their path or direction. I think a lot about trajectory. Now,
Speaker 1: that's like kind of the thing that I try to
Speaker 1: come back to. It's not we have all these measurements,
Speaker 1: all these analytics, all these numbers for determining our current position.
Speaker 1: You know, there's so much discussion about position in life.
Speaker 1: What's the number on the scale, what's the current record
Speaker 1: of the team, what's the stock price or of the
Speaker 1: quarterly earnings. We have like all these ways of analyzing
Speaker 1: and measuring our current position. And then if the number
Speaker 1: doesn't come out right. If it's not what you're hoping for,
Speaker 1: it's not where you're hoping to be. There's often a
Speaker 1: lot of judgment that comes as a result of that.
Speaker 1: You know, like all this coach is washed up and
Speaker 1: like their past their prime. Or you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like a failure because I didn't achieve what I said
Speaker 1: I wanted to achieve. Or we've been working on this
Speaker 1: aught up for six months and it's still a mess
Speaker 1: and we haven't shipped it yet. Like there are all
Speaker 1: these feelings and judgments that come as a result of
Speaker 1: analyzing your current position, and my like current suggestion or
Speaker 1: current focus is saying, hey, let's stop worrying so much
Speaker 1: about our current position and focus a little bit more
Speaker 1: on our current trajectory. Are we getting one percent better
Speaker 1: or one percent worse? Are we improving or have we flatlined?
Speaker 1: Because if you're on a good trajectory, all you need
Speaker 1: is time. You know, like time will magnify whatever you
Speaker 1: feed it. So if you have good habits, time becomes
Speaker 1: your ally and every day that goes by kind of
Speaker 1: getting a little bit better position. And if you have
Speaker 1: bad habits, if you're not a bad trajectory, then time
Speaker 1: becomes your enemy, and every day that clicks by, I
Speaker 1: dig the whole a little bit deeper. And so I've
Speaker 1: started to come to this feeling that it's much more
Speaker 1: about the trajectory and returning to that focus, to that
Speaker 1: path or that direction as you called it, and much
Speaker 1: less about the result on any particular day. Yeah, that's powerful.
Speaker 1: I love the traject because there's a three dimensional quality
Speaker 1: to it, right, I mean path and directions kind of
Speaker 1: you think of a flat space. Trajectory can can can
Speaker 1: imply and signify even more. Um So let's go back
Speaker 1: to the way you start atomic habits and I'll just
Speaker 1: quickly a paraphrase and not make you relive the details.
Speaker 1: But sophomore year high school, you're hitting the face with
Speaker 1: a baseball bat. It's a freak accident, but it's frightening, terrifying.
Speaker 1: I think you had multiple skull fractures. Both I sockets
Speaker 1: were broken, ended up almost losing your life being in
Speaker 1: a coma, and it's an excruciatingly long, challenging rehab and
Speaker 1: it basically ruins your high school baseball career. Who what
Speaker 1: gave you the belief James that after playing as you
Speaker 1: as you talked about eleven innings of varsity baseball that
Speaker 1: you still had some baseball in you and you could
Speaker 1: go to college and become an outstanding player at Dennis,
Speaker 1: And which you did. Where did that come from? Um?
Speaker 1: Probably family, I guess I was gonna point to to
Speaker 1: one particular area. Um, you know, some of it is
Speaker 1: just like luck, and some of it's maybe my personality
Speaker 1: or makeup, but a lot of it was family. I
Speaker 1: think mostly my dad and my grandpa, my mom. Um,
Speaker 1: those are people that played like a really crucial role
Speaker 1: in my recovery. And um, they're very positive people, you know.
Speaker 1: My my grandpa in particular, was very positive. And I think, uh,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, even though it was like, hey, this
Speaker 1: terrible thing happened to me, Like one of the first
Speaker 1: things I said when I woke up out of the
Speaker 1: coma was I never asked for this. Um. I kind
Speaker 1: of was able to move on from that, like fairly quickly.
Speaker 1: Even while I was still recovering. I couldn't drive a car,
Speaker 1: you know, my first physical therapy sessions, I was practicing
Speaker 1: basic motor patterns like walking a straight line. But I
Speaker 1: remember being in like a fairly good mood despite that,
Speaker 1: and so I don't know. I I think somehow keeping
Speaker 1: my mental state in a positive place was like a
Speaker 1: really important part of the early process. And then there
Speaker 1: also was just a lot baked into it. You know,
Speaker 1: my dad was a very good baseball player. He played professionally,
Speaker 1: he played the minor leagues for the St. Lois Cardinals,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, my whole life, I grew up
Speaker 1: looking at that and thinking about that and thinking about
Speaker 1: how cool WO be to play professionally too, And you know,
Speaker 1: I was never as good as him and didn't end
Speaker 1: up having that kind of career, But I do feel
Speaker 1: like I fulfilled my potential. And I'd say, like maybe
Speaker 1: that part was like kind of my personality. And how
Speaker 1: much of that's genetic and how much of that's learned,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but that's definitely something that I feel
Speaker 1: like has expressed itself, not just in my sports career,
Speaker 1: but also in the other things that I try. If
Speaker 1: I attempt something and like I'm serious about it, who
Speaker 1: knows where I'll end up. Like I'm not saying I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be the best in the world at it, but
Speaker 1: I want to feel like I squeezed everything I could
Speaker 1: out of it. You know, I want to feel like
Speaker 1: I maximized my potential, and as long as I feel
Speaker 1: like I gave it my best shot, then I'm pretty
Speaker 1: satisfied before we're out at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: And it's almost always been the case that my early
Speaker 1: results are never that great. Like, you know, I was
Speaker 1: never the fastest promote, that most death let person on
Speaker 1: any team that I played on. But I stuck with
Speaker 1: it for a long time. And if you keep getting
Speaker 1: better each day, and you keep trying to squeeze out
Speaker 1: all of your potential, you can end up in a
Speaker 1: pretty good place if you're persistent. I remember my dad
Speaker 1: telling me that that we at the end of each
Speaker 1: baseball season early on and throughout high school and so on,
Speaker 1: we would sit on our back deck and talk about
Speaker 1: how the season went, and he would always say something
Speaker 1: along the lines of like, you know, like more guys
Speaker 1: are gonna drop off at the end of this year,
Speaker 1: Like this is gonna be the last year they play.
Speaker 1: You know, they won't show up again next year. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting how like much that probably played a role
Speaker 1: in my career that like I just kept being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play again next year, and if you keep
Speaker 1: showing up, you know, after a fifteen or seventeen years
Speaker 1: or something, you're like, yeah, you ended up having a
Speaker 1: decent career. And I was kind of one of those
Speaker 1: guys that started sort of slow, but just continue to
Speaker 1: get better and better, and um, I ended up feeling like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a really good career. At the end of it.
Speaker 1: Baseball was a really important part of my life. I'm
Speaker 1: really glad that I had it, and I'm glad I
Speaker 1: didn't lose it after the injury because it ended up
Speaker 1: playing any and more crucial role after that. Yeah. Just
Speaker 1: showing up, right, just showing up and and improving that.
Speaker 1: That's that's a lot of what the book is about. So, Dennis,
Speaker 1: and you're the Male Athlete of the Year, and I'm
Speaker 1: proud to see that ESPN recognize you is an Academic
Speaker 1: All American. That's a pretty big deal. So you know,
Speaker 1: my company that same Academic All America team. So I
Speaker 1: was listening on that team under the D three players
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And then Buster Posey was selected as the
Speaker 1: Player of the Year that year. Four years later, he
Speaker 1: was playing for the Giants and I was starting a blog,
Speaker 1: So we had like very different trajectories after that, but
Speaker 1: for that one year we were together, I know, I
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun with it. You know, I
Speaker 1: feel like the person who has the most fun ends
Speaker 1: up winning at the end of the day. And um,
Speaker 1: it was Baseball was just a huge part of my
Speaker 1: life at that time. And I was really lucky to
Speaker 1: have great teammates. Teammates are kind of like family. You
Speaker 1: don't get to pick them, but I just like, I
Speaker 1: got really lucky with the set that I had. And Uh,
Speaker 1: it was definitely very formative experience, and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the lessons I learned both building habits at
Speaker 1: practice each day and in the gym and so on,
Speaker 1: and just like relationship wise and competitiveness wise, a lot
Speaker 1: of that stuff has been like copied and pasted over
Speaker 1: into my entrepreneurial career and has continued to serve me well.
Speaker 1: We share a passion for fitness. UM, the therapeutic value
Speaker 1: of it, the mental health benefits as well as a
Speaker 1: physical UM. I've heard you say that workout can can
Speaker 1: change the course of your day. And if you can
Speaker 1: change the course of a day, you can you can
Speaker 1: change the course of a longer period of time. UM.
Speaker 1: I get called Jim obsessed, and I said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: let's let's just refame it as wellness obsessed. You know,
Speaker 1: fitness to me as wellness and longevity. So for people
Speaker 1: that have a hard time building a gym habit, and
Speaker 1: don't roll your eyes out there. I know I talk
Speaker 1: a lot about the gym, but it is important to
Speaker 1: me and um and to you too. So what what
Speaker 1: can people do aside from just showing up to make
Speaker 1: the habit stick and make it not seem like drudge
Speaker 1: because you right, fun, let's not downplay that. If if
Speaker 1: you can be active in some way, if you can
Speaker 1: not think about lifting weights but just being active, can't
Speaker 1: we all find something that's active that we enjoy. Oh.
Speaker 1: I think that's a huge element of any habit that
Speaker 1: you're trying to build. You know, the truth is a
Speaker 1: lot of the time people pick up habits because they
Speaker 1: kind of feel like it's what they are supposed to do,
Speaker 1: It's what society is encouraging them to do, or their
Speaker 1: parents or their friends are encouraging them to do. It's
Speaker 1: not actually what they want. But you know, there's not
Speaker 1: a thousand ways to do anything in life, but there's
Speaker 1: almost always more than one way. And so I think,
Speaker 1: for whatever habit you're trying to build, ask yourself, what's
Speaker 1: the version of this habit that brings me the most
Speaker 1: joy or makes me the most excited. Because if you're
Speaker 1: excited about it, if you're interested, if you're curious, if
Speaker 1: you're engaged, that is like almost always the first huge
Speaker 1: hurdle to clear, because if you're excited, then there are
Speaker 1: endless ways to improve. But if you're not excited, if
Speaker 1: it does feel like drudgery or like a chore, then
Speaker 1: even the obvious improvements are going to feel like a
Speaker 1: hassle because you don't really feel like doing it. You
Speaker 1: want to be there. So I I like training with weights,
Speaker 1: but not everybody wants to train like a bodybuilder like
Speaker 1: some people want to be you know, kayaking or rock
Speaker 1: climbing or going for a run or cycling with a
Speaker 1: friend or whatever whatever that version of fitness looks like
Speaker 1: to you. I think, try to find the one that
Speaker 1: makes you most excited or interested. As a real kind
Speaker 1: of extreme example of this, I think probably one of
Speaker 1: the greatest fitness apps that was ever built was Pokemon
Speaker 1: Go because it was like a back door to getting
Speaker 1: people would go walk like ten miles a day just
Speaker 1: to try to find a Pokemon. It wasn't a fitness
Speaker 1: app on the surface, but man, I got people moving.
Speaker 1: And that's a good example of like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: like I just found this really fun and so it
Speaker 1: got me digging around the park for three hours. So, um,
Speaker 1: find the version of the habit that's exciting to you.
Speaker 1: I think that's the first step. Second thing, though, and
Speaker 1: I do think this is particularly it's not necessarily unique
Speaker 1: to fit us habits, but it is very common with
Speaker 1: fitness habits, which is man, you know, especially for ambitious people,
Speaker 1: sit around and you think what you want to achieve
Speaker 1: and becomes really easy to bite off more than you
Speaker 1: can chew. And I don't know why we're this way,
Speaker 1: but we are so focused on finding the perfect diet
Speaker 1: plan or the best workout program, the ideal sales strategy.
Speaker 1: We're so focused on optimizing that we don't give ourselves
Speaker 1: permission to show up in a small way. And this
Speaker 1: is one of the strategies I talked about in the book,
Speaker 1: which I call the two minute rule and says, take
Speaker 1: whatever habit you're trying to build and scale it down
Speaker 1: to something. It takes two minutes or less to do
Speaker 1: so read thirty books a year becomes read one page,
Speaker 1: or do yoga four days a week becomes take out
Speaker 1: my yoga mat. Now, sometimes people resist this a little bit,
Speaker 1: so like, okay, buddy, you know, I know the real
Speaker 1: goal isn't just to take my yoga mat out. I
Speaker 1: know I'm actually trying to do the workout. So this
Speaker 1: is some kind of mental trick. And I know it's
Speaker 1: a trick. Why would I fall for it? Basically, but
Speaker 1: I have this guy. This guy's name is Itch, I
Speaker 1: mentioned in Atomic Habits, and he ended up losing over
Speaker 1: a hundred pounds and he's kept off for more than
Speaker 1: a decade. And when he first started going to the gym,
Speaker 1: he had this strange little rule for himself where he
Speaker 1: wasn't allowed to stay for longer than five minutes. So
Speaker 1: get in the car, drive to the gym, get out,
Speaker 1: do half an exercise, get back in the car, drive home.
Speaker 1: And it sounds ridiculous, you know, it sounds silly. You're like,
Speaker 1: this is obviously not gonna work. But if you take
Speaker 1: a step back, you realize that he was mastering the
Speaker 1: art of showing up up. And so I think This
Speaker 1: is like this deep truth about habits, which is a
Speaker 1: habit must be established before it can be improved. You know,
Speaker 1: it has to become the standard in your life before
Speaker 1: you can scale it up and optimize it into something more.
Speaker 1: So I think probably a couple of things we've mentioned
Speaker 1: already all tie into this. Pick a habit that excites you,
Speaker 1: that you're interested in, that feels like it's a good
Speaker 1: fit of fun fit for you. Um use the two
Speaker 1: men a rule or something similar to scale it down
Speaker 1: and make it as easy as possible to master the
Speaker 1: art of showing up, to become the type of person
Speaker 1: that goes consistently, and then tie that into the identity
Speaker 1: piece that we talked about earlier. You know, who is
Speaker 1: the type of person that doesn't miss workouts? What happens
Speaker 1: do they have? Who's the type of person you're hoping
Speaker 1: to become. What would a healthy person do here? Those questions,
Speaker 1: those like um uh, forms of identity, Those are interesting
Speaker 1: to think about it. And ultimately I think the the
Speaker 1: ultimate version of this is kind of where you're at now, Chris,
Speaker 1: which is you take pride in it, you know, like
Speaker 1: you take pride in being that kind of person who
Speaker 1: focuses on wellness or who is fit or who prioritizes
Speaker 1: that in their life. And because it's an important part
Speaker 1: of your story, because it's an aspect of your identity,
Speaker 1: it's kind of easier to show up each week. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean the workouts are easy, it doesn't mean it
Speaker 1: always feels like you want to do it. But you
Speaker 1: don't have to motivate yourself to go to the gym
Speaker 1: in the same way that somebody's just getting started does.
Speaker 1: Because it's part of your story, You're like, no, this
Speaker 1: is just like who I am. This is something that
Speaker 1: I do each week, and it's important to me. And
Speaker 1: hope believe those little steps can get you started and
Speaker 1: set you on that path to becoming that kind of
Speaker 1: person I read about Mitch. She puzzled me because I
Speaker 1: don't get it. Every day I get to work out,
Speaker 1: I don't have to work out. I view I view
Speaker 1: it as something that is great process or and I
Speaker 1: don't have fitness goals. I don't do it for anything
Speaker 1: other than I Actually I'm completely present in the gym,
Speaker 1: and that is a great hour, hour and a half,
Speaker 1: and that's that's its own reward for me. Beyond weight
Speaker 1: or aesthetics or anything else you achieve. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, um, I do think of myself as a
Speaker 1: disciplined person. I'm shitty at having the discipline to get
Speaker 1: better in Spanish. There's just something like that where you know,
Speaker 1: I speak it by living in Miami. I want to
Speaker 1: be fluent in it, and for some reason, I know
Speaker 1: what it takes to do that. I know it takes consistency.
Speaker 1: I know it takes practice and study and talking, and
Speaker 1: I just I am having a block with that. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody out there has something they'd like to do,
Speaker 1: they know sort of the roadmap to it that damn it.
Speaker 1: If it's just hard to execute day after day, I
Speaker 1: still have a lot. That's that's for I'm going to
Speaker 1: get better at it by finding ways too to show
Speaker 1: up every day, so you know, it's fascinating. My My
Speaker 1: best personal example for this is nutrition. So like if
Speaker 1: we say you got fitness and working out, you have sleep,
Speaker 1: and you have nutrition. That's kind of being the three
Speaker 1: like big pillars of of wellness or health. I was
Speaker 1: always pretty good. I was always great at prioritizing sleep, um,
Speaker 1: and I was always pretty good at at working out.
Speaker 1: But nutrition just eluded me for a long time, and
Speaker 1: I kind of got away with it when I was
Speaker 1: in my twenties. But then you start to get older
Speaker 1: and you're like, yeah, I can't quite like slide in
Speaker 1: the same way that I could before until you hit sixty, James,
Speaker 1: I want to tell you, so, I, Um, I tried
Speaker 1: a bunch of things, you know, I tried all the
Speaker 1: different types of diets or whatever. I tried, um uh,
Speaker 1: downloading apps like my Fitness Pal. I actually used my
Speaker 1: fitness but I didn't even use it for a single
Speaker 1: a whole day. I used it for a single meal,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is an enormous paint in
Speaker 1: the ask. There's no way I'm gonna be blocking my
Speaker 1: food to all this. So um. This was over a
Speaker 1: span of five, seven, you know, nine years, Like I
Speaker 1: was trying all kinds of different stuff, and I just
Speaker 1: never I don't know, I just always kind of reverted
Speaker 1: back to my normal way of eating. And over the
Speaker 1: last two years I finally have made like meaningful progress
Speaker 1: on it. And the thing that changed it was I
Speaker 1: hired a coach and he doesn't actually do even that much.
Speaker 1: He just there's a spreadsheet, so it's just a Google
Speaker 1: sheet where I log my meals. And the thing that
Speaker 1: helped a lot was, like many people, I eat a
Speaker 1: lot of the same things each week, Like there's probably
Speaker 1: twenty meals or thirty meals that are what I eat,
Speaker 1: like eight percent at the time. And once I logged
Speaker 1: those twenty or thirty in there, I could just copy
Speaker 1: and paste them in each day, and that made it
Speaker 1: was so much easier to track. And then um and
Speaker 1: then he sends me an email once a week to
Speaker 1: check in and see how things are going. And I
Speaker 1: don't know why, but that version spreadsheet, plus an email
Speaker 1: from a coach, that was the thing that got me
Speaker 1: to stick to tracking my calories and staying on track.
Speaker 1: And I'm not perfect with it, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: even worried about being perfect with it, but I bet
Speaker 1: of the weeks throughout the year, I'm on target. And
Speaker 1: that is so different than how it was before. And
Speaker 1: the point that I'm trying to get across here has
Speaker 1: actually nothing to do with new nutrition and tracking. Whatever.
Speaker 1: The point is, I wrote a book about the stuff.
Speaker 1: I know all the strategies. It's not like I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do right. So like if you're feeling like, man,
Speaker 1: I keep being told what to do, but I'm not
Speaker 1: falling through. Yeah. Same, you know, like there's so so
Speaker 1: don't feel like that that's like the core issue or
Speaker 1: that you're unique or in your struggle there. Um, it's
Speaker 1: just that I had to keep trying different lines of
Speaker 1: attack before I figured out one that fit and worked
Speaker 1: for my life. And I think this is generally how
Speaker 1: I think about habits and behavior change, which is there
Speaker 1: is no single best strategy for doing it. There is
Speaker 1: no one way to build habits. There's no one way
Speaker 1: to break a habit. There are many ways. And what
Speaker 1: I tried to do with atomic habits is lay all
Speaker 1: the tools out on the table and say, hey, here's
Speaker 1: here's a wrench, and here's a screwdriver, and here's a hammer,
Speaker 1: and your job. The thing you have to bring to
Speaker 1: it is a willingness to try things, a willingness to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna pick up a hammer today
Speaker 1: and see how that works. And then the next week
Speaker 1: maybe it's like, you know what, I'll try the screwdriver.
Speaker 1: And eventually you find the right tool for the job,
Speaker 1: You find the right thing for your situation. But it
Speaker 1: can take a while, and you know, like that has
Speaker 1: been true for me, just as it's true for everybody else.
Speaker 1: So I think that's just kind of if you're serious
Speaker 1: about change or serious about improvement, you also need to
Speaker 1: be serious about having this mindset of self experimentation, this
Speaker 1: philosophy of trying things out and of experimenting until you
Speaker 1: find the right solution for you. So that's just It
Speaker 1: doesn't make it easier, but that, like, that is just
Speaker 1: part of the process, and those things are hard. If
Speaker 1: you're saddled with the fear of failure, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're a perfectionist, you're afraid to fail, then you don't
Speaker 1: want to experiment you because you feel like, well, what
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work. Well, that's not the point. You
Speaker 1: You talk a lot about things that really stem from
Speaker 1: self awareness. You write the self awareness or lack of
Speaker 1: it is poison, and that reflection and review is sort
Speaker 1: of the antidote for that. Awareness to me is such
Speaker 1: a missing component and such an elemental thing for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. I don't think you can be a
Speaker 1: good leader if you're not aware. If you're not aware
Speaker 1: of what's going on around you, your people. With the problems.
Speaker 1: But but how do people sort of spark that kind
Speaker 1: of self awareness if they if they don't have it.
Speaker 1: If you're not self aware, you don't even aware that
Speaker 1: you're not aware. Yeah, it's a great question. It is crucial.
Speaker 1: And I again, this is all this stuff as reminders myself, right,
Speaker 1: so like I've made all these mistakes too, and self
Speaker 1: poorness is tricky. A lot of times you think you
Speaker 1: have it and you don't, and so like that, boy,
Speaker 1: that's really hard. You feel like, yeah, I know what's
Speaker 1: going on that you're actually missing the bigger picture. I
Speaker 1: think there are a couple of things that are involved.
Speaker 1: So the first is are you engaged at all? Like
Speaker 1: are you interested and curious? If you kind of checked out,
Speaker 1: then you're just sort of blind to all the things
Speaker 1: that are going on. So it's really hard to be
Speaker 1: self aware if you're not engaged um. And that can
Speaker 1: mean on like a personal level, that can just mean
Speaker 1: that you care about the thing, you care about the workout,
Speaker 1: or you care about the novel you're working on, you
Speaker 1: care about the project or whatever. But are you engaged um.
Speaker 1: And then ultimately, self awareness is the process of recognizing feedback.
Speaker 1: So sometimes the feedback comes and you don't recognize it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you miss it, you don't see it. Other times
Speaker 1: the feedback is not there. You're not getting the information
Speaker 1: at all. And so I think this is where the
Speaker 1: process of reflection review comes in and can be useful,
Speaker 1: which is it is a process for sourcing, for collecting,
Speaker 1: and for analyzing and noticing feedback. UM. I have a
Speaker 1: couple of different processes of reflection review. You can sort
Speaker 1: of think about this almost like a meta habit. It's
Speaker 1: like one level up or one level above all the
Speaker 1: other habits you're building, because if you have a process
Speaker 1: for reflection review, you can kind of look down on
Speaker 1: the rest of your habits from above and maybe notice
Speaker 1: them or look at them a little bit more. Maybe
Speaker 1: it even gives you a little distance where you can
Speaker 1: get out of the emotion and the feelings of of
Speaker 1: it and you can just kind of see it for
Speaker 1: what it what it is. UM. So my two processes
Speaker 1: for a reflection review are one. I do a weekly review,
Speaker 1: so every Friday that's mostly business related for me. I'm
Speaker 1: mostly looking at how many email subscribers do we get
Speaker 1: this week, how much revenue expenses, um, you know, do
Speaker 1: we published like just kind of getting a view of
Speaker 1: the business, where's the money coming in, where's it going out, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And um, most of the time I don't do a
Speaker 1: whole lot with that because the feedback cycle is pretty
Speaker 1: quick from Friday to Friday, and not a whole lot
Speaker 1: has changed, but it does. It's interesting a couple of
Speaker 1: times a year something a little flag will go up
Speaker 1: and it's like, hey, that's a little abnormal, you know,
Speaker 1: like that doesn't look the way it should. We need
Speaker 1: to course correct and so, um, that's a useful kind
Speaker 1: of weekly review. Then at the end of the year,
Speaker 1: I have an annual review that I do each December,
Speaker 1: and I used to publish them publicly. I haven't published
Speaker 1: it the last year or two. But this looks at
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. I look at the number of
Speaker 1: workouts that I did throughout the year. I look at
Speaker 1: the average number that I did each month. Um, I
Speaker 1: look at my best lifts for the year. Um. I'm
Speaker 1: training in a different way now, so I don't care
Speaker 1: as much about hitting max as I as I used to.
Speaker 1: But that was like a big thing that I used
Speaker 1: to look at, like, hey, did I hit a higher
Speaker 1: weight this year? At some point that I did the
Speaker 1: year before, Um, I look at how many places I
Speaker 1: traveled to, number of cities that I went to, how
Speaker 1: much time I spent away from home, how many nights
Speaker 1: did I sleep outside of my own bed? Um, And
Speaker 1: then like is that too high or too low? A
Speaker 1: lot of the time when I was trying to like
Speaker 1: travel more and see more of the world, I felt like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I should do a little more of this. And then
Speaker 1: the year after the book came out, I was traveling
Speaker 1: like crazy, and that year it was interesting. It was
Speaker 1: like the opposite. I was like, oh, there's way too
Speaker 1: many nights away from home, and so I kind of
Speaker 1: dipped it down. The next year. Um, I look at
Speaker 1: the number of articles I published, how many words I
Speaker 1: wrote that year, um, the amount of traffic that each
Speaker 1: article published, etcetera. So you get the idea it's gonna
Speaker 1: be unique for each person, and you have to ask yourself,
Speaker 1: what are the kind of the core things that I
Speaker 1: want to track or pay attention to. But it's a
Speaker 1: chance to check in, and I think mostly it's a
Speaker 1: chance to say, hey, I have these things that I
Speaker 1: say are important to me, Like I say that I'm
Speaker 1: this kind of person or that I say I'm working
Speaker 1: towards this sort of outcome. What did I actually spend
Speaker 1: my time on this year? And are the is there
Speaker 1: are those two things lined up, like the way that
Speaker 1: I spent my time and what I actually did? Is
Speaker 1: that lined up with what I say my priorities and
Speaker 1: values are. And every year I find areas where they're not.
Speaker 1: Where I said one thing was important, but actually I
Speaker 1: didn't spend enough time on it, or that wasn't where
Speaker 1: my attention was directed. And so the process of reflection
Speaker 1: review gives you a chance or course correct. You'll never
Speaker 1: be perfect, but now you have a chance to adjust.
Speaker 1: And the more that you have that, I think, the
Speaker 1: more you're starting to get a little bit of that
Speaker 1: feedback and you can be aware of what's going on
Speaker 1: rather than just kind of continuing blindly down some path
Speaker 1: for two or three years, ten years. Reflection and review
Speaker 1: that's a powerful a new meaning for R and R.
Speaker 1: Rest and relaxation are really nice. I mean that nothing
Speaker 1: against that, but I think I think that the other
Speaker 1: R and R is a great tool, um you know,
Speaker 1: for awareness, and I think that reflection review probably is
Speaker 1: easier if you can clear out the static, internal static.
Speaker 1: We talked about finding ways to get centeredness and peace
Speaker 1: solitude if possible, but also the external stuff, leaving your
Speaker 1: phone in the other room, that that's that's so crucial.
Speaker 1: I think people are yearning for that kind of inner harmony,
Speaker 1: that sort of centeredness and the ways to get there
Speaker 1: and what all the things that you describe that that
Speaker 1: can lead to the that it can improve in medicines
Speaker 1: and a lot of ways. Focus is the art of
Speaker 1: knowing what to ignore and instead of thinking about what
Speaker 1: should I be focused on? What should I be sending
Speaker 1: my time on? Which should I you give more attention to?
Speaker 1: It can be useful to start by saying what do
Speaker 1: I need to ignore, what I need to get rid of,
Speaker 1: what do I need to like call and delete from
Speaker 1: my life and create the capacity to spend more attention
Speaker 1: on the things that matter. You know, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of time we feel like we can't do we
Speaker 1: want to do because we're tapped out, we're exhausted, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have capacity. So that removing the static, as
Speaker 1: you say, can be a really helpful thing to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not to get to philosophical or too eastern, but I
Speaker 1: think unlearning things can be even more powerful than learning
Speaker 1: them sometimes because we all get very program and we
Speaker 1: all have to stop and check ourselves and and unlearned
Speaker 1: self control. So it's part about that. I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I think it's a really important point. I just want
Speaker 1: to double click on that for a second. Is um,
Speaker 1: un learning is really tough because a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that you learned did serve you for quite a while,
Speaker 1: it did benefit you, and so um, I think about
Speaker 1: life is like a series of seasons. So my personal
Speaker 1: example for this is like when I was writing Atomic Habits,
Speaker 1: I was in this season where it's really career heavy.
Speaker 1: I was working tons of hours, focused a lot on
Speaker 1: the book and finishing it and doing a great job
Speaker 1: and launching it and marketing it and so on. Then
Speaker 1: a couple of years later, I had kids, and now
Speaker 1: I'm in this season where everything shifted. I've got young kids,
Speaker 1: and so it's not his career heavy. The family burners
Speaker 1: kind of turned up now the work burners turned down lower.
Speaker 1: And I was really slow on the uptake there, Like
Speaker 1: it took me probably a year and a half to
Speaker 1: figure out, oh, some of these things that we're serving
Speaker 1: me in my previous season aren't serving me anymore, and
Speaker 1: I keep trying to force fit them into my new life,
Speaker 1: and so it can be tough to I think my
Speaker 1: assumption early on was unlearning means everybody learned some of
Speaker 1: these bad patterns throughout life or some unhelpful things, and
Speaker 1: you need to unlearn those. And that's kind of true.
Speaker 1: I think we all have things that are suboptimal that
Speaker 1: we can unlearn. But it also can mean there were
Speaker 1: a lot of good things that you learned, are good
Speaker 1: habits that you had, but they just don't fit your
Speaker 1: current life or your current season that you're in, and
Speaker 1: you need to unlearn those two And that has proven
Speaker 1: to be tougher for me to unlearn, but I think
Speaker 1: can be just as useful. So I think that question
Speaker 1: of what season in my inn right now and what
Speaker 1: habits do I need to let go of that previously
Speaker 1: certainly but no longer do And what habits do I
Speaker 1: need to soak up that are a better fit for
Speaker 1: the season that I'm in. Those are some interesting things
Speaker 1: to come back to from time to time. That's that's
Speaker 1: a great way to think about it. I hadn't before,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna I'm gonna ponder that the way of
Speaker 1: looking at it in terms of life seasons, um, a
Speaker 1: couple more things. Self control governs a lot of the
Speaker 1: things we talked about. What you write is that people
Speaker 1: with most self control are often the ones that are
Speaker 1: best at removing themselves from temptation or moving the temptations
Speaker 1: from their proximity. So help people sort of grasp that,
Speaker 1: how can they achieve some success with what we're talking
Speaker 1: about by just strengthening their self control with some of
Speaker 1: the tricks of the trade. I thought that was one
Speaker 1: of the more surprising things that I came across as
Speaker 1: I was researching the book and talking to different academics
Speaker 1: and so on, is that, I mean, h ones are
Speaker 1: all somewhat similar in the sense that, yeah, most people
Speaker 1: think donuts taste great. You know, are like most people
Speaker 1: are excited to watch a really good TV show, or
Speaker 1: you know, like it's just easy to do some of
Speaker 1: the things that people spend a lot of their time doing.
Speaker 1: And um, we look at some people are like, man,
Speaker 1: they have such incredible self control. How do they do it?
Speaker 1: You know, they never eat donuts, they never watch TV
Speaker 1: or whatever. And the answer is, they're actually not that different.
Speaker 1: They just aren't tempted nearly as much like they the
Speaker 1: person who the person who eats the fewest number of
Speaker 1: donuts as a person like never really sees them or
Speaker 1: doesn't pass a donut shop. Um. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting because if you take that idea seriously, then you
Speaker 1: start thinking about, how can I structure my life so
Speaker 1: that I'm tempted less? How can I structure my day
Speaker 1: so that I'm coming across the things that I want
Speaker 1: to be tempted by and maybe not the things that
Speaker 1: I feel like are wasting my time or pulling away
Speaker 1: my energy and so on. So the first thing you
Speaker 1: can do is just reduce exposure. You know, unsubscribed for emails,
Speaker 1: don't keep junk food in the house. If you're trying
Speaker 1: to follow a new diet, like don't follow food bloggers
Speaker 1: on Instagram. You know, you're constantly being triggered by the
Speaker 1: thing that you're trying to avoid, reducing exposure to the
Speaker 1: queue that prompts it. That's probably one of the most
Speaker 1: straightforward ways. The second thing that you can do is
Speaker 1: increase friction, sometimes increasing it so much that you can't
Speaker 1: even do the behavior anymore. One of the more interesting
Speaker 1: examples I came across when I was writing the book
Speaker 1: is some people who were biting their nails and doing
Speaker 1: it for years, and they wanted to get rid of
Speaker 1: this habit. One of the ways that they kicked it
Speaker 1: was by getting invisible line. And the invisible line the
Speaker 1: liners that you wear on your teeth. Once you have
Speaker 1: them on, you can't bite your nails while those are in,
Speaker 1: and so it was this weird thing that you like,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't think it was for that, but they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: I need to straighten my teeth. And then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden their nail biting habit faded to the side
Speaker 1: because there was too much friction between them and the behavior.
Speaker 1: And I think that's kind of an interesting thing to
Speaker 1: think about too, Like how can you introduce steps between
Speaker 1: you and the thing that you want to do. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it can be a subtle, a really subtle thing, like
Speaker 1: I gave the example of keeping my phone in another room.
Speaker 1: Another example for me, if I buy let's say I
Speaker 1: buy a six pack of beer and I put in
Speaker 1: the fridge. If it's like on the door or at
Speaker 1: the top shelf where I can like right in front
Speaker 1: of my face, and I can see it when I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in there. I'll drink one every night with dinner
Speaker 1: just because it's there. But if I put it down
Speaker 1: like on the lowest shelf of the fridge, like all
Speaker 1: the way in the back, I have to like bend
Speaker 1: down to see it, I can't even really spot it
Speaker 1: when I opened up the door. Sometimes it'll sit there
Speaker 1: for like two weeks. I won't even like think about it. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not going to work for someone who like
Speaker 1: has no how CAHOL problem or is struggling with you know,
Speaker 1: it's like a real addiction or something like that. But
Speaker 1: there are a lot of habits that are like that
Speaker 1: if they're just like not visible, if they're just like
Speaker 1: the friction is increased a little bit, they kind of
Speaker 1: fade away. So I think that's actually the first place
Speaker 1: to focus with self control is optimize your environment. We've
Speaker 1: talked a lot about physical environment. The last one that
Speaker 1: I want to mention with this just because I think
Speaker 1: it's so important is social environment. And if you really
Speaker 1: want to get habits to stick, like if you want
Speaker 1: him to stick, get him to stick for two years
Speaker 1: or five years or I don't know, even decades. The
Speaker 1: social environments one of the most powerful elements to capture.
Speaker 1: You know, if I if I walk outside my house,
Speaker 1: I look across the street, let's say my neighbor's cut
Speaker 1: in their grass. I might think, oh, man, you know what,
Speaker 1: I need to mow the lawn too, And you'll stick
Speaker 1: to that habit of mowing your grass for five or
Speaker 1: ten or twenty years, like however long you live in
Speaker 1: the house. And why do we do it? Partially we
Speaker 1: do it because it feels good to have a clean lawn,
Speaker 1: but mostly it feels good to have a clean law
Speaker 1: because you don't want to be judged by the other
Speaker 1: people in the neighborhood for being the sloppy one. And
Speaker 1: so it's actually this social norm and the social expectation
Speaker 1: of the group of your neighbors that gets you to
Speaker 1: be motivated to do the habit consistently. And that kind
Speaker 1: of thing happens with all sorts of habits. And so
Speaker 1: I think the punchline if you want to increase self control,
Speaker 1: if you want to increase consistency with habits, is join
Speaker 1: a group, join a tribe where your desired behavior is
Speaker 1: the normal behavior. Because if it's normal in that group,
Speaker 1: man it's going to be really motivating for you to
Speaker 1: stick to it. You know, like people will join across
Speaker 1: Fit Jim thinking that they're gonna build a workout habit,
Speaker 1: and then you find them six months later and they
Speaker 1: all are eating paleo and they have the same brandon
Speaker 1: nee sleeves, and they're like wearing the same workout shoes.
Speaker 1: And they were never trying to like pick up all
Speaker 1: those habits. They just they are soaking them up because
Speaker 1: that's what the tribe is doing. And so if you
Speaker 1: start to build relationships, build friendships with people where your
Speaker 1: desired behaviors the normal behavior, it becomes much easier to
Speaker 1: maintain that sense of what we would call self control
Speaker 1: and stick to the habit of the long run. So
Speaker 1: physical environment, social environment, both of those are powerful ways
Speaker 1: to kind of hack self control and get it to
Speaker 1: stick for a longer period of time. Yeah, social environment
Speaker 1: includes strangers on social media platforms, and a good way
Speaker 1: to avoid toxicity in your life is to remove yourself
Speaker 1: from that um the platform that begins with Tea among others.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to get side. Were short on time,
Speaker 1: but you you write very convincingly about the need to
Speaker 1: sort of shape and curate your social media feeds so
Speaker 1: that between to reinforce things that you want to make
Speaker 1: part of your identity and remove things that you don't
Speaker 1: want part. I mean the people you follow on Twitter
Speaker 1: or Instagram or whatever. In a sense, you're choosing your
Speaker 1: future thoughts when you choose those people people, you're choosing
Speaker 1: your future thoughts by who you are clicking on. That
Speaker 1: That is a that is a great way to incentivize
Speaker 1: people to take stock. You have to think carefully about
Speaker 1: it in a way. You're when you choose who to
Speaker 1: follow on all these sides, you're kind of creating your
Speaker 1: own little city. And pretty much every thought that you
Speaker 1: have is downstream from what you consume. It's almost never
Speaker 1: the case that a thought just arises spontaneously. It's almost
Speaker 1: always somebody said something in conversation and then I had
Speaker 1: a response, or I read something, or I viewed something
Speaker 1: and I had a response as a thought. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: like when you choose who to foll all on the Twitter,
Speaker 1: you're choosing your future thoughts. So think carefully about what
Speaker 1: you want to be focused on a week from now,
Speaker 1: or a month from now, or a year from now,
Speaker 1: and pour more of that into your feet and into
Speaker 1: your life, and less of what you feel like makes
Speaker 1: you feel down or angry or depressed or whatever. You're
Speaker 1: generous with your time. Last thing, now that you've helped
Speaker 1: people change their mindsets, which changes lives, which is contagious,
Speaker 1: which changes the world, what is the next frontier for you?
Speaker 1: And where do you see UM an area that that
Speaker 1: excites you beyond um the work in Atomic Habits. So
Speaker 1: I kind of have two things first, as you mentioned
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the show. But three to one
Speaker 1: is the weekly newsletter that I put out. So it's
Speaker 1: three three short ideas for me, two quotes from other people,
Speaker 1: and then one question to think about for the week.
Speaker 1: And uh, I really enjoyed the practice of putting that together.
Speaker 1: And I think it's nice because it's a reminder for
Speaker 1: myself again each week, like what I want to focus on,
Speaker 1: what I want to think about, what's an interesting question
Speaker 1: to kind of sit with. And the audience seems to
Speaker 1: be enjoying as well. So that comes out every Thursday.
Speaker 1: And then I am working on a second book. UM
Speaker 1: I wrote my Habits book. I'm like, I don't have
Speaker 1: anything else to share about it. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: have any other ideas. Everything's in that one, um, But
Speaker 1: I do feel like there are some questions you could
Speaker 1: have at the end of the book, Like, for example,
Speaker 1: one question might be, Okay, I know how to build
Speaker 1: better habits now, but which habits should I be focused on?
Speaker 1: Or where should I direct my attention and energy for
Speaker 1: it to be the highest and best use. And we
Speaker 1: could call that different things, you know, we could call
Speaker 1: it focus or choices, or like how you're you know,
Speaker 1: channeling your energy and attention. But I'm kind of circling
Speaker 1: a lot of ideas around that right now and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out um. You know, people work hard in
Speaker 1: many different areas of life, many different professions, many different careers,
Speaker 1: many different countries, and yet the results are very different
Speaker 1: depending on what you choose to direct your effort toward.
Speaker 1: And this is true even within an individual life. We
Speaker 1: all can think about stuff where, hey, when I put
Speaker 1: my effort here, I get a lot out of it,
Speaker 1: and when i've my effort here, I don't seem to
Speaker 1: get many results. So what's going on there and what
Speaker 1: is the difference between things that kind of multiply your
Speaker 1: effort and things that sort of divided, and so I'm
Speaker 1: thinking a lot about those choices and maybe how to
Speaker 1: best direct your attention and energy. Can't wait to see
Speaker 1: what's next. I'm sure it'll be wise. Hey, it's nice
Speaker 1: to meet you two dimensionally on this screen, James. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate what you've done, as I said, and grateful
Speaker 1: for your time today. Yeah. Thanks, Christ appreciate the opportunity,
Speaker 1: and I hope we get to hang out in person sometimes,
Speaker 1: so thank you again. That'd be fun. I really hope
Speaker 1: you've got a lot from that. We only had time
Speaker 1: to scratch the surface. James offers so many proven methods
Speaker 1: and tools for self improvement. I recommend checking out James
Speaker 1: clear dot com. As always, a huge thank you to
Speaker 1: the team at Octagon by co executive producer and wife
Speaker 1: Jennifer Dempster and I are so grateful you've made valor
Speaker 1: who you've got part of your listening habits and be
Speaker 1: saying you best wishes for the new year. We'll talk
Speaker 1: to you then in season six mm hm