Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind brained behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest. He will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today.
Speaker 1: It's a great delight to have James Clear on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Clear's website, Jamesclear dot com receives millions of visitors each
Speaker 1: month and hundreds of thousands subscribed to his email newsletter.
Speaker 1: His work has appeared in The New York Times, Time,
Speaker 1: and Entrepreneur, and on CBS This Morning, and has taught
Speaker 1: in colleges around the world. Clear is the creator of
Speaker 1: the Habits Academy, the premier training platform for organizations and
Speaker 1: individuals that are interested in building better habits in life
Speaker 1: and work. His latest book is called Atomic Habits, An
Speaker 1: Easy and proven Way to build good habits and break
Speaker 1: bad ones. James, such a delight to chat with you today. Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for having man. It's good to talk
Speaker 1: to you. Good talk to you too. I mean, this
Speaker 1: book that you did is right now at this point
Speaker 1: in your life, you're magnum opus. Yeah, that's true. I
Speaker 1: mean it's the most complete and comprehensive guide that I've
Speaker 1: put together on how habits work and really how to
Speaker 1: change them or how to shape them. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I mean, as a scientist, you'll appreciate this
Speaker 1: philosophy too. But I think a lot of authors, they
Speaker 1: write a book and then because you put so much
Speaker 1: effort and energy and research into a book, you know,
Speaker 1: for me, this was a three year process to finish
Speaker 1: the book itself, and then probably six years of writing
Speaker 1: before that. I think a lot of time. Once the
Speaker 1: book is published, you kind of double down on all
Speaker 1: the ideas because it took so much effort to put
Speaker 1: it in there. But in a sense, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: just view this as like the world's most polished first
Speaker 1: draft on habits, you know, And so I put it
Speaker 1: out there and I'm hoping that I'll get a lot
Speaker 1: of feedback on you know, what people enjoy and find
Speaker 1: useful and what questions they have where there are gaps
Speaker 1: in my thinking. And then you know, hopefully I can
Speaker 1: send out a revised and updated version five years from
Speaker 1: hour or ten years from how or whatever and really
Speaker 1: fix any of the flaws they are there. So I'm
Speaker 1: I like, I'm very excited to share with people. I'm
Speaker 1: really proud of what it is, but I'm also excited
Speaker 1: to continue to improve it. Well, you clearly walked it, dok,
Speaker 1: because that's one of the main themes of your book
Speaker 1: is to continually improve even you know, one percent, you know,
Speaker 1: every day. I'd be happy if I improved one percent
Speaker 1: every month, you know, I add up by a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm always impressed with those who can do that every day,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. So I really like that attitude. And
Speaker 1: you said the first draft for the world like the
Speaker 1: world's first draft, but personally you obviously went I assume
Speaker 1: you went through more than one draft. What was your
Speaker 1: first draft like a this book? Your person man, do
Speaker 1: not even want to talk about it? Well, this is
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit of an insight into my process,
Speaker 1: but I totally over wrote for the book, so I
Speaker 1: ended up having to ask my publisher for an extra
Speaker 1: year to research and write it. Once I got about
Speaker 1: a year in, I really still this isn't going to
Speaker 1: be enough time, and they very graciously gave it to me.
Speaker 1: But my first full draft of the book was two
Speaker 1: hundred and fourteen thousand words, which is over seven hundred pages,
Speaker 1: and the finished version is about two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: pages of texts, so it's about one third of what
Speaker 1: it was when I first put it all together, and
Speaker 1: I'm glad that that happened. I mean, it needed to
Speaker 1: be refined and honed down, but my hope is that
Speaker 1: I was able to like still capture the essence of
Speaker 1: all of those seven hundred pages, but in a more digestible,
Speaker 1: easy to understand, simple and actionable format. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's such a common thing for that first draft to
Speaker 1: be bloated, as they say, because you rarely know exactly
Speaker 1: until hindsight, you know exactly what are the most relevant
Speaker 1: things until you see the big picture. At least that
Speaker 1: is the case for me, you know, Oh, that was
Speaker 1: definitely the case. I didn't really know what the book
Speaker 1: was until I had written that's interesting proposal. Well, it
Speaker 1: was always going to be a book about habits, right,
Speaker 1: it was always going to be that I have been
Speaker 1: writing about habits at James claar dot com for what
Speaker 1: six years now, And so I had a lot of
Speaker 1: ideas about habits, a lot of individual strategies for changing
Speaker 1: them or specific tactics that you could use in a
Speaker 1: given situation. And there were maybe say thirty or forty
Speaker 1: of those ideas that were all kind of under the
Speaker 1: umbrella of building better habits. But I didn't understand how
Speaker 1: they all fit together. I didn't understand like what the
Speaker 1: framework was, that how they integrated. And I needed to
Speaker 1: pretty much write the whole book to get my thoughts
Speaker 1: in order and figure out, like how do these work together?
Speaker 1: You know, on a blog, articles can be kind of
Speaker 1: like a spider web. You can have like one article
Speaker 1: that connects to three or four other ideas. But in
Speaker 1: a book, it needs to be more of like a
Speaker 1: number line chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four,
Speaker 1: like it needs to build. And so I had to
Speaker 1: write the whole thing to figure out where do all
Speaker 1: the pieces fit. I love that. I love that because
Speaker 1: you know, in Wire to Create, I talk about how
Speaker 1: creativity is is an emergent property, and like you know,
Speaker 1: Picasso said he hardly ever knew where he was going
Speaker 1: until he got there, you know, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: your process is similar, But it doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: have to operate blind. That's a false economy at all. Right.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean just because it's emerging that you're just
Speaker 1: like stabbing in the dark at trial and error. You're
Speaker 1: still building these habits that are going to ultimately increase
Speaker 1: the likelihood that something good's going to emerge. You know,
Speaker 1: I would be interested to get your thoughts on this,
Speaker 1: but I think for me, similar to that Picasso quote
Speaker 1: you just shared, writing is like thinking. A lot of
Speaker 1: the time, I don't really know what I think about
Speaker 1: something until I have written about it, because I get
Speaker 1: to kind of iterate on the thought multiple times as
Speaker 1: I go through it. And I find that if I'm
Speaker 1: asked about something that I haven't written about, what I'm
Speaker 1: really doing in the moment is I'm just talking my emotions.
Speaker 1: I'm talking my feelings. Like you asked me a question,
Speaker 1: I haven't written about it before, so my response is
Speaker 1: just kind of based on like whatever my gut intuition
Speaker 1: is or feeling is in the moment, and I'm talking
Speaker 1: those feelings out loud in my response. But when I write,
Speaker 1: I get to do that. I get to talk through
Speaker 1: my feelings and I read what I write out loudly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I get to revise it again and again, and
Speaker 1: so I eventually where I get to after I've revised
Speaker 1: an article twenty five times is very different than what
Speaker 1: that first draft would be when it comes out of
Speaker 1: my mouth in conversation. I don't know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. It's like you ask me about something
Speaker 1: and I tell you what I think, but it might
Speaker 1: not actually be what I think. It's just kind of
Speaker 1: my first initial response. Yeah. I've also I've often thought
Speaker 1: of the running the process as a beautiful thing for
Speaker 1: me personally, because it allows you to kind of call
Speaker 1: and reject all the things that, if they were put
Speaker 1: in public, would hurt your reputation as a writer. And
Speaker 1: I wish, like the dating process, the marriage process, the job,
Speaker 1: the selection process. I wish so much of life was
Speaker 1: like that. You know. It's like because I think like
Speaker 1: if some people read like some of those early drafts,
Speaker 1: they would not think I'm as good of a writer
Speaker 1: as they think right now. But who's the real me?
Speaker 1: I mean, is the real me? You know, the finished,
Speaker 1: polished you know, Wow, he's such a good writer. You
Speaker 1: know or is the real me? Am I faking everyone?
Speaker 1: You know? Like the real me was like that first draft.
Speaker 1: I like this idea that, like the mind is a
Speaker 1: suggestion engine, and so in my mind is suggesting a
Speaker 1: lot of alternatives for the answer to any given question,
Speaker 1: and writing allows me to kind of like put all
Speaker 1: of those alternatives on one page and then gradually call
Speaker 1: the ones that don't make sense and cut those out
Speaker 1: and refine the ones that do make more sense. And Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you only get one chance at the first date
Speaker 1: or one chance at the job interview, you kind of
Speaker 1: give whatever your first response is, but it may not
Speaker 1: be your the best suggestion that your mind could come
Speaker 1: up with. That's right. So you were on this podcast before.
Speaker 1: You're one of our rare return offenders. Oh, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. I'm very honored to have earned the right
Speaker 1: to come back. Your work is excellent, and I'm wondering
Speaker 1: how you personally have felt like you've learned or grown
Speaker 1: since I chatted with you February fourteen, two that I
Speaker 1: had to look it up. Februar fourteen, twenty sixteen, we
Speaker 1: chatted Where were you at that place? And you know,
Speaker 1: how do you think you personally have grown well. So
Speaker 1: you caught me right after I had signed the deal
Speaker 1: at that point. So I signed it in late twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: so it had been a few months, so I was
Speaker 1: in the process of writing the book, but I really
Speaker 1: had no idea what I was biting off and what
Speaker 1: was to come. But as far as how I've changed,
Speaker 1: I think my thoughts on habits have become much more refined,
Speaker 1: and we can talk about that as we go through
Speaker 1: the conversation. But in a more broad sense, recently I've
Speaker 1: come to realize or have started to appreciate more the
Speaker 1: I guess I'll say, like the balance between things. So
Speaker 1: this idea that two opposing answers can often both be correct,
Speaker 1: but it just depends on the circumstances. Or two opposing
Speaker 1: strategies can often both be effective, but it depends on
Speaker 1: when you need them. So take just as like a
Speaker 1: very simple example, you could live your life in like
Speaker 1: a low level state of movement, walking to and from work, sleeping, whatever.
Speaker 1: Or you could do like a more extreme strategy where
Speaker 1: you're living on both ends of the spectrum, Like you
Speaker 1: sprint for thirty minutes a day and you do like
Speaker 1: this intense sprint, workout, and then you like really rest
Speaker 1: and recover for like ten hours and you sleep, you
Speaker 1: know a lot that night. And often that like oscillating
Speaker 1: strategy can actually lead to better outcomes or better results,
Speaker 1: Like it could lead to more muscle growth and strength
Speaker 1: in this sprinting and sleeping case than just performing at
Speaker 1: like a mid range level of movement throughout the whole day.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if that's also true of a lot
Speaker 1: of ideas. If that's true from like a mindset standpoint,
Speaker 1: that many seemingly opposing extremes or opposing theories, there's truth
Speaker 1: in all of them, and it just the answer is
Speaker 1: not to always sprint or to always sleep. The answer
Speaker 1: is to like, what strategy or what extreme do you
Speaker 1: need at this particular time. And so I'm coming to
Speaker 1: appreciate that a little bit more. One of the areas
Speaker 1: where I've thought about this related to habits and related
Speaker 1: to ideas is, you know, there's this never ending nature
Speaker 1: versus nurture debate, and like you have on one end
Speaker 1: the deliberate practice believers who say, like we can fashion
Speaker 1: ourselves into almost anything, and then on the other end
Speaker 1: you have geneticis and scientists who say, like, you know,
Speaker 1: the genetic code is, we're definitely not a blank slate.
Speaker 1: We're you know, very limited. And I think both of
Speaker 1: those are simultaneously true, which sounds like crazy when you
Speaker 1: first think about it. But it is both true that
Speaker 1: we can fashion ourselves and mold ourselves into much more
Speaker 1: than people would expect, that maybe you're ceiling in any
Speaker 1: given area is higher than you would believe. And it's
Speaker 1: also true that our genes nudge us in ways and
Speaker 1: shape us in ways, set a boundary for us in
Speaker 1: certain areas that we often underappreciate. And so I don't know,
Speaker 1: I've kind of been wrestling with these ideas of like
Speaker 1: opposing answers or simultaneously true opposites. I really love that
Speaker 1: you said a lot of really interesting things there. You know.
Speaker 1: Our last are very elitist podcast episode is with Robert Poeman.
Speaker 1: I inter mentioned of the book. Actually, I know I
Speaker 1: was going to say, you mentioned him in your book
Speaker 1: in one of your last chapters, So that was cool
Speaker 1: to see that. Yeah, And we try to kind of
Speaker 1: wrestle with some of those issues of that tight interplay
Speaker 1: between na surnature and he's a strong believer that genes
Speaker 1: make us create our environments like we create, They nudge
Speaker 1: us to create our environments, you know. And it seems
Speaker 1: like a big theme of your book is choosing the
Speaker 1: environment that'll help you excel, Like why make things hard
Speaker 1: for yourself? Like Pullman talks about not going against the
Speaker 1: green of your nature. Yeah, I mean, so this is
Speaker 1: something I talk about a little later in the book,
Speaker 1: and I haven't really seen. I'm sure Robert has a
Speaker 1: variety of ideas on this, but I haven't really seen
Speaker 1: many people talk about the influence of genes on habits
Speaker 1: or personality on habits, And I think that there are
Speaker 1: like some interesting threads to follow there. But it's also
Speaker 1: it feels like we're kind of still in the infancy
Speaker 1: from a scientific standpoint on what the answers are. But
Speaker 1: the example that I give in the book is that
Speaker 1: you have Michael Phelps, who is, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the most famous swimmers of all time six foot four.
Speaker 1: And you have another Olympian that I mentioned who competed
Speaker 1: at the same Olympic Games as Phelps in Athens, hikim
Speaker 1: Ol Grooge, who is a very famous runner and Grouge
Speaker 1: held at one point the world record I think in
Speaker 1: the one thousand meters, the five thousand meter and the
Speaker 1: mile races. And so he's a fantastic athlete in his
Speaker 1: own right. And what's interesting is that they're seven inches
Speaker 1: different in height. Phelps is six ' four, El Grooge's
Speaker 1: five to nine I believe, and they have the same
Speaker 1: length enseam on their pants. So the runner is like
Speaker 1: all legs and no torso, and Phelps has this very
Speaker 1: long back which is great for pulling through the water.
Speaker 1: And so the question I had was, well, what if
Speaker 1: they switched sports. They're both like literally world class athletes,
Speaker 1: and you know, if Michael Phelps was a runner instead
Speaker 1: of a swimmer, could he make the Olympics? And the
Speaker 1: answer is almost certainly no. At peak fitness, Phelps was
Speaker 1: one hundred and ninety four pounds and El Garuge and
Speaker 1: the other Olympic runners competed around one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty five pounds, so it Phelps would
Speaker 1: have been sixty pounds overweight by the time he got
Speaker 1: to the starting line. And in distance running, every pound
Speaker 1: is like a curse. And so the point here is
Speaker 1: that this is kind of a larger way of looking
Speaker 1: at genes in general, which is that your genes are
Speaker 1: The usefulness or the utility of your genes is often
Speaker 1: determined by the environment that you are in. So if
Speaker 1: you're seven feet tall, that's an incredibly useful set of
Speaker 1: genes on a basketball court, but it's very limiting if
Speaker 1: you're trying to be a gymnast or do a routine
Speaker 1: on the balance mean, and this is true not just
Speaker 1: for physical characteristics, which are very clear and obvious to
Speaker 1: talk about, but also for psychological ones. I don't know
Speaker 1: that we have the same depth of knowledge about psychological
Speaker 1: traits and their links to the genetic code, yet I
Speaker 1: think we're moving in that direction. But it is interesting
Speaker 1: to think about can you set up an environment for
Speaker 1: yourself or put yourself in situations where you're like a
Speaker 1: seven foot or on a basketball court, where you're in
Speaker 1: an environment that favors you, and make it easier for
Speaker 1: yourself to build better habits in that way. And you
Speaker 1: probably know the personality psychology literature better than I do,
Speaker 1: but I am interested in, like how certain personality traits,
Speaker 1: like the Big five, how onto the genetic code, and
Speaker 1: then like what that might tell us about how to
Speaker 1: strategize for your habits. You know, like if you're low income, scentciousness,
Speaker 1: and you're not likely to be someone who's orderly and organized,
Speaker 1: and maybe like not the type of person who would
Speaker 1: remember to do something, Maybe your strategy could benefit from
Speaker 1: a more optimized environment, like a physical environment that has
Speaker 1: more cues in it to prompt you and remind you
Speaker 1: to perform a habit rather than just leaving it up
Speaker 1: to being orderly. I don't know, I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: that would shape things, but I think that there's probably
Speaker 1: like a thread to pull on there where personality can
Speaker 1: be informative for strategy. And that's the ultimate punchline of
Speaker 1: that chapter, is that genes do not eliminate the need
Speaker 1: for hard work. They show you what to work hard on.
Speaker 1: They do not eliminate the need for strategy. You don't
Speaker 1: just say, oh, there's biological determinism, no need to worry
Speaker 1: about this, like it's all fixed anyway. They tell you,
Speaker 1: based on your characteristics, where should your strategy be focused.
Speaker 1: I like that. I think there's an interesting catch twenty
Speaker 1: two with the personality one, in the sense that personality
Speaker 1: might influence what strategy is. You're motivated to pursue in
Speaker 1: the first place. Like, one facet of consciousness is achievement drive.
Speaker 1: Some people would call it grit, some people call it industriousness.
Speaker 1: And industriousness is a separate facet than orderliness. So you
Speaker 1: might actually score really low in achievement oriented drive and
Speaker 1: low in orderliness, and the well ordliness just won't bother you,
Speaker 1: Like if you're very low orderliness and you're high these
Speaker 1: things come apart as well, like you're very high achievement. Like,
Speaker 1: so it seems like the discrepancy between like who you
Speaker 1: want to be and who you are is really the
Speaker 1: important factor here versus you know, because some people it
Speaker 1: just won't bother them at all. They're not setting habits
Speaker 1: that make them more orderly. Like some people are actually
Speaker 1: totally fine with not always having publicly recognized successes or
Speaker 1: even you know, reaching long term goals. They're just happy
Speaker 1: to like just have good friends and family, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's just so you think about, well, I think
Speaker 1: what's interesting there too is and this is true for
Speaker 1: any type of advice, which is advice is pretty useless
Speaker 1: if you don't have a willingness to self experiment, you know,
Speaker 1: Like there are a lot of great ideas out there,
Speaker 1: but if people expect those ideas to map perfectly onto
Speaker 1: their own life, then things kind of fall apart a
Speaker 1: little bit. You need to be willing to like massage
Speaker 1: the ideas or toy with them enough to figure out
Speaker 1: how do I fit this into my own circumstances. And
Speaker 1: so in that sense, a deeper understanding of your personality
Speaker 1: or of your genetic traits, your inclinations and predispositions might
Speaker 1: allow you to more accurately determine what advice is useful
Speaker 1: for you. You You know, someone who doesn't need to worry
Speaker 1: about things being orderly. It's like, well, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that area of this advice is just not relevant to me,
Speaker 1: and I can move on to the next section because
Speaker 1: something else is going to be more useful for my
Speaker 1: personality and situation. So I think that understanding ourselves more deeply,
Speaker 1: and there are all kinds of interesting things that I
Speaker 1: think are going to come in the coming decades about
Speaker 1: DNA and genetics and how that links to our psychology
Speaker 1: and mindset. Understanding those things better will probably allow us
Speaker 1: to have better strategies for building habits as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that linkage that you're making there, and it's
Speaker 1: going to start talking about that in the public conversation.
Speaker 1: I want to circle back because like almost every sentence
Speaker 1: you make leaves me in like ten directions to follow
Speaker 1: up on. So it's like you're particularly a difficult guest
Speaker 1: in a good way. But you said a bunch of
Speaker 1: things that were very rich earlier, and I want to
Speaker 1: circle back to this idea of opposing things that seem
Speaker 1: to be at odds with each other, like you're either
Speaker 1: this person or that person, and it's like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: a person that has both that encounters both sort of things.
Speaker 1: I think about this a lot. Let's zoom in on
Speaker 1: that point you made because Abraham as one of my
Speaker 1: favorite psychologists, refers to us one of the key elements
Speaker 1: of self actualization as dichotomy transcendence. So I linked that
Speaker 1: to what you were saying, Like he talks about how
Speaker 1: like really highly developed individuals who are very wise have
Speaker 1: this ability to not see things that seem paradoxical as paradoxical,
Speaker 1: like seeing them is only like a parent paradoxes. Like
Speaker 1: you know a lot of dichotomists we have in sy
Speaker 1: like male female, or work and plan or all these
Speaker 1: other things. So he actually viewed that as a very
Speaker 1: high level of actualization in life if you can do that.
Speaker 1: I like that phrase dichotomy transcendence. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: you're stepping outside of this black and white conversation and
Speaker 1: seeing the partial truths that are available in all the options. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm really exciting made that point. That was excellent. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually you don't talk about that too much in your
Speaker 1: book though. Is this a new theory maybe your next
Speaker 1: book or something. Well, I came to realize some of
Speaker 1: it as I was writing the book, you know, so
Speaker 1: I just mentioned this, like the difference between Okay, so
Speaker 1: you know, there's this classic debate and a lot of
Speaker 1: psychology research about like social psychologists saying the environment shapes
Speaker 1: your behavior and personality psychologist saying your personality shapes your
Speaker 1: behavior and so on, and of course there are elements
Speaker 1: of both. But what's interesting to me is like how
Speaker 1: far either option can take you, you know, like how
Speaker 1: far altering the physical environment, like what you see when
Speaker 1: you walk into your room. So let's say, you know,
Speaker 1: just take a classic example of like watching television as
Speaker 1: a habit. Well, if you walk into pretty much any
Speaker 1: living room where do. All the couches and chairs face
Speaker 1: they all face the TV. So it's like, what is
Speaker 1: that room designed to get you to do? And we
Speaker 1: don't think about it that way, right, But there are
Speaker 1: a variety of things you could do there. You could
Speaker 1: like take a chair and turn it away from the TV.
Speaker 1: You could put the television inside a wall unit so
Speaker 1: it's behind like a set of doors or a cabinet
Speaker 1: so that you're less likely to see it. You could
Speaker 1: take the remote and put it in a drawer. You
Speaker 1: could also increase the friction associated with the task, so
Speaker 1: you could like take batteries out of the remote control.
Speaker 1: And then that adds like an extra five or ten
Speaker 1: seconds and you're like, well, do I really want to
Speaker 1: watch TV? Or is this just something mindless I'm going
Speaker 1: to do? Could check it out at the window, Yeah, right.
Speaker 1: You could take the You could take the TV and
Speaker 1: unplug it and then only plug it back in if
Speaker 1: you can say the name of the show that you
Speaker 1: want to watch, so you aren't just allowed to like
Speaker 1: mindlessly turn on Netflix and find something. If you really
Speaker 1: want to be extreme, you could take the TV off
Speaker 1: the wall and put it in the closet and only
Speaker 1: set it up when you want to watch something bad
Speaker 1: enough to set it up again. But the point here
Speaker 1: is that many of our habits are a response to
Speaker 1: what is obvious or frictionless in our environment. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no better example than cell phones. You know, our
Speaker 1: smartphones are on us all the time, and I find
Speaker 1: the last year or so, I've started to keep my
Speaker 1: phone in another room until lunch each day. I keep
Speaker 1: it out of my office. So it just gives me
Speaker 1: like three or four hours where I can stay focused
Speaker 1: and not be distracted. But what's funny about that to
Speaker 1: me is that if my phone is next to me,
Speaker 1: it's on the desk and I have in the room,
Speaker 1: I'm like everybody else, I'll check it like every three
Speaker 1: minutes or five minutes or whatever. But if it's I
Speaker 1: have a home office, so if it's out of there,
Speaker 1: it's just up the stairs, it's like forty five seconds away.
Speaker 1: But even though it's only forty five seconds away, I
Speaker 1: never go get it. And so my question is like
Speaker 1: do I really want it or not? Like I'm checking
Speaker 1: it every three minutes if it's next to me, but
Speaker 1: if it's not in the room, I never want to
Speaker 1: work forty five seconds to go get it. And I
Speaker 1: think that there are a lot of Technology has created
Speaker 1: a lot of habits like that, where they're so frictionless
Speaker 1: and convenient that we find ourselves falling into them whenever
Speaker 1: we have a down moment or whenever we are bored
Speaker 1: for a fraction of a second. But we don't want
Speaker 1: them in some deeper sense. We don't even want them
Speaker 1: enough to climb up the stairs for forty five seconds
Speaker 1: and go to a different room. And so when you
Speaker 1: remove those things and you make them less convenient or
Speaker 1: less obvious, you'll often find that you slide back into
Speaker 1: the work that maybe is deeper and more meaningful to you.
Speaker 1: It's not that I didn't want to write an article today.
Speaker 1: It's just that because my phone was three feet away
Speaker 1: from me, I was always checking it, and so once
Speaker 1: I took it out, it's like kind of removing the
Speaker 1: mental candy from your environment, and it becomes easy to
Speaker 1: like eat the healthy stuff when you're not surrounded by that.
Speaker 1: So I think that environment design can play a crucial
Speaker 1: role in shaping habits. Yeah, I really like that, And
Speaker 1: you triggered in me the idea of inverting your fourth law.
Speaker 1: I wanted to actually go through. Maybe we should first
Speaker 1: go through the four laws, how about that? And then
Speaker 1: we'll like after that, so we'll get everyone excited. They'll
Speaker 1: want to listen. Now they're dying to know what the
Speaker 1: inversion is of the fourth law. So let's go each one.
Speaker 1: So the first law of behavior change, and these are
Speaker 1: your laws. By that, I mean you propose these laws, right, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: ladies out in the Yeah, I break a habit into
Speaker 1: four stages and then come up with what I call
Speaker 1: the four laws of behavior change. And there's one for
Speaker 1: each stage. And so you can think about them as
Speaker 1: like a set of tools for making it easier to
Speaker 1: build good habits. So the first law is to make
Speaker 1: it obvious, so you want to make the cues of
Speaker 1: your good habits obvious. The second law is to make
Speaker 1: it attractive. The more attractive and a habit appears to us,
Speaker 1: so the more we perceive it to be valuable, the
Speaker 1: more likely you are to follow through on it and
Speaker 1: perform it. The second or the third law is to
Speaker 1: make it easy, so you want to make your habits
Speaker 1: as convenient or frictionless as possible. And then the fourth
Speaker 1: law is to make it satisfying. If a habit is satisfying.
Speaker 1: If it feels rewarding or enjoyable, you have a reason
Speaker 1: to repeat it in the future. And as you just mentioned,
Speaker 1: you can actually invert each of these four laws. If
Speaker 1: you want to break a bad habit, so make it obvious,
Speaker 1: make it attractive, make it easy. Make it satisfying is
Speaker 1: for building a good habit. If you want to break
Speaker 1: a bad habit, then you make it invisible, make it unattractive,
Speaker 1: make it difficult, make it unsatisfying. And so those four
Speaker 1: laws of behavior change kind of give us a set
Speaker 1: of tools for adjusting and improving our habits. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that synthesizes an awful lot of research. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are four laws, but it like we're talking hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of research studies on self control that back that
Speaker 1: up from all those self contrilly literature scene definitely talks
Speaker 1: about like ways of making it hard for you to
Speaker 1: get to the thing. Well, actually, I mean there are
Speaker 1: probably there are thousands of studies behind those four laws,
Speaker 1: you know, they're really what I wanted to come up
Speaker 1: with was a framework that describes how human behavior works.
Speaker 1: And I'm not really I think it would be a
Speaker 1: little reckless to claim that those four stages and those
Speaker 1: four laws describe all of human behavior, but from a
Speaker 1: broad standpoint, they're pretty close. You know, pretty much every
Speaker 1: behavior you take in some kind of raw data, there's
Speaker 1: some type of queue or some preceding event, and then
Speaker 1: you interpret that data in some way. And that's what
Speaker 1: the craving stage is about. It's about how you interpret
Speaker 1: the cues that you come across. So that's the second stage.
Speaker 1: And then there's a response the behavior you perform, and
Speaker 1: then there's some kind of outcome or result, which we
Speaker 1: could call the reward if it's beneficial, or the consequence
Speaker 1: if it's negative. And what I'm really describing there is
Speaker 1: the process of learning. You know, you see something, you
Speaker 1: make a prediction about how to respond, you take an action,
Speaker 1: and then you update your prediction for the next time
Speaker 1: based on what the outcome was. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of finer details of each of these things. I'm going
Speaker 1: to point some stuff out that I think it was
Speaker 1: pretty cool. So you have three layers of behavioral change,
Speaker 1: outcome processes, and identity. Could you explain those three and
Speaker 1: then let's zoom in on identity. It's many favorite phrase
Speaker 1: zooming in let's zoom in on identity. All right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the way that I think about this is there
Speaker 1: are kind of multiple levels of behavior change, or multiple
Speaker 1: levels of achieving something. And typically when we go about
Speaker 1: trying to change our behavior, we start with what I
Speaker 1: would call an outcome based approach. So we think about
Speaker 1: the result that we want. So I want to double
Speaker 1: my income, or I want to lose sixty pounds in
Speaker 1: the next six months, or I want to meditate for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes a day or something like that, and so
Speaker 1: we think about the outcome that we want. Then we
Speaker 1: back into a plan for doing that. So it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, if I want to lose sixty pounds, then
Speaker 1: my plan is I'm going to fall this diet and
Speaker 1: I'm going to the gym three days a week. And
Speaker 1: that's your process. So you have outcomes and then process,
Speaker 1: and these are kind of like we're peeling back the
Speaker 1: layers of an onion. So outcomes on the outside, process
Speaker 1: the next layer in. But then I think there's a
Speaker 1: deeper layer of behavior change, which I would call identity change.
Speaker 1: And so this is like the set of beliefs or
Speaker 1: how you identify your self image. That's kind of underlying
Speaker 1: the process, the actions you're taking, and the outcomes that
Speaker 1: you're trying to achieve. Now, typically when people go about changing,
Speaker 1: I don't know that most people really think about identity.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, it's like, all right, outcome, I
Speaker 1: want to be skinny, and process, if I follow this diet,
Speaker 1: I'll be skinny, and that's kind of like the end
Speaker 1: of the thought, and the identity is sort of like
Speaker 1: implicitly just follows. You think that if I get skinny,
Speaker 1: then I'll be the person I want to be or something.
Speaker 1: But I think it's actually better to invert this process.
Speaker 1: So it's not that any of them fascinating. I'm the
Speaker 1: person I want to be. What's that? Oh? I thought
Speaker 1: the inversion was if I'm fat, then I'll become the
Speaker 1: person I want to be. Exactly. It's not that any
Speaker 1: of the stages are bad. It's just that if you
Speaker 1: start with the outcome, I think you're focusing in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction. But if instead we start with the identity.
Speaker 1: One way to do this is to like kind of
Speaker 1: reverse engineer the process. So you can ask yourself, well,
Speaker 1: who is the type of person that could lose weight? Well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's the type of person who doesn't miss workouts,
Speaker 1: and so then you focus on building the identity of
Speaker 1: being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts, and
Speaker 1: then that changes or shifts a little bit the process
Speaker 1: that you're going to follow, because now it's more about, Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to go to the gym, and it's less
Speaker 1: about like I need to do this particular type of
Speaker 1: workout or this particular type of results or outcome. It's
Speaker 1: more about, like, how do I reinforce that identity. And
Speaker 1: this is one reason why I think small habits can
Speaker 1: be so useful is that even if they don't get
Speaker 1: the outcome that you want, they can still reinforce the identity,
Speaker 1: which ends up leading to good outcome in the long run.
Speaker 1: So something like doing five push ups, a lot of
Speaker 1: people would be like, well, well, you know, what's the
Speaker 1: difference of doing five push ups? Like, it's not going
Speaker 1: to get me in shape anyway. But the key is
Speaker 1: if you're really busy, if your kids are sick, you're traveling,
Speaker 1: and it's like I've been on the airplane the last
Speaker 1: six hours and I was exhausted, and I got to
Speaker 1: the hotel and all I can do is five push
Speaker 1: ups before I collapse on the bed, but I still
Speaker 1: am the type of person who doesn't mis workouts, and
Speaker 1: so even though it's a small habit, it can still
Speaker 1: cast a vote for that identity. And this, I think
Speaker 1: is a good way to think about how identities are
Speaker 1: formed and how they can change, is that every action
Speaker 1: you take is like a vote for the type of
Speaker 1: person that you want to become. So it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: as you perform a habit, you're building up evidence of
Speaker 1: being a type of person. In a sense, your habits
Speaker 1: are how you embody a particular identity. You know, It's
Speaker 1: like every day that you make your bed, you embody
Speaker 1: the identity of someone who's clean and organized. Every time
Speaker 1: you go to the gym, you embody the identity of
Speaker 1: someone who is fit. Every time you sit down and
Speaker 1: write one sentence, you embody the identity of someone who
Speaker 1: is a writer. And so these small actions like reading
Speaker 1: one page or writing one sentence, or doing five push ups,
Speaker 1: they seem little because they are insignificant because we don't
Speaker 1: they can get the result that we want, but they
Speaker 1: can reinforce the identity of who you want to become.
Speaker 1: And I think that that actually identity change is true
Speaker 1: behavior change, because once you identify as that kind of person,
Speaker 1: you're really no longer even looking to achieve some kind
Speaker 1: of behavior change. You're just acting in alignment with the
Speaker 1: type of person that you already think that you are.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like it's one thing to say I
Speaker 1: want this, it's something very different to say I am this.
Speaker 1: And I think that ultimately that's where we're trying to
Speaker 1: get to, is to adopt that identity and then let
Speaker 1: the results of all naturally. I really really like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, for the longest time, my identity was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm an introvert and I don't want to
Speaker 1: be as introverted sometimes, you know, like I would like
Speaker 1: to break out of my shell sometimes. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I've bet a lot of listeners listeners would like to
Speaker 1: break out of their shell in their own respective things.
Speaker 1: Maybe we all have something we would like to share
Speaker 1: it at Rochelle, and you're saying, a really good first
Speaker 1: step is to, yeah, reconceptualize ourselves as you know, well,
Speaker 1: if I were this raging extrovert, I would be the
Speaker 1: type of person who would not say no to that
Speaker 1: request or now I'm not going to as my goal
Speaker 1: is to be a raging extrovert. But you know, just
Speaker 1: go outside my comfort zone socially more well. And I
Speaker 1: think actually that you know you don't want to be
Speaker 1: a raging extrovert as the example. I think that's a
Speaker 1: good way to think about this. You're not looking to
Speaker 1: like rip your identity in half or become a totally
Speaker 1: new person. I want to be authentic STI right right,
Speaker 1: You're looking to upgrade and expand your identity a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's kind of I compared to like retouching a painting.
Speaker 1: You know, you're just looking to like make some adjustments.
Speaker 1: And one way to make the adjustments is to implement
Speaker 1: some of these small one percent changes. And I think
Speaker 1: it's also important to note that this is a little
Speaker 1: different than what you know. See oftentimes you'll hear people
Speaker 1: say things like fake it till you make it, But
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about is a little bit different here
Speaker 1: because by sticking to a small habit, by doing five
Speaker 1: push ups or writing one sentence or whatever, you again,
Speaker 1: you're casting those votes for that kind of identity you
Speaker 1: have evidence of that being that type of person. Faked
Speaker 1: till you make it is asking you to believe something
Speaker 1: without evidence, And there's a word for beliefs without evidence
Speaker 1: called delusion. You know, at some point, if you try
Speaker 1: to keep believing something and you don't have any reason
Speaker 1: to believe it, then the brain doesn't like that. It
Speaker 1: falls flat. But with small habits, you have evidence of
Speaker 1: being that type of person, proof to root the identity in.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what's so powerful about them is
Speaker 1: that they seem like these small actions, but they end
Speaker 1: up being evidence of the type of person that you're becoming.
Speaker 1: And this is maybe the deeper or real reason that
Speaker 1: habits matter that I wrote this whole book on it,
Speaker 1: that I think it's so important. I mean, yes, habits
Speaker 1: can get you external results. They can help you lose
Speaker 1: weight or earn more money, or be more productive or
Speaker 1: reduce stress or whatever, but they also are the path
Speaker 1: through which we forge our self image, through which we
Speaker 1: kind of reinforce this who what type of person we
Speaker 1: are and develop self confidence. And so for that reason,
Speaker 1: I think they serve an even deeper and more important
Speaker 1: role in our lives. I love that. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: also really like their focus on systems. Could you talk
Speaker 1: about why we should stop setting goals and focus on systems? Instead,
Speaker 1: because that's not a language that many people talk about.
Speaker 1: Everyone talks about importance of goal setting for instance, Right, right, sure,
Speaker 1: So I mean, first of all, this comes from someone
Speaker 1: I was very goal oriented for a long time. Right.
Speaker 1: I would set goals for the grades I wanted to
Speaker 1: get in school, for how much weight I wanted to
Speaker 1: lift in the gym, for you know what, I wanted
Speaker 1: my business to grow, and you know, like all that
Speaker 1: type of stuff. So I did this for a long time,
Speaker 1: and at some point I realized that some of these
Speaker 1: goals I set I achieved, but many of them I
Speaker 1: did not. And so clearly, like the action of setting
Speaker 1: a goal was not the thing that was determining whether
Speaker 1: or not I was achieving these things. And I came
Speaker 1: across this language from Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind Dilbert.
Speaker 1: At first he's got like this system versus goals thinking
Speaker 1: as well, and he's a little more anti goals than
Speaker 1: I am. But I think goals are useful, but it's
Speaker 1: important to be clear about what they are useful for.
Speaker 1: They're useful for clarity and setting a sense of for
Speaker 1: like knowing where you want to focus your attention. But
Speaker 1: almost immediately after you've done that, after you've gained some clarity,
Speaker 1: it's best to put the goal on the shelf and
Speaker 1: focus on systems. And this is not the typical way
Speaker 1: that we think about this. I think that this is
Speaker 1: because part of it is because we live in a
Speaker 1: very results oriented society. So the news something is only newsworthy.
Speaker 1: It's only a story when we're talking about the outcome,
Speaker 1: the result, the goal. You know, you're never going to
Speaker 1: see a news story that's like man eats chicken and
Speaker 1: salad for lunch today. It's only a news story like
Speaker 1: six months or a year later, when it's like man
Speaker 1: loses one hundred pounds. It's only after the outcome that
Speaker 1: it becomes something that people talk about. And social media
Speaker 1: has just exacerbated this or magnified it even more because
Speaker 1: now all day long we're inundated with people's results, with
Speaker 1: people's outcomes, and I think because we see the outcome
Speaker 1: so much, we overvalue the results and think the goal,
Speaker 1: the ambitious outcome, is what matters, when really it should
Speaker 1: be about the process of the system that precedes the outcome.
Speaker 1: And so this hints that at some of the things
Speaker 1: I write about in the book about why goals are
Speaker 1: less useful maybe or deserve less of our tension than
Speaker 1: we give them, which is that one problem is achieving
Speaker 1: a goal only changes your life for the moment, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we think that what we need is this result. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you get really motivated and you want
Speaker 1: to have a clean room, you've got all this clutter
Speaker 1: in your garage or in your bedroom or something, and
Speaker 1: so you spend a couple hours cleaning your room. You'll
Speaker 1: have a clean room for now, you know, after you
Speaker 1: spend a couple hours doing it. But if you don't
Speaker 1: change the sloppy or messy habits that led to a
Speaker 1: dirty room in the first place, you turn around three
Speaker 1: weeks from nowur a month from now, and you've got
Speaker 1: a dirty room again. And so we think the results
Speaker 1: need to change, But the results are not the thing
Speaker 1: that needs to shift. We need to change the habits
Speaker 1: behind the results, or the system that led to the results.
Speaker 1: And if you change the system, the outcomes are just
Speaker 1: a natural product. It's like we spend all our time
Speaker 1: treating symptoms without treating the actual cause. And so I
Speaker 1: think that a focus on systems helps resolve some of that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I thought That was an excellent point. I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote you on something relating to this that I
Speaker 1: want to discuss. When you finally break through the plateau
Speaker 1: of latent potential, that's capitalized plateau of latent potential, people
Speaker 1: will call it an overnight success. The outside world only
Speaker 1: sees the most dramatic event rather than all that preceded it.
Speaker 1: But you know that it's the work you did long
Speaker 1: ago when it seemed that you weren't making any progress
Speaker 1: that makes the jump possible today possible. You also talk
Speaker 1: about the different positive and negative compounding. Have you thought
Speaker 1: about it in the reverse way? You know, we make
Speaker 1: judgments about people you know as well they're great because
Speaker 1: they did that, but we also make a lot of
Speaker 1: we're very judgmental about each other as well. So in
Speaker 1: the book, I talk about how habits can compound for
Speaker 1: you or against you. Yeah, And I think that this
Speaker 1: is one key reason to understand habits. They're kind of
Speaker 1: like this double edged sword. You know, they can either
Speaker 1: cut you down or they can build you up. And
Speaker 1: if you understand the details about them, then you can
Speaker 1: design them to your liking rather than to your hindrance
Speaker 1: and maybe avoid the dangerous half of the blade of
Speaker 1: that double edged sword. And I think that that's crucial
Speaker 1: for understanding how they work, because on any given day,
Speaker 1: I mean, I like to so that chapter you just
Speaker 1: quoted from earlier in there, I say, habits are the
Speaker 1: compound interest of self improvement. And the reason I like
Speaker 1: that phrase is that, the same way that money multiplies
Speaker 1: through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as
Speaker 1: you repeat them over time. But that can be true
Speaker 1: both positively or negatively. Right, So, on any given day,
Speaker 1: it's really easy to overlook the difference between a choice
Speaker 1: that's like slightly better or slightly worse. You know, I mean,
Speaker 1: what is really the difference between eating a burger and
Speaker 1: fries for lunch or eating a salad. Your body looks
Speaker 1: basically the same in the mirror that night. The scale
Speaker 1: hasn't really changed. What's the difference between studying Chinese for
Speaker 1: an hour tonight or not studying at all. You still
Speaker 1: haven't learned the language either way. And so it's very
Speaker 1: easy for us to dismiss those daily choices, those small habits.
Speaker 1: But it's only two or five or ten years later
Speaker 1: that those choices have compounded and we end up in
Speaker 1: a very different spot, and when we realize how much
Speaker 1: value there is in a choice that's one percent better,
Speaker 1: and how much of a cost there is and a
Speaker 1: choice that's one percent worse. So that's why I like
Speaker 1: to use compounding as an example for habits. It's not
Speaker 1: that it maps perfectly onto that hockey stick curve, but
Speaker 1: it more accurately describes what it's like to build a
Speaker 1: habit and what it feels like on a daily basis,
Speaker 1: which is, it doesn't really feel like much. It kind
Speaker 1: of feels like the beginning of that compounding curve. You
Speaker 1: just kind of flat, there's nothing to show for it.
Speaker 1: And it's only later when you get down toward the
Speaker 1: hockey stick portion of the curve that you're like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: I'm in a really different place a decade later than
Speaker 1: it feels like on a daily basis. Yeah, I love that,
Speaker 1: and I loved the idea of contrasting positive versus negative compounding.
Speaker 1: That's really cool. Maybe we should step back a moment
Speaker 1: and actually explain what your four step model of habits is. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'll give you an example as I walk through
Speaker 1: it so real quickly. The four stage is ore a Q,
Speaker 1: what I call craving as the second stage response and reward. Okay,
Speaker 1: As an example, say you walk into a room and
Speaker 1: it's dark. So in this case, the queue is visual,
Speaker 1: it's a dark room. The craving is how you interpret
Speaker 1: the queue or the prediction that your brain makes about
Speaker 1: what to do next. So often we talk about craving
Speaker 1: as like, you know, I crave a donut or I
Speaker 1: crave a cigarette or something like that. But I kind
Speaker 1: of mean this more in a broader sense, like what
Speaker 1: do you desire to do based on the situation. So Q,
Speaker 1: the room is dark, craving, I want to be able
Speaker 1: to see, or I wanted to reduce the uncertainty of
Speaker 1: being in a dark room. Response is the third stage
Speaker 1: where you flip on the light switch. So this is
Speaker 1: the routine or the action, the behavior that you take,
Speaker 1: and then reward the room is lit, I'm able to
Speaker 1: see now. And those four stages in that example, you
Speaker 1: know that happens in what thirty milliseconds. I mean it's
Speaker 1: happening so fast that you don't even think about it.
Speaker 1: And this is a good way to think about how
Speaker 1: this process works in the brain. I mean, your brain
Speaker 1: is going through this endlessly. You're endlessly taking in information,
Speaker 1: raw data from the environment, the temperature, the pixels in
Speaker 1: your visual field, what you're hearing, all of this data,
Speaker 1: and those are the cue use that you're of the
Speaker 1: external environment that you're absorbing. And then you're making predictions
Speaker 1: about which of those cues are important and how you
Speaker 1: should respond and what your next action should be based
Speaker 1: on your current state and past experience and what you've learned.
Speaker 1: Then you take an action, and then finally you analyze
Speaker 1: what the outcome is and then try to update your
Speaker 1: prediction for the next time. And your brain's going through
Speaker 1: these cycles endlessly, even right now as you're listening to this.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and if you do it enough, then pretty
Speaker 1: soon you can proceed through all four stages without even
Speaker 1: thinking about it. It's more or less non conscious, like
Speaker 1: flipping on a light switch in a dark room. You
Speaker 1: don't actually think the room is dark. I'd like to
Speaker 1: be able to see like you're just flipping the switch
Speaker 1: as soon as you enter the door. And that is
Speaker 1: kind of the process of forming a habit. You've repeated
Speaker 1: it enough that you can do it more or less
Speaker 1: without thinking. A second way that I like to break
Speaker 1: down these four stages though, and I think it's instructive
Speaker 1: for understanding what the role of a habit is in
Speaker 1: daily life. Is that habits are the solutions that your
Speaker 1: brain automates to repeated problems that you face throughout life.
Speaker 1: So the more that you face the same problem, the
Speaker 1: more your brain starts to develop fluency and speed and
Speaker 1: accuracy with coming up with a solution for it. So like,
Speaker 1: in the morning, you put your shoes on, and in
Speaker 1: a sense, having an untied shoe is a problem that
Speaker 1: your brain has to solve. So Q you see this,
Speaker 1: your shoes untied, craving, I want to have a tied shoe. Response,
Speaker 1: I tie the shoelace and then reward the shoe is
Speaker 1: now secure on my foot. And in that sense, habits
Speaker 1: are just these solutions, and they don't have to be
Speaker 1: And this is one of the key things to realize.
Speaker 1: Your brain is just looking for an effective solution in
Speaker 1: the moment. It doesn't mean that the original solution that
Speaker 1: you came up with, the original habit that you build,
Speaker 1: is necessarily the optimal habit, right, So like if you
Speaker 1: come home from work and you feel stressed and exhausted,
Speaker 1: so que you walk in the door, craving, you're feeling exhausted,
Speaker 1: you want to feel refreshed, or you know, improve in
Speaker 1: some way improve your current state. Response, Well, there are
Speaker 1: variety of ways to deal with that. You know. One
Speaker 1: person might play video games for an hour and they
Speaker 1: learned that that's one way to reduce exhaustion and stress.
Speaker 1: Another person might smoke a cigarette for ten minutes. A
Speaker 1: third person might go for a run for twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: and all of those are solutions to the recurring problem
Speaker 1: of coming home from a long day of work. But
Speaker 1: some of them are healthier and more productive than others.
Speaker 1: And once you realize this that your habits are just
Speaker 1: trying to it's just your brain's best attempt to come
Speaker 1: up with a quick and easy solution to the problems
Speaker 1: you face, then you can start to figure out, like,
Speaker 1: all right, what are better habits that might serve me
Speaker 1: more in the long run but also resolve those challenges
Speaker 1: or problems that I face on a repeated daily basis.
Speaker 1: If I could make that happen in the real world, like,
Speaker 1: I would definitely be able to make some strides in
Speaker 1: my habits. Because this stuff is, as you talk about,
Speaker 1: a lot of these habits are, and as a lot
Speaker 1: of research at the subconscious level, they're programmed as if
Speaker 1: then statements, right, Like, so we need like these implementation
Speaker 1: intentions in order to but we can reprogram this stuff, right,
Speaker 1: I mean there's hope, Yes, there is hope, and it's
Speaker 1: habits are Yeah, if then statement is a good way
Speaker 1: to think about it. Because habits are all about associations, right,
Speaker 1: They're all about like the solution that you associate with
Speaker 1: a certain context or with a certain problem. And this
Speaker 1: is often one reason why it's easier to build a
Speaker 1: new habit in a new environment because you're not trying
Speaker 1: to overpower your old associations. So like, let's say, for example,
Speaker 1: that you wanted to build the habit of reading more. Well,
Speaker 1: if you are like, all right, I'm going to read
Speaker 1: more tonight, and so you go into your living room
Speaker 1: and you sit down in your couch. But the context
Speaker 1: of being in your living room, being on your couch
Speaker 1: might already be associated with watching Netflix for an hour
Speaker 1: each night, And so when you go in there, you're unconsciously,
Speaker 1: subconsciously fighting against your like behavioral biases in that environment
Speaker 1: or the stimuli of being there and like wanting to
Speaker 1: reach for the remote and turn on Netflix. So it
Speaker 1: might be easier actually to build a reading habit. Say,
Speaker 1: there's so there's like a coffee shop near your office
Speaker 1: where you never go in there, so it's a new shop,
Speaker 1: and now this place becomes the context, the area where
Speaker 1: you finish work. You walk to the coffee shop, you
Speaker 1: turn your phone off when you get in the door,
Speaker 1: and you pull out a book and you read for
Speaker 1: thirty minutes. And so now there's this is it becomes
Speaker 1: the reading coffee shop. Right, It's like that's the thing
Speaker 1: that that context gets tied to. And even if you
Speaker 1: can't do it with like an entirely new environment, you
Speaker 1: can often do it with a space in your current environment.
Speaker 1: So maybe you get like a new chair and you
Speaker 1: put it in the corner of your apartment, and that's
Speaker 1: the reading chair, and the only thing you ever do
Speaker 1: in that chair is you read. And the point here
Speaker 1: is you're trying to associate the context with a new habit,
Speaker 1: and it's better when you can do it in a
Speaker 1: place that you don't already have associations with, you don't
Speaker 1: already have other things you have to fight through to
Speaker 1: build a new one. I love that. So in the
Speaker 1: little time we have remaining here, why don't we do
Speaker 1: some advanced tactics. Yeah, for sure. It sounds like an
Speaker 1: operative advanced like mercenary tactics. Okay, I love it. How
Speaker 1: can we go from being merely good to being truly great?
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously that book From Good to Great is
Speaker 1: a bestseller. You know, a lot of people are very
Speaker 1: interested in that, Like, how can we go that extra mile? Yeah,
Speaker 1: our fie off frontier. We already talked about genes in town,
Speaker 1: and we already talked about the importance of finding that
Speaker 1: environment that get the best out of your genes. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little about the Goldilocks rule? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: the Goldilocks rule is essentially a way of thinking about
Speaker 1: how to stick with a habit in the long run,
Speaker 1: or how to maintain your motivation to perform a habit
Speaker 1: in the long run. And the idea, and there's some
Speaker 1: interesting research that has shown this is that humans experience
Speaker 1: peak levels of motivation when they work on a challenge
Speaker 1: of just manageable difficulty, so not too hard, not too easy,
Speaker 1: just right. That's like the Goldilocks rule or this Goldilocks zone.
Speaker 1: Did you coin that phrase? Goldilocks rule. Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of like happy about that. I didn't coin
Speaker 1: the phrase just manageable difficulty. That was from the research.
Speaker 1: But Goldilocks rule is like my way of thinking about
Speaker 1: how to keep yourself on that edge of challenge. So
Speaker 1: the idea here is that you want to stay on
Speaker 1: the perimeter of your abilities. And so you know, imagine
Speaker 1: that you're playing a tennis match. If you play against
Speaker 1: someone who's a professional, like Roger Feeder or Serena Williams,
Speaker 1: is going to get boring pretty quickly because you're going
Speaker 1: to lose every point. But if you play against someone
Speaker 1: who is like if you play against a little child
Speaker 1: playing against five year old, that's going to be boring
Speaker 1: because you're going to win every point. But if you're
Speaker 1: playing against someone what's that that might be a little fun.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well it'd be really cute for a minute, right,
Speaker 1: But if you're trying to play a serious match, if
Speaker 1: you play against someone who is your equal, you know
Speaker 1: who's like, they're pretty good, you're pretty good. They win
Speaker 1: a few points, You win a few points. You have
Speaker 1: a chance to win, but only if you really try.
Speaker 1: That's incredibly motivating. It like forces you to lock in.
Speaker 1: And perhaps the best example of this in modern life
Speaker 1: is video games. Video games are designed to keep you
Speaker 1: right on that razor's edge of your ability. So if
Speaker 1: you're struggling with a level, they'll give you more power
Speaker 1: ups or more coins, or maybe drop a few more
Speaker 1: weapons your way. If you're really advancing and knocking it
Speaker 1: out of the park, then all of a sudden they'll
Speaker 1: throw more challenges for you. But the idea idea is
Speaker 1: that they want to keep you on that edge while
Speaker 1: you always feel like you're making progress, but you're also
Speaker 1: always challenged enough to stay fully engaged, and so that's
Speaker 1: kind of where you want to stay now. This is
Speaker 1: similar to being in a state of flow, similar to
Speaker 1: being like fully engaged in the moment. And some research
Speaker 1: has shown that states of flow are often achieved when
Speaker 1: you're about four to five percent beyond your current ability.
Speaker 1: So you're being stretched just a little now in daily life.
Speaker 1: How do you know what that is? Right? Like, what
Speaker 1: is writing four percent beyond your current ability? Or what
Speaker 1: is you know, meditating five percent harder than you usually do.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to quantify that, but I think
Speaker 1: that as a rule of thumb, or as a heuristic
Speaker 1: to keep in mind this idea that I'm looking to stretch,
Speaker 1: but only just a little bit, Like you really do
Speaker 1: still need to be winning a lot, making progress, otherwise
Speaker 1: you don't have a reason to continue. Yeah, And would
Speaker 1: you say Steve Martin was a good example of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I tell the story in the book of Steve Martin,
Speaker 1: who he had been comedian for many years before he
Speaker 1: broke out. I think he said, how did he describe it?
Speaker 1: I think he said eighteen years total, and it was
Speaker 1: like ten years struggling, four years refining, and then four
Speaker 1: years in wild success. And early on in his career
Speaker 1: his comedy segments were incredibly short. I mean when he
Speaker 1: was like a teenager and he was doing this in
Speaker 1: high school, it would be, you know, three minutes or
Speaker 1: five minutes on stage. And then gradually, each year he
Speaker 1: would expand it just a little bit, so he'd do
Speaker 1: like a seven minute routine, and then I think by
Speaker 1: the time he was eighteen, he was doing like a
Speaker 1: ten minute routine or fifteen minute routine, and each time
Speaker 1: he would just keep adding a little bit so he'd
Speaker 1: keep the pieces that worked right. He knew that he
Speaker 1: had some segments that could get laughs, but then it
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, all of a sudden, I have to
Speaker 1: come up with two new minutes of new material that
Speaker 1: I don't have before. So he's also really being challenged.
Speaker 1: So a great example of what the Goldilocks rule looks
Speaker 1: like in daily life. There's just enough winning for him
Speaker 1: to be like that wasn't a total bomb. I still
Speaker 1: need to show up next week, but just enough challenge
Speaker 1: for him to really be pushing hard and be like, man,
Speaker 1: I got to come up with some good jokes, and
Speaker 1: result was he kept getting better a year in and
Speaker 1: year out, and he turned around when he was, you know,
Speaker 1: in his twenties and thirties and just had this incredible career.
Speaker 1: And of course there are a variety of other things
Speaker 1: aligned with that. We talked already about jeens and so on.
Speaker 1: To maximize your ability in any field, you need to
Speaker 1: be able to stay motivated and stick with it, and
Speaker 1: the Goldilocks rule is one way to do that. All right,
Speaker 1: So I'm going to end here with two of my
Speaker 1: favorite quotes from your book. So one each habit unlocks
Speaker 1: the next level of performance. It's an endless cycle. Love
Speaker 1: That kind of makes me think of the love life
Speaker 1: as a video game right where you get to unlock
Speaker 1: the next level, you know, just by doing something a
Speaker 1: little bit better. And the other one I like is
Speaker 1: the secret to getting results that last is to never
Speaker 1: stop making improvements. It's remarkable what you can build if
Speaker 1: you just don't stop. James Clear, congratulations on this tremendous
Speaker 1: accomplishment of this book and I wish it all the success. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the chat. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
Speaker 1: you to join in the discussion at Thespsychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add a
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