Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - How to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones with James Clear (Re-Release) #321

Episode Date: December 28, 2022

Do you believe habits are ‘good’ or ‘bad’? Are you constantly trying to create better habits and quit those that don’t serve you? Today’s guest has insights that will help get your New Year off to a great start by truly understanding what habits are – and how to optimise them. James Clear is an entrepreneur and New York Times best-selling author of Atomic Habits a handbook for anyone who wants to finally get to grips with successful behaviour change. He shares his learnings via his hugely popular newsletters, to help people use the psychology of habit formation to live healthier, fuller lives. We talk about ‘designing your environment’, building a tribe around you who support what you want to achieve and finding the path of least resistance to what you want to do. When it comes to good versus bad habits, James says it’s more about which are effective – are they serving you? We also discuss how true behaviour change is really identity change. Every action you take towards your goal is a vote for the person you wish to become. You’re no longer that someone who tries to go for a run three times a week, you’re a runner. James says we can all begin by asking ourselves ‘Who do I want to become?’ then looking at what habits we might need to build that identity. This is such a useful conversation, packed with practical tips, and I think it’s a great way to kick off the year. I know you’re going to feel fired up to seek out your new identity once you listen.  Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore https://www.calm.com/livemore https://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/321 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Your current life today is largely the sum of your habits. In many ways, it's the habits that you've been following for, say, the last six months or the last year that have carried you to whatever results you have right now. But I think the real reason that habits matter is they reinforce a new identity. They reshape the way you think about yourself. Every action you take is like a vote for the type of person that you wish to become. Habits are a lifestyle to live, not a finish line to cross. Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More.

Hey guys, how you doing? This, of course, is the time of year where many of us are thinking about habits. How can we go about creating new habits that are going to help us lead happier and healthier lives? So what I've decided to do is re-release a powerful conversation I had a little over two years ago now with the wonderful James Clear. Now James is the author of the global smash hit Atomic Habits, a handbook for anyone who wants to finally get to grips with successful behavior change. And what he does is help people use the psychology of habit formation to live healthier and more fulfilled lives. And I really feel that the topics we discussed over two years ago now are just as relevant and valuable today.

In this conversation, we talk about the importance of making new behaviours easy, the surprising difference between good and bad habits, why you can't improve a habit until you've established one, and how true behaviour change is really identity change. Every action you take towards your goal is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. Now James says we can all begin by asking ourselves the pertinent question, who do I want to become? And then we can start looking at what habits we might need to adopt in order to build that identity. We also cover the importance of designing our environment around us to support us in our endeavors and why intentionally building a tribe around you that is going to support you is arguably the most important thing that you can do.

This really was a wonderful conversation, jam-packed with practical information that you can start applying immediately. I hope you enjoy listening. And now, my conversation with James Clear. with James Clear. I just wanted to write something useful. And that's what I've tried to do, not only with the book, but with my newsletter and the articles that I wrote before

I became an author. And so it's fun to see that actually happen. I mean, that's the best part is hearing from people who use atomic habits to lose weight or to be more productive or start a side business or whatever. So making an actual difference and being useful is kind of my number

one thing. And I feel like if you do that well, then, you know, the business side kind of takes care of itself. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it is very useful, very practical, super well researched. You know, if you were writing the book now, based upon all the interviews you've done over the last couple of years, based upon all the podcasts you've been on, I mean, is there anything that's coming up that you wish you'd put in the book? Yeah, there are a couple, probably two things I would pick that if I could add them or redo it, I would adjust that. The first one's kind of a small thing is just talking more about timing, like when the right time is to insert a habit into

your daily routine or something. You know, you can imagine like the morning is often a good time for many people because they have control over that hour. You know, like we all have the same 24 hours in a day, but each hour is not equally under your control. Like the hour from 6 AM to 7 AM, it might be just up to you how to use that. But the hour from 11 AM to noon, maybe you're at work or you're, you're on the, under the demands of your boss or, you know, running errands or whatever. So, uh, talking a little bit more about timing, you know, for some people building a meditation habit at 7 AM makes a lot of sense. But if you have young kids, your four year old doesn't care that you're trying to meditate then. So, so there's, there's

something to be said there I think could be expanded upon. And then the big one though, is, you know, I wrote, I think it's chapter 10 in the book talks about the influence of social environment on your habits, the influence of family and friends. And so I knew that it was important in the sense that I wrote a chapter about it, but that's the one topic that since the book has come out, I think is even more important than I realized. If you really want to get a habit to stick for the long run, the social environment plays a huge role. And in fact, if you look at many habits that we do stick to for 20 or 30 or 40 years, there's often a very strong social component. Things like, you know, say you move into a new neighborhood and you walk outside and you see your neighbor mowing their lawn or trimming the hedges.

And you think, oh, I need to mow the lawn. You may stick to that habit for as long as you live in the house. I need to mow the lawn. You may stick to that habit for as long as you live in the house. And partially it's because you want to have a clean lawn, but mostly it's because you don't want to be judged by the other people in the neighborhood. And so it's actually the social expectation that gets that habit to stick. And that's true for all kinds of tribes that we're a part of, whether it's the people we work with, or the people that we live around, or the volunteering that we do, whatever it is. All those tribes, large and small, have a set of social expectations for how to act and what's normal. And those social norms often influence which habits we

stick to in the long run. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. We have something in the UK that's called social prescribing in the moment, which is really taking off. And it's this idea that as doctors, instead of asking a patient, an individual patient to try and make changes by themselves, we try and tap them in to a local group where they're already doing that behavior. A classic example is something called Parkrun, which is transforming the health of the UK. Do you know, are you familiar with park run? No, I haven't heard about it. Yeah. Park run is, is basically every Saturday in local parks, people get together to run a 5k or walk a 5k, but you do it together. Um, they've got a motto that I think it's something like no one comes last um so there's

always a tail walker to be the very last person in it's very supportive and it really has transformed my relationship with running because I rock up until the pandemic every Saturday with my son and I know all I have to do is is arrive at the venue once I I'm there, whether I'm tired, whether I'm not feeling it, I will end up completing 5k. And, you know, as doctors, we're really starting to learn actually that the way we've been advising people to do things is potentially a little bit short-sighted and not helpful in the long term. Yeah, that's a great example. I think the punchline for me usually comes down to, you want to join a group to join a tribe where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.

Because if it's normal in that group, it's going to become very attractive and natural for you to stick to it. Because our behaviors are not just something we do from a practical standpoint for ourselves. They also are signals to the people around us. And by finding tribes where your desired behavior is the normal behavior, the good habit that you want to build becomes a signal to those other people. Hey, I get it.

I fit in. I'm part of this. I belong. And belonging is one of the deepest needs that we all have. And if you have to choose between, I get the habits that I want to have, but I don't really belong, I don't fit in, I'm kind of cast out,

or I'm going against the grain of the social norm, or I have habits that I don't really love, but I get to fit in and I belong. Most people will choose belonging over loneliness. The desire to belong often overpowers the desire to improve. And so you want to make sure you get those two things aligned. And even further to your point about being a doctor, this, I mean, this influences things. It's almost like a fish being in water where it's like, what is water? You know, like when you go to the hospital or

go to see patients, you could wear a bathing suit, but that would be weird, right? So instead you wear a white lab coat or a suit and tie or whatever. Like we don't dress that way. We have a habit of which clothes we put on largely because that would be, it would violate all the social expectations and norms for what it means to visit someone in a hospital or what it means to go to the doctor. And that type of thing happens all over the place. It's again, it's like a fish in water surrounds us constantly. Like why do you ring doorbells or knock on doors before you walk in? Because it would be weird to barge into someone's house without doing that, right? Like we have a habit of doing things that way. And there's a social expectation that you ask for

permission before you step inside someone's home. And so the social environment in that way, just, it has such a strong influence on the habits and behaviors that we repeat again and again. And you can go against the grain of the social norm, the social norm for a little bit, but if you want to stick to a habit for years, I think you got to have some kind of community or some kind of social norm that's working with you rather than against you. Yeah. I mean, really, really helpful advice to people. If someone's listening to this and they think, okay, James, I get that, but I've tried. And my friends, the ones who I like hanging out with don't have those behaviors. They still like boozing every night. They still like, you know, having big tubs of ice cream when I'm actually trying to stop doing that. You know,

what can I do then? Have you sort of picked up any helpful tips along the way that will help people who struggle getting that social environment aligned with what they want as well? Yep. Yeah. Certainly, there is a time and a place for having to cut things out of your life entirely. But I don't know that that's necessary most of the time. I do think for many habits, you need at least some kind of, we can call it like a sacred space where it can happen, where you're not actually going against the grain of things. Like, let's say that you want to start doing yoga consistently

or start running consistently. If you grow up or live in a flat of all people who are fairly athletic and interested in that, well, it's a lot more natural to do that. Whereas if your family, nobody's interested in working out with you or they kind of criticize you when you put the yoga video on, then you're kind of fighting this uphill battle. You don't really have a sacred space for that. So, you know, um, finding somewhere, whether it's a little harder

here during the pandemic, but you know, usually we could say going to a yoga studio for a class, uh, where at least for that hour, you're surrounded by people who your desired behavior is the normal behavior. Um, so that's one thing. The other thing though, is the more precise you get about what you actually want, um, the less likely you are to find that generally just kind of hanging out in the world because your, your goals are specific to you. And, uh, so what you may find, and I've had to do this is that you may need to create the tribe rather than stumble into one or find one naturally. So as an example, you know, my, my business, my career is to be an author, but I really view myself more as like an

online business person as an entrepreneur. And so I have looked and sought out other entrepreneurs who have similar businesses as me, they started with a newsletter, they write books now. And I've reached out to all of them cold, slowly developed relationships with some of them. And then once I had talked to say 25 or 30 people like that, I had five or six or eight that I really got along well with. And so I invited those people out to a retreat each year where we all kind of get together in person for three or four days. And I take care of organizing it all. Everybody pitches in money and splits the cost. And it's really valuable for all

of us because it's not the kind of group that we would just stumble into, right? We wouldn't, we wouldn't just be able to naturally find that social environment. So you may find that you need to create it, uh, in order for, for you to be surrounded by people who really do share your objectives and your goals and your values. But I think that's very much worth it. It's 100% worth the effort for me. Yeah, I mean, it's a great example to share. And you did mention the pandemic. And I guess in some ways that has presented new opportunities. So what I mean by that is, yes, I can no longer go to my yoga class, for example, but actually there's a litany now of Zoom yoga classes. And you can probably,

through social media, through the internet, find, actually sort of trial out until you find your perfect tribe, which may even be meeting on a daily basis. I don't know if you've been doing many interviews during the pandemic at all, but I'm interested as to whether you feel the way the world has changed over the past six months, has that harmed the creation of new habits or has that helped the creation of new habits? Um, well, anytime behavior changes or sorry, anytime the environment changes in a big way, behavior changes in a big way. And many of us throughout the pandemic have felt or seen our environment change in really meaningful ways. It used to be that you went into the office, but now your office is the kitchen table or the pantry used to be miles away from you most of the day, but now it's right around

the corner and you can snack whenever you want. And so those shifts in environment have definitely led to a shift in behaviors, a creation of new habits. Now, not necessarily all good habits, but it's definitely been a shift. I do think, however, we can ask ourselves, you know, what is one of the things that I like to come back to when we talk about designing habits is what is the path of least resistance? So how can I make the good habits the obvious and easy thing to do in this environment? And when we all have our environment shift and we're working from home and different things are happening, you're in an environment that you probably have not optimized before,

at least not for the certain set of habits that are being performed in it now. So I'll give a couple personal examples. I knew I'd be spending more time at home during quarantine and the pandemic and so on. And I figured, well, I'd like to use at least some of that time productively. So I want to read a little bit more. So I bought some books off my reading list. I have like four or five of them next to me right now on the desk So I bought some books off my reading list. I have like four or five of them next to me right now on the desk. I put a couple down on the coffee table, one or two next to my bed. So I kind of sprinkling books throughout the house so that it's the path of least resistance to read them. I also took all the apps that are on the home screen of my phone

and I move those to a second screen. And then I took audible and I put that on the home screen, right in the home bar. So it was the first thing that I would see when I would open up my phone, just to remind me to listen to another audio book. And so what I'm trying to do is to prime my environment for more productive action, right? To make the good habit, the lap, the path of least resistance. And what you often see, if you look around people's environments, we have, you know, people can have good intentions. We can have all kinds of things that we would like to do, but the habits that we often actually spend time on are often the path of least resistance. Like if you take a lot of people

feel like they watch too much TV or they watch more Netflix than they would like or whatever. But if you walk into any living room, where do all the couches and chairs face, right? So it's like, what is this room designed to get you to do? And I'm not saying that you have to, you know, get rid of your television or something, but you could place it inside a cabinet or a wall unit. So that's behind doors. You're less likely to see it. You could take the chair that you usually sit in to watch television. You could turn it and have it face a coffee table with a book on it. You could take the remote control, put it inside a drawer, put a book in its place. And, you know, no single choice like that is going to radically transform your behavior. But you can imagine the impact of making a dozen or two dozen or 50 little choices

like that throughout your environment that all kind of prime the more productive action. And suddenly it becomes a lot easier to stick to good habits when they're the path of least resistance. Yeah, such a good point. And as you were describing that, I thought about my living room at the moment. And I've got three books in there that I'm sort of dipping in and out of at the moment. We've also started unplugging the television and the Virgin sort of cable box. And actually, if you have to plug them in before you put it on and before you load up Netflix, that is sometimes a five-minute procedure for it to turn it on, it to load up. That is enough. That is enough friction between me watching Netflix again. Ah, you know what?

I'm just going to read the book. Um, and it's surprising how little friction you need for a bad habit to kind of fade away. Like another similar example to that. I, um, I've been doing this for the last year or two where I have this little habit where I try to start my day by leaving my phone in another room until lunch and it doesn't work for everybody, but it works well for me. And what I find is if I have my phone next to me, if it's, if I bring it in, I'm like everybody else. I check it every three minutes, you know, but if it's in a different room, I have a home office. And so it's only like 30 seconds away, but I never go get it. And I'm like, well, did I want it or not? You know, in the one sense, I wanted it bad enough to check it every three minutes when it was next to me.

But in another sense, I never wanted it so bad that I would work 30 seconds to go get it. And, um, I've seen the same thing with beer. If I buy like a six pack of beer and I put it in the front of the fridge, if I have it right there where I can see it, when I open up the door, I'll grab one every night just because it's there. But if I tuck it down on the lowest shelf and I put it like come to the back of the fridge where I can barely even see it, sometimes I'll forget it's there for weeks. And it's surprising that that little bit of friction can lead to a change in your behavior. You know, I don't think those things will solve like a true addiction, but most people aren't dealing with that. In many cases, you'll be surprised how much you can curtail your bad habits just by making them less obvious and a little more difficult to do.

Yeah, I mean, we'll maybe touch back on addiction later if there's time. But that is such a great example, James, because you're still bringing beer into the house. You're just hiding it. You're making it invisible, which is changing your behavior. So, you know, I've always said to my patients, try and control the environments you can control, right? You can't control what's outside your front door. So for people who are, let's say, trying to lose weight, for example, if they feel that that's going to benefit them for their health, I will often say, well, which of the foods you're trying to eat more of, which of the foods you're trying to eat more of, which of the ones you're trying to eat less of, let's not bring the ones you're trying to eat

less of into the house in the first place. But you're saying even if you do bring stuff into the house, there are tricks you can do just to make them that little bit harder to access, which I think is a really helpful tip for people. Well, the more friction there is between you and a bad habit or an undesirable behavior, the less likely you are to do it. So if the food that you want to avoid, the junk food that you're trying to not eat, if it's, you know, um, 15 minutes away at the store, that's a lot of friction. Um, if it's in the house, that's much less friction, but it's better if it's on the highest shelf in the pantry or tucked away at the bottom of the fridge or,

you know, um, down in the basement in the cellar or something like these, you know, anywhere where you can add more friction, make it less visible, make it less obvious, increase the number of steps between you and the behavior like you did when you unplugged the television. You know, that's just a little bit of extra friction. And all of that stuff adds uh and is is helpful in kind of guiding your behavior towards uh the path of least resistance yeah reminds me one of my patients who actually couldn't stop eating crisps uh so i think you guys call them potato chips um and he the solution we ended up finding after trying to tweak it for a little while is he would put them in his garden shed. So he had to, you know, in the UK in the winter, you probably don't want to get out of the door, go into your garden, get to the shed and it works. It was, you know, it is amazing. I think, I think we often, what I think is beautiful about your book, actually, there's many things about it that are just frankly fantastic, but you've actually,

you've really helped to codify something that we all do on a daily basis, often without thinking about it. And I want to explore that a little bit with you. Either in the book or in a previous interview, I've heard you say that where we are at the moment in life is a result of the habits that we have or something to that effect. I wonder if you could maybe expand upon that a little bit because I think it's a really interesting concept. Well, you know, there are a variety of things that influence your outcomes in life. Probably if we're going to say there are like two or three big pillars, we probably would say, well, there's luck and randomness. So certainly, you know, good luck and bad luck influence your outcomes. There's your choices, individual decisions you make, where to go to school, who to marry, what job to take, what career to pursue.

Those certainly influence your outcomes. And then there are your habits and your actions. And, you know, by definition, the first one, luck and randomness is not under your control. So you I don't think it makes sense to focus there because you don't have control over it. By definition, their choices, we you know, we could talk more about that possibly. But the one that I've explored the most is your habits. And the reason is because they are decisions, they're, they're also choices, but they're ones that get repeated day in and day out. they are decisions. They're also choices, but they're ones that get repeated day in and day out.

And I think for that reason, they exert an enormous force on your outcomes in life. And we could potentially, as you just mentioned, sort of boil it down and simplify it and say that your current life today is largely the sum of your habits. In many ways, it's the habits that you've been following for, say, the last six months or the last year, the last two years that have carried you to whatever results you have right now. I had a friend who told me a couple months ago, I thought I liked the way he phrased it. He said, if you're enjoying good results right now, you were killing it six months ago. And I think that speaks to the quality of habits and how they build up and compound. And it's really the process that you've been running. And I like to kind of simplify this down and use, I use the phrase system versus goal. And so what I say is that like, you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level

of your systems. And if we're a little bit more precise about those words, your goal is like your desired outcome. It's your target, the thing that you want to achieve. But what is your system? Your system is the collection of daily habits that you follow. And so each little habit is kind of like a gear in that overall machine. And if you optimize your habits, you're optimizing your system and you naturally fall to whatever that level of result is to whatever the system is running toward. If there is ever a gap between your goal and your system, if there's ever a gap between your desired outcome and your daily habits, your daily habits will always win. It doesn't matter how good your intentions were. It doesn't matter what you hope to achieve. It's what your habits

are carrying you toward. And so the kind of the great irony of all of this is we also badly want better results in life. You know, we also badly want to make more money or to reduce stress or to find love or to be more productive. But the results are actually not the thing that needs to change. It's the system that precedes the results. It's the habits that precede the outcome. So it's kind of like fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves. Why is it that we don't sort of intuitively get that? Why is it, you know, classic case, January the 1st every year where it's, okay, complete lifestyle overhaul, get to the gym

three times a week, eat completely perfect whole foods, you know, don't bring any sugar in the house. And it lasts for about two weeks or three weeks at the most for many people. And then if they're not seeing results, there's something isn't there in the human psyche that actually we judge the success of our habits, maybe a little bit too early, I guess. I really like what your friend said about how you are now is what you were doing six months ago. It's such a beautiful way to think about it. But what's going on there with human psychology that we don't quite see it? Yeah, I don't know that I have a perfect example or answer, but a couple of things that come to mind, like one is that I think at a very deep fundamental level, like a biological level, humans are goal seeking

organisms, you know, like in to some sense, in some degree, maybe it's subconscious, but you have a goal of finding food and water, you have a goal of seeking shelter. And it's the objective of satisfying your thirst that motivates you to take action. So we kind of, I feel like it's the objective of satisfying your thirst that motivates you to take action. So we kind of, I feel like it's probably wired into us at some deep level to have goals and results. And so because of that, we have a tendency to kind of over-focus on that when it is applied to say the modern world and not to like just our physical existence. The other challenge, and I think modernity just kind of magnifies this or accelerates it is that whether it's the daily news cycle, or social media,

it tends to be very results focused, it tends to be very results oriented. So you know, you're never going to see a news story that says something like, man eats chicken and salad for lunch today, right? It's only going to be a story when it's like man loses, you know, all this weight or, uh, it's only, we only hear about the Broadway play once it's a hit, not when it's being written, right? We only hear about the, um, successful team after they've won the championship, not while they're training in the off season. And so the results of success are often highly visible and discussed. And the process of success is often hidden from view.

And for that reason, I think we tend to overvalue results and undervalue the process that, you know, precedes it, all the work that comes before. So I think, you know, society tends to be very outcome oriented and results oriented. And certainly results matter. And this is this, again, is like one of the little ironies or kind of competing tensions of this. I'm not saying that results don't matter. They do. But people who focus only on results win one time, people who focus on systems win again and again. And so the place that you want to focus is on building better habits and developing better systems, not necessarily achieving a particular outcome. Yeah. Yeah. So much for people to reflect on there, I think.

You know, if we think about habits, and often we call habits good or bad, And often we call habits good or bad. And it's really interesting because I think sitting underneath habits in the book, and I really, it's funny, I read the book when it first came out. I actually quoted some of your book in my third book, which just came out in America, which you may not have seen yet, but I quote. Oh, thank you. Not at all. I quote one of your lines in the conclusion there. Congrats, by the way, finishing any book is a huge project. So

congratulations. You've done three. Yeah. And I submitted my fourth manuscript last week, so I'm barely still alive and functioning actually. But, um, I like the, uh, I like the phrase that I think Sam Harris used it where he said, um, writing a book is often like having a baby except bloodier. And I was like, yeah, it's quite a battle. My, my PA said to me last week, she's, she said, Ron, I thought you'd finished in June. I was like, yes. So did I, I thought I was done. She goes, I'm just on the final bit now, but you know, June bled into July into August into September. Um, but you know, as I revisited this morning and I haven't looked at it for maybe over 12 months actually right so it was it was really nice to revisit it and I've actually been prompted to maybe put it into my living room and make it one book that I reread now from start to finish

but it's really interesting to me that although on the surface it's about habits, what strikes me is actually it's really about awareness and what you're really doing is helping shine a light on people as to how they're spending their time, what are they doing. And actually, I don't know how spiritually inclined you are, but actually there's a real spiritual component to the book I found, because you're helping people, you're actually helping us understand ourselves better. And I think that's one of the most powerful things that any of us can give another human being, is the ability to understand themselves. Yeah, thanks for saying that. I think, you know, behavior is, this is, I think, one of the common myths about behavior change. People say, oh, you know, behavior change is so hard. It's so difficult to change habits,

whatever. The truth is we're changing all the time. One of the primary functions of your brain is to change your behavior whenever the environment shifts or whenever the context shifts. So you're very capable of change and you're kind of doing it constantly. However, in order to change in an intentional way, in order to be in control of that change and not just having it happen to you, I think you have to start with some kind of awareness. So the point that you just made about the book is actually about self-awareness. It's actually about understanding yourself better. It's actually about seeing some of the behaviors that you're usually blind to. That I feel like is an essential

first step if you want to be in control of that process in any way. A lot of people feel like they're the victim of their habits, but I think if you want to become the architect of them, you need to have some kind of self-awareness. You need to be able to identify what am I actually doing right now? What is the truth of the situation? And where do I want to go? What is the truth of what I want to become or want to achieve? And then you can start to bridge that gap once you have a better, clearer understanding of where you currently stand and where you want to go. Is there an argument that we shouldn't use the term good and bad when it comes to habits. Now, I get it. Most of us would consider, I don't know, moving our bodies more an inverted commas good habits. But

you described so beautifully how all behaviors really are playing a role in our lives in some way. And in some ways, assigning good and bad to them might be layering on a level of judgments, which can often actually get people even more stuck. So I wonder if you can unpack that a little bit for us. Yeah, you can sort of twist this either way. Like on the one hand, I do think there is an argument for just saying, listen, there aren't really good or bad habits. There are effective habits in the sense that they are effective at solving the problem that you're facing in that moment. And having some additional layer of judgment or feeling guilty about that probably isn't serving you. It's not really helping you move forward. So maybe we could dismiss that. On the other hand, I think we all sort of implicitly understand what we're saying when we say it's a good habit or a bad habit. But I have wrestled with this a little bit more because there are some academics or some researchers who kind of adamantly say that there is no such thing as a good or a bad habit. And here's where I've come

down on it. Pretty much all behaviors in life produce multiple outcomes across time. So broadly speaking, let's say there's an immediate outcome and there's an ultimate outcome. And with your bad habits or things that we commonly call a bad habit, usually the immediate outcome is favorable. Like the immediate outcome of eating a donut is great. It's sweet, it's sugary, it's tasty, it's enjoyable. It's only the ultimate outcome a year or two years from now, or if you keep eating donuts, that's unfavorable. With a good habit or something we commonly call a good habit, like say going to the gym,

the immediate outcome is often kind of unfavorable. Like the immediate outcome of going to the gym for the first week is your body looks the same in the mirror. The scale hasn't changed. If anything, you're a little bit sore. It's only the ultimate outcome, you know, a year or two or five later that is favorable. And I think, first of all, this is I feel like this is an important point for a couple reasons. First, it helps explain a little bit why we continue to repeat habits that we consider to be bad for us.

The reason is because they serve you in the moment. You know, even something like smoking a cigarette, the immediate outcome might be that you get to socialize with friends outside the office or you curb your nicotine craving. It's only the ultimate outcome that is unfavorable. And we tend to have brains that are wired for immediate returns. And that, you know, that makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Like you would rather have a brain that takes shelter from a storm now, uh, than one that doesn't, you would rather have a brain that prioritizes getting the next meal than giving equal weight to a meal that you might have in two weeks. Um, and so it serves us usually

to be immediately focused, but in modern society, it comes back to hurt us a little bit when it comes to a lot of these bad habits. With good habits, however, it's a lot about finding ways to delay gratification or to pull the long-term rewards of those good habits into the present moment so that you feel good right now. of those good habits into the present moment so that you feel good right now. In, you know, in ancient history or in prehistory, our ancestors largely grew up in environments that were immediately focused, like I said, taking shelter from a storm or getting the next meal or something like that, avoiding predators.

But modern society has become increasingly focused on delayed rewards. You go to school now so that you can graduate in a few years. You show up at work this week so that you can get a paycheck in a month. You save for retirement now so that you can have financial security a decade or two or three from now. And so modern society asks us to make more delayed return decisions than our ancestors did. And so I think we have a little bit of

friction with a lot of the good habits that we want to build are more delayed than what maybe our biological underpinnings are wired for. So there's a little bit of a challenge there. But I think the summary of this is that if I were to define what is a good habit, what is a bad habit, I would say the cost of your good habits are in the present. The cost of your bad habits are in the future. And it's really that gap between immediate outcome and ultimate outcome that I think helps define what is good or bad. Your good habits are the ones that serve you in the long run. Your bad habits are the ones that don't serve you well in the long run. And that I think is a, you know, maybe a simplistic way of viewing it, but

it kind of gives us a clean division for how most of us actually use the word in conversation. Yeah, I really like that. And I think the way you've come down there is really helpful because I think sometimes we can in science and academia sort of get a bit lost sometimes in terms of what technically is something, you know, how can we define it? And of course, I understand the value in that. But it also has to be translated for the layman in terms of, well, what does that mean for me? You know, and- There's value in being precise, but there's more value in being useful.

And so I would rather be, I would rather have a useful definition than a precise one. And this is maybe one example. Hey, you're preaching to the converter. I'm all for things like that. It's about, you know, you know, you wrote a book, you come up with these concepts, you write, I've got to say, I want to talk about your newsletter at some point. It is just a brilliant newsletter. And guys, I would encourage anyone to sign up for it, the 3C1 newsletter. It's one that I read on most weeks. I won't say I read it every week because I don't, but I see it everywhere and I read them more than- I'm just happy that you're showing up at all, man.

I think it's great. Thank you. No, I actually don't know how you produce that level of content on a weekly basis. You must have some- In fact, let's go there now. You must have some pretty good habits or systems in place to produce such high quality output on a weekly basis. So I wonder if you're able to share some of them. Thank you for saying that. Pretty much every thought we have is downstream from what we consume.

And so I think the first step for me is trying to choose good pieces of information to consume. Almost all of my like reading is kind of like fuel for me, the way that I think about it is, I had this this little challenge, this little challenging point in my career, where after about a year or two, my audience had started growing. And I thought, oh, people are paying attention now. Now I need to be really good. And so I thought, well, if I just spend more time writing, then that's how I can make it even better. I'd need to put more effort in. But actually, I think it ended up making it worse because what I didn't realize is that if I don't have good ideas to write about, I don't need to write more, I need to read more. And so it's kind of like driving a car and reading is like filling up the tank with gas.

And writing is like going on an adventure and going on a journey and getting somewhere. And the point of having a car is not to just stay at the gas station and fill it up with gas all day, like you're supposed to actually go somewhere. So if you only consume, that's not beneficial. it up with gas all day. Like you're supposed to actually go somewhere. So if you only consume, that's not beneficial. But if all you do is try to drive and put stuff out, then at some point you run out of gas. And so I need a balance between the two. I get that in a couple different ways. Trying to select good books to read, of course, is, you know, a big part of that. But I've found Twitter to be really useful. I've spent what probably would be considered an unreasonable amount of time curating my Twitter feed. And like I would say,

it might be over 100 hours at this point that I've spent looking at different profiles. Should I follow this person or not? What about people I really like? Who do they follow? And like just kind of doing this endlessly, you know, over and over again. I sort of do this kind of it's like bulking and then cutting basically, but for Twitter. So I kind of like bulk up and add a hundred accounts that I'm going to follow. And then I sit with that for a couple of weeks and then I cut again and, you know, only keep the ones that are really useful, really high signal, low noise. But the end result of that is that essentially I'm crafting my information flow because I log in there, you know, for an hour or two every day. And that's determining essentially I'm crafting my information flow because I log in there, you know, for an

hour or two every day. And that's determining what I'm seeing in my timeline, what's popping up in my feed. And I would say at this point, every day, I probably get at least three ideas from my Twitter feed, probably more, uh, that I take notes on and maybe spark me to go read something more, go down a rabbit hole or something like that. So I really feel like that's probably the most important part in my process is crafting information flows and figuring out what to read. And then the ideas sort of come bubble up naturally when you're getting that much inspiration. I have more practical or tactical stuff. Like we have a big spreadsheet that I keep where I dump all of my ideas into it and I dump any interesting quotes I have into it. And of my ideas into it, and I dump any

interesting quotes I have into it. And eventually, we go back through those, and I select my favorites, and those kind of make it into the newsletter. So there's sort of like an additional round of curation that goes on. But I do think reading is probably the most important part of the process. Yeah, what's interesting about that for me, James, is we started off this conversation talking about our social environments. And we've kind of evolved it into your social media environments, which certainly is part of our social environment. The way humans now live and consume information and interact with people is done online. A lot of it's You know, a lot of it's done online, a lot of it's done through social media. And I really like that idea. I've

been sort of talking on my Instagram as it happens about this for a while to people say, look, you've really got to take control over who you're following, you know, the way you're going to think, your ideas of the world, but also how you feel. Like if you're struggling with stress and anxiety, I sort of think, well, are you following people who make you feel more stressed, make you feel more anxious, whose whole persona is on calling other people out and then therefore it's going to be a whole divisive type of feed you're following? Or do you want to spend time following people who make you feel good, positive, compassionate? Whatever it is you want. It's not for me to say what people should or shouldn't

follow. I guess you found what you need from Twitter and you've not just left it up to chance, which kind of goes to your central theme in the book as well, which is about, you know, we're results of the habits we're following, but half the time we don't even know that these are habits that we've been actually following until we shine a light on it. And it's the same principle that you're using with Twitter, right? You're being really intentional about who you're following, but would you recommend, given how important our environment and what we surround ourselves with is, would you almost say that that is something that all of us should be considering when we go online? Oh, I think so. When you choose the people that

you follow online, it's like you get to pick the citizens for your own little city. You know, you're getting to create that and you want to be very careful about who you let into your city, about who you're, you're allowing to be part of that information flow. Because essentially what you're choosing is you're choosing the people who are shaping your thoughts. And that's one of the most important choices that you can make. So I agree with you. I think a lot of the time behavior on social media is somewhat mindless. We just, well, we follow someone cause we've been following them for a long time and we, you know, look at their posts because we always look at the posts when we log into Instagram or Twitter or wherever. And we don't really think carefully. Does this actually

benefit me? Like, does this, is this giving me good things to think about? Do I feel better about myself after I look at this? I had one friend who she told me, she was like, I just deleted Instagram cause I felt worse about myself after I logged at this? I had one friend who she told me, she was like, I just deleted Instagram because I felt worse about myself after I logged in every time. And it took her a while to realize that. And I don't think that's necessary. I mean, I have an Instagram account, but I do think that you need to be careful about who you follow. So curating that is a big part of, yeah, you're not only choosing who to follow, you're choosing what your future self will think. And you want to make sure that you're giving yourself the opportunity to have good future thoughts. Yeah. I don't know if you've seen The Social Dilemma that's come out recently on Netflix.

I haven't seen it, but I know Tristan and have been familiar with his work for a little while. Yeah, I mean, I certainly think it's one of the most important documentaries I've seen in a long time. It definitely warranted me plugging in, waiting for the box to load for five minutes before I could press play on that. But it really has made me think. And, you know, we've not spoken about identity yet. I really want to get into that. But what was interesting about the social media algorithms and the way they were explaining in the documentary is that actually, they're actually changing the way that we think and therefore changing the way that we behave. And if we really take that, put that at the forefront of our minds,

if the people you follow and the algorithms, which are then tracking that and then feeding you more content, have the potential to change how you think and then how you behave. What could be more important than curating your online world intentionally? One thing I was doing before, I think it makes a difference. On Instagram, when you follow someone, you can actually go in and actually add them to a close friends list. And that's what I started doing. Maybe there's 10 or 20 people. They're not all close friends, but I've added them to close friends because I'm like, I really like these people's content. I actually want to see their content when they post it.

And that's, again, it's just another practical thing that I think it helps people take control a little bit. Yeah, I would agree. It's choosing information flows, social media being probably one of the primary ones for all of us is a huge crucial thing for kind of shaping your future thoughts. But Jason, you've got these four laws, these four laws of change, of behavior change, I guess. And I wonder if we could go through them. I guess we've touched on a couple of them in sort of passing so far. But before we start that, I wonder if you could define what a habit is, what an atomic habit is, and then we can maybe sort of expand upon these

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Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually, they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. forward slash live more. So there are a couple different definitions of a habit.

You know, the one that's most common or is something to the effect of a habit is a behavior that you've repeated enough times to be more or less automatic or, you know, it's something fairly mindless, automatic routine behavior. So brushing your teeth, tying your shoes, unplugging the toaster after each use, like you just kind of do these things automatically. They take 30 seconds or a minute or, you know, they're pretty quick. Um, there are some other

ways to define a habit though. And I like to use some of these alternate definitions because I think it helps reveal a little bit more nuance about what habits are and where they live in our lives. So for example, another way to define a habit is it's a behavior that is repeated in a particular context. So you start to realize that the environment matters a lot in habits, like your couch at 7pm might be where you watch Netflix. And so it's actually the behavior of watching Netflix is tied to that context. If you're somewhere else at 7 p.m., then you probably won't perform that same habit. And so you start to realize how much your behavior is linked to the environment or the circumstance around you. behavioral scientist, he has something where he says something to the effect of habits are solutions to recurring problems in your environment. And what I like about that is it speaks to habits serve a purpose. They are effective at solving some kind of problem. And if you start to unpack that a little bit more, you see that there can be quite a variety

in the habits that people build. For example, you finish the workday and it's like 6 p.m. and you're exhausted and tired from a long day of work. Well, in a sense, that's a problem that your brain needs to solve. And one person might solve that problem by playing video games for an hour. And another person might solve it by smoking a cigarette. And a third person might solve it by going for a run. And you can see pretty quickly that there are some solutions that are more effective or optimal or healthy than others. And I think the question to ask yourself, you know, early on when you're a child, you inherit these solutions. You kind of inherit, you soak up the habits that you see role modeled

by your parents or your friends or whatever experiences that you happen to have in your narrow sliver of the universe. But what are the odds that the habits that you inherited from your childhood, the experiences you had and the things that you saw done are also the optimal solution to the problems that you face? that you face, it's very unlikely that whatever you happen to stumble across is actually the optimal way to do it. And if you realize that, then you come to discover that as you become an adult and you're more in control of your habits and your environment, it becomes your responsibility to assess what are the problems and challenges I face repeatedly, the things that I'm trying to solve, and what would be a better way to do that? What are the optimal solutions? So it's not your fault if you inherited, uh, unhelpful habits or unproductive habits, but it is your responsibility to try to figure out how to adjust those and how to improve those in some meaningful way. Yeah. Right. So that's kind of a, my long definition of what is a habit. Um, now what is an atomic habit? I use the phrase atomic because I

think it has three meanings and all three kind of apply to building better habits. So the first meaning of the word atomic is tiny or small, like an atom. And that is part of my philosophy. Habits should be small and easy to do and not very difficult and convenient. The second meaning of the word atomic is the fundamental unit in a larger system. So atoms build into molecules, molecules build into compounds, and so on. And we mentioned this earlier, but your habits are kind of like the fundamental unit of the overall system that you run. Each one's like a little gear in the overall machine. And collectively, you put all those little units together and you

end up with your daily routine or your lifestyle. And then the third and final meaning of the word atomic is the source of immense energy or power. And I think that if you combine all three of those meanings, you make changes that are small and easy to do, and you layer them together like units in a larger system, you can end up with some really powerful results. And those three kind of different meanings of atomic, I think if you apply those to building better habits, you can end up with a really powerful system of better habits and behaviors. And so that's kind of where the phrase atomic habit came from and how I feel or think about using it in that context. Yeah. Wow. No, thanks for that. that. Really useful way to think about habits. So trying to think about habits

through the lens of health, let's say. Meditation is a practice that many people struggle to do consistently. Many people have the desired outcome of, I want to meditate, I want to be a meditator. I read about all these benefits, but I just can't do consistently. Many people have the desired outcome of, I want to meditate, I want to be a meditator. I read about all these benefits, but I just can't do it. And I wonder if it might be useful to try and unpick why it's difficult, but through the lens of those four laws. I wonder if you'd be game for that to see if we can maybe to make it super

practical for people. Yeah, sure. Of course. Let me just give a summary of the four laws first, and then we can kind of dive into using that example. So if you want to have it stick, you kind of roughly have four different things that if you can get them working for you, they're sort of like levers. And if they're in the right positions, building good habits is easier. And if they're in the wrong positions, you're kind of fighting an uphill battle. So the first thing is you want to make your habits obvious. Most habits are preceded by some kind of cue. And so you want the cues of your habits to be obvious, available, visible, easy to see. The easier it is to see or get your attention, the more likely you are to stick with

the habit or perform it. The second one is to make your habits attractive. Um, if you want your habits to be motivating, if you want them to be compelling, uh, then you need it to be attractive in some form. The third law is to make it easy. So the easier, more convenient, frictionless your habits are, uh, the more likely, likely you are to perform them. We've talked a little bit about that with environment design already. Um, and,. And the fourth and final thing is you want to make it satisfying. So the more satisfying or enjoyable a habit is, the more likely you are to stick with it. Now, not every behavior in life is satisfying or rewarding, right? Sometimes things have a cost or a consequence.

Sometimes they're fairly neutral. But if a behavior is not rewarding, if it's not enjoyable, at least to some degree, then it's unlikely to become a habit. It needs to have some kind of positive emotional signal associated with it that kind of tells your brain, Hey, that felt good. You should repeat this again next time. So just so real quick summary, the four laws of behavior change, make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying. And I think that sort of gives you a high level framework for getting a good habit to stick. I'll just kind of make a note of this right here. We don't have to get into it in detail, but I do just want to mention it, which is

those four help you build a good habit. If you want to break a bad habit, then you just invert those four. So rather than making it obvious, you want to make it invisible, unsubscribe from emails, reduce exposure to the queue. Rather than making it attractive, you want to make it invisible, unsubscribe from emails, reduce exposure to the queue. Rather than making it attractive, you want to make it unattractive. Making it easy, make it difficult, increase friction, add steps. Rather than making it satisfying, make it unsatisfying, add some kind of immediate cost or consequence to the behavior. So that's like the high level view for breaking a bad habit.

And obviously the book goes into many more examples of like how to do each of those, but we can talk about the, how to apply it to meditation now. Yeah. So someone's listening to this or watching it on YouTube and they go, right, okay, I'm bought in, going to get James's book. I'm going to start a meditation practice. Where should I begin? How would you advise them using your sort of framework of these laws? So usually if I say, okay, we got to start in some place, what's the first thing I should do? I actually typically recommend what I call the two minute rule. And the two minute rule is part of that third law, which is making it easy. And the two minute rule says, take whatever habit you're trying to build and scale it down to something that takes two minutes or less to do. So do yoga four days a week becomes take out my yoga mat or meditate for, you know, 15 minutes a day becomes meditate for two minutes. Um, and sometimes I say that and

people resist it a little bit. Cause they're like, okay, you know, I know the real goal isn't just to take my yoga mat out. Right. And I know I'm actually trying to do the workout. So this is some kind of mental trick. They're like, why would I fall for it basically? And I get where people are coming from, but so I have this reader, his name's Mitch and he lost a bunch of weight, kept it off for over a decade. But for the first six weeks that he went to the gym, he had a rule for himself where he wasn't allowed to stay for longer than five minutes. So he'd get in the car, drive to the gym, get out, do half an exercise, get back in the car, drive home. And it sounds ridiculous, right? It sounds

silly. You're like, obviously this is not going to get the guy the results that he wants. But if you take a step back, what you realize is that he was mastering the art of showing up, right? He was becoming the art of showing up. He was becoming the type of person that went to the gym four days a week, even if it was only for five minutes. I think this is a much deeper truth about habits that often gets overlooked, which is a habit must be established before it can be improved. It has to become the standard in your life before you can optimize and scale it up. And for whatever reason, we get very all or nothing with our habits. You know, it's like, I have to find the perfect workout program or the ideal business plan or the best diet to follow before I can take a first step. And I can imagine in this meditation example,

there are probably many people who are like, well, what is the best form of meditation? Like that would be one of the first, first things they would ask themselves. And then they'd spend hours researching on YouTube and whatever. And you know, a lot of the time we put off action because we think I need to learn more, but usually the best way to learn is by taking action. And so the two minute rule kind of helps you overcome that tendency to have this like perfectionist spiral and research too much and encourages encourages you to just get started. So I think that's step number one is let's take meditation and let's just scale it down to something you can always do. We're just going to meditate for say 60 seconds. Um, and then we can start to apply some of the other laws. So let's say we've got the first law, make it obvious. Well,

there are a couple of different things that you could make meditation obvious. You could, if you're going to do it on your phone, if you're going to download one of the meditation apps, like calm or waking up or headspace or something like that, you could take that app and put it on the home screen the way that I mentioned earlier in this interview about moving audible there. So you can make it the most obvious app on your phone. If you don't care about that, or you're just going to do it like in your house or in a room or something, you need to figure out where is that going to occur? So this is one of, this is something I mentioned in the book. I think it's in chapter five. I talk about implementation intentions and implementation intentions are when you state your intention to implement a particular behavior at a certain time

in a certain place on a certain day. So it's like, when do I meditate? I meditate on Mondays at 7am in my guest room or whatever, you know, like you just, you have to have a space where that actually happens. And, um, maybe you have a meditation pillow. So you've set that up and that's all, you know, the environment, the and that's all, you know, the environment, the space is primed. You know, it could be just in the corner of your living room or something, but there needs to be some space where that habit lives. And it's very clear when and where to do it. A lot of people feel like what they lack is motivation, but what they really lack is clarity. They lack a very clear understanding of when and

where the habit's going to live. So honestly, I think just those two things. So that's the first law, make it obvious, deciding when and where it's going to occur. And the third law, make it easy, scaling it down and just doing it for 60 seconds or two minutes or whatever. Those two things alone would go a long way in getting people to to stick with a new meditation habit yeah that's really really helpful james and i just want to share with you a patient story from i'm gonna guess seven eight years ago and you know i i've often said this but as a medical doctor i mean i can definitely put my hands hands up and say very clearly that my patients have taught me a lot more than I've taught them. Because I often say this when I'm teaching doctors as well,

really listen to your patients, listen to what they're telling you. They will often tell you why something's working, why it's not working. And one thing I've observed, I'd be really curious as to why does the same advice work for one patient and not work for another patient? Why does one patient go with that and sort of implement it all and come back like a different person? Literally a different person, not just different health, a different person, which we'll also talk about. And why does someone else really, really struggle? I remember this case, this lady who I think stress and chronic unremitting stress was driving a lot of her symptoms, her headaches, her insomnia, her mood issues. And we tried all kinds of things and she actually wanted to meditate, but she said, she tried before, but when I sort of probed her a little bit, she said,

ah, it's just not for me, doc. I've tried it. I've tried the apps. You know, I've tried YouTube videos. It's just not for me. And when you probed, when I sort of delved a bit deeper, she'd actually made it really hard. She wanted to do 20 minutes consistently. And because she hadn't met that bar, she in her head is not a meditator. So I said to her, I said, hey, look, what do you think you could commit to every day? Could you do 10 minutes? She goes, no, I could try, but I don't think so. I said, okay, how about five? She thought about it. She said, I don't know. I said, okay, okay. How about one minute? She said, well, yeah, I could do one minute, but will it make any difference? I said, well, hold on a minute. Let's just make a commitment

here, right? So I, and actually, you know, I was a lot younger as a doctor back then. And I said to her, I tell you what, whatever you commit to doing, I will also do it. I write it in a diary. And when you come back to see me next week, we'll compare, right? So I added that sort of accountability piece with her. But she started off doing one minute. And we also defined when she was going to do it. It was going to be first thing in the morning before she did anything else. That one minute, you know, after a couple of weeks became five minutes, not because I asked her to, but because she, as you would say, she was mastering the art of showing up. You know, I didn't know how to articulate it. I didn't know the science of behavior change back

then. I was sort of just going on intuition as a clinician. How can I help that lady do what she tells me she wants to do? And now she's meditating for 20 minutes a day, locked in, right? And it's, so if anyone is skeptical about your two minute rule, I would sort of concur as a clinician that this stuff works. You just got to commit to it, right? You know, one of the most motivating feelings for the human mind is the feeling of progress. If you're making progress, you have every reason in the world to continue. It's like, oh, we're moving forward. I'm making progress on the goal that I'm hoping to achieve. And so there's this weird trick that we can play on ourselves in our brain where we're

like, well, I want to meditate for 20 minutes. And if she would have done it for one minute, she would have felt like a failure if that was her expectation. Right. But somehow just by shifting it and saying, no, I'm only going to try to do this for one minute. If she does it for two minutes, she feels like she crushed it, you know? And so it's this very strange thing.

And I think that's a good argument for, especially in the beginning, starting with keeping the bar low. And you need to get in your reps. And this is true, I think, for almost any kind of habit that you're building. Like, you need the repetitions, whether it's meditating for one minute or writing one sentence or reading one page, it doesn't matter that it's, it's almost always better to do less than you had hoped than to do nothing at all. And, um, the two minute rule kind of helps nudge you toward that direction, nudge you toward the direction of getting in your reps, uh, getting it done and mastering the art of

showing up, even if it's in a small way, and then using that as a foothold to advance to the next level and kind of build some momentum and get that feeling of progress. Yeah. Now you sort of frame that with two of the four laws. I really like the fourth law, make it satisfying. What are some of the ways that people can make things satisfying? As you were talking about before, how can you, often the problem is with good habits or, you know, in adverse commas, good habits. The problem often is, is the, the, the desired effects is somewhere in the future. And so how can, how can people bring that into the presence? Well, I think the ultimate form of a reward is feeling like you're showing up

as the type of person that you want to be, that it's reinforcing your desired identity. But as you mentioned, the problem is it takes a long time for that to be true. Like the first time you meditate, you don't identify as I'm a meditator and it feels good to do this because that's part of who I am and part of my identity. It might take you a year or two or who knows how long before you actually start to adopt that feeling. I mean, I didn't identify as an author until I actually had a published book. Like even when I was writing it, I didn't feel like I was an author. So that, that can take a long time. Um, I think the key though, is that in my opinion, there are kind of two things. One, you want some kind of a reward that is immediate. And I think the speed of it is actually quite important.

You need to feel that positive emotional signal right away so that you have a reason to tie that behavior to feeling good. And you have a reason to repeat it again in the future when the same situation arises. So there are a couple different ways you can do this. You know, one very simple way that applies to almost any habit is to use a habit tracker. So I'd like to use my dad as an example here. So both of my parents like to swim. But one of the challenges with swimming is that your body looks exactly the same when

you get out of the water as it does when you jumped in. And so you have no evidence that that workout was worth it, right? You have no evidence that this is actually getting you what you want. And so what my dad does is after each workout, he pulls out a little calendar and he puts an X on that day. And it's a small thing, but that X in the moment is something that matches the frequency of the habit. Every time he swims, he also gets to put an X down and it gives him a signal of visual

progress. We just mentioned that progress is one of the most motivating feelings for the human mind. You need to have some way to visualize that some way to see that you're progressing because if you can't see the change in your body or there's no change on the scale yet, you need something else that says, Hey, that was the right thing to do. This feels good to show up and do the thing I want to do. So a habit tracker is one very simple one. The other thing though, and people talk about external rewards all the time. And so, you know, like, oh, I went to the

gym and so I'm going to reward myself by getting an ice cream cone or something. But my little nuance or argument here is I think you want to choose external rewards that align with the internal identity that you're trying to build. So if you reward yourself for going to the gym by getting an ice cream cone, that's kind of like casting votes for two different identities. Like on the one hand, you're casting vote for being a healthy person. On the other hand, you're casting a vote for eating ice cream or whatever. So instead you could do something like reward yourself, you know, any week when you don't miss a workout, you reward yourself with a bubble bath at the end of the week. you don't miss a workout, you reward yourself with

a bubble bath at the end of the week. And that's sort of like an external reward that also is a vote for taking care of your body. And so that kind of aligns with that identity that you're trying to build through working out. Or say, any month that you hit your target of saving for retirement, you some people might say, oh, well, you could reward yourself by buying a leather jacket, but that doesn't really align with the financial saving mentality you're trying to build. So instead, I would say, well, any month that you hit that target, you could reward yourself with, say, a free hour where you get to take a walk in the park or a free time to do whatever you want. Because really what you're trying to get to with retirement is freedom. And so you're kind of aligning with that same internal identity that

you're trying to build. But I do think that the faster so the immediacy part, the faster you can get a positive reward, that's a really powerful thing. And the more that your external rewards can align with the internal identity you're trying to build. That's an important thing to keep in mind as well. Yeah. I mean, we, we at home use, uh, tick charts on the wall to try and get that sort of progress going. So my wife, me, my two kids, we we've all got a tick chart on the wall. We've chosen, you know, this is, this is basically what my last book was about where we've chosen a mind hearts, a mind body and heart health snack a day. So something for your mental health, something for your physical health, something for your emotional health. They all take under five minutes. And my kids do them, initially at least,

to get their tick, right? So that was actually the motivator for them to do it. And I think what you said there about the speed at which you get the reward, I think that's really important because I found that often the kids sometimes, if they would forget to put their tick and I say, oh, you know, you can do it at the end of the day when you're back from school, you can put your ticks on. You start to lose the connection, right? Between behavior and reward. And I wonder for you, James, like I've heard, I've heard you say in a previous

interview that, you know, when you, when you send out your weekly newsletter, you know, within an hour, you're starting to get replies and you're getting that feedback. So you've, you've got that loop going, I've done something. I start to, to, to hear and experience how that's impacting people. How did that go for you when you were writing a book, which obviously takes a long time and you're not getting that immediate reward? Did that make it harder to stay focused and to stay motivated? Definitely. I think, you know, sort of the topic that we're kind of circling right now is basically like immediate feedback or having some kind of having feedback loops in your behavior and how those influence your actions. And so you're right, you know, whether you post a tweet and you kind of start seeing likes trickle in, you know, within the first few minutes or whether you send out a newsletter, in my case, and you get replies within an hour. Those feedback loops are very fast and very motivating because it feels good to get that, um, to get those signals of feedback, those signals of progress. And that's enough to get

me to show up again the next day and like, let's work on next week's article or let's work on the next tweet or whatever. Um, but with writing a book, the feedback cycle, the feedback loop is so long. You, one of the great challenges of writing a book is you sit down and work on something. It's this huge manuscript, 200 pages, 300 pages, whatever. And it's a total mess. And you work hard for eight hours. And it's just as much of a mess as when you started, there's nothing. And you have to continue to do that for like two years before it actually turns into something and like starts to congeal and clarify itself. Um, and I didn't realize that that was going to be such a challenge for me because atomic habits was my first book.

But when I was in the middle of it, it was very hard. Um, and I didn't, I don't need a million people to read my work when I'm working on it, but I do need somebody to give me some feedback and say, Hey, you're on the right path. And so eventually, the way that I solved that was by hiring an editor to send drafts to and just get a little bit of feedback from them and iterate on my ideas. And that was really crucial because that first year was very hard for me. I felt like I was kind of lost. I have another point that I want to add to this kind of feedback loop conversation. And it came up when you were mentioning something a minute ago. feedback loop conversation. And it came up when you were, you were mentioning something a minute ago. This is true. It's it's feedback loops like that are powerful. Immediate feedback is powerful, not only for solidifying good habits for kind of making us feel motivated and getting these

signals of progress, but it also will curtail bad behavior if you have a very immediate consequence or punishment to the behavior. So two of my favorite examples, Danella Meadows, who was a great systems thinker and engineer, she had an idea where she said, if we want to reduce pollution, any manufacturing facility that produces waste and lets the wastewater out into the river, they should be required to take up water for their facility downstream. So that the very first place that feels the effects of the pollution is the place that is producing it. Another one that I really liked, apparently Boeing, when they were working on their planes and they first made the switch, I think this is in the 1990s, when they first made the

switch from a fully manual wing to one that was fully software driven, the engineers who designed the software were required to be on the first test flight. And it's such a partially that's because they wanted to test some things, but it's such a great alignment of incentives. You know, like you better get this right because you're going to be the one who pays the cost. And the more those are two just beautiful examples of immediate feedback loops, in this case, an immediate consequence. And the faster that consequence or reward is delivered, the more immediately it's associated with a behavior, the more likely it is the behavior is going to change. And this is something in

atomic habits. I refer to this as the cardinal rule of behavior change, which is behaviors that are immediately rewarded get repeated, behaviors that are immediately punished get avoided. And it's really the speed that is kind of the key factor there. It's such a brilliant point. And I started thinking about climate change. thinking about climate change. And I started thinking about, you know, we're trying to, society's trying to encourage all of us to reduce our use of plastic, recycle more. But actually, one of the problems, I guess, is that there's no immediate feedback loop. Whether you recycle or not, if you toss a plastic bottle away, you don't see it in the ocean. You don't see it in the fish's stomach. You probably live thousands of miles away from where that's actually happening.

And so I guess not having that, it's actually a big problem when we want to make societal changes something. Yeah, society is, the feedback loops are delayed in a lot of ways between our choices. I mean, whenever you, you know, order chicken, you chose to kill a chicken, but you didn't have to do it yourself, right? There's no immediate feedback loop there. If you had to kill every piece of food that you ate, you might make different choices based on that. So there are a lot of things in society that are like that. And I think behavior, in a way, figuring out how to design systems so that the feedback is immediate, it's a huge way to get behavior to change. And if you can figure out how to do it just in your own life, I mean, no individual has control over the whole world. But if you can figure out how to do it for your own life and design a system where the behaviors you don't want to perform, they give you an immediate cost.

And the behaviors that you do want to perform provide more of an immediate reward. That's a very powerful skill to develop. And it takes some careful thought. It's not necessarily easy. But I think that you'll find your own behavior often shifts when you have those systems set up. Yeah. And there are loads of tips in the book, actually, to help people do just that, I think. I want to talk about identity. We've sort of

skirted around it. We touched on it a little bit, but it's probably the thing in the entire book that resonates to me on a deep level the most, because in many ways it reflects what I've experienced in my own life but also what I've seen time and time again with patients is that it's not just about habits of course it is but it's what doing those habits regularly does for you and how you think about yourself. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on identity, but also, like, I'd love to know, was there a penny dropping moment for you when you figured that out? What happened there? Yeah. I mean, certainly, you know, various people have probably had similar thoughts at some point, but I, when I publish the book, most of what I do, most of my writing is reading widely, collecting the best ideas that I can find from various authors and researchers and academics and so on,

and trying to put it together in a way that's easy to understand and easy to apply. Maybe I've experienced it in my own life, but you know, I'm not necessarily pretty much everything I share is, you know, somebody else's thought of it. Um, identity based habits is probably the one thing that I was like, this is actually my idea. Um, and so, so I did feel kind of excited about it. I remember when I first wrote about it, it's funny when you write articles, you know, you have these ones that you publish that you think, oh, this will go over well, and then it doesn't really do anything.

And then other ones you think, um, oh is just kind of average, and then for some reason it blows up and people love it. So you're kind of a terrible judge of your own work. I think probably all creators have felt that at some point. But when I first wrote about identity-based habits, it was in December of 2012, and we were driving through West Virginia. It was in December of 2012, and we were driving through West Virginia, and I was in the passenger seat of a car, and I had to get an article out that day because my schedule was I published every Monday and Thursday, and I didn't have my article finished, so I needed to write something. And I don't know why, but I just started thinking about the connection between identity and behavior, and that was kind of when I first started, you know, working on that concept and published the article on it. And then eventually, I sat with the idea more, worked on it for Atomic Habits, continued to build upon it. And where I ultimately came down is that true behavior change is really identity change. And what I mean by that is, if you start to look at yourself in a new way, if you assign a new story to yourself, you're not even really pursuing behavior change anymore.

You're just acting in alignment with the type of person that you see yourself to be. So if you identify as I'm a meditator, you're not really convincing yourself to meditate each day. You're just like, no, this is what I do because that's part of who I am. And so the real goal is not to run a marathon. The goal is to become a runner, right? The goal is not to read 50 books a year. It's to become a reader. The goal is not to do a silent meditation retreat. It's to become a meditator. And once you start assigning those identities to yourself, you start seeing the behavior in a new way. It's not an obligation or something you're trying to achieve. It's not an obligation or something you're trying to

achieve. It's not a challenge. It's just part of your natural action. Now, ultimately, and kind of to connect this idea to the rest of our conversation, I think this is where habits come back into play. And it's the real reason I think why habits matter. Like we often talk about habits as being the pathway to external results. Oh, habits will help you lose weight or make more money or be more productive or reduce stress. And you know, it's true. Habits can help you do all those things and that's great. But I think the real reason that habits matter is they reinforce a new identity. They reshape the way you think about yourself. Every action you take is like a vote for the type of person that you wish to become.

And so, no, doing one push-up does not transform your body, but it does cast a vote for, I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And no, writing one sentence does not finish the novel, but it does cast a vote for, I'm a writer. And the more that you do these things, the more you perform these little habits, the more you cast votes and build up kind of a body of evidence for being that kind of person. And eventually, the weight of the evidence sort of shifts things and the story shifts in that direction. election. And it's kind of like, just to continue the voting metaphor, it's kind of like any election. It doesn't need to be unanimous, right? But all you need is a majority. And if you have enough votes, then you start to think, yeah, that is who I am. Like if you study biology every Tuesday night for 30 minutes, you don't naturally think the first night I am studious. But if you keep doing that week in and week out, then you're like, yeah, you know, maybe being studious is part of my personality. That is part of my identity. And I think the final point I'll make on this is just that it's a little bit different than what you usually hear,

which is something like fake it till you make it. Yeah. You know, I don't necessarily have anything wrong with fake it till you make it. It's asking you to believe something positive about yourself, but it's asking you to believe something positive without having evidence for it. And we have a word for beliefs that don't have evidence. We call that delusion, right? Like at some point your brain doesn't like this mismatch between what you're saying you are and what you're actually doing. So behavior influences beliefs and beliefs influence behavior. It's a two-way street. But my argument is to let the behavior lead the way. To start by doing one push-up or meditating for one minute or writing one sentence or sending one email and letting that be undeniable evidence

that in that moment, you were that kind of person. You were an athlete. You were a meditator. You were a salesperson, whatever it is that you're trying to achieve. And so for all of those reasons, I kind of think the first question to ask yourself is what kind of identity do I want to build? Who do I wish to become? And if you have a good idea of that, then you can start to back into habits that reinforce that identity. And I feel like that's often a more fruitful way to approach behavior change than to try to achieve some external result. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, you put it in such a beautifully unique way. I think it's an incredible concept for people to get their heads around. And in some ways, James, you know, there's quite, there's a lot of research out there. It's quite conflicting, certainly from what I've seen,

that does it take 66 days to build a habit? Does it take 21 days? I'm not convinced by any of that, what I've seen, but I'd love to know your thoughts on that. But really the point I wanted to make to follow on from what you've just said is maybe it's not about the number of days, but maybe it's until your identity actually makes the switch, right? Maybe it takes you as long as it takes until you start to identify as the kind of person who does the habit that you've started to do. Yeah, you hear all types of different numbers, 21 30 days 90 days as you said 66 days the popular one right now there was one study that showed that on average it took about 66 days to build a habit but even in that study the range was quite wide you know if you pick something

really simple and easy like drinking a glass of water at lunch each day that might be a few weeks if you pick something more difficult like going for a run after work every day that might be a few weeks. If you pick something more difficult, like going for a run after work every day, that might be seven or eight or nine months. So I don't think 66 really tells you very much. I think the true answer, the honest answer to how long does it take to build a habit is forever. Because if you stop doing it, it's no longer a habit. And the point that I'm getting to here is that habits are not a finish line to be crossed. You know, the problem with numbers like that is that people are like, oh, well, if I just do this for 30 days, then I'll be a healthy person. Or if I, you know, if I do this for 66 days, then I'll be productive. But the reality is habits are a lifestyle to live, not a finish line to cross.

And so that just, I think, reinforces this idea that you're looking for a small change, a non-threatening change, a sustainable change, something you can make part of your new normal. And if you're willing to do that, if you're willing to integrate it into your lifestyle, then to your point, it's much more likely to become part of your identity at some point. The things that you identify as are part of how you live. They're part of your daily routine. And so you're not just looking to like do them for a sprint. Um, you're looking to, to make them part of the long run. So, um, I think for all those reasons, I, I focus less on the number of days, uh, and more on, uh, how can I build something into my lifestyle and make it part of my new normal? Yeah, no,

brilliance. Uh, James sort of coming towards the end of our conversation, one thing I think a lot about, and I can't actually remember if you cover this in the book, so I'd sort of be interested in your thoughts on this. I know for myself, there are a few keystone habits. So it's a habit that if I do, the knock-on benefit to everything else is quite profound. It's, I don't know, like a mega habit in some ways. If that one gets in, everything else gets in. And is this something you've seen? Have you written about it? Is it something you've seen in the research? And I'm sure you've had feedback from millions of readers since the book came out as well. I'd love to understand some of your thoughts on that. Yeah. So first place I ever saw the phrase

Keystone Habit was in The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. And I like the idea, you know, the idea that you've got kind of these, I sometimes will call them like a meta habit. It's kind of like above all the other habits that come after it. And I've seen a couple, I have a couple in my own life. I've seen them with readers as well. There are a few common ones. Um, you know, so like sleep is an interesting one. If you get a good night of sleep, then you kind of set yourself up for, for the next day and getting, it's very hard to perform other habits at your highest and best level if you're constantly running low on sleep. So that's, that's an important one. I always think for me personally, reading is a huge one. And part of that is because as you go through life, life is dynamic. It's not static, right? The world is changing,

circumstances change, your goals and desires change. And that means that you face different problems at different times. But the value of reading is that that's a habit that if you stick with it, you can always just be reading a book that's relevant to what you want to achieve. And so no matter what problem you're facing, you can read a book about it. If you want to learn how to be a better cook, you can read a bunch of books about it. If you want to learn how to launch a podcast, you can read a book about it. If you want to learn how to get in shape, there are tons of books about that. So it doesn't matter where you're at in your life. Reading is a habit that really serves you well. And then for me, what I would consider my keystone habit is exercise.

I'm interested in strength training, but I think any form of exercise could probably work. And what I find, and this is to the point that you just made, if I get the workout in, I get the benefits of the I get the benefits of the workout, the benefits of like the physical fitness, but a couple other things happen as well. The first is I tend to eat better on days that I would work out. You would think I could like, oh, just be sloppy about it. But it's really, if I'm not working out, then like my whole life kind of devolves and I start eating sloppy. But if I get in the gym, then it's like, well, I don't want to waste it. And so I eat, I eat healthier. The second thing is that I tend to have like this post-workout high, you know, where you're pretty focused and you can concentrate well for maybe an hour or so.

I sleep better that night because I'm tired from the workout, which means I wake up the next day and I have better energy. And at no point was I trying to build better nutrition habits or focus habits or sleep habits or energy habits, but all those things kind of came as a natural side effect of just making sure I got the workout in. So I think a question you can ask yourself is just what are the things that I do on the day when things go well? And one of those is often your keystone habit. Like exercise is commonly listed. Going for a daily walk is a common one, especially among creatives, just getting outside and moving a little bit. Um, if you talk to a lot of performers, comedians or basketball players or whatever, a lot of them will talk about visualization being one of their keystone habits. So they can get that in. Then they tend to perform better when

they step out onto the stage or onto the court. Managers and CEOs or high performers, probably physicians as well, probably talk about meditation as a common keystone habit. They get those few minutes in, then that kind of sets their day up for success. So, you know, you can decide what it is for you, but those are some common examples of habits that tend to pull the rest of your life in line. Yeah. Yeah. James, you literally have written such a phenomenal book that has gone into the homes and the minds and hearts of certainly a million, but I'm sure many millions more over the coming years. Thank you for writing it. Thank you for thinking deeply. Thank you for writing the email newsletter, which really is, I think, one of the best newsletters out there, certainly that I've come

across. This podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. When we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of our lives. And James, I always like to leave the listeners and the viewers with some practical tips, just a few little takeaway thoughts that they can think about applying into their own lives immediately to start improving the way that they feel. So any closing thoughts for my audience? Yeah, I think we can summarize some of the key points that have come up throughout the conversation. So first one, the two minute rule, take your habits, scale them down to something that takes two minutes or less to do. You can apply that to pretty much any habits. That's a great way to make it easy to start. Environment design,

we talked about making good habits the path of least resistance. So what is the environment around you? You know, what are the things that you see first when you walk into the room or when you open your phone? Let's try to prime the environment for productive action. Make the good habit the path of least resistance. We talked about social environment, how important that is. So you want to join a group to join a tribe where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. And if you can't readily find those groups, then maybe you can create one the way that I did with, you know, creating some of those

retreats for different authors and entrepreneurs. So actions like that, I think can really help. We talked a little bit about implementation intentions and the importance of choosing exactly when and where a habit is going to live in your life. So if you put sort of all of that together, what you end up with is, all right, we're going to have a really small habit. We'll use a two-minute rule for that. We'll use implementation intentions to figure out when and where we're going to insert that into our daily routine.

We're going to optimize the environment to make those behaviors easy and make them the path of least resistance. And then eventually we're going to look for other people who are like-minded and who also share those values and principles. And I think if you can do those things, then you ultimately, one, have designed a better system for habits and behavior and hopefully we'll be casting votes for your desired identity and reinforcing the kind of person you want to become. And so, you know, again, I mentioned one of the meanings of the word atom or atomic is the fundamental unit in a larger system.

And so you're just trying to do this, you know, one at a time, building up those little habits, creating a larger system, creating more power and momentum and energy to move toward that desired identity and reinforce the kind of person you want to become. So hopefully you found some of those ideas useful. I think that's a good

place to start when trying to build better habits and change your behavior. James, brilliant advice, brilliant closing thoughts. Thank you for everything you do. Thank you for giving up some of your time today to come onto my show to talk. And I look forward to the next book. Thank you so much. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. As always, do think about one thing that you can take away and start applying into your own life. And if you're looking for a book

to kickstart your new year, I'd really recommend that you take a look at my third book, Feel Better in 5. The book is going to help you transform your physical, mental, and emotional health in small five-minute chunks. All of my recommendations are backed by the latest science and behavior change. And there are over 30 five-minute health snacks that you can choose from in that book. Perfect for even the most time-pressed person. The book is available all over the world as a paperback, ebook and as an audiobook which I am narrating. Before you go, just wanted to let you know about

Friday Five. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I may be consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each Friday, you can sign up for free at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday Five. And before I sign off, I just want to say a big thank you to all of you who listen to my podcast each week,

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