Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Build Meaningful, Sustainable Habits | James Clear

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

This week’s conversation is with James Clear, a writer and speaker focused on habits, decision-making, and continuous improvement.He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits.His work has appeared in Entrepreneur magazine, Time magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and on CBS This Morning.His website, jamesclear.com, receives millions of visitors each month and hundreds of thousands subscribe to his popular email newsletter.So why do habits matter?We all have tons of habits, things like signing your name or knocking on the door, ringing the doorbell, tying your shoes or unplugging the toaster after each use... but how do we build more important or meaningful routines around things that really matter to us?For James, it starts with choosing what you want to optimize for and the type of identity that you want to reinforce, the type of person you want to become.So in this conversation, we dive into some best practices for habit development and how to create a system that is organized toward the outcome you desire._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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patience. Like if you have good habits, all your time is your ally. All you need is for, you know, time to keep working for you. But if you have bad habits, be getting 1% worse each day, or you're staying, you know, kind of stuck in neutral time becomes your enemy. You know, every day that clicks by you dig the hole a little bit deeper. And so it's much more about mastering your trajectory than your position. It's much more about getting 1% better than, um, you know, trying to have some magical outcome on day one. Okay, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade and training, I am a sport and performance psychologist. And the whole idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, to better understand what they're searching for, how they organize their inner

life, their psychological framework, if you will. We want to understand how do they use their mind to become their very best and possibly even master the skill that they've dedicated their life efforts toward. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true.

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at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal. For two full months for free, terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein bars. And so has the

team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone

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protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now, this week's conversation is with James Clear, a writer and speaker who's focused on habits, decision-making, and continuous improvement. He's the author of the New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits. Such a good name. And his work has appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine, Time Magazine, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and CBS This Morning. And you can punch over to his website, jamesclear.com, to learn more. He receives millions of visitors each month and hundreds of thousands subscribe to his popular email newsletter. So why do habits matter? I know you know the answer to that, but rhetorically, it's important to dig underneath the surface a little bit. We have tons of habits. Things like the way that you sign your name or the way that you knock on a door or the you know, the way that you tie your shoes

or unplug the toaster after each use. You have habits. But how do we build more important or meaningful routines and habits around the things that really matter? There are things that matter to you. And if you want to sustain that, habits will play. And so the idea is to build great habits to support what matters most to you. Of course, you need to know what matters most to you. That's a different set of work. But this is about choosing what you want to optimize and then figuring out the triggers, how to reinforce so that you can build the dynamic habits that you want to become the type of person that you want to become. So in this conversation, we dive into some of the best practices for habit development and how to create an ecosystem that is organized towards the outcomes and the performances and the way of living that you desire. And with that, let's jump right into

our conversation with James Clear. James, how are you? Hi, great to talk to you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, stoked to sit with you and have this conversation. So congrats on making a dent in the science and the psychology of habit formation through your book, Atomic Habits. And, you know, I just want to start with why did you get interested in the behaviorism, you know, the old behaviors of discipline of psychology? Why did you go there? Well, you know, I kind of came into it two different ways. The first way was as like a practitioner. You know, I played a bunch of sports growing up and then ended up playing baseball

through college. And, you know, any college athlete can tell you like habits are a big part of what you do. You're practicing, you know, different drills, developing your skills, you know, even stuff like in the gym or showing up to practice at the same time every day. Like there's a lot of ritual and routine built in. And, you know, one great thing about working on a sport for, in my case, 17 years is that you see your skills develop, you see consistency pay off, you see the benefit of building habits each day and like working on that. And I did not have a language at the time for that. Like I was just showing up and doing what my coaches told me and training in the gym and trying to do what I was supposed to do to be a better player, I never would have said like, oh, I'm just trying to get 1% better today. Or, you know, I'm building better habits or anything. I didn't think about it in that way, but I experienced it. And a couple of years later, after I finished graduate school and started my own business and started working on some of that stuff, I had this document where I would just write down my thoughts on habits. Like nobody was reading it.

It was just a word doc, but it got to be like 50 or 60 pages long. And it was just kind of James's thoughts on habits. And I was like, I should, like I should just at least publish something from this. And so I put it up on jamesclear.com and I decided to build like a little writing habit. I published a new article every Monday and Thursday for the first three years.

And it was really that writing habit that gave me the language around how to describe habits. And that kind of developed my expertise. Like I felt, you know, everybody kind of has this imposter syndrome thing that shows up in various ways. And for me early on, I was like, you know, who am I to write about this stuff? And I had a friend who told me, well, the way you become an expert is by writing about it every week. And I kind of internalized that. And I think it's true, you know, like, by the time I got three years in, he's right, it turns out, there's actually not that many people who have written 150 articles about habits.

And so you learn a lot along that way, along the way. And that led to the audience growing and me getting the book deal and ultimately writing Atomic Habits. So it was sort of first it was as a practitioner and then later it was as a writer and researchers, maybe the wrong word is not like research in an academic way, but research in the sense of like reading broadly, synthesizing ideas and trying to explain them in a straightforward way. Cool. All right. So it sounds like you were actually quite methodical about and purposeful

about how you created a deep understanding of the value of habits. So you learned, you lived it for a while, you know, through sport. And then what did you find as you were quote unquote researching, not original research, but researching of research when you were researching? What are some of the more captivating, more surprising or counterintuitive findings that you came across? You're like, wait a minute. This isn't what it felt like in sport. This is not what I've been doing. Well, one that was surprising was the influence of your environment.

So something that happens with sports is that your teammates are kind of like family. You don't really get to choose them. Like you don't choose the guys that you're recruited with or that, you know, that come in on the team with you, but you have to make those things work. And in my case, I was really lucky. I had great teammates and I'm looking back on it after having read more about how habits work and how they form and how they stick, you realize that the social environment is actually a huge factor in habits that stick, particularly those that stick for a long time.

Um, so imagine for example, that you move into a new neighborhood and you walk outside on Tuesday night and you see your neighbors and they're like mowing their lawn and you're like, Oh, we need to, you know, I need to mow the grass. And partially you do that because it feels good to have a clean lawn, but mostly you do it because you don't want to be judged by the other people in the neighborhood. It's like the social expectation,

the social norm of what it means to be a good neighbor and have a clean lawn that gets you to stick to that habit. And you might do that. You might keep the habit up of mowing your grass for the next 30 years or however long you live in that house. And like, we wish we had that level of consistency with our other habits. And anytime you see habits that tend to stick for years or for decades, there's often a strong social component associated with it. And I think the practical

takeaway is you want to join groups to join tribes where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. Because if it's normal in that group, then it's going to be very attractive for you to stick to it. And I think the lesson that came out of this kind of research and me stumbling into this more is that at first I thought that our habits were things that we did to like serve ourselves. You know, there are things that we do to solve a problem or to try to achieve something or, you know, resolve a conflict in our minds. But your habits are not only behaviors that you do to serve yourself. They are also a signal to the people around you that you get it, you belong, you fit in, you're part of the tribe. And, you know, like take a habit like ringing a doorbell or knocking on the door before you

enter someone's home. There's no reason you have to do that. You could just barge in the front door, but that would be rude. And it's not how we operate. It's not like part of the social contract. And you just soak that habit up through imitation by seeing your parents do it, by seeing friends do it. And so many of our behaviors are like that. We soak up the habits and behaviors of the people that we're around. We soak up what the normal behavior is. And so I think it becomes very important, increasingly important, as you discover what's

important to you, as you discover what you're optimizing for, you want to expose yourself to communities and tribes and groups where those behaviors are the normal behavior. And if most people have to choose between option A, I get to have the habits that I want, but I don't really fit in. I'm kind of cast out a little bit. I'm on my own.

Or option B, I have habits I don't really love, but I fit in with the crowd and I belong. Most people choose belonging over loneliness. Most people, the power to belong will often overpower the desire to improve. And so, you know, in most cases, you want to get those things aligned if you really want the habit to stick. So I think the long-term impact of the social environment is something that I experienced, but I didn't realize. And it turns out to be really powerful. There's lots of colloquial sayings that don't really hold up on a research framework, but you're touching on them. I'm wondering if you were pulling on disparate bits of research,

or you found some pieces that were like no i want to point right to a b and c to to be able to um say this is what i'm this is what i'm standing on to to have this insight because i think the inside is rad i think what you're saying is spot on and some of those colloquial sayings like you become the average of your five friends you know like that type of stuff um and i've seen it firsthand in pro sport is we call it culture and you're calling it environment i'm not sure that um they're that different for for me up at the seattle seahawks and working with coach carol on this the way that we've come to understand culture is that it's the art culture is the artifact of relationships. So culture is like, it's the relationship between yourself and others that really defines

what culture is. And there's things that are condoned and things that are not condoned. There's things that are implicitly and explicitly rewarded. And there's things that are kind of tolerated, you know, right. And not coached out or up. And that all kind of that mess of things becomes the relationships that we have with each other based on behaviors and, and thought patterns. All that being said is, um, are you standing on any particular bits of research that you're

like, cause I, this is what I hear you say, environment matters. Um, also what matters is the way that you think about clarity of what you're optimizing toward. I hear you talking about belonging, and the need and the drive for belonging is stronger than the need and the drive for improvement. And I don't want to take any leaps that you're not taking, but I nod my head to all of them. And I just, I'm curious, like how you got to that. Yeah. So the way that I usually approach a project like this, in this case, writing atomic habits is I want to read really widely. So that often involves research. Like one of the books that I, some of these concepts resonate from, there's a book called the person in the situation.

And it was written by a couple of psychologists from Stanford. And there's tons of research in there where they talk about like the influence of a lot of these things. But you know, I read that book and dozens of others and you know, variety of studies on their own and conversations with people and high performers and you know, all these different places that you kind of soak up ideas from. And I'll usually go through that period for like a year or two where you're just trying to read widely and essentially map the terrain. And for me, what ends up happening is that you start to see the same ideas bubble up again and again. And anytime I see evidence of something one time, it's like, well, that's interesting. But if you start to see evidence

of it multiple times, you're like, okay, there's probably something to that. And I do want my ideas to be scientifically grounded, but the longer the time has gone on, the more I think the true test of an idea is, does it stand up to reality? Not does it work in like a lab controlled environment, but does it actually work in the real world? And so I want both of those things. And so most of the ideas I talk about have to pass both of those tests. Now, there are some things, like one thing that you just mentioned that I brought up is knowing what you want to optimize for. Now, admittedly, I have not read a ton of research on how to decide what you should optimize for or the importance of knowing what you want. But I do think that's a lesson that holds up really well

in reality, which is the more precisely you know what you want, the better your strategy can be, the more obvious the actions and choices are that you should take. And in fact, I've been doing this little exercise for the last couple of weeks where I start each day with a blank sheet of paper, and I write at the top of it, what do I really want? And it's surprising how useful it can be to ask yourself the same question again and again. You would think it would just get repetitive and boring and it's not useful anymore, but actually doing it each day, your answers change a little bit. They get more precise. Things that you thought you really wanted turned out to just be a middle step and you can skip them entirely. And the better of an answer

you have to that question, what am I optimizing for? What do I really want? The better your strategy becomes because you, you cut out a lot of wasted effort and energy. And many people have like, we sort of generally know what we want. I want to be happy. I want to find love. I want to reduce stress. I'd like to have a good career. But most people, myself included, don't precisely know what they want. They don't precisely know how they want to spend their day. And I think that the journey of self-improvement often starts with self-awareness. And so you need to understand yourself better and know exactly what you want. And when you do, those choices fall into line much easier. Sports is always like a great example for this because it's so clear.

You know, it's so obvious that at the beginning of each season, every team wants to win the Super Bowl or to win the championship. Like there's this just crystallizing thing to point toward. In daily life, it's a little bit harder. You know, like there is no national championship of tech startups or, you know, you know, the Super Bowl of parenting, like there's not really a thing like that. And so it becomes a little harder, but still the more, the more clearly you can define what you're trying to achieve, the easier it becomes to choose which habits to build and what choices to make and so on. So that's a long-winded way of saying most of the ideas I think are scientifically grounded, but all of the ideas, if nothing else, they have to stand up to reality. And like,

does it make actionable, practical sense in daily life? Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life. And to do that, they developed what they call the Momentus Standard. Every product is formulated with top experts and every batch is third-party tested. NSF certified for sport or informed sport.

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they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code finding mastery 20 at Felix gray.com for 20% off. The idea of having a forcing function to become more aware and more precise that I found that

there's three ways for that. And back, this is, this is not standing on research. This is actually just a bit of amalgamation, amalgamation of ideas here, but it's journaling, writing, it's mindfulness, investigating and understanding your inner world a bit better, and then it's conversations with wise people. functions for clarity. And so that we become more finely tuned with the thoughts that we hold, the words that we express them, the way that our actions embody the two of those together. And so it's one of those three that I found. And if you can do all three, I think you're on a pretty accelerated path. Now, what you said, so the idea that I love is that it sounds so boring and it's like, just answer the question once and you should be done with it. But I don't know, you might be in a funky mood. You might not have had the information that you have in three days that materially changes what

you want. And so when you're answering it right now, can I double click in there and say like, how are you answering the question right now? What is it that you want? And then I want to go back like upstream to why that question for you? Yeah. So sure. Let me, let me pull my notebook out. I have it literally right in front of me here. So yesterday's answer. So I've got, what I did yesterday was I, and again, I answered this, answer this differently each time. So it's, how things change. But the way that I did it yesterday was I wrote down categories. So I've got health, marriage, family, friends, work, and lifestyle. And those are not always the categories I use, but that's just what I happen to do.

And so I did it kind of in big picture ways, like to be in the best shape of my life or to enjoy lifting weights each week. So I'm like trying to kind of visualize what that would look like. And then I've got all other stuff like, you know, I basically grew up on my grandparents' farm and so I love being outdoors and stuff, but I also like a lot of things of city life. So I like under lifestyle have enjoy the ideal blend of city and country life. And so I've kind of basically what I'm doing here is sort of visualizing the outcomes that I want or what that, you know, what that might feel like. And then what I tend to do after that,

and I don't do this every time, but what I like to do is if I feel like I have a good clear picture of what I want, then the next step is I try to come up with some action steps and it doesn't have to be for everything, but just like three to five things that I can actually do. And what's funny is, you know, I've been doing this exercise for a few weeks now. Last week, I wrote down three action steps I could do, and I actually got one done. And it's like, there's something really motivating about that, about how straightforward that is. It's like, just take the time to figure out exactly what you want and then take the steps to do those. And like last week, I can literally say I took a step towards designing my ideal life. And it really wasn't like I could never have done that before. It's just

that I was more straightforward about it. So yeah, a lot of the things are, are things like that. And then, you know, some of them are general, like seeing my parents at least once a month or having a great relationship with my kids. So there's, there are a lot of things down here. I probably have, I don't know, 15 or 18 different answers listed. But that's kind of what the process roughly looks like. Okay. There you go. And then are you using imagery to be able to imagine what you wrote or are you using imagery first? My general philosophy is I try to work backwards from magic. So what would the magical outcome be? And let's define what that is. And then I do need to come up with, like I said, those action steps or that path to achieving it. However, I try to, and this, I think is as a side note here, I think this is deeply true about many things in life, which is

to perform at a high level or to think at a high level, you need to simultaneously hold competing ideas in mind. Things that seem as if they are opposites, you somehow need to believe both. So on the one hand, I'm saying, let's work backwards from magic. Let's be very precise about what we want to achieve. On the other hand, the competing idea that I also try to hold in mind is I want to be very clear about what I want to achieve, but I also want to be very flexible about how I get there. And so I'm actually not trying to define the route perfectly because I don't think that's possible. Nobody can predict the future or the outcome, but if you directionally know where you

want to go, you, what it does is it's kind of like, um, it's kind of like that game of like, I spy that you play as a kid and you're like, Oh, I spy something blue. And then like all the blue stuff in the room sort of takes on a new quality and lights up and you start to notice it. And that same sort of thing happens here. Uh, you know, I spy this magical outcome and then you start to notice all these different pathways for achieving that as you go through life. And to build on what you just mentioned a moment ago about like, you know, you would think you'd do this once and then you'd be done, but maybe you have different information three days from now. Well, you also spy, so to speak, different information three days from now, you come across new opportunities and the world is

dynamic. It's not static. And so because the circumstances are always changing and what you want may evolve, like I'm a different person now than I was 10 years ago, and I'll probably want different things 10 years from now than I do today. I think it gives you both a very clear target to shoot for and a very flexible way to kind of operate throughout the day, spring on the opportunities that come up and, you know, just sort of like gradually make your way there, even though you don't know. Similar to that, there's that famous quote about like writing a book is kind of like driving a car in the fog. You can only see five feet in front of you, but you can make the whole trip that way. And this is very much the same way. It's like, I've got this mountain in the distance and between the mountain and me is just like a vast, expansive fog. And I don't know how we're going to make the journey, but I know that we will. And so I'm very flexible about how I get through the fog, even if like I try to keep the mountaintop in clear view the whole time. I really appreciate your thinking. I really like the way that you

structure your ideas and string them together. Either one or two things is happening is either you've said exactly what you've just said a thousand times. I definitely haven't said that fog one recently. I was like, I hope that I can put this together well. Yeah, no, but I really like how you string your ideas together. You are, you're a serious person and you, um, Oh yeah, I don't know. I, uh, I'm serious about the ideas. Like I want the ideas to be good. Um, and so I, I guess what I would say is I care about them. I don't know that I would say serious as much as like, there's this great book. It was written in the seventies. It's called on caring. It's very, it's a very weird book in some ways.

It's like only a hundred pages and it's all about caring for whatever you want, your ideas, your kids, your work, whatever it is. But I do think there's something deeply important about that, about like caring about getting it right. You know, I think, you know, I'm sure you have many examples of people on the team, whether it's Russell Wilson or Pete Carroll, whoever,

that care about doing their job right. And it's how deeply they care about it that makes them good at it. And I just love evidence of greatness whenever I see that. And it often comes back to caring deeply. So, yeah, I guess I'm serious in that way. I'm serious in the way that I want to do it well. So you're hedging that a little bit for me to almost begging the question, like, okay, so you've got a goofy side too. Yeah. Um, I don't think you should take yourself too seriously, you know, like, and I have made so many mistakes that I,

I think to be serious about it would be unfruitful. Um, you know, like I'm going to mess up and get so much wrong that if I took it too seriously, it kind of breaks you. Like you need to have at least a little bit of humor about your inability to do things well or predict the future. Like, I don't know. I, I almost feel like this, the ideal strategy is one of trial and error and experimentation because nobody can figure it out all ahead of time. If that's true, if you're going to do a lot of trial and error, you need to have at least a little bit of sense of humor because there's going to be a lot of errors. There's going to be a lot of failed experiments.

So, yeah, I think, I don't know. Again, holding ideas that are simultaneously, you know, they seem like opposites. On the one side, you're very serious about it. On the other side, you don't take yourself too seriously at all. My dad told me something once he – so my dad played professional baseball. He played in the minor leagues for the St. Louis Cardinals. And so of course, growing up, I wanted to be like him and, you know, compete at a high level and stuff. And I remember him telling me something once after like a really tough loss.

And he was like, listen, when you lace up and step between the lines, you have to act like that's the only thing that matters. And as soon as you step off the field, you have to realize that it doesn't matter at all. And somehow you need to be able to do that as an athlete. You have to be able to flip that switch to be like, listen, when I'm out here, I'm out for blood. Like this is not, this is not a game. I'm very serious about it. And as soon as you step off, be like, I'm a whole person. The game does not define me. I'm not only an athlete. And, um, you know, I try to internalize that as best I can. Obviously it's hard to do, but, um, but I do think that that serves you well in many areas of life. Cool. Okay. So that's a powerful insight because

you're hinting on some really dangerous territory, identity foreclosure, where you're solely defined by what you do, as opposed to who you are in, you know, from an integrous standpoint and a whole standpoint. And you're also talking about, um, a mechanism to drop into deep focus. And so deep focus is one of the pathways to, um, being fully present and being fully present is when your body and your mind are in the same place focusing on the same thing and it's rare it is a rare experience to be completely present and you know when that happens when you hook a bunch of moments together and string them together full presence you get glimpses of potential you get glimpses of what is possible and whether it's writing or performing

or listening in a conversation i don't know a pathway through the better versions of humanity without deep focus and embodying the deep now and so i that was a mechanism that you just shared that you and your dad shared which is a way way to trigger integrity as a whole person, as well as double clicking underneath of that, like, Hey, be all in wherever you are. And there's some sort of magic line that you cross as a trigger to say, I'm in. Can I, I have a question for you about that. So I, um, I've been lucky, I think, to experience that deep focus or flow or whatever we want to call it. And once you get a taste of that, there's something so insatiable about it. It's like such an addictive feeling to be fully present and fully focused.

And for me, there was this beautiful experience of feeling like it often, it often happened my final season of baseball. And, uh, there's something beautiful about knowing that you, like, you could not pay me to be anywhere else. This is where I need to be in the world right now. When you feel that way, when you feel fully focused like that, it's like, I honestly, I don't care. Like you could give me a million dollars to not play this game, but I don't want it. Like, I'm not, this is, I don't need to be anywhere else. And in a lot of ways, I've been chasing that feeling, uh, ever since finishing my athletic career. So what I'm curious about for you is, uh, if you've seen it show up in other areas outside of physical pursuits, uh, and what that looks like and like, is it, is it harder there? Is there something specifically about being unified

and like fully focused in body and mind that makes it easier to get into flow versus something that's purely mental. Um, yeah, I don't know. I, I just feel like you hear a lot about people in sports being in those deep focus and flow moments, but it's our harder to imagine, you know, a software engineer feeling in flow, looking at a spreadsheet or something. And that doesn't mean it can't happen, it just yeah actually um so you're on to something it's probably more of a unique proclivity that you hold in from a genetic standpoint that it's easier for you to find that space doing something physical and it might be because you've had more practice at it uh than other things but coders will like engineers and coders will talk about, they'll put their headset on, they'll get their environment in whatever chaotic or still way that they're looking for. And then they're listening to the music and they're starting to code and kind of sort things out. And then when they realize that the music has been playing, but they didn't hear it, they report back to me like, that's when I know my stuff was good. So if you're listening, so they were basically in the zone, in a flow state.

Musicians call it being in the pocket. And you might say, well, there's something physical that they're doing. Therapists, psychologists can feel this transcendent full emergence that takes place in conversation where they're completely connected to the other human, but also like watching the experience unfold. And there's this meta experience where, um, exactly what athletes talk about in flow state psychologists can also experience. So, um, you can also find it washing dishes. You can also find it, you know, like, again, that's something physical, but sitting on a pillow that is the opposite of, you know, something physical, which is what Zen Buddhist monks or, you know, Western practitioners of mindfulness would talk maybe about enlightenment. Maybe they don't call it flow state, but there's another transcendent state that they fall into, which is across language and across culture is really about the deep now.

The music example resonates with me. Like the, the idea of like putting my headphones on and writing, I can see myself getting closer to that than, you know, like there's something about that, that sounds, sounds very right. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature.

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That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. So let's double click into the space about habits. And so, um, atomic habits is not lost on me that atomic meaning small particles that are incredibly powerful. Right. And so let's talk about small habits. First, maybe we go upstream to talk about just give folks that might not be versed in habits, why they're important, you know, because how many habits do you have? A lot. How many are conscious and how many are non-conscious? Most are non-conscious. Most are below conscious. That's the whole point of this exercise is to get things below conscious awareness. So you don't have to actually think about signing your name a particular way. It

just is a habit. Okay. So let's just talk about why small habits matter and how to stack habits or build effective habits to create the change that you want. Yeah. So let me, um, let me pinch that, that word that you just used stack. And let's talk about another meaning of the word atomic. So you mentioned tiny or small, like an atom. And that's a big part of it. I think habits should be small and easy to do powerful orful or the source of immense energy or power, that's another meaning of the word atomic. But there's a third one that people often overlook, which is the fundamental unit in a larger system. So atoms build into molecules, molecules build into compounds and so on. And the way that I like to think about these small habits is that as a

system of behaviors organized toward, you know, the outcome or lifestyle that you want. And so, you know, the phrase that I like, the way that I like to encapsulate this philosophy is you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. And if we put a little finer point on that, what we're talking about is your goals, your desired outcome, your target, what you're shooting for. What is your system? It's the collection of daily habits that you have. It's like each little habit is kind of like a gear in the overall machine. And as you mentioned, we have tons of habits, you know, things like signing your name or knocking on the door or ringing the doorbell

or tying your shoes or unplugging the toaster after each use, like literally just go throughout your day. I mean, it's just a huge mass of habits. But we also can build more important or meaningful routines around things that really matter to us. And so it's mostly about choosing what you want to optimize for and the type of identity that you want to reinforce, the type of person you want to become, and then building habits, creating a system that is organized toward that outcome. And so again, I think the first question is like, who do I want to become? You know, so what am I optimizing for? And so I often start with what I call identity-based habits, where you kind of start with, what is the identity I want to reinforce? Who's the type of person I want to become? Who is the kind of person that could achieve the outcome that I want? That's another way to get to that question because a lot of people, the idea of like trying to choose your identity or trying to pick your values or

principles, it's kind of like a really big picture thing. And sometimes it's hard to have a good answer to that, but most people know the result they want. They know that they want to get six pack abs or they want to double their income or whatever. And so you can say, okay, fine. Who is the type of person that could have six pack abs? And maybe you realize, oh, it's the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And so now you're focused more on building habits that are aligned with that identity. And that could get you to do something like, you know, do one pushup. Whereas before you're like, well, why would I do one pushup? That's not going to give me six pack abs. But it does cast a vote for I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts.

And I think that's one of the powerful things about small habits is that they provide evidence of your desired identity. They give you this new story to tell about yourself. They reinforce like the better narrative about who you are, even if they don't necessarily transform your life with that one action. Like, no, writing one sentence does not finish the novel, but it does cast a vote for,

I'm the type of person who's a writer. And no, meditating for 60 seconds does not immediately give your life a sense of calm, but it does cast a vote for for I'm a meditator. And so I think that's maybe the real reason that small habits matter. They can matter for external reasons too. They can compound and, you know, start to make you more productive and healthier and so on. But I think the deeper reason they matter is because they create this system that reinforces your desired identity, that reinforces this new narrative about who you are. Starting with a question, right?

Like, what am I optimizing for? Or who am I becoming? Or what does success look like to me? Like, whatever a key question is. And so I like all the questions that you've answered. So you certainly could spend a lifetime sorting some of those out, or do some deep work over the course of maybe two, three weeks and get questions over advice. And the reason that I say that is that even if the advice is good, even if it comes from somebody who's experienced or has accomplished what you want to accomplish, or the circumstances are fairly similar,

advice is somewhat brittle in the sense that it only applies in a narrow context. And so, you know, like I said, the world is dynamic, not static. And if the circumstances change or your objectives change a little bit, the advice doesn't really apply. Or maybe, who knows, maybe the advice applies to the situation, but your strengths are different than that other person. And so now, you know, you are not as well, you're not able to make as good of use of that. So instead, what I prefer are questions because you can carry a question with you around to different environments and it can serve you,

it can kind of illuminate the answer for you. So for example, one of these identity-based habits questions that I like is, what would a healthy person do? And I have a reader who, she ended up losing over 100 pounds and she's kept it off for over a decade now. And in the beginning, one of the first things that she did was just carry that question around with her to like every situation. It's time to order lunch. Should I get a salad or a burger and fries?

What would a healthy person do? Or my next meeting is in 20 minutes. Should I walk five blocks or should I take a cab? What would a healthy person do? And so just by having that one good question, you can figure out your own advice. You can figure out your own solution based on what you're facing. And so for that reason, I like questions a lot. But yes, to answer your kind of point or to build on that, start with a question, use that to determine, you know, what do I want? What kind of identity do I want? What are the habits that reinforce that identity? And then let's start with a really small version of that. Let's start with, like you said, one particle or one atom, you know, let's do one pushup or write one sentence or whatever. And I think this starting small is particularly important in the beginning,

because often the most important thing is to master the art of showing up. This, I think, is a much deeper truth about habits that often gets most important thing is to master the art of showing up. This, I think, 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 it or scale it up into something more. But we get really all or nothing with our habits. We feel like, oh, if I don't have the ideal diet plan or the best business idea or the perfect workout program, then I shouldn't start yet. Like we often think, um, I can't get started. I can't take action yet. I need to learn more.

But the truth is the best way to learn is usually by taking action. Um, it's usually by getting started. And so I like to remind myself that there's a great quote from Ed Latimore where he he says, the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door. And I think that kind of encapsulates the core idea in the beginning. In the beginning, it's like, let's master the art of opening the front door. Forget about whether you're doing the right exercises, forget about the optimal workout program or the best technique or whatever. Let's master the art of showing up. Once you've done that, yeah, sure. All that other stuff matters, but let's start by figuring out

who we want to become and mastering the art of opening the door and showing up. And there's some research, really clear research that when you start small in that way, that you get a win, you get some momentum, you're running downhill, not uphill at it. And then if you can infuse that small win with celebrating like a wild person, that there's a dopamine thing that you're getting ahead of. And I know that you've talked about this as well, that when you find when you stitch something, a new action with an existing habit that you already have, that's rewarding in and of itself. There's some momentum that can carry you there. Maybe you can give an example there. And then also, like, let's say it's running. This is an example I'll lean on. And you don't really want to run, but the habit of putting your shoes, you want to be

fit. You don't necessarily want to really run. So running might not be the right way to do it. There might be something better to do for you. But you're like, no, no, no, I'm'm committing to it just putting your shoes out by the front door and when you put them out by the front door the night before and you and you celebrate like a wild person like look at me one step closer that's exactly right that's how you're actually creating an experience inside of you that's giving a little buzz a little reward a little dopamine hit

and with that dopamine there's a reward just looking at your shoes and identifying like i am one step closer to freaking getting after it and that in of itself is like my wife will look at me when i'm starting up some some habits she's like oh there he goes you know he's like he's actually being a wild person right now and it's working you know so um but maybe you can talk about like, uh, the habit when you link it, when you link a new habit to an existing habit, that's already something that's, um, got momentum, that there's an advantage in that as well. You know, what's fun about that? I have not heard that phrase before celebrating like a wild person, but I might steal it.

I really like it. And the reason is that, um, you're making it fun. You're making it, it's almost almost like making it playful like a game. And for any habit to stick, there needs to be some form of reward, some form of pleasure, a positive association with it where your brain is like, hey, this feels good. I should do this again next time. And so celebrating like a wild person is kind of a way to do that.

And I think that phrase does a good job of encapsulating it. Yeah, so what you're, what you're getting at here, this idea of what I call habit stacking. And this is a concept that I first learned from BJ Fogg. He's a professor at Stanford and his idea is little formula, which I think is great, is you're going to take your current habit, something you already do, and then you're going to stack a new behavior on top of it. And so what it does, it's very, it's a very nice way to find a very clear and specific place for a new habit to live in your life. And so for example, his formula is something like after current habit, I will new habit. So let's say that you already have a habit of making a cup of coffee every morning

and you want to start meditating consistently. So your little habit stack could be after I make my cup of coffee, I will immediately meditate for 60 seconds. And so you've got this small habit, you layer it on top of something you already do, and you have this very obvious place that it comes into your life. You could even, to build on the example you just gave about running, you could have like, let's say it's got two parts. So you could say, um, after I brush my teeth for bed, I will put

my, uh, put my running shoes next to the front door and then you go to sleep. And then in the morning you could say, after I turn off my alarm, I will immediately go put my running shoes on and go for a run. And so you've kind of got this two-part system there for making the running habit easier. And I think the core lesson here is that many people think what they lack is motivation when what they really lack is clarity. And there are a lot of things in life that actually we will do them if we're very clear and specific about when and where they're going to occur. But most of the time, people wake up and they think, I hope I feel motivated to go for a run today, or I hope I feel motivated to write consistently. And if you just leave it up to that, you know, life gets busy and things creep in and you often don't have the time to do it. But if it's already pre-decided

when and where you're going to do it, specifically what action you take that then leads into this new habit, it's much easier to stick with the program. And so there are all kinds of habit stacks like that that can be really useful. Yeah, there you go. BJ Fogg, the after I, I will is a massive, that's a great insight on stacking. I call it hooking. When you're hooking two things together, that you're more likely to get this natural carry or this momentum for the new behavior. Okay. Let's talk about 1% Better. You've got some cool findings and stories around getting 1% Better. I think the story that best encapsulates this idea is the story of the British cycling team. For many years, they were very mediocre. You know, the premier race in cycling is the Tour de France.

They had never won. The race had been around about 110 years at this point. This is around 2003, 2004. They brought in this new performance coach named Dave Brailsford. And he had one concept that made him a little bit different than the coaches that had come before. And he referred to it as the aggregation of marginal gains. So the way that he described it was the 1% improvement in basically everything that we do related to cycling. So, you know, they start with a bunch of things that you'd expect a cycling team to start with. Like they, uh, they put slightly lighter tires in the bike. They designed a more ergonomic seat. They had

their riders where these little biofeedback sensors, these little chips to see how each person would respond to training. And then they'd adjust the programming and practice schedule, uh, based on that data. But then they did a bunch of things that you wouldn't expect a cycling team to do. Like they, um, they hired a surgeon to come in and teach the riders how to wash their hands to reduce the risk of catching a cold or getting the flu. They have two different types of racing suits. They got indoor racing suits and outdoor racing suits. And they're different fabrics.

And so they tested those fabrics in a wind tunnel. And they found out that the indoor suits were lighter and more aerodynamic. So they asked all of their riders to wear that fabric. They split tested different types of massage gels to see which one led to the best muscle recovery. Then they'd use that after training sessions. They have a huge truck, like a big semi that carries all the bikes in it. And they painted the inside of that trailer white so that they could spot little bits of dirt and dust that might get in the gears and degrade the performance of the bikes.

They also asked their riders to test a bunch of different pillows, like a dozen different types of pillows, to see which one would lead to the best night's sleep for each person. And then once they had that figured out, they brought those pillows on the road with them to hotels for the Tour de France or whatever.

And, you know, so they did all these types of things and brailsford said you know if we can actually do this if we can execute on all these little one percent changes then i think we can win a tour de france within five years and uh he ended up being wrong they won the tour de france in three years and then they repeated again the fourth year with a different rider and then they had a one-year break and then they won the next three in a row so after having never won for like 110, 115 years, suddenly they win like five out of the next six. And so this idea that like small improvements,

1% changes are not just nice to have, you know, they're not just like a bonus or cherry on top of your performance, but actually can be the pathway to unlocking like elite levels of success. I think, you know, it's a little surprising, a little counterintuitive. If anything, you know, if nothing else, it's certainly underappreciated. And excellence is often not about radical change. Like it's often about accruing small improvements over time. It's

often about waking up each day and trying to find a way to get 1% better and layering those changes on top of each other. And for me, for my personal life, the lesson I try to take away from that is progress and improvement are much more about trajectory than position. You know, we talk a lot about position in life. What is the number on the scale? What is the number on the bank account? You know, like, where am I currently standing? Am I in first place or am I in seventh place? But this argument is much more about trajectory. It's like, actually, you know, if you have a positive trajectory, if you're moving up into the right, if you're getting 1% better each day, all you need is patience. Like if you have good habits, all your time is your ally. All you need is for, you know, time to keep working for you. But if you have bad habits, be getting 1% worse

each day, or you're staying, you know, kind of stuck in neutral time becomes your enemy. You know, every day that clicks by you dig the hole a little bit deeper. And so it's much more about mastering your trajectory than your position. It's much more about getting 1% better than, you know, trying to have some magical outcome on day one. What are you trying to sort out in life? Because you're spending a lot of time in your life about getting better and getting better. You know, the 1% practices. What are you trying to sort out?

Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think, you know, first, I'm probably still figuring it out. Like, uh, you know, I think things that I did was focused on sorting out the last decade ago, maybe not be focused on that now, you know, like I'm going to have kids soon. Once I have kids, I'm sure I'll be thinking a lot about trying to sort out parenting, uh, trying to figure that out. Right. Um, so there, there's always like a new challenge. So in some sense, the mile, the goal is shifting, you know, the post is shifting. Um, the second thing shifting, you know, the post is shifting. The second thing is for my work, the kind of overarching mission that I think about is I'm trying to increase the distribution of great ideas in the world. So, you know, if it's a good idea,

if it's useful, it's practical, like that's all I really want. I just want to be useful to the reader. And so I'm trying to spread those, you know, I'm trying to get them in front of more people. I'm trying to get those ideas to more people. And so on the one hand, it looks like, yeah, you're kind of spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to get better. Like, are you actually getting better? But the way that I think about it is it's kind of like leading the leaders. You know, it's like, if you can share these ideas with people who are using them in all different types of industries, sport, business, music, whatever, we've got a lot of people who are being impacted by having a better strategy or by having a better mindset.

And so, um, in that sense, I'm kind of playing like a meta game, you know, where I'm trying to like equip people with the tools and the, um, and the mindsets that are in the strategies that are useful for them and their particular work. So that I think is probably like on the business side. And then honestly, on the personal side, I think it's mostly about what you mentioned earlier, this idea of feeling fully engaged, fully focused. You know, like to not, I tend to be, I think one of my, it's both an asset and it's a flaw, is being future oriented, thinking a lot about, you know, where to not, I tend to be, I think one of my, it's both an asset and it's a flaw, is being future oriented, thinking a lot about, you know, where's the business headed? Where am I headed? You know, like, what are we trying to achieve here? And I'm good at that. I'm good at

visualizing the future. But the downside is you spend too much time in the future. And you, you know, every minute you're in the future, you're missing out on the present. And so I think, you know, as much as possible for me getting better at being in the moment, feeling fully focused, feeling that sense of flow. I often get it now I get it. I guess I get it a little bit through writing. You've kind of convinced me of that during this conversation. But I often feel like I get it during weightlifting.

So that's definitely something I'm trying to get better at and training in the gym. But yeah, I don't know. I think probably the overarching answer to this is I'm still figuring it out. Yeah. Totally cool. And, you know, uh, danger and risk weightlifting is not really risky, but when you're, when you're sitting underneath 300 pounds or 150, whatever kind of you're pushing around, there's a forcing function says you better be in it.

And so, um, you know, even if it's for a little burst of a moment, that that's a really important mechanism as a forcing function to be fully present. Same with like, I don't know, slalom or downhill skiing. Like you've got to be in it, you know, same with big wave surfing, you have to be in it. Cage fighting, you have to be in it. The luxury that most of us hold, we don't have to be in it. That's a fascinating point that like, you don't have to be all in. So you don't mentally go all in. And like, just having that for a moment is very powerful. I can think back to when I've been an entrepreneur for over 10 years now, but I can think back to a moment about a year and a half in where I had to go all in. Like my wife was, she was my girlfriend at the time. And she was worried. Cause I like,

basically I had like two weeks worth of money. Um, and it was like, well, I have to pay rent in four weeks. So like, so either I'm going to figure this out or, and she like, um, I think she sent me like a hundred bucks and she was like, look, just you can send it back to me if you don't need it. But like, you're going to have at least enough money if you need to like buy groceries or whatever. And, um, yeah, it really, honestly, in a lot of ways, it comes back to that moment when I was like, I'm gonna, I, it was almost like I couldn't, I, I forced myself to be like, I can't have this not work. Do you know what I mean? Like I had to go all in and it was like, look, I'm either going to figure it out or I'm going to fall on my face, but like, I have

to figure it out. And, uh, I don't know. There's something very powerful about those moments. Oh, for sure. And I think I spent most of my life in action sports, um, as a youngster, really accidentally creating, forcing functions for me to be completely immersed. And it's not lost on me now that I needed that then. And it's still my life efforts now are to help people live in the present moment more often. How? By training your mind, not necessarily putting yourself under extreme risk situations, because it doesn't always port, you know, it doesn't port into daily living necessarily well. And that's why you see people chasing the high, chasing the moments, as opposed to this transcendent experience where you're able to be present wherever you are with whomever you're with,

you know, and so that is my life efforts right now. And this is why I was looking forward to this conversation is habit development formation is there's a sweet science here that hopefully will allow you to become better at getting better. And then eventually that two degree or one degree shift over time will create a new trajectory, a new location, if you will, of where you'll end up in two months, two years, 22 years. And then in doing that, though, if you're just a habit stacker and you're really good at that but you are not living in the present moment yeah man we're missing some stuff so that's why i'm saying like for me that we got to train our minds we got to do some sort of

internal work to train and condition our minds the same way we train and condition our hip mobility you know our glute strength, our kinetic chain, the physical part of our body. Okay, enough of that. Talk to me about a framework. What is a great framework that you've come to find to have high utility in keeping track of the habits that you're working on? Do you have a system that you found to be valuable?

Yeah, so you hinted at this earlier in the conversation. I almost mentioned it. One of the most motivating feelings to the human mind is the feeling of progress. If you feel like you're making progress, then you've got every reason in the world to continue. You know, it feels great. You're moving forward. And one of the best ways to notice your progress is to visualize it. And I don't mean that mentally, although that can be useful too. I mean, like actually being able to visually see that you're getting better. We love checklists, James. Our brains crave checklists for the most part. Yeah. There's something so rewarding that little dopamine hit. Like I did it. Look, look, I have

evidence. I'm a good human. I am better. Yeah. In some, in some cases, in some habits, you like get it built in, you know, like this is one thing that's fun about weightlifting. If you put an extra five pounds on the bar, you have undeniable proof that you are making progress and you're better than you were last week. Um, but a lot of habits don't have that. Like I think about my parents, um, my, my parents like swimming. And one of the hard things about swimming is when your body looks exactly the same when you get out of the water is when you get in, right? Like there's no evidence that that workout was worth it. And so my dad, what he

does is he has this little pocket calendar and takes it out after each workout. And he puts a little X on that day. And then at the end of the month, he adds up the number of Xs. And you know, he's just got a little very basic habit tracker there. And so the first lesson I think that I want to add to this little question about feedback or measurement is it's best if you have a form of feedback that matches the frequency of the habit you're trying to build. So let's say, for example, a lot of people use the scale as a way to measure feedback for workouts. But the problem is the scale might take a week or two to change and you're working out three or four times a week. And so it's really easy to keep showing up and be like, oh, scale's no different.

And so the frequency of the measurement does not match the frequency of the habit. But if you've got, you know, a habit tracker, you get to put a little X down every time you do that. And so it's a small thing, but it makes you feel like you're making some progress. It makes you feel like you mentioned that little dopamine hit where you're like, I showed up. I'm a good person. I did what I was supposed to do. And if you mix that with your strategy of celebrating like a wild person, then you've really got a nice little one-two punch. So that's kind of the first insight.

The second thing that I'll say is that I don't track all of my habits. Like for example, I don't track how many books I read in the year. I do try to read consistently, but I don't measure it. But I do think that my most important habits, the ones that really move the needle for me in like life or business, if I look back and I'm honest about when I made really good progress with them, it's almost always when I was tracking them consistently. So on the personal side, it's, uh, I write, I have a workout journal. So I write, I write down all the sets and reps and everything. Um, I have also recently in the last few months, I've started

tracking my macros for calories. And it's funny, you know, for many years, nutrition was the one health habit that I just kind of like let slide and did just so, so, so on. And now suddenly it's like guaranteed results. All I had to do was track. It's really surprising how measurement made a big difference for me there. And then on the business side, the two things that I care most about are book sales and email subscribers. And I have spreadsheets for each. And, you know, lo and behold, by tracking those things every week, turns out we get better at them. And so there's something about measurement that focuses your mind. And again, it's kind of similar to that question we said really early on, what am I optimizing for? Well, if you're, if you have a spreadsheet that's tracking it, you kind of implicitly are admitting,

yeah, I'm sort of optimizing for this. And so, you know, yeah, I'm tracking book sales. I'm tracking email subscribers. Guess what I see each week. I see opportunities to grow those things, um, partially because I'm keeping them top of mind. So I think measurements really useful for that. That's the second point. And then the third and final point that I'll say about measurement and feedback is that a measurement ceases to be a good measure if it becomes the sole target that you're focusing on. And this is something that's called Goodhart's Law. But basically, you know, all of these measures are a proxy for what you're actually trying to achieve. And you need to keep that in mind because a lot of people, you know, it turns it's no longer about being a healthy person it becomes just obsessively about the number on the scale or for a lot of students i know i was this way in school it's actually not at all about learning

anything it's just about getting a good grade on the test and um if i'm being honest about it i didn't really care if i learned as long as i got an a and um those are examples of bad measures those are examples of the measures. Those are examples of the measurement overtaking the actual thing that you're trying to achieve. So I do think measurement can be very powerful because it can visualize your progress and it can give you some immediate feedback, but there's also that little bit of a danger with it. And so you kind of need to keep it between the rails when considering that. Okay. Is there anything else that you want to add or that we

didn't get to? I've mentioned this in the book, the cardinal rule of behavior change, or what I call the cardinal rule of behavior change is behaviors that are immediately rewarded get repeated and behaviors that are immediately punished get avoided. And it's really the word immediate. That's kind of the key piece there with feedback. It's like having really instant feedback. And I already gave you some examples on good habits, but I also think this is like a potentially really powerful thing for curtailing or reducing bad behavior. So, um, one of my, two of my favorite stories are examples on it. One Danella Meadows, she's like a systems engineer and she was talking about pollution and like, you know, people talk about pollution and climate change and all kinds of stuff and

like how hard it is to get people to change their behavior. But she was like, what if any warehouse or manufacturing facility that put pollution into the water had to take up water for their facility downstream from where they put the pollution in? So the first person to feel the effects is the person who's doing it. You probably would see a lot different behavior from that facility. Or another one that I really like is the engineers at Boeing. I think this was in like the 1990s or so. When they first designed the airplane wing to be software controlled rather than manually controlled, the engineers who designed the software for that, they were required to be on the first test flight. And partially that's because, you

know, like they wanted to test some things, but also there's a really good alignment of incentives there where it's like, listen, you better do this the right way. Your life is the one that's on the line. And the more that we can design systems like that, that is a huge, I think, massive skill designing systems where the incentives are aligned. And that applies to government and it applies to politics and business and all kinds of big picture things. But I think it also applies to your daily life. And the more that you can design little systems like that, where you get immediate feedback, that's positive for the things you want to do. And you have an immediate consequence for the things you don't want to do. That's really powerful. Like think about the difference between someone who they're like, all right, tomorrow's going to be the day

I'm going to go for a run. And they set their alarm for 6am and then 6am rolls around, their bed is warm, it's cold outside. Like, well, I'll just press snooze instead. But if they text a friend the day before and they say, hey, can we meet at the park at 6.15? Your bed is still warm and it's still cold outside, but suddenly that bears an immediate cost. And so you've just designed a little system where the incentive is aligned and you want to get up because you don't want to look like a jerk. So I think the better people are at that, you really see a dramatic behavior change if you're good at designing systems where the incentives are aligned. I'm so glad I asked the question at the end. That was great. And have you thought about technology and investing in technology to build habits?

And have you gone down that path? Yeah. There are a variety of things to consider here, I think. You know, like the immediate piece that I just mentioned, this idea that idea that like, you want feedback to be instant technology is really good at that, you know, like, and this is one of the reasons why social media is very addictive or like sticky, you know, like, yeah, I post something on Twitter and I get feedback within a minute, you know, like, and that's, there's something it's so immediate that it's very yeah. It's very habit forming. Video games are another incredible example of this.

They're giving immediate feedback all the time, you know, whether it's, you know, little power-ups or coins, they're rubies that you collect as you go through a level, whether it's the sound of, you know, a character picking up a gun or a weapon or something, even the little like pitter-patter of a character's steps as they run through the level,

that's immediate feedback that you're making progress. And so they're very good at designing those kind of, you mentioned earlier, the importance of like momentum and technology is really good at designing momentum in like that. So I think probably the most meaningful place you see it is with video games right now. That's probably like the cutting edge, even though we don't talk about it in that way in terms of habit formation. I often think it's funny. The other thing I'll add is I don't know that habit or a piece of technology that explicitly try to build better habits. I don't know that they've been that effective. Like, for example, think about like most of the apps that try to design people's like exercise behavior. And then if you were to ask, what's the most effective exercise app of all time?

It's probably something like Pokemon Go. Like it was probably a game that they got people to go walk. I mean, kids were walking 10 miles just to go find the next Pokemon. And so it's sort of like, I think the lesson here is that technology is really good at certain things. But in many cases, the most effective way to change behavior is through a backdoor. It's actually, it's like by playing a game, you end up walking 10 miles. If you were to create an app that tried to get people to explicitly walk 10 miles, it probably wouldn't go over that well. So I do think you need to be very clever about how that works. Nice job, James. I can tell you have a command of the space. You've spent a lot of time writing and thinking and making it practical. And I want to encourage folks to pick up your book, Atomic Habits, and where else can, jamesclear.com, right? Those are the two places. And then on social, you know, is there a third place that people can find you and what you're up to?

Yeah, no, I, I mean, I'm on all the social networks and stuff. You want to check those out, but I think that's probably right. You know, if you enjoyed this conversation, best place to start is probably atomic habits and you can check that out at atomic habits.com. And, uh, if you want to check out the newsletter, which is probably the other thing that I'm most known for, um that's at jamesclear.com. Nice job, dude. Appreciate you. This was awesome.

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