The Food Medic - S6 E1: How to make habits that stick with James Clear

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”James Clear is a writer and speaker focused on habits, decision making, and continuous improvement. His book, Atomic Habits, is a New York Times bestseller and more than 1,000,000 people subscribe to his weekly newsletter at jamesclear.com. His work has appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine, Time Magazine, the New York Times, and on CBS This Morning. His strategies have been used by coaches and teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB. I’ve been following his work since the early days back in 2013 and I am still a mega fan. Grab a pen and paper - or open your notes app - because there are SO many great takeaways from this episode.This episode covers:- James’s journey and what led him to write Atomic Habits- How to make habits that stick: The 4 laws of behaviour change - Systems vs habits vs goals - The 2 minute rule: how to stop procrastinating and start a new habit- Making hard-to-stick habits satisfying and rewarding- Small habits lead to big wins- How changing your habits may require you to change your tribe- How to say no and avoid daily distractions- Technology and social media shape our thoughts and habits- How you can stay motivated when you get boredIf you loved this episode make sure to give it a review, rating (hopefully 5 stars) and share it with your friends and family. instagram/twitter/facebook: @thefoodmedicwww.thefoodmedic.co.ukThis podcast episode is sponsored by WHOOP. Right now, you can get your first month free when you checkout through join.whoop.com/thefoodmedic Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over deliver. Hello and welcome back to another episode and a brand new season of the Food Medic podcast.

Can you tell I'm very excited? We are now on season six, which is incredible. And although I say this every season, I absolutely loved recording this one and it may be our best yet. So whether you're listening to this on your commute, on the beach, on a run, on the sofa, thank you for having me in your ears and I hope you enjoy the show. So if you're new around here, I should probably introduce myself. My name is Hazel or Dr Hazel if you like. I'm a medical doctor, nutritionist, author and founder of The Food Medic. On this podcast we hear from a range of people with expertise and experience in health and nutrition who provide evidence-based advice on how we can live healthier lives. To give you a bit of a teaser of what's to come on this season,

we're going to be discussing a range of topics from health behaviours and habits, maximising performance and recovery, wearables, burnout, which has been a big thing for me this year and for many of us, sobriety, gut health, mental health, resistance training and CrossFit. Again, if you do enjoy this podcast it would mean so much to me if you could spare less than 60 seconds of your time to leave a rating and a review and share it with someone you think might enjoy it too. For more from me you can visit our website on thefoodmedic.co.uk or find me on social under thefoodmedic Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. So without further ado I'm very excited to introduce my first guest who I literally

fangirled over during this podcast but I was just too excited to finally have him in the same virtual room as me. Ladies and gentlemen it is Mr James Clear. If you haven't heard of James before, he is a writer and speaker focused on habits, decision making and continuous improvement. His book Atomic Habits is a New York Times bestseller and more than 1 million people subscribe to his weekly newsletter at jamesclear.com. His work has appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine, Time Magazine, the New York Times and on CBS This Morning. His strategies have been used by coaches and teams in the likes of the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB. I've been following his work since the early days back in 2013, I think, and I'm still a mega fan. So grab a pen and paper or open up your notes app because there are so many great takeaways

from this episode. I hope you enjoy. Today's podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, Whoop. Whoop is one of the most popular fitness wearables right now. It's a 24-7 digital fitness and health coach that provides actionable insights to help you recover faster, train smarter and sleep better. Whoop is unlike most other wearables in the sense that it doesn't just tell you what you've done but it tells you what you really need to know. So I've been using my Whoop for a few months now, and I am so impressed with the amount and level of insight it can provide you. So each morning when you wake up, you get a recovery score from Whoop based on your sleep and other recovery metrics such as heart rate variability and resting heart rate. That score helps to guide your day,

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free when you check out through join.whoop.com slash thefoodmedic. So James, the reason that I really wanted to have you on the podcast to have a chat, obviously you've published an incredible book, but I first came across your work when I was back in medical school. And I want to say it was 2012,

maybe 13 and I'd signed up to your newsletter and it was probably the only non-academic reading I was doing at the time but it really helped me get through med school and just build healthy habits into my day. So first of all I just want to thank you for that and for supporting me there. But off the back of that, I'd love to kind of start with that and how you really got into writing about habits and talking about it and where your journey first began. Yeah, you've been with me for a while. Thanks for following for all those years. I'm glad you have found it useful. I got started because I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I didn't think, or didn't intend to be an author or to have a career as a writer, but I knew that I wanted to

run my own business and I knew that I wanted to have the flexibility to work on projects that excited me. So for the first couple of years that I tried that, I mostly just stumbled around and didn't make a whole lot of progress and tried a bunch of ideas that didn't really go anywhere. And eventually I realized that the reason, one of the reasons I was struggling to make a lot of progress is because I was creating things, but I didn't have an audience. I didn't have anybody to share the new thing I made with. And so I would put energy into trying to like build this product or build this business. And then I thought, well, if I make it, then like, you know, people will find it. But that obviously was not true.

And so I started writing and blogging and building an email newsletter so that I would have an audience that I could share, you know, whatever the next product was that I was going to work on. And along the way, this funny thing happened, which is it turns out I like writing. And initially I wrote about just kind of whatever was interesting to me and habits were part of that. But I also wrote about fitness and weight training and other stuff that people seem to not be as interested in. And so gradually I found out that the thing that I was both interested in and that people wanted to hear from me on was writing about habits and strategy and decision-making. And so now I've continued to write about those topics

and ultimately, you know, it culminated in the publishing of Atomic Habits. Yeah. I think all great things often start like that, where it's a happy accident. And then that led you to writing Atomic Habits. Why atomic? So I chose the phrase atomic and atomic habits specifically for three reasons. So the word atomic has multiple meanings. You know, the first meaning is tiny or small like an atom. And that is part of, you know, my philosophy or approach is I think habits should be small and easy to do. The second meaning of the word atomic is the one that usually gets overlooked. So it's like the fundamental unit in a larger system, like atoms built into molecules and molecules built into compounds and so on. And I think your habits are kind of like that,

you know, each one is sort of like a little atom or a little, you know, gear in the overall system of your day, and you put them together and you kind of end up with your daily routine. And then the third and final meaning is the source of immense energy or power. And I think if you combine all three of those meanings, you sort of understand the narrative arc of the book or the, like one of the core ideas of the book, which is you want to make changes that are small and easy to do. And then you layer those on top of each other, like units and a larger system. And if you layer those on top of each other, like units and a larger system. And if you can do that and do it consistently, then you can end up with some really powerful and remarkable results.

And so I think the word atomic and the phrase atomic habit sort of encapsulates all three of those meanings. Yeah, I would agree. And you mentioned the word systems there. And I've written down one of your quotes so that I don't mess it up. But one of the quotes that you've said that's often quoted online is, you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems, which I love. But can you tell us what you mean by systems versus habits versus goals? Sure. So if we put a little like deeper

explanation on each of those terms, So your, what is your goal? Your goal is your desired outcome, right? It's like the thing that you're shooting for the target. What is your system? Your system is the collection of daily habits that you follow. And if there's 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. Like almost by definition, you know, your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results. So, you know, let's say whatever system you've been

running for the last six months or 12 months or whatever, that has carried you somewhat inevitably to the results that you have today. Now, you know, of course, there are other things in life that influence your outcomes like luck or randomness, good luck or bad luck. But by definition, those things are not under your control. And in the long run, your life bends in the direction of your habits. It bends in the direction of the system that you've been running. And so if you want to influence the outcomes in your life to the best degree possible, it actually isn't that much about the goals. It's much more about the system that you're following, you know, in a sense, setting the goal is kind of the easy part. You know, like I can set a goal right now to sell 10 million books. You know, it took me like three seconds. I mean, the goal is

not really the hard part. It's building a system of habits that carry you toward that goal. And I think this is one of the, I don't know, it's kind of one of the great ironies of life that we also badly want our results to change. You know, we also badly want to make more money or to lose weight or to have peace of mind or whatever the outcome is that we're shooting for. But the results are not actually the thing that needs to change. It's kind of like fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves, fix the habits, redesign the system, and the outcomes will follow naturally. Yeah, absolutely. And when it comes to building habits and thinking about how we're going to get to that goal, and the system we're going to get to that goal and the system we're going to take. You talk about laws of behavior change in the book and how you can kind

of simplify or I guess, focus on how those habits can work for you and make them sustainable. Can you talk us through the four laws that you chat about? Sure. So let me back up for just a second and just describe like a habit from more of a scientific standpoint. I like to divide habits into four stages. I think if you understand those four steps, you've got like not only a more of a scientific understanding of what a habit is or how that behavior works, but you also have four different places where you can intervene. And that's kind of the four laws of behavior change you're mentioning. So before we get to the laws, the four steps are cue, craving, response, and reward. Cue, craving, response, and reward.

And so the cue is something that gets your attention. So like if you walk into the kitchen and see a plate of cookies on the counter, that is a visual cue. That starts the habit of eating a cookie. And then the second stage, the craving, that is a prediction that your brain makes. So for example, as soon as you see the cookie, you don't even really have to think about it, but your brain automatically is making a prediction, something probably like, oh, that'll be sweet, sugary, tasty, enjoyable. And it's actually that prediction that motivates you to take the third step, which is the response. You walk over and pick the cookie up and you take a bite. And then finally there's the reward. Oh, it is in fact, sweet, sugary, tasty, enjoyable.

And you know, not every behavior in life is rewarding, right? Sometimes things have a cost or a consequence. Sometimes they're just kind of neutral and don't really mean a whole lot. But if a behavior is not rewarding, then it's unlikely to become a habit. You need that kind of positive emotional signal for your brain to be like, Hey, I want to repeat this again in the future. So cue craving response reward from those four stages. We can, I like to say, we're like operationalize this. How do we turn into something actionable? And that's what these four steps are. So if you want a good habit to stick, there are kind of roughly four things that you want to do. And you don't have to do all of these all the time, but the more of them that you do and the more of them you have working for you,

the more likely it is that a habit will stick. So there's one for each stage. The four laws of behavior change are make it obvious. That's the first law. You want to make the cues of your good habits obvious, available, visible, easy to see. The second law is to make it attractive. And we talked about that craving. You want your habits to be attractive, appealing. And the more attractive or appealing or exciting, enticing a habit is, the more likely you are to feel motivated to do it. The third law is to make

it easy. The more easy, convenient, frictionless, simple a habit is, the more likely you are to perform it. And the fourth and final law is to make it satisfying. The more satisfying or rewarding or enjoyable a habit is, the more you have a reason to repeat it again in the future. So make it obvious, make future. So make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying. Those are kind of the high level view of the four laws of behavior change and how to get a good habit to stick. Amazing. And I guess let's try apply this to health behavior. And the reason I'm picking health behaviors is obviously this is a health focused podcast, but also I find that when it comes to improving health, you're not getting those rewards, like you mentioned instantly, and that can often put people off sticking to the habits. So say I want to start

running. How would you apply those four laws to building in a daily running practice? Yeah, great question. So first, I should just say what you just mentioned about the rewards being delayed. Very common thing with many different types of habits, not just health habits, but also a hallmark of any compounding process, which is the greatest returns are delayed. And so delaying gratification, this is kind of one of the biggest challenges when it comes to building habits. And one of, I think the distinct differences between what is a good habit and what is a bad habit. Usually the things that we call bad habits reward us right away in the moment. So immediately they have a little bit of a reward, but in the long run, they have a cost and your good habits are the exact reverse in the immediate term. They tend to have a cost. You know, it takes effort to sweat and go to the gym right now, but in the long run, a year or two from now, you are much fitter

because of it. And so it's that kind of misalignment of whether the behavior rewards you immediately versus in the long run that helps us define what makes some habits good and some habits bad. So let's take your example of building a running habit and just run through those four steps. So how can we make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying? All right. Well, if you want to make it obvious, one thing that you could do is set out your running shoes and your running gear the night before. So when you go to sleep, you wake up and it's the first thing you see it sitting right by your bed or they're sitting right by the front door, wherever makes sense for you, but trying to make it as obvious as possible, some kind of reminder in the physical

environment that, Hey, I want to go for a run, making it attractive. So you can imagine a scenario where, uh, let's say you go to bed tonight and you're like, um, all right, I listened to this guy talk about habits in this podcast today. I'm going to go for a run tomorrow. And you set your alarm for 6 a.m., but then 6 a.m. rolls around and your bed is warm. It's cold outside. Like, well, I'll just press snooze. But if you send a text to a friend today and you say, hey, can we meet at the park at 615 and go for a run?

Well, now 6 a.m. rolls around and your bed is still warm and it's still cold outside. But if you don't get up and go for a run, you're a jerk because you leave your friend at the park all alone. So you haven't made the run itself necessarily any easier in that situation, but you have made it more attractive to get up and go for a run. You've kind of changed the calculus that's going on in your mind about whether you want to do it or not. Make it easy. Now this is one where we would scale the rundown. So rather than, you know, worry about running for 45 minutes or doing some kind of full workout or whatever, we could say the goal is just to run around the block once, or we could make it even smaller and say the only objective is to get your running shoes on. Once you've tied them, everything after that is

considered a bonus. And sometimes people resist that a little bit. I like to refer to this strategy as in the book, I call it the two minute rule, which is you take whatever habit you're trying to build and you scale it down to something that takes two minutes or less to do. So run for 45 minutes becomes put on my running shoes. And people are like, okay, you know, I know the real goal isn't just to put my running shoes on four days a week. I know I'm actually trying to do this workout. So if this is some kind of mental trick, then why would I fall for it basically? But I have this reader, his name is Mitch.

I mentioned him in the book and he lost a bunch of weight. He's kept it off for over a decade now. And when he first started going to the gym, he had a rule for himself where he wasn't allowed to stay for longer than five minutes. So he would 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 type of person that went to the gym four days a week,

even if it was only for five minutes. Yeah. And I think that's a deep truth about habits, something that people often overlook, which is a habit must be established before it can be improved, right? It has to become the standard in your life before you can worry about optimizing and scaling it up. So in the case of this running habit example, I think scaling it down and putting your shoes on and just viewing that as a victory makes a lot of sense because if you can't become the type of person that puts your running shoes on four days a week, then the idea or the theory or the hope of being the kind of person to run 45 minutes, four days a week is, I mean, that's way down beyond this. So let's just focus on getting that first step nailed. And then we can worry about expanding up from there. And then the fourth and final, I'll make it satisfying.

As you mentioned, one of the challenges is that your body looks exactly the same at the end of the run as it does when you left. So you have no physical evidence right away that that was worth it. And this is one of the reasons I recommend using certain things like a habit tracker, which is just saying, Hey, after each run, just get a little calendar out and put an X on that day. And then at the end of the month, you can add up how many workouts you did and compare that to the last month and so on. And putting an X on a calendar is a small thing, but it adds a little bit of feeling, a little bit of emotion to the moment. It gives you a signal of progress. And one of the most motivating feelings to the human mind is the feeling of progress.

You know, if you're moving forward, even if it's slow, even if it's in a small way, that feels good and you have every reason to continue. And so I would say those would be like four quick ways that you could apply it. Yeah. Oh, I love them. And I'm a big fan of habit trackers. I think it's like when you have a really long to-do list and you tick everything off that feeling of satisfaction, but you mentioned kind of, I guess, the size of the habit when it came to running, you know, like, don't aim too big. Do you think that's where a lot of people fall down? Do we try to tackle too many habits at once or try to make the habit too ambitious? Yeah, I think it's very common. I mean, I know I've done it a lot. You know, this is I should say, as we're talking through all this, like I'm basically talking through all the mistakes

I've made, right? Like these are all things that I've struggled with as well. And I think one of them is when you think about a change and you start to envision it and what your life could be like, you get excited about, you know, what that could be and, uh, and about how great things could be and what you could accomplish. And it's very easy in those moments to overly ambitious might be, I don't know. I don't know that I love the way to phrase that because I think it's great to be ambitious, but it's, it's easy to bite off a little too much too soon. And you convince yourself that, oh, I should be running for 45 minutes, four days a week. And you know, maybe that's where you end up, but that doesn't mean that's where you have to start. And I think the most important

thing early on is establishing some type of consistency, trying to make it part of your new normal, building a lifestyle that you can sustain. And usually to be able to sustain that new lifestyle, the change needs to be non-threatening in a way. It needs to be like so easy that you can't really say no to it because what ends up happening is everybody thinks about what they want to achieve on their best day. But the question you need to ask is, what can I stick to on my worst day? Because when you're really exhausted and tired and busy and life is creeping in, okay, are you still going to be able to maintain the habit that day? Because it's actually the bad days that help keep the streak alive.

It's finding a way to show up when it's not perfect that allows you to maintain that consistency and build the habit in the long run. Yeah. And I guess for people who are trying to integrate a new habit into their lives, they've not done it before. One method is habit stacking. Can you chat us through this process? Sure. So when you're looking to build a new habit, one of the most effective things that you can do is have a clear time and space for where you establish that habit. And there are actually quite a few studies that show that if you pick a specific time and place to do something, you're more likely to follow through. So, you know, if you say, 7am in my basement is where I'm going to work out, or you know, 6pm in my living room

is where I'm going to read or whatever, it's you're more likely to follow through if you have that clear plan. Now, habit stacking takes that a step further. And so this is an idea that BJ Fogg professor at Stanford came up with, which is, can we instead of just taking a time, which is, can we, instead of just taking a time and a place, can we take a behavior and pair our habit with a new behavior? So you can imagine you already have a bunch of habits that you do each day. Like a lot of people, for example, they make a morning cup of coffee. So let's say that the new habit that you want to build is

you're like, I'd like to get into meditating more. Well, you can stack those habits together. You can layer them on top of each other. And so Dr. Fogg's example, or his little framework is you say, I will perform the new habit after I do my old habits. So for example, it might be like, after I make my cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds. So by stacking those two things together, you give yourself a very clear time and place a very clear behavior to link the new habit to. And, you know, you're more likely to do it if you have a very consistent and obvious place to insert that behavior into your life. Now, once you get good at this, you can start to stack multiple things together. So you could say you can imagine a little morning routine that is a habit stack that has like

multiple pieces. It might be like, after I make my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds. After I meditate for 60 seconds, I will write my to-do list for the day. After I write my to-do list for the day, I will prioritize the items and begin working on the first one immediately. And so now you have just this little stack of behaviors that you do the same way each time, and it kind of gets the momentum going and it's a very clear and clean path for you to follow each morning. I guess it becomes almost automated then in that it just seamlessly falls into place every day. Right. The thing that it does, I, the thing that I like about it is that it takes decision-making off the table. You don't, a lot of people wake up each morning and they're wondering, oh, you know, I hope I feel motivated to work out today, or I wonder when I'll have time to

meditate today. And if you already have a habit stack built, you don't need to decide, you know, you just, after I made the cup of coffee, that's when I meditate. It's already done. So removing that amount of friction from the decision-making process and from the behavior allows you to just, you can just do the actions and not have to worry about when or where they're going to happen. And it makes it a little more likely that you'll follow through. Yeah.

I don't know if you have an answer for this, but is there any evidence to say that people are more likely to stick to habits at certain times of the day, like first thing in the morning? I think that it depends on the habit, but the general answer is yes. So I think the question of are sometimes better than others for this particular habit, whatever the one is we're talking about, I think the answer to that is definitely yes. Like you can imagine, say you have a young parent who is trying to meditate. Well, 7am or after you make your morning cup of coffee, that might be a good time for most people. But if you have a two year old and a four year old running around, and you're trying to get them dressed, then that may not be a good time to do it each morning. And so you need to find a different time when it makes sense for that habit to, you know, have the space that it needs to, uh, to be established. I don't know about specific

research studies related to doing things earlier in the day. I'm sure there are some out there, but I will say from a practitioner standpoint, from, you know, just my personal experience of working on it, what I found is that with most things, the longer the day goes on, the more likely it is. It's kind of like you increase your surface area for interruptions and that could be related to work or personal life or whatever. And so generally speaking, I think it's when it's possible or if it makes sense for the habit, it's a better move to do it earlier in the day because you have fewer things that you've been exposed to that could take you off track. Yeah, I agree. I think everything that I try to implement tends to be first thing because

otherwise, it rarely gets done. But you did mention kind of children and family there. And that's also an important factor to consider, because the people in our lives also shape our habits, which can be tricky. I can work in our favor, but it can be tricky if they reinforce habits that may not support our goals. So what advice would you have for people who feel that way? Yep. So I think I want to say two things here. The first thing is you'll often read different frameworks or ideas or approaches. And sometimes you'll be like, well, this is, you know, obviously written by somebody who doesn't have a family or this isn't going to work in my situation or whatever.

And a family is just one of those constraints, by the way. It's not the only reason that like a plan may not work, right? We can come up with an infinite number of things that could possibly, you know, mean this isn't a good fit for your life. Of course. number of things that could possibly mean this isn't a good fit for your life. But my response to that is that's fine that it doesn't work perfectly for you because no matter what the plan is, even if it does sound like it'd be a perfect fit for your life, you still need to have the willingness to experiment and implement it yourself. Because ultimately all of these plans

are just, I mean, they're just words on paper at first. So if you don't have a willingness to experiment and to try to figure out what version of this is going to make sense for me, then it actually doesn't matter how good or how bad the plan is, because you have to have a willingness to take action, a willingness to experiment for any of this to work. So the idea that you'll be able to find a perfect plan for you, it's unlikely and it's not a fruitful way to spend a lot of time and energy. But if you look at the plan and say, okay, this is a starting point. How do I turn this into something that works for me? Then I think you're in a much more powerful position to actually make it work. Second thing is, you're right. Our family and friends dramatically influence our habits.

And this is actually one area that since the book has come out, I think is even more important than I realized. So many of the behaviors that we stick to day in and day out, especially those that we stick to for years, almost always there's a social component involved in that. So let's say for example, that you walk outside and you see that your neighbor is mowing their grass and you think, Oh, I need to mow the lawn or trim the hedges or, you know, weed the garden. And partially you do that because it feels nice to have a clean lawn and to have, you know, a garden that looks nice, but mostly you do it because you don't want to be judged by the other people in the neighborhood for being the sloppy one. And so it's actually the social pressure

of being part of that neighborhood group of being part of that tribe that gets you to stick to the habit. And this is true for almost countless numbers of habits. And so I think the punchline 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, it's going to be very motivating for you to stick to it. Because we don't just do behaviors, we don't just follow habits for the results that they get us. We also follow them because they are a signal to the people around us that we belong or that we get it. We understand what it's, what it means to be part of this tribe. And you know, this is why you see people like join a CrossFit gym and then they think they're going for working out. But three months later, they all are eating like a paleo meal plan. They have a certain brand knee sleeves and they bought these new workout shoes. And like all that stuff is just additional signals to the other people in that group

that they get what it means to be a part of that tribe. And so whatever tribes that you expose yourself to, whatever groups that you become a member of, you're going to start to soak up some of those behaviors naturally. And so I think it makes sense to think carefully about what groups were a part of and what the social norms are there. important and an option for people who feel like, well, maybe the people in their lives don't have that shared interest. And when it comes to things like exercise, that definitely comes to mind for me. I joined. I think that's true. And I also think, you know, sometimes it gets thrown out like, oh, you know, get rid of the toxic people in your life and so on. And yeah, if somebody's

truly toxic, I think that's certainly a good strategy, but I don't know that just because you have an ambition or you have something that you want to achieve or a lifestyle change you'd like to make. I don't know that that means you have to fully get rid of all the people in your current life or even just some of them. Instead, what you're kind of hinting at here and what I would agree with is we need to find a sacred space where that new habit is protected. You know, you don't need everybody in your life to also get into running if you would like to build that as a new lifestyle behavior, but maybe finding a group so that you have a sacred space where that habit can live and be

protected. And like for an hour a day, yeah, you are surrounded by people who have the behavior that you want to have. And then for the other 23 hours, you can continue to live your life as normal. But when you're trying to make that behavior change, you've got a safe space for it to happen in. Yeah, I agree. And I guess now like a lot of socializing exists online, partly because of the pandemic, but also because of social media. So how do you think social media slash technology can help support our habits? I think it's huge. And I think it can be even more powerful than most people realize. Almost nobody thinks about it this way. But when you choose the people to follow on Twitter or Instagram or wherever, you're choosing your future thoughts. And nobody thinks about it like that.

They just think I'm interesting celebrity. I'll follow them or there's my friend or whatever. But these are the people that determine what you see in your feed, what kind of information you come across. And almost every thought that we have is downstream from what we consume. So if you're consuming better thoughts, if you're coming across better information, then you are significantly more likely, it's almost guaranteed, that you're going to start thinking some of those things yourself. You are going to have a response to the information that comes across your feed. And for that reason, I think it makes a lot more sense to spend almost what we could call like an unreasonable amount of time curating and carefully selecting

the people that you follow on social media, because you're selecting your mood, your emotions, your thoughts for all the days in the future that you browse that feed and see that information. And, um, that's just more from like a passive standpoint. If you start to actually interact with some of these people and develop, you know, relationships or friendships with them, then I think that, you know, becomes even more deeply true. So I think my primary encouragement would be to be very selective about who you follow and to think carefully about what kind of information flows you're creating. Yeah, that's so true.

And I guess following on from that, it can be difficult to say no to things or just simply avoid the daily distractions from others that take us away from focusing what's important to us. So how can we learn to say no to unnecessary distractions to be more productive? Well, I think the first thing is understanding or knowing what you're optimizing for. So that question, what am I optimizing for, is something that I think most people don't take time to seriously consider it and seriously answer that question. If you know clearly what you're optimizing for and what's important to you, deciding to say no, it becomes easier because you know what you're prioritizing. The challenge is

when you only sort of know what you're optimizing for. And a lot of things sound roughly equal in weight and importance. And then it becomes much harder to say no, because you're not quite sure if it really matters or not. So the first thing is knowing clearly what you want, knowing what you're optimizing for. Once you know what you want, then I think the next thing is knowing clearly what you want, knowing what you're optimizing for. Once you know what you want, then I think the next step is to sort of, the phrase I like is work backwards for magic. So what is the magical outcome? What is the ideal outcome for this thing that you're optimizing for? And then let's work backwards from that. What steps need to happen? How many reps do you need to put in? Or how much time each day do you need to spend on this? Who do you need to meet? What type of skills do you need to build? Like all, you know, all these

questions can be answered as you're working backwards and trying to figure out what, what are some potential paths that could take me there? And I don't think you need to have one perfect path to the thing that you're optimizing for. In fact, I would almost encourage you not to have one perfect path and be flexible with how you may end up, you know, meandering toward this thing that you really want. But if you know what you're optimizing for and you work backwards from it to figure out what you need to do and how much time you need to be spending on it and so on, and you develop, or at least have a rough idea of multiple pathways that you can follow to that successful outcome,

then you have a much clearer picture in your mind of what you should be spending your time on and what's important to you and why you're going to be doing those things. And once you have a clear vision in your mind of what's important to you and where you should be spending your time, then when the opportunities come your way or different questions get tossed into your, you know, field of vision, it becomes much easier to say yes or no to it because that vision that you have becomes a filter for all the opportunities and all the things that come your way. You can run it through this little kind of mental picture that you have and think, does this help me get closer to what I want? Does this help me get closer to what I'm optimizing for or not? But it's when you don't have a clear vision for those things that it becomes much

harder to say no, because pretty much everything sounds roughly the same when you're not quite sure what you want. Yeah. It's getting clear on those kind of values and goals. One of the things you say in the book is the greatest threat to success is not failure, it's boredom. And I guess one of the topics that often comes up, I know on my platform is, is I guess the question around staying motivated when you get bored working on your goals, especially if the goal is something that requires a process of, as you mentioned, compounding habits over a period of time. And it takes time, despite what many people say, you know, it only takes 60 days to build a habit or all of that are, it's a variable. And it's easy to lose interest, I guess, if you're doing the same thing every day. Well, you know, longevity is like its own form of greatness.

Being able to do the reasonable thing longer than most people will do it is going to lead to outcomes that are better than what most people are getting. And so getting bored with what you're doing or giving up after, you know, a relatively short period of time or even a moderate period of time is only going to lead to, you know, a relatively short period of time, or even a moderate period of time is only going to lead to, you know, fairly mediocre results. Now, the challenge with this though, is that it's very hard to beat the person who's having fun. You know, in a world with 7 billion people, you're going to find at least a few who the thing that feels like work to you, it feels like fun to

them. And if it feels like fun to that person, then they're much more likely to stick to it. And so in a sense, I think the first quest is to try to find things that feel like fun to you, that you really enjoy at least the majority of the process, if not everything. For myself, books turn out to be one of those things. Writing a book is really a hassle for a lot of people, but I find a lot of it fun. And so it's very easy for me to work on it a lot because I find it enjoyable. However, for that phase of building the first draft where it does feel like a slog to me, and I can feel like I'm getting bored with it, or it's just like getting repetitive and tedious. What do you do in those situations? How can you keep yourself motivated when, you know,

you know, this overall is going to be something that you like, but for this moment, it doesn't feel like it. And I think just knowing that those periods come and, you know, will occur is helpful. Like just realizing like, Oh, that's where you're at in the process, huh? You're dealing with that phase. Like that's, that's fine. Everybody deals with that. It's all part of it. That can be helpful. But the other thing that I found very useful for me is scaling down. So the idea of maybe doing the whole first draft sounds boring or sounds repetitive or sounds tedious. And I'm not motivated to do that. But if I scaled down and I say, Hey, in this chapter, in this section, I've got this one idea that I'm toying with. Can you write a better title or a subtitle for that section of the book? That's a really small thing. Can you just do that? And when I'm toying with that little individual idea, I'm like, yeah, actually, this

is, you know, this isn't as boring. This is kind of interesting. It's like, you know, just one little problem. And so it's getting really granular and finding some small detail to remain fascinated with that helps me overcome that general feeling of boredom. Um, when the whole thing starts to feel a little boring, can I scale it down and find a little detail that's fascinating? I've done something similar in the gym. You know, I've been training for over a decade now. And naturally, if you're going to be working out for many years, there are going to be some days where you're like, man, I'm doing the same exercises. Don't really feel like doing this. But the key for me, at least the same story, let's scale it down and try to find a little detail of the form or of the technique

to focus on. And let's just try to make that the thing that you play with today. And by finding those little granular elements, it helps keep you engaged, gives you something else to focus on. Yeah, I agree. It's interesting. You brought up the training thing. I've recently, I say recently, it's been about two years now, three years, maybe I joined CrossFit because I was in that same situation where I just felt like I was going to the gym and not very motivated or found it interesting anymore but I think the habit of training most days especially in a crossfit box as well is compounded by what you mentioned earlier in that like when I go there's like a social element and now like when I socialize outside of the gym it's often with people who

do crossfit as well. And it's, so there's kind of lots of ways that are tied in. It was changing the environment, training with people who had similar interests. And there was lots of things that just came together, but I haven't invested in any knee sleeves or I haven't joined any paleo communities as of yet. That is a good example though, of how it can help solidify the habit because now not only do you train with those people, you're also friends with them and it adds some additional social pressure might even be the wrong word. Cause you know, pressure kind of has this negative connotation, but the idea is that, you know, this is what the

people I hang out with do. And so it's easier to stay aligned because it's like, not only am I doing this because these people work out, but I'm also doing it because I want to hang out with my friends and, um, that helps keep it solidified. Yeah. 100%. I'm interested to know what habits you're currently working on. Yeah. Um, I'm doing a new style of training in the gym right now. It's still weight training, strength training, but just a little bit different workouts. And it's five days a week, whereas in the past, I usually was doing three or four days a week. So that's just a little bit different.

And then I'm working on a second book. So sticking with writing habits is something that's like very important for that. You know, I'm continuing to focus on. And probably the biggest change with that is my life is choppier now. When I wrote Atomic Habits, I had this period where for like six months, I just basically wrote all day long. I was like 10 or 12 hours a day, just writing and editing and revising. And that was kind of how I finished the book. And I don't have the space to do that now with my current schedule. And so this book is going to need to be written in a new way. And so

it's figuring out how to write a book in, you know, one or two hour chunks rather than a 10 hour chunk. And so I guess mostly what I'm saying is I'm not really building that many new habits as much as I'm building old habits in new ways now and kind of finding a way to fit those habits into the current season that I'm in. And I think a lot about that, about like what season of life am I in right now and how do my habits need to adjust to best fit that season? And I think that's something that we all, you know, we all go through different periods. And so you may find that if you want to reclaim a lost habit during a previous season, it may need to take a different shape now than it did previously. Yeah. That's really interesting. So when can we expect this new book? Or is that all TBC? Yeah, it's, it's still a long ways out. The first one took me

five years to write. Hopefully, this one won't take quite as long. But, but when it's ready, I'll be letting everybody know about it. So hopefully, you'll, you'll find out. And in the meantime, where can people find more about you and the work that you're doing? Yeah. If you enjoy this conversation, I think the most straightforward thing, well, if you want more information on habits, then Atomic Habits is the best place to look. You can find the book at atomichabits.com. But if you're more generally just kind of interested in my thoughts and would like to

browse more of my writing and work, you can go to jamesclear.com. And if you click on newsletter, you can sign up for my weekly newsletter, which is called 321. And each issue has three short ideas for me, two quotes from other people, and one question to think about. Anyway, I think if you've enjoyed the conversation, you will genuinely find those to be helpful. Yeah, they are. I'm so impressed that they're still going, especially on top of book writing. It must be a challenge. Yeah. I like some parts of it more than others, but most weeks it's a lot of fun. So I'm very fortunate to have the setup that I do. Amazing. Well, thank you for giving us your time today.

I'm sure there's so many people listening who have gotten a lot from this conversation. I know how you have so thank you wonderful thanks for the opportunity wow what an episode hey if you did love it just as much as I did I would love if you took the time to leave a short review and a rating and we'll see you again next time before you go I do want to remind you of a quick question that James asks in the episode what can you stick to on your worst day and how can you show up when things aren't perfect