The One You Feed - James Clear on Compounding Nature of Habits (Part 2)

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. His work has appeared in The New York Times, CBS This Morning, Time, Entrepreneur, and he has taught in colleges around the world.  James is also the creator of the Habits Academy, the premier training platform for organizations and individuals that are interested in building better habits in life and work.  In Part 2 of this interview, Eric and James discuss more specific ideas and concepts for establishing good habits and eliminating bad habits.If you’d like to make 2022 a better year for you, bring clarity to what matters most, and discover the tools to help you become the person you really want to be, Eric can help you! To book a FREE, no-pressure 30-minute Discovery call to see if working with Eric is right for you, click here.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!James Clear and I Discuss the Compounding Nature of Habits and…His book, Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad OnesHabits are a response to the physical cues in our environmentLearning to make it obvious or reduce friction when trying to create good habits Habit stacking and priming your environment for successClarifying the action: “After _____, I will _____”Getting specific with your actions (when, where)How social environment affects the attractiveness of habitsMaking habits easy and convenientThe two-minute rule for establishing good habitsA habit must be established before it can be improvedOptimize for the starting line rather than the finish lineMake it satisfying – how positive emotions cultivate good habits and negative emotions destroy themBring the long-term consequences into the short termReinforcing your identity by your actionsJames Clear Links:James’s WebsiteTwitterInstagramIf you enjoyed this conversation with James Clear, you might also enjoy these other episodes:James Clear (2015)Tiny Habits for Behavior Change with BJ FoggSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Happy holidays, everybody. In case you're just recently joining us or however long you've been a listener of the show, you may not realize that we have over seven years of incredible episodes in our archive. We've had so many wonderful guests that we've decided to handpick a few of our favorites during this holiday season as we have some time off. And these may be new to you, but if not, they are certainly worth another listen. We hope you'll enjoy part two of this two-part series with James Clear. If I leave the phone in another room, then I never go get it in the morning, which is always so funny to me because I never wanted it enough to put in 45 seconds of work. Welcome to The One You Feed.

Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.

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Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, here's part two of the interview with James Clear. He has a new book called Atomic Habits, an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones. James's work has appeared in the New York Times, Time, and Entrepreneur, Thank you. He's the creator of the Habits Academy, the premier training platform for organizations and individuals that are interested in building better habits in life and work. So let's talk about making it obvious. One of the things that you talk about in the book, and there's so much research behind it, is you say environment is the invisible hand that shapes human environment. So a lot of the making obvious or invisible,

right? The inversion of that law is really about how we structure our environment. Right. So let me just give you some tangible examples. Many of our habits are a response to the physical cues that are in our environment. And so let's take the habit of watching television. You know, like if you walk into pretty much any living room, where do all the couches and chairs face? They all face the TV. So it's like, what is this room designed to get you to do? Right. It's the most obvious thing in that environment, the very prevalent cue.

So there are a variety of things you could do to change that. So in this case, we're talking about an inversion of the first law, make it invisible to watch TV. So you could take the remote control and you could put it in a drawer instead of leaving it out on the coffee table. You could take the television itself and put it inside a wall unit or behind like a cabinet and doors. You could also, uh, increase the friction associated with the task. So like if you wanted to, you could take the batteries out of the remote control and then that adds like an extra five or 10 seconds. And maybe it's enough time for you to be like, do I really want to watch this right now?

Or am I just turning it on mindlessly? Um, you could unplug the TV after each use and then only plug it back in. If you can say the name of the show you want to watch. So you're not allowed to just like mindlessly turn Netflix on and find something. Um, and if you really wanted to be extreme about it and you wanted to reduce the

cues, you could take the TV off the wall, put it in the closet and then only take it out when you really want to watch something bad enough to set it up again. But the point here is that there's kind of like a range of options. And the more that you can increase the steps between you and the bad behaviors and reduce the steps between you and the good behaviors, and the more that you can make the cues of your good habits obvious, the more likely you are to fall into those. So to give you another example, um, when I wanted to build a flossing habit, I realized that I brushed my teeth twice a day, but I just didn't floss consistently. And one of the reasons was because I had floss hidden away in a drawer in the bathroom. I just like, wouldn't think about it. I would, I would forget it cause it wasn't

obvious. So I bought one of those, uh, a little bowl and, uh, some of the flossers and I put them in the bowl and put it right next to my toothbrush. And now I brush my teeth, put the toothbrush down, pick a flosser up, do it right then. And, uh, that was pretty much all I had to do to build the habit of flossing. It kind of surprised me that like that was the only change that needed to happen, but it just, once it was obvious, it fell into place. And many habits are like that. And unfortunately, the cues of many bad habits are also like that. And so if you can cut them out, if you can reduce exposure to those negative cues, you often find that the bad habit fades away naturally. The other classic example of that is, if you want to play guitar guitar more don't have it in the case which is

one of those things that is 100 true but when i think about it i'm like man what what what creatures we are as humans yeah it takes eight seconds to take a guitar out of a case and yet truly that difference of eight seconds makes a ton of difference in i mean a it's that i see it right because it's out but B there is just even, and this will get, this gets more to the make it easy stage, but, but just even that little bit of friction of having to open the case, get it out. I mean, it's, it's ridiculous, but that's, you know, it works. So, uh, a friend of mine plays the violin and he was not practicing nearly as much as he wanted to or needed to. So he took

his violin and he placed it right in the middle of his living room floor on a stand. And he was like, now I pass it like, you know, a dozen times a day. So I ended up playing like an hour a day, just because it's there. And, uh, this also your example, the guitar, uh, the guitar case, it shows how like habits can bleed into each other and how it can be useful too. So like, let's say that you, uh, go to guitar lessons, you have an instructor or you play with a band or whatever. When you come home, you already have a habit of what you do with your guitar when you come home. Right. Usually you keep in the case and you put in the closet or put it in the, you know, in the corner or whatever.

But instead it can be really useful to build a new habit of when I get home, I take my guitar out of the case and I put it on the stand in the middle of the living room or on the side of the room, whatever, right. In an obvious location, because just that action of what you do with it, when you come home, makes it easier for you to pick it up again throughout the day and play it. Yeah. What you just described, there's a borderline of two things and implementation intention and habit stacking, right? Yeah. So habit stacking, I think is, it's this really useful method for building a new habit. And, um, I first heard about it from BJ fog is this professor at Stanford and, uh, the basic anchoring, right? I think. Yeah, yeah, he does. Yes. I think he does called anchoring. Um, anyway, his idea is like, you want to anchor

this new habit to, uh, a previous one that you have, right. Do you want to, in my language, you want to stack the new habit on top of the old one. So for example, uh, you could, let's say you want to build the habit of meditation. You could say, when I make my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds or after I make my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds. And that's basically the formula for this is you say after blank, I will blank. Yeah. So in the case of the guitar one, you could say after I come home from work or after I come home from guitar practice, I will place my guitar, take my guitar out of the case and place it on the stand. And the more that you can come up with good habit stacks like that, the more you can prime your environment for taking the effective action. They're so useful also, because a lot of times what, again, when I'm working with people about putting this stuff into actual practice is the time of the day isn't always consistent. So ideally, you'd say I meditate at 7am every morning.

But the problem is different things happen. But you do walk your dog every morning, right? Might be seven o'clock, might be 705, might be six 30, might be eight, you know? Right. So the advantage of that habit stacking or anchoring is that you can, the time doesn't have to be exact. You don't get thrown off if you miss your time because you're, you're, you're tying it to something that is going to happen, but it might be a little bit variable. You get home late from work.

Instead of I meditate at six, I meditate when I walk in the door from work is, is a, you know what I mean? It's a more practical. Yeah, I think that's a great point. It flexes with you a little bit, right? And that's why it's important to choose triggers for your habit stack that are things you actually already do every day. Yeah. And are, I guess, more specific would be better. Like if it's a vague thing, like, um, you know, after I get

home from work, I will, uh, organize one item of clothing in my closet or something like that. Well, that's fine. But like, it actually would be better if it was more specific. Like after I take off my shoes from work, I will organize one item of clothing in my closet. And, uh, because of this, the specificity of it, it makes it very clear when to act. Yep. All right. Let's keep moving. I've got about 10 more things we could talk about there, but I do think that idea of specificity is so critical knowing when, where as much exactness as you can have is such a big, is such a big deal. Let's get on to number two, make it attractive. So, you know, different habits are attractive to us at different times. So timing

is, is part of it. Um, but the more that you view a habit as attractive, the more likely you are to feel motivated to do it. And I think one important area to focus on here is social environment. So we've talked a little bit about physical environment and how that can prompt your habits, but social environment often determines what habits we find attractive. So, you know, everyone is part of multiple tribes. Some of the tribes that we're part of are really big, like what it means to be American or what it means to be French or what it means to be Buddhist or Christian or whatever. Um, and some of the tribes are small, like what it means to be a member of your local CrossFit gym or a neighbor on your street or to volunteer at your local

school. But all of these tribes, large and small, have a set of shared expectations, a set of shared behaviors that are part of them. So just imagine some habits that like most people do, like when you step onto the elevator, you turn around to face the front. Or if you have a job interview, you wear a suit and a tie or a dress or something nice. Now there's no reason that you have to do those things, right? Like you could face the back of the elevator. You could wear a bathing suit to a job interview. Like you don't, you don't have to do it, but you don't. It's a great idea actually. Because it violates the shared expectations of the group, right? You don't do it because it goes against the grain of what the tribe wants. And so the lesson there is that when habits go with the expectations of the tribes that we were a part of, they're very attractive because they help you belong. They help you fit in. You get praised and approved of by others for doing them. When habits go against

the grain of our tribes, they're very unattractive. And so whether or not you feel motivated to do something is often contingent upon the people that you're surrounded by. And the punchline here, the practical takeaway is you want to join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. Because if it's normal in that group, it's going to seem attractive to you because it'll be the type of thing that helps you fit in. This is why you see people, you know, like people will join a CrossFit gym and all of a sudden they start eating paleo and they buy certain types of shoes and they, you know, like all, they pick up all these other habits that they weren't even trying to do in the first place. They were just trying to get fit, but they do those because that's what it means to be part of that tribe. They start to get friends there and then they, they collect all these other habits. So, um, the caveat that I like to add to that, because in a sense, when you ask people to change their habits, you're kind of asking them to change their tribe to a certain degree.

And that can be hard. That can be intimidating. And if you're, um, if your choice is either, I get to do the habits that I want to do, but I have to be alone. I have to like leave the tribe I'm in to go do this new thing. Or I have to stick with my old habits, which aren't really the greatest, but I get to stay as part of the group. I get to keep my friends and family. Then we would often, we often choose to be wrong with the crowd than right by ourselves. And, um, it takes a very bold and courageous thing to be on your own. And so it's easier to go from one tribe to another. It may still not be easy overall, but it's easier if you have a new group of friends to go to. And that's why I think it's important to have like shared context with that new group or to try to find these like mutually beneficial areas of overlap so that

you can be friends, uh, quickly around one thing while you're trying to pick up the new habit. So let me just give one more example. Steve cam is a friend of mine. He runs a company called nerd fitness and nerd fitness is all about getting in shape, but it's specifically organized for people who identify as nerds who are into star Wars or video games or the Marvel universe, Spider-Man, Batman, whatever. And my point here is that if you're joining that group, getting in shape is still an intimidating thing. It doesn't change the habit of getting fit, but you can maybe bond with people over like your mutual love of star Wars. And you're like, Oh, now I'm friends with Mark and Lisa. And because we're friends, you know, they work out three days a week. So maybe, you know, if they can do it, I can do it too. And if you have that

mutual area of overlap to develop a sense of belonging and friendship around, it becomes easier to adopt the habits of that new tribe. So it still requires effort, but I think that can help make those new habits more attractive. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today.

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That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

I think one of the things about technology that is so useful is that the internet in particular is that you can find people to support you on the changes you're trying to make, even if those people aren't really, it's not, you can't get them into your life physically easily, whether that be their physical location, whether that be you've got a job and a family, and so you don't have much time to be out, you can still get some of that support and that tribe and that belonging. I don't think it's, I don't think it's as good as in person in real life. But it is an option. And I think that a lot of people, I think, just say, well, I can't change all other stuff. So I just don't even look for that group. Whereas a step in the right direction is can I find that support, encouragement, guidance online?

Yeah. And it's just getting better. I actually just talked to someone. She had a fascinating idea for this business where it's work. They're working with self-improvement ideas. So, you know, weight loss group or things like that, but through virtual reality. And so, you know, now, right now you join like a Facebook group, you know, and you, you get support for your weight loss goal or whatever, and that's fine. That's better than nothing. It's, it's great. Uh, but we all know instinctively that being part of a Facebook group is not the same thing as like being in a room with people who share

your goals. But if you can put on a headset and suddenly you like step into this room, it's kind of like you're watching a screen or in a video game. And now you're in the same room with 10 other people who are one person's in Montana, somebody else's in Arizona, people are spread out all over, but you all have the same goals. Um, then suddenly it starts to feel very real. Um, and, uh, and so I think we're going to see more of that over the next decade or two and certainly well into the future where you can basically replicate what it feels like in real life. And now suddenly you can be the parent who works a 60 hour week and has two kids at home and you only have time from 8 to 9 p.m. But during that one hour slot, you can connect with people from all over who share the same goals. Yeah, I think that's great. I mean, it's one of the things I spend a lot of time wrestling with my own in my own head

is, all right, we've got this show. And there's, you know, we've got a got a large number of listeners, right, who have similar values, similar, you know, how, how is it that we could use this thing that's virtual, and make it more supportive, we have a Facebook group that works good. It's nice, but it's it is different, you know, and, it's, it's very difficult to organize, you know, um, meetups in a hundred different, you know, we're not that big, right. You know? So I think often about that, how, what, what are ways to create some of that benefit for the community? Um, so I'm always looking for other options. So I'm, I'm, I'll be, I'll ping you afterwards to learn more about that. Yeah, for sure. I'll be happy. Sure. All right. How about number three, make it easy. So if you're trying to think like, where should I start with

a habit? What's the first thing I should do? This is probably where I would recommend starting, which is essentially making your habits as easy and convenient as possible. The more, um, the more frictionless a habit is, the more convenient it is, the more likely you are to follow through. So just as an obvious example of this, consider your phone. Uh, you know, we all have our smartphones on us all the time. And one of the things about smartphones is that they are so frictionless, so easy to use that we slide into them all the time, even if we don't really want to. So I had a, um, an interesting thing that I realized recently. So this year I've started doing a new habit where I

leave my phone in another room until lunch each day. So I have a home office, so it's not that far away. It's maybe like 45 seconds up the stairs and into another room. Well, if my phone is next to me, if it's on the desk, I'm like everybody else. I'll check it every three minutes, you know, like I'm just looking at it cause it's there. But if I do that, if I leave the phone in another room, then I never go get it in the morning, which is always so funny to me because it's like, well, I was checking it like a hundred times over those three hours, but I never, so in a sense you would think I wanted to look at it, but I never wanted it enough to put in 45 seconds of work. Right. And so this is the, the inversion of the, of the third law, which is make it difficult. But the point here is that if you can add a little bit of friction to the bad habits,

they often fade away. And if you can reduce the friction of the good habits, they often rise up, uh, and become much easier to perform. Now, the simplest way to do this for building a good habit is to practice what I call the two minute rule. And the two minute rule is basically you take whatever habit that you're trying to build and you scale it down to just the first two minutes. So, you know, do 30 minutes of yoga becomes take out your yoga mat or read 25 books a year becomes read one page or write a book becomes write one sentence, whatever you can do in two minutes or less. And the key here is that you're really trying to automate or habitualize the first two minutes of the behavior, just the beginning of it. And this is way more powerful

than maybe at first seems. Uh, and the reason is because a habit must be established before it can be improved. If you don't master the art of showing up, if you don't master the art of just doing the habit every day, then there's nothing to optimize. So I had a reader who actually did this. He ended up losing over a hundred pounds. And one of the things that he did was that he went to the gym, but he had a rule where he wasn't allowed to stay for longer than five minutes. And it sounds silly, right? It sounds kind of ridiculous because it's like, why would you go to the gym for only five minutes? But what you realize is he was mastering the art of showing up. He

became the type of person who would go to the gym every day, even if it was just for five minutes. And then after like six weeks, he was like, you know, I'm coming here all the time. I kind of feel like staying longer or figuring out what program I should do or get a personal trainer or whatever. But it's really crucial to do that. I think you need to optimize for the starting line rather than the finish line. Most people are always optimizing for the finish line. How much money do I want to earn? How much weight do I want to lose the next six months? I might, whatever.

But if you optimize for the starting line, how can I master the art of going to the gym for just five minutes? Then you've got options because you're actually there every day. And same thing is true for, you know, if you write one sentence a day, it's like, well, it's going to be hard for me to write a book if I only write one sentence. Well, that's true. But you literally can't write a book if you aren't the type of person who at least doesn't write one sentence every day. So I think it's important to scale it down to the first two minutes and master that.

And once you make it as easy as possible and you master the art of showing up, then you can optimize and improve from there. Yeah. My meditation habits, a classic example of this, because I would meditate for a while and I'd quit. And then I'd pick up another book and they'd say, you should meditate 30 minutes a day. So I'd sit down to meditate for 30 minutes a day, which was, you know, I've joked before, like when I sit down to meditate, it's like the circus comes to town, you know, that's a long time to spend with the circus when you're not used to it. When I said, you know what, I'm going to meditate for two minutes every day, then I built that.

And then I could go to three, then five, then ten. I mean, it totally changed everything because it was something I was able to do. And I think, and this leads us a little bit into four, which is to make it satisfying. I was able to have the satisfaction of feeling like I'm meditating every day. Instead of the, I did good for two days, then I did crappy for five, then I did okay for one, that daily, day after day, began to, all the way back to the identity, too.

I started to feel like I'm a meditator. I'm doing it. It feels good. I'm satisfied. I want to do it again. And Bill, I think that is one of such a fundamental ideas that make it easy. And even if it's small, it can still reinforce that identity like you just mentioned. And if it reinforces the identity, if it helps you believe that, Hey, I am a meditator, then even though it's small, it actually is big, you know, it's meaningful. Um, and so I think for that reason, that's a really good place to start. If you're looking to build a habit is scale it down, master the art of showing up and reinforce that identity. Yep.

Yep. I will talk with people about that. Like, well, okay, you know what? Uh, how about we start with meditating for three minutes a day? You know, I'm not going to get peaceful meditating three minutes a day, right? No, you may not, but you can become a meditator, but you can become a meditator, right? But you can, you, you can make progress. And, um, you know, yeah, just that, that starting small is, is so critical. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really.

Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, number four. So the fourth law is to make it satisfying. And the idea here is it's really about the ending of the habit.

You want, whenever a habit finishes, you want to feel successful in some way. You want to feel satisfied in some way. And the reason is because if you enjoy a habit finishes, you want to feel successful in some way. You want to feel satisfied in some way. And the reason is because if you enjoy a habit, it's kind of like there's this pleasurable emotional signal in the brain where it's like, hey, this felt good. You should do this again next time. And so in a sense, we could say positive emotions cultivate habits and negative emotions destroy them. When you have this satisfying emotion associated with it, you want to do it again next time. And there are a variety of examples of this. Some of them, uh, some of the best ones

are from businesses. So toothpaste is a common example that's given. There's no reason that toothpaste needs to taste minty. It doesn't, the mint flavor doesn't actually increase the effectiveness of the toothpaste itself. It doesn't make it clean your teeth better, but it does lead to a clean mouth feel and makes it more satisfying to brush your teeth. And because it's more satisfying and enjoyable, you have a reason to turn around again and do it the next time. Um, one of my favorite examples, uh, recent examples from car manufacturers. So a couple of years ago, BMW added this feature to one of their cars where if you really slammed on the accelerator and pressed on the gas, it would pump additional engine growl through the speakers in the car.

So it made it more satisfying to press on the gas. Ford had a similar setup where they had like this valve that normally the car would be soundproofed. And if you really slammed on the gas, the valve would open and let the engine noise in. But the idea here is that there's some additional immediate satisfaction with driving, driving the car, and that gets you to enjoy it and want to repeat it and so on. And, uh, the same is true for any habit, but it's really about the speed. It's really about feeling successful right away. And this is one of the challenges with building good habits or breaking bad ones is that behaviors often produce multiple outcomes across time. And those outcomes are somewhat misaligned.

So for a bad habit, the immediate outcome is often favorable. You know, like if you eat a donut right now, it's sugary and tasty and feels good. Yeah. But the ultimate outcome, if you continue that habit for a month or a year or whatever, is unfavorable. For good habits, it's usually the reverse, right? Like the immediate outcome of going to the gym right now is you sweat it's effortful, requires energy and sacrifice, but the ultimate outcome that you're in shape a month or a year from now is favorable. And so a lot of the battle of building good habits and breaking bad ones is about figuring out how to take those long-term consequences of your bad habits and pull them into the present moment. So you feel like a little bit

of the pain right now, and you have a reason to avoid it and taking the long-term rewards of your good habits and pulling those into the present moment so that you feel successful and feel satisfied right now and have a reason to show up again. And the ultimate example of this is a reinforcement of your desired identity. If you feel like, for example, so to continue this exercise one, I just said, you know, the immediate outcome for exercise is that it's effortful and requires sacrifice. It's not that enjoyable, but that doesn't have to be true. And this is one reason why it's important to choose forms of exercise that you really enjoy. You know, like not everybody has to lift like a bodybuilder. If you want to go hiking or cycling or kayaking or whatever, do whatever form is most pleasing to you because if it makes you feel good in the moment, you're going to want to repeat

it again in the future. Yeah. Similarly, if you can kind of reframe this using that growth mindset kind of thing that we talked about earlier and see it as, Hey, every time I show up at the gym, I am being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. I'm reinforcing that identity. Well, now, as soon as you walk in the door and do one rep, you can feel satisfied. You can feel good about the, the effort, even if, uh, you're still waiting for those delayed rewards to accumulate in the background for the scale to

change or for you to get stronger or whatever. Um, and so I think what you see is that people who are often appear to be good at delaying gratification from the outside, it's like, man, he shows up at the gym multiple days a week. He must be really good at delaying gratification and like working hard for a long-term goal. Often for the person in themselves, it doesn't feel that way. They instead are focused on an alternative way to feel immediately satisfied in the moment. It's like exercise makes me feel good. It reinforces my identity of someone who doesn't miss workouts. I get to hang out with my friends. It feels good to move my body a little bit, whatever.

But they're focused on the immediate outcome that is pleasurable rather than the delayed gratification that they're waiting for. Yep. And back to BJ Fogg, he talks a lot about celebrating victories, right? I think that's the, that's the reason, right? If you celebrate even the little change that feels good. Yeah. It doesn't have to be big, but you just need some positive emotional signal in the moment. Yep. Yeah. The other, the one that worked for me for exercise was when I went from exercising cause I would look better in the future or because I wouldn't have a heart attack in the future, all that. When I really became very focused on every single time in my life I've ever exercised,

I felt better when I was done. There's never been a time where I was like, I wish I didn't do that. Yeah. So that's what I focus on is like, it'd be great if I could focus on like, boy, it feels good to be on the treadmill. And actually sometimes I can, right. As I've gotten better, but I do know that, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes from now, I'll feel good right then. And the same thing with eating, like I've started to really focus on like, after I eat like crap, how does it feel right then in that moment? You know, like, oh, I feel full or I feel, you know, you know, like trying to shrink that, that window of, of gratification, you know, between the result. And it's, it is such a tricky thing. We're not well wired for that.

Something that's, you know, planning for something that's way out in the future. We're yeah, we're definitely wired evolutionarilyarily speaking, for immediate gratification because we had to be to survive. You had to account for, is there a lion threatening me right now? Or is there a storm that I need to take shelter from? Or have I eaten today? It's very near-term, immediate focused. But the downside of that in modern society is that there's all kinds of unintended consequences that, uh, that now come some of which we just talked about. But as a final example of this, it can be very useful to have, uh, immediate satisfaction for habits that what I would call are like habits of avoidance. So

things like, I don't want to drink alcohol for 30 days, or, uh, I don't want to go out to eat at restaurants as often. Um, or I don't want to spend money on Amazon today. In a sense, those people set challenges like that for themselves a lot, but those habits like that are really hard because they're not inherently satisfying. You know, like what is the, what is the satisfaction of not going out to eat at the restaurant? Right. You're just like resisting temptation to go out. Yeah. So I had a, a reader who wanted to do that. He and his wife wanted to eat out less and cook more meals at home. And so what they did was they opened up a savings account and they labeled it trip to Europe. And then whenever they wouldn't go out to eat at a

restaurant, they would transfer $50 over to the account. And being able to see that $50 go over and the, the savings account grow in the moment was just a little bit of immediate satisfaction that suddenly made it rewarding to stay at home and cook the meal. And so little hacks like that, that give you some, a little bit of immediate pleasure in the moment can be really useful for sticking to some of those behaviors that otherwise wouldn't feel very satisfying.

Yep. And keeping track of our habits is one of those things that is really useful. And you make that point that part, one of the main things that makes it useful is it, it makes it more satisfying. Yeah. It feels good to like, you know, I write down all my workouts, right. I log the exercises and the reps and the sets and all that. And closing my journal at the end of a workout feels good to have banked another one and, you know, and wrote and written it down. And the simplest version of that is just whenever you do a habit, you put an X on the calendar for that day, but it's nice to have like a visual measurement of the progress you've made. It feels good to see yourself making progress and crossing off those

habits. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Well, James, thanks so much for, uh, taking the time. I think we've, we've, uh, rapidly run out of time, but thanks for coming on again. Uh, congr, thanks so much for taking the time. I think we've rapidly run out of time, but thanks for coming on again. Congrats on the new book and thanks for sharing all this with our listeners. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. And if people want to check out the book, it's called Atomic Habits and you can just go to atomichabits.com. Yep, absolutely. And we will have links in the show notes directly to that and all your other stuff. Tons of great writing on your website too. So we'll point links in the show notes directly to that and all your other stuff. Tons of great writing on your website, too. So we'll point people there.

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I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we share our personal journeys navigating our 30s,

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