The One You Feed - James Clear on the Compounding Nature of Habits Part 1

Episode Date: October 24, 2018

James Clear on the Compounding Nature of Habits Part 1See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The same way that money compounds or multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them over time. 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. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort

to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know 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 really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the iheart radio 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 Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, we share our personal journeys navigating our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engage in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. guests to relatable stories that will resonate with your experiences. Decisions Decisions is going to be your go-to source for the open dialogue about what it truly means to love

and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections. Tune in and join the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us, everybody. Today's guest is James Clear, who has been on the show before, which was an amazing episode and everybody loved it.

The second interview is really fun because Eric and I were able to record it live in person with James. So you'll hear a little bit of that room reverb and everything, But there's just something I love with all of these interviews that we've done live like this. There's something about, I don't know if it's possibly the nonverbal communication and the way that Eric is able to interact with people just seems to really bring out the best. And this new interview with James

Clear is no exception. 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, and on CBS This Morning, and he has taught in colleges around the world. His website, jamesclear.com, receives millions of visitors each month and hundreds of thousands subscribe to his email newsletter. 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. I also wanted to mention that we have a new mini episode series that Eric is doing. It's one a week and it's for Patreon supporters at $10 a month.

Eric discusses a specific topic for each episode, and they've been really great so far. Of course, if you're a Patreon supporter, you also get the usual post-show conversations, which are continuing conversations after each episode ends. Those are exclusively for supporters. And also, which is nice, the episodes are ad-free. And I just want to remind you that when you subscribe on Patreon for the One You Feed podcast, you're really doing something great for the world. There is, of course, plenty of people who need to listen to this podcast. They need the message and the inspiration, but they would not be able to afford to be supporters. So, of course, your contribution helps us continue

making the One You Feed podcast, and you can almost think of it as a gift to those people who cannot afford to be contributors. So thanks, everybody. Go to oneyoufeed.net slash support to become a supporter. And here is part one of our interview with James Clear. Part two will be next week. Hi, James. Welcome to the show. Hey, great to talk to you. We have had very few guests who've appeared twice, so welcome to Select Club. Very nice. Thank you. I'm glad I crossed the threshold. I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, our first interview was really well-loved by listeners, so I'm excited to do it again.

You have a new book called Atomic Habits that is coming out. I think it's out today, so congratulations on that. Yeah, thank you. And we'll jump into that in just a minute, but let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you and your life and

in the work that you do. Yeah. I mean, it's a great story. So right now in the context of where I'm at right now, I think a lot about like, what habits are we feeding? You know, this is one of the things I say early in the book that habits can compound for you or against you. And this is essentially what that parable is saying, right? That like, whatever one you feed is the one that is magnified, the one that, um, gain strength over time. And habits are a lot like that, you know, like on any given day, it's really easy to overlook the importance of them. They don't really seem like a whole lot. I mean, you know, like what is the difference between eating a burger and fries for lunch or eating a salad? Uh, there's not really a whole lot of difference there. You

know, at the end of the night, you look basically the same in the mirror. The scale weighs more or less the same. Um, but if you compound those choices over two or five or 10 years, you end up with a very different outcome. It's only like a decade later that the importance of your daily habits becomes like fully apparent and you see how critical those daily choices are. So in a sense, I think this idea of the one you feed for me right now, I think a lot about like what habits am I feeding? You know, like what, what daily actions am I taking that are either 1% better or 1% worse? And over the long run, they add up to very different outcomes. Yeah. You say in the book that we often

dismiss small changes because they don't seem to matter very much in the moment. That strikes me as so true. You also say small changes equal big results. They can. So this idea that habits are like a double-edged sword, I think is something that it recurs multiple times throughout the book, because pretty much any of the things that can work for you with habits, like having an environment that is well designed for a particular task or being in a tribe or in a social group that nudges you in a certain direction, they also can work against you, you know, like peer pressure can be positive or negative in this particular example. Um, but, uh, but if you can manage to orient those forces in the right direction, then you can end up with some really powerful habits in the long run. And, you know,

I like to say that habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. And what I mean by that is the same way that money compounds or multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them over time. And it's, it's not really like that linear curve where you just put in a little bit of work and you get a little bit of results and just kind of goes up at a 45 degree angle. It's feels more like the compound interest curve where in the beginning you don't really see anything, you know, like I just gave that example of eating a salad for lunch versus eating a burger and fries.

But similarly, you could say, like, what's the difference between studying Chinese for an hour tonight or not sitting at all? Not a whole lot. Like you haven't learned the language either way. It feels like you put work in or you don't put work in. You're at the same point of the curve. But if you continue that the same way that like saving for retirement, all of a sudden, like a couple decades later, your compound and all the greatest returns are delayed. It's the same with habits. Often the most significant outcomes are on the latter half of the curve. Yeah. And that idea of habits being double-edged swords will cover a couple of different times. In the book, you have the four laws of behavior change, which we'll cover, but they all have an inverse, which covers the bad habits. Right. You know, here's what you do if you want to build a good habit. Here's what you want to do if you want to build or you want to get rid of a bad habit. Bad habits seem to build themselves

pretty easily. But yeah, it's that same sort of thing. And I think that I love this line where you say your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Right. And I do think that that is one of the things that's so hard with building new habits or, you know, starting a new exercise routine or whatever. Like you said, you don't see the results right away. You do the work for a while and then eventually, if you keep it up, you start to see the results. Let's talk a little bit more about that idea that you said that habits often appear to make no difference until you cross sort of this critical threshold. You use some examples in the book, you just used them with money. The other one that I thought was such a good example is bamboo. Yeah, so bamboo, for like the first five

years, it kind of grows these extensive root systems underground, and doesn't look like anything. And you know, there's nothing to show for it. And then all of a sudden, they'll shoot, you know, 60 or 80 feet into the air in just a few weeks. It's crazy. Right. It's, it's nuts that that's how it actually grows. Cancer is another example that I give in the book, you know, it's prevalent in many areas of life. But the, the idea is that you need to build the foundation for you to hit this transition and to see the results. You know, another example I give in the book, I like to use the metaphor of heating up an ice cube. And it's kind of like, imagine you're in a cold room. You can see your breath. You've got this ice cube on the table. It's like 25 degrees. You heat it up 26, 27, 28, 29. And still like nothing has happened.

There's just this ice cube sitting there, 30, 31. And then you go from 31 to 32 degrees. And it's this one degree shift, no different than all the other little shifts that came before. But suddenly you hit this phase transition and the ice cube melts. And habits aren't exactly like that. But the process of building a habit is often feels like that. It's similar, you know, where like you're banking work, you're putting in your reps and you don't really feel like you have much to show for it. And a lot of the time that can be

very frustrating when you're in the process of trying to change something. Cause you're like, man, I've been running for three months. Like why hasn't my body changed? But it's important to realize that complaining about working for three months or six months or a little while on a goal or on a habit and not having the results you want, it's kind of like complaining about heating an ice cube from 25 to 31 degrees. You know, like the work isn't wasted. It's just being stored and you have to be willing to stick with it long enough to break through that plateau and let it hit that phase transition and release the results. And that again, it's difficult to feel in the moment. But But in the long run, it can lead you in a really good place.

Right. And this leads to another idea that comes up in the book a lot, which is that we spend too much time focused on goals. And you recommend focusing on systems instead. So first, let's talk about why a focus on goals can be counterproductive. Well, so first of all, I mean, this is coming from someone who I set goals for so many areas of my life for many years. I mean, I was very goal oriented, right? I would set goals for like the grades I wanted to get in school or how much weight I wanted to lift in the gym or what I wanted my business to do over the next quarter, all kinds of stuff. And sometimes I would achieve those goals,

but a lot of the time I wouldn't. And so I, at some point I got to this like conclusion where I was like, okay, I'm setting all these goals, but only some of them are working out. Clearly goal setting is not the thing that's determining whether I'm making progress or not. So I should say before I get super anti goals or talk about the downsides of goals, I'm not saying goals are useless. I think goals still have a purpose. And the purpose is that they provide clarity. They provide a sense of direction. If you have a goal, you know where to focus your attention and energy, and that's good. But after you set a goal, it's pretty much good to immediately put it on the shelf. And I

think that this is hard for us to do because we live in a society that really prioritizes goals or prioritizes results. Like take the news, for example. It's pretty much only a news story once it's out an outcome. You know, like you're never going to hear a news story that's a man eats chicken and salad for lunch. Right. It's only going to be a story like six months later when it's like man loses 50 pounds. So we're very outcome focused and this is just magnified even more by social media because we see everybody's results all day long. And I think because of that, because we're inundated with results, we tend to overvalue them. We tend to think, Oh, it's all about the goal.

It's all about achieving this big result. It's about the outcome. And so we get very outcome and goal focused. But in fact, every outcome is preceded by some kind of process. And this is, this gets into some of the downsides of being overly focused on goals, which is, we think that what we need to do is change our results. We think that what we need to do is to achieve a goal, but really the goal is not the thing that needs to change. So for example, say you have a messy room or your garage is like, you know, completely filled with clutter and you set a goal to clean it. If you get really motivated, then you might, you know, spend all afternoon cleaning it and whatever. And you end up with a clean room or a clean garage after that. But if you don't fix the

messy, sloppy habits that led to a dirty room in the first place, then you turn around a month later and you've got a messy room again. And so the outcome is just a natural consequence of the habits. It's like we try to treat a symptom without treating the cause. We just want to have this outcome. But in fact, the real thing that needs to change are the habits behind it. And that is what I would call your system. The system is your collection of habits that naturally lead to whatever the results are in your life right now. Yeah. I think the classic example of that, that most people can relate with is the diet. I go on a diet. Okay. And my goal is to lose 30

pounds, 10 pounds, five pounds. I changed my life. I do it. As soon as I hit my goal, I go, all right, did it. Right. And next thing I know, I'm 30 pounds heavier, right? It's that yo-yo effect. The other one that I love that you say about goals, and I relate with this one a lot, you say that goals restrict your happiness. They kind of create this like artificial finish line for, okay, once I hit my goal, then I'll be happy. Or once I achieve this milestone, then I can be successful.

And again, this is something that I've slipped into so many times over the years. With my business, for example, for a long time, this milestone, then I can be successful. And again, this is something that I slipped into so many times over the years. I, you know, with my business, for example, for a long time, I told myself if I can just get featured in the New York times, then I'd be set, which of course is a complete lie. You know, like now, now it's happened a couple of times I've been in there and it's great. It's a nice spike for a week and then things go back to normal. Life carries on. And so there is no single event that is going to make or break you as an entrepreneur and really probably no single meal that will make

or break you as a dieter, as someone who's trying to eat nutritiously, no single workout that will make or break your health. Um, it's really about the long-term process and the habits that you maintain that determine how far you walk along that path. 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. Brian 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, 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 I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. There's something you say in the back of the book, you you're writing some sort of like common sense observations or whatever that show how some of these things are going to be true. And one of them was happiness is simply the absence of desire. We had a guest not too long ago, she came out in the last few weeks, but, you know, her basic idea

was, you know, you get what you want and you think that's what made you happy. What made you happy was that you stopped wanting something else, you know, and goals are that way. I mean, I relate with that so much with like, you know, when just when this thing gets here, when that thing gets here. I mean, I think I've lived, I think a lot of us live a huge portion of our life in that way. And my problem was always, so I'd get the thing I thought I wanted, I wouldn't be any happier. And instead of questioning the whole train of thinking, I think, well, that thing just wasn't good enough. Right. Maybe I must need to want something else. That must be the problem.

If I just had a girlfriend, then I get the girlfriend, I'm not happy, and now she's the problem. You know, I mean, so it's such a pernicious way of thinking that is so deeply embedded in everything that we do. If you don't have a desire to change your current state, if you're happy with, then you, by definition, you are happy with your current state, right? You're content with where you're at, but anytime a desire arises and you desire to change your state, you now are not content with where you're at. Right. And so happiness is the absence of desire. It's the absence of the desire to change your current state. And it's hard to practice. And that actually, perhaps that word provides a little insight into it.

It is a practice. It's not a finish line. You can't permanently be in a state of no desire. But you can practice returning to a state of contentment or returning to a state of not wanting. Yeah. I mean, we're wired to sit in a state of complete contentment because we're wired to seek food. I mean, like, it's what keeps us alive. It wouldn't make sense. You wouldn't be a human if you didn't. That's right. Yeah. So it's

there. It's like a lot of things. I think it's a question of like, what is the ratio of that in your life compared, you know, what, what ratio is, is helpful or useful, you know, you know, talking about goals in relation to happiness as well. One of the other things is goals kind of like box you into this either or outcome where like either you achieve your goal and you're happy, uh, assuming the goal does make you happy or anything else happens and you're not right. And that's another reason why I think focusing on a system is really great because there are many ways that a system can run. It doesn't have to just be one finite, narrow outcome. And anytime the system is running, you can feel satisfied with it.

So just take the process of like writing a book. If writing a book is your goal, you can only be happy in your head if the book is written. But if you're focusing on the system of being the type of person who writes each day or something, there are like a million ways that could happen. You could journal, you could write a poem, you could write one sentence, you could write a chapter, you could just write emails. There are so many things that you could do to reinforce that identity of being a writer. And I think that that provides like much more leeway in being gracious with yourself and in also continuing to make progress, even if it doesn't look exactly like the goal you had in your mind at the beginning.

Yeah. Used a word there, identity. And you talk about that there are three layers of behavior change, right? One is we change our outcomes. The second is we change our processes. And then the last is we change our identity. So talk about the role of identity in building good habits or changing behavior. Well, in a sense, I think true behavior change is actually identity change. Because you can imagine like, it's one thing to say, I want this, but it's something very different to say, I am this, you know, like, once you adopt an identity, adopt a particular belief, you're not even really pursuing behavior change anymore. You're just acting in alignment with the type of person you already believe that you are. Yep. So one of the examples that I give in the book is like, imagine that you have two people who are smokers and are trying to quit. And the first person you offer a cigarette and they, you offer them a cigarette and they say,

uh, no thanks. I'm trying to quit. And the second person you offer them a cigarette and they say, Oh no, thanks. I'm not a smoker. And same action. They're both turning down the cigarette, but the first person still identifies as someone who is a smoker and they're trying to do something. They're not. The second person is like, I'm a non-smoker and that signals a shift in identity. And that is a powerful thing because once you see yourself as that kind of person, you have additional reason to reinforce that behavior. Yeah. And, um, this comes back to why I think small habits are important because the natural question anybody has at this point, they're like, okay, if you buy into this idea that identity and

behavior are linked, it's like, well, how can I change my identity then? That seems like a difficult thing to do. And I think the answer is small habits and tiny actions are the best method we have for shaping our identity. And the reason I say that is because in a sense, your habits are how you embody a particular identity. You know, every time you make your bed in the morning, you embody the identity of someone who is clean and organized. Every time you go to the gym, you embody the identity of someone who is a fit person. Every time you write one sentence, you embody the identity of someone who is a writer. And it's kind of like every action you take is a vote for the type of person that you want to become the type of person that you believe that you are. And as you cast these votes, as you repeat these little habits, you kind of build up evidence of being that type of person.

And I really think the evidence there is like a crucial part because it gives you something to root the identity in. It gives you proof of being that kind of person because a lot of the time people will say things like fake it till you make it, but fake it till you make it as a little different than what I'm talking about here, because it's asking you to believe something without having evidence for it. Right. And there's a worth word for beliefs that don't have evidence. We call it delusion. You know, at some point, like the brain doesn't like this. That's right. Yeah. Um, but if you can turn around and say, Hey, I've, you know, I've written one sentence, uh, 13 out of the last 14 days, all of a sudden you have evidence of being

a writer. Yeah. And so your habits and actions give you proof of who you are. And gradually, over time, they can reshape your identity a little bit or expand or upgrade it in some aspect. Yeah, I think that idea about delusion is is so important, because, you know, a lot of I think, is so important because, you know, a lot of, I think, what leads to a good life is having thoughts that are constructive and productive and all that. But we don't believe stuff that we don't believe. It's the whole, like, you know, you look in the mirror and say, I'm beautiful. Well, if you don't feel beautiful, like, I mean, right, your brain rejects it. And a lot of times when I'm working with people, what I work on is, you use the phrase in here, I'm the kind of person who, and I hear this all the time from people I work with,

I'm the kind of person who can't finish what they start. I'm the kind of person that works out for a month and then quits. I'm the kind of person, and a lot of times I think that the best place to start is to just, can we just suspend judgment for a while, right? Can we just not fix ourselves into that identity? And then you're right, as we have contrary evidence, that belief changes. It's interesting, for years and years and years, I mean a lot of years, I was an on-again, off-again meditator. I'd do it, I'd get all inspired, and I would do it for a while, and then I would quit. And so I just had this sort of belief, like I was the kind of person who just could never stick with it.

And then through a lot of the things we talk about in your book here, and a lot of things I work with clients on and all that, I got to a point where I became a daily meditator, you know, for a lot of years, you know, several years in a row, like every day. And then recently there's been a lot going on and I fell out of the habit a little bit. But the whole time that I was out of the habit, it just felt like a matter of time till I picked it up again because I thought of myself as I'm someone who meditates, that's what I do. So it was just there was this dissonance inside. It wasn't the dissonance of, I'm a failure, I screwed up again, it was just the dissonance of like, I'm a meditator, and I'm not meditating. And so I found my way back to it. It was just very

interesting for me to have that experience as somebody who had had the opposite belief about myself for so long. Yeah. That's interesting how identity can also like pull you back to center, you know, like if you, if it's working for you and, uh, this comes back to that notion that we talked about earlier, which is that habits are a double-edged sword. And so identity can work for you or against you, right? It can be a very empowering thing. Like I'm a meditator or it can be a negative thing. Like I'm bad at directions or I'm terrible at math or I can't, I don't remember people's names or I'm the type of person who, you know, works out for a month and doesn't do it anymore. And that all of those are just examples of your identity reinforcing negative

habits rather than positive ones. 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, 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. I think what starts to happen is what I see people do is if they think they're the kind of person who starts something and then doesn't stick with it, the minute they don't stick with it for a day, which happens to everyone all the time, right? I mean, we're not perfect. The minute it happens, they start going, I knew it.

I knew it. I knew I was the kind of person. I screwed up again. And that sort of, when that mental chatter takes over, it is not conducive to doing anything positive. We sometimes think if I'm just hard enough on myself, I'll do the right thing. But that doesn't really seem to be the way this works. I think your idea of putting your identity on the back burner for a little while while you accumulate some new evidence is a really good one. It's like, don't criticize yourself for your faults.

Don't praise yourself for your successes. Just put your judgment on the side for a little while. Let's just leave it over there for a month. Right. And just be willing to try and to experiment with something new. And you might surprise yourself. And I think that that's where habits can come into play if you let them surprise you and accumulate evidence of being this new person. It's the Carol Dweck growth versus fixed mindset thing, right? I mean, the growth mindset, you know, a lot of people think it's silly. They're like, well, of course, the growth mindset, that's ridiculous. I'm never going to be an NBA player. I'm like, well, no, I'm not. Like, I mean, you might have been able to be, right? You're a tall guy. I was not going to, was not going to in the, in the cards for me, but that's not what a

growth mindset says. It just says, I can get better. It doesn't put a limit on how far I'll get better. Just I can get better. And the fixed mindset says, no, this is the person I am. And so I think often, again, just opening that door to like, I can get better. I think that's actually a crucial distinction, you know, like the, uh, deliberate practice or growth mindset or any of these, um, grit, these strategies that are about like, uh, you know, you can become much more than what you think you can. Those strategies are not saying you can be anything. It's not saying a five foot four person is going to play in the NBA. Um, but

it is saying that anyone can get better, uh, if they're willing to practice and have this kind of growth mindset and so on. And I think that that is true. Uh, humans are learning machines and, you know, like you might not be a concert violinist if you start practicing the violin, but anybody who practices and has an open mindset will get better at playing the violin. Yeah. I'm not naturally musically talented in the way that I know lots of people who are. I mean, I've been around a lot of people. I'm like, they're just gifted.

I was never that way. But I'm a pretty decent guitar player because I just kept doing know, I wanted to do it, I kept doing it. And so I was able to get way better than I ever thought I could have gotten, you know, just by doing it. And so, so let's talk about the four stages of habits. And then we'll go into the four rules. Sure. So I'll explain them a little bit from a conceptual level and then give you maybe one or two examples so you can see what it looks like. So I break habits into four stages and those four stages are cue, craving, response, and reward. And I do that for a very specific reason. So pretty much every habit and possibly every

human behavior, you can say cycles through these four stages. So first there's some kind of cue or some kind of, let's say raw data that you take in. Often external, it doesn't have to be, but it's often visual. So for example, the cue could be, you walk into a room and the room is dark. So you see that the room is dark. Then you have some kind of craving and the craving is about how you interpret the cue. So it's about your prediction and, uh, different people can have different cravings, even if it's the same cue, right? You can imagine two people walk into the kitchen and they see a pack of cigarettes on the counter. And one person is a smoker and they interpret that cue as, Oh, I have a craving to smoke this,

you know, and the other person has never smoked. I was like, no, it just looks like a pack of cigarettes. Doesn't mean anything. Right. So same cue, totally different interpretation. And the craving is crucial because how you interpret the cues in your life determines how you respond to them. And so if your interpretation is different, the response is different. So that leads you to the third stage, the response. So in my example, I was giving you walk in queue, the room is dark craving. I want to be able to see, or I want to reduce the uncertainty of being in a dark room response. I flip on the light switch. And then the final step is the reward, which in this case is you're able to see the room is lit. And of course, in that example of the habit of flipping on a light switch that happens in what half a second, you know, a fraction of a second. I mean, we're going through this process endlessly and all the time and it's happening very rapidly. Your, your brain is going through these four stages. And, uh, if you do it enough, then you can go through all four stages pretty much on autopilot. You know, like when you walk into a dark room, you don't think I would like to be able to see, you know, like you don't have this conscious craving, but it's just naturally and implicitly there.

And and really what I'm describing with those four stages is the process of learning. Right. Because say you take another habit like tying your shoes. Well, the cue might be you have the shoe on your foot that's untied. Craving is I want to have the shoe secure. I want to have the shoe tied response. I try to tie my shoes reward. Well, maybe the first couple of times you do it, you're not good at tying your shoes. So then, you know, it doesn't work. Like the, the knot is all messed up. You can't figure it out. But then, you know, as a kid, you practice tying your shoes a hundred times,

500 times, a thousand times, pretty soon you can tie your shoes on autopilot. It's just a habit. You can go through the cue, the craving, the response and the reward. You're not even thinking about it. You can have a conversation with somebody else. You can think about what's on your to-do list for the morning and so on. That's why I'm still wearing slip-ons. Yes. There you go. Make it easy on yourself. So this is a, this is ultimately the purpose that habits serve, right? They allow us to solve the problems that we face in life. The recurring problems. Some of them are small, like needing to tie your shoe. Some of them are bigger, like what do I do when I come home from work each day and I feel exhausted? What are my habits for dealing with that?

But the point is, whenever you face a problem repeatedly, your brain starts to automate the solution. And it does that by going through these four stages and learning how to respond to the cues and problems that you face throughout life. And so those cues could be internal or external. So the one we talked about, as you walk into the room, it's dark, that's your cue or using cues as a way to remind us to do a habit. But they're also the internal state, which you described, which is I get home from work, I'm stressed. The stress is the cue, right. So in that case, uh, it's probably a combination of internal and external. Like let's say each, you know, you come home from work and you step in the front door. So you have the context of walking in the door from work. So that's kind of physical. Uh, you know, I come in the door at five 30 and then you also have this

internal feeling of like, I'm stressed and exhausted from a long day. And when you put all that together, uh, that kind of is the thing that initiates the habit. It's something that makes habits a little difficult to pin down or difficult to change is that over time, it's often the case that habits are not triggered by a single little cue, but actually by like the overall context of the environment. You know, so like you, you go upstairs after work and you change into comfortable clothes and you make dinner and then you finish dinner. And the context of being in your living room at night leads to the habit of watching Netflix for three hours. Um,

and it's not really any one thing in the living room, but it's the overall situation. And, uh, this is one reason why it can often be easier to build new habits in a new environment. Right. Because let's say that you want to build the habit of reading in this example I just gave. Well, if you're trying to do that after dinner each night and you say, okay, I'm going to read on the couch instead. Well, that whole context is you have this association with it that's nudging you toward watching Netflix for three hours. Yeah. And so it's often easier to change it up a little bit.

Like you could buy a new chair and put it in the corner of the room and that's the reading chair. And the only thing that you do in that chair is you read. And so you try to associate this new habit with a new area or context so that you aren't fighting like all the old stimuli that are nudging you toward your previous habits. Well, let's go into the four rules of behavior change. Cause this is really where we start to get practical suggestions for how to change things. Right. So we just talked through those four stages, cue, craving, response, and reward. And for each stage, I've come up with a law, which I'll call the four laws of behavior change. So if you want to build a good habit for your cues, you want to make the cues of your good habits obvious.

So the first law is make it obvious for craving. You want to make it attractive for the response. You want to make it easy. And for the reward, you want to make it satisfying. And so those four laws make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying, give you sort of like a toolbox that you can use for building a good habit. And then if you want to break a bad habit, you just invert each of the four laws. So for your bad habits, you do want the cues instead of making it obvious, you want to make it invisible, make it unattractive, make it difficult, make it unsatisfying. And, uh, with those, with the inversion of the four laws, you have this set of tools for, uh, increasing the likelihood that you'll be able to break a bad habit.

And, um, the way that I like to think about them is they're kind of like four levers. And when the levers are in the right positions, it's really easy to build good habits. It kind of is effortless. And when they're in the wrong positions, you're kind of fighting this uphill battle. And so they, my hope is that those four laws of behavior change give you a very practical guide for how to actually adjust your habits in daily life. Like what can we really do about this? And they make the insights and the science about how habits work, and they turn that into an actionable framework. Join us next week for part two of the interview with James Clear. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast.

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