The School of Greatness - James Clear’s ULTIMATE GUIDE to Crushing Your New Year's GOALS (Transform Your Life in 2024!)

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Today, we're diving into a topic that's perfect for anyone looking to start the new year on the right foot: building better habits. As we step into 2024, it's time to shake off the old and embrace the new. And who better to guide us on this journey than James Clear, the mastermind behind the transformative book, "Atomic Habits"? In this episode, James brings his unparalleled expertise on habits, decision-making, and personal growth. Whether you're looking to overhaul your life or just tweak a few things, James's insights are the perfect catalyst for change. Get ready to be inspired, motivated, and equipped with practical strategies to make this year your most successful yet. So, grab a notebook, settle in, and let's turn those New Year's resolutions into reality with James Clear!James Clear is a writer and speaker focused on habits, decision making, and continuous improvement. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits. Clear is a regular speaker at Fortune 500 companies and his work has been featured in places like Time magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and on CBS This Morning. His popular "3-2-1" email newsletter is sent out each week to more than 2 million subscribers.In this episode you will learnLearn the importance of continuous personal growth and how incremental knowledge gained each day can significantly enhance your life.Discover the value of focusing your efforts on the right goals, emphasizing the impact of aligning your hard work with meaningful objectives.Understand the crucial role of self-accountability in achieving success, recognizing that internal motivation and self-discipline are key drivers of progress.Explore the complex relationship between the need for social belonging and personal development, learning how to balance these often competing desires.Grasp the significance of physical health as a foundation for all life's endeavors, realizing that caring for your body is essential for overall well-being and success.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1542For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More episodes from James Clear:https://link.chtbl.com/1393-pod https://link.chtbl.com/1372-pod

If you want better outcomes, the thing to focus on is building better habits. The results of success are widely discussed and highly visible, and the process of success is often invisible. We tend to overvalue outcomes and we undervalue the process. I think the shift is... Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome to this special masterclass. We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. If people are listening to this, watching this, thinking about how they can transform their lives and better their lives, what's something over the next seven days that they should be thinking about with their habits to to make this happen yeah great question i don't even think it needs to be seven days i think it'd be five minutes you know like you can do a lot with five good minutes like five good

minutes of exercise will reset your mood five good minutes of writing will make you feel totally different about your manuscript it's like now the project's moving forward. Five good minutes of conversation will restore the relationship and, you know, get people back on, on track. So five good minutes can do a lot. And I think you can scale it down that small and just ask yourself, you know, how can I live five good minutes? You know, how can I like in a sense, each day is a small lifetime and how can you live a good life today? That's really day is a small lifetime and how can you live a good life today that's really all you got to focus on is can i have a good day today and then you can wake up again tomorrow and do the same thing and this idea of getting one percent better each day

it's really encouraging a focus on trajectory rather than position you know there's so much discussion about position in life we have all these different ways of measuring our current position. Like what's the number on the scale, how much money's in the bank account? What's the current stock price? We have all these different ways of analyzing what our current position is. And then usually when we get that number, whatever it is, there's kind of some sort of judgment that happens. You know, it's, oh, I'm not where I said I wanted to be yet, or we haven't achieved what we said we wanted to achieve. And what I'm encouraging is to say, listen, measurement's fine. It can be useful, but just for a minute, let's set that to the side and stop worrying so much about our current position and focus a little bit more on our current trajectory. You know, is the arrow

pointed up and to the right, or have we flatlined? You know, are we getting 1% better or 1% worse? Because if you're on a good trajectory, even if it's just for the next five minutes, then you're on the path where all you need is time. Time will magnify whatever you feed it. If you have good habits, time becomes your ally and that trajectory will carry you forward. And if you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy. And every day that goes by, you kind of dig the hole a little bit deeper. And so getting 1% better each day, it's really a mindset. It's an approach.

It's less about measuring it. Oh, is it 1% or 1.6% or whatever? Like it's not about getting caught up in the numbers. It's about trying to focus on putting yourself on a good path and then letting those days stack up. Love that approach and that mindset. I'm curious, in your opinion, why do you think so many people have the habit

of being hard on themselves, even when they're improving and seeing the metrics go up on whatever they're measuring? I mean, it can probably be many different things. And I don't know all the answers. I think one thing that's common is that the results of success are widely discussed and highly visible.

And the process of success is often invisible and hidden from view. You know, like you'll never see a news story that's like man eats chicken and salad for lunch today. You know, it's only a story once it's like, man loses a hundred pounds. You know, it's only once it's a result that people talk about it.

Or like, there's never gonna be a story about, James writes 500 words today. You know, it's only once it's a result that people talk about it or like there's never going to be a story about James writes 500 words today. You know, it's like only a story once atomic habits is a bestseller. And so because the results are the thing that gets discussed so much, it's not by the way, it's not that results don't matter. Like I consider myself pretty results oriented. It's just that I think we tend to overvalue outcomes because it's all we ever talk about. And we undervalue the process because it's just not, it's not compelling to talk about what's going on on a daily basis. So because of all that, I think it can get easy to judge yourself. You know, you could be doing the right thing on any given day.

Like I could sit down and I could write 500 words and that's actually a really good day, you know, but if the manuscript still a mess and I'm still a year and a half away from the book coming out and I'm seeing somebody else launch a bestseller this week, then it's, you start to judge yourself and feel like, oh, they have what I want to have, or I'm not there yet. Or this is still a mess. I've been working on it for months. Like this is never going to get finished. It's very easy to fall into that kind of mindset. And especially if you're focused on results. So I think the shift is partially, it just helps to know that working on habits day in and day out, focusing on building a better process and building a better system is how results occur. And that is very obvious to all of us as soon as you say it but man it's so easy to forget it on a daily basis

and so reminding yourself that most of your results in life are a lagging measure of the habits that precede them so your bank account is a lagging measure of your financial habits your physical fitness is the lagging measure of your exercise habits your uh even like silly stuff like the amount of clutter in your living room is a lagging measure of your exercise habits your uh even like silly stuff like the amount of clutter in your living room is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits so many areas of life are largely maybe not exclusively but largely influenced by the habits that precede them and so if you want better outcomes the thing to focus on is building better habits and um for some reason, we get into this mindset where we're focused on results and we naturally start to compare. And that leads to feelings of judgment, resentment,

and negativity, and so on. And if we can just shift it a little bit and just try to focus on having five good minutes or living a good day or building better habits, then I think maybe you pull yourself back in the present moment. You focus a little bit more on running your own race and maybe a little bit less on what everybody else is doing. Love that, man. Focus on your own race. You know, over 10 million copies sold of Atomic Habits. You know, if there is anyone who hasn't got this yet,

you guys got to make sure you get this. But I'm curious for those who haven't got it yet and don't know, how long does it take to form a habit? There seems like there's all this different research. This university says this, and this scientific study says this, how long does it take to actually form a habit? And it's dependent on what habit you're trying to create. And are there also, also are there different stages of building and forming a habit? That's interesting. The stages part's interesting.

People don't usually ask that. Okay. So very popular question. How long does it take to build a habit? It does depend on the habit you're building. So there are a variety of studies that show, you know, if you pick an easy habit, you know, might only take a couple of weeks. If you pick something really difficult, maybe it takes six or seven or eight months.

Like, you know, who knows? But it also depends, like the same habit can take very different amounts of time, depending on the context. Imagine one person who's trying to build the habit of doing yoga every day. And they live with a bunch of athletes or people who go to yoga studios or whatever. And then the other person is trying to build a habit of doing yoga every day. And they live with nobody who works out and they kind of get criticized or poked fun at if they do it in front of them. Well, same habit, but very different situations. And so the environment is going to influence how much friction you're feeling associated

with that. And obviously that will influence how easy or difficult it is. So I don't really know that the timing tells you anything. There's all these kind of popular myths, 21 days or 30 days or whatever. And there's not really anything back that up, but there's also a couple of studies that say on average, it's like 66 days or something like that. But again, the range can be quite wide, uh, depending on the habit. So I think the true answer, the honest answer to how long does it take to build a habit is forever. Because if it stops, if you stop doing it, it's no longer a habit, you know, like, and what I'm trying to get at with that

is habits are not a finish line to be crossed. You know, they're a lifestyle to be lived. It's something to integrate into your new normal. It's not like, Hey, let me just do this for 30 days or 66 days. And then I'll be a healthy person or then I'll be productive or whatever. You know, I won't have to think about it anymore. It's like, no, like what we're looking for is a change that you can integrate into your new normal, something you can make part of your lifestyle. And then once it's part of your daily life, great, you can start to look at the next habit and try to integrate that one. And it's a, it's kind of this endless process. And maybe that encourages you a little bit more to look for a non-threatening

change or a sustainable change rather than just trying to flip a switch. Yeah. And it also sounds like a habit is only a habit and correct me if I'm wrong, if it becomes and is your identity on a consistent basis. And if it's not your identity, then you're not doing it if it's not your identity. I don't think most researchers would define it that way, but it speaks to this question you asked about stages. And that was kind of the first thing that I thought about when you mentioned that question. So like, let's say, for example, let's just take like a classic habit, like going to the gym and working out. So early on, going to the gym is kind of uncomfortable. You know, you're worried about

like, are people judging me? Do I look stupid? I don't know what exercises to do. You know, like I don't know where to put my stuff today. I have a water fountain at this gym or do I need to bring a water bottle? There's like all these like stupid little questions that you're thinking about when you're getting started. And it's definitely not part of your identity. You haven't shown up enough to be comfortable there and feel like, hey, this is just part of who I am. And so early on the kind of the first stage when you're practicing it, I think the number one thing you need to do is scale it down, reduce the scope and try to make it as easy

and as frictionless as possible to show up each day. So that's probably like stage one is how do I make this the opposite of what people try to do when they're like, I'm out of shape. I'm going to go every day for the next year and I'm not going to miss a day. And I'm going to eat chicken and salad every day. Well, and you know, what's interesting is, especially for ambitious people, it's really interesting or really easy to fall into that pitfall because when you sit down and you think about the changes you want to make, yeah, it's easy to get excited about that. I think implicitly you kind of,

even though people don't say it what the thing that's kind of in the back of their mind is what can I achieve on my best day like how can I get to peak performance you know and instead I almost think it's more useful to ask yourself what can I achieve even on the worst days like what what habit could I stick to even on the bad days because then if you start there now you can start to build some momentum. You can show up consistently. You can establish the habit. So that's maybe the first stage is scale it down. The second stage is you start to get some like other rewards associated with it. So you've been going to the gym for a few months and then maybe you start to see a little bit of a change in your body, or maybe you start to develop some friendships there and you look

forward to seeing your new buddy there and you guys fist bump and you chat a little bit. And it's just like kind of more engaging and fun to do it, uh, to go there and, you know, work out. And so these are like other benefits, things that make the habit feel good and they kind of help you show up, uh, more and more. So you're starting to get these external benefits that are coming along the way. And then ultimately the, the, maybe the final stage or a later stage is now it feels like it's kind of part of my identity. I go like, this is where I would say, so I've been working out for a while now. And it's probably like the habit that I care most about, like my, in terms of personal habits, it's the one that feels like it centers me, or it's the only time

I really get for myself. And so I want to work out now. Yes, of course I want the benefits of it and the, you know, the physical changes and all that stuff. But what I really want is I just feel good when I do it. You know, I feel like I'm being me, I'm being the kind of person I want to be. And it makes me feel like, yeah, this is the identity I want to have. This kind of person I want to be. And so I can get that satisfaction instantly. Like as soon, as long as I'm doing one rep, I, you know, I get that feeling. And so, um, that's a reward that comes maybe later. You got to show up a lot before you get to that place mentally. But I think ultimately that's where you're trying to get to. Now there is, there is maybe one more

stage after that, which is the tighter that you cling to your current identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it. And so this is kind of an endless process. You know, like we all can sort of think about like, let's say you have a surgeon who they've been doing an operation a certain way for the last 20 years, and they have a bunch of successful patients

and cases from that operation. And they just are like, yeah, you know what? I know it works well this way. And then a new technology. Yeah. A new technology comes along and they're like, you know, hey, you can do this with robots now, or you can do it laparoscopically or whatever. And they resist it because they're like, no, I have a lot of evidence for doing it my old way. They cling to that current identity and it's harder to grow. And five years from now, they find themselves behind the curve. Or you've got a teacher who they've been doing their lesson plan the same way for the last 10 years, and they don't want to integrate YouTube or some

new learning modality or whatever. And five years from now, they find themselves behind the curve. And so the tighter you cling to your current identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it. And it's kind of this endless cycle in the, in the early stages, what you want is to foster the identity to like reinforce being that kind of person. Cause it helps you show up. But then eventually a couple of years from now, the world changes and you need to adapt. And so it's kind of like evolve or die. And you need to continually be retouching or optimizing or refining that identity in your approach. And so that's, those are, there are some various stages there, but those are kind of some of the big ones that I, that

stuck out to me. Yeah. And it's like people who are stuck to whatever fax machines. And then it's, you know, then from faxing to email and then email to, you know, cell phones and whatever it is, it's like our grandparents don't keep up with the email and then email to, you know, cell phones and whatever it is. It's like our grandparents don't keep up with the technology and then we can't call them on FaceTime because they don't know how to turn it on or whatever. So that's interesting. It sounds like there's different stages to these habits. And it sounds like when you become successful, the habits that got you here may not necessarily get you to the next stage or season of accomplishment, fulfillment, success, health. Is that right?

Yeah, it's interesting because I would say there's kind of like two categories. Their habits are like timeless that you, and we call those the fundamentals of whatever your domain is. Like in my case, reading and writing are probably always going to be habits that will serve me as an author, you know, but then there's other stuff, you know, the way that I executed the book launch for atomic habits. You know what, like, if I launch another book in 10 years, a lot of those strategies probably be outdated. And so you need to upgrade and improve, you need to evolve and change. And so there's, there's both the fundamentals that you always need to stick to. And there's just this continual growth and, and learning process that you also have to be committed to. A habit must be established before it can be improved, right? If you don't establish the

habit, there's nothing to optimize. If you're not showing up at the gym every day, you don't even, who cares about what workout you're doing? You're not even there. Don't start running an hour a day if you've never run in a long time. Be the person who shows up and puts their running shoes on every day before you worry about how far you're running, what kind of workout you're doing, if you've never run in a long time. Be the person who shows up and puts their running shoes on every day before you worry about how far you're running, what kind of workout you're doing and all that type of stuff. Establish the art of showing up first

before going all in on the desired goal you want. I think that's right. I mean, you can find examples of people who flip a switch and transform their lives or have an epiphany and do it overnight. But I think that it's rare. I think that the more sustainable strategy, the more reliable strategy is to scale it down to the first two minutes, focus on that, establish it, master the art of showing up, and then go from there. So really you should like, usually when people think about building better habits, they optimize for the finish line, right?

It's like, how much weight do I need to lose? How much money do I need to make? You know, how, when can I finish this book? It's all focused on the result. But I think instead, if you optimize for the starting line, make it as easy as possible to start, scale it down, organize your environment. So all that stuff is set up. This is another strategy for making it easy, which is that you can prime your environment to make the future action easier, right? Like if you chop up a bunch of vegetables and fruit on Sunday, it's now easier to have a healthy snack during the week. If you set your workout clothes out the night before,

it's now easier to get into the workout the next day. But doing all that stuff to make it easy to show up, that is probably the more important piece early on. There's also like all these, there are all these logistical details for building a habit that nobody thinks about in the beginning. Like what? Well, like take the example of my reader who went to the gym there. It's like, okay, what gym are you going to go to? How are you going to get there? Are you going by yourself? Are you going to go with a friend? Do you need to, what

time are you going to go? Yeah. What time are you going to have your own water bottle or is there a water fountain at the gym? And that stuff sounds like silly and small, but when someone's starting, the fact that like, oh, the gym doesn't have a water fountain and I always forget to bring my own, that's enough friction for someone to quit. So by focusing on just the first two minutes, you figure all that stuff out. And then once you've got that piece mastered, now you can worry about how long the workout is and what program to do and all that stuff. So figuring out the logistics first is an important step. I think that's something that just comes naturally with scaling a habit down. You figure out what's required to show up because you're not worried about the results or the outcome or how long you worked out or judging

yourself for running 30 minutes when you should have run 45 or whatever. Got it. Okay. So this is the response still? Right. Okay. And what's the fourth? The fourth one, and this is crucial for getting a habit to stick, is the reward or the outcome. So every behavior is followed by some kind of outcome. This is just basic cause and effect. And if the immediate outcome is favorable, is enjoyable, you have a reason to repeat it in the future. It's kind of like donuts. Yeah, exactly. Right. It's like that example. If you, if you, um, if you feel good, if you feel satisfied right after you do something, then it's like this positive emotional signal. And it's like, yeah, I should do this again. So you can see this actually business is a really interesting example with this. There are a lot of products and some of the most successful products have

some type of immediate satisfaction that is layered into them. So toothpaste is a very common example. There's no reason a toothpaste needs to taste like mint, but it does because the minty flavor and the refreshingness of it, it makes sure it gives your mouth this clean feel. It's more satisfying. So you have a reason to do it again in the future. I heard an interesting one recently about car manufacturers that some of them are adding a fake guttural roar to the car or the truck when you press the accelerator because it just adds to the actual natural sound of the engine. So it makes it more satisfying to step on the gas and to drive the car. So there are a variety of examples like this, but if you can add in,

the key is it needs to be immediate, right like this is um in the book i refer to this as the cardinal rule of behavior change which is behaviors that are immediately rewarded get repeated behaviors that are immediately punished get avoided and it's really about the speed of how quickly you feel successful if it feels good you have a reason to do it again um is that why video games do so well video games are masters at this they're masters at it so um they're masters actually at a variety of of aspects related to habit formation so one is they're really good at this immediate satisfaction there are all kinds of things you're actually constantly getting feedback in a video game even if you're just running you hear the

pitter-patter of the steps it's that's gratifying it's yeah the pitter patter of the steps. It's gratifying. The jingles of like picking up another power up or, you know, seeing a kill or something like that. Whatever the game is, you're always getting constant feedback. Sound, things that are on screen. They're really good at dripping out. Watching the score increase in the top corner. That is immediate feedback. So they have all these different ways of making you feel satisfied.

And when you see that progress, you have a reason to continue in the future. This is one of the most effective forms of immediate satisfaction is progress. As soon as you feel progress, you have a reason to continue. It feels really good to see that you're making headway. Now, why do some people make all this progress? Let's say they lose the weight. They lose 100 pounds, but then they gain it back two years later yeah they've got this progress they achieve the desired goal but then how come it didn't stick it's a good question i mean it's a complicated thing a hard thing but um i'll give a couple potential uh reasons so one of it comes back to the social norms that we mentioned before um there's a story that I tell in the book about Vietnamese soldiers,

American soldiers during the Vietnam War. So they were over in Vietnam and these two congressmen went over and found out that the heroin usage among the troops was incredibly high. I think they first thought it was like 10% or 15%, but then they found out it was actually over 20%. So one in five troops is addicted to heroin or trying heroin using it while they're over there and they're like this is a huge problem we need to figure this out so they created this whole committee to investigate things whatever and eventually the war ends and the soldiers come back and they were shocked by is

that um 90 percent of the soldiers that were addicted to heroin in Vietnam were not addicted when they returned. And the main reason, it makes so much sense, but it upended our understanding of addiction at the time. They completely changed the context, right? In Vietnam, they're in a war zone. They're highly stressed. They're surrounded by other users. Heroin is present and easy to get. They come home. They're in a totally new environment. It's not a war zone anymore. They're not surrounded by other users. They don't really know where to get heroin, so they have to figure that out too. You layer all this stuff together and suddenly it becomes much easier to not do that. Whereas previously they thought, oh, it was an addiction. They were

doing it for other reasons. This same thing is true, but usually in the reverse, right? Typically you have an addict who gets hooked on a drug, goes into rehab. This is the equivalent of leaving your environment behind, not having any of those triggers. But then you send them home to the same place they got addicted in the first place, right? So now they're surrounded by all their old friends, all the same cues, and it becomes very hard to resist that. And I wonder if when people rebound from habits after they've achieved some level of success, whether it's losing weight or getting clean or whatever. If it's the return of the environment that causes a lot of that. Do you think that's what it is?

Well, I don't know if it's always that. I don't think I can say it is universally. But I think that it definitely plays a role. Because we're influenced by people's pressure either way, like you said. Yes. Peer pressure can either be positive or negative. Yeah, the communities we surround ourselves with, we rise to the community. Right.

You know, if you're around vegans all day and there's only vegan food available, you're going to eat probably mostly vegan. Right. If that's what you want. Or if you're trying to eat healthier, if you go back home and everyone's eating donuts all day, that temptation is going to be hard to say no to after months. You can do it for a little while, but it's just really hard to do it. So environment is a huge factor,

is what I'm hearing. I think both social and physical. We haven't talked that much about physical environment, but that's another key component. You know, so like, I'll give you an example of a good habit and a bad habit. So for good habits, you want the physical environment to make it obvious

and easy for you to do the behavior. You know, so like I am. Like have a pull-up bar in your room. Exactly, trying to do a hundred pull-ups a day, right? Like have it hanging over your door as opposed to even if you had one, but it was in the closet because you just half the time you wouldn't ever take it out or it's at the gym upstairs or down the street. No. Um, you know, I have a friend who he wanted to practice a guitar more. And so he left his guitar in the middle of his living room. And that would just'd walk past it 100 times a day becomes much easier, right? Bad habits are the same way.

But in reverse. Instead of making it obvious, you want to make it invisible. You know, take like, which is just talking about video games. A lot of people feel like they spend too much time watching TV or playing video games or watching a screen. But if you walk into pretty much any living room, where do all the couches and chairs face? They all face the television. So it's like, what is that room designed to get you to do? Turn it on. Yeah. So you can restructure that environment to make it less likely that you'll fall into that habit. And there are a variety of things you could do. You could take the remote control and

put it inside like a drawer so you don't see it. You could put the television behind a wall unit or a cabinet so that it's less visible but you could also increase the friction with the task so you could like unplug your tv after each use and only plug it back in if you can say the name of the show that you want to watch so you can't like mindlessly pull up netflix and just find something or you could take the batteries out of the remote control so that it's an extra like five to ten seconds to turn on. Maybe that's enough time to be like, do I really want to watch something right now? I'm just doing this mindlessly.

Yeah. If you really want to be extreme. Don't have a TV. Yes. You could get rid of the TV entirely or take it off the wall and put it in the closet and only take it out when you really want to watch something. For four years when I lived in Columbus, I removed the TV for four years. I didn't have a TV in my place because I was like, I want to earn money. I want to build my business and I have nothing. So I need to work. I need to focus on this to build the habit that I wanted for my business. And it was

the best thing for me because I would spend hours just mindlessly watching. And now I was like, okay, if I want to watch something, I'm going to go to the sports bar and watch the game. I'm going to go to a friend's house and watch this specific thing. Or I'm going to go to the movies and take a break. Right. As opposed to three hours a day of TV. What's brilliant about that, and it's a really good example,

is that we, I think about that a lot with phones as well. So every day I try to leave my phone in another room outside of my office, at least until lunch. Because then I get like a four hour block of time in the morning where I can just work without any distraction. And it's funny how quickly you don't like if my phone was on me in the morning, I would check it like, you know, every five minutes or whatever. But when it's out of the room, I don't even find myself wanting to I never walk up the stairs to go check it, even though it's only 30 seconds away. So it's interesting how little we actually want to do these things, but we just do them all the time because they're obvious and easy. And I think the key is to invert that. Take the things that are the bad habits, the distractions, the procrastinations, the unproductive uses of time, and make them more invisible, reduce exposure, and less easy to do. And take the things that are good habits and make it the equivalent of having your phone on you all the time.

Make it right in front of you. Make it obvious. Make it easy. Make it frictionless. Yeah. If you're looking to write, do you write with your journal or your computer? I write on the computer. I write in Evernote.

It's got to be faster. Yeah. You'd have to transfer later and all these things. Yeah. Okay. Okay. If you were coaching someone who said, I have no clue what I'm supposed to do with my life.

I'm lost. I have all these bad habits. I smoke. I drink. I eat donuts every day. I have no job. My room is sloppy. And I'm just depressed.

What would you say to them to get started with changing their life around in the form of better habits? Well, you just need to pick one thing, first of all. I think that I just mentioned a few minutes ago, one of the most powerful forms of motivation is progress. So seeing some progress, I mean, it can be as simple as make your bed each day, right? Like, but just doing that, embodying the identity of someone who's getting better, who's making progress, just pick one thing and use that as, this is true. I mean, Lewis, this is something

you've probably seen with a lot of people that you've talked to but habits are the foundation for mastery so if you you know say take a take a sport like basketball um you need to be able to dribble with both hands without thinking before you can worry about what strategy you're running on offense or what kind of you know strategic play you're going to run or what your defensive scheme is or all this other stuff right like you need to automate the fundamentals of the craft before you can worry about the next level of performance. Same thing is true for chess. You know, like you need to know how the chess pieces move automatically without thinking about it before you can get into, all right, what is my strategy going to do? I'm going to do this and they're going to do that. And so I think this is true, not just at the peak

levels of performance that you integrate these habits and use habits as the foundation for the next level of performance, but also true when you're getting started. Just build one small thing. Carve out a 1% change, a 1% improvement, and use that as a stepping stone to the next level. What about self-control? Because what if we have this desire for something? What's the other word for self-control? Willpower. Willpower, yeah. What about willpower? How much willpower do we have? So you hear this a lot. I mean, it's very common, especially in self-help, motivation, self-motivation. You need to be motivated. You have to have willpower. Grit and perseverance

are huge and important. And it's not that those qualities are not important. It's just that the way to develop them is different than what most people think so most people think i need willpower so i should just try harder there's an interesting body of research i mentioned it in the book i think it's in chapter seven on self-control and willpower which is that the people who appear to have the greatest self-control actually are just tempted the least. So they face temptations less frequently and therefore have the reserves and the resources to resist it when it occasionally comes up. And I think that this is actually like the lever to pull or the pressure point to push on is that the way to get better willpower is to design an environment that tempts you less,

not to say, let me just try harder. Right. Yeah. Set yourself up to win. And you have a chapter that talks about the power of accountability partners. I talk about accountability and coaches all the time. I hire coaches for everything because I use sports as my life, my analogy for my life. And I know that I couldn't have gotten to where I wanted to be as an athlete without great coaches and accountability. So how important is accountability towards habits as well? Yeah, it's huge. So I recently hired a powerlifting coach. He's great. He's worked with like 12 world champions.

And having him has, he's not based in Columbus actually, but Columbus is great for strength culture. It's, you know, I mean, obviously there's the Arnold, but then Westside Barbell and a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, it was awesome. But your point about coaches is a crucial one, which is that having a coach forces you to be aware of things that you would otherwise overlook, right? Like as you, this is what I call the downside of building good habits, which is you build habits. And in the beginning, you develop fluency and skill and ability and things become easier. and skill and ability and things become easier. But after a little while, once a habit has been established, the downside of having a habit is that you can do it good enough on autopilot, which means that you start to overlook your mistakes and not think about how to get better.

And so what you need is a coach to keep you on that razor's edge so that you keep building habits, but it also forces you to stay aware of what the next level of performance is. And that's kind of the challenge of continuous improvement. It's like a cycle. You know, it starts with awareness. If you're not aware of what your habits are or what your behavior is, you don't have a chance to change it. Then from that awareness, you go to deliberate practice

where you have to effortfully try and work to get better. And eventually the thing that you were deliberately practicing becomes a habit and becomes automatic. But once it becomes automatic, that's not the end. You have to return to awareness and see where you're at now and start the cycle again. Huh. And what about, what if you can't afford a coach? How do you find the right accountability partner? That's where I think we come back to the social component that we talked about earlier. Join the group, join the community. That's probably the best way to do it. And the great thing about the, you know, the internet and the web is that you can find those people before where you couldn't find them

previously. You know, it used to be that you had to hope that the people in your local community or on your sports team or at your, you know, organization were also interested in the same things. And now you can find those people and find them online. Search it. And what's the downside of good habits? So this is what i was mentioning with this fact that like you start to overlook your mistakes there's a um there's an interesting study that was done on surgeons where they found that early on in residency they were getting better and then they continued to improve as they became a surgeon and practiced for a few years and then they hit some kind of peak and then their performance actually declined slightly because they stopped overlooking their

mistakes or stopped looking for ways to get better. And so you need to be on that edge of paying attention. My favorite example of this is actually a surgeon himself, Atul Gawande. And he hired a coach, a previous surgeon who was retiring to review the video of his surgeries and to tell him where he could improve and what he could do better. And I think that's a brilliant example of how to have a coach, even if you're not in sports or not a competitor or something. We can all benefit from feedback. And the tighter the feedback cycle, the faster you learn. That's powerful. I love it, man. This is powerful stuff. I'm going to ask you a couple of final questions. Yeah, sure.

This one's called the three truths. If you could only share three lessons with humanity in the world and they didn't have access to your writing or your blog or your books, but you only had three lessons you could share, what would those three lessons or three truths be? Yeah, that's really tough. So the first one, I would say, is about reading. I mentioned earlier that reading is sort of like this meta habit that helps you solve all your other problems. So I guess my lesson for reading would be start more books. No, would be, yeah, start more books, quit most of them, read the great ones twice. So if you start more books, you'll be exposed to more ideas. If you quit most of them, if you quit the ones that aren't relevant to you or aren't that good, or just aren't a high quality bar, then you'll have the chance to start

even more. And when you find the great ones, read them twice because the advice is incredible and it's potentially life-changing. Okay. All right. So the first one I would say is reading. The second one is something to do with physical movement and strength training. You cannot, every human has a body and every human has like a physical presence. So learn to use your body in some way to be more alive and to experience

what that's like to be human. If you just spend all day in your head or all day staring at the screen, you only kind of get half of what it means to be alive. So I would say physical strength is another one. And then the third one has to be something along the lines of community connection, serving others. I don't know what exactly that would be. Personally, I have felt most engaged when I've been working on a shared mission with a group of people face to face which is interesting coming from someone who you know my business

is built online right i spend most of my time sending emails to you know half a million people but i think actually i find more satisfaction and more purpose in connecting with people face to face so maybe that would be it uh Talk to someone face-to-face every day. That's cool. What are three to five non-negotiable habits that every human being should, and if they could do on a daily basis, it would improve their lives and everyone's life around them? What are those non-negotiable habits on a daily basis, it would improve their lives and everyone's life around them. What are those non-negotiable habits on a daily basis we should do? Yeah. Three habits that would improve everybody's lives on a daily basis. It's so hard to give an answer like that. Cause obviously everybody's,

you know, dealing with different stuff, but there are a few things that I think I do genuinely think most people would benefit from. So, um, the easy answer would be, be, or the easy way to frame this would be reading, but I don't think it actually has to be reading books. I think it just is the habit of learning something new. So if you, you know, listening to podcasts, reading a book, watching a good YouTube video, whatever, it doesn't matter what version of that it is. But if you go to bed a little bit smarter than you were when you woke up, that's going to improve your life. And just having this thirst for lifelong learning, having an eagerness to learn or discover something new each day, it's going to pay off in a huge way in the long run, no matter what topics you're interested in. So a habit of some small habit of daily learning, let's just

call it learn something new for 10 minutes each day um some sort of physical activity uh you know this is i think an important um realization about all habits which is in most areas of life there might not be a thousand ways to do something but there's almost always more than one way and you know i like working out in the gym but not everybody wants to train like a bodybuilder and that's fine you know like you can kayak or go running or rock climbing or ride a bike or whatever there's like a bazillion ways to live an active lifestyle and you should choose the version of your habits that is most exciting to you like in in a way that's the first biggest hurdle to clear when building habits is have you selected a habit that you're genuinely interested in that you're actually

engaged with because if it's something that you actually care about there are going to be like endless opportunities for improvement if you're not actually care if you don't actually care about it if you're just doing it because you kind of feel like society is encouraging you to do it or your parents want you to do it or your peers are kind of subtly saying hey this is something you should do then even the obvious improvements are going to feel like a chore you know so let's call it uh 10 minutes of learning something new uh some sort of physical activity whatever is exciting or interesting to you and And then I think the other one is a process, a habit of reflection and review. So it's very easy in life to be so busy or working on stuff

heads down, or just have the next task come up, whether it's things you got to do for your kids or responsibilities at work that you never take even five minutes to step back and just breathe and ask yourself, am I working on the right thing? You know, am I directing my attention and energy to the highest and best use? And boy, there is nothing so wasteful as working hard on the wrong thing. You know, like so many people work really hard, but are you directing your energy and attention to the best spot? And so the only way to discover that like i know i'm not smart enough to figure it out on the first time like i can't i can't just sit down give me five minutes and be like oh this is exactly what i should be focused on it takes iteration it takes refinement it takes a process

of reflecting and reviewing and looking back on the previous day and be like, Hey, was that a good way to spend my time? Like, did I live a good life today? And the more that you do that, the more you start to course correct. And the other tricky thing, and the reason this needs to be a habit that you revisit consistently, I don't necessarily think it needs to be daily, but consistently is the answer changes over time. You know, like what you want shifts over time, the situation you're in or the resources you have or the time you have shifts over time. And so you need to keep coming back to this.

Maybe it's every week, maybe it's once a year, but whatever it is, you need a chance to reflect and review and to try to ask yourself, is there a better way to do this? Am I working on the right thing? Am I working on what actually matters? Am I directing my attention and energy in the highest and best way? Yeah. And how important is accountability then in your mind when we are taking on these new habits for ourselves? Is it important to have self-accountability, buddy accountability,

to have self accountability, buddy accountability, coach accountability, you know, social accountability, do those support habits, forming these consistent habits? And what are the factors are in play there? They definitely support them, or hinder them, potentially, depending on the people around the, you know, the group that you're part of. Ultimately the form of accountability that matters the most is self-accountability. It's almost impossible to exceed the standards that you have for yourself. Like that almost always sets the baseline. You know, if your, your beliefs or your standards are almost always going to be the limit on what you allow yourself to do or what you accept. Now it's easier to stick to high standards in a supportive environment than it is in a, uh, an unsupportive one. So there are a lot of things that can influence whether you want to maintain that standard, but ultimately the standard you hold

yourself to is going to be the most important thing. Now, having said that, I do think that the social environment, the tribes that you belong to influence your habits in a really dramatic way. So if I had to pick one topic that I think is even more important now than I realized when I was writing the book, I would probably say the social environment. You know, we're all part of multiple tribes. Some of those tribes are like really large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be Australian. Some of those tribes are like really large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be Australian. Some of those tribes are small, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street or a member of the local CrossFit gym. But all of those tribes, large and small, they have a set of expectations. You know, they have a set of social norms. They have a set of beliefs that, hey, this

is how you act in this group. This is what's normal and expected. And the more that your habits align with the expectations of the group, the easier it is to stick with them, the more appealing and attractive they are because they signal to the people around you, hey, look, I belong too. I'm part of this. And the more that they go against the grain of the tribes that you belong to, the harder they are to stick to because you start to get criticized for them. And if people have to choose between, you know what, I have habits that I don't really love, but I fit in, I belong, I'm part of something. Or I have the habits that I want to have, but I'm cast out, I'm ostracized, I'm criticized. I mean, the desire to belong will often overpower the desire to improve.

You know, belonging will, the loneliness will lose to belonging. And so you need to get those two things aligned and join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. It is so true. And it doesn't mean you can't make it happen. There's a great example that came up this week. Someone on my team, on our team call said, I asked everyone on the call, I said, what is one thing you want to let go of next year for your life?

Like, what's one thing that's not serving you right now that you want to let go of? And this person said, I want to let go of drinking, drinking alcohol, like, or at least drinking as frequently as I do with the social circles that I'm in. And I thought that was interesting because I've never been drunk in my life. I don't drink. It's not a part of my identity, right? I never did it from sports. And then after sports, I was just like, why? It didn't make sense to me. Nothing good or bad about it. It just wasn't fitting my values personally. I have other problems, which is sugar, right? It's like, I've got that. That's my vice, right? So no judgment here. But I was just like, this never stopped for me, you know, in every until maybe

the last four or five years, or anytime I'd go out in college after college, then the business world, restaurants, networking events, like all that stuff, people would always try to influence me to drinking. And so I had to be so firm in my beliefs and really just not even care at all about it. I just knew that people were going to try to influence me. They would try to say a joke. They'd be, I can't believe you never drank, all these different things. Try to get me to drink for the first time, all this stuff. I knew it happened every single week.

And I just realized, okay, this is going to happen no matter what type of circles I'm in. Unless I find people that do not drink, which is very rare. And which is one of the reasons why with my girlfriend, when we started dating, I was like, listen, it's not going to work. If you like to drink, I don't think I can date you. Like, it doesn't mean you're a bad person. I just don't want to be in that environment for the rest of my life with the person I'm choosing to be with. And so I had to make a conscious decision. And she was like, well, I don't really need it.

Like maybe I'll drink a glass of wine once a month. I'm like, okay, that's fine. But if this is a weekly thing, like it's just not going to work because I've chosen this to be a high priority of my value for my life. of my value for my life. And it's very challenging if there's something you want to do and the people around you are influencing you the other way in terms of accountability.

So I think it doesn't mean you can't do it, but choosing to be around people or groups or tribes like you mentioned that are supportive, even if it's the local CrossFit gym or whatever it might be, find those communities as much as possible. If your family isn't as supportive, even if it's the local CrossFit gym or whatever it might be, find those communities as much as possible. You know, if your family isn't as supportive, find these other micro tribes to support you in that habit form. There's this whole chapter in atomic habits.

It's called the secret to self-control. And one of the surprising things that I came across when I was researching the book is a lot of these self-control studies. We typically will like kind of the standard story we all tell is, oh man, I wish I had the discipline of that person, or I wish I was, you know, as consistent as this professional athlete or whatever. But in fact, um, the people who exhibit the highest self-control are often the people who are tempted the least. That's like the predominant pattern that is common across those different contexts is that they are just cookies in your house. You're not going to eat them. Yeah. And so, you know, you want to stack the deck in your favor and design an environment or join groups and tribes where your desired behavior is normal,

where your desired behavior is easy. And if you do that for yourself, sure, you'll still have to put effort in. Um, but it's going to be so much more productive and easy to stick to the habit, because you're in a space and a context that's designed to support it. And that's maybe one of the biggest hacks or strategies for building better habits is worry a little bit less about having superhuman willpower and worry a little bit more about designing an environment where you don't need willpower at all. You did something really smart, which I think a lot of people aren't willing to do.

You spent 10 years writing every week in an incredible article or articles that were so detailed, so thought out, so researched. And you said, how can I serve the maximum number of people in my niche, and then start branching out into space as well, and do it consistently over a decade, without really making a lot of money, you know, selling other things. And then you came out with a book. And now this doesn't happen for everyone. But then you came out with a book. And it became, you know, a one of the best selling books of, of the most-selling book of last year on Amazon, like you said, top five, I think, this year as well. And it just continues to add value to people.

And I think it's a testament to what you created for a decade plus of adding value. So congratulations on everything, man. Yeah, thank you. That's very nice of you to say. It's been a wild ride. There are a couple things going on there. I do try to operate with this core value of always give value before you ask for value. And if you think about in any business, but like in my business at writing books, the

amount of what it costs a reader or what it costs a customer is not just how much they have to pay for the book. It's also how much time they have to spend reading it or finding it and so on and whatever that total cost is time plus money that's like the amount they have to pay and then whatever I get paid um is what I make but what they get in return should be like well in excess of that so like the value they get minus the time and money they spend, there's some surplus there. And we could call it whatever, but I think about it as goodwill. And I always want to have a surplus of goodwill. And so everything that I create, whether it's an article or a newsletter or the book, I want people to have this feeling that

it's like, oh my gosh, I get so much out of this. Of course, I would want to open the next email. Or of course, I would want to buy the book. It's like such an obvious win for me. So I always try to give value before I ask for value. And I don't think that there's any one way to do this. Like you could start with the book and not have an audience, for example. But the way that I did it is I wanted to focus on building the audience first, building the platform first, give as much value as possible, get the audience as large as possible. And then I was able, you know, I didn't have any credentials, right? Like I don't have any background for, and there was no reason for me to get a book deal. I was just a guy with a blog.

And the only reason that any of the publishers in New York met with me is because I spent that time building the email list and developing the audience. And then that got my foot in the door and got the book deal. And then, of course, you have to execute well on that and create something valuable. And then, you know, ultimately, the book being a hit was sort of just all this potential energy that had been built up for two years or five years or whatever, and then it being released when the book came out. So to a large degree, I kind of think that's the hardest thing about writing books is all the work is upfront. You have to build the audience and write it and edit it and make the marketing plan

and start to record interviews and execute on that. You have to do all of that stuff before you sell a single copy. And most people are just not willing to delay gratification that long. You know, I mean, it's probably depending on how you measure it. Atomic habits took somewhere between like three and six years. Um, definitely at least three years. Cause that's how long it was from when I got the book deal, but I was doing a lot before I even got the book deal. So, you know, it's just a long time to work on something without making a cent from it. And so if you're willing to do that, then you can get a great result. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you

on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.