Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - James Clear: Atomic Habits, How Small Habits Change Your Life | Productivity E265

Starting point is 00:00:00 There's this interview with Michael Jordan where a journalist is kind of asking like, hey, you take all these big shots. What happens if you try to take a game winning shot and you miss? And his reply was like, why would I think about missing a shot I haven't taken yet? This is why one of the key things I talk about in Tomic Habits is getting 1% better each day. Because if you're on a good trajectory, even if it's a very modest gain on any given day, all you need is . He's the author of a New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits.

Starting point is 00:00:24 The frequent speaker at Fortune 500 companies and Habits expert. The truth is, I've struggled with all the same things everybody else struggle. with like do I procrastinate sure all the time do I focus too much on the goal and not enough in the system yeah of course and so at some level atomic habits and the concepts that we talk about today they're all reminders to myself one of the things that a lot of people struggle with they want to build a new habit and they try a little bit but then it can't seem to get going and they feel like what they lack as motivation but often what people really lack as hello young improprieters welcome back to the show and happy new year and speaking of the

Starting point is 00:01:14 new year, we're all trying to form healthy habits right now. And good habits are so important and especially hard to keep this time of year. But luckily for us, we've got an expert on habits for today's show. And he's none other than James Clear. He's going to take us through some surefire ways to build good habits and break bad ones. James Clear is a writer, speaker, and behavioral science expert focused on habits, decision making, and continuous improvement. He's the author of the number one New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits and the popular 321 email newsletter. James, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Hey, thank you so much.

Starting point is 00:01:53 Pleasure to talk to you. So I'm really excited for this. I've been wanting to have you on since 2018, since you released Atomic Habits, and I've interviewed all the greats in this field, Charles Duhigg, BJ Fogg, near A.L. And so really happy to have you on the show to discuss habits as well. Yeah, thank you so much. This will be fun. When I was doing research about you, I found out that you actually had a dream of becoming a professional baseball player when you were growing up.

Starting point is 00:02:21 Can you tell us that story and how those dreams ended up turning out? Sure. So my dad actually did play professionally. He played in the minor leagues for the St. Louis Cardinals. And so, of course, I grew up looking at him and thinking about that. And I played a variety of sports growing up and certainly dreaming of being a professional athlete is nothing unique for a lot of little kids. But yeah, it was definitely something I was excited about. I also dropped about being an astronaut.

Starting point is 00:02:45 So, I don't know, some kind of combo baseball player astronaut. But it was great. Sports were a big part of my life. And I ended up playing baseball all the way through college. When I was in high school, I suffered a real serious injury. I was hit in the face of the baseball bat. And it was an accident. My classmate took a swing and bat struck me right between the eyes,

Starting point is 00:03:05 broke my nose, the bone behind my nose, shattered both eye sockets. and I ended up having a very long recovery. I couldn't drive a car for nine months. It was a year before I got back on the baseball field. I had double vision for weeks. First physical therapy session, I was practicing basic motor patterns, like walking in a straight line.

Starting point is 00:03:23 And it was the first time in my life where I was really forced to start small. You know, like I wanted to just flip a switch and go back to being a normal, young, healthy person. But I had to focus on little things. Like, can I have a good physical therapy session today? or maybe a couple months after the injury, I couldn't do much physically,

Starting point is 00:03:42 but maybe I could study and try to get a good grade on a test, or eventually, like I said, I started driving again or got back on the baseball field. And about a year later, this was the first time where I started working out consistently. First, it was pretty modest, like two days a week. Then eventually it became three or four and training with the team in the gym and all that.

Starting point is 00:04:01 So I ended up barely playing in high school. I wheezzled my way onto a college team, came off the bench my freshman year was the starter my sophomore year team captain junior year and then senior season I ended up being named to the academic All-American team which is about I don't know 30 players around the country and

Starting point is 00:04:17 I never played professionally I don't think there's anything necessarily like heroic about the story or anything but it's just that I look back on it now and I feel like I fulfilled my potential and I think that at some level that's all any of us are looking to do you know we all face challenges in life

Starting point is 00:04:34 and this injury was one of mine and I think we want to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and feel like, despite the cards that I was dealt or the things that I faced, I was able to make the most of what I had available. And your habits are one of, if not the best, way of doing that. And so this injury was a way where I kind of had to live those principles out throughout the next five years and recovering from it. I did not have a language for it at the time.

Starting point is 00:05:00 If you would come up to me, I never would have said some of the stuff I say now, like, oh, I'm just trying to get one percent better each day, or, you know, I was trying to focus on the system and not the goal or things like that. But having that background gave me, I think, a lens for thinking about these concepts and problems.

Starting point is 00:05:15 And 10 years later, when I started writing about habits, I had a little bit to personal experience to draw upon. And I do think that I generally try to write about things that I have to live and the living of the concepts, I think, makes the writing better

Starting point is 00:05:30 because the truth is, I've struggled with all the same things everybody else struggles with. know, like, do I procrastinate? Sure, all the time. You know, if I focus too much on the goal and not enough on the system, yeah, of course. And so at some level, everything that's shared an atomic habits and the concepts that we talk about today, they're all reminders to myself to try to pull myself back to center and to remind myself what to focus on and hopefully build some good habits along the way. I love this story. And I just want to stress to everybody tuning in of how crazy this accident

Starting point is 00:06:00 was when you were younger. I want to read a quote from your book. You say, I have no memory. of the moment of impact. The bat smashed into my face with such force that it crushed my nose into a distorted U-shape. The collision sent the soft tissue of my brain slamming into the inside of my skull. Immediately a wave of swelling surged throughout my head. In a fraction of a second, I had broken nose, multiple skull fractures, and two shattered eye sockets. So that's super heavy. And I know that when I was young, I used to feel like invincible. I used to feel like I could never get sick. Sort of like untouchable. So I have to imagine that having such a near-death experience at a young age must have shaped your mindset about the world at the time.

Starting point is 00:06:41 You mentioned before that you didn't really know it at the time, but do you think it did shape the way that you view the world or how you react to the world? Well, certainly we were all a product of the experiences that we go through, and I definitely learned things from it. And yeah, I look back on it. I think I was very fortunate to have people around me who had a really positive mindset. that my parents, my grandparents. And so they were really encouraging me to focus on the elements

Starting point is 00:07:08 of the situation that I could control, focus on making a little bit of progress. One of the first things that I said when I regained consciousness the next day was that I never asked for this. Well, you can really spiral and get into this pity mentality or victim mentality, start to feel like, why did this happen to me? And they did a good job of helping me cut that off and focus much more on the positive side of things and how I was improving each day. And I never really let my mind go to a place where it was like, oh, what if I never recover fully or what if this is permanent or what if, you know, I don't know, something terrible comes to this. I'm reminded of that there's this interview with Michael Jordan where a journalist is kind of asking

Starting point is 00:07:45 like, hey, you take all these big shots, like, you know, what happens if you try to take the game winning shot and you miss? And his reply was something like, why would I think about missing a shot I haven't taken yet? And I always like phrases like that. I'm not going to sit here and worry about all the things that could potentially be that will probably never turn out. I'm going to focus instead on what I can control in the moment, how I can stay positive right now and continue to make a little bit of progress. And then we'll see where that ends up taking me. But I'm not going to sit here and try to predict the future or worry about what will or won't happen.

Starting point is 00:08:14 And can you talk to us about the small habits that you took in that time, not knowing that you were following your habit formula? But what small habits or what consistent actions did you take so that you could eventually become a picture? again? Well, obviously a lot of them were physical. So early on, it's just physical therapy. What the doctors and physical therapists are asking me to do, trying to do a good job of taking care of myself and recovering and so on. About a year later, it shifted much more back into baseball, rebuilding skills, trying to regain some of the time that I'd lost and get back to where I was before. And then eventually, it became more about strength training, continuing to grow into my body, habits that were related to the mental side of the game and confidence and all that.

Starting point is 00:08:58 And I would say each of those elements sort of came along as each year passed. And it really wasn't until five or six years later that I felt like I was more fulfilling my overall potential in what I had. And so it was a long, slow road, and it was not any single habit. I mean, it was the collection of many habits. And I say this at the end of atomic habits, which is the holy grail of behavior change is not a single 1% improvement or a single small habit, it is a thousand of them. And that's really what I mean when I talk about building a better system. It's not about making one change and thinking that

Starting point is 00:09:30 will transform your life. It's a commitment to making many small improvements, accumulating them and aggregating them together, and then trusting that collectively as a system, you're going to end up in a really strong and positive place. And that's what you call habit stacking, right? Well, Habit stacking is a specific strategy that you can use for helping to do what I'm describing here. So let me just zoom back for a second before I share that. My view is that there is no one way to build better habits. There are many ways. And my job is to lay all the tools out on the table.

Starting point is 00:10:02 And if I can give you a more full toolkit, then you can sit there and decide, you know what? I think for my situation or for this circumstance, what I need is the wrench or what I need is the hammer or what I need is the screwdriver and so on. So I'm trying to equip readers or empower readers with more strategies that they can use for dealing with the issues that they face and the habits they want to build. Habit stacking is one strategy that you can use. So you mentioned that you've interviewed BJ Fogg before. So this is an idea that comes from BJ. So he's a professor at Stanford. And he has this concept, this little tiny habits recipe.

Starting point is 00:10:34 And the insight was really smart. He says a lot of the habits that you're trying to build, they can be more successful if they're linked to or connected built on top of. habits that you already have. So as an example, let's say that you're already in the habit of making a cup of coffee every morning and you want to get into the habit of meditating. Well, you could stack those habits together. So your habit stack could be something like, after I make my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds.

Starting point is 00:11:01 So now you have this very clear place where you're inserting the new behavior. And this is one of the things that a lot of people struggle with. They want to build a new habit and they try a little bit, but then it doesn't quite work out or they can't seem to get going. And they feel like what they lack as motivation, but often what people really lack is clarity. They don't know clearly when and where the habit is going to occur. We kind of wake up and go through life with this vague sense,

Starting point is 00:11:27 this general notion of, I hope I feel motivated to work out today, or I hope I feel motivated to write today. And by choosing a habit stack or by choosing a specific place to insert the behavior into your life, now it's not ambiguous anymore. You know exactly. I meditate for one minute after I make the cup of coffee. Now, once you get good at this, you can start to chain them together.

Starting point is 00:11:47 So you could come up with a little morning routine, something like, I make my cup of coffee. After I make my cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds. After I meditate for 60 seconds, I will write my to-do list for the day. After I write my to-do list for the day, I will immediately begin working on the first item. So now you have this little stack where nothing takes more than 30 seconds apiece, but you're only six minutes into your day and you already feel like you have some momentum. and you're moving forward. So that's one of the many strategies that you can use for building new

Starting point is 00:12:16 habits. Awesome. And this is basically a teaser to the later half of our conversations. I'm excited to dig into all those strategies. But first, James, you are a very famous author and public speaker. And your main topic is building habits. And before you started writing about habits, you were actually a practitioner of studying habits yourself, used to do personal experiments and write down your notes. So what first got you interested in habit formation? Well, when it really started early on, it was just a word document that I had for myself. And it started as some notes. It was kind of like James's thoughts on habits. And eventually that document got to be like 60 pages long. It was just a collection of different thoughts and notes and things I was observing. And once it got to be that long,

Starting point is 00:13:02 I was like, man, I should publish at least something of this. I should like try to take a little piece of this and turned into an article or something. And so I started writing on Jamesclair.com and posting these short blog post there, two or three thousand words, and I would do that every Monday and Thursday. And it was really that writing habit of publishing every Monday and Thursday for the first three years

Starting point is 00:13:23 that launched my career. That was really the thing that started at all. So it began as like a personal interest, and then within about three months, some of those were going over well, and I was getting a little bit of feedback from readers. Not a ton, but just, you know, I would write something.

Starting point is 00:13:36 I get a few emails from people who liked it. And I was like, okay, clearly I'm, there's a little bit of signal here. You know, I was like onto something and the feedback was better than some of the projects I had worked on previously. And now I was interested in it not just for me, but also for the reader's sake. And so I just started exploring that topic and that content more and more, trying to come up with interesting strategies, share useful stories. My format that I settled into after the first year was a James Clear article is an article

Starting point is 00:14:06 that starts out with an interesting story, probably an unexpected one or that leads to some kind of insight that you're not really thinking it's going to head toward. And then I unpack that main insight or principle. And then after that, I followed up with a bunch of really practical examples of what it might look like to use that in your daily life. So that general strategy or that general format of story principle insight or story principle action step. I followed that a lot for most of my articles. And then eventually that led to the interest of agents and publishers, and ultimately the book deal that led to Atomic Habits. Amazing. And you also started an email newsletter list, correct?

Starting point is 00:14:44 Yeah, that's actually probably one of my real skills. I didn't know this at the time, but it turns out that I was pretty good at building an email list. So I started writing weekly. I started the email list from the beginning, and it grew quickly. That was one of the main signals, probably the main signal that I used for whether things were going well or not,

Starting point is 00:15:03 was I adding more email subscribers? And over the first two years, it became one of the fastest growing blogs online at that time. And by the time I signed the book deal, got 220,000 subscribers. By the time the book came out, it was closer to 450 or 500,000. And now, you know, we're almost 3 million people read the newsletter each week. It's so incredible. And email newsletters are so underrated. I've had so many accomplished people come on this show that really started off their whole careers

Starting point is 00:15:32 based off this email newsletter list, Jenna Coochie. Amy Porterfield, like the list just goes on and on of these business influencers who really started with an email newsletter list. What does the value of your list mean to you today? How would you value your email newsletter list today? Three million subscribers you said. It's the backbone of my business. The email subscribers are the real audience. Everybody else, people who follow me on social media or read a post or browse something online or come through a Google search, I consider that to be the equivalent of like window shopping or like walking around inside a store and then heading back out. They're engaging with it. They're seeing it. But the people who go to the cash register and

Starting point is 00:16:13 actually check out, that's your real audience. And for me, those are my email subscribers. So everything is basically based around the email list. Like my whole website is optimized for that. My social media is optimized for that. It is all designed to drive more people back to, email so that I can have an ongoing relationship with them. The great thing about email is how flexible it is. I can send whatever message I want to them. So if I start a podcast, I could tell them about it. If I launch a new book, I could tell them about it. If I have some interesting thing going on on on Instagram, I could tell them about it. Whatever you're doing or whatever project you're working on, you can use email to relay that message. And that is not necessarily true,

Starting point is 00:16:54 or at least you get into more convoluted ways of trying to do that on various social media platforms or other ways of communicating. So I think all of that to say, I value email really highly. It's been the number one priority for me from the start, and I would say it remains the number one priority now. I totally agree. I think it's such an important channel. And I think the only other channel in this digital space that compares to it

Starting point is 00:17:17 is really podcast because you also sort of own your feed, own your subscribers. It's a little bit similar. but email, in my opinion, to your point, is the best still. Podcasting is great, and probably the connection with the audience is deeper. You know, it feels like you're having a personal conversation. The challenge with podcasts are they are much harder to grow than an email list, and you don't have a direct link that you can click on.

Starting point is 00:17:40 And so it's harder to drive people to a particular page. You need to either read out a URL or try to come up with some alternate way of getting the traffic to go somewhere. So relative to the size, if you have to the size, like 100,000 email subscribers or 100,000 podcast listeners, I would think almost always you'll be able to drive more people with the email than with the podcast, but they both serve a purpose. And podcasting probably leads to a deeper connection, even if it is a little harder to drive traffic to a particular place. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture.

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Starting point is 00:20:43 good for engagements and people are super engaged, but when it comes to clicks and conversions, email is where it's at. So let's talk about the Habits Academy. So in 2017, you launched the Habits Academy. It's a premier training platform for organizations and individuals interested in building better habits for life and work. What did you learn from the Habits Academy and your experience with that in terms of what it takes to make habits work for the real world? Well, it's taken a lot of different shapes. So it started as a series of workshops that I did online. So I I would run a workshop every quarter. One would be about procrastination, another one would be about habit formation, another one would be about

Starting point is 00:21:19 productivity or whatever. And eventually those workshops and the material that I put together became the start for the Habits Academy. And then Habits Academy turned into this larger portfolio of classes and segments and learning material about building better habits. And I had that run for a couple of years and a lot of different businesses and teams and stuff went through it. And then we just recently have closed it down because I partner with Masterclass to create an updated version of my habits training material. And so the most recent

Starting point is 00:21:53 versions on Masterclass. But then now I am taking a lot of the ideas that I have built upon from the Habits Academy and all these other sources and a lot of the lessons that I've learned from speaking to at this point, I think 200 plus Fortune 500 companies and transform. that into a habits app. So we have a new app called Adams, AT-O-M-S, and it's all about habit tracking, tracking, tracking your habits, and getting daily lessons and insights from me about building good habits and breaking bad ones. And so there have been many different things that have come out of that work, but the app is now like the central holding ground for all of that. Oh, awesome. And shout out to Masterclass or a long-term sponsor. If you guys want to discount, go to masterclass.com

Starting point is 00:22:37 slash profiting. So let's talk about your book atomic habits. Obviously, it was like one of the most viral business books of all time. I remember I was going to Amazon reviews. And I saw that you have almost 120,000 reviews by far, the most Amazon reviews that I've ever seen on a book. So congratulations on all its success. And when you put this book out, you said that it's like an operating manual. You didn't want it to feel like an academic research paper. So why did you feel like you needed to make habits more accessible to your readers? Well, partially, that's my style. The thing that I care about the most is can I actually use this in daily life?

Starting point is 00:23:18 I'm kind of scientifically minded. I have an undergraduate degree in biomechanics. So, you know, I was always sort of like a science guy. And I like that part of it. I really want the ideas to resonate and to align with what the research on the topic says. but as an individual, what I care about the most is can I use these ideas in daily life? And so that was part of my big draw or my big interest in the topic. And then I also think it's a big part of the value that I provide.

Starting point is 00:23:46 I don't do the research. I'm not a researcher. I'm not an academic. I'm also not a journalist, so I don't really do like a lot of the interviewing and whatnot. So if you look at some of the other people that are in the space, they do a better job of those things than I do. my value that I provide is being a bridge between the academic research or the reporting and journalistic work and daily life. So how do we take these concepts and turn them into something that I can use in my daily life and work? And that was one of my guiding lights as I wrote atomic habits.

Starting point is 00:24:17 I was just constantly coming back to this question, how can I make this actionable? How can I make this practical? How do I make this useful for people? What would it look like to take this and use it on a day-to-day basis? And so the whole book is designed around that concept. I also felt like there are many great books that have been written about habits, and there are many more that will come in the future. But one of the gaps that was in the market was that there were a lot of books that talked about

Starting point is 00:24:42 what habits were or how they worked, but there weren't as many that talked about specifically what to do if you want to build them. And I was like, well, that's a gap that I can fill. So I think the combination of those things led to that style. And did you realize, when you put this out, did you have any idea that you would have one of the most viral business books of all time? Well, I don't think any author could reasonably expect an outcome like that. Of course, I hoped that it would do well. I sort of had three different levels in my mind.

Starting point is 00:25:11 My like, I won't feel like this is a failure. This will have been worth my time if I sell 5,000 copies. That was my baseline. Then I had what I really wanted to do and what I thought I could do, which is I thought I could sell 100,000 copies. Between my email list and working really hard and doing a lot of interviews, I feel like it might be a little bit of a stretch, but I think I can figure out a way to do that.

Starting point is 00:25:31 That was my target and what I was shooting for. And then my big dream was, well, what if it could sell a million copies ever? A big question here is like over what time frame? A lot of people talk about selling a million copies, but it's like over what? A year or over 25 years? Those are very different numbers. And so I was like, well, if I gave myself 25 years, maybe I could figure out how to do that. And so those were the numbers I had in mind.

Starting point is 00:25:54 Now, of course, I never expected for it to sell 15 million copies in five years. But I'm just glad that I was able to do the best. I could and to produce something useful. And then really, it's been up to the readers to determine the outcome of the book. My job as a creator is not to judge the work. My job is to do the work. My job is to try to produce the best thing that I can and share it with people and hopefully it's useful. And then it's actually the reader's job to determine whether it's successful or not. In a sense, I wrote the book, but I didn't create the success of it. The readers did by sharing it with other people. I wrote it, but I didn't sell 15 million copies. The readers did. They're the ones who

Starting point is 00:26:34 recommended it to their friends and family. They're the ones who bought it as gifts for people. They're the ones who told somebody about it at a party. So it's actually by producing something really useful and driving word of mouth that the audience figures out how far this is going to go. With the success of your book and all the feedback that you've received with all these reviews and all the fans that you have, do you ever think about, okay, I've got all these different ideas for like a sequel. Are you thinking about another book? Yeah. I don't want to write a book just because I can get a book deal. I'm only going to write a book because I have something to say. There's a balance between all of this. I have a lot of people ask, oh, are you worried about a second book?

Starting point is 00:27:13 Like did not following up, you know, the sophomore slump sort of thing or like it not being as good as Atomic Habits. And my reply is, I don't think it needs to be like that. Atomic Habits can just be a project that went really well. And I did my best and tried really hard. and I'm glad that it's gone well and it's been useful for people. And now I can move on to the next thing and do my best and try really hard. And hopefully that'll be useful too. I do feel like I have written my habits book. So I don't think I have multiple books about habits in me.

Starting point is 00:27:42 But I will probably write about something that plays nicely with habits or is kind of adjacent to it. So I don't know. I'm exploring different ideas right now. I kind of have three different manuscripts and various states of disarray. So we'll see. But I'm slowly working on it. Awesome. I'm sure whatever it is, it's going to be a breakout success just like atomic habits was.

Starting point is 00:28:02 So the heart of your book, Atomic Habits, is that the idea that small habits can make a big difference. Why don't we start there? Why do you believe that's true? Well, time will magnify whatever you feed it. So if you have good habits, even if they're little and seem relatively minor in any given day, you'll continue to put yourself in a stronger position day after day. In many ways, if you have good habits, you're on the right trajectory. And so all you need is time.

Starting point is 00:28:29 You just need some patience. But 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 this idea that small habits can make an enormous difference, what it really is about is about emphasizing trajectory rather than position. There's a lot of discussion about position in life, how much money's in your bank account, what's the current number on the scale, what's the stock price, what are the quarterly earnings. We have like all these ways of measuring your current position. And then if the measurement

Starting point is 00:29:00 isn't what you wanted it to be or you haven't achieved what you set out to achieve, you kind of start judging yourself or feeling guilty for it or you feel bad about it. And what I'm encouraging is to say, listen, just for a minute, let's stop worrying so much about our current position and instead focus a little bit more on our current trajectory. And this is why one of the key things I talk about in Tom of Cabot is getting 1% better each day. Are you getting 1% better? 1% worse. Is the arrow pointed up and to the right or have you flatlined? Because if you're on a good trajectory, even if it's a very modest gain on any given day, all you need is time. And if you're on a bad trajectory, even if you're in a pretty strong position right now, it's not going to end well.

Starting point is 00:29:40 And so building better habits, making these small improvements, it's really about getting you on a path that can lead to where you want to go. I really like that question of, can my current habits carry me to my desired future. You know, and if they can, then great. Maybe you just need to be patient and let the days work for you. But if they can't, then something needs to change about your trajectory. And so your habits are one of the things that set you on that path and determine how far you're going to go and whether you're improving day in and day out.

Starting point is 00:30:11 And so for all of those reasons, I like to refer to habits as the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies with compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them across time. Many of your outcomes in life, many of the results that we also badly want to have, they're kind of like a lagging measure of the habits that precede them.

Starting point is 00:30:31 So your bank account is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your reading and learning habits. Even little stuff, like the amount of clutter in your living room is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. And so we also badly want better results in life,

Starting point is 00:30:48 but the somewhat ironic thing is that the results are not actually the thing that needs to change. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves. Adjust the habits and you'll be set on a different path and carried to a different destination naturally. So this concept of getting 1% better each day, it's really a philosophy, an attitude, an approach of showing up, trying to make some small improvement and trusting that that little improvement can compound something much greater over a broad span of time. Yeah, and something that you briefly mentioned is that it can actually hurt you in the reverse. If you've got bad habits or if you make mistakes over time, that can also compound as well. Sure. I think we all have felt this. Habits are a double-edged sword. They can either build you up or they can cut you down. And I think that's a good reason for understanding what a habit is and how it works so that you can be the architect of your habits and not the victim of them.

Starting point is 00:31:43 A lot of people feel like they're the victim of their habits. They're happening to them. They don't even realize what they're doing and they turn around like, oh, I can't believe I did that again. And if you understand how a habit works and the various strategies that you can use to design them, now all of a sudden you can take control of the process and you can start to design your behavior to benefit you rather than hinder you. Happy New Year, Yap, gang. I just love the unique energy of the new year. It's all about fresh starts. And fresh starts not only feel possible, but also feel encouraged. And if you've been thinking about starting a business, this is your sign. There's no better time than right now.

Starting point is 00:32:22 2026 can be the year that you build something that is truly yours, the year where you take control over your career, and it starts with Shopify. I've built plenty of my own businesses on Shopify, including my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. So it's a two-day workshop. People buy their tickets on Shopify. And then my mastermind subscription is also on Shopify. I built my site quickly in just a couple of days, payments for setup super easily, and none of the technical stuff slowed me down like it usually does because Shopify is just so intuitive. And this choice of using Shopify helped me scale my masterclass to over $500,000 in revenue in our first year. And I'm launching some new podcast courses and can't wait to launch them on Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell

Starting point is 00:33:06 online and in person, just like the millions of entrepreneurs that they power. You can build your dream story using hundreds of beautiful templates and setup is fast with built-in, AI tools that help you write product descriptions and edit photos. Plus, marketing is built in so you can create email and social campaigns easily. And as you grow, Shopify can scale right along with your business. In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash profiting. Go to Shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, hear your first This new year was Shopify by your side.

Starting point is 00:33:49 What's up, Yap, gang? If you're a serious entrepreneur like me, you know your website is one of the first touch points every single cold customer has with your brand. Think about that for a second. When people are searching on Google, everybody who interacts with your brand first is seeing your dot-com initially.

Starting point is 00:34:04 But here's a problem. Too many companies treat their website like a formality instead of the gross tool that it should be. At Yap Media, we are guilty of this. I am really due for an upgrade from my website, and I'm planning on doing that with Framer this year, because small changes can take days with my other platform and simple updates require tickets. And suddenly, we're just leaving so much opportunity on the table. And that's why so many teams, including mine, are turning to Framer.

Starting point is 00:34:29 It's built for teams who refuse to let their website slow them down. Your designers and marketers get full ownership with real-time collaboration, everything you need for SEO and analytics, with integrated A-B testing. I love that. I love testing and making sure that we've got the best performing assets on the page. You make a change, hit publish, and it's live in seconds. Whether you're launching a new site, testing landing pages, or migrating your full.com, Framer makes going from idea to live site fast and simple.

Starting point is 00:34:58 Learn how you can get more out of your dot com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at Framer.com slash profiting for 30% off a Framer pro annual plan. That's 30% off in 2026. Again, that's Framer.com slash profiting for 30% off. Framer.com slash profiting. Rules and restrictions apply. Young and profiters. I know there's so many people tuning in right now that end their workday wondering why certain

Starting point is 00:35:26 tasks take forever, why they're procrastinating certain things, why they don't feel confident in their work, why they feel drained and frustrated and unfulfilled. But here's the thing you need to know. It's not a character flaw that you're feeling this way. It's actually your natural wiring. And here's the thing. When it comes to burnout, it's really about the type of work that you're doing. Some work gives you energy and some work simply drains you. So it's key to understand your six types of working genius. The working genius assessment or the six types of working genius framework

Starting point is 00:35:58 was created by Patrick Lensioni and he is a business influencer and author. And the working genius framework helps you identify what you're actually built for and the work that you're not. Now, let me tell you a story. Before I uncovered my working genius, which is galvanizing and invention. So I like to rally people and I like to invent new things. I used to be really shameful and had a lot of guilt around the fact that I didn't like enablement, which is one of my working frustrations. So I actually don't like to support people one-on-one. I don't like it when people slow me down. I don't like handholding. I like to move fast, invent, rally people, inspire. But what I do need to do is ensure that somebody else can fill the

Starting point is 00:36:35 enablement role, which I do have, Kate on my team. So working genius helps you uncover these genius Gaps, helps you work better with your team, helps you reduce friction, helps you collaborate better, understand why people are the way that they are. It's helped me restructure my team, put people in the spots that they're going to really excel, and it's also helped me in hiring. Working Genius is absolutely amazing. I'm obsessed with this model. So if you guys want to take the Working Genius assessment and get 20% off, you can use code

Starting point is 00:37:01 profiting. Go to workinggenius.com. Again, that's workinggenius.com. Stop guessing. Start working in your genius. Yes. Let's talk about the different types of habits. You talk about outcome-based habits versus identity-based habits. Can you talk to us about the difference between the two? Well, outcome-based or results-focused or results-based, like, this is usually where people start when they want to change their behavior. One of the first things you ask is, like, well, what do I want to achieve? And it could be things like, I want to reduce stress or I want to lose a certain amount of weight in the next six months or whatever. Like, we all have stuff like that. I want to double my income. And then the natural next step is, well, if that's what I want to do, let me come up with a plan for doing that.

Starting point is 00:37:44 If I want to double my income, maybe I need to make 10 sales calls a day. Or if I want to reduce stress, then maybe I need to meditate every morning. And so usually the conversation stops there and we implicitly in our mind, without really saying it, but we just sort of think, you know, if I'm able to do this and get this result, I'll be the kind of person I want to be. or I'll be happier or I'll be more satisfied. I'll have fulfilled what I wanted. And what I'm encouraging is actually to say,

Starting point is 00:38:12 let's start that process in the reverse. So let's start with not what do I wish to achieve, but who do I wish to become? Who is the type of person I want to become? This is what I call identity-based habits. What is the identity that I want to have? And then which habits reinforce that identity. For example, you could say in the results

Starting point is 00:38:31 or outcome-based mindset, I want to write a bestselling book. But the identity-based mindset is, I am a writer. What is the type of habit that reinforces being a writer? And as long as you're doing that, you can start to feel successful.

Starting point is 00:38:46 Or you could take a very classic example. You know, getting in shape is probably one of the most common habits. On the one hand, you could say, I want to lose 30 pounds in the next six months. And that leads you to a whole sort of array of habits that you're trying to build and things you're trying to do.

Starting point is 00:39:01 But if instead you start by asking yourself are saying, I want to become the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. That's my identity. Well, now you can see how different those two things are. I mean, if you're just trying to focus on being the kind of person who doesn't miss workouts, you can feel good even if you do five pushups. That helps feed that identity. So ultimately, the reason that I think that habits really matter,

Starting point is 00:39:24 we often talk about habits as mattering because of the external results they'll get you. Habits will help you get fit or be more productive or make more money. or reduce stress. And that's true. Habits can do all that stuff and that's great. But I think the real reason, the true reason that habits matter is that every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. So no, doing one push-up does not transform your body, but it does cast a vote for I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And no, writing one sentence may not finish the novel, but it does cast a vote for I am a writer. And individually, those are small things, but collective.

Starting point is 00:40:03 if you keep showing up in small ways day in and day out, you keep casting votes on the pile, you build up this body of evidence for being that kind of person. And so your habits are how you embody a particular identity. You know, every day that you make your bed, you embody the identity of someone who's clean and organized. Every day that you study for 20 minutes, you embody the identity of someone who's studious. And doing it one time probably doesn't mean that much. But if you do it every day, after six months or a year or two years, at some point you cross this invisible line and you're like, well, I guess that is part of who I am. And I think this is ultimately where we're trying to get to, which is you take pride in that aspect of your identity. I'm a runner,

Starting point is 00:40:46 I'm a writer, I'm a meditator, I'm the type person who finishes what they start, whatever it is, you take pride in that being part of your story. And once you take pride in it, you'll fight to maintain the habit. If you take pride in the size of your biceps, you never skip armaday at the gym. or if you take pride and how your hair looks, you have this long hair care routine. You do it every day. And so it's really trying to get to the point where you see that as part of your story.

Starting point is 00:41:09 And so true behavior change is really identity change. It's really getting you to shift the narrative you have about who you are and what's normal for you. Yeah, so as I think about this, the identity aspect of this is what makes it long term. When you believe that you are changing into this different type of person, it's more sustainable,

Starting point is 00:41:29 it's more long-term results, whereas if you have a goal, it's more like short-term. Can you talk to us about the problem of goals and also the goals related to our happiness and unhappiness? I think you're right. I think that goals can be really useful, but they tend to be good for clarity and motivation figuring out what optimized for, particularly in the short run. Let's say somebody decides to have a goal of running a 5K, all right? So they sign up for the race, they train for a few months, and then the race comes and they run,

Starting point is 00:41:56 and now the goal is gone. and so they don't run and then they turn around they look around and spend like three months they're like oh I haven't run you know in three months now and you get this

Starting point is 00:42:06 yo yo effect this back and forth pattern a lot with habits where people will pick a goal and they kind of work toward it and then the goal passes and then but if you have the identity of I am a runner

Starting point is 00:42:16 well you might still train for the 5K but once the race is over you're like well this is just kind of part of who I am that's part of what I do and so you keep running each day and of course it doesn't always work that perfectly cleanly

Starting point is 00:42:26 but that is the general idea is that once you start to see it as part of your normal day, as part of who you are, you have every reason in the world to continue with it because this is just part of how you act. The other thing with goals

Starting point is 00:42:39 is that we're always promising to ourselves that we'll be happy once we do something, we'll be happy once we complete the 5K, once we finish the book, once we make a certain amount of money, and if instead you make it more about the identity, now you can be happy in the moment. You can be happy any time that you are running because that's part of who you are and you feels

Starting point is 00:43:01 good to be aligned with the type of person that you want to be. It feels good to perform a habit that reinforces your desired identity. And so you can feel good in the moment while also working toward the long-term outcome. And I think that's another reason why I like that strategy. Yeah, makes total sense. Okay, let's move into the process of building a habit. You divide it into four simple steps, cue, craving, response, and reward. could you go over that at a high level with us?

Starting point is 00:43:28 So every habit goes through these four stages, cue, craving, response, reward. The cue is kind of something you notice, like maybe you see a plate of cookies on the counter. It's a visual cue. The next thing it happens, there's a craving. Your brain predicts, oh, that cookie will be sweet, sugary, tasty, enjoyable.

Starting point is 00:43:42 And so that gives you the motivation or the desire to walk over, pick it up and take a bite. So that's the response. And then finally, there's a reward. Oh, it is in fact, sweet, sugary, tasty, enjoyable. Now, not every behavior in life is rewarding. right? Sometimes things have a cost or a consequence. Sometimes they're just kind of neutral.

Starting point is 00:43:59 They don't really mean a whole lot. But if a behavior's not rewarding, if there isn't some sort of positive emotional signal associated with the action, it's really hard for it to become a habit. So your brain needs some reason to remember it and say, hey, this is worthwhile. You should repeat those steps in the future.

Starting point is 00:44:15 So you can kind of imagine those four stages, cue, craving response, reward, like going around a clock. And the more that you go around and around and around, the tighter the behavior becomes. Now, what I like to do is operationalize this. So how do we turn this into something actionable? So if we take those four stages, and that's kind of the real brief overview of the science of habits.

Starting point is 00:44:36 If you're interested in much more, obviously, atomic habits covers that in much greater depth. But I've come up with what I call the four laws of behavior change. And there's one for each of those four steps. So the first law is to make it obvious. You want the cues of your good habits to be obvious, available, visible, easy to see. easier it is to see or get your attention, the more likely are to act on it. The second law is to make it attractive, the more attractive or appealing a habit is, the more motivating or enticing it is, the more you're going to feel compelled to do it. The third law is to make it easy, the easier, more convenient, frictionless, simple a habit is, the more likely it is to be performed.

Starting point is 00:45:14 And then the fourth and final law is to make it satisfying. More satisfying or enjoyable a habit is, the more rewarding or pleasurable it is, the more likely you are to repeat it. So make it obvious. Make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying. Now, there are many ways to do each of those four things, and atomic habits covers all that in much greater detail. But that's like the big picture view.

Starting point is 00:45:33 And so if you're sitting there, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, you know, I have this habit. I keep trying to build it, but I keep procrastinating. Or maybe like in a business context, you might think, you know, we have this behavior. We keep asking people to do it, but they only do it every now and then. You can just go through those four laws and ask yourself, how can I make the behavior more obvious?

Starting point is 00:45:52 How can I make it more attractive? How can I make it easier? How can I make it more satisfying? And the answers to those questions will reveal different steps that you can take to increase the odds that the habit's going to occur. So you can sort of use those four laws of behavior change as a guiding principle for trying to shape the habits in your life.

Starting point is 00:46:12 I love that. And by the way, guys, his class is also on Masterclass. I'll link that in the show notes. It's 10 different video lessons. It's awesome. So I'd highly recommend you guys check out Atomic Habits and James Clear's class on Masterclass. Okay, let's talk about breaking bad habits before we go. I know we only have a couple of minutes here.

Starting point is 00:46:29 Can you just walk us through how we can break a bad habit? Sure. Building a good habit, just to recap from a minute ago, make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying. If you want to break a bad habit, then you just invert those four. So rather than making it obvious, make it invisible. Unsubscribe from emails, don't keep junk food in the house. if you're trying to follow a new diet,

Starting point is 00:46:50 don't follow a bunch of food bloggers on Instagram, reduce exposure to the queue. Rather than making it attractive, make it unattractive. I will say this is the trickiest one, the hardest one when it comes to breaking bad habits. And I think it's better to focus on some of the others. Rather than making it easy, make it difficult. So increase friction, add steps between you and the behavior.

Starting point is 00:47:10 You can imagine if there's a bag of potato chips right next to you in the pantry, that's a lot easier to eat than if they're three miles down the road at the grocery store. so the more friction between you and an action, the less likely it is to occur. As another example of that, one of my little habits that I try to break is checking my phone all the time. And it's tricky because phones are useful. They can serve a purpose. And so what I've come up with is I leave my phone in another room until lunch each day. Now, I can't always do that, but I can probably do it seven out of ten days. And I have a home office. So my phone is only like 30 seconds away, but I never go get it. And I always think that's so interesting. If it was right

Starting point is 00:47:49 next to me, I check it every three minutes. So I wanted to check it in that sense, but I never wanted it so bad that I would walk 30 seconds down the hallway to go get it. So introducing a little bit of friction can often reduce the habit to the desire degree. And then the final version for breaking a bad habit is rather than make it satisfying, which is what you want to do for good habits, make it unsatisfying, layer on some kind of cost or consequence to the action. So to break a a bad habit, make it invisible, make it unattractive, make it difficult, make it unsatisfying. And again, there are many ways to do each of those four things, but that gives you the big picture of you.

Starting point is 00:48:25 Well, James, we are out of time. We had so much more to cover. I'll make sure that I cover as much as I can in the outro. You guys also have access to his book. You guys can get masterclass. I'll put all the links in our show notes. James, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Great.

Starting point is 00:48:42 Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Man, my time with James Clear was cut so short today, and honestly, I'm so bummed about it. I had so many questions prepared for him, and we really only hit the tip of the iceberg with him. But I wanted to recap some of the wonderful insights he offered, and I can cover some of the content that we didn't get to cover in the conversation in this outro. First, I love how he talks about habits as the compound interest to self-improvement. The effects of good habits build on each other.

Starting point is 00:49:16 other and multiply the longer you keep them. Good results are a lagging measure of our good habits. You fix the inputs to the process and the outputs will fix themselves. And for that same reason, James says it can be counterproductive to be focused on outcomes or even on your goals. Goals represent a promise to ourselves that we'll be happy once we do something, once we finish a project or once we make a certain amount of money. As a result, it's hard to be happy in the moment, to be happy with the process and the journey. But James says that if you make your habits a part of your identity, then you will be far more fruitful.

Starting point is 00:49:55 Every action you take is a step toward becoming the type of person you wish to become. In his book in Masterclass, James lays out some great techniques for building these types of identity reinforcing habits. Those include habits stacking, which is identifying a current habit you already do each day and then stacking your new desired behavior on top. For instance, meditating for two minutes while you wait for your coffee to brew. Temptation bundling, linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

Starting point is 00:50:26 For example, watching your favorite Netflix show while you get in a 30-minute run on the treadmill. The two-minute rule, when you start a new habit, just do it for two minutes. Read before bed each night becomes read one page and then hopefully you get some momentum. And finally, commitment devices. A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that controls your actions in the future. For example, to minimize your meal portion, ask the waiter in advance to split your meal and box half of it to go. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. Want to create another healthy habit that will benefit yourself and others.

Starting point is 00:51:02 Every time you listen and enjoy an episode of this podcast, share it with your friends and family. Just hit that share button and text a link to this episode to someone that you know who you think could benefit from our content. And why not drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts while you're at it? Help us make sure that others can find us and create their own listening habits. You can find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. Before we go, I did want to shout out my amazing production team, our ad ops and sales team, our social media team.

Starting point is 00:51:34 You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for all your hard work in 2023. And I'm really excited for this upcoming year and excited to see all. of your hard work. This is your host, Halitaha, aka the podcast Princess, signing off.

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - James Clear: Atomic Habits, How Small Habits Change Your Life | Productivity E265

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