Habits That'll Help You Not Waste Another Year Of Your Life w/ James Clear EP 1372

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It's true that luck and randomness and misfortune. It's true that all that stuff is going to happen to you and you can't control everything every card that's dealt to you in life. But it's also true that you influence the situation and so the only welcome.

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Sure.

When it comes to setting and accomplishing them, what do you think is the difference between successful and unsuccessful people on broad terms.

Broadly speaking? You know, obviously every situation is different, so it's hard to say for sure. But I do think there are some patterns or some useful things that you can kind of keep in mind. So one of the framings that I talk about in Atomic Habits is a lot of the time, everybody starts this conversation with, what results do I want? So people set New Year's resolutions, and they're like, I want to be the kind of person who loses a certain amount of weight, or I want to be the type of person who makes, you know, a certain amount of money next year or whatever. And so they set this. This outcome that they want. And they think, okay, if I'm going to lose £40, then I need to come up with a plan. So I'm going to follow this diet, and I'm going to go to the gym four days a week. And so we have the result that we want, and we got the plan for achieving it. And most of the time, the conversation stops there. We just sort of assume, hey, if I do this thing and follow through on this plan, then I'll be the person I want to be, is kind of the implicit assumption, like, I'll be more like who I hope I will be. And my argument is, let's flip that on its head and start by asking ourselves, not what do I want to achieve, but rather, who do I wish to become? You know, who is the type of person I want to be? How do I want to be spending my days? What's the kind of identity I want to have? And then you can ask yourself, what habits reinforce that identity? So maybe rather than saying, I want to lose 40 pounds and I'll go to the gym four days a week, you say, I want to become the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And you can see how that gives you a different frame or a different lens. You know, suddenly it becomes a little bit less about what you do in the gym on any particular day. And it's a little bit more about just showing up and being that kind of person and being consistent. And you give yourself permission to still feel good, even if you only have five minutes to work out that day because you're reinforcing that identity rather than, you know, a lot of the time we do this weird thing with goals, which is we say, I want to lose 40 pounds in the next six months. And then six months passes and you've only lost 17 pounds. And so you feel like a failure because you didn't hit this arbitrary target that you set in the beginning. But in fact, you should be feeling great. Cause you're making progress. You know, like, you should be feeling really good about the fact that you're in a better position now than you were six months ago. And so goals kind of like play with our minds in that way. And that's why I think it can be helpful to focus on who's the type of person I want to be, what kind of identity do I want to reinforce, and are my habits supporting that?

I think identity is so key. And it's a lot of, you know, a lot of people say they want something, but their actions don't enforce the identity behind who they want to become. What is the part of your identity that you're most proud of? In the last couple years since launching the book and since now, you know, being a father of two young kids, what is the identity that you've had to shift going into? I'm a successful writer. I do this every day. I've written this bestselling book that is a phenomenon. Now I'm becoming a father. And how do you balance both of those identities?

I guess that's a really good question. You know, you see this a lot in different areas of life. So in, in my case, I've had a couple different identity shifts. You probably had this too, given your athletic career. For a long time I was an athlete, I was a baseball player. And so when my career ended up, I was like, what am I now? You know, like I. This thing was a huge part of my life for, you know, 17 years. And then all of a sudden I'm not doing that anymore. So it felt like this loss of identity. I probably had a two or three year period where to call it a morning is probably overstating it, but there was.

If something felt like it feels like a morning though.

Yeah, it kind of. Something felt lost. You know, it was like, man, I feel like a part of me is gone now. So you hear that happen from a lot of people in the military as well. You know, they'll be like, their identity is, I'm a soldier. And then they leave the military and they become a civilian. And it's kind of like, well, who am I now they sort of feel like they lost their footing. And the way that I describe it at this point is I like to think about life as a series of seasons. And so one question I ask myself is, what season am I in right now? And so before I had kids and before the book came out, I was in this really career heavy season and my identity was tied up in like, I'm a very hard worker. I. I try to always provide the maximum amount of value to my audience. I'm not going to let the number of hours that needs to be done to achieve this or accomplish this outcome, like, block me from trying, you know, like, I'm just going to work my way through it. And then I have this shift in seasons and you know, now like a big part of my identity is being a dad. And you lose a lot of hours, working hours that are now focused on family. And I love that, right? I love that part of it. I love the family part of it. But I still feel like I lost this other part of being the hardworking entrepreneur. So for sure I'm still working through that right now. I mean, my kids are young, but, but it's just a, it's a. Signals a shift in seasons. And usually when your seasons shift, your habits often need to shift with it. And I found myself kind of trying to force fit some of my old habits into my new lifestyle. And they weren't like serving me anymore.

Which habits?

Main thing that I struggled with were creative habits. So it was all around writing and reading. And usually I was spending a lot of hours each day working on that. And now it's like, hey, instead of having four hours a day to do this, now you have four hours a week. So how do you figure out like, one of the questions I had for myself, especially during that first year was, okay, I know how to perform at a high level under the previous number of hours, but I don't have that anymore. So it's kind of like a lifestyle that doesn't work for me. So now how do I perform at a high level under a completely new set of constraints? And I'm still figuring that out to some degree. But like, one thing I did was I restructured the newsletter. So for the first three years of my career, the habit that kind of launched my career was I wrote a new article every Monday and Thursday, and those were usually like about 2,000 words. And I would spend somewhere between. The shortest amount of time I ever spent was like eight hours on an article. Most of the time it was somewhere between like 15 and 20 and the really long ones would be like 30 or 40, but that was rare.

It's amazing.

So it was basically like that kind of was my full time job was I, you know, I do 15 hours on an article on Monday and then I do 15 hours for the Thursday article and then the rest of the time throughout the week it would be, you know, the rest of the stuff to run the business. And I did that for the first three years, but then I had to work on the book. So I kind of changed it while I was working on the book, but I had the same number of writing hours and then the book comes out and then I have kids and now I don't have any of that time anymore, though I restructured the newsletter so that I could do it in a couple hours, usually about two hours. So now I can just do it on one day. I just need one morning and I can do it in those two hours and it's done. And rather than writing these long form articles now I do, I call it 3, 2, 1. But it's three short ideas for me, two quotes from other people and then one question to think about for the week. And this is another thing I try to do just as an entrepreneur in general, but also for my, my overall life. I like to play this little game, this little, like, thought experiment where if I have constraints that I have to stick to, like in this case, I have so much less time than before. It's easy to fall into this story and telling yourself, like, well, this isn't fair, like, I don't have as much time as the people I'm competing with. I don't have as much time as other people. So I guess I just can't do that anymore. Or the strategies that other people talk about, they won't work for me. And I try to avoid that kind of mindset whenever I can. And instead I flip it around and try to ask myself, okay, out of all the universe of options out there, of all the different ways that you could write a newsletter, is there a way that I can do this so that it only takes me two hours a week? Because that's all the time that I have. But the result for the audience is not equal to what I was doing before. It's actually better. Can I actually use this, this constraint and create something that's even better than what I was making previously? And I usually, maybe I'm just too optimistic, I don't know. But usually I'm like, yeah, if you think about, like, it's hard to imagine all the possible options out there. You're like, yeah, there probably is something out there that is better for them and only takes me two hours rather than taking me 30. And so it took me probably like nine months of brainstorming and trying to come up with ideas before I eventually settled on the structure of 3, 2, 1. But the newsletter is way bigger than it was before. There are way more subscribers now. That's not the only measure of whether it's providing value to people, but people seem to really like it, and it definitely is performing well. And, you know, it takes me 1 15th of the time. So I think that can be a powerful sort of little thought experiment to play with yourself if you're facing some constraints and just encourage yourself to try to think a little more carefully about it. There's usually a path for figuring out a better solution, even if you have constraints.

You were mentioning this earlier. It sounds like what people are doing, life is going to happen. Things are going to stack on our plate, seasons are going to change, there's going to be adversities. It's natural. And what I'm hearing you say is that even if that doesn't happen and you're just, you know, have. Have a kid and things just need to change for you and everything's still okay. It sounds like one of the most important habits is to ask better questions. Is. Is to ask, is this supporting me? Is there a better way? Is there a more effective way? Who could I become that I'll be more proud of? It sounds like there's. You had to ask a different question, a better question to give you a bigger result in less time and bigger result for you and the audience.

I think questions are crucial. You know, it's kind of funny because I spent a lot of time writing about these ideas and trying to share what I learned with habits and improvement, decision making, productivity, and all that. And I think it's easy for that stuff to kind of come across as, like, advice. But I'm not really trying to give people advice. I'm just trying to, like, lay out a toolkit and say, hey, here all the strategies, here's all the tools, let's lay them on the table, and then you can choose which one's the best fit for you. Like, I don't really have much interest in telling people what to do. I'm more just trying to, like, share all the strategies. But the other problem with advice is that it's kind of brittle in the sense that it's very dependent on Context, you know, like people, someone can give you actually very good advice. They can give you, like, an idea that genuinely worked for them. But if your context is different, if the timing or the situation is different, or you have different resources, different strengths, it still might not be a good fit for you. Questions, however, are the opposite questions. Whereas advice is brittle and context dependent, questions are flexible and adaptable, and they shift, they can naturally transform based on the context. So, for example, one question you could ask yourself, like, somebody could give you really good advice, so to speak, on what workout program to follow, or you could just have a question and you ask yourself, what would a healthy person do? And if you keep walking around life asking yourself what would a healthy person do? You start to notice all sorts of things based on your current situation that maybe you could do. And it's much more flexible and adaptable than just trying to follow one strict workout program, which may not work if you have a knee injury, or if you don't have enough time that day, or for any number of reasons.

Right?

So I do really like questions, and you're right that I had to ask myself better questions to get better answers. I had to ask myself better questions to kind of get myself in a better mindset. And there are a few questions that I really like that I keep coming back to. And I think maybe, you know, maybe anybody listening to this will find it useful as well. So the first question is, what am I optimizing for? And, you know, people optimize for different things. Sometimes we optimize for money, Sometimes we optimize for free time or family time. Sometimes you optimize for creative output or having, like, the ability to choose the creative projects you work on. It can be any number of things, but you need to decide what it is for you. And I think a lot of the time we sort of fall into this rut where we're just kind of optimizing for what we think we're supposed to be doing or what other people are encouraging us to do. And we're not actually optimizing or working on what we actually want to optimize for. So the other challenge with that question is it shifts over time. You know, like, what I'm optimizing for today is different than what I wanted 10 years ago or five years ago. So you need to keep revisiting that question and asking yourself, what am I optimizing for? Now, the second question that I like is, can my current habits carry me to my desired future? So once you know what you're Optimizing for. Are you on a trajectory that can get you there, or do your habits need to change? Cause if you're on a. If you're on the wrong trajectory, if you know you want to optimize for one thing, but your habits are leading you somewhere else, obviously something needs to change the other way to kind of frame this. If you want to, like, flip it around and frame it maybe from a. That's like maybe a little bit more of a positive angle. If you want to frame it from more of a negative angle, what you could ask yourself is, how am I contributing to the situation that I say I don't want? Or how am I contributing to the conditions that I say I don't want? And if you look at your current habits, you'll almost always notice that there are a few things that you're doing that are influencing the situation. You know, like, most of life is not. It's not entirely under your control, but it's also not entirely out of your control.

Right.

You know, it's. The majority of life is like kind of like a tennis match. You know, you don't control what the other player does. You don't control their shots or, or their strategy, but you do influence it with your shots and your strategy. And so it's true that luck and randomness and misfortune, it's true that all that stuff is going to happen to you, and you can't control everything, every card that's dealt to you in life. But it's also true that you influence the situation. And so the only reasonable approach is to focus on the elements that are within your control and to try to influence it, to try to shape the conditions to the best way possible. And I think questions like, are my current habits carrying me to my desired future, or how am I contributing to the conditions I say I don't want? Those questions are. Are kind of helping shape that or helping reveal different steps that you could take. By the way, that. How am I contributing the conditions? Question, I think that's from Jerry Colonna, great, like, business coach and entrepreneur. So. So those are a couple that I like. The other question that I asked myself, which I mentioned previously, what season am I in right now? You know, that kind of helps encourage you to get in the right mindset and think, hey, you know, sometimes habits can be good for you, but they just have outlived their usefulness like they were. They were good for a previous season. And so that doesn't mean that, you know, the habit was bad. It doesn't mean that you should feel bad about doing it. It just means that maybe it outlived its usefulness. So those are just a few of the things I like to kind of prime myself with to try to spark thoughts on what should I really be focused on. Right.

Yeah. When you're playing baseball and, you know, in the batting cage for an hour a day and that habit served you then, it doesn't serve you now to swing a baseball bat for an hour a day. So you just got to know what season you're in. I'm curious. You know, you ask a question in your newsletter every week. Yeah. What was the most powerful question for you of 2022?

All right. Actually, I actually have a couple that I like here. So I, I, I have a big spreadsheet where I keep all the, the questions and ideas and stuff from each week, and I go through them every now and then and kind of mark some of my favorites. But, so these, these are just a few that I liked from this year. So one is, do I need to spend more time searching for better information, or do I need to spend more time acting on the information that I already have? So is the bottleneck strategy or is it execution?

Right.

Another one that I like, this is kind of the trying to encourage me to try big things or attempt big things is the question to ask yourself is not, will I succeed? The question is, what should I attempt? You know, if we get so caught up in trying to succeed, then I think maybe you can talk yourself out of trying things that are worth attempting, even if they don't ultimately pan out the way that you hope they will.

How does someone know what they should be attempting in life?

It's a great question. I mean, I, you know, I don't know the answer. I'm not, I'm not the person that, you know that has the answer to that kind of stuff. But, um, I think that people often talk themselves out of things before they should. So we're almost always our own bottleneck before the world is actually the bottleneck. If you, if you think about it, you know, if you just try to step outside and above yourself for a second and think about the things that you've tried or the projects you've worked on. It's almost never the case that you hit a true hard stop that. Like, the world is just like, hey, sorry, there's nothing else you can do. There's nobody else to contact. There's no small action to take. There's no alternate path of attack or line of questioning. There's nothing else you can do. There's almost always something else you could try if you want to give it another attempt. But we talk ourselves out of it way earlier than the world puts a true hard stop in front of us. And so as best as possible, I try to not be my own bottleneck. I try to not be the I try to let the world tell me no before I tell myself no. And that I don't think. I feel like sometimes if people want to push back on something like that, they'll talk about how it's like overly positive or it can get delusional or something like that. And you know, certainly I would prefer to not be too negative or too positive. I'd prefer to strike a perfect balance, but that's not possible. And if I'm going to err in one direction, I'd rather err on being too positive rather than too negative. I'd rather err on attempting too many things rather than talking myself out of them. But even though you're trying to be positive and trying to attempt difficult things, that doesn't mean you can ignore reality. You know, like another question I like. So this is, this is actually another one that I marked on the sheet, which is without altering the facts of the situation I'm facing and without ignoring the reality of what must be done, what's the most useful and empowering story that I can tell myself about what's happening and what I need to do next?

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Quince.com Lewis and there's this little exercise I heard about one time. So all you need, you need to get two sheets of paper or open up two doc, two Google Docs or whatever on the first one you're going to. You can pick whatever timeframe you want for this. Just for this example, let's say it's the last 10 years of your life. Okay. But you could do the last six months or whatever. All right, so on the first sheet of paper, you're going to write down the last 10 years of your life. You're going to tell the story of the last 10 years, but the only rule of this game is that you can't tell any lies. Okay? Everything has to be true. The first version, you're going to write the least favorable version of your last 10 years. It's got to be true, but it's the least favorable framing. The second version, you're going to write the last 10 years, but it's going to be the most favorable. Now, what's interesting, I feel like you look at those two sheets of paper, There are no lies on either one of these. You know, both. Both sheets of paper are true. And I just have a hard time seeing what. Telling yourself that first version, that first piece of paper, what that gets you. You know, like, if you're. If you're not ignoring reality, if you're sticking with the facts of the situation and you're still going to deal with uncomfortable conversations that need to be had or the difficult steps that need to be taken, you might as well tell yourself the most empowering and useful version of that story. That's the story that's going to make you feel best. It's going to get you motivated, it's going to get you moving. So I don't think you should be delusional about it. And it doesn't mean that there aren't going to be hard times or that you're not going to have to have difficult conversations. Like all of that is still part of life, but you're just trying to not be your own bottleneck.

Yeah, it's reframing the story of your life. And when we can frame why we are doing things on a daily basis in a more empowering way, as opposed to a disempowering way. It starts to feel like there's a lot more flow, fun, fulfillment, joy in life rather than a drag holding us back. So I love that. All right.

I just. I love these questions. Let me just give you one more. So sometimes I like to do this thing with asking myself a question where both answers can be true, opposites can be true, and the question is not whether it's right or wrong. The question is, what do you need right now? So, for example, this is one that I had in an issue that went out in June. Sometimes we're too hard on ourselves, criticize our mistakes to an unhelpful degree. Other times we're too easy on ourselves and let excuses run our lives. So which way are you leaning right now? Do you need to be harder with yourself? Do you need to be firmer and more disciplined, or do you need to be easier on yourself, more forgiving and how can you pull yourself back to center and you know, yeah, sometimes like, you need to be tough with yourself and disciplined and sometimes you need to be forgiving and chill out a little bit. And the question is not whether one person is right or wrong. The question is, which one do you need right now? You know, which one serves you best? And so many things are like that, you know, it's not. The question is not do you need to rest or do you need to train? The question is, which one do you need right now? You know, the question is not do you need to read and research or do you need to write and produce? The question is, which one do you need right now? And so opposites can both be true. It's just a matter of timing. And I like to think about balance in general. We talk a lot about work, life balance or balance in life. And I think it's easy for it to kind of get squished into this like average mode where you're just like, well, let me just do a little bit of each. But actually you can still be really intense if the timing is right. You can. It's like turning it on and turning it off. You know, the. The question is let me rest fully or the the approach is let me rest fully and let me rest fully. Um, and let me restfully and let me train fully. And so in a way, balance is about timing, not intensity. You know, it's not saying don't do intense things, just like, you know, take it easy and like keep yourself in this average mode. It's saying not do like really intense things, but just shut it off every now and then and give yourself self space to recover and have the right timing.

Love that. Something about, you know, thinking about what people need the most right now, you know, as a season, a year turns over for a lot of people and really a season of the last few years for a lot of people, hopefully turning over into the next season. Something that I love in one of your strategies and your approaches is focusing on getting 1% better. You know, every day or every time you do something, focus on the 1% improvement and getting better. 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 all you gotta 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 1% 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 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, measurements, 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 into the right or have we flatlined? You know, are we getting 1% better or 1% worse? Cause if you're on a good trajectory, even if it's just for the next five minutes, you know, then you're on the path where all you need is time. Like, time will magnify whatever you feed it. You know, 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 in seeing the trajectory.

I 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'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 100 pounds, 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. And 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's 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 even, like, silly stuff like the amount of clutter in your living room is the lagging measure of your cleaning habits. 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 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. 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 is dependent on what habit you're trying to create? And are there also. Also, are there different stages of building and forming a habit?

Hmm, 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, it 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's 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. You know, there's all these kind of popular myths, 20, 21 days or 30 days or whatever, and there's not really anything to back that up. But there's also a couple studies that say on average it's like 66 days or something like that. But again, the range can be quite wide 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 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, and you're not, 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 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 we're working out so early on, going to the gym's 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. Um, you know, like, I don't know where to put my stuff. Do they 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 could 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, and, you know, you can keep going. 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, 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, 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 more and more. So you're starting to get these external benefits that are coming along the way. And then ultimately 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 get that feeling. And so 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 you. 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, because 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 and 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 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, 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 there. 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. There are habits that are like, timeless that you. And we call those the fundamentals of whatever your domain is. You know, 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 will 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 learning process that you also have to be committed to.

What's the habit you think you're going to need to innovate over the next one to two years in this season of life that supported you to getting here, but won't support you to the next level?

Yep. My biggest fear is that I know how to write a good book, but the way that I know how to do it doesn't work for me anymore. So I had a. I had a. A period the last, like six to nine months of writing. Atomic Habits, where it was just all that I was doing. You know, it was like, I would wake up, I'd write for 12 hours a day or edit for 12 hours a day. I'd go to sleep, I'd dream about it, I'd wake up again and do it all over. And that was just like. It was this kind of. I don't know. To call it a dark period is probably too extreme. But it, you know, it was just like this very intensely focused period. And I can't do that anymore because I have kids, I got a family, and like, it just. It doesn't work. So I know that if I can force myself to go through that. Which, by the way, like, that was a difficult thing, my little mantra for that period of life was. Elaine de Baton has this quote where he says, of many books, the reader thinks this could have been truly great if only the author was willing to suffer a little bit more. And I just kept telling myself, that's.

Kind of true, though.

Yeah. So I just. That was the, like, my little mantra was like, this can be great, but you just have to be willing to suffer a little bit more. And so I just told myself that like every.

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You know, for sure, I, I just can't, I can't do it that way anymore. So I have to go back to that little thought experiment that I mentioned earlier where I've got this new constraint. And so now I have to ask myself, okay, if I can only write for one hour a day, how could I write a book that's even better than a topic than Atomic Habits? How can I write something even better than Atomic Habits if I can only write for one hour, hour a day?

Now you got a good question.

I don't know. I don't know the answer yet. But that's my little question. That's the, that's the thing I'm noodling on for right now. That's the better question that hopefully.

That is a, that is a great question. I mean, again, it goes back into maybe you didn't think it was possible with your newsletter because you had to do whatever, 10, 15 hours a week on it, and now you're doing two. And it's impacting people, you know, in, in a potentially a greater way with the results it's getting. So it's, I think there's a world in which you could write two hours a week and write a better book.

It's gotta Be possible, you know, I mean, the obvious answer is like, well, it'll just take longer, you know, like. But. But I also don't want to.

But if you had to do it in the same time, if you had to do it in one year, I bet there's a way.

So there's. That's where the question gets really interesting. For another constraint, you say, okay, you can only write for one hour a day and you only get two years. Can you write something that's better than Atomic Habits?

I think you would. I think you would because. Because again, you've got 10, 15 years of experience writing now. You know what works. You can do it faster. You can pull into your archives of memory better. You have all the documentation from the previous. You know, you've got this skill now that it should flow more effortlessly if you allow it to.

But we'll see. I appreciate your. Your enthusiasm and encouragement about it because I'll need it. But I. I don't know. We'll see. That's my little task, is to see if I can find an answer.

I'm curious. It's another personal question for you. When I interviewed Liz Gilbert about. She did Eat Pray Love, which I think did 10 or, I don't know, 20 million copies. Whatever. It's done. It's done. Over 10 million copies. And I remember her talking about, is my best selling work behind me?

Yeah.

And kind of that. Is it, you know, the fear or the worry or the just the thought about it? I'm curious for you, after writing the bestselling book of the year and potentially the decade, I guess, what is the biggest fear that you have moving forward? Is it the fear of greater success? Is it the fear of potentially not it being. Being as successful what you do in the future, or just the. The fear of judgment in the opinions of other people, no matter what you do?

Yeah, I remember hearing that Adele said something similar like that after she. She wrote and released someone like you. That she was like, it's because I don't remember how old she was, but she was in her 20s. And, you know, she was like, I'll never write a song better than that. And that's kind of a strange feeling to feel like the peak of your career is already behind you. I am trying to not think about it like that. You know, I. I've had some friends who have written bestselling books as well and have gone through stuff like this. And, you know, I've heard about the Adele example or the Liz Gilbert example. You know what, like I'm just trying to look at it as it was a project and it can just be a thing that went really well, you know, like, it doesn't have to be more than that. It's just, I tried really hard. I wanted to provide a great amount of value and it seems that people like it and that's great. Like it doesn't have to become some all consuming thing that defines every bit of my existence. You know, it's just like it's a project that went well and now I'm going to move on to the next project and I'm going to try to do that one well. And I think that's, that's fine. It can just be that it doesn't, it doesn't need to be more.

How do you, how do you keep yourself there mentally and emotionally so that it doesn't, you don't feel like you have to deliver something as good or better than the last work.

So is it the Ohio roots?

Is it the, you know, this your dad now? Like, what is the, how do you keep yourself emotionally stable in that way?

Yeah, I, I, you know, I don't know the perfect answer, but I'll just say a couple things that are coming to mind. I, you know, so I think some of it's personality. Um, you know, like, I'm not really the type of person that worries about very much. I've just never really been like that. So I don't know, this kind of seems how I'm wired. I'm more focused on like, what is the next thing rather than like worrying about what could happen. Um, so having a project that excites me that I can get invested in, I think it helps a little bit that I'm not ruminating on the last thing and whether it's being judged appropriately or not. Not one interesting little side effect. And I, I just want to say before I preface this, this is the best possible outcome, right? Like the, the best possible thing is that Atomic Habits did well. So like it comes with trade offs, it comes with, you know, downsides or problems that maybe you didn't think about solving beforehand. But this is what I was working for, you know, like, this is. So this is like, this is partially.

How can I write a book that gets a hundred thousand copies sold and then it does 10 million global, globally. You were like, okay, it exceeded every expectation and then a thousand times.

So, you know, it's, yeah, it doesn't make any sense to complain about the result that you wanted, even if it comes with trade offs and Other. Other problems that you need to deal with. I remember Charlie Munger said something like that, too, where he was talking about people once they get into their 90s, a lot of the time that all that they talk about is how all their friends have passed away and how much their body aches and the next illness and all that kind of stuff. And he was like, listen, the best possible outcome is that you live this long, so it doesn't. Doesn't make sense to complain about it. Um, so that doesn't mean that there aren't problems. And one of the interesting, like, little problems or unexpected things that. That unexpected for me is before, early in my career, I was trying to get as much feedback as possible. Like, I would respond to every email that a reader sent. I would, you know, every message on Twitter I would look at or respond to. I was trying to get feedback so that I could learn, so that I could figure out, what do people like? What do they not like? How can I get better? How can I improve? And now the feedback is too much. So it doesn't. It. Like, it's crippling to try to. First of all, it's not possible to respond to it all. But even if it was, or you tried to make that commitment, I don't think it's helpful at this point. You're just kind of getting noise, you know, I mean, it's at the point now where I can be pretty confident that Atomic Habits is a good book. I'm not going to say it's the greatest book ever or anything like that. I'm sure that I could have done it better or there are error areas that can be improved. But I can be pretty confident at this point that it's good because, you know, 10 million people have bought it. And if you look at the hundreds of thousands of reviews, almost all of them are four or five stars. But there's still going to be some sliver of people who. They read it at the wrong time or it wasn't in what they were expecting, or for whatever reason, they just.

Don'T speak to them.

Yeah, and that's fine, you know, but, like, there's enough of them now because it has reached so many people that if I just focused on that little segment, I could spend all day just looking at listening to people who don't like it. And that would make it seem like it was this big problem, when in fact, it's not a problem at all. Like, 98% of people love it. And so there's no. There's no issue. There's nothing that needs to be solved. And so just the amount of feedback has scaled to such a degree that weirdly, you have to start insulating yourself from feedback because otherwise you spend too much time responding to noise. And that's a. That's been a hard thing to figure out a good balance for, because I re. I want to continue to learn. I don't want to, like, wall myself off and. And not. I don't want to become ignorant or unaware of how my work is landing or what I'm saying or how what would be most useful to people. And yet at the same time, there's just way too much feedback to pay attention to at all. So that's been. That's been an interesting challenge. I'm not sure how I'll deal with that going forward.

What was the habit in the last decade leading up to atomic habits of thinking and feeling that was most consistent for you? The most habit thought, the most consistent thought habit and the most consistent feeling habit that you had created developed over the decade leading up to it.

For the most consistent thought thought. And I think this is just kind of my core approach to entrepreneurship. The most consistent thought was, I'll be. I'll figure it out. You know, and so, like, you're always facing another thing as an entrepreneur. You don't know what. There's not really any playbook. You know, there. There sort of playbooks, there's things other people did to grow their business or there's strategies to use or whatever. But everybody's running their own race, and everybody's in a slightly different situation, has slightly different strengths and weaknesses, slightly different resources and opportunities. And so you gotta figure that out for yourself. How do I best put all these pieces together? And you need to have that mindset if you're gonna be like, if you don't have the mindset of I can figure it out, well, then you're for sure not gonna do it. Just having the mindset does not guarantee it happening. But you need to at least be in that frame of mind. So that was the most common thing that I told myself is whatever the next thing was in the horizon. Like, I'll figure it out. I'll figure out a way to make it work, or I'll figure out a way to, you know, utilize my strengths to try to, you know, develop a new line of attack for this or whatever. But I'll. I'll figure out some solution. The most common feeling, probably the feeling of, like, waiting or the feeling of delaying gratification that that was probably the most common thing was like, you just keep showing up and keep doing stuff, but it's not there yet. You know, you. I especially in my case, because I focus so much on building the audience first and not on monetizing. And so I didn't really make much money for the first, like, three to five years of this business. I mean, so do something for five years and try to put your heart and soul into it every day. And then, like, don't really have the payoff. It's just a lot of waiting. And so, you know, that I was fine with it. Like, it, you know, I had the personality that could work. And I would make money on the side doing freelance gigs or I would, you know, occasionally have some kind of, like, I'd do like a seminar or a webinar or something that I would sell tickets to and I'd present something to the audience. But for the most part, I was just trying to provide as much value for free. And so it was a lot of waiting. And that was probably one of the most common things that I felt, the.

Feeling of delayed gratification. I think if more people learned that skill, that habit, and developed it and nurtured it, they would be so much more fulfilled, happy, and there'd be so much better, bigger payoff for them than the instant gratification or the shortcuts and things like that.

The key part that made that work for me, the reason I could do it, is because I was still making progress. So you. Like, I was delaying gratification, but I could still see that things were on a good path. So the newsletter was growing quickly. I was getting good feedback from the audience.

Traffic was growing on your website.

Yeah, I wasn't. Traffic was growing. I wasn't feeling like I'm putting work out into a vacuum and there's no response months. And so because I could see this snowball was building and rolling down the hill, it was easier to tell myself, hey, just you're on a good path. Just keep going. You know, you can keep waiting.

And when you saw, I know you're very connected to a lot of the other kind of writers in our space, and you guys, you know, connect and do masterminds and stuff like that, people that I've known as well for a long, long time, when you would see other people in your industry or friend group or peer group writing New York Times bestselling books over and over again and launching this thing and this project, and you're kind of just turning away, doing the same thing, Consistently, for five, seven years before you launched your book? How do you not get discouraged from your peers doing the things that maybe you want to do in the future, but you haven't done yet?

Yeah, well, I mean, it's a good question. I think it's very natural to slide into that kind of feelings of comparison stuff, but I tried to avoid that. Like, I want these people to succeed, you know, I imagine so. Like, there are two scenarios. There's going to be bestselling books either way.

Okay?

So they're. They're still going to happen every week. Every week they're going to have. So the question is, do you know the people who are writing bestsellers or do you not? And I would much rather be friends with all the people doing it than to not be. Um. And I was just looking to learn. You know, I'm. I'm just trying to soak up, like, they're. These are really smart people, and they, you know, they've done the thing that I'm hoping to do. So what can I learn from them? And how can I provide value to them or help them out or, you know, at least be an ear that can listen to the things that they're struggling with? And so, yeah, I was looking to try to, like, build relationships with those people. Not to turn it into, like, a competition, but more turn into, like, a collaboration and try to be on the same team.

Yeah, I think that's so wise. And I. And I think there's a lot of people that hoard their information, that compete with their peers, and I just think that's a losing battle when you try to compete and be the best and win. That was kind of my 20s, where I was like, how do I be number one and be the best at everything? And then I realized, man, this is exhausting and draining. And then when I launched my show 10 years ago, I was like, how can I make it about everyone else? How can I shine the light on everyone? Not make it the Lewis Howe show, but make it the school of greatness and shine the light on others like yourself, James, and lift them up and collaborate instead of compete. And it's so much more rewarding to be in collaboration with people, to see them shine, to support their success and be in partnership with people, you know, and working together in your own way. But then saying, how do I learn everything for myself and just, you know, keep it all for me?

For sure. I think, like I mentioned, the comparison part is natural, and it kind of also. It's something that you wouldn't want to shut it off totally. Like, let's say, for example, that you want to launch a YouTube channel. How do you know what a good YouTube video is? The only way that you know is you look at a bunch of YouTube videos and you start to compare them. You start to compare and contrast and see which. What qualities make one great and what qualities, qualities make other others not so great. And so it's the ability to compare things that leads to what we would call taste, you know, or the. The ability to make judgments. And so you need that, that muscle, that comparison muscle for that. I think the problem is when it gets applied in unuseful ways. So I tend to think that it's really helpful to compare small things or granular things. So like. And very unhelpful to compare big things. So it's helpful to compare small things. Like what's the marketing strategy for this particular book launch? Or what kind of squat form or technique is that person using in the gym? And you can look at this little, small detail, deconstruct it, and you can learn something from it. Meanwhile, it's pretty unhelpful generally to compare big things. What's that person's net worth compared to mine? How happy is their marriage compared to mine? These are like, really big issues, and there's so many factors at play, and it's really complicated, and it's just kind of a losing battle to compare anything like that. It's not. It's not really helpful for anybody. But if you can scale it down, deconstruct the small stuff, then yeah, there's often a lot that you can learn. So I think comparison's fine if you keep it in the right lane and in. For big picture stuff, it's better to collaborate and maybe for small things, it's better to deconstruct and compare and try to analyze, and then you can figure out how to make. Make it work for you.

Right. I'm curious. Speaking of scales, before the book launched for you, on the scale of 1 to 10, let's call it the joy happiness scale. 10 being you're at peak happiness, peak joy, you know, consistently, maybe some minor moments here and there, but most of the time you're a joyful, happy person. Is a ten. One is you're miserable. On a scale of one to ten before the book comes out, call it a few months before, where are you on that scale?

So whenever I get a scale like this, I basically never choose 1 or 10 because I feel like there's 7 billion people in the world. And so there's got to be some other, you know, example out there that's higher than what I'm imagining or lower than what I'm imagining. So I pretty much never select those. But having said that, well, a couple months before the book came out, I was really. I was really quite happy because I was done with the book finally, you know, and I've been working on it. If you went like, maybe, maybe, say, a year and a half or two years before the book came out, that was a really tough period because I was in the middle of working on it. But I generally consider myself to be a very happy, positive person. And so even years before, even before I got the book deal, you know, like, I. And I wasn't making much money, but I had this audience that was growing. I was quite happy then, you know, like, I was even before, you know, before I had a career and I was just a regular college student. I was quite happy then, you know, and so I try. I think this is actually a very important version of mental toughness, which is. Mental toughness often gets framed as grit, stubbornness, discipline in the face of challenge. I'm going to force my way through it. But I think there's another version of mental toughness, which is flexibility, adaptability, things like, I can be happy no matter what I'm working on. I can be happy no matter who I'm hanging out with. I can make this work no matter what resources I have available. And mindsets like that are actually very robust and resilient. They're very mentally tough. Because your mindset, your mood is not dependent on your conditions. If your mood is dependent on your conditions, you're kind of, like, brittle. You're, you know, you're. You're stuck. You're. You're beholden to the situation and you're being held hostage by it. And so I don't want my happiness to be held hostage by the situation. Like, I'm going to be happy no matter what I'm working on. I'm going to be happy no matter who I'm hanging out with. And I try to approach life like that, even though, of course, there will be moments of grieving and sadness and difficulty. Everybody's life is going to have that. But I don't want to be. I don't want to be held hostage by my circumstances. So, yeah, so I would say there were periods two years before the book came out, that period was harder, but I still tried to be happy, even though I was feeling pretty drained.

What does that look like when it's hard for you and you're in the darkness of writing, you know, 20 hours a day. What is that? Is that a 7? Is that a 2? Is that a 4? What is that on the scale?

Let's say my baseline is I'm usually at like, a seven or an eight. And then if I have, like, a really great day, I'm, like, living at a nine. Um, and then on a hard day like that, I'm like, at a 4. And I'm just feeling, like, exhausted mostly. The one feeling that I don't like is feeling so busy that I can't be thoughtful. So I'm. I'm so busy working on stuff. I'm so exhausted by the amount of effort that I had to put in. I can remember this a lot from this period. I would have been working so hard in the book all day, and then I'd be like six o', clock, and I'd be like, I just need to stop for. For a minute and go to the gym and work out. And I would go and work out. But I was kind of like a zombie going through my workout. I was just. I was so tired that I was just getting through it and I'd see people and I just. I was so busy. I was so tired that I couldn't be thoughtful and have a good conversation. I just didn't have the energy for it. But you. On a typical day, I'd be excited to walk in the gym. You know, I'd have, like, a bounce in my step, and I go in there and I have a great workout and I get to chat with people and kind of cut it up a little bit and then leave. And I just didn't have the energy for that at that time. So I think that's what being maybe a four looks like compared to being a seven or an eight.

And where are you today? 10 million copies sold. Two young kids, you know.

Yeah.

Living a dream.

As long as you're getting sleep, I feel good. You know, the kid's sleep dictates a lot of things. I would say that I'm, like, pretty consistently at an 8 right now. The thing that's keeping me from being at a nine is wrestling with this new season that I'm in. And I'm. I've got, like, all this time that I'm spending with the kids, which is great, and I don't regret at all. But I also have this ambition, this drive to create something great, to continue to build a business, to try to, like, make my little mark on stuff and I don't have the time for it so I got to figure out some answers to those questions that we were asking earlier.

I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links and if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience. Make sure to subscribe to our Greatness plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewishouse. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over@greatness.com newsletter and if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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