February 12, 2024 • 36 mins
Our daily habits are the key to reaching our long-term goals, argues writer James Clear. His bestselling book, "Atomic Habits," distills the most compelling research on how to break bad habits and form good ones. He talks with Maya about how our habits shape our identity—for better or worse—and how to design our habits so they actually stick.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Whatever outcomes you have or lifestyle you're enjoying right now,
it's kind of a byproduct of the habits you've been running,
and so if you want the outcome to change, it's
actually the habits that need to change.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Writer James Clear has helped millions of people achieve their
big goals through small shifts and behavior, and he believes
that our habits can have a powerful impact on how
we see ourselves.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
True behavior change is really identity change. Every action you
take is a vote for the type of person you
wish to become. So your habits are how you embody
a particular identity.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
On today's epsiodisode, a tactical guide for actually reaching our goals.
I'm maya shucker and this is a slight change of plans,
a show about who we are and who we become
in the face of a big change. If you're like me,
(01:35):
you often set ambvicious goals like wanting to meditate or
to cook more at home, but you struggle with execution,
like sure, I want to read more in the evening,
but when I sit down after work, Instagram is just
way more appealing. So this is where James comes in.
He believes that tiny changes in our habits are the
(01:55):
key to reaching our long term goals. His best selling book,
Atomic Habits distills the strongest insights from academic research, including
how to break bad habits and form good ones, and
he teaches us how to design our habits so they
actually stick. We started our conversation with the basics, So
(02:16):
let's start off with what a habit is. How do
you define habits?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Well, if you talk to an academic or researcher, they're
probably going to say, hey, technically, a habit is a
behavior that's more or less automatic or mindless, So like
brushing your teeth, or tying your shoes, or unplugging the
toaster after each use, like things that you don't even
really think about, you know, usually it's thirty seconds or
last two minutes or lastening. They're very quick, automatic routines.
(02:40):
But there is this interesting thing about habits, which is
that's not usually the way we talk about it culturally.
Like if I were to ask you, hey, what are
some habits you're trying to build, You're probably not going
to tell me something mindless and automatic. You're probably going
to say, I want to get in the habit of
writing every day, or I want to get in the
habit of going to the gym four days a week.
And I know what you mean when you say that,
(03:02):
you mean I want it to be this regular practice,
this ritual that I repeat consistently. But that stuffs pretty effort.
Puone requires concentration and careful thought, like especially writing. You
know it's ever going to be mindless, the way that
brushing your teeth might be.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Why are good habits so hard to pick up and
bad habits so hard to kick?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
What is the difference between a good habit of bad habit? Well,
most behaviors produce multiple outcomes across time, So broadly speaking,
let's say that a behavior has an immediate outcome and
an ultimate outcome, like kind of the canonical example of
a bad habit is smoking a cigarette. Well, the immediate
outcome of smoking a cigarette might be that you reduce stress,
or that you get to connect with a coworker outside
(03:44):
the office, or many other things that we often would
say serve you in some way or serve some need
that you might have. It's only the ultimate outcome of
continuing to smoke for ten or twenty years or whatever
that is negative. Good habits are often the reverse, Like
the immediate outcome of going to the gym for the
first week is often unfavorable. Your body's sore, you feel
(04:05):
foolish and stupid, You're worried that people are judging you
or think you're doing the exercises wrong. It's only the
ultimate outcome of sticking to a good habit for a
year or two or three that you get the results
that you want. And so I think my summary of
what is a good habit and what is a bad
habit is that the cost of your good habits is
in the present, the cost of your bad habits is
(04:25):
in the future.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
One of the things that I studied during my POSTOC
in cognitive neuroscience is temporal discounting. And I think, you know,
there's lots of reasons why it's really hard to invest
in good habits, But in addition to the rewards of
the good habits not being salient in the moment, we
also do discount the value of future rewards in a
pretty significant way. So even if we're told intellectually, okay,
(04:50):
this thing is going to pay off, our brains are
wired it's such that we just don't assign the same
value to those future rewards versus the present day ones.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Sure, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, But
my understanding of it is that for most of human
history we evolved in what was roughly an immediate return environment.
So your ancestors saw a storm on the horizon, they
take shelter. Now that gives them in a media benefit.
They need a meal, they forage for berries in the bush,
that gives them an immediate benefit. And so our paleolithic
prehistoric brains are largely the hardware that is the same
(05:19):
as it has been for the last fifty thousand years.
Grew up in an environment like that, or we're evolved
in an environment like that, and then now in modern
society we live, in many ways in a delayed return environment.
You go to work now so you can get paid
in two weeks. You study now so you can graduate
in four years. You save for retirement now so that
you can retire in two decades, and so a lot
(05:40):
of the behaviors, a lot of the habits we want
to build, have extreme temporal discounting going on. It's not
even just like a day or two from now, it's
many years from now, and we're not wired to work
that way.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Can you say more about why it's important that we're
so intentional about how we build our habits.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
So first reason is your brain is building habits all
the time, whether you think about it or not. So
if you're going to be creating habits anyway, it benefits
you to understand and what the process is and how
it works so that you can design it to your
benefit rather than to your detriment. I think a lot
of people feel like they're the victim of their habits.
Oh I did that, I didn't even realize that, or oh,
(06:19):
my habits are kind of happening to me. If you
understand how it works, now you don't have to be
the victim of your habits. You can be the architect
of them. And as far as I can tell, you
can only effectively direct your attention toward one thing at
a time. The more that you can figure out how
to offload stuff and not have to think about it,
the more that you kind of have operations going on
automatically in the background, and you can now direct your
(06:41):
attention towards something else. If you had to think carefully
about how to tie your shoes every time you did it,
or how to brush your teeth every time you did it,
or where the bread is and the pantry every time
you grabbed for it. I mean, an individual day would
become very cumbersome.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
By the way. Given my husband, Jimmy, I actually am
searching for where the bread is every day in the country.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Jimmy, if you're listening to this, stop moving to bread.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
I know, just keep it in one damn place.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Okay, But yeah, you get that's the idea, you know,
like your brain wants to do that so that you
can more smoothly get through the day and focus on
some of the other demands of life.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah. You talk about the difference in your book between
goals and systems. What do you mean by this?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
So your goal is your desired outcome, the target, the
thing you're shooting for. Your system is the collection of
habits that you follow each day. So almost by definition,
your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results.
Whatever outcomes you have or lifestyle you're enjoying or not
enjoying right now, it's kind of a byproduct of the
(07:45):
habits you've been running or the system you've been following
for the last six months, year, two years. And so
if you want the outcome to change, it's actually the
habits that mean to change. And this doesn't mean that
goals are useless, like I actually think goals are really
helpful for setting a sense of direction, gaining clarity, figuring
out what to optimize for. And I am someone who's
(08:07):
very goal oriented, so in a lot of ways, I
say all this stuff as a reminder to myself to
try to focus a little bit more on the habits
and the system and a little bit less on the
outcome and the goal.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
I also think that when we engage with the kind
of system that we want to build around us to
achieve the goal, it actually has a nice sobering effect
on the goal itself. So in a bubble, it's really
easy to think audaciously, like incredibly ambitiously about the goal
you're trying to achieve. But when you pressure test it
in the context of a system, all of a sudden,
(08:39):
the practical realities of how it is you're actually going
to achieve that goal come into the light, and you
might think to yourself, hmm, I might need a slightly
more modest goal at least this time around. And that's
not to say don't be ambitious, but that pressure testing
is actually critical so that you don't feel that you're
constantly failing or just set moonshots that you have no
chance of reaching when it comes to day to day reality.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I actually think it's a beautiful point. It's really wise
of you to bring it up. A lot of the time,
when I'm thinking about building my business, the first question
that I feel like you should ask is how do
I want to spend my days? And then inside of
that you can ask questions like how could I grow
the business more effectively, how can we reach more people?
How can we make a bigger impact. But a lot
of entrepreneurs start by asking how can we make the
(09:22):
most money possible? And I feel like that's a very
bad way to start, because you end up with a
bunch of options that are not the way that you
want to live your days. And so to your point
about dreaming ambitiously, people will often come up with goals
that they have for themselves, but then when they have
to start implementing that or thinking about the system, they realize, oh,
this isn't how I want to spend my time. Yeah,
you know, this isn't what I want to be doing.
(09:43):
And what you find is that a lot of the
people you're jealous of, or the results that you're envious of,
a lot of the things that you kind of wish. Oh, well,
you know what if I had what they had. You
don't want to do what is required. You're not even
interested in living that life. You know, there are many
things like sometimes I I'll talk to some of my
entrepreneur friends and just say something like, whatever the optimal
way is to make money, you probably don't even want
(10:05):
to do that. Like, you probably don't even want to
make the most money because it's a lifestyle. It's completely
unrelated to how you want to be spending your time,
and you could transfer that into pretty much any domain
in life.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, yeah, I really like that. And I think, look,
some of us have the luxury of thinking how do
I want to spend my days? Others of us don't
have that luxury, and we just have so many demands
on our time and our resources. And so the reason
why it's good to engage with systems at the outset
of goal pursuit is that there will just be natural
constraints and limitations on imagine single mom of three working
(10:36):
two shifts to make ends meet. They need to set
reasonable goals given the demands on their time. So it's
useful no matter what your starting point is. So you've
convinced us that systems are important. I mean, they're really
the driver of whether or not we achieve our goals.
Can you tell us, James, about the four elements of
habit formation, and then we can talk about how to
try to optimize given those elements.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Sure. So there's a much longer scientific discussion of the
cinnatomic habits, but the brief summary is that I like
to break a habit into four different stages, and I
think if you understand these four stage you understand how
habits work. So the first step is there's a queue.
So there's something that you notice or gets your attention.
So for example, you hear a siren, that's an ambulance
coming up from behind you. That's an auditory queue that
(11:20):
starts the habit of pulling to the side of the road.
Or you see a plate of cookies on the counter
in the kitchen, that might be a visual queue that
starts the habit of eating a cookie. After the queue,
the second step is the craving. There's some kind of
interpretation that your brain makes about what's going on. So
you see the plate of cookies in the counter visual queue,
your brain thinks, oh, that'll be sweet, sugary, tasty, enjoyable.
(11:42):
And so it's actually this moment of assigning a favorable
meaning to the cookie that gives you this motivation, the urge,
the desire to walk over, pick it up and take
a bite. So that's the third step the response, and
then finally there's a reward. Oh, it is in fact sweet, sugary, tasty, enjoyable.
So Q craving response reward, And you can kind of
(12:04):
imagine those four stages like going around a clock Q
craving response reward, Q raving response reward. And the more
that you cycle around that clock, the tighter that feedback
loop becomes. The more that behaviors are preceded by a
reliable queue and followed by an enjoyable reward, the tighter
the habit is, and the more ingrained and automatic it becomes.
(12:25):
And so that's kind of the very brief scientific description
of what's going on in your brain when you're building
a habit.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, what if the queue is simply a thought, Like
for a lot of times, the queue is simply I
want jalapino kettle potato chips, And it's like, I don't
really know if there's a physical que in my environment
or a particular context. It just that I know that
thing's delicious, and so my brain during the middle of
the day will just serve it up.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yep. The answer to this is going to differ depending
on which researcher expert you talk to. For myself, I
don't know. Some people believe that internal cues are a
thing that they can arise spontaneously, and then that that
could somehow dry before it. I guess I'll just say
I'm not sure that spontaneous thoughts exist. It seems as
(13:13):
if life is a very long, cascading chain of cause
and effect, and that every thought actually comes from somewhere,
even if you can't pin it down yourself.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, there's no question, just from like a physics point
of view, that the thought about the kettle chips was
preceded by something. But it does feel different to me
when the queue is a plate of chocolatech of cookie
sitting on the counter, versus when the queue is a
flurry of subconscious thoughts that are then followed by wanting
the kettle chips. Because in that frame I feel like
I have less control over whether or not I get
(13:46):
access to that queue. I don't even know what served
it up in the first place. It was just a
random smattering of thoughts that unfold it in a particular sequence.
That's why it feels relevant.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, habits of thought seem to be very hard to interrupt,
you know. It's like, if this is bubbling up for me,
how do I fix this habit where all of a sudden,
I feel like I have this urge to do something
or to eat something, or to ruminate on something. And
I will say that I don't have a great answer
to that. It's not like saying, hey, if you don't
want to eat more peanut butter, let's just keep jars
(14:15):
of peanut butter out of the house, exact because now
there's a lot of friction between you and the action, right.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, those neurons are inside your damn head. Can't run
away from them, folks can't lock them up.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah. Yeah, And so it's a very tricky thing and
I don't know that I have a good answer to it.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
After the break, James teaches us how we can build
habits that actually stick. We also discuss how our identity
can shape our habits, and how our habits can shape
our identity. We'll be back in a moment with a
slight change of plants. Let's talk about how we can
(15:01):
make good habits stick. Talk to me about the four
laws of habit building, and then for each one, I'd
love to ask you a couple of questions.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Sure, let me just give a brief summary and then
we can dive in. If you want a habit to stick,
there are basically four things that you want to happen.
So you want the cues of your good habits to
be obvious, so the first laws to make it obvious.
You want the craving to be attractive, to be compelling,
so the second laws to make it attractive. The more
compelling or enticing or motivating a habit is, the more
(15:29):
likely are going to feel like you want to do it.
The third laws you want to make it easy. The easier,
more convenient, frictionalless simple habit is, the more likely it
is to be performed. And then the fourth and final
laws you want to make it satisfying. The more satisfying
or enjoyable habit is, the more rewarding or pleasurable it
is the more likely you are to feel compelled to
do it in the future. So if you're sitting there
(15:51):
and you're thinking, no, I have this habit, I keep
procrastinating on it. I just can't quite seem to get started.
You can just go through those four laws and ask yourself,
how can I make the behavior more obvious? 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.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
So let's start with how we can make things more obvious.
What are some examples?
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I think one interesting thing you can do is just
hold a habit in the back of your mind that
you're thinking about building, and then walk into the rooms
where you spend most of your time each day and
look around and ask yourself, what is this space designed
to encourage? What behaviors are obvious here? What behaviors are
easy here? And you're going to start to notice different things. So,
for example, I had a reader who wanted to practice
(16:38):
guitar more frequently. He would go once a week and
then he would not practice, and he'd show up with
the next lesson and his instructor would say, you haven't practiced,
and so he took his guitar out of the case,
put it on a stand in the middle of the
living room. He would pass it thirty times a day,
and so he's more likely to pick it up and play.
So get you get the idea right, which is you're
just trying to make the thing that you want to
(16:59):
do more obvious, and you're trying to make the thing
you don't want to do less obvious and increase friction there.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
What do we do in situations where we really don't
have a lot of control over our environment. This actually
became quite salient during quarantine for me. So I remember
I was working basically from my kitchen, and so there
was no ability for me to make something like obvious
you're not obvious in that context or as much harder too.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, so what if we can't do something about this?
So COVID is a very easy example that you just mentioned.
You know a lot of people suddenly they're working from
the kitchen or from their living room. Now I can
snack all day or turn on TV anytime or whatever.
So this is a strategy. It comes from BJ Fogg,
Professor at Stanford, and he's got this kind of tiny
habits method. I refer to it in atomic habits as
habit stacking, because you're going to stack your new habit
(17:45):
on top of an old one. But the idea is
just that in FOG's insight, which I think is really smart,
is that it's often easier to stick to a new
habit if you chain it or link it to something
that you just did before. So let's take your example
of working in the kitchen. Maybe something you already do
each morning is that you make a cup of coffee,
and maybe there's some new productive behavior that you want
(18:06):
to do so that you get into the swing of
your day. You know, just say work on the most
important past, just to use a general thing, but it
could be more specific if you know what it is
for your job. So your habit stack could be something
like I walk into the kitchen, I make my cup
of coffee. After I pour my cup of coffee, I
will immediately start working on the most important thing. And
you give yourself this order of events that things always
(18:27):
happen in the same way, and so you kind of
try to link the habit to a specific queue in
that environment.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Let's talk about making things attractive. So what does this
mean in the context of habit formation. I'm assuming you
mean I should just bring a life size poster like
David Beckham with me everywhere I go.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Honestly, though like that could do. It depends on what
the habit is. So I think my current answer to
this I wish I had written this in the book,
but I didn't. It is worth asking yourself what would
this look like if it was fun. One of the
most common New Year's resolutions is to exercise more. And
I think that a lot of people are exercising or
(19:05):
going to the gym in January just because they feel
like they should go to the gym, or that like
society wants them to or they're expected to. And there
are many ways to live an active lifestyle. Some people
like lifting weights like a bodybuilder, and that's great, but
you don't have to do that. You could kayak or
rock climb, or go for a run or do yoga.
Like we could come up with an almost infinite list
(19:26):
of what that might look like, and you should choose
the version of that habit that is most fun to you.
And this doesn't mean that every habit in your life
is going to feel like going to a concert. Right,
It doesn't mean that like your habits are going to
feel like the most fun thing that you do. But
most things in life, there may not be like a
thousand ways to do it, but there's almost always more
(19:47):
than one way, and you can almost always find a
version that is more fun than the default. And so
I think you should start there.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, I think one thing we can suffer from I
certainly suffer from this is having a bit of a
purity complex around building new habits or certain behaviors. So
one of my goals is to just eat more vegetables.
Team I'm a vegetari, so you know, it's a pretty
pretty substantial fraction of what I should be eating, but
I don't. And so my goal is to eat salad
more regularly. But I had a purity complex about it.
(20:17):
So it's like, well, if I'm going to eat salad,
then I should get the healthy dressing and I should
be really sparing in terms of the toppings salad toppers
I put on it. And my husband kind of changed
my mind about this. He like makes his salad a
party every day. There's like a party inside his bowl, James,
and so I have become very expensive. In my definition
of what a salad topper is, it could be crushed
of potato chips. The other day, I put Snyder's honey
(20:41):
mustard pretzels on top of my salad and I just
go like I go to town with the salad. And
what's remarkable, since implementing this new rule at work this
whole year, I basically had salad for lunch like ninety
percent of the time. And so that was a really
good lesson for me, which is, if you're trying to
introduce a new thing, you don't have to reach for
(21:02):
perfection or feel like it's a painful, arduous process, and
therefore it's virtuous. There's some middle ground there, and it
actually led my habit to stick because I do look
forward to I look forward to lunch now like a
lunch that includes salad.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
That's a great example. There is so much truth to
the fact that you should try to do things in
the beginning that feel good and are enjoyable, and if
you can find a way to make it enjoyable, then
you have a reason to keep repeating it. And now
that you're having salid ninety percent of days, sure, maybe
there are little ways that you can start to optimize it.
I think you bring up a good point about there's
(21:39):
a certain type of person that has this mindset where
it's like for it to be virtuous or for it
to count, it has to be perfect, or it has
to be done you know, really well.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Or that or very hard in pa.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I need to feel like I'm suffering otherwise it doesn't
count yep. And that's a mindset that I do think,
even if it has served you in your life where
you found it useful in many ways, which I think
a lot of the people who believe it because they
feel like it's served them, it's worth releasing that for
a little bit and at least experimenting and seeing what
it might be like for it to be fun for
a little bit and to get the habit established and
(22:09):
you can scale it up and turn into something more.
And this can take many different shapes, but I do
think that this is a very deep truth about habits,
which is a habit must be established before it can
be improved. You know, it has to become the standard
in your life before you can scale it up and
optimize it and turn it into all the things that
you want it to be. And so you figured out
how to get salads established as part of your daily routine,
(22:31):
and you made it fun, and once it was established, great,
then there were so many ways that you could figure
out how to make it healthier. But you try to
figure out how do I get this going first? And
I think that's a great lens to use. There's also
another question that I think is worth just kind of
thinking about or holding on to, which is a lot
of people start by when they think about the habits
(22:51):
they want to build. I think especially this is a
pitfall for ambitious people or talented people who you know,
really when you start sitting her down and thinking about
what I want to achieve, your natural inclinations to be, like,
what could I do on my best day? You know,
what would it look like if I was at peak performance?
What would it look like if I was really firing
on all cylinders. You start to get excited about who
that future peak performance you could be, and instead, I
(23:15):
think it's almost better to ask yourself, what would I
stick to even on my bad days?
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah? I really like that.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
What would I stick to on my worst day? And
that becomes the baseline for the new habit. You know,
you're like, even when I don't feel like eating salad,
I'll probably eat this one that tastes really good and
has the potato chips on it, and it's like kind
of fun and exciting, and you can come up with
like what that might look like for me. For my
writing habit, one of my objectives is just to write
one sentence a day. It's like, look, even when I'm
exhausted and the day has gone terribly and I haven't
(23:42):
gotten anything done I wanted to get done, I can
write one sentence before I go to sleep. So figure
out what your baseline is for what you can stick
to even on the bad days, and then great, if
you feel better, scale it up from there. But I
think your example is a nice way of seeing how
that can work out.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
I this also, you know, fits into your make it
easy bucket of habit formation. I love one of the
stories that you talk about, which is a guy who
is trying to commit to going to the gym.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, there's this reader, my name Mitch, and he's lost
over one hundred pounds and now he's kept it off
for more than a decade. And when he first started
going to the gym, he had this strange little rule
for himself where for the first six weeks he wasn't
allowed to stay for longer than five minutes, so he
would get in the car, drive to the gym, do
half an exercise, get back to the car, drive home.
He was mastering the art of showing up. He was
(24:29):
figuring out how to make it part of his daily routine,
how to make it fun or easy enough that he
would do it. And there's this great quote from Ed
Latimer where he says, the heaviest weight at the gym
is the front door. Like, there are a lot of
things in life that are like that. You know, the
hardest step is the first.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
One, absolutely, And then what about the fourth law of
habit building making it satisfying? How is this different from
making something attractive? Is this more the residual feeling that
you're left with after the experience.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
No, it's a good question. They're definitely related.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
The make it attractive is often not exclusively, but often
it's about your expectation of what the payoff is going
to be. So it's the attractive part is usually about
anticipation motivation, whereas the satisfying part is about the resolution
of that anticipation. So making it attractive is like I
expect this cookie to taste good. Making it satisfying is
(25:20):
I just ate it, And it did in fact taste sweet, sugary, tasty, enjoyable.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
But the point here that the kind of practical takeaway,
and I refer to this in the book as the
cardinal rule of behavior change, which is behaviors that get
immediately rewarded get repeated, behaviors that get immediately punished get avoided.
And it is such a basic, simple idea as soon
as you hear it stated. But all human beings like
to feel good. We all want to feel praised, to
(25:46):
feel rewarded, We all want to feel satisfied and to
enjoy experiences in life. And so the more that your
habits can give you a positive emotion like that, the
more likely you are to repeat them in the future.
And we also, on the flip side, want to avoid
things that have consequences that feel painful, that it cause
you to suffer, that are unenjoyable. So the basic idea
(26:06):
here is how do I feel after I can lead
the habit, And the more that you feel good or
enjoy it, the more likely are to show up again
in the future. So that's kind of the big picture
view of it.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
This is why my absolute favorite number one habit building
strategy is temptation fundling, which is, you know, it was
a concept created by my friend and former collaborator Katie Milkman,
and essentially all temptation bundling is you pair the undesirable thing. Right.
Let's say you have to fold laundry with a desirable thing,
(26:36):
which in this case is of course listening to an
episode of A Slight Change of Plans, right, And so
you pair these two things, but really crucially you deny
yourself the ability to do the pleasurable thing outside of
the context of the undesirable activity.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
So if you're not doing laundry, then you're not listening
to your favorite episode of a podcast or a TV
show or whatnot. And I cannot tell you what a
game changer this has been for me in my life.
One of the biggest reasons that I was drawn to
your work, James, and what I found so refreshing in
Atomic Habits is that you talk about habits in the
context of identity.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
So we often talk about habits as mattering because of
the external results they'll get you. But I think the
real reason the habits matter is that every action you
take is a vote for the type of person you
wish to become. So your habits are how you embody
a particular identity. So, for example, every morning that you
make your bet, you embody the identity of someone who
(27:34):
is clean and organized. Every time that you study biology
for twenty minutes on Tuesday night, you embody the identity
of someone who is studious. And individually these are small things,
but collectively it's like casting votes on this pile and
building up a body of evidence for being that kind
of person. And the first time that you go out
and shoot a basketball for five minutes, you don't suddenly think, oh,
(27:57):
I'm a basketball player. But if you do that every
day for the next six months or year or two years,
at some point you kind of cross this invisible threshold
where you say, hey, being a basketball player must be
a big part of my life, Like that's kind of
part of who I am. And I think this is
ultimately where we're trying to get to, and this is
in atomic habits. I call this identity based habits, but
(28:17):
it's basically this idea that true behavior change is really
identity change. It's really getting you to shift the story
about who you are and what's normal for you. And
if you start to take pride in that aspect of
your story, if you start to believe I'm this kind
of person who does this, it becomes a little easier
to stick to the behavior. And I think that's the deeper,
(28:39):
more meaningful reason to care about your habits and what
they are, because they're shaping you every day.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Yeah, and I love how subtle changes in the way
that we frame things to ourselves or to others can
have a big impact on our behavior. So the whole
research on identity priming which says that we act in
ways that align with our current identity or the identity
that we aspire to have, so it can use health reinforcing.
And you give the example of someone who's trying to
quit smoking cigarettes and they're offered a cigarette and one
(29:07):
person says, no thanks, I'm trying to quit, Okay, that
person's identity is of being someone who's trying to change
versus someone who says no thanks, I'm not a smoker.
They no longer identify as someone who smokes, and that
slight tweak in how we self identify can have a
big impact on our subsequent decisions.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
I think that behavior and beliefs are two way street.
So you know, what you believe influences the way you act,
and the way you act influence is what you think
about yourself. And so that's why I often encourage people
start with, you know, one sales call or one push
up or one minute meditation like that action can help
cast a boat for believing something new about yourself. Yeah,
but the example that you're giving here, you can see
(29:47):
how it works the other way as well. You know,
we all have beliefs and identities that serve us and
that hinder us. So things like I'm terrible remembering people's names,
I'm not good at directions, I have a sweet tooth.
These are all little stories that you tell yourself that
reinforce a certain type of behavior. And progress often requires
(30:08):
unlearning as much as it requires learning. And so one
of the big challenges with the behavior changes, can I
unlearn some of the identities that are no longer serving me? Yeah,
And so that's a tricky thing, and I think the
best way to do it is by taking small actions
that cast votes for this new identity that you want
to have and gradually let the new identity crowd out
(30:29):
the older one. But it's not a one time thing.
It's not a one day thing. It's a lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
And the more that you can start to embrace that,
the more that you can start to foster and build
these new identities.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
It seems so appealing to tether your identity to your
behaviors because it is such a hugely motivating force. Right.
If you self identify as a runner, you're more likely
to run. If you self identify as a writer, you're
more likely to write. But it's a double edged sword, right,
because if we wrap our sense of self, our sense
is self worth so much in our habits, then if
(31:01):
you lose the ability to do something, it can be
so destabilizing. Right. So let's imagine a woman who's been
a runner for the last ten years, self identifies as
a runner, then has kids and endures some sort of
injury as a result of her pregnancy that renders are
unable to run. Now you're not only mourning the loss
of running, but you're mourning the loss of yourself in
(31:22):
some more fundamental way. And so how do we think
about that trade off so that the transitions in life.
I mean, the show is all about slight changes of
plan don't carry such a heavy burden.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
This is very common. I've heard about this from a
lot of readers since the book has come out. So
some other examples that are similar to what you're mentioning.
A person who identifies as a soldier. They've been in
the military for many years, and then they leave and
they become a civilian. What am I now? I feel
like I lost my identity. I recently heard from a
mother who her kids have now grown and gone off
to college, and she's suddenly an empty nester. She's like,
(31:55):
for the last twenty years, I've been a mother, So
you know, like I am still now, but in what way?
You know, it feels so different. And so we all
can think of these inflection points that we have in
our life where we're kind of mourning the loss of
a previous identity, or there's this trans from someone that
we thought we were to this new stage or this
new chapter. There is always going to be some part
(32:15):
of greeting that is part of that. And you know,
if your life is not going to look the same,
then that I don't think. I don't think it's reasonable
to tell people we just don't feel that way, you know,
like that's a natural part of being human.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Right, especially if it's constituted a part of your self worth,
your self identity.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
But I do think there's an effective way to think
about it, or maybe some useful things that you can
do that don't necessarily remove it from your life, that feeling,
but maybe lessen the blow or give you an effective
way to move forward. So, in the case of the
military example, I'm a soldier for a long time, I've
become a civilian. What am I now? Well, you may
not still be a soldier, but you could be the
(32:54):
kind of person who falls through on their mission. You
could be a good teammate, you could be the type
of person who is reliable. And these are all qualities
that were part of your life as a soldier and
they can still be part of your life now as
a civilian. And so I think that's one of the
first questions is which of the traits or pieces of
my previous identity are transferable into this new chapter. And
(33:16):
so that I feel like maybe the label is different,
but I don't have to lose who I am or
how I operate. You know, or what I consider to
be core parts of my personality, I can still find
outlets for those, So I think that is one effective
way to kind of manage that change.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
So, James, you've shared so much valuable content with us today.
For the listener who's feeling energized to begin this new habit,
what's your advice to them?
Speaker 2 (33:41):
I feel like sometimes the two best time frames to
focus on are either ten years or one hour. So
ten years is like, if you think about most of
the meaningful things you're trying to achieve in your life,
building a great marriage, raising kids that you're proud of,
growing a successful business, or launching a startup, writing a book,
getting in the best shape of your life, pick whatever
(34:01):
it is for you. These are almost always multi year things,
and so it's a big thing to try to accomplish.
But I think just think about that big fisher thing
you're trying to move toward, and then scale it down
and ask yourself, what can I do in the next
hour to move me toward where I want to be
in ten years? And if you just make it granular
like that and try to have one good step today,
(34:22):
you turn around in a year or two or five
or ten and probably be surprised by a lot of
the progress that you made. So in that way, I
think you can have a strategy where small habits are
not just about doing things that are small, they're also
about doing things that are powerful. And that's one of
the main reasons why I chose the phrase atomic habits.
It's not only tighty, it's also powerful.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed my
conversation with James, don't miss the next two weeks of
A Slight Change of Plans. We're revisiting two of our
favorite episodes. The first one is an episode on the
science of making and keeping friends, and then a conversation
about how a small shift in mindset can make stress
work for us rather than against us. And I'm excited
(35:36):
to share that we're back with the new season of
A Slight Change of Plans beginning in early March, and
it is a goodie. We can't wait to share it
with you. See you soon. A Slight Change of Plans
(35:57):
is created, written, and executive produced by me Maya Schunker.
The Slight Change family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our
senior editor Kate Parkinson, Morgan, our producer Trisha Ba and
our sound engineer Andrew Vastola. Louis Scara wrote our delightful
theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocal. A
(36:18):
Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A
Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Whatever outcomes you have or lifestyle you're enjoying right now,
it's kind of a byproduct of the habits you've been running,
and so if you want the outcome to change, it's
actually the habits that need to change.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Writer James Clear has helped millions of people achieve their
big goals through small shifts and behavior, and he believes
that our habits can have a powerful impact on how
we see ourselves.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
True behavior change is really identity change. Every action you
take is a vote for the type of person you
wish to become. So your habits are how you embody
a particular identity.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
On today's epsiodisode, a tactical guide for actually reaching our goals.
I'm maya shucker and this is a slight change of plans,
a show about who we are and who we become
in the face of a big change. If you're like me,
(01:35):
you often set ambvicious goals like wanting to meditate or
to cook more at home, but you struggle with execution,
like sure, I want to read more in the evening,
but when I sit down after work, Instagram is just
way more appealing. So this is where James comes in.
He believes that tiny changes in our habits are the
(01:55):
key to reaching our long term goals. His best selling book,
Atomic Habits distills the strongest insights from academic research, including
how to break bad habits and form good ones, and
he teaches us how to design our habits so they
actually stick. We started our conversation with the basics, So
(02:16):
let's start off with what a habit is. How do
you define habits?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Well, if you talk to an academic or researcher, they're
probably going to say, hey, technically, a habit is a
behavior that's more or less automatic or mindless, So like
brushing your teeth, or tying your shoes, or unplugging the
toaster after each use, like things that you don't even
really think about, you know, usually it's thirty seconds or
last two minutes or lastening. They're very quick, automatic routines.
(02:40):
But there is this interesting thing about habits, which is
that's not usually the way we talk about it culturally.
Like if I were to ask you, hey, what are
some habits you're trying to build, You're probably not going
to tell me something mindless and automatic. You're probably going
to say, I want to get in the habit of
writing every day, or I want to get in the
habit of going to the gym four days a week.
And I know what you mean when you say that,
(03:02):
you mean I want it to be this regular practice,
this ritual that I repeat consistently. But that stuffs pretty effort.
Puone requires concentration and careful thought, like especially writing. You
know it's ever going to be mindless, the way that
brushing your teeth might be.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Why are good habits so hard to pick up and
bad habits so hard to kick?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
What is the difference between a good habit of bad habit? Well,
most behaviors produce multiple outcomes across time, So broadly speaking,
let's say that a behavior has an immediate outcome and
an ultimate outcome, like kind of the canonical example of
a bad habit is smoking a cigarette. Well, the immediate
outcome of smoking a cigarette might be that you reduce stress,
or that you get to connect with a coworker outside
(03:44):
the office, or many other things that we often would
say serve you in some way or serve some need
that you might have. It's only the ultimate outcome of
continuing to smoke for ten or twenty years or whatever
that is negative. Good habits are often the reverse, Like
the immediate outcome of going to the gym for the
first week is often unfavorable. Your body's sore, you feel
(04:05):
foolish and stupid, You're worried that people are judging you
or think you're doing the exercises wrong. It's only the
ultimate outcome of sticking to a good habit for a
year or two or three that you get the results
that you want. And so I think my summary of
what is a good habit and what is a bad
habit is that the cost of your good habits is
in the present, the cost of your bad habits is
(04:25):
in the future.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
One of the things that I studied during my POSTOC
in cognitive neuroscience is temporal discounting. And I think, you know,
there's lots of reasons why it's really hard to invest
in good habits, But in addition to the rewards of
the good habits not being salient in the moment, we
also do discount the value of future rewards in a
pretty significant way. So even if we're told intellectually, okay,
(04:50):
this thing is going to pay off, our brains are
wired it's such that we just don't assign the same
value to those future rewards versus the present day ones.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Sure, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, But
my understanding of it is that for most of human
history we evolved in what was roughly an immediate return environment.
So your ancestors saw a storm on the horizon, they
take shelter. Now that gives them in a media benefit.
They need a meal, they forage for berries in the bush,
that gives them an immediate benefit. And so our paleolithic
prehistoric brains are largely the hardware that is the same
(05:19):
as it has been for the last fifty thousand years.
Grew up in an environment like that, or we're evolved
in an environment like that, and then now in modern
society we live, in many ways in a delayed return environment.
You go to work now so you can get paid
in two weeks. You study now so you can graduate
in four years. You save for retirement now so that
you can retire in two decades, and so a lot
(05:40):
of the behaviors, a lot of the habits we want
to build, have extreme temporal discounting going on. It's not
even just like a day or two from now, it's
many years from now, and we're not wired to work
that way.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Can you say more about why it's important that we're
so intentional about how we build our habits.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
So first reason is your brain is building habits all
the time, whether you think about it or not. So
if you're going to be creating habits anyway, it benefits
you to understand and what the process is and how
it works so that you can design it to your
benefit rather than to your detriment. I think a lot
of people feel like they're the victim of their habits.
Oh I did that, I didn't even realize that, or oh,
(06:19):
my habits are kind of happening to me. If you
understand how it works, now you don't have to be
the victim of your habits. You can be the architect
of them. And as far as I can tell, you
can only effectively direct your attention toward one thing at
a time. The more that you can figure out how
to offload stuff and not have to think about it,
the more that you kind of have operations going on
automatically in the background, and you can now direct your
(06:41):
attention towards something else. If you had to think carefully
about how to tie your shoes every time you did it,
or how to brush your teeth every time you did it,
or where the bread is and the pantry every time
you grabbed for it. I mean, an individual day would
become very cumbersome.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
By the way. Given my husband, Jimmy, I actually am
searching for where the bread is every day in the country.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Jimmy, if you're listening to this, stop moving to bread.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
I know, just keep it in one damn place.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Okay, But yeah, you get that's the idea, you know,
like your brain wants to do that so that you
can more smoothly get through the day and focus on
some of the other demands of life.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah. You talk about the difference in your book between
goals and systems. What do you mean by this?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
So your goal is your desired outcome, the target, the
thing you're shooting for. Your system is the collection of
habits that you follow each day. So almost by definition,
your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results.
Whatever outcomes you have or lifestyle you're enjoying or not
enjoying right now, it's kind of a byproduct of the
(07:45):
habits you've been running or the system you've been following
for the last six months, year, two years. And so
if you want the outcome to change, it's actually the
habits that mean to change. And this doesn't mean that
goals are useless, like I actually think goals are really
helpful for setting a sense of direction, gaining clarity, figuring
out what to optimize for. And I am someone who's
(08:07):
very goal oriented, so in a lot of ways, I
say all this stuff as a reminder to myself to
try to focus a little bit more on the habits
and the system and a little bit less on the
outcome and the goal.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
I also think that when we engage with the kind
of system that we want to build around us to
achieve the goal, it actually has a nice sobering effect
on the goal itself. So in a bubble, it's really
easy to think audaciously, like incredibly ambitiously about the goal
you're trying to achieve. But when you pressure test it
in the context of a system, all of a sudden,
(08:39):
the practical realities of how it is you're actually going
to achieve that goal come into the light, and you
might think to yourself, hmm, I might need a slightly
more modest goal at least this time around. And that's
not to say don't be ambitious, but that pressure testing
is actually critical so that you don't feel that you're
constantly failing or just set moonshots that you have no
chance of reaching when it comes to day to day reality.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I actually think it's a beautiful point. It's really wise
of you to bring it up. A lot of the time,
when I'm thinking about building my business, the first question
that I feel like you should ask is how do
I want to spend my days? And then inside of
that you can ask questions like how could I grow
the business more effectively, how can we reach more people?
How can we make a bigger impact. But a lot
of entrepreneurs start by asking how can we make the
(09:22):
most money possible? And I feel like that's a very
bad way to start, because you end up with a
bunch of options that are not the way that you
want to live your days. And so to your point
about dreaming ambitiously, people will often come up with goals
that they have for themselves, but then when they have
to start implementing that or thinking about the system, they realize, oh,
this isn't how I want to spend my time. Yeah,
you know, this isn't what I want to be doing.
(09:43):
And what you find is that a lot of the
people you're jealous of, or the results that you're envious of,
a lot of the things that you kind of wish. Oh, well,
you know what if I had what they had. You
don't want to do what is required. You're not even
interested in living that life. You know, there are many
things like sometimes I I'll talk to some of my
entrepreneur friends and just say something like, whatever the optimal
way is to make money, you probably don't even want
(10:05):
to do that. Like, you probably don't even want to
make the most money because it's a lifestyle. It's completely
unrelated to how you want to be spending your time,
and you could transfer that into pretty much any domain
in life.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, yeah, I really like that. And I think, look,
some of us have the luxury of thinking how do
I want to spend my days? Others of us don't
have that luxury, and we just have so many demands
on our time and our resources. And so the reason
why it's good to engage with systems at the outset
of goal pursuit is that there will just be natural
constraints and limitations on imagine single mom of three working
(10:36):
two shifts to make ends meet. They need to set
reasonable goals given the demands on their time. So it's
useful no matter what your starting point is. So you've
convinced us that systems are important. I mean, they're really
the driver of whether or not we achieve our goals.
Can you tell us, James, about the four elements of
habit formation, and then we can talk about how to
try to optimize given those elements.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Sure. So there's a much longer scientific discussion of the
cinnatomic habits, but the brief summary is that I like
to break a habit into four different stages, and I
think if you understand these four stage you understand how
habits work. So the first step is there's a queue.
So there's something that you notice or gets your attention.
So for example, you hear a siren, that's an ambulance
coming up from behind you. That's an auditory queue that
(11:20):
starts the habit of pulling to the side of the road.
Or you see a plate of cookies on the counter
in the kitchen, that might be a visual queue that
starts the habit of eating a cookie. After the queue,
the second step is the craving. There's some kind of
interpretation that your brain makes about what's going on. So
you see the plate of cookies in the counter visual queue,
your brain thinks, oh, that'll be sweet, sugary, tasty, enjoyable.
(11:42):
And so it's actually this moment of assigning a favorable
meaning to the cookie that gives you this motivation, the urge,
the desire to walk over, pick it up and take
a bite. So that's the third step the response, and
then finally there's a reward. Oh, it is in fact sweet, sugary, tasty, enjoyable.
So Q craving response reward, And you can kind of
(12:04):
imagine those four stages like going around a clock Q
craving response reward, Q raving response reward. And the more
that you cycle around that clock, the tighter that feedback
loop becomes. The more that behaviors are preceded by a
reliable queue and followed by an enjoyable reward, the tighter
the habit is, and the more ingrained and automatic it becomes.
(12:25):
And so that's kind of the very brief scientific description
of what's going on in your brain when you're building
a habit.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, what if the queue is simply a thought, Like
for a lot of times, the queue is simply I
want jalapino kettle potato chips, And it's like, I don't
really know if there's a physical que in my environment
or a particular context. It just that I know that
thing's delicious, and so my brain during the middle of
the day will just serve it up.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yep. The answer to this is going to differ depending
on which researcher expert you talk to. For myself, I
don't know. Some people believe that internal cues are a
thing that they can arise spontaneously, and then that that
could somehow dry before it. I guess I'll just say
I'm not sure that spontaneous thoughts exist. It seems as
(13:13):
if life is a very long, cascading chain of cause
and effect, and that every thought actually comes from somewhere,
even if you can't pin it down yourself.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, there's no question, just from like a physics point
of view, that the thought about the kettle chips was
preceded by something. But it does feel different to me
when the queue is a plate of chocolatech of cookie
sitting on the counter, versus when the queue is a
flurry of subconscious thoughts that are then followed by wanting
the kettle chips. Because in that frame I feel like
I have less control over whether or not I get
(13:46):
access to that queue. I don't even know what served
it up in the first place. It was just a
random smattering of thoughts that unfold it in a particular sequence.
That's why it feels relevant.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, habits of thought seem to be very hard to interrupt,
you know. It's like, if this is bubbling up for me,
how do I fix this habit where all of a sudden,
I feel like I have this urge to do something
or to eat something, or to ruminate on something. And
I will say that I don't have a great answer
to that. It's not like saying, hey, if you don't
want to eat more peanut butter, let's just keep jars
(14:15):
of peanut butter out of the house, exact because now
there's a lot of friction between you and the action, right.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, those neurons are inside your damn head. Can't run
away from them, folks can't lock them up.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah. Yeah, And so it's a very tricky thing and
I don't know that I have a good answer to it.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
After the break, James teaches us how we can build
habits that actually stick. We also discuss how our identity
can shape our habits, and how our habits can shape
our identity. We'll be back in a moment with a
slight change of plants. Let's talk about how we can
(15:01):
make good habits stick. Talk to me about the four
laws of habit building, and then for each one, I'd
love to ask you a couple of questions.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Sure, let me just give a brief summary and then
we can dive in. If you want a habit to stick,
there are basically four things that you want to happen.
So you want the cues of your good habits to
be obvious, so the first laws to make it obvious.
You want the craving to be attractive, to be compelling,
so the second laws to make it attractive. The more
compelling or enticing or motivating a habit is, the more
(15:29):
likely are going to feel like you want to do it.
The third laws you want to make it easy. The easier,
more convenient, frictionalless simple habit is, the more likely it
is to be performed. And then the fourth and final
laws you want to make it satisfying. The more satisfying
or enjoyable habit is, the more rewarding or pleasurable it
is the more likely you are to feel compelled to
do it in the future. So if you're sitting there
(15:51):
and you're thinking, no, I have this habit, I keep
procrastinating on it. I just can't quite seem to get started.
You can just go through those four laws and ask yourself,
how can I make the behavior more obvious? 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.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
So let's start with how we can make things more obvious.
What are some examples?
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I think one interesting thing you can do is just
hold a habit in the back of your mind that
you're thinking about building, and then walk into the rooms
where you spend most of your time each day and
look around and ask yourself, what is this space designed
to encourage? What behaviors are obvious here? What behaviors are
easy here? And you're going to start to notice different things. So,
for example, I had a reader who wanted to practice
(16:38):
guitar more frequently. He would go once a week and
then he would not practice, and he'd show up with
the next lesson and his instructor would say, you haven't practiced,
and so he took his guitar out of the case,
put it on a stand in the middle of the
living room. He would pass it thirty times a day,
and so he's more likely to pick it up and play.
So get you get the idea right, which is you're
just trying to make the thing that you want to
(16:59):
do more obvious, and you're trying to make the thing
you don't want to do less obvious and increase friction there.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
What do we do in situations where we really don't
have a lot of control over our environment. This actually
became quite salient during quarantine for me. So I remember
I was working basically from my kitchen, and so there
was no ability for me to make something like obvious
you're not obvious in that context or as much harder too.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, so what if we can't do something about this?
So COVID is a very easy example that you just mentioned.
You know a lot of people suddenly they're working from
the kitchen or from their living room. Now I can
snack all day or turn on TV anytime or whatever.
So this is a strategy. It comes from BJ Fogg,
Professor at Stanford, and he's got this kind of tiny
habits method. I refer to it in atomic habits as
habit stacking, because you're going to stack your new habit
(17:45):
on top of an old one. But the idea is
just that in FOG's insight, which I think is really smart,
is that it's often easier to stick to a new
habit if you chain it or link it to something
that you just did before. So let's take your example
of working in the kitchen. Maybe something you already do
each morning is that you make a cup of coffee,
and maybe there's some new productive behavior that you want
(18:06):
to do so that you get into the swing of
your day. You know, just say work on the most
important past, just to use a general thing, but it
could be more specific if you know what it is
for your job. So your habit stack could be something
like I walk into the kitchen, I make my cup
of coffee. After I pour my cup of coffee, I
will immediately start working on the most important thing. And
you give yourself this order of events that things always
(18:27):
happen in the same way, and so you kind of
try to link the habit to a specific queue in
that environment.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Let's talk about making things attractive. So what does this
mean in the context of habit formation. I'm assuming you
mean I should just bring a life size poster like
David Beckham with me everywhere I go.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Honestly, though like that could do. It depends on what
the habit is. So I think my current answer to
this I wish I had written this in the book,
but I didn't. It is worth asking yourself what would
this look like if it was fun. One of the
most common New Year's resolutions is to exercise more. And
I think that a lot of people are exercising or
(19:05):
going to the gym in January just because they feel
like they should go to the gym, or that like
society wants them to or they're expected to. And there
are many ways to live an active lifestyle. Some people
like lifting weights like a bodybuilder, and that's great, but
you don't have to do that. You could kayak or
rock climb, or go for a run or do yoga.
Like we could come up with an almost infinite list
(19:26):
of what that might look like, and you should choose
the version of that habit that is most fun to you.
And this doesn't mean that every habit in your life
is going to feel like going to a concert. Right,
It doesn't mean that like your habits are going to
feel like the most fun thing that you do. But
most things in life, there may not be like a
thousand ways to do it, but there's almost always more
(19:47):
than one way, and you can almost always find a
version that is more fun than the default. And so
I think you should start there.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, I think one thing we can suffer from I
certainly suffer from this is having a bit of a
purity complex around building new habits or certain behaviors. So
one of my goals is to just eat more vegetables.
Team I'm a vegetari, so you know, it's a pretty
pretty substantial fraction of what I should be eating, but
I don't. And so my goal is to eat salad
more regularly. But I had a purity complex about it.
(20:17):
So it's like, well, if I'm going to eat salad,
then I should get the healthy dressing and I should
be really sparing in terms of the toppings salad toppers
I put on it. And my husband kind of changed
my mind about this. He like makes his salad a
party every day. There's like a party inside his bowl, James,
and so I have become very expensive. In my definition
of what a salad topper is, it could be crushed
of potato chips. The other day, I put Snyder's honey
(20:41):
mustard pretzels on top of my salad and I just
go like I go to town with the salad. And
what's remarkable, since implementing this new rule at work this
whole year, I basically had salad for lunch like ninety
percent of the time. And so that was a really
good lesson for me, which is, if you're trying to
introduce a new thing, you don't have to reach for
(21:02):
perfection or feel like it's a painful, arduous process, and
therefore it's virtuous. There's some middle ground there, and it
actually led my habit to stick because I do look
forward to I look forward to lunch now like a
lunch that includes salad.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
That's a great example. There is so much truth to
the fact that you should try to do things in
the beginning that feel good and are enjoyable, and if
you can find a way to make it enjoyable, then
you have a reason to keep repeating it. And now
that you're having salid ninety percent of days, sure, maybe
there are little ways that you can start to optimize it.
I think you bring up a good point about there's
(21:39):
a certain type of person that has this mindset where
it's like for it to be virtuous or for it
to count, it has to be perfect, or it has
to be done you know, really well.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Or that or very hard in pa.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I need to feel like I'm suffering otherwise it doesn't
count yep. And that's a mindset that I do think,
even if it has served you in your life where
you found it useful in many ways, which I think
a lot of the people who believe it because they
feel like it's served them, it's worth releasing that for
a little bit and at least experimenting and seeing what
it might be like for it to be fun for
a little bit and to get the habit established and
(22:09):
you can scale it up and turn into something more.
And this can take many different shapes, but I do
think that this is a very deep truth about habits,
which is a habit must be established before it can
be improved. You know, it has to become the standard
in your life before you can scale it up and
optimize it and turn it into all the things that
you want it to be. And so you figured out
how to get salads established as part of your daily routine,
(22:31):
and you made it fun, and once it was established, great,
then there were so many ways that you could figure
out how to make it healthier. But you try to
figure out how do I get this going first? And
I think that's a great lens to use. There's also
another question that I think is worth just kind of
thinking about or holding on to, which is a lot
of people start by when they think about the habits
(22:51):
they want to build. I think especially this is a
pitfall for ambitious people or talented people who you know,
really when you start sitting her down and thinking about
what I want to achieve, your natural inclinations to be, like,
what could I do on my best day? You know,
what would it look like if I was at peak performance?
What would it look like if I was really firing
on all cylinders. You start to get excited about who
that future peak performance you could be, and instead, I
(23:15):
think it's almost better to ask yourself, what would I
stick to even on my bad days?
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah? I really like that.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
What would I stick to on my worst day? And
that becomes the baseline for the new habit. You know,
you're like, even when I don't feel like eating salad,
I'll probably eat this one that tastes really good and
has the potato chips on it, and it's like kind
of fun and exciting, and you can come up with
like what that might look like for me. For my
writing habit, one of my objectives is just to write
one sentence a day. It's like, look, even when I'm
exhausted and the day has gone terribly and I haven't
(23:42):
gotten anything done I wanted to get done, I can
write one sentence before I go to sleep. So figure
out what your baseline is for what you can stick
to even on the bad days, and then great, if
you feel better, scale it up from there. But I
think your example is a nice way of seeing how
that can work out.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
I this also, you know, fits into your make it
easy bucket of habit formation. I love one of the
stories that you talk about, which is a guy who
is trying to commit to going to the gym.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, there's this reader, my name Mitch, and he's lost
over one hundred pounds and now he's kept it off
for more than a decade. And when he first started
going to the gym, he had this strange little rule
for himself where for the first six weeks he wasn't
allowed to stay for longer than five minutes, so he
would get in the car, drive to the gym, do
half an exercise, get back to the car, drive home.
He was mastering the art of showing up. He was
(24:29):
figuring out how to make it part of his daily routine,
how to make it fun or easy enough that he
would do it. And there's this great quote from Ed
Latimer where he says, the heaviest weight at the gym
is the front door. Like, there are a lot of
things in life that are like that. You know, the
hardest step is the first.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
One, absolutely, And then what about the fourth law of
habit building making it satisfying? How is this different from
making something attractive? Is this more the residual feeling that
you're left with after the experience.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
No, it's a good question. They're definitely related.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
The make it attractive is often not exclusively, but often
it's about your expectation of what the payoff is going
to be. So it's the attractive part is usually about
anticipation motivation, whereas the satisfying part is about the resolution
of that anticipation. So making it attractive is like I
expect this cookie to taste good. Making it satisfying is
(25:20):
I just ate it, And it did in fact taste sweet, sugary, tasty, enjoyable.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
But the point here that the kind of practical takeaway,
and I refer to this in the book as the
cardinal rule of behavior change, which is behaviors that get
immediately rewarded get repeated, behaviors that get immediately punished get avoided.
And it is such a basic, simple idea as soon
as you hear it stated. But all human beings like
to feel good. We all want to feel praised, to
(25:46):
feel rewarded, We all want to feel satisfied and to
enjoy experiences in life. And so the more that your
habits can give you a positive emotion like that, the
more likely you are to repeat them in the future.
And we also, on the flip side, want to avoid
things that have consequences that feel painful, that it cause
you to suffer, that are unenjoyable. So the basic idea
(26:06):
here is how do I feel after I can lead
the habit, And the more that you feel good or
enjoy it, the more likely are to show up again
in the future. So that's kind of the big picture
view of it.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
This is why my absolute favorite number one habit building
strategy is temptation fundling, which is, you know, it was
a concept created by my friend and former collaborator Katie Milkman,
and essentially all temptation bundling is you pair the undesirable thing. Right.
Let's say you have to fold laundry with a desirable thing,
(26:36):
which in this case is of course listening to an
episode of A Slight Change of Plans, right, And so
you pair these two things, but really crucially you deny
yourself the ability to do the pleasurable thing outside of
the context of the undesirable activity.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
So if you're not doing laundry, then you're not listening
to your favorite episode of a podcast or a TV
show or whatnot. And I cannot tell you what a
game changer this has been for me in my life.
One of the biggest reasons that I was drawn to
your work, James, and what I found so refreshing in
Atomic Habits is that you talk about habits in the
context of identity.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
So we often talk about habits as mattering because of
the external results they'll get you. But I think the
real reason the habits matter is that every action you
take is a vote for the type of person you
wish to become. So your habits are how you embody
a particular identity. So, for example, every morning that you
make your bet, you embody the identity of someone who
(27:34):
is clean and organized. Every time that you study biology
for twenty minutes on Tuesday night, you embody the identity
of someone who is studious. And individually these are small things,
but collectively it's like casting votes on this pile and
building up a body of evidence for being that kind
of person. And the first time that you go out
and shoot a basketball for five minutes, you don't suddenly think, oh,
(27:57):
I'm a basketball player. But if you do that every
day for the next six months or year or two years,
at some point you kind of cross this invisible threshold
where you say, hey, being a basketball player must be
a big part of my life, Like that's kind of
part of who I am. And I think this is
ultimately where we're trying to get to, and this is
in atomic habits. I call this identity based habits, but
(28:17):
it's basically this idea that true behavior change is really
identity change. It's really getting you to shift the story
about who you are and what's normal for you. And
if you start to take pride in that aspect of
your story, if you start to believe I'm this kind
of person who does this, it becomes a little easier
to stick to the behavior. And I think that's the deeper,
(28:39):
more meaningful reason to care about your habits and what
they are, because they're shaping you every day.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Yeah, and I love how subtle changes in the way
that we frame things to ourselves or to others can
have a big impact on our behavior. So the whole
research on identity priming which says that we act in
ways that align with our current identity or the identity
that we aspire to have, so it can use health reinforcing.
And you give the example of someone who's trying to
quit smoking cigarettes and they're offered a cigarette and one
(29:07):
person says, no thanks, I'm trying to quit, Okay, that
person's identity is of being someone who's trying to change
versus someone who says no thanks, I'm not a smoker.
They no longer identify as someone who smokes, and that
slight tweak in how we self identify can have a
big impact on our subsequent decisions.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
I think that behavior and beliefs are two way street.
So you know, what you believe influences the way you act,
and the way you act influence is what you think
about yourself. And so that's why I often encourage people
start with, you know, one sales call or one push
up or one minute meditation like that action can help
cast a boat for believing something new about yourself. Yeah,
but the example that you're giving here, you can see
(29:47):
how it works the other way as well. You know,
we all have beliefs and identities that serve us and
that hinder us. So things like I'm terrible remembering people's names,
I'm not good at directions, I have a sweet tooth.
These are all little stories that you tell yourself that
reinforce a certain type of behavior. And progress often requires
(30:08):
unlearning as much as it requires learning. And so one
of the big challenges with the behavior changes, can I
unlearn some of the identities that are no longer serving me? Yeah,
And so that's a tricky thing, and I think the
best way to do it is by taking small actions
that cast votes for this new identity that you want
to have and gradually let the new identity crowd out
(30:29):
the older one. But it's not a one time thing.
It's not a one day thing. It's a lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
And the more that you can start to embrace that,
the more that you can start to foster and build
these new identities.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
It seems so appealing to tether your identity to your
behaviors because it is such a hugely motivating force. Right.
If you self identify as a runner, you're more likely
to run. If you self identify as a writer, you're
more likely to write. But it's a double edged sword, right,
because if we wrap our sense of self, our sense
is self worth so much in our habits, then if
(31:01):
you lose the ability to do something, it can be
so destabilizing. Right. So let's imagine a woman who's been
a runner for the last ten years, self identifies as
a runner, then has kids and endures some sort of
injury as a result of her pregnancy that renders are
unable to run. Now you're not only mourning the loss
of running, but you're mourning the loss of yourself in
(31:22):
some more fundamental way. And so how do we think
about that trade off so that the transitions in life.
I mean, the show is all about slight changes of
plan don't carry such a heavy burden.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
This is very common. I've heard about this from a
lot of readers since the book has come out. So
some other examples that are similar to what you're mentioning.
A person who identifies as a soldier. They've been in
the military for many years, and then they leave and
they become a civilian. What am I now? I feel
like I lost my identity. I recently heard from a
mother who her kids have now grown and gone off
to college, and she's suddenly an empty nester. She's like,
(31:55):
for the last twenty years, I've been a mother, So
you know, like I am still now, but in what way?
You know, it feels so different. And so we all
can think of these inflection points that we have in
our life where we're kind of mourning the loss of
a previous identity, or there's this trans from someone that
we thought we were to this new stage or this
new chapter. There is always going to be some part
(32:15):
of greeting that is part of that. And you know,
if your life is not going to look the same,
then that I don't think. I don't think it's reasonable
to tell people we just don't feel that way, you know,
like that's a natural part of being human.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Right, especially if it's constituted a part of your self worth,
your self identity.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
But I do think there's an effective way to think
about it, or maybe some useful things that you can
do that don't necessarily remove it from your life, that feeling,
but maybe lessen the blow or give you an effective
way to move forward. So, in the case of the
military example, I'm a soldier for a long time, I've
become a civilian. What am I now? Well, you may
not still be a soldier, but you could be the
(32:54):
kind of person who falls through on their mission. You
could be a good teammate, you could be the type
of person who is reliable. And these are all qualities
that were part of your life as a soldier and
they can still be part of your life now as
a civilian. And so I think that's one of the
first questions is which of the traits or pieces of
my previous identity are transferable into this new chapter. And
(33:16):
so that I feel like maybe the label is different,
but I don't have to lose who I am or
how I operate. You know, or what I consider to
be core parts of my personality, I can still find
outlets for those, So I think that is one effective
way to kind of manage that change.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
So, James, you've shared so much valuable content with us today.
For the listener who's feeling energized to begin this new habit,
what's your advice to them?
Speaker 2 (33:41):
I feel like sometimes the two best time frames to
focus on are either ten years or one hour. So
ten years is like, if you think about most of
the meaningful things you're trying to achieve in your life,
building a great marriage, raising kids that you're proud of,
growing a successful business, or launching a startup, writing a book,
getting in the best shape of your life, pick whatever
(34:01):
it is for you. These are almost always multi year things,
and so it's a big thing to try to accomplish.
But I think just think about that big fisher thing
you're trying to move toward, and then scale it down
and ask yourself, what can I do in the next
hour to move me toward where I want to be
in ten years? And if you just make it granular
like that and try to have one good step today,
(34:22):
you turn around in a year or two or five
or ten and probably be surprised by a lot of
the progress that you made. So in that way, I
think you can have a strategy where small habits are
not just about doing things that are small, they're also
about doing things that are powerful. And that's one of
the main reasons why I chose the phrase atomic habits.
It's not only tighty, it's also powerful.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed my
conversation with James, don't miss the next two weeks of
A Slight Change of Plans. We're revisiting two of our
favorite episodes. The first one is an episode on the
science of making and keeping friends, and then a conversation
about how a small shift in mindset can make stress
work for us rather than against us. And I'm excited
(35:36):
to share that we're back with the new season of
A Slight Change of Plans beginning in early March, and
it is a goodie. We can't wait to share it
with you. See you soon. A Slight Change of Plans
(35:57):
is created, written, and executive produced by me Maya Schunker.
The Slight Change family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our
senior editor Kate Parkinson, Morgan, our producer Trisha Ba and
our sound engineer Andrew Vastola. Louis Scara wrote our delightful
theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocal. A
(36:18):
Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A
Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker
Host
Dr. Maya Shankar
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