Building and Breaking Habits, Mental Frameworks etc. with James Clear

Why Listen To This?

• Interview with James Clear, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits.

Learnings

• ‘7 – On self-reflection/self-review
  • Allows one to course-correct.
  • Nobody plans to go off-course or make a mistake. But it may happen. There is a kind of natural drift in life that may end up being counter-productive. In this case, a review helps to check in and get back on track.
  • At least have a self-review once a year.
  • ‘8 – Include some questions to better plan for the next period:
    • “What am I optimizing for?”
      • Changes from time to time.
      • Decide what is good for you and don’t fall into the trap of internalizing what society says is good for you.
    • “Does this activity fill me or drain me of energy?”
      • Ideally spend more time with activities that fill you with energy.
    • “Does the amount of attention I give to this activity match its true importance?”
    • “Can my current habits carry me to my desired future?”
    • “How can I create an environment that will naturally bring about my desired change?”
      • Rather than force yourself and fight through, structure your:
        • Physical environment;
        • Social environment;
        • The tribes you’re part of; and,
        • Your strategy for what you’re trying to achieve so that it’s almost natural that you’re moving in that direction
• ‘13 – “you don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems”
  • Stack the deck so it is harder to fail.
  • Tips to set up systems:
    • Give yourself permission to reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule.
      • Eg. On working out, if you do not have time, reduce reps but still do something.
      • In the long run, the bad days matter more than the good days because if you show up on the bad days, even if it’s less than what you had hoped for, you maintain the habit. If you maintain the habit, then all you need is time.
        • “You also proved to yourself, you can look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the night and be like, “You know what? Circumstances weren’t ideal, situation wasn’t perfect, but I still found out a way to show up and get some reps in today.” That’s the first thing, it’s mindset and approach.”
• ‘19 – Have a key habit or an activity which sets you up to do other productive things:
  • Eg. For James, it is workout — Leads to better eating habiits, better sleep, etc.
  • Others may tend to meditate or breathe.
• ‘23 – On ideas and information flows:
  • Every idea you have is downstream from what you consume.
  • When you choose to read something or follow someone on Twitter, you’re choosing your future thoughts in a sense, you’re creating the information flow, and you’re choosing the thoughts that are going to arise.
  • You may not necessarily know what they are, but over time you can start to learn which sources of information are higher signal than others. That is the most important habit to build as there is an overflow of information.
• ‘49 – Your habits reinforce your identity.
  • The behaviors that you perform each day are reinforcing or shape the story that you have about yourself.
  • Not just habits. Every experience is part of who you are, but by virtue of the fact that they get repeated again and again, they have an outsized influence on your story.
  • “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become”.
• ‘53 – On identity-based habits:
  • Decide the type of person you want to be, and then you prove it to yourself with small wins.
    • The more small wins, the more small habits that you perform, the more votes that you cast for that identity, the more you build up evidence of being that kind of person.
    • Eventually, you start to take pride in that aspect of your identity.
  • “Whatever aspect of your identity that you’re trying to reinforce, that’s kind of the story.”
  • ‘You can also phrase it as a question. So for example, rather than saying, “I’m the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts,” you may ask “What would a healthy person do?” And so you’re just kind of walking around all day asking yourself, “What should I get for lunch? Well, what would a healthy person do?” Or, “Should I take an Uber, or should I walk to the next meeting? Well, what would a healthy person do?” And you just kind of go around your day and try to make decisions that you feel support that identity.’
  • The Atomic Habits playbook:
    • Ask – “Who is the type of person I wish to become?”
    • Prove it to yourself with small wins. If you do not have time, try reducing the scope, but stick to the schedule.
    • As such, you find ways to reinforce your desired identity, even if it’s small, especially in the beginning.
    • Over time:, if you master the art of showing up and performing these habits, it leads to:
      • Consistency → Builds up momentum → Reinforce or shapes the desired identity.
      • Eventually, ‘at some point you kind of cross this invisible threshold where you’re like, “Oh, I guess I am that kind of person.” If you go out and shoot a basketball for five minutes, you don’t think, “Oh, I’m a basketball player.” But if you do it every day for six months or a year or two years, at some point you cross this invisible line. You’re like, “I guess playing basketball is kind of part of who I am.”’
• ‘64 – On breaking a habit:
  • Three ways:
    • Eliminate it entirely.
    • Reduce it – curtail it to the desired degree if any.
    • Substitute – replace it with a different habit.
  • Of the above three methods, substituting is easier and more effective.
• ‘66 – Habits as a solution to a problem:
  • Eg. You come home after work every day and are, usually, exhausted.
    • So you may scroll Instagram mindlessly for 30 minutes.
    • Someone else may play videogames,
    • Some others may go for a run.
  • All of the above are solutions to the same problem. some may be productive, others are not.
  • Once you analyze and realize that it’s unlikely that your current solutions are the optimal solutions, you can step outside and above yourself and look down and try to come up with a better solution.
• ‘68 – The four laws of behavior change:
  • To cultivate a habit, make it:
    • Obvious
    • Attractive
    • Easy
    • Satisfying
  • If you want to break a bad habit, do the opposite; make it:
    • Invisible
    • Unattractive
    • Difficult(increase friction)
    • Unsatisfying
• ‘74 – How to apply the laws of behavior change?
  • Even if you reduce the time spent on each activity, make an effort to show up every day and do it. This way, you’ll build the habit and now you have gained a foothold and you can advance to the next level.
  • The 2-minute rule:
    • Take any habit you’re trying to build; scale it down to something that takes 2 minutes or less to do.
    • Eg. “Read 30 books a year” becomes “read one page”.
  • This way, you, master the act of showing up, essentially building a habit.
  • A habit must be established before it can be improved.
  • Make the habit:
    1. Easy to do
    2. Easy to show up(be consistent)
    3. Satisfying
  • To make it satisfying, can be like the following:
    • The fact that you have done something can inherently give you a sense of satisfaction; or,
    • You may add an additional benefit – something which gives you a positive emotion like, treating yourself to your favorite food or drink, etc.
    • The cardinal rule of behavior change — “behaviors that get rewarded, get repeated, and behaviors that get punished, get avoided”
  • All humans want to feel good, o have positive emotions, to be supported, to be loved, to be rewarded, and to have something that feels good. Associating that with habits is the core idea.
  • Eventually, it connects to the notion of identity, i.e. When you perform a habit and you feel good because it’s reinforcing your desired identity.
• ‘82 – On writing books/content:
  • Factors of a good piece:
    • Timeless
    • Universal
    • Something that fascinates you:
      • Be passionate about the content you produce
      • According to Morgan Housel, “Writing for yourself is fun and it shows. Writing for other people is work and it shows.”
• ‘110 – In writing/content creation, competence matters more than credentials.
  • You don’t need permission from anybody.
  • Write something that genuinely makes a difference in someone else’s life and deliver on the problem you’re writing about.
  • This can easily help you make a career out of it.
  • Having an email list of 450,000 people is what helped James get a book deal as he doesn’t have any credentials to his name.
• ‘120 – Have a pregame routine as a starter for habit-building.
  • Have a ritual you do before you start something.
  • That can be powerful and will set you up mentally for what you have to do.
• ‘122 – On the social environment:
  • The more your habits go along with the group, you feel that you’re a part of something and by virtue, you’ll stick to the habits better.
  • If it doesn’t go with the group, there will be friction and in the long run, it’ll be difficult to stick to the habits.
  • Most of the time, the desire to belong is more powerful than the desire to improve.
  • Join tribes where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
  • Set up your environment in such a way that you’re served by your environment and not hindered by it.
• ‘132 – On habits and the trajectory of life:
  • The trajectory of your life bends in the direction of your habits.
  • “It comes back to doing small things well each day, trying to live one good day, and then, waking up again tomorrow and doing the same thing., it comes back to consistency.”
  • Results are a lagging measure of your habits.
    • Eg. your bank account is a lagging measure of your financial habits;
    • Your physical fitness is a lagging measure of your training habits.
  • To change the results, change the habits.
  • “And small habits, showing up in little ways, mastering the art of showing up, trying to get a little bit better each day, those are all things that you can keep in mind as you try to just live one good day today and be on a good trajectory.”
  • “It’s like a mindset. It’s a philosophy, it’s an approach, that “I’m going to focus on the trajectory that I’m on and I’m going to try to stay on a good path, even if it’s just in small ways,” and then, trust that that will compound and multiply and turn into something much greater over time.”
  • “Because the truth is, time will magnify whatever you feed it. If you have good habits, time becomes your ally, and all you need is patience. But if you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy.”