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If you want better outcomes, the thing to focus on is building better habits.
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The results of success are widely discussed and highly visible and the process of success is often invisible.
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We tend to overvalue outcomes and we undervalue the process.
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I think the shift is
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Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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Welcome to this special masterclass.
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We ve brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today.
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It s going to be powerful.
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So let s go ahead and dive in.
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If people are listening to this, watching this, thinking about how they can transform their lives and better their lives, what s something over the next seven days that they should be thinking about with their habits to make this happen?
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Yeah, great question.
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I don t even think it needs to be seven days.
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I think it d be five minutes.
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You know, like you can do a lot with five good minutes, like five good minutes of exercise will reset your mood.
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Five good minutes of writing will make you feel totally different about your manuscript.
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It s like now the project s moving forward.
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Five good minutes of conversation will restore the relationship and, you know, get people back on track.
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So five good minutes can do a lot.
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And I think you can scale it down that small and just ask yourself, you know, how can I live five good minutes?
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You know, how can I, like, in a sense, each day is a small lifetime.
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And how can you live a good life today?
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That s really all you got to focus on is, can I have a good day today?
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And then you can wake up again tomorrow and do the same thing.
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And this idea of getting 1% better each day, it s really encouraging a focus on trajectory rather than position.
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You know, there s so much discussion about position in life.
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We have all these different ways of measuring our current position, like what s the number on the scale?
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How much money is in the bank account?
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What s the current stock price?
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We have all these different ways of analyzing what our current position is.
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And then usually when we get that number, whatever it is,
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there s kind of some sort of judgment that happens, you know, it s not where I said I wanted to be yet, or we haven t achieved what we said we wanted to achieve.
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And what I m encouraging is to say, listen, measurements fine, it can be useful, but just for a minute, let s set that to the side, and stop worrying so much about our current position, and focus a little bit more on our current trajectory.
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You know, as the arrow pointed up into the right, or have we flatlined?
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You know, are we getting 1% better or 1% worse?
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Cause if you re on a good trajectory, even if it s just for the next five minutes, you know, then you re on the path where all you need is time.
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Like.
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Time will magnify whatever you feed it.
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You know, if you have good habits, time becomes your ally and that trajectory will carry you forward.
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And if you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy.
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And every day that goes by, you kind of dig the hole a little bit deeper.
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And so getting 1% better each day, it s really a mindset.
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It s an approach.
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It s less about measuring it.
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Oh, is it 1% or 1.6% or whatever?
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Like it s not about getting caught up in the numbers.
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It s about trying to focus on putting yourself on a good path.
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and then letting those days stack up.
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I love that approach and that mindset.
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I m curious, in your opinion, why do you think so many people have the habit of being hard on themselves even when they re improving and seeing the metrics go up on whatever they re measuring?
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I mean, it can probably be many different things, and I don t know all the answers.
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I think one thing that s common is that the results of success are widely discussed and highly visible, and the process of success is often invisible and hidden from view.
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You ll never see a news story that s like, man eats chicken and salad for lunch today.
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You know, it s only a story once it s like man loses 100 pounds.
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You know, it s only once it s a result that people talk about it or like there s never going to be a story about James writes 500 words today.
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You know, it s like only a story once atomic habits is a bestseller.
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And so because the results are the thing that gets discussed so much.
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And it s not, by the way, it s not that results don t matter.
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Like I consider myself pretty results oriented.
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It s just that I think we tend to overvalue outcomes because it s all we ever talk about.
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And we undervalue the process because it s just not it s not compelling to talk about what s going on on a daily basis.
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So.
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because of all that, I think it can get easy to judge yourself.
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You know, you could be doing the right thing on any given day.
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Like I could sit down and I could write 500 words and that s actually a really good day, you know?
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But if the manuscript s still a mess and I m still a year and a half away from the book coming out and I m seeing somebody else launch a bestseller this week, then it s, you start to judge yourself and feel like, oh, they have what I want to have, or I m not there yet, or this is still a mess.
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I ve been working on it for months.
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Like this is never going to get finished.
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It s very easy to fall into that kind of mindset.
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and especially if you re focused on results.
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So I think the shift is partially it just helps to know that
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Working on habits day in and day out, focusing on building a better process and building a better system is how results occur.
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And that is very obvious to all of us as soon as you say it, but man, it s so easy to forget it on a daily basis.
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And so reminding yourself that most of your results in life are a lagging measure of the habits that precede them.
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So your bank account is a lagging measure of your financial habits.
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Your physical fitness is the lagging measure of your exercise habits.
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Even like silly stuff like the amount of clutter in your living room is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits.
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So many areas of life are largely, maybe not exclusively, but largely influenced by the habits that precede them.
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And so if you want better outcomes, the thing to focus on is building better habits.
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And for some reason, we get into this mindset where we re focused on results and we naturally start to compare.
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And that leads to feelings of judgment, resentment and negativity and so on.
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And if we can just shift it a little bit and just try to focus on having five good minutes or living a good day or building better habits, then I think maybe you pull yourself back in the present moment.
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You focus a little bit more on running your own race.
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and maybe a little bit less on what everybody else is doing.
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Love that man.
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Focus on your own race.
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You know, over 10 million copies sold of Atomic Habits.
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You know, if there is anyone who hasn t got this yet, you guys got to make sure you get this.
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But I m curious for those who haven t got it yet,
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and don t know, how long does it take to form a habit?
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It seems like there s all this different research.
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This university says this, and this scientific study says this.
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How long does it take to actually form a habit?
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And it s dependent on what habit you re trying to create.
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And also, are there different stages of building and forming a habit?
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Hmm.
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That s interesting.
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The stages part s interesting.
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People don t usually ask that.
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OK, so very popular question.
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How long does it take to build a habit?
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It does depend on the habit you re building.
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So there are a variety of studies that show, you know, if you pick an easy habit, you know, might only take a couple of weeks.
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If you pick something really difficult, maybe it takes six or seven or eight months.
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Like, you know, who knows?
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But it also depends, like the same habit can take very different amounts of time, depending on the context.
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Imagine one person who s trying to build the habit of doing yoga every day, and they live with a bunch of athletes or people who go to yoga studios or whatever.
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And then the other person is trying to build a habit of doing yoga every day, and they live with nobody who works out and they kind of get criticized or poked fun at if they do it in front of them.
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Well, same habit, but very different situations.
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And so the environment is going to influence how much friction you re feeling associated with that.
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And obviously that will influence how easy or difficult it is.
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So I don t really know that the timing tells you anything.
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You know, there s all these kind of popular myths, 21 days or 30 days or whatever, and there s not really anything to back that up.
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But there s also a couple of studies that say on average, it s like 66 days or something like that.
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But again, the range can be quite wide depending on the habit.
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So I think the true answer, the honest answer to how long does it take to build a habit is forever.
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Because if it stops, if you stop doing it, it s no longer a habit, you know, like, and what I m trying to get at with that is habits are not a finish line to be crossed.
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You know, there are lifestyle to be lived.
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It s something to integrate into your new normal.
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It s not like, hey, let me just do this for 30 days or 66 days and then I ll be a healthy person or then I ll be productive or whatever, you know, I won t have to think about it anymore.
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It s like, no, like what we re looking for is a change that you can integrate into your new normal, something you can make part of your lifestyle.
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And then once it s part of your daily life, great, you can start to look at the next step and try to integrate that one.
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And it s a it s kind of this endless process.
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And maybe that encourages you a little bit more to look for a non threatening change or a sustainable change, rather than just trying to flip a switch.
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Yeah.
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And it also sounds like a habit is only a habit and correct me if I m wrong.
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if it becomes and is your identity on a consistent basis.
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And if it s not your identity, then you re not doing it, if it s not your identity.
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I don t think most researchers would define it that way, but it speaks to this question you asked about stages.
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And that that was kind of the first thing that I thought about when you mentioned that question.
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So like, let s say, for example, let s just take like a classic habit, like going to the gym and working out.
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So early on going to the gym is kind of uncomfortable.
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You know, you re worried about like, are people judging me?
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Do I look stupid?
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I don t know what exercises to do.
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Um, you know, like I don t know where to put my stuff.
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Do they have a water fountain at this gym or do I need to bring a water bottle?
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There s like all these like stupid little questions that you re thinking about when you re getting started.
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And it s definitely not part of your identity.
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You haven t shown up enough to be comfortable there and feel like, hey, this is just part of who I am.
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And so early on the kind of the first stage when you re practicing it, I think the number one thing you need to do is scale it down, reduce the scope and try to make it as easy and as frictionless as possible to show up each day.
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So that s probably like stage one is how do I make the opposite of what people try to do when they re like, I m out of shape.
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I m going to go every day for the next year and I m not going to miss a day and I m going to eat chicken and salad every day.
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Well, and you know, what s interesting is, especially for ambitious people, it s really interesting or really easy to fall into that pitfall.
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Because when you sit down and you think about the changes you want to make, yeah, it s easy to get excited about that.
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I think implicitly, you kind of, even though people don t say it, what the thing that s kind of in the back of their mind is, what can I achieve on my best day?
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Like, how can I get to peak performance, you know?
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And instead, I almost think it s more useful to ask yourself, what can I achieve even on the worst days?
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Like what habit could I stick to even on the bad days?
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Because then if you start there, now you can start to build some momentum.
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You can show up consistently, you can establish the habit.
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So that s maybe the first stage is scale it down.
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The second stage is you start to get some like other rewards associated with it.
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So you ve been going to the gym for a few months and then maybe you start to see a little bit of a change in your body.
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Or maybe you start to develop some friendships there and you look forward to seeing your new buddy there and you guys fist bump and you chat a little bit.
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And it s just like kind of more engaging and fun to do it, to go there and work out.
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And so these are like other benefits, things that make the habit feel good and they kind of help you show up more and more.
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So you re starting to get these external benefits that are coming along the way.
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And then ultimately the maybe the final stage or a later stage is now it feels like it s kind of part of my identity.
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I go like this is where I would say so I ve been working out for a while now and it s probably like the habit that I care most about like my in terms of personal habits.
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It s the one that feels like it centers me or it s the only time I really get for myself.
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And so
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I want to work out now.
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Yes, of course, I want the benefits of it and the, you know, the physical changes and all that stuff.
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But what I really want is I just feel good when I do it.
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You know, I feel like I m being me.
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I m being the kind of person I want to be.
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And it makes me feel like, yeah, this is the identity I want to have this kind of person I want to be.
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And so I can get that satisfaction.
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instantly.
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As long as I m doing one rep, I get that feeling.
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And so that s a reward that comes maybe later.
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You got to show up a lot before you get to that place mentally.
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But I think ultimately, that s where you re trying to get to.
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Now, there is maybe one more stage after that, which is the tighter that you cling to your current identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.
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And so this is kind of an endless process, you know, like you we all can sort of think about like, let s say you have a surgeon who they ve been doing an operation a certain way for the last 20 years, and they have a bunch of successful patients and cases from that operation, and they just are like yeah and you know what I know it works well this way.
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And then a new technology has always been this way.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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A new technology comes along and they re like, you know, hey, you can do this with robots now or you can do it laparoscopically or whatever.
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And they resist it because they re like, no, I have a lot of evidence for doing it my old way.
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They cling to that current identity and it s harder to grow.
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And five years from now, they find themselves behind the curve.
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Or you ve got a teacher who they ve been doing their lesson plan the same way for the last 10 years and they don t want to integrate YouTube or some new learning modality or whatever.
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And five years from now, they find themselves behind the curve.
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And so, the tighter you cling to your current identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.
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And it s kind of this endless cycle.
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In the early stages, what you want is to foster the identity, to reinforce being that kind of person, because it helps you show up.
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But then eventually, a couple years from now,
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the world changes and you need to adapt.
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And so it s kind of like evolve or die.
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Um, and you need to continually be retouching or optimizing or refining that identity in your approach.
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Um, and so that s, those are, there are some various stages there, but those are kind of some of the big ones that I, that stuck out to me.
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Yeah, it s like people who are stuck to whatever fax machines and then it s, you know, then from faxing to email and then email to, you know, cell phones and whatever it is.
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It s like our grandparents don t keep up with the technology and then we can t call them on FaceTime because they don t know how to turn it on or whatever.
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So.
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That s interesting.
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It sounds like there s different stages to these habits, and it sounds like when you become successful, the habits that got you here may not necessarily get you to the next stage or season of accomplishment, fulfillment, success, health.
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Is that right?
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Yeah, it s interesting because I would say there s kind of like two categories.
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Their habits are like timeless that you, and we call those the fundamentals of whatever your domain is.
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You know, like in my case, reading and writing are probably always going to be habits that will serve me as an author, you know, but then there s other stuff, you know, the way that, uh, I executed the book launch for atomic habits.
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You know what?
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Like if I launched another book in 10 years, a lot of those strategies would probably be outdated.
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And so you need to upgrade and improve, you need to evolve and change.
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And so there s both the fundamentals that you always need to stick to, and there s just this continual growth and learning process that you also have to be committed to.
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A habit must be established before it can be improved, right?
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If you don t establish the habit, there s nothing to optimize.
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If you re not showing up at the gym every day, you don t even, who cares about what workout you re doing?
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You re not even there.
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Don t start running an hour a day if you ve never run in a long time.
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Be the person who shows up and puts their running shoes on every day before you worry about how far you re running, what kind of workout you re doing, and all that type of stuff.
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Establish the art of showing up first before going all in on the desired goal you want.
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I think that s right.
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I mean, you can find examples of people who flip a switch and transform their lives or have an epiphany and do it overnight, but I think that it s rare.
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I think that the more sustainable strategy, the more reliable strategy is to scale it down to the first two minutes, focus on that, establish it, master the art of showing up and then go from there.
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So really you should like,
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Usually when people think about building better habits they optimize for the finish line.
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It s like how much weight do I need to lose?
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How much money do I need to make?
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When can I finish this book?
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It s all focused on the result.
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But I think instead if you optimize for the starting line, make it as easy as possible to start, scale it down,
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Organize your environment so all that stuff is set up.
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This is another strategy for making it easy, which is that you can prime your environment to make the future action easier, right?
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Like if you chop up a bunch of vegetables and fruit on Sunday, it s now easier to have a healthy snack during the week.
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If you set your workout clothes out the night before, it s now easier to get into the workout the next day.
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But doing all that stuff to make it easy to show up, that is probably the more important piece early on.
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There s also like all these
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There are all these logistical details for building a habit that nobody thinks about in the beginning.
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Like what?
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Well, like take the example of my reader who went to the gym.
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It s like, okay, what gym are you going to go to?
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How are you going to get there?
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Are you going by yourself or are you going to go with a friend?
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Do you need to... What time are you going to go?
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Yeah, what time are you going to go?
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Are you going to have your own water bottle or is there a water fountain at the gym?
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And that stuff sounds like silly and small, but when someone s starting, the fact that like, oh, the gym doesn t have a water fountain and I always forget to bring my own, that s enough friction for someone to quit.
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So by focusing on just the first two minutes, you figure all that stuff out.
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And then once you ve got that piece mastered, now you can worry about how long the workout is and what program to do and all that stuff.
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So figuring out the logistics first is an important step.
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I think that s something that just comes naturally with scaling a habit down.
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You figure out what s required to show up because you re not worried about the results or the outcome or how long you worked out or judging yourself for, you know, for running 30 minutes when you should have run 45 or whatever.
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Got it.
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Okay.
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So this is the response still?
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Right.
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Okay.
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And what s the fourth?
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The fourth one, and this is crucial for getting a habit to stick, is the reward or the outcome.
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So
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Every behavior is followed by some kind of outcome.
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This is just basic cause and effect And if the immediate outcome is favorable is enjoyable.
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You have a reason to repeat it in the future.
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It s kind of like doughnuts Yeah, exactly, right?
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He s like that example if you if you um If you feel good if you feel satisfied right after you do something then it s like this positive emotional signal and it s like yeah I should do this again.
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Yeah, so
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You can see that actually business is a really interesting example of this.
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There are a lot of products and some of the most successful products have some type of immediate satisfaction that is layered into them.
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So toothpaste is a very common example.
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There s no reason a toothpaste needs to taste like mint, but it does because
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the minty flavor and the refreshingness of it, it gives your mouth this clean feel.
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It s more satisfying, so you have a reason to do it again in the future.
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I heard an interesting one recently about car manufacturers, that some of them are adding a fake guttural roar to the car or the truck when you press the accelerator, because it just adds to the actual natural sound of the engine, so it makes it more satisfying to step on the gas and to drive the car.
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So there are a variety of examples like this, but if you can add in the key is it needs to be immediate, right?
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So like this is in the book, I refer to this as the cardinal rule of behavior change, which is behaviors that are immediately rewarded, get repeated behaviors that are immediately punished, get avoided.
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And it s really about the speed of how quickly you feel successful.
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If it feels good, you have a reason to do it again.
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Is that why video games do so well?
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Video games are masters at this.
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SPEAKER_00
They re masters at it.
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SPEAKER_00
So they re masters actually at a variety of aspects related to habit formation.
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So one is they re really good at this immediate satisfaction.
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There are all kinds of things.
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You re actually constantly getting feedback in a video game.
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Even if you re just running, you hear the pitter patter of the steps.
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It s gratifying.
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the jingles of like picking up another power up or seeing a kill or something like that, whatever the game is, you re always getting constant feedback.
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Sound, things that are on screen, they re really good at dripping out.
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Watching the score increase in the top corner, that is immediate feedback.
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So they have all these different ways of making you feel satisfied.
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And when you see that progress, you have a reason to continue in the future.
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This is one of the most effective forms of immediate satisfaction is progress.
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As soon as you feel progress, you have a reason to continue.
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It feels really good to see that you re making headway.
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Now, why do some people make all this progress?
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Let s say they lose the weight, they lose 100 pounds, but then they gain it back two years later.
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They ve got this progress, they achieve the desired goal, but then how come it didn t stick?
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SPEAKER_00
It s a good question.
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I mean, it s a complicated thing, a hard thing, but I ll give a couple potential reasons.
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So one is it comes back to the social norms that I mentioned before.
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There s a story that I tell in the book about Vietnamese soldiers, well, American soldiers during the Vietnam War.
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So they were over in Vietnam and these two congressmen went over and found out that the heroin usage among the troops was incredibly high.
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It was like, I think they first thought it was like 10 or 15%, but then they found out it was actually over 20.
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So, you know, one in five troops is addicted to heroin or trying heroin, using it while they re over there.
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And they were like, this is a huge problem.
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We need to figure this out.
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So they created this whole committee to investigate things or whatever.
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And eventually the war ends and the soldiers come back and they were shocked by is that
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90% of the soldiers that were addicted to heroin in Vietnam were not addicted when they returned.
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And the main reason, it makes so much sense, but it upended our understanding of addiction at the time.
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SPEAKER_00
They completely changed the context, right?
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In Vietnam, they re in a war zone.
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They re highly stressed.
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They re surrounded by other users.
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Heroin is present and easy to get.
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They come home, they re in a totally new environment.
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It s not a war zone anymore.
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They re not surrounded by other users.
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They don t really know where to get heroin, so they have to figure that out too.
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You layer all this stuff together, and suddenly it becomes much easier to not do that.
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whereas previously they thought, oh, it was an addiction, they were doing it for other reasons.
2
SPEAKER_00
This same thing is true, but usually in the reverse, right?
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SPEAKER_00
Typically you have an addict who gets hooked on a drug, goes into rehab, this is the equivalent of leaving your environment behind, not having any of those triggers, but then you send them home to the same place they got addicted in in the first place, right?
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So now they re surrounded by all their old friends, all the same cues, and it becomes very hard to resist that.
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And I wonder if,
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When people rebound from habits after they ve achieved some level of success, whether it s losing weight or getting clean or whatever, it s the return of the environment that causes a lot of that.
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Do you think that s what it is?
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SPEAKER_00
Well, I don t know if it s always that.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t think I could say it is universally.
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SPEAKER_00
I think that it s definitely it definitely plays a role.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean because we re influenced by people s Pressure either way like you yes peer pressure can either be positive or negative Yeah, the communities we surround ourself with we rise to the community, right?
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You know if you re around vegans all day and there s only vegan food available You re gonna eat probably mostly vegan, right?
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That s what you want or if you re trying to eat healthier if you go back home and everyone s eating doughnuts all day
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That temptation is going to be hard to say no to after months.
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SPEAKER_00
You can do it for a little while, but it s just really hard to do it.
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SPEAKER_00
So environment is a huge factor, is what I m hearing.
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I think both social and physical.
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SPEAKER_00
We haven t talked that much about physical environment, but that s another key component.
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I ll give you an example of a good habit and a bad habit.
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So for good habits, you want the physical environment to make it obvious and easy for you to do the behavior.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, so like I, um, like have a pull up bar in your room, exactly.
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SPEAKER_00
Trying to do a hundred pull ups a day, right?
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Like have it hanging over your door as opposed to even if you had one, but it was in the closet because you just half the time you wouldn t take it out.
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Or it s at the gym upstairs or down the street.
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SPEAKER_00
No.
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You know, I have a friend who he wanted to practice guitar more.
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And so he left his guitar in the middle of his living room.
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And that was just so he d walk past it a hundred times a day.
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Pick it up and play.
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Becomes much easier, right?
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SPEAKER_00
Bad habits are the same way.
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SPEAKER_00
So, but in reverse, instead of making it obvious, you want to make it invisible.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, take like, which is just talking about video games.
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A lot of people feel like they watch too much, spend too much time watching TV or playing video games or watching a screen.
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But if you walk into pretty much any living room, where do all the couches and chairs face?
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SPEAKER_00
They all face the television.
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So it s like, what is that room designed to get you to do?
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Turn it on.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
So you can restructure that environment to make it less likely that you ll fall into that habit.
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SPEAKER_00
And there are a variety of things you could do.
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SPEAKER_00
You could take the remote control and put it inside like a drawer so you don t see it.
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You can put the television behind a wall unit or a cabinet so that it s less visible.
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SPEAKER_00
But you could also increase the friction with the task.
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SPEAKER_00
So you could like,
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Unplug your TV after each use and only plug it back in if you can say the name of the show that you want to watch.
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SPEAKER_00
So you can t mindlessly pull up Netflix and just find something.
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SPEAKER_00
Or you could take the batteries out of the remote control so that it s an extra five to ten seconds to turn on.
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SPEAKER_00
Maybe that s enough time to be like, do I really want to watch something right now?
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SPEAKER_00
I m just doing this mindlessly.
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SPEAKER_00
If you really wanted to be extreme.
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Don t have the TV.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, you could get rid of the TV entirely or take it off the wall and put it in the closet and only take it out when you really want to watch something.
2
SPEAKER_01
For four years when I lived in Columbus, I removed the TV for four years.
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I didn t have a TV in my place because I was like, I want to earn money.
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I want to build my business and I have nothing.
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So I need to work.
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I need to focus on this to build the habit that I wanted for my business.
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SPEAKER_01
And it was the best thing for me because I would spend hours just mindlessly watching.
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SPEAKER_01
And now I was like, okay, if I want to watch something, I m going to go to the sports bar and watch the game.
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I m going to go to a friend s house and watch this specific thing.
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Or I m going to go to the movies and take a break as opposed to three hours a day of TV.
2
SPEAKER_00
What s brilliant about that, and it s a really good example, is that we, I think about that a lot with phones as well.
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So every day I try to leave my phone in another room outside of my office.
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at least until lunch, because then I get like a four hour block of time in the morning where I can just work without any distraction.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s funny how quickly you don t, like if my phone was on me in the morning, I would check it like, you know, every five minutes or whatever.
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SPEAKER_00
But when it s out of the room, I don t even find myself wanting to, I never walk up the stairs to go check it, even though it s only 30 seconds away.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s interesting how little we actually want to do these things, but we just do them all the time because they re obvious and easy.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think the key is to invert that.
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Take the things that are the bad habits, the distractions, the procrastinations, the unproductive uses of time, and make them more invisible, reduce exposure, and less easy to do.
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SPEAKER_00
And take the things that are good habits and make it the equivalent of having your phone on you all the time.
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Make it right in front of you.
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Make it obvious.
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SPEAKER_00
Make it easy.
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Make it frictionless.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you re looking to write, do you write with your journal or your computer?
2
SPEAKER_00
I write on the computer.
2
SPEAKER_00
I write in Evernote.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s got to be faster.
2
SPEAKER_00
Transfer later and all these things.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, okay If you were coaching someone who said I have no clue what I m supposed to do with my life I m lost.
2
SPEAKER_01
I have all these bad habits I smoke I drink I eat doughnuts every day.
2
SPEAKER_01
I Have no job My room is sloppy and I m just depressed
2
SPEAKER_01
What would you say to them to get started with changing their life around in the form of better habits?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, you just need to pick one thing, first of all.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think that I just mentioned a few minutes ago, one of the most powerful forms of motivation is progress.
2
SPEAKER_00
So seeing some progress, I mean, it can be as simple as make your bed each day, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
But just doing that, embodying the identity of someone who s getting better, who s making progress, just pick one thing and use that as,
2
SPEAKER_00
this is true.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, Lewis, this is something you ve probably seen with a lot of people that you ve talked to, but habits are the foundation for mastery.
2
SPEAKER_00
So if you, you know, say, take a, take a sport like basketball, um, you need to be able to dribble with both hands without thinking before you can worry about what strategy you re running on offense or what kind of, you know, strategic play you re going to run or what
3
SPEAKER_01
what your defensive scheme is, or all this other stuff.
3
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You need to automate the fundamentals of the craft before you can worry about the next level of performance.
3
SPEAKER_01
Same thing is true for chess.
3
SPEAKER_01
You need to know how the chess pieces move automatically, without thinking about it, before you can get into, all right, what is my opponent going to do, and I m going to do this, and they re going to do that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so I think this is true, not just at the peak levels of performance, that you integrate these habits and use habits as the foundation for the next level of performance, but also true when you re getting started.
3
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Just build one small thing, carve out a 1% change, a 1% improvement, and use that as a stepping stone to the next level.
3
SPEAKER_00
What about self-control?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because what if we have this desire for something?
3
SPEAKER_00
What s the other word for self-control?
3
SPEAKER_00
Willpower.
3
SPEAKER_00
What about willpower?
3
SPEAKER_00
How much willpower do we have?
3
SPEAKER_01
You hear this a lot.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s very common, especially in self-help, motivation, self-development.
3
SPEAKER_01
You need to be motivated.
3
SPEAKER_01
You have to have willpower.
3
SPEAKER_01
Grit and perseverance are huge and important.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s not that those qualities are not important.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s just that the way to develop them is different than what most people think.
3
SPEAKER_01
So most people think, I need willpower, so I should just try harder.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s an interesting body of research, I mentioned it in the book, I think it s in chapter seven, on self-control and willpower, which is that the people who appear to have the greatest self-control actually are just tempted the least.
3
SPEAKER_01
So they face temptations less frequently and therefore have the reserves and the resources to resist it when it occasionally comes up.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think that this is actually like the lever to pull or the pressure point to push on is that the way to get better willpower is to design an environment that tempts you less, not to say, let me just try harder.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Set yourself up to win.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you have a chapter that talks about the power of accountability partners.
3
SPEAKER_00
I talk about accountability and coaches all the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
I hire coaches for everything because I use sports as my life.
3
SPEAKER_00
I know that I couldn t have gotten to where I wanted to be as an athlete without great coaches.
3
SPEAKER_00
and accountability.
3
SPEAKER_00
So how important is accountability towards habits as well?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s huge.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I recently hired a powerlifting coach.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s great.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s worked with like 12 world champions and having him has, he s not based in Columbus actually, but Columbus is great for strength culture.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s, you know, I mean, obviously there s the Arnold, but then Westside barbell and a bunch of other stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it was awesome.
3
SPEAKER_01
Um,
3
SPEAKER_01
But your point about coaches is a crucial one which is that having a coach forces you to be aware of things that you would otherwise overlook.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is what I call the downside of building good habits which is you build habits and in the beginning you develop fluency and skill and ability and things become easier.
3
SPEAKER_01
But after a little while, once a habit has been established, the downside of having a habit is that you can do it good enough on autopilot, which means that you start to overlook your mistakes and not think about how to get better.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so what you need is a coach to keep you on that razor s edge so that you keep building habits, but it also forces you to stay aware of what the next level of performance is.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s kind of the challenge of continuous improvement.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like a cycle.
3
SPEAKER_01
It starts with awareness.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you re not aware of what your habits are or what your behavior is, you don t have a chance to change it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Then from that awareness, you go to deliberate practice where you have to effortfully try and work to get better.
3
SPEAKER_01
And eventually, the thing that you were deliberately practicing becomes a habit and becomes automatic.
3
SPEAKER_01
But once it becomes automatic, that s not the end.
3
SPEAKER_01
You have to return to awareness and see where you re at now and start the cycle again.
3
SPEAKER_00
Huh.
3
SPEAKER_00
And what about, what if you can t afford a coach?
3
SPEAKER_00
How do you find the right accountability partner?
3
SPEAKER_01
That s where I think we come back to the social component that we talked about earlier.
3
SPEAKER_01
Join the group, join the community.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s probably the best way to do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the great thing about the, you know, the internet and the web is that you can find those people before where you couldn t find them previously.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now it used to be, uh, that you had to hope that the people in your local community or on your sports team or at your, you know, uh, organization,
3
SPEAKER_01
we re also interested in the same things.
3
SPEAKER_01
And now you can find those people and findings online.
3
SPEAKER_01
Search it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And what s the downside of good habits?
3
SPEAKER_01
So this is what I was mentioning with this fact that you start to overlook your mistakes.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s an interesting study that was done on surgeons where they found that early on in residency, they were getting better.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then they continued to improve as they became a surgeon and practiced for a few years.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then they hit some kind of peak.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then their performance actually declines slightly because they stop overlooking their mistakes or stop looking for ways to get better.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so you need to be on that edge of paying attention.
3
SPEAKER_01
My favorite example of this is actually a surgeon himself, Atul Gawande.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he hired a coach, a previous surgeon who was retiring, to review the video of his surgeries and to tell him where he could improve and what he could do better.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s a brilliant example of how to have a coach, even if you re not in sports or not a competitor or something.
3
SPEAKER_01
We can all benefit from feedback.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the tighter the feedback cycle, the faster you learn.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s powerful.
3
SPEAKER_00
I love it man, this is powerful stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m going to ask you a couple of final questions.
3
SPEAKER_00
This one is called the three truths.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you could only share three lessons with humanity and the world and they didn t have access to your writing or your blog or your books but you only had three lessons you could share.
3
SPEAKER_00
What would those three lessons or three truths be?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s really tough.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the first one I would say is about reading.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mentioned earlier that reading is sort of like this meta habit that helps you solve all your other problems.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I guess my lesson for reading would be start more books, no, would be
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, start more books, quit most of them, read the great ones twice.
3
SPEAKER_01
So if you start more books, you ll be exposed to more ideas.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you quit most of them, if you quit the ones that aren t relevant to you or aren t that good or just aren t a high quality bar, then you ll have the chance to start even more.
3
SPEAKER_01
And when you find the great ones, read them twice because the advice is incredible and it s potentially life-changing.
3
SPEAKER_01
All right, so the first one I would say is reading.
3
SPEAKER_01
The second one is something to do with physical movement and strength training.
3
SPEAKER_01
You cannot, every human has a body and every human has like a physical presence.
3
SPEAKER_01
So learn to use your body in some way to be more alive and to experience what that s like to be human.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you just spend all day in your head or all day staring at a screen, you only kind of get half of what it means to be alive.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I would say physical strength is another one.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then the third one has to be something along the lines of community, connection, serving others.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what exactly that would be.
3
SPEAKER_01
Personally, I have felt most engaged when I ve been working on a shared mission with a group of people face-to-face, which is interesting coming from someone who, you know, my business is built online, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
I spend most of my time sending emails to, you know, half a million people or whatever, but I think actually I find more satisfaction and more purpose in connecting with people face-to-face.
3
SPEAKER_01
So maybe that would be it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Talk to someone face-to-face every day.
3
SPEAKER_00
What are three to five non-negotiable habits that every human being should, and if they could do on a daily basis, it would improve their lives and everyone s lives around them?
3
SPEAKER_00
What are those non-negotiable habits on a daily basis we should do?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, three habits that would improve everybody s lives on a daily basis.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s so hard to give an answer like that because obviously everybody s, you know, dealing with different stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
But there are a few things that I think I do genuinely think most people would benefit from.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the easy answer would be the easy way to frame this would be reading, but I don t think it actually has to be reading books.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think it just is the habit of learning something new.
3
SPEAKER_01
So if you, you know, listening to podcasts, reading a book, watching a good YouTube video, whatever, it doesn t matter what version of that it is.
3
SPEAKER_01
But if you go to bed a little bit smarter than you were when you woke up, that s going to improve your life.
3
SPEAKER_01
And just having this thirst for lifelong learning, having an eagerness to learn or discover something new each day, it s going to pay off in a huge way in the long run, no matter what topics you re interested in.
3
SPEAKER_01
a habit of some small habit of daily learning, let s just call it learn something new for 10 minutes each day.
3
SPEAKER_01
Some sort of physical activity, you know, this is, I think, an important realization about all habits, which is in most areas of life, there might not be 1000 ways to do something, but there s almost always more than one way.
3
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, I like working out in the gym, but not everybody wants to train like a bodybuilder and that s fine.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, like you can kayak or go running or rock climbing or ride a bike or whatever.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s like a bazillion ways to live an active lifestyle and you should choose the version of your habits that is most exciting to you.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like in a way, that s the first biggest hurdle to clear when building habits is have you selected a habit that you re genuinely interested in, that you re actually engaged with?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because if it s something that you actually care about, there are going to be like endless opportunities for improvement.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you re not actually care, if you don t actually care about it, if you re just doing it because you kind of feel like society is encouraging you to do it or your parents want you to do it or your peers are kind of subtle
4
SPEAKER_00
saying, hey, this is something you should do, then even the obvious improvements are going to feel like a chore, you know.
4
SPEAKER_00
So let s call it 10 minutes of learning something new, some sort of physical activity, whatever is exciting or interesting to you.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then I think the other one is a process, a habit of reflection and review.
4
SPEAKER_00
So
4
SPEAKER_00
It s very easy in life to be so busy or working on stuff heads down, or just have the next task come up, whether it s things you got to do for your kids or responsibilities at work, that you never take even five minutes to step back and just breathe and ask yourself, am I working on the right thing?
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, am I directing my attention and energy to the highest and best use?
4
SPEAKER_00
And boy, there is nothing so wasteful as working hard on the wrong thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, like so many people work really hard, but are you directing your energy and attention to the best spot?
4
SPEAKER_00
And so, um, the only way to discover that, like, I know I m not smart enough to figure it out on the first time.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, I can t, I can t just sit down, give me five minutes and be like, oh, this is exactly what I should be focused on.
4
SPEAKER_00
It takes iteration.
4
SPEAKER_00
It takes refinement.
4
SPEAKER_00
It takes a process of reflecting and reviewing and looking back on the previous day and be like, Hey, was that a good way to spend my time?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, did I live a good life today?
4
SPEAKER_00
And the more that you do that, the more you start to course correct.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the other tricky thing, and the reason this needs to be a habit that you revisit consistently, I don t necessarily think it needs to be daily, but consistently is the answer changes over time.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, like what you want shifts over time.
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the situation you re in or the resources you have or the time you have shifts over time.
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And so you need to keep coming back to this.
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Maybe it s every week, maybe it s once a year, but whatever it is, you need a chance to reflect and review and to try to ask yourself, is there a better way to do this?
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Am I working on the right thing?
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Am I working on what actually matters?
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Um, am I directing my attention and energy in the highest and best way?
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Yeah.
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And how important is accountability then in your mind when we are taking on these new habits for ourselves?
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Is it important to have self-accountability, buddy accountability, coach accountability, social accountability?
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Do those support habits, forming these consistent habits?
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And what other factors are in play there?
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They definitely support them or hinder them, potentially, depending on the people you re around and the group that you re a part of.
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Ultimately, the form of accountability that matters the most is self-accountability.
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It s almost impossible to exceed the standards that you have for yourself.
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That almost always sets the baseline.
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Your beliefs or your standards are almost always going to be the limit on what you allow yourself to do or what you accept.
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Now, it s easier to stick to high standards in a supportive environment than it is in an unsupportive one.
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So there are a lot of things that can influence whether you want to maintain that standard.
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But ultimately, the standard you hold yourself to is going to be the most important thing.
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Now, having said that, I do think that the social environment, the tribes that you belong to,
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influence your habits in a really dramatic way.
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So if I had to pick one topic that I think is even more important now than I realized when I was writing the book, I would probably say the social environment.
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You know, we re all part of multiple tribes.
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Some of those tribes are like really large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be Australian.
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Some of those tribes are small, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street or a member of the local CrossFit gym.
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But all of those tribes, large and small, they have a set of expectations.
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You know, they have a set of social norms.
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They have a set of beliefs that, hey, this is how you act in this group.
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This is what s normal and expected.
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And the more that your habits align with the expectations of the group, the easier it is to stick with them, the more like appealing and attractive they are because they signal to the people around you, hey, look, I belong to, you know, like I m part of this.
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And the more that they go against the grain of the tribes that you belong to, the harder they are to stick to because you start to get criticized for them.
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And if people have to choose between, you know what?
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I have habits that I don t really love, but I fit in.
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I belong.
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I m part of something.
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Or, I have the habits that I want to have, but I m cast out, I m ostracized, I m criticized.
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I mean, the desire to belong will often overpower the desire to improve.
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You know, belonging will, loneliness will lose to belonging.
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And so, you need to get those two things aligned and join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
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It is so true, and it doesn t mean you can t make it happen.
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There s a great example that came up this week.
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Someone on my team on our team call said, I asked everyone on the call, I said, what is one thing you want to let go of next year for your life?
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Like, what s one thing that s not serving you right now that you want to let go of?
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And this person said, I want to let go of drinking, drinking alcohol, or at least drinking as frequently as I do with the social circles that I m in.
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And I thought that was interesting because I ve never been drunk in my life.
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I don t drink.
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It s not a part of my identity.
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I never did it from sports.
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And then after sports, I was just like, why?
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It didn t make sense to me.
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Nothing good or bad about it.
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It just wasn t fitting my values personally.
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I have other problems, which is sugar, right?
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It s like, I ve got that, that s my vice, right?
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So no judgment here, but I was just like, this never stopped for me, you know, in every, until maybe the last four or five years.
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where anytime I d go out in college, after college, then the business world, restaurants, networking events, like all that stuff, people would always try to influence me to drinking.
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And so I had to be, I had to be so,
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firm in my beliefs and really just not even care at all about it, that I just knew that people were going to try to influence me, they would try to say a joke, they d be like, I can t believe you never drank, all these different things, try to get me to drink for the first time, all this stuff.
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I knew it happened every single week.
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And I just,
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Realize, okay, this is going to happen no matter what type of circles I m in, unless I find people that do not drink, which is very rare.
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And which is one of the reasons why with my girlfriend, when we started dating, I was like, listen, it s not going to work.
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If you like to drink, I don t think I can date you.
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Like, it doesn t mean you re a bad person.
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I just don t want to be in that environment for the rest of my life.
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with the person I m choosing to be with.
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And so I had to make a conscious decision.
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And she was like, well, I don t really need it.
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Maybe I drink a glass of wine once a month.
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I m like, okay, that s fine.
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But if this is a weekly thing, it s just not gonna work.
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Because I ve chosen this to be a high priority of my value for my life.
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And it s very challenging if there s something you want to do and the people around you are influencing you the other way in terms of accountability.
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So I think it doesn t mean you can t do it, but choosing to be around people or groups or tribes like you mentioned that are supportive, even if it s the local CrossFit gym or whatever it might be.
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Find those communities as much as possible.
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If your family isn t as supportive, find these other micro-tribes to support you in that habit form.
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There s this whole chapter in Atomic Habits.
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It s called The Secret to Self-Control.
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And one of the surprising things that I came across when I was researching the book is a lot of these self-control studies
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We typically will like kind of the standard story we all tell is, oh man, I wish I had the discipline of that person or I wish I was, you know, as consistent as this professional athlete or whatever.
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But in fact, the people who exhibit the highest self-control are often the people who are tempted the least.
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That s like the predominant pattern that is common across those different contexts is that they are cookies in your house.
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You re not going to eat them.
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Yeah.
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And so, you know, you want to stack the deck in your favor and design an environment or join groups and tribes where your desired behavior is normal, where your desired behavior is easy.
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And if you do that for yourself, sure, you ll still have to put effort in, but it s going to be so much more productive and easy to stick to the habit because you re in a space and a context that s designed to support it.
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And that s maybe one of the biggest hacks or strategies for building better habits is worry a little bit less about having superhuman willpower and worry a little bit more about designing an environment where you don t need willpower at all.
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You did something really smart, which I think a lot of people aren t willing to do.
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You spent 10 years writing every week an incredible article or articles that were so detailed, so thought out, so researched.
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And you said, how can I serve the maximum number of people in my niche and then start branching out into space as well and do it consistently over a decade without really making a lot of money, you know, selling other things.
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And then you came out with a book.
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And now this doesn t happen for everyone, but then you came out with a book.
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And it became, you know, a one of the best selling books of the year of the most selling book of last year on Amazon, like you said, top five, I think this year as well.
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And it just continues to add value to people.
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And I think it s a testament to what you created for a decade.
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plus of adding value.
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So congratulations on everything, man.
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Yeah.
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Thank you.
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That s very, very nice.
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You say it s been a wild ride.
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I, there are a couple of things going on there.
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Like I do try to operate with this core value of always give value before you ask for value.
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And if you think about in any business, but like in my business at writing books, the amount of, um,
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What it costs a reader or what it costs a customer is not just how much they have to pay for the book.
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It s also how much time they have to spend reading it or finding it and so on.
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And whatever that total cost is time plus money.
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that s like the amount they have to pay.
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And then whatever I get paid, um, is what I make.
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But what they get in return should be like well in excess of that.
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So like the value they get minus the time and money they spend, there s some surplus there and we could call it whatever, but I like think about it as like goodwill.
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And I always want to have a surplus of goodwill.
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Um, and so everything that I create, whether it s an article or a newsletter or the book, I want people to be,
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to have this feeling that it s like, oh my gosh, I get so much out of this.
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Of course, I would want to open the next email.
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Or of course, I would want to buy the book.
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It s like such an obvious win for me.
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So I always try to give value before I ask for value.
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And I don t think that there s any one way to do this.
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Like you could start with the book and not have an audience, for example.
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But the way that I did it is I wanted to focus on building the audience first, building the platform first, give as much value as possible, get the audience as large as possible.
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And then I was able, you know, I didn t have any credentials, right?
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Like I don t have any background and there was no reason for me to get a book deal.
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I was just a guy with a blog.
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And the only reason that any of the publishers in New York met with me is because I spent that time building the email list and developing the audience.
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And then that got my foot in the door and got the book deal.
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And then, of course, you have to execute well on that and create something valuable.
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And then, you know, ultimately, the book being a hit
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was sort of just all this potential energy that had been built up for two years or five years or whatever.
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And then it being released when the book came out.
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So I to a large degree, I kind of think that s the hardest thing about writing books is all the work is up front.
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You know, you have to work, build the audience and write it and edit it and make the marketing plan and start to record interviews and execute on that.
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You have to do all of that stuff before you sell a single copy.
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And most people are just not willing to delay gratification that long.
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You know, I mean, it s probably.
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Depending on how you measure it, atomic habits took somewhere between like three and six years, definitely at least three years, because that s how long it was from when I got the book deal.
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But I was doing a lot before I even got the book deal.
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So, you know, it s just a long time to work on something without making a cent from it.
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And so if you re willing to do that, then you can get a great result.
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I hope you enjoyed today s episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today s episode with all the important links.
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And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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And now it s time to go out there and do something great.