James Clear on Huberman Lab: Why identity beats motivation

Habits stick when they reflect who you are, not just what you want; Clear covers identity-based habits, the Four Laws, and environment design.

James ClearguestAndrew Hubermanhost

Jan 5, 20262h 35mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

150 min read · 30,375 words

0:00 – 2:57
James Clear
1. JCJames Clear
  Habits are solutions to the recurring problems in our environment. Let's say you get done with a long day of work. You come back, you're kind of exhausted. That happens, you know, frequently. It's a recurring problem that you face. How do you solve that problem? One person might solve it by going for a run for 30 minutes. Another person might solve it by playing video games for 30 minutes. Another person might solve it by smoking a cigarette. They all are trying to solve that same core problem. What you find is that, you know, you get to be 20 or 25 or 28, and a lot of the solutions that you have to these recurring problems that you face are solutions that you inherited or that you saw modeled by your parents or your friends or just, you know, whatever you have interfaced with throughout your short life so far. As soon as you realize that your solutions may not be the best solution, it's now your responsibility to try to figure out a different way to do it.
2. AHAndrew Huberman
  (instrumental music plays) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is James Clear. James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits and one of the world's foremost experts on how to build rock solid habits that better your physical and mental health, work, and relationships. Today, we discuss how to build a habit and how to break bad habits as fast and durably as possible. You'll notice that today's conversation is a very realistic one, and it's largely devoid of cliché acronyms such as make it specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. There is some of that discussion, and acronyms are useful, but as you'll learn today from James, the real-world examples of how to make and break habits are what really stick with you and that you can apply. No one has spent more time on the data related to habit formation and bad habit breaking than James Clear. Today, you also get to know him as a person and how he implemented what he has learned so effectively, even as the backdrop of his life has shifted to include more, not fewer, work and family responsibilities. And we all have things that we know we can and should do more of and things that we should do less of, and we all know that behavioral change starts with a desire to change. But as James Clear explains, it requires a system, one that works for you and that you design in order for it to really stick. Thanks to James' incredible depth of knowledge, generosity, and clarity of communication, today's conversation about habit formation is filled with useful tools that you can apply to improve your life. So, if you have a habit or perhaps many habits that you're hoping to form or if you have bad habits that you want to break, not just for the New Year but at any point, today's conversation is absolutely for you. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with James Clear.
2:57 – 6:16
Common Habits, Tool: Habit Success & Getting Started
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  James Clear, welcome.
2. JCJames Clear
  Hey, thank you so much for having me.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  Your book is everywhere, and th- and now I get to actually meet the person, uh, behind it. So, I'm curious, when people come to you or when they read your book looking for ways to develop habits or presumably also to end bad habits-
4. JCJames Clear
  Mm.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... is there a common theme? Uh, for instance, um, do most people have difficulty dropping bad habits, building new habits? Are there specific types of habits that people want to build? I mean, we need to just sort of step back from everything you've heard and read about your book and in interactions with your audience.
6. JCJames Clear
  Sure. Uh, yeah, I think there are some themes. Like, there are definitely habits that are very common and broad that, you know, range across seems like everybody. The most common New Year's resolution, for example, is to do some form of exercise. So, there's obviously a huge bucket of health and fitness habits that most people or many people are very interested in. Um, lots of things like productivity habits at work or creativity habits, writing, you know, music, painting, whatever, things like that. So, there, there are these big categories. I think what's more interesting, though, is to look at what are the themes that help habits stick and help habits fail or cause habits to fail. And, um, there are definitely some patterns there which are interesting. For example, I was working out the other day, and I was talking to my trainer, and he said, um, "Yeah, I have this class this morning, and, uh, there were eight people signed up." But it was a pretty gross day. It was like wet and rainy. It was gray. It was just kind of like cold and gross. And only two people came. And, um, the interesting thing about that to me is how little of an edge you need to like gain an advantage, you know? Like, really all we're talking about there is are you cool with being uncomfortable or inconvenienced for like five to 10 minutes while you're getting ready and getting in your car and it's raining and it's kind of gross? Once you get to the gym, the workout's the same as it, as it's always been, right? It's like the same as it is in the middle of the summer. Um, and so it's really about that little point of friction at the beginning. And that, I think if I could pick a single biggest lesson that has come out from all the readers, it is the magic and the importance of starting. Um, mastering that five-minute window or sometimes even like that 30-second window of choosing to start and making it easy to start, that, I would say, is the single biggest theme of habits. And in fact, a lot of the time you can boil almost all problems that habits face into two categories. It's either making it easier to get started, so overcoming procrastination, or it's sticking with it. "I'm not... I did it once or twice but I'm not consistent." But what does it mean to stick with something? It almost always just means that you get started each time you try to do it. And so you could ultimately revert it all back to mastering the art of getting started. And the easier that you can make it to get started, whether it's scaling a habit down, optimizing the environment, coming up with a better strategy, looping other people in, there's all kinds of things you can do. The more that you can do that, the more likely you are to succeed. Looking back on, you know, now Atomic Habits sold 25 million copies, I'd say that's maybe the biggest lesson that I have is that, uh, the people who make it easy to get started and who master the art of getting started tend to stick with it and succeed. And the people who make it hard to get started, big u- dream up a b- big, ambitious plan in their head, you know, try to do too much at once, they set themselves up to fail.
6:16 – 10:18
Make Starting a Habit Easier, Tool: 4 Laws of Behavior Change
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  So in terms of getting started, uh, I imagine trying to create, you know, a very thin edge of the wedge, so to speak-
2. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... you know, so that the on-ramping to something is very, very easy.
4. JCJames Clear
  Sure.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  And, uh, I suppose that could be done by a number of different approaches. You can, um, you know, uh, segment out whatever it is, the habit or task that you want to do, like you're going to write one word or one sentence or one letter.
6. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  There's that approach. There's also the approach of trying to find the times of day or the environments where the wedge becomes, uh, present, as opposed to it being a big step.
8. JCJames Clear
  Yep.
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  Right? Um, I suppose there's no one-size-fits-all, but what are some of the ways to, quote-unquote, "get started"? Because I think there's something incredible and somewhat depressing about the human brain, where we can know something, we can know it so well that we can just think about it and loop on it and loop on it and watch ourselves fail to do the thing that we're trying to do. It's kind of an incredible-
10. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... flaw of human nature.
12. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  Um, and basically, what you teach is how to overcome that flaw.
14. JCJames Clear
  So a simple question, what are easy ways to get started? Um, in a way, all of Atomic Habits is an answer to that question. So like we could... Maybe this will be the next two hours, is us kind of unpacking this in, in greater detail. But from a real high level, there are kind of four things that you want to do if you want to get a habit to stick. So I call it the four laws of behavior change. But you want to make your habit obvious, so this is about making it visual or easy to see, easy to notice. It doesn't have to be vision, but that's often the sensory perception that you use the most. Um, make it obvious. The second is to make it attractive, so the more fun or attractive or appealing a habit is, the more likely you are to perform it. The third thing is you want to make it easy, so the easier, more convenient, frictionless. This can be about scaling your habits down and simplifying, reducing the number of steps. And then the fourth thing is you want to make it satisfying. The more satisfying or enjoyable a habit is, the more you have this like feeling of pleasure, reward, or positive emotion associated with it, the more you're going to want to repeat it in the future. So those are the four steps, m- make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying. There are many ways to do each of those things, and, um, my approach is not to prescribe, but to empower. You know, like I- I don't really feel like there is one way to build better habits. There are many ways, and my job is to lay all the tools out on the table and say, "Here. Here's a full toolkit, and then you can decide, do I use the screwdriver or do I use the wrench or do I use the hammer? Like what's best for this situation?" Um, so to... just to build on one of those, for example, let's take make it obvious. A lot of that's about priming your environment to make the action easy. You know, I think one interesting thing you can do, walk into most of the spaces where you spend your time each day, your office, your living room, your kitchen, and look around and ask yourself, "What behaviors are obvious here? What behaviors are easy here? What is this space designed to encourage?" And you'll often find that it's encouraging the thing that maybe you don't want to do, or it's at least not encouraging the good habit that you say is a priority. And so there are all sorts of steps you can take, you know. If you want to make it easier to go for a run, set your running shoes and your running clothes out the night before. I have a couple of readers who actually sleep in their running clothes and then just get up, put their shoes on, and get out the door, right? They're trying to make it as obvious and as frictionless as possible. If you want to eat the good food or the healthy food, you know, place, place the nuts on the counter rather than the chips or something like that, right? It's just like, what is the obvious thing that's present? I had one guy who, um, he would go to his music lesson and practice gi- guitar with his instructor each week, and then he would get a bunch of homework to do, these chords and scales and things to practice. And then he would come home and put his guitar in the guitar case and stuck in- stick it in the closet, and then he'd go back to, you know, uh, practice the next week, and they'd be like, "You aren't doing any of this." And so he bought a little stand and put it on the, uh, the guitar on the stand in the middle of the living room, and now he passes it 30 times a day. And so he's much more likely to pick it up and play it for five minutes. And so there's just like this gradual progression of how can you make the things in your life that you want more of more obvious to you? Um, and that is just one of many ways to make starting easier.
10:18 – 13:26
Sponsors: Lingo & Wealthfront
1. AHAndrew Huberman
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13:26 – 18:42
Writing Habits, Seasons & Flexibility; Adaptability, Tool: Bad Day Plan
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah. Environment, to me, is so critical and so overlooked. You know, I heard online at one point from a, a great writer, I won't mention who they are, that, you know, it's really important to have a very comfortable chair to write in because writing for long hours is hard on your body and this kind of thing. And then Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, sat in the exact chair you're sitting in right now, and he said, "Oh, no. You want kind of an uncomfortable chair." So it was, like, kind of painful. Now, he's a former Marine-
2. JCJames Clear
  (laughs) .
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  Uh, and s- wrote a book called The War of Art aft- after all. But, uh, I sort of veer towards Steven's approach. Like, if, if a room is too comfortable, the couch is too comfortable-
4. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... it favors, you know, lounging-
6. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... and it favors thinking about things that maybe are fun to think about or, you know, but-
8. JCJames Clear
  Sure.
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... not, not really getting the work done. Not that you need to sit on a, you know, a rock or something like that, but some of my best writing and work was done on planes where I got stuck in the middle seat and was kinda pissed off about it.
10. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  And I could use that energy of being kinda pissed off.
12. JCJames Clear
  Channel it into this chapter. (laughs)
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  I'm like, "I'm gonna get this done." Right? I'm not gonna do the, I'm not gonna lose-lose by not getting work done. Whereas, I think had I been in first class and, like, stretched out-
14. JCJames Clear
  Sure.
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... and everything perfect, then sometimes that perfection lends itself to just kinda leaning into the, the creature comforts of that.
16. JCJames Clear
  Well, first of all, it's a good mental shift by you, right? Like, take a suboptimal situation. How do I channel this into something I can use? That's a, that's a great skill for life. Um, people ask me something like this a lot. You know, "What is your writing routine? What are your writing habits? What does it look like?" Uh, and, um, the truth, if I'm being honest about it, is I've had tons of different writing routines. I wrote parts of Atomic Habits on my parents' couch when I was visiting them for the holidays. I wrote parts of it in the passenger seat of a car while we were on a road trip. I wrote a lot of it at my desk, you know, but, uh, there's no one place where it happened.
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm.
18. JCJames Clear
  And, um, I think that it also reveals an important truth about habits, which is that there's this kind of implicit assumption that we don't really say but a lot of people think when they s- think, "What would it look like to be successful with this habit?" They think, "Well, I would just do it for the rest of my life," is basically what they kind of assume. And if it changes or they stop doing it, then they kind of feel like that's a failure in some way. I, I don't think it's like that at all. Um, habits can have a season, you know? And you're, you have different seasons in your life, and I think one really interesting question to ask is, "What season am I in right now?" And you will find that as your seasons change, your habits often need to change as well. So, for example, uh, for the first three years that I wrote, I wrote at jamesclear.com and I published a new article every Monday and Thursday. And they were, like, 2,000-word pieces, took me, like, about 20 hours each on average. So that, you know, that's a 40-hour work week. I'm putting in two, two pieces a week for three years. And that was how I built my audience and got the book deal that eventually became Atomic Habits. Then I signed the book deal where I don't have capacity now to write those articles, so I had to change my strategy. Most of my writing was going into writing the book. I did that for, like, three years. The book came out. And then now, the last five years, I've been writing a newsletter once a week that takes me about two hours instead of 20, um, so it's a much different form. But, you know, three million people read that newsletter every week. They get a lot of value out of it. And I guess my point is, if you look at my writing habit and you say, "Well, you wrote two articles a week for three years. What happened in the fourth year?" If I would've felt like, "Oh, well, I don't do that anymore, so it's a failure," that seems kinda silly to me. You know, like, I've been writing, it's just been changing shape based on the season that I've been in. And I found that with lots of other habits too. You know, for my fitness habits have changed a lot over the last 20 years. I had periods where I was going heavy, like, power lifting or Olympic lifting style, and I would train four or five days a week. I had periods and pockets where I was only lifting twice a week. Um, now it's four days. It just, you know, it shifts depending on the season that you're in. And so I think people need to give themselves more permission for their habits to adjust rather than to feel like, "Well, if I don't stick to this, then I'm not sticking to my habit." I, I feel like that, uh, flexibility is a big component in long-term success. There's this story that mental toughness is something that's like, "I'm gonna make it happen no matter what the circumstances," right? Like, "I'm gonna grind and make sure that this is, you know, I'm gonna persevere." And, uh, there's a place for that type of thinking, but, um, I think really most of the time mental toughness looks more like adaptability. Consistency is adaptability. Don't have enough time? Do the short version. Don't have enough energy? Do the easy version. Find a way to show up and not put up a zero for that day, because doing something is almost always infinitely better than doing nothing. And so eventually what you get to here is realizing that...In a lot of ways, the bad days are more important than the good days. You know, it's actually the bad workouts, the ones where I don't really feel like doing much or I don't have much time, but I get in there and I just do, like, a couple sets of squats and then I'm done in 20 minutes, that day counts for more because I showed up and I didn't put up a zero, than the days when I got a ton of time and do a full workout. And so people get real excited and amped up about their habits. They, you know, they want to come up with this, like, perfect version. What could I do? You know, if I achieved peak performance, what would that look like? What could I do on my best day? But instead, I think it's often better to ask, like, "What could I stick to even on the bad days?" And that becomes your baseline. That's where you start from. And then on the good days, great, you got capacity, go ahead and ramp it up. But what can you stick to even on the bad days, I think is a good place to start.
18:42 – 24:54
Consistency, Flow vs Grind, Master Showing Up, Learning & Practice
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah, I more and more think that one of the dangers of, quote unquote, "optimization," which in my view is also a, a poorly understood term. I think optimization is optimization for the moment in the day or the hour, not some perfect ideal. But one of the, one of the downsides to the availability of, like, over-the-counter stimulants and energy drinks and, um, tutorials of how to focus, of many of which I, you know, talk about online and elsewhere, is that most people who are in some sort of pursuit, writing or school or otherwise, experience the, the, the perfect flow, quote unquote, or groove of being really in the zone, and then they're always chasing that. And anything that's below that feels like it wasn't worthwhile.
2. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  But I really like the way that you framed that. You know, getting something in on the days when you're less than optimal, or far less than optimal, is actually where you change yourself in a way that makes those optimal days more available. That's what, that's what I'm hearing.
4. JCJames Clear
  Right.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  That playing hurt teaches you how to play, play well under great conditions, or play even better under great conditions.
6. JCJames Clear
  Consistency enlarges ability. And so by being more consistent, you enlarge your capacity to handle more. You enlarge your ability and broaden your skill set. You build your base of strength to handle the harder thing later. To be consistent means you show up on the days when it's not perfect. Um, in many ways, I, I feel like that's the only place that you gain an edge. You know, the easy days, everybody works out on the easy days. Everybody does it when they feel good. Everybody does it when they have time and energy and capacity. It's who is doing it when it's not optimal. That's the only place that you gain separation.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm-
8. JCJames Clear
  And so figuring out ways to show up even when the circumstances aren't ideal, even if it is less than you ultimately hope to do, ends up being a real, a real win.
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  What you just said I think is so, so critical. That people hear that, you know, there's a perfect state that they're pursuing, or that it takes 50 days to develop a habit, or 29 days, and we could explore that, uh, that, that whole thing, uh, as its own discussion. But I think it's so important for people to understand that the consistency piece raises the ceiling. I've actually never heard it stated that clearly, um, and it's great that, that you presented it that way, because that's something that anyone can do, right? Anyone can write one sentence per day. And that's not the suggestion, but the consistency piece really does seem to elevate the ceiling on, on performance and what's possible. But I think people ... I think we've been exposed too much to these concepts of flow, in my opinion. I don't want to knock on Steven Kotler and the beautiful work that he's done, and Csikszentmihalyi, who originated the term. I think Kotler and Csikszentmihalyi, uh, uh, I think it's a, a wonderful literature. Um, and it, it certainly has its place. But I think people, in their pursuit of flow, um, look at the grind as failure, and they don't really know what the grind is. Is it a hard day where you're, like, doing sets to failure in the gym? Is it when you're, you have, quote unquote, "writer's block?" You've simplified it down to it's just simply showing up over and over again that raises the possibility for flow, raises the possibility for optimal performance, and probably raises the, the basement on what failure or poor performance is as well, which means you're getting better.
10. JCJames Clear
  I have this reader, his name's Mitch. I mention him in Atomic Habits, and he, um, when he first started working out, he had this strange little rule for himself where he wasn't allowed to stay at the gym for longer than five minutes. So he got in the car, drove to the gym, got out, did like half an exercise, and then he'd get in the car, drive back, and go home. And it sounds silly, you know? You're like, "Clearly this is not gonna get the guy the results that he wants." But if you take a step back, what you realize is he was mastering the art of showing up, right? He was becoming the type of person that went to the gym four days a week, even if it was only for five minutes. And it's like the inversion of what most people do, which is we sit down and we try to perfect it, you know? What's the perfect diet plan? What's the ideal workout strategy? What's the best sales strategy? You know, like we want to have everything lined up first, and then we take the first step. But I'm reminded of that, there's that quote from Ed Latimore where he says, "The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door." And, you know, there are a lot of things in life that are like that. You know, the hardest step is the first movement. And so by mastering the art of showing up, well, now he's in the gym. Now he's in the arena. There's all kinds of improvements that you can make. And so he got six weeks in and he was like, "Well, I'm coming here all the time. I might as well start working out a little bit longer." And I feel like that is such a better place to be, um, than to try and to get it perfect from the start and then feeling like, "Well, if I can't run four days a week, why am I bothering?" You know, "If I can't work out for 45 minutes, then it doesn't matter." But the truth is, it matters every time you show up. We use the phrase "building habits," but in a lot of ways, what we're actually describing is just the process of learning. Your, your brain is just learning a new behavior. And you will get better at anything that you practice. Anything. Now, I'm not saying that if you practice basketball you can go play in the NBA in six months, right? Like, or maybe ever. Um, but you individually will be a better basketball player six months from now than you are today if you practice it each day. And every skill that you have was once unknown to you. You know, when you were born, you did not know how to cut a tomato or, you know, play a musical instrument or even brush your teeth. But you know all those things now, and many others. And so the way that you learn things is by practicing them. Um, and the way that you learn habits is also by practicing them, even if it's small.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  I think it's so important to view habits through the lens of learning and therefore neuroplasticity, right? Uh, which I think is a broad term that can mean many... I mean, having a stroke will induce neuroplasticity, but not the kind one wants. So, I, I guess the, the precise definition would be, you know, sort of, I call it self-directed adaptive plasticity. It's not a real term.
12. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  But it, it works for what we're talking about, so I'll just say plasticity, um, for short. But-
14. JCJames Clear
  Sorry, not to cut you off, but that is, I feel like the self-directed piece is an important part there. You know, your brain's learning habits all the time, right? Y- you will learn habits whether you are in control or not, whether you care or not. I think that's a good reason to want to know what they are and how they work. The real question is not whether you will gain new habits. It's whether you can design them, right? Or be in control of them, whether it can be self-directed.
24:54 – 28:01
Chunking, Getting Started at Gym
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah. I mean, maybe it's worth exploring this a little bit because, um, i- so for neuroscientists who learn about plasticity, you learn about developmental plasticity, which existed in all of us when we were kids and just, it's just pass- how passive experience shapes us. And, uh, it's very robust up until, they always say till age 25, but about that is when the window closes for, like, m- multi-language learning without accents, you know, becomes much, much more difficult after 15, 20, 25 than it does, say, at 40, 45 or s- or 60. Some people can do it, but takes much more effort. Um, so that's passive learning. But the self-directed piece is interesting because there are sort of two forms of that. Uh, one form is, um, where it's explorative, like you're trying to, I don't know, um, figure out how to paint or figure out how to, uh, um... but you don't really know what the painting is gonna be.
2. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  Um, the other is what is called instructional plasticity. And I guess the strict term would be self-directed adaptive instructional plasticity. This is why it gets to be a, you know, kind of a mouthful but-
4. JCJames Clear
  Sounds sticky.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah. But the instructional piece means there's a correct answer. There's a correct answer. And, and neuroscientists are familiar with the fact that, you know, i- there's these certain forms of learning where, where there's a correct answer f- that the nervous system needs to learn, like how to shoot a free throw from a particular location on a court, for instance. Um, how to state a word, uh, with the proper enunciation in a different language, for instance. And so there's a right and there's a wrong. And the example of this guy Mitch-
6. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... who went to the gym, um, and then left after five minutes-
8. JCJames Clear
  (laughs)
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... um, I feel like there's a merge there where he, through some unconscious genius, realized that the right answer was getting in the door and had to teach himself that piece-
10. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... as opposed to the entire workout. So that's just chunking, right? But it requires that, that there's a, a prerequisite to getting in the gym, and that's just going there in the first place. And if we, and if we're trying to learn how to do an entire workout, it's too much. Or if we're trying to learn how to perform really well, it's, you're, we're really trying to learn f- 50 or 1,000 things.
12. JCJames Clear
  Right.
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  So this business of chunking, it's so simple on the face of it, but I feel like instructional plasticity says we need to learn the right answers and then stack those.
14. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  And so I don't think he was crazy. I think he was really onto something and really in tune with what the neuroscience says.
16. JCJames Clear
  People often think they're keeping it simple or making it simple, but they don't realize how many steps are involved. Like, let's take just getting to the gym. Forget about the workout, but just getting there. Which gym will you go to? What time are you gonna go? Are you going before work or after work? Are you stopping by on your way or is it on your commute? Do you need to drive separately? Are you gonna bring a water bottle or do they have water fountains at the gym? That alone sounds like a silly thing, but I heard from a reader one time who said, "I always forget my water bottle and they don't have water fountains there, so I don't feel like going."
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  (laughs)
18. JCJames Clear
  That's enough friction to prevent somebody from doing the workout, right? Like, there's so many little steps like that. Um, and y- what are you gonna wear? Do you have the cl- are the clothes clean or are they in the laundry right now? Like, there's so many things that could prevent it from happening. So just mastering getting started forces you to cross all of those thresholds early on and figure out, "H- how do I get in here consistently week in and week out?" And then once you got that part licked, then okay, great, we can move on to what the actual workout should be.
19. AHAndrew Huberman
  These
28:01 – 34:10
Flow Don’t Fight, Dissatisfaction & Effort, Tool: Identity-Based Habits
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  days, I and many others hear about and talk about this idea that the effort becomes the reward. I mean, that's sort of the, the holy grail of all this, right? And, um, I think that can happen. I mean, it has sort of masochistic, uh, tones to it. Uh, years ago I was dating a woman, we're still good friends, and I r- I remember one time she just said to me, she said, "Flow, don't fight." And I was like, "What are you talking about?" And she said, "E- everything that you do is, y- you're sort of, like, pushing yourself into doing it even though you really enjoy these activities." We're talking about work-related activities. And, um, I was like, "Oh, so you just, like, flow into everything that you do?" And she's like, "Yeah." She was from Eastern Canada.
2. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  And I was like, "Is, is everyone up there like that?" And she's like, "No, actually, you know, my, my dad..." or someone in her family is, like, a fisherman, had to get up early in the morning, go out in the cold. So she was a hardy person, a very hardy person, a hard worker. Just recently finished her graduate degree, in fact. And I was like, this "Flow, don't fight" thing is interesting because I feel like across my day, I do wake up and I'm like, "All right, have to do this, need to..." And these are opportunities that I love.
4. JCJames Clear
  Sure.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  And I've thought to myself, "Do... We only have so much, you know, time on the gas pedal." You know, may- maybe she's right. Maybe, maybe we need to flow through certain parts of our days where we're just kind of on, in automatic so that we can fight harder against the things that, that are really barriers for us. Uh, I've been wanting... Since I woke up this morning, I'm like, "I, I gotta ask James this question." Do you think there's a way that we can kind of toggle flow and fight?
6. JCJames Clear
  That's an interesting question. I, so I have two thoughts. First thought is, um, for a long time I wrestled with this question of, do I have to be dissatisfied to be driven? D- d- is, is that part of it? Is that, is part of it that I have this vision for where I want to be or what I want to accomplish, and then I look at my current state and I realize there's a gap between where I am and where I want to be? And that dissatisfaction with that gap is what drives you forward. It's the, it's the drive to close the gap that gets you to show up and work hard or take the test or do the thing, you know? Um, and I think certainly there are many times in my life when that has been the driving force. But, uh, the healthiest response I think that I've come up with, or the, the counterpoint, is y- imagine that, like, an acorn falls from a tree and, you know, it manages to take root and starts to grow and, you know, at first it's just this little acorn and then it's this sapling and then it, you know, grows into this, eventually this large, mature oak. And, um-At no point in that process did, was it like berating itself for only being an acorn or for only being a sapling, right? For not being enough yet, for not being big enough, for not having achieved that outcome. Um, nobody looks at it and thinks, "Oh, what a failure. You aren't a full oak tree yet." Um, and yet despite that there isn't this dissatisfaction going on, it continues to grow. And I think the answer there is, it grows simply because that is what an oak tree does. It grows because that is what is, it is encoded to do. And so I feel like the, the healthiest version of me, like just flowing with it, you know, or just stepping into it, is what do I feel like I'm encoded to do? You know, like, uh, th- it's almost like I was made for this, you know, this is my strength. This is what I, like it lights me up and makes me feel alive. And then I can be quite driven, um, and not feel dissatisfied in the moment. So I, I think that was like kind of the first thing that I, that came to mind. The second piece is, I have had this experience where the effort has been the reward, where the, the, the work is the win or what, you know, however people want to phrase it. Doing the thing is the satisfaction, but rarely do I have that experience right away. Um, it has, it has come with time. So like working out is a very good example for me. Um, I've been training for, you know, 15 or 20 years now, and f- yeah, like I want all the same things everybody else does, right? I wanna be healthy, you wanna look good, you, you know, you have all these like outcomes that you want from working out. But the last couple years I have started to train more and more just because of how I feel when I work out. I like how it makes me feel. And now I don't have to wait. I don't have to wait two years to see how I look in the mirror. Like, I feel good when I'm doing this set. Um, and so it becomes more about the experience and I, liking how I feel when I'm doing it. In my language, in the Atomic Habits language, it's what I call identity-based habits. Um, every time that I show up and work out, I am casting a vote for being the type of person who works out, for being an athlete, for being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And every time I cast a vote for being that type of person, I feel good about myself. I feel like I'm showing up and being the kind of person I want to be. I feel like I'm reinforcing my desired identity. And I think this is one of the, it- it certainly is one of the concepts from Atomic Habits that has resonated with most with people, which is rather than starting your habits and asking, "What do I wish to a- achieve? What do I wish to, you know, accomplish?" You start by asking, "Who do I wish to become? And how are my habits reinforcing that desired identity? Am I casting votes for being that type of person?" Every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become. So if you sit down and you study for 20 minutes on Tuesday night, you are casting a vote for being studious. If you shoot a basketball for an hour outside, you cast a vote for being a basketball player. And individually those are small things and they don't really mean a whole lot, you know, in, in any given moment. But collectively, if you do it for three months or six months or a year, you cross this invisible threshold at some point where you say, "Yeah, being a basketball player must be a big part of who I am." And you start to take pride in being that kind of person. And if you take pride in it, if it becomes part of your story, then you'll fight to maintain the habit. And now all of a sudden the situation has flipped. Now you're trying to do it rather than trying not to do it, you know? Rather than trying to motivate yourself to stick to it, you're just saying, "This is part of who I am." You know? Like, I get up and I go for a run because I'm a runner, not because I have a half marathon in three months. I'm, I'm doing it 'cause I like being this kind of person. So I think the, the question of what are my actions reinforcing? How are my habits feeding my desired identity is an interesting thing to play with, and I think an important question for all of us to ask ourselves.
34:10 – 39:38
Friction, Competition & Effort; Credentials
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah. I confess that, um, friction for me is a great motivator. You know, I, I was in essentially a scientific competition in my postdoc years also when I started my lab, and I was like, "This is great." Like, I, I have something constantly to push against.
2. JCJames Clear
  Mm.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  And I enjoyed the work.
4. JCJames Clear
  What kind of friction do you mean? Like having a, a-
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  Oh, a big lab that we were competing with, and, and it was a new area. A bunch of tools had arrived on the scene. We were developing tools. They were developing tools, and it was very, very competitive. And, uh, I was like, "This is so great." Like-
6. JCJames Clear
  Felt like a little arms race.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah. And it was, and, and they got their piece and we got our piece and it's, it all worked out. But I think competition can bring that out, and I think it was really healthy and, um, it raised the anxiety level certainly. 'Cause in science you can actually get scooped.
8. JCJames Clear
  Mm.
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  You can work very, very hard for a lot of years and someone can beat you to the punch.
10. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  And you have to tell the student or postdoc like, "We, we are resetting." And when I was the postdoc, it was, it was scary. So you try and find your corner where, uh, there's a bit more assurance that you're gonna be okay no matter what, but it's not always the case.
12. JCJames Clear
  Sure.
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  Especially if you pick the problems that are like very timely, like the tools just became available to answer questions that people have wanted to answer for a long time, and it's just a cluster.
14. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  And so I used to think, "Gosh, is this unhealthy?" Is this like really unhealthy? I'm waking up at 4:00 in the morning going to lab and like beating them. I'm like, "No. Are you kidding me?" Like, it, it was part of building my career, but I wouldn't want to do that forever.
16. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  And so this, the flow piece sounds really, really nice. Um, and at the same time, I don't know, I, I, I agree completely with what you said, that in the friction you get these sort of breakthroughs of like, "Oh, this, this went well for five minutes. I really enjoy this." And you start to hold on to those, those pockets. You said you really enjoy the workout, the set. I, I feel a lot of resonance with that. I actually like exercising.
18. JCJames Clear
  Mm.
19. AHAndrew Huberman
  But you're one of the few people I've ever met that doesn't say, "Oh, I like how I feel afterwards." I like how I feel afterwards, but I also like how it feels in the moment.
20. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
21. AHAndrew Huberman
  It sounds like you do as well.
22. JCJames Clear
  Yeah. I like the act of it. I like the practice of it.
23. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah. I mean, that's a gift that you had to work for.
24. JCJames Clear
  I think so. I, you know, well, t- to the point that you just made, it's hard for you to imagine always being in that flow or f- always feeling that way about it. And, and also the competition can be very healthy. I agree. I think it's both. Uh, and I almost...... I resist anybody who would say that they're always in one or the other.
25. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm.
26. JCJames Clear
  I think everybody's in both from time to time. And, um, your point about the competition between the labs, that's instructive for building habits too. Sometimes it really helps if things have stakes. I find that it's actually quite hard for me to care if there are no stakes.
27. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm.
28. JCJames Clear
  I, I want there to be something that matters. Ultimately, that's why I decided to start sharing my ideas online. I was working at a orthopedic practice, uh, just doing, like, an internship over the summer, this was many years ago, and, uh, I started writing about habits. And eventually, and nobody asked me to, I just was doing it 'cause I was interested in it, and I got this Word doc that was like 60 pages long. It was just like, "James's thoughts on habits." And writing in the Word doc is kind of boring. There are no stakes, you know? So I was like, "Well, eventually I, I need to put some of this up and just see, is it any good or not?" You know, "Do people like it or not?" And, um, eventually that led to jamesclear.com and then eventually Atomic Habits. Um, but the fact that there were stakes forced me to up my game. You know, my, my undergraduate degree is in biomechanics, and then I got a business degree as well. So I, I don't have a degree in psychology, you know, or neuroscience, which is kind of what I think you would expect somebody who writes about habits to have. And so, I was kind of lamenting that early on, and I said that to a friend and he said, "Well, the way you become an expert is by writing about it every week." And so I just really internalized that. And so I wrote two articles a week for the next three years, and it turns out if you write 150 articles about habits, you learn a lot along the way. And because it was public, I could get criticized every time, and I think that made the work much better. Um, and ultimately, you know, I was able to triangulate my way to, you know, putting together some decent ideas about the topic.
29. AHAndrew Huberman
  And building habits and, uh, suppressing bad habits is synonymous with your name and vice versa. I think there are several cases I can think of, you, uh, Derek, um, from More Plates More Dates-
30. JCJames Clear
  Mm.
39:38 – 45:59
Make Effort Rewarding, Mindset, Tools: Previsualization, Emphasize Positives
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah, I think this, uh, attachment to making the effort the reward is something that, um, can happen. I think that it's a, a, a top-down training. I'd like your thoughts on this. You know, we, we can tell ourselves, um, you know, "This pain is good. This is me getting better." Like, I think there, there are two kind of parallel examples in the world of exercise-
2. JCJames Clear
  Mm.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... where, um, it's very concrete and it, I think it maps to the cognitive space, but I think one of the incredible things about resistance training is, uh, this notion of the pump. I mean, not because I enjoy it, but because it gives you a little visual and, uh, like sensory window into what will happen if you do things correctly, like recover and, and, uh, proper nutrition, et cetera. Like, you get, you literally get a visual and a, and a sensory window into the future.
4. JCJames Clear
  You have some kind of evidence-
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah.
6. JCJames Clear
  ... that in the moment, you're doing it right.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah.
8. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  And, um, and in general, the, what you end up with, it sort of parallels that, that progress during the, during the workout. Whereas with, with running, like, if I run up a steep hill with a weight vest on, my lungs are burning. I wanna cough up a lung, like, I feel like I wanna vomit and we can tell ourselves like, "This is good. This is me getting better. It will be easier the next time." But you don't feel faster in the moment.
10. JCJames Clear
  Mm.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  You're not like, "Oh, this is what it feels like to really be faster than I am in this, on this current day." And so I think both are important. So I look at those as kind of, um, templates for the positive feedback I can give myself. Like, if I have a good, um, stretch of writing or podcast prep where I'm like really finding papers, I'm like, "This is so cool. This is great." I'll say, "Okay, this is really good." Like, we're in the groove. That's sort of like the, the pump in the gym thing, like it's heading someplace. But then when things are really like running up against a brick wall and I'm just like, "This is so painful," I, I've had to teach myself to say, "Okay, this is, this is good. This is me getting better." This is how the brain learns. The brain learns by experiencing friction. It doesn't learn by experiencing performance.
12. JCJames Clear
  Right.
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  I mean, we don't learn from performance. We only learn from failure, right? That the brain won't change unless it has to change. So, um, I'd love your thoughts on this as it relates to the space I think most people think of habits and learning, like how to learn a new language or, or, um, a musical instrument or, or just changing one's daily routine so that one is healthier or k- or kinder. You know, a lot of people just struggle with kind of being jerks, you know? And, and I think they're trying to be kind, and it's hard. It's hard to develop the, the habit of being kind if that's not their nature. So h- uh, how do these things map for you?
14. JCJames Clear
  A lot of the time people will complain about writing habits, for example. "Writing's so hard. Writing's so difficult. It feels so, you know, arduous in the moment." And I, sometimes I try to remind myself, yeah, it does feel difficult and that's kind of why it works. Imagine going into the gym and complaining that, like, the weights are heavy. You're like, well, that's like, yes, the weights are heavy. That's why you're getting stronger. And the writing is hard and that's how you're getting smarter. Or at least let's say that's how you're clarifying your thoughts. Just as the weights feeling heavy is evidence that you are getting stronger, the writing feeling hard is evidence that you are thinking, that you are forcing yourself to think and clarify. So there is some...... friction, some tension that is necessary for growth. I think what you're referencing, telling yourself a better story in the moment, is very helpful, you know, like, this is... Yeah. It is painful, it is hard, and this is part of what it means to grow. I also think it's helpful to do some things either beforehand or afterward that can help feed that process to get you to show up. So for example, beforehand, pre-visualization can be really helpful. I practice this with my kids, just trying to help them imagine what a good day would look like. You know, like my one son, he, um, he started preschool recently, and the first day at drop-off, he didn't have a good day. He kind of, you know, cried, fussed a little bit, didn't really want to stay. Second day, same sort of thing. Um, so third day, I said, "All right. It's, you know, it's preschool day today." And he was like, "Ah," and I was like, "Hold on, let's, let's just, you know, we're getting breakfast in the morning." I said, um, "You know, you like preschool, right? Like, you, you really like your teachers?" Um, he's like, "Yeah." And I said, "Uh, what about, um, you guys did snack time yesterday. That was fun, right?" And he's like, "Yeah." And I said, uh, "You got to play with glue sticks and the crayons. Like, that was a cool activity. And then what do you do after, um, school gets done?" He's like, "Oh, we go out on the playground and we play for, you know, 30 minutes or whatever." And that was it. I just stopped there. But the point is that I'm trying to get him to imagine what a good day would look like if it unfolds, right? Emphasize the positive parts of the experience that are about to happen. What are the things that you're about to do that you enjoy or that are good for you? And go into the day with that story in your mind, and I think that increases the odds that you're going to show up and, you know, maybe we just got lucky. Who knows? But he had a good drop-off that day.
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  Sounds like a great day.
16. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah.
18. JCJames Clear
  Yeah. Sounds, sounds awesome.
19. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah.
20. JCJames Clear
  I want to do it too.
21. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah.
22. JCJames Clear
  I played baseball for a while. I played baseball through college, and when I was younger, like 10, 12, 14, um, my dad and I would do this thing where at the end of each season, we'd go and sit down on the back deck and we would kind of, like, replay the good parts of the season. We'd talk about the, our best games, the best wins, talk about, you know, the best plays that I had had or things that went well or whatever, and we're just trying to, like, emphasize the wins, you know? And, uh, so I finished each season, even if it wasn't, like, the best season for me, I was never the best player on any team that I was on, but I finished it feeling good, and that gives you a little bit of momentum going into the next season. And so I, I think the core question, whether you're visualizing it ahead of time or rehearsing it afterward, is, what are you emphasizing? There's this interesting exercise I heard of one time, and you take a piece of paper or two documents, and the only rule of this game is that you can't write down anything that's false. So yeah, they... It just has to be true if you write it down. The first page, you're gonna write down the story of your last year, but it's the negative version, all the bad things that happened, the stuff that didn't go your way, whatever. The second page, you're gonna write down the story of your last year, but it's the positive version, all the wins you've had, the things that wor- worked out well, you know, your best days. And you look at those two pieces of paper, there are no lies on either one.
23. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm.
24. JCJames Clear
  And I, I think the question is, which one are you emphasizing each day? You know, what story do you carry with you when you go into the next experience? And a- as long as you are not ignoring reality, you know, as lo- as long as you're not ignoring the truth of the situation and what you need to manage or what you need to face, I think you always want to tell yourself the more empowering one, you know? You always want to carry that version with you that makes you feel inspired or empowered or positive, and that, I think, will increase the odds that you show up. I don't know that it'll necessarily make you a kinder person, but certainly it puts you in a better position for things like that to happen. So I think there is some mental rehearsal, let's say, that you can do to put yourself in a better position to not only just have a good day, but also be more li- likely to perform at a high level.
45:59 – 48:56
Sponsors: AG1 & Joovv
1. AHAndrew Huberman
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48:56 – 55:18
Reflection & Learning, Tool: Self-Testing; Perfectionism, Tool: Curiosity
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  think that it's very difficult to do what one wants to do without imagining it first. I think people get scared that the outcome won't be what they hope for. Like, that, that fear of failure piece is, I think is very real. The post-activity reflection, just want to hover on that for a second. Um, about a year ago, we did an episode on how best to study and learn, and this maps, of course, to neuroplasticity, and the literature is very straightforward. Um, but there's this interesting, um, shift in the literature in the last couple of years, which clearly shows that anything that we reflect on later, we learn faster and we retain longer.
2. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  And it's because most all of learning is anti-forgetting, and that sounds so obvious. It's like a giant duh. Whenever I say that, people are like, "Well, duh." It's just a play on words. But no. I mean, there's all this sensory information coming in, you know, massive amounts, and, and we forget most of it. It's either irrelevant or, or it just, you know, it just goes through for whatever reason and doesn't stick. When students, for instance, would read a passage once or twice or three times or four times, and they did all the derivations of do they take notes, do they highlight, do they talk about it with friends, et cetera, there are two things that really make things stick, and one is self-testing. Just, you know, reflecting later, like, "Oh, did I? What happ- Ugh, I don't remember that. No, I got that wrong." Th- that, that's incredible, um, for... Self-evaluation in low stakes is, is incredibly powerful for retaining information. And the other one was just reflecting on, like, what happened, what went right, what went wrong, which is really what you're describing about-
4. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... uh, about these exercises and y- and your kids' day, right? Um-
6. JCJames Clear
  It reminds me a little bit of, uh, like, the spaced repetition literature. In a way, the reflection is like another instance of spaced repetition. You, you come back to it later, and it resurfaces the material-
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yep.
8. JCJames Clear
  ... and that increases the odds that you retain it.
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah. Having taught many undergraduate and graduate courses and medical students, I can tell you, um... Well, graduate students and medical students are universally motivated because the stakes are very high. Classes are smaller. There's kind of more of a, like, community around us.
10. JCJames Clear
  They've also passed a filter just to get in, right?
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  Right.
12. JCJames Clear
  There's a selection bias just to, to be there.
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  Right. Undergraduates, it varies by place and course and, and, and et cetera and major, et cetera, but, uh, whether or not it's their major or not. I'm not saying different majors are more or less motivated. But what's interesting is that most students are exposed to information. They might study for the exam. Ideally, they do. And then the next time that they are evaluated on that material in any kind of concrete way is on the exam.
14. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  And the students that actually test themselves or that ask for... Some, the best students always ask for, like, a, a pre-quiz quiz.
16. JCJames Clear
  Hmm.
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  Um, inevitably best performing students. And I think this business of just being willing to feel the pain of being wrong when there's very low stakes, it still sucks. None of us like to be wrong.
18. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
19. AHAndrew Huberman
  It's like, "Ugh." You know? And, and you, you decide to put it online. Like, is any of this wrong?
20. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
21. AHAndrew Huberman
  We've done that. We, we've now, having had a few painful experiences where I just said the wrong thing in passing-
22. JCJames Clear
  Sure.
23. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... or made a joke that was turned into a not-joke.
24. JCJames Clear
  I'm a slow learner.
25. AHAndrew Huberman
  You know?
26. JCJames Clear
  I need a lot of feedback.
27. AHAndrew Huberman
  Well, (laughs) I mean, there were jokes I made that then, like, were cut and exer- Like, those kinds of experiences are painful enough that you, you check everything with a fine-tooth comb going forward.
28. JCJames Clear
  Sure, sure.
29. AHAndrew Huberman
  You know? You just... That's the way it is. But I think most people will do anything to avoid that kind of scrutiny.
30. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
55:18 – 1:04:20
Striving vs Relaxation, Balance, Tool: Turn On/Off; Hiking, Nature Reset
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  about how the habit of striving can be also mirrored by the habit of real, true relaxation.
2. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  Not thinking about the thing you need to do or trying to build, but allowing that maybe plasticity to take place, not just in sleep-
4. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  But are- are you an active relaxer? Like, do you say, "Now it's time to just completely chill"?
6. JCJames Clear
  Yeah, I think I'm pretty good at shutting off, uh, once- when I decide to shut off. There was a... I think it was on Tim Ferriss's podcast at one point, and he had Josh Waitzkin on there. And Josh said something about how he was doing a... he was in a martial arts competition and, um, he was actually asleep on the, like, bench on the side and they came over and woke him up and they said, "Hey, we got the time wrong for your- for your event. Like, you're actually up in, like, two minutes." Um, and so he, like, woke up out of his sleep and then he did this little, like, pre- um, uh, pre-competition ritual and just, like, flipped the switch and was, you know, ready to go. And, um, he talked about this importance of being able to turn it on and turn it off, and I... ever since I've heard that example from him, I've been thinking more about this idea of turning it on and turning it off. You know, you- you sprint and then you rest. Um, what does that look like in daily life? And I actually think... well, first of all, I think it's kind of fractal. I think that you can say you could have, like, a 10-year sprint where you're, like, really career-focused, that's the season of your life right now, and then maybe the next season is more family-focused or more relaxation-focused or whatever. Um, it also, of course, could be day or week or, you know, even hour. Um, so it can scale up and scale down. But I also think it maybe is a better version of what it means to be balanced. You know, we- people talk a lot about work/life balance or what balance might look like. I think balance might actually be turning it on and turning it off really well. It's not, um, doing everything at, like, 50%. You know, it's not just, like, staying at some steady state. It means that when you're sprinting, you're actually sprinting, and when you're resting, you're actually resting. And the ability to oscillate between those two states, um, in lots of ways, I think is very helpful. There's obviously the physical ways in which you could do it, whether it's working out or, you know, actually relaxing and resting. Um, I think there are mental ways to do it too. I tried to practice this a couple, uh, couple months ago. We were hosting a party and, you know (laughs) , anytime you're hosting an event, there can be, like, this urgency that comes, right? The people are coming, the guests are coming, everybody's anxiety levels ratchet up, like, you know, is everything ready? And, um, the phrase that I was playing with was, "Can I be outside and above this?" You know, so can I- can I mentally, can I step outside and above the situation and almost, like, look down on it? And if you are outside and above the situation, really what you want is to feel larger than the situation that you are dealing with. If you are smaller than the situation, mentally, then it is driving you, right? Your anxieties are responding to this larger thing that you feel like you can't control. But if you can step outside and above it, now I can look down on what is fo- facing me right now and I can make a wiser decision or a calmer decision or whatever. Um, and so I'm trying to find ways to kind of turn the anxiety on and off, right? Like, turn the stress on and off. And, uh, so I- I think there are a number of things that you can- that you can do there, but I'm trying to get better at practicing it myself.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah, I think the- the word reset is not, um, in our, like, action palette enough-
8. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... uh, these days. I think, um, because it's so easy to bring information and work to wherever we happen to be. And even if it's not work, just communications. Uh, I mean, I've made it a point in recent years to put social media on one phone, maybe even keep it in a lockbox, but I'll try and take hikes where I'm just spending time with the person I'm with and the phone is back in the car.
10. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  And I realize there's a danger to that. Like, there could be a fire. It is LA after all. It could be, you know, mountain lions, this kind of thing, but it's totally worth it. Totally worth the- the, uh, the untethering, in- in my opinion.
12. JCJames Clear
  Very low percentage of risk too, you know?
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah.
14. JCJames Clear
  But, um-
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  I mean, you know, there- there are people around and, I mean, it's not clear the phone would save you from a mountain lion anyway.
16. JCJames Clear
  Yeah (laughs) .
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  So you're better off... it actually would probably, uh, reduce your reaction time.
18. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
19. AHAndrew Huberman
  So-
20. JCJames Clear
  Record your final moments. (laughs)
21. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah, exactly. (laughs)
22. JCJames Clear
  Yeah, that's interesting. I also think that there's an element to, um... if you're the type of person who has a very, uh, strong work ethic and you have worked your way out of problems throughout life, that, for me, for a long time, that was my solution to something. If it wasn't working, well, then I'll just work a little bit harder and I'll work my way out of it. Um, and when that has worked for you for a while, you end up using it as a crutch, and so hard work becomes this thing that you just kind of, like, slide back into. But what are the odds, mathematically speaking, what are the odds that the thing that you're doing today or this week is the highest and best use of your time? Uh, it's almost impossible that you are actually working on the thing that is the best use of your time. I think Sam Altman has some quote where he said something like, uh, "You should have a very high bar for working on anything other than thinking about what to work on," because choosing the right thing to focus on is gonna get you 100 or 1,000X the results. Maybe you can work 10% harder, but if you want 100X the output, you need to direct the attention and energy to something else. And I think that creating space to rest, to reflect, and review allows that opportunity to arise. Uh, a lot of the executives I talk to, or companies that I speak at or work with, everybody's just kind of tapped out. They're very... you know, they- they're working quite hard and so they keep their head down and try to knock out the things that are on their plate, but what they need to do is step back and relax and think for a moment, to reflect and say, "Are we working on the right things?" I- I think that's some of the most important time that I have carved out in my week. I- I have, like, roughly 30 minutes every Friday where I just do a weekly review, and there is nothing scheduled, it's just me thinking about the business. Um, and that, a lot of the best stuff comes out of that. Um, I think I'd pr- it'd probably be better if it was three hours instead of 30 minutes, but, you know, you need to find at least some time to sit down and think...... am I directing my precious energy and attention in the right way? And I think that rest and reflection and relaxation play directly into that. If you're just working, if you're just sprinting all the time, you don't have the space to see the larger picture.
23. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah. I'm really intrigued by this concept of wordlessness, like getting your body and brain into states of, while awake, uh, wordlessness. So not a lot of information coming in about work or really anything. Um, maybe it's the liminal state be- between awake and sleep-
24. JCJames Clear
  Mm.
25. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... some of these NSDR, yoga nidra type practices. But it's more, um, you know, like hiking or running or swimming, um, where your brain goes through a, a period of chatter and you're thinking about the other thing, but then at some point everything becomes discontinuous-
26. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
27. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... in a way and it... or listening to music.
28. JCJames Clear
  Hiking's the one that does it for me.
29. AHAndrew Huberman
  That does-
30. JCJames Clear
  What, what you're describing right now is like how I get after, like, maybe an hour into a hike or something.
1:04:20 – 1:14:24
Identity & Professional Pursuits; Choosing New Projects; Clinging to Identity
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  Which I... it makes me want to bring something up that you raised earlier, and I should have asked then, this notion of identity. I think one of the reasons that it's so hard for people to relax and reset or to shift their life to a different mode of, of focus. Like, for instance, uh, you said you had this online blog and then you decided to focus on the book, and then now you're doing a number of other things. It's kind of interesting, um, to explore how we, how we catalog wins or how we carry our wins as well as our losses.
2. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  Because I think a lot of people, they'll publish a book. Um, if they're lucky, it has ha- half the success of Atomic Habits, but then they feel like they either have to do it again or they have to do something to sort of maintain the buoyancy of that experience out there in the world as opposed to just being able to shelve it in their mind like, "That was awesome." Listen, Atomic Habits is a, an, a super impressive book, and it's done incredibly well for all the right reasons. And one could say like, "Okay, did that. Like, next thing." And some people can do that. You mentioned Waitzkin. Josh is a friend, and, and he's, uh, just has this incredible ability to be like, "I'm done playing chess."
4. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  "I'm doing the next thing. I'm done doing that." Like, he really can cut ties with his previous self.
6. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  I think most people find that difficult. We feel like we need to succeed where we succeeded before or else it no longer is real.
8. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  How often do you, do you play with the idea of, of habits and identity and kind of what you're on the precipice of now?
10. JCJames Clear
  It's an interesting question. I s- r- I saw this with a number of the things that I researched when I was writing the book, um, stories that came up, and then I've also felt it personally. Some examples. I heard from one guy when I was writing the book who was in the military, then he leaves and he's like, "My identity for the last 20 years is I was a soldier. Now I'm not, so what... like, who am I?" basically. Um, and then, uh, another common one that you hear is from athletes. "You know, I, I felt this way. I didn't even play professionally, but, you know, I played all the way through college." You get to the end of your senior year, "I've been doing this for 17 years now." Um, and then all of a sudden the next day, you're not an athlete anymore. "So what... like, who am I? You know, this is, like, a huge part of my identity." And so you can also imagine, you know, founders when they sell their company or CEOs after having a long run and the... you know, it's just like you have something that was a huge part of your life and now you're not. I, I heard from a mother the other day who said, "I'm suddenly an empty nester, you know? 25 years I've been taking care of these kids, and now all of them have moved out. Like, you know, what am I doing? What is my purpose?" So I think it's very common for people to have something like that, an identity that they, um, feel like they've lost. And for me, the thing that helped the most was trying to find through lines from that previous identity that can still serve me in the new season. So you take the soldier example. Yeah, they're not a soldier anymore, but they could still be a good teammate, they could be the type of person who follows through on their mission, they can be somebody who's reliable and can be counted on, you know? And then you start to look at the parts of your past where you were that kind of person and then look at...... your current situation, where can you express those traits again. Um, in my little case as an entrepreneur, I, I always emphasize being an entrepreneur and a creator more than I did being an author. I, I kind of have to admit that I'm an author now 'cause I have the book, but I, really what I see myself as, is an entrepreneur. And so the shift from blog to book to co-founding companies, or what- like, that, to me, that feels connected, um, because I have that story as the through line. So I, I don't know that it's really about abandoning your past in any way or, or saying that, "Oh, that didn't happen," or it happened in a different way. It's just about finding the parts of the experience that you can hold onto and feel proud of and carry into your next chapter. Um, not, not everything goes on forever. Uh, basically nothing does, and that's fine, you know? It, it's okay. It doesn't need to last forever. You can still feel very, very proud of what it was, but let's try to find some pieces of it that we can take with us to the next thing.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  Along the lines of identity, it sounds like you are very content with understanding where you're at, where you were before, and where you're headed next. I think where people get tripped up is that they want to be understood by the outside world, or they have a hard time cutting ties with how the outside world understands them.
12. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  Like, if the entire world said, like if I asked say, "Who's James Clear?" And you says like, "The author," you know, it can be harder for people to cut ties with that. I've seen this in a lot of, uh, a lot of professions and friends who are very, very successful. The, uh, entrepreneur, um, s- uh, example, founder example is, is a very, um, important one I think. I've seen a few times on X and other social platforms of, of founders that sell their companies for, you know, half a billion dollars, billion dollars. And I'm from Silicon Valley, so you, you end up knowing some of these people over time, and inevitably they don't feel good a few days later. It's like a postpartum depression-
14. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... of sorts, and it's because for them it was the hunt, and now what? And if they don't prepare for that, actually it can be catastrophic.
16. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  People say, "Oh, poor billionaires." You know? But, but it, I think it's more of a, a model for what we all experience. So I think these, these titles that we tell ourselves we have and that we're living into are powerful but double-edged.
18. JCJames Clear
  Yup, for sure.
19. AHAndrew Huberman
  Uh, and the f- where we glean the most feedback about our identity from people I think is also dangerous because, um, it can hold us in place, uh, in a, in a major way.
20. JCJames Clear
  So two things. First is you see the founder example, which shows it very explicitly 'cause there's this exit for a large amount of money, but it can be true for anything. You see why you should a- optimize for playing the game and not necessarily winning the game, right? The, the win is do you get to continue to keep playing? Um, and so in a lot of ways, the- we, we glamorize these outcomes, uh, but in fact it's like, how do you wanna spend your days? You know, I- when I choose a new project to focus on, one of the first questions that I ask is, "How do I wanna spend my days?" And then you draw a box around what you want that to look like. And inside that box, how can you make the biggest impact, make the most money, reach the most people, you know, whatever. Um, but not outside of it. But what happens a lot of the time is people start by asking the f- the second question, which is, "How can I make the biggest impact or make the most money or reach the most people?" And then they talk themselves into a daily life that is outside of what that box would contain, and you find that this is not actually how I wanna spend my days. Or you optimize for the outcome, like the founder selling for $500 million, and not for the daily lifestyle. And really, like, that's what matters the most, is do you like how you spend your days? Um, do you have power over your days? Do you have- you know, do you feel alive during your days? And so, uh, it's a different sh- it requires you to ask a different question than what most people are asking most of the time, or what society in general is asking us most of the time.
21. AHAndrew Huberman
  I'm just very impressed, to be, uh, completely candid, I'm very impressed by how self-identified you are with h- with your role in, at a given stage of-
22. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
23. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... of your work life. And now, uh, I know you have a family, et cetera.
24. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
25. AHAndrew Huberman
  And Josh Waitzkin as well, how he, he grew up a chess player, this chess prodigy, the movie about him, there were all the bricks stacked for him to stay in that role-
26. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
27. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... maybe not forever, but to hold onto that identity. And he just cut ties. He d- he never played another game of chess. And, uh, he'll talk about chess and he'll talk about it with great affection and, and also with a little bit of pain about some of the painful points of it, but he was able to just-
28. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
29. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... cut the cord and be the next version of himself and the next version. And not just at the time where he started a family, because I d- you know, that's the most transformative step-
30. JCJames Clear
  Sure.
1:14:24 – 1:15:42
Sponsor: Eight Sleep
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure you get a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct, and that's because in order to fall asleep and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees, and in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly five years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. The latest Eight Sleep model is the Pod 5. This is what I'm now sleeping on, and I absolutely love it. It has so many incredible features. For instance, the Pod 5 has a feature called autopilot, which is an AI engine that learns your sleep patterns and then adjusts the temperature of your sleeping environment across different sleep stages. It'll even elevate your head if you're snoring, and it makes other shifts to optimize your sleep. If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, go to eightsleep.com/huberman to get up to $350 off the new Pod 5. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350.
1:15:42 – 1:21:47
Criticism; Identity & Growth
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  I love it. I, I think it's something that at every stage of life, uh, is very relevant to how people decide to show up. I think, um, uh, I'm recalling that when I started studying neuroscience, there was no field of neuroscience, but they had a textbook that was, I think it was, like, Biological Psychology or something like that, or physiology. I can't remember the book, but they had pictures of some of the luminaries in the field. There were so few people you could actually put that in the kind of jacket of the book.
2. JCJames Clear
  There were five of them. Here they are.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah, and they had their pictures, and I'll never forget, there were little quotes below, and one guy, I don't even know who it was, 'cause I have a pretty good, uh, handle on neuroscience history, but I don't remember who it was, but it's, he said, his quote was, "I enjoy doing research more than eating." And I thought, "That sounds like a really cool profession."
4. JCJames Clear
  (laughs)
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  I already liked biology, but I was like, "How cool would that be?"
6. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  I mean, everyone loves to eat.
8. JCJames Clear
  Yeah. (laughs)
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  Most everyone loves to eat. I'm like, "How cool is that, that he loves it more than eating?"
10. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  And I was like, "Wow." And I, I think eventually I experienced that, how much fun doing experiments is, and, and, uh, uh... But at the same time, I think that, yeah, the danger is people get into, uh, a mode where they can't shift. Th- There's another piece, too, which has to do with recognition at either large scale, like the kind of recognition you've achieved, or smaller scale, like in a community or in a family. Um, there's this great moment in the movie, uh, Basquiat, about Jean-Michel Basquiat, the painter-
12. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... where he's having a conversation with his friend about fame and, you know, and how it's, and how it can contaminate the, the proc- the creative process. And, and the essence of it is basically, and we'll put a link to it, it's really good. Uh, Benicio del Toro's doing most of the talking, so even just listening to him talk is fun. But, um, the content is great too, and, and, and the essence of it is that if you become known for something that's not the most important thing to you, or work that you did is recognized but not for the reasons that you did it, that there's this kind of, uh, mismatch. And the big mistake is seeking to be understood in the way that you want to be understood-
14. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... and, and for every level of what you do to be understood. And I think this is when criticism starts to hurt, is when it starts to feel like misunderstanding of how genuine you are about your work, or, or y- or they're just getting it all wrong. Like, they're looking at the, they're looking at the right things, but they're getting it wrong because they don't understand your motivation. And I think one of the most powerful things, um, i- is to develop habits that are really around your understanding of who you are and why you're there. And yes, you want to achieve these milestones and the, and the feedback, but when the feedback comes, to be very cognizant of, like, that doesn't change why you did it. Like, they can't actually chan-... Like, you have to take control of your own thoughts is really what we're, we're tal- and your own goal process.
16. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  Otherwise, it can really destroy people. Uh, it destroyed Jean-Michel. I mean, he was a, he was a heroin addict, and he died, I think, of AIDS or a heroin overdose or both. I don't recall. But, you know, it, it clearly destroys artists when they achieve success but they're not understood, and I think it, I think it can destroy entrepreneurs too.
18. JCJames Clear
  It's been an interesting, uh, learning experience with Atomic Habits. There... Really, there is no one version of Atomic Habits. There are 25 million versions.
19. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm.
20. JCJames Clear
  And it's what those 25 million people who have read it have thought, and I don't have control over any of them, you know? I have-
21. AHAndrew Huberman
  That's very uncomfortable, right?
22. JCJames Clear
  Yeah, it's, it's interesting, I-
23. AHAndrew Huberman
  You have to come to terms with it.
24. JCJames Clear
  I've come to accept it.
25. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah, you come to terms with it.
26. JCJames Clear
  I've come to accept it.
27. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah.
28. JCJames Clear
  And even, you know, it's to the point now where it's, you know, it's the highest rated habits book of all time. We're just really grateful for that.
29. AHAndrew Huberman
  Awesome.
30. JCJames Clear
  And obviously one of the best-selling books of all time, um-
1:21:47 – 1:30:03
Failure, Identity, Sports, Tool: Rebounding & Reaching; Public Failures
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  and I think it's very important, um, this notion of feedback from other people. I think the story that people start to create for themselves if they, um, if they get critique, not just in the public space, but from anyone, is that I do think that people tend to map it to some story in their head about, like, their family. Like, they had, you know, a alcoholic parent or no one's really succeeded. I mean, this is why it's hard, I do think, for people to break through in new environments. You know, they're the first person in their family to go, to go to university or something like that, or to play a competitive sport at a certain level. And so when the failure comes back, a, a, an instance of failure, I think they map it to, like, "What this means about me as a person. I'm fated. My family line, my history is fated." Like, all this fading-to-be stuff is very dangerous. But I can tell you, based on, um, growing up where I grew up and being surrounded by the people I'm surrounded by, that the people who have never had a story of failure or trauma or difficulty, they're the most terrified.
2. JCJames Clear
  Mm.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  And they are actually the most vulnerable. Most of the people I've known that have self-harmed in s- sometimes very serious, irreversible ways, or just completely crashed their lives, and they were just glowing examples of what's possible in creativity, in performance, academics, sport, all this, are people that had never failed until they failed. And I think it b- it gets to this very point.
4. JCJames Clear
  This is something that I think, it doesn't have to be sports. Sports is, just happens to be how I learned it. I've, there are many ways to do it. I think, really, what it probably comes down to is performing publicly or performing with a risk of failure. But for me, it's one of the, I think the best lessons that I pulled out of playing sports, is what it feels like to fail publicly and getting over that. D- nobody wants to strike out to end the game. But if you do, you feel terrible for a little bit, and then you realize, you move on. Um, when I got to college, you go into the gym and you're training with the rest of the team, and, like, you're a freshman and you're weaker than the other guys and that doesn't feel good. But you miss a set, and then you move on and you go do the next exercise. And all those are little moments of failure that you have to learn how to get over and get through. And each time that you do, you are training this muscle of learning what it's like to rebound. In a lot of ways, the secret to winning is learning how to lose. You know, it's learning how to bounce back from a loss and figuring out how to show up again the next time despite that. And so, sports was the best way for me to learn that. By the time I got to my senior season, I said, "Uh, I don't care. I, I would rather be out there, you know? I don't want us to lose, but if we're gonna lose, put it on my shoulders. I can handle it. I'll, I'll take the loss, you know? I don't want us to lose, but I would rather be out there." And I think that's served me really well in my entrepreneurial career, too, because I'll reach. I'll try. And ultimately, what matters is not that you keep winning, but that you keep reaching. And eventually, if you reach enough, something's gonna work out for you. But you have, you can't be scared of failure in order for that to work, you know? You have to be able to know how to lose. You have to be able to know how to come back from a loss.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah, that's powerful. And the fact that you were willing to do it publicly is very powerful because nowadays, I think it's almost always public. You know, I'm a big fan of Twyla Tharp, the choreographer, and, uh-
6. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm. She's great.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah, she's terrific. And, and she talks about how the important thing as a dancer or a choreographer is to fail a lot in private so that you don't fail in public.
8. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  Nowadays, that's much more difficult. Like, any mistake that's on a stage or a court is going to be on a phone, in a video, and it's gonna hit the internet. And the more recognizable somebody is-
10. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... the more famous they are, the harder it is for them to control their perfect reputation. So, we've seen kind of an inversion of what we w-... of how at least I was raised, where everyone in the textbooks and whether or not it was Martin Luther King or whether or not it was, um, a sports star, whoever, like, they only showed you the best parts of these people's lives.
12. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  Now, it's all unearthed. It's all out there. And so I think, um, just the act of being online for, like, an, a middle school kid is a very scary thing, right?
14. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  Or in high school, like if something doesn't go well, if they're, like, dancing, like school dances, I have a, you know, niece who's like... When I asked her about the school dance, she's like, "Oh, yeah, there's no phones there." Right? Which is cool, right?
16. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  You know, like no phones. The, so that they can just enjoy themselves.
18. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
19. AHAndrew Huberman
  Right? Because reputations and rumors and gossip and drama, it, it exists at every level. You know, a professor at Stanford is a true luminary in the field of biology. He once said to me, he said, uh, "It's all just like high school forever."
20. JCJames Clear
  (laughs)
21. AHAndrew Huberman
  And I was like, "God, really?" And he's like, "Yeah." He's like, "You can change. People change." He's like, "But the way people interact and what they talk about and what's most salient and-"
22. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
23. AHAndrew Huberman
  "... is rarely what's most important or interesting, you know, and the drama and the, all that," he's like, "it goes on forever." All the whispering, the this, the that, he's like, "It never ends." It's like it, it's baked into everything. He didn't say nursery school and elementary school, fortunately, but everything from high school forward, he insists, is exactly the same. Middle... He said, um, in, uh, I guess they don't call them old age home, retirement homes, there's like drama.
24. JCJames Clear
  Oh, yeah.
25. AHAndrew Huberman
  You know (laughs) ?
26. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
27. AHAndrew Huberman
  And you're like, "Really?" (laughs) So, so I think it's important to recognize.
28. JCJames Clear
  I think there's space, space for both, uh, for both statements to be true. So Twyla Tharp's statement, "You make a lot of mistakes in practice so that you, you know, perform excellently in public," uh, th- that's definitely true, right? Like I, when I was, um, when I was playing baseball or getting ready for a big test, um, you know, my dad would sometimes say to me, I, you know, if you're nervous before the performance or something, you're like worried how the game's going to go or worried about this test you're gonna take, he would say, "Trust your preparation."
29. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm.
30. JCJames Clear
  And I think there's kind of two messages there. Like the first is, you know, relax, you're going to be able to perform, whatever. But obviously, the second hidden message is you better prepare, right? Like you need, you need those reps in private in order to perform in public. And that, I think, is a durable truth that is, that is consistent throughout life, you know? Like the person who prepares, um, is in a better position to win.
1:30:03 – 1:38:22
Daily Habits, Tools: Day in Quarters; Never Miss Twice; Meal Timing
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  I think seeking legacy is, is dangerous. Um, and it brings us back to this question of, of like how to construct the day (laughs) , you know? 'Cause at the far extreme is kind of a life, a career, a legacy. I'd like to talk a little bit about the day.
2. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  The unit of the day. Um, you've talked about never failing twice in a row.
4. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  Is that day today or is that, um, you know, morning, afternoon, two failures-
6. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... you're done (laughs) ?
8. JCJames Clear
  Uh, uh, yeah (laughs) . Uh, I did hear one time, I think Gretchen Rubin was the one who said, "You should split a day into four quarters." Uh, you got morning, afternoon, evening, and then nighttime, or, you know, divide something in-
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  That's what I do, definitely.
10. JCJames Clear
  Yeah. And then it's like-
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah.
12. JCJames Clear
  ... you, if you lose the first quarter, well, that's all right. You can still come back and win the next quarter. It kind of gives you permission-
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yup.
14. JCJames Clear
  ... for the day to not be a wash, you know? I do think that's a mistake people make sometimes. They get off on a bad start, and they're like, "Oh, the whole day is ruined." You know, like-
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm.
16. JCJames Clear
  ... let's, let's reset and try to, you know. I think in a lot of ways, living a good life is figuring out a way to have a good day even when things don't go your way.
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm.
18. JCJames Clear
  You know, if you can have, if you have that ability to bounce back and make something of the day even when it's not optimal, that's, that's good. You, you positioned yourself to have a good life 'cause things are not always gonna go your way. Um, never miss twice is an idea that, uh, it's an encouragement. It's a, it's an attitude, right? That you show up, and, you know, you've been following a new diet for eight days, and then on the ninth day, you binge eat a pizza, and you're like, "Well, you know, wish that hadn't happened, but never miss twice. Let's get back on track tomorrow."
19. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm.
20. JCJames Clear
  Or in my case, you know, I wrote a new article every Monday and Thursday.... that was the habit that kind of launched my writing career. If I missed on Monday, I wish it hadn't happened, but let's make sure I get one out on Thursday. And what you, the real insight here, what you really learn when you look at top performers across many domains is that they make mistakes like everybody else, you know, everybody's human, but they tend to get back on track quickly. And if the reclaiming of a habit is fast, the breaking of it doesn't matter that much. You know, you get to the end of the year and it's just a little blip on the radar. But it's missing a habit and letting slipping up once turn into not doing it for three months, that's the real problem. And so you're trying to course correct quickly. That's, that's what Never Miss Twice is really about. Um, you could break it down to within a day if it's a habit that you're doing multiple times a day, sure, you know, but I, I think the real thing is trying to build this ability to rebound quickly.
21. AHAndrew Huberman
  And to me, that's also the danger of, quote unquote, "optimization," as most people perceive it. They figure if they miss the, the optimal window to work or the optimal window to work out, then it's over.
22. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm. Yeah.
23. AHAndrew Huberman
  And I think there's advantages to understanding when one is at their mental or physical peak and trying to schedule things that way.
24. JCJames Clear
  Sure.
25. AHAndrew Huberman
  But also having flexibility.
26. JCJames Clear
  I feel like you would be, uh, the perfect person to answer some of this, but I, um, this is how I first started thinking about intermittent fasting, was, um, it's like, well, if you, every- (laughs) everybody was so wrapped up in when exactly you were eating, and I was like, if you got the same amount of calories in a 24-hour period and you just spaced it out differently, one person's eating every hour, one person's eating every six hours, one person only eats at all in an eight-hour window, whatever, uh, is it gonna make that big of a difference? Like, what percentage difference are we attributing to purely meal timing, right? So I, I don't know what the answer is. Maybe you do. But, um, I feel like it's probably fairly nominal. If your, if your body's getting the same amount of calories from the same foods in a 24-hour span, it probably isn't making that dramatic of a difference.
27. AHAndrew Huberman
  You're right. The, the one exception is if you start to eat on a nocturnal, more nocturnal schedule-
28. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
29. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... it's worse. And I'll battle people to the end of time on this one. I'm not saying everyone has to be up with the sun and down with the sun at the end of the day and only eat on a, you know, when the sun is up and (laughs) and, um, and not after the sun is down. But y- you want to protect an hour or so before sleep, ideally two or three hours, where you're both not gnawingly hungry-
30. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
1:38:22 – 1:45:37
Daily Habit Timing & Sequencing, Tool: Mindfully Choose Inputs
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  a bad thing.
2. JCJames Clear
  Yeah. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about timing and habits and sequencing 'cause I do, I do think that it's an important lever that you can pull on for building habits. So first is, a- as a general rule, I think the earlier in the day you do something, the better odds are that it's going to happen. The, the more of the day that goes on, the more real estate there is for something to interrupt you, for somebody else's agenda to get put on top of yours, for somebody to need something or an emergency happens. It's just, you decrease the likelihood that the habit's going to occur. So generally speaking, I think stacking a group of habits earlier in the day is probably good. Um, having said that, there is definitely, there are 24 hours in everybody's day, but each hour is under different levels of control for you. So I think the question is not, like, do you have enough time? The question is which of your hours are within your control? Or which of your hours can you shape better than others? Some hours are a lot more in your control than others. Like if you, if you have somebody who doesn't have kids, then meditating at 7:00 AM might be a great time to do it. But if you have, like, toddlers running around and trying to get pants on your kid, then, you know, that's not a good time to try to do that habit. And so, um, you need to figure out which of your hours are under your control. And then there's also circadian rhythm stuff and trying to time things up, especially physical things like working out or whatever. Like, sure, so we can try to do some optimization there if, you know, if you have the control over that hour. But, um, the other thing that I think that is important to ask is, "Which of my habits are upstream from other good things happening?" So for me, I know that, uh, probably if I was going to pick the big pillars of what really makes a good day for me: Do I get a workout in? Do I read? It really doesn't even have to be long. It could just be five minutes. But do I, do I do any, any reading? Um, and then do I write one sentence? Those are my, those are kind of my, my, like, measures. Now, of course, once I... For me, the hardest part is choosing what to write. Once I actually pick what I'm writing about, then it's easy for me to get going further. So I know that there's a lot more that comes after that one sentence. But those are, those are kind of the big professional ones that I'm like, "If I do those three, I usually have a pretty good day." The reading and the writing are easier for me after I work out. So the workout is kind of the linchpin one. I, if I-
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  Why do you think that is? Is it that you dispel a certain amount of nervous energy?
4. JCJames Clear
  I think some of it is just the post-workout high. I kind of have that clarity, uh, you know, an hour or two after I work out, so that, I think that helps. I think some of it is also, um, I like to work out, uh, not early in the morning, but in the morning. Um, and I don't know. It just, like, gets me going for the day. It, like, changes my whole, it changes my state.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm.
6. JCJames Clear
  Um, I feel, I feel more energized after that.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  What time do you wake up? And what time do you tend to work out? Not that people should map exactly to this.
8. JCJames Clear
  (laughs)
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  But I'm just curious.
10. JCJames Clear
  Yeah, good caveat. Um, usually I'm waking up around 7:00.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm.
12. JCJames Clear
  Uh, and usually I'm working out around 10:00 to 11:00, somewhere around there.
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  For me, and certainly there are some data to support this, but also other timings that, um, three hours after waking or 11 hours after waking seem to be-
14. JCJames Clear
  Hmm.
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... ideal times to workout.
16. JCJames Clear
  Interesting. So I'm kind of around that zone.
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah, yeah.
18. JCJames Clear
  That's interesting.
19. AHAndrew Huberman
  I mean, I think that, you know, you-
20. JCJames Clear
  I did not know that, but, uh...
21. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... mentally and physically, uh, probably due to changes in body temperature and circulation of... You know, that morning cortisol rise that wakes people up.
22. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
23. AHAndrew Huberman
  We hear so much about cortisol being a stress hormone. We forget that morning cortisol needs to be very, very, very high in order to have low cortisol at night.
24. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
25. AHAndrew Huberman
  If you don't, you have this kind of flat cortisol curve, as they call it. Sets you up for insomnia, anxiety, a bunch of things that are really bad.
26. JCJames Clear
  Hmm.
27. AHAndrew Huberman
  Uh, cortisol has gotten a bad rap. And I, when you exercise and you probably quadruple your cortisol levels at least during the workout and, and afterwards, depending on the workout.
28. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
29. AHAndrew Huberman
  So if you're stacking all your cortisol earlier, it's like a wave front for the rest of the day and I'm guessing that's probably what you're tapping into.
30. JCJames Clear
  That's interesting, yeah.
1:45:37 – 1:51:31
Creativity, Specialization vs Generalization; Books
1. JCJames Clear
  This reminds me a little bit of, um, like, David E- Epstein, some of his work on range and, you know, like, uh, exploring broadly and y- how that... How having a range of either, uh, sports activities or intellectual pursuits can make you better. They... A lot of times, they say experts are T-shaped, right? They have... They broad... They read broadly, but then they have a narrow vertical where they're, they, uh, specialize. Um, and the big takeaway that people have from this a lot is that it's the top of the T that really matters. "I need to read w- more widely. I need to look, you know, around the world and expose myself to lots of things." But I actually think the stem of the T is incredibly important. It is the, it is the precursor to the top of it mattering at all. And what I, what I mean is that the fact that you have an area where you are focused on, the fact that you have an area where you are specializing, gives the broad range of things that you're exposing something to latch onto, right? And so by, by having your area of expertise, or just by... It doesn't even have to be an area of expertise. It could just be a mission or a, a project, an objective. So for me, the objective is the next thing that I'm writing. And then, as I explore broadly and listen to podcasts and read books and look at things, that's always sitting in the back of my mind. And so I'm s- it's always there, ready. It's like an antenna waiting for a signal. And then as I read widely, well, that thing, that project that I have, it's forcing me to pick up on different stuff, and that I start pulling that, and I start connecting it. I feel like creativity is... Very rarely is it actually an original thought. Mostly what it is, is the synthesis of two things that had not been previously connected. And so by having your project or your area of expertise, you have something you're focused on, and then you read widely, and you look for interesting things that can connect to it. And so I just... That's what I'm doing the whole time. I'm reading, and then I'm like, "Oh, this would apply to that." And then I just can't help myself to start to write about the connection or write about the, the overlap between those things.
2. AHAndrew Huberman
  This is, I think, one of the reasons why, and I don't think everyone needs to pursue degrees, but one of the reasons why something like graduate school, for those that are interested in really pouring themselves into a topic or a career in a certain area, is so valuable. Because, you know, let's say biology. You do experiments, but then you walk with other people to a seminar. You watch the seminar. You walk back. You talk about what was dreadful, what was funny, what was amazing. Maybe you talk about other things as well. But you're sort of immersed in it, and so your whole world... You know, it's a very pure time. And again, it's not for everybody, but it's a very pure time where you're just completely immersed in a set of topics and conversations. I think, um, online algorithms have gotten so good now at detecting the range of things that we're interested in and feeding those to us.
3. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
4. AHAndrew Huberman
  I think there's a, an opportunity there, um, where if the algorithms could be, um, you know... If we could self-select a filter so that it could enrich us, right? I mean, when I go on YouTube, I want to see certain types of content. Other stuff, I think, appeals to whatever it believes about my, you know, kind of less, uh, let's call them, um, uh... (sighs) Just things that they're not bad, but they're not, they're not good.
5. JCJames Clear
  Hm.
6. AHAndrew Huberman
  They're not, they're not serving any purpose in my life. I don't, I don't want to see that stuff. And so I, I think it... But I do listen to a lot of lectures. I, uh, l- I think personal development stuff online is incredibly interesting and meshed with scientific literature. Obviously, that's, that's what appeals to me. So, it seems like the, the solution is to be a selective forager, and books are probably the most direct way to do that.
7. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
8. AHAndrew Huberman
  Like, you choose what books are on your shelf, as opposed to your feed, which you don't really self-select.
9. JCJames Clear
  Sure.
10. AHAndrew Huberman
  I think there's more control over it nowadays.
11. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
12. AHAndrew Huberman
  But do you read physical books? Uh, do you listen to audiobooks?
13. JCJames Clear
  I prefer physical. I like audio. What I almost never do is e-books. I, I don't have some personal vendetta against them. I just rarely read them. Um, I, I prefer physical. If I'm gonna d- If I'm gonna read a book for the first time, usually it's the physical book that I'm reading. Um, two areas where I really find audio helpful. One is if I just don't have that much time. You know, if I'm gonna be on the road a lot or traveling a lot or whatever, obviously, that's much easier. Um, and so it's nice to, to have the audio as an option. Um, but second, I find if a, if an author or a topic is particularly dense, I... The audio works really well for me.
14. AHAndrew Huberman
  Hm.
15. JCJames Clear
  Um, and, uh, part of the problem is I get bogged down with the physical version, and so it's just... I'm... It's a slog to read through it.... but if I listen to it in audio, I can often keep pace and I'm understanding the overall argument that's being made, but I'm not slowing myself down sentence by sentence. And so, I can get through something that's a little bit more dense in audio much better. And yeah, and usually when I read a physical book, I just, I go through and then if any passage strikes me, I put a little parenthesis at the start of it, a parenthesis at the end, and then a star in the margin so that I can easily find them, and then by the time I get done with the book, there's usually, you know, 30, 40, 50 pages with little stars in it. Sometimes, if it's really relevant, I will go back through those stars and take a photo of that passage, highlight the text on my phone, and then copy and paste it into the doc that I'm working on so I can, like, have the quote or the passage there, or whatever. Um, and that's usually, that's usually it. That's, that's usually what I'm doing.
16. AHAndrew Huberman
  Talked a lot about physical space, um, interacting with, um, other inputs and, and I think this business of, like ... It was the great Joe Strummer from The Clash who said, "No input, no output."
17. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
18. AHAndrew Huberman
  Which I think is great. Uh, I think what you've added to that very important quote is that the, the source and the type of input matters.
19. JCJames Clear
  The way that I would summarize it is, if you want to learn, wander. If you want to achieve, focus. And so it is the, it is the wandering widely that will surface all sorts of new learnings and insights. But you don't just want to be surfacing random things, you also want to be able to channel that into something productive that you are creating. A piece of music, a scientific research study, a book, a w- whatever. You know, whatever the thing is you're working on. A new business. And so having a narrow vertical where you are focusing, a project where you are dedicated to, gives that wandering somewhere to live, uh, some- something to contribute to.
1:51:31 – 1:53:18
Sponsor: Function
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins, such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics, and tests for PFASs, or forever chemicals. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors who are expert in the relevant areas. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had elevated levels of mercury in my blood. Function not only helped me detect that, but offered insights into how best to reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, I'd been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC, N-acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And I should say, by taking a second Function test, that approach worked. Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important. There's so many things related to your mental and physical health that can only be detected in a blood test. The problem is, blood testing has always been very expensive and complicated. In contrast, I've been super impressed by Function's simplicity and at the level of cost. It is very affordable. As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com/huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman podcast listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman to get early access to
1:53:18 – 2:02:01
Habits & Context, Environmental Cues, Tools for Minimizing Phone Use
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  Function. Can we talk a little bit about the environment of the laptop or the computer screen or tablet? Um, that has become a very cluttered space, or there's a lot of opportunity for an entire universe to exist in that small space, right?
2. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  Earlier we were talking about visual apertures, and in the old days you could just, you know, throw on a hat or a hoodie and you'd just kind of like block everything out, put a desk lamp over something, make the room dark, and like, you're focused because there was no screen and no feed. Or if there was a screen, there was no feed, and you could go on the internet but, you know, you were typing or you were, you were working on problem sets or you were doing whatever it is you need to do, or reading. Um, how do you organize your desktop and your relationship to the internet, uh, so that you can maintain maximum productivity?
4. JCJames Clear
  I'll get, I'll answer your question, let me unpack something first. So, uh, we've made it this far, we've never actually defined what a habit is. Like, if you, if you were going to define it, there are a couple different ways you could define it. So like, one way, you know, if you talk to an academic or a researcher or something, they'll probably say it's this automatic, non-conscious behavior you perform, you know, without really thinking about it. Tying your shoes or brushing your teeth or something like that. Um, but I think another very interesting way to potentially define a habit is that it's a behavior that is tied to a particular context. So, your habit of watching Netflix might be tied to the context of your couch at 7:00 PM, and whenever you're in your living room at 7:00 PM, you're just kind of being gradually pulled toward doing that. And there are some studies that have shown that, uh, or have found, that, um, it tends to be easier to build a new behavior when you're in a clean context, when you're in a context where you're not battling the previous cues for your other habits. So for example, if you said, "I want to get in the habit of journaling each night," well, if you sit down on your couch at 7:00 PM, your brain is kind of subtly thinking it's time to pick up the remote and turn the TV on, not time to journal. Now, you may not always have a dedicated room where this is going to be the journaling room, but there are a number of steps you could take. For example, you could just, like, set a chair up in the corner and that chair becomes the journaling chair, and so now you walk in and you sit in that chair and the only thing that happens when you sit in that chair is you journal for five minutes. And so now you're creating, you're starting to create a context that is associated with that habit, and the fact that there is not anything currently associated with it makes it a little bit easier for that habit to form. You're not fighting the other cues in your environment quite as much. Um, okay, so let's take that definition, that truth about habits, and apply it to our smartphones or our laptop screens. Part of the power and the problem with the modern smartphone is that ...... you are blending the context for all kinds of habits. Is the screen the place where you go to answer an email, or is it the place where you go to browse social media, or is it the place where you go to watch YouTube or play a video game or check for like the sports scores? It's the place where you do all of that. And so, it's kind of similar to sitting down on the couch and trying to journal when your brain wants you to turn on the TV. You pull the smartphone up and you're like, "I'm gonna try to be productive," and it's like, well, there's also 17 other things that you're trying to do at the same time. And so, uh, that puts yourself in a tough position, uh, I guess is the, is the point that I'm getting to. Here are some of the things that I do. I don't think that I have this figured out by any means, but these are some of the steps that I play with. The first is, um, I don't do this all the time, but I will say maybe 70% of the time, 80% of the time, I leave my phone in another room until lunch, and, uh, usually that's just like 9:00 to noon-ish, um, or 9:00 to maybe if I say I work out at 11:00, 9:00 to 11:00-ish. Um, but it gives me a couple of hours in the morning when I'm not responding to everybody else's agenda or I'm not getting interrupted by, you know, the phone. I'm just gonna work on what's most important to me. What I've always found interesting about that is if I have my phone on me, I'm like everybody else. I'll pick it up and check it every three minutes just 'cause it's there. But if it's in a different room, I have a home office and so it's just down the hall, it's only like 30 seconds away, but I never go get it.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  Mm-hmm.
6. JCJames Clear
  And I'm like, "Well, did I want it or not?" You know, in the one sense, I wanted it so bad that I would check it every three minutes when it was next to me, but in the other sense, I never wanted it badly enough that I would work for 30 seconds to go get it. A lot of your habits are like that. If you introduce a little bit of friction, they will kind of curtail themselves to the desired degree. So, anyway, that's the first one, is try to separate myself from it. The second thing is on the screen itself, there are things that you can do. So, when I wanted to listen to more audiobooks, for example, that was when the pandemic hit, that was one thing that I told myself was like, "All right, I'm gonna be at home more, let me try to get more reading in." So, I downloaded Audible for audiobooks and I moved it to the home screen on my phone, and I took all the other apps and I moved them to the second screen. Now, does that mean that I'm never gonna check Instagram again or never gonna ... you know? No, but it does mean that whenever I open up my phone, the visual cue that I see is reminding me of what I want to try to do. Um, and then I have at various points done much more strict things. Um, so right now, for example, for the last year and a half or so, I've deleted social media entirely off of my phone, um, and I can use it on the desktop, that's my, my little rule, uh, but I don't have the password or the login. My assistant does. And so, any time that I want to log in, I have to ask her for it. And that's just enough friction that I don't do it just to browse. I'm only doing it if I really need to do it. So, after I did that for a little while, I thought, "Well, this went well. Let me try to take email off my phone," which sounded really extreme to me, um, but it turned out to not be that hard. I- my little rule was, if I really need it, I'll just download it and I can use it. So, I've ha- I haven't had email on my phone for like six months now. I've downloaded it twice. Uh, once was to get tickets to get into a, uh, a show that we were going to, and then, um, the other time I was at the airport and I had to send an email. But I download it, I do the thing, and then I delete it again. And again, it's just, it's the same as keeping the phone down the hall, which is, it's just a little bit of friction if you have to download the app every time you want to use it. There will be times when you'll use it, and that's fine, but if you're just wasting time for a minute or your thumb is just looking for something to click 'cause you don't have anything to do, you're not gonna take the time to download it 'cause like, "Well, I didn't even wanna look that bad anyway. I'm not gonna wait for a minute for it to download." So, um, those are a few of the, the things that I've been playing with.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  Doesn't sound like you use any programs like Freedom or any of those to lock you out of the internet.
8. JCJames Clear
  I know Fred, the founder of Freedom. I've, I've, um, uh, I have used it. Freedom and, what's the other one called, Self Control, um, I've used both of those at various times, but I haven't used them for years now. I got into this thing for a little while when I was (laughs) actually working on writing Atomic Habits. I tried to lock everything down, not just social media. It was like ESPN.com, like what, you know, I- I- I don't, don't want to allow myself to use the internet basically. Um, but then I realized, well, I still need to be able to research stuff and get to things, so it got, my list of blocked websites got kind of unwieldy, um, and, uh, it was fine, but, um, I don't know. It- it was fine. I don't have anything bad to say about it, but it's not a strategy that I've used long term.
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  I've used Freedom a little bit. I don't really struggle with getting on the internet, uh, if I have tasks to do on my computer.
10. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  I do think the phone thing, people talk about the dopamine hits, et cetera, from the phone. I actually don't think it's as, uh, dopamine-driven as we would like to believe.
12. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  I think that's a convenient heuristic with- I- the, the behavior itself looks a lot more like a reflex or- of, you know, one person picks up their phone at dinner and then suddenly everyone does it. I don't think people are as conscious of, of what they're doing. It could also be called a habit, right?
14. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm. Yeah.
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  Um, and the cues are, are so many and so low level, uh, but powerful that I think, uh, people are just living in the-
16. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... reflex or the habit of picking up their phone and looking at it and scrolling it.
18. JCJames Clear
  Okay, so this-
19. AHAndrew Huberman
  I don't think, I don't think there's much reward there in most cases and, and I, I, it's harder to research in the lab. I mean, this has been done but it, it, and, and listen, I think the discussion around too many dopamine rewards is a healthy discussion in general, um, but I think there's something kind of off about how we think about, um, cellphone use. We're thinking about more in terms of rewards, like how many times have you picked up your phone, seen something and been like, "Oh, that's awesome," and then reflected on it later that day? Like you might send it to somebody in the moment, but like, if you ask me what did I see on social media yesterday that was super interesting, I'd say, probably had something to do with a bulldog. I like bulldogs. But I can't really tell you. I'd have to really explore.
20. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
21. AHAndrew Huberman
  If you ask me like what was really like something really cool that happened yesterday, oh, I ran into an old friend down near the beach-
22. JCJames Clear
  Ah.
23. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... et cetera, like it- it's so salient, like it just pops right in.
24. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
25. AHAndrew Huberman
  So,
2:02:01 – 2:08:21
Bad Habits, Checking Phone, Tools for Breaking Bad Habits
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  I don't know. What- what are your thoughts about social media as a reward mechanism or a slot machine? I think about it more as a, um, kind of like a, a, a-... tapped into kind of, like, an itch pathway that we just naturally scratch without even thinking about it.
2. JCJames Clear
  What I think is really interesting is, let's use this example of checking your phone and talk about the four laws of behavior change that we talked about before. What you often see, you can... This was, um... I don't know if this is a deep insight to anybody else, but it felt like a deep insight to me when I was working on the book, which is, what if I looked at our bad habits and tried to figure out why do they, why are they so sticky? And then apply that to the good habits that I want to build. Inverting that was really helpful for me. So, (clicks tongue) if you look at... You know, a lot of people feel like they check their phone too much. Well, what are f- what do the four laws of behavior change look like? Make it obvious. Our phones are always on us. They're always around. They're very easy to access. They're, they're highly visible. Um, make it attractive. There are lots of fun things, silly memes and video games or whatever. There's all kinds of interesting stuff happening on your phone. How many people are following me? Whatever. There's lots of things to check there. Um, make it easy. So many of the apps are just striving to make it as frictionless as possible. Um, you know, Instagram will auto-swipe albums for you so that you don't even have to swipe through the images. Like, they'll, they'll do it for you. Um, and so there's just this continual quest toward convenience and ease. Uh, so many of the big apps on your phone are just taking a modern desire and then making it easy and more convenient. People have always needed to eat. DoorDash is like, "Just tap your thumb. We'll bring it to your door."
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  Love DoorDash.
4. JCJames Clear
  You know, it's like... Yeah. Um, so, uh, and then make it satisfying is some of that dopamine hit or reward that you get, whatever level that may be. But the point is, yeah, it does all four of those things really well. And so the behavior's very sticky. You know, people sit there and they're like, "How long will it take to build a habit?" And I'm like, "Well, how long did it take you to get in the habit of checking your phone?" You don't, you probably don't even know. It was probably like two or three days or, you know, you, you never even had to think about it. It was just because all those levers were pulled, um, it was very easy for the behavior to form. And so I think looking at what makes your bad habits sticky helps reveal some of the things that maybe you want to apply to your good habits to, to make those more likely as well.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  What are some of the tools that people can use to break bad habits that are not related to the phone? Uh, just, just because we've already covered those.
6. JCJames Clear
  Yeah. Yeah.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  Um, but, you know, there are a lot of people who, um, have trouble, you know, craving sweets, um-
8. JCJames Clear
  Sure.
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... late night eating. Um, tough one. That's a tough one. When I'm craving, like, some sour, um, candy-type flavor-
10. JCJames Clear
  Mm.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  That's a tough one.
12. JCJames Clear
  (laughs)
13. AHAndrew Huberman
  Uh, I usually can manage to just wait it out.
14. JCJames Clear
  Yeah.
15. AHAndrew Huberman
  But that's my vice.
16. JCJames Clear
  Sure.
17. AHAndrew Huberman
  People have... You know, they've got their stuff. What, what, what do you suggest?
18. JCJames Clear
  So we just went over four things that make habits stick. You make it obvious, attractive, easy, satisfying. To break habits or to in- uh, to decrease the odds that a behavior is going to occur, you just invert those four. So rather than making it obvious, make it invisible. Don't keep junk food in the house. Put, you know... Uh, unsubscribe from the emails. Whatever. Reduce exposure to the thing that triggers it. Rather than making it attractive, make it unattractive. This is the most difficult one for hab- bad habits. It's not... I would say it's the last place you should probably focus, because once you learn that the sweet tastes good or that a donut is tasty, it's hard to rewire your brain to think something different. You would need to, uh... Well, I'll give you an example of it in a minute. But, uh, so rather than make it attractive, make it unattractive. Rather than making it easy, make it difficult. Increase friction. Add steps between you and the behavior. You know, I've heard from people who take the sweets and they put them on the highest shelf in the garage, so then they have to walk all the way out there and climb up to get them. You still know they're there. You can still get it, but you're just trying to find ways to increase, uh, friction. You know, say you want to smoke. If you have a pack of cigarettes on the table in front of you, that's really low friction, like you need a lot of willpower to resist that. If the closest pack is three miles down the road at the grocery store, you still might get in the car and drive there, but it's a lot more friction. Um, and then rather than making it satisfying, make it unsatisfying. Usually, that's about having some kind of immediate consequence to the reward. Um, you can manufacture this in some ways. Maybe you start, like, an agreement, like, uh... I was just texting with my friend Brian the other day, and he, uh, he wanted to get in shape. He, like, really felt like he wanted to lose these last 10 pounds, and so he hired a trainer, and then he wrote up a contract between he, his trainer, and his wife. And if he did not hit his weight check-ins for the next three months, then, uh, there was some reward for his wife. She got, I don't know, she got like $1,000 to go shopping or something like that. I don't remember what it was, but something. And then if he did hit it, then he got like $1,000 to go to the football game or whatever. Um, and the point is just that, um, there's now some kind of immediate cost to the action that previously did not have it. So, it's just an inversion of the four laws. And again, for both of these, building good habits and breaking bad ones, you don't need all four of these things at the same time, but the more that you have these levers working for you, the more likely it is that you're gonna get the outcome that you want. To go back to the point that I had earlier about making things unattractive is difficult, the only way that I have really seen it is if somebody kind of gradually changes their identity. Sometimes it can be rapid, like let's say you read a b- you know, let's say that every morning you go down and you make some toast and jam for breakfast. Um, and then, uh, you read a book that convinces you that carbs are the devil and grains are terrible, and you're like, "Oh, I don't want that at all now. I'm not gonna eat toast for breakfast anymore." So now you've had this... You've flipped the switch in your mind. You see the loaf of bread, and instead of thinking, "Breakfast," you think, "Oh, that's something I don't want." That's an- one example of how it could be made unattractive. Um, sometimes you see that happening. Um, I'm not advocating against grains, by the way. Um, but, uh, it's rare, right? Um, uh, the other way is it's more, it tends to be more gradual, you know? Like, you show up and you keep reinforcing a certain identity, and then two or three or four years later, you're like, "You know what? This has become an important part of my life. That thing that I used to do, I probably don't need that anymore." And you can kind of, you know, let it go. It doesn't, it doesn't carry the same weight that it used to carry before in your mind. Um, but that's slow, so I don't recommend focusing on it because it's either hard or it's slow, whereas the other changes, like reducing exposure to the cue or increasing the amount of friction or distance between you and the habit, those are much quicker.
2:08:21 – 2:18:40
Physical & Social Environment, New Habits, Tool: Join/Create Groups
1. AHAndrew Huberman
  ... social constraints, um, can play a big role, I think. Um, years ago, I read something that many people... I don't know if this is true, but this article claimed that many people who are, uh, obese, like meet the clinical definition of obese, uh, self-reported that they didn't want to exercise because they, um, felt... it made them feel selfish. I thought that was interesting.
2. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
3. AHAndrew Huberman
  It... Now, I'm sure some people hear that and they go, "Oh, they're making excuses." But it was interesting. Uh, like, let's assume that they were telling the truth, 'cause I think they were. You know, th- this idea that, you know, most of us think of exercise as taking great care of yourself, you're gonna be around for people longer, and yourself, and you can... all these great things. But I think there's a category of people out there that think, "No, working out is selfish. It's like self-indulgent. It's not kind. It's not... it's not altruistic. Y- your time should be spent doing other things."
4. JCJames Clear
  Taking too much time for myself, I'm not focused on others enough or something like that.
5. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah, and there's a whole depth of psychology there, I'm sure. But, um, I think what I had to assume is that it a- it's a product of environment and, and upbringing where, you know, people come to believe that. So if you are, for instance, somebody who doesn't want to drink alcohol anymore, and you, like went to the university that I went to where everyone drank, (laughs) like everyone drank, um, y- you know, you're, you're fighting a pretty tough uphill battle. My experience was that the only way to win that battle the first time and every time is to make the battle the point, where you basically are like, "You zig, I zag." You have to take this kind of antagonistic stance.
6. JCJames Clear
  Mm-hmm.
7. AHAndrew Huberman
  Right? I'm not gonna be like you. And that's a frustrating thing because it can separate you from people in social gatherings. It's-
8. JCJames Clear
  I was gonna say, that's kind of a hard place to live.
9. AHAndrew Huberman
  It's very effective. Um, I did drink a bit in college, but drinking was never really a big thing for me anyway. So it's easy to do or easy to not do, uh, where, uh, just by virtue of where I was and me, but, um, but as an example, I think, yeah, when you take this, um, you know, everyone else sleeps in, I get up at 4:00 AM, you know? They don't... You know, why? Well, 'cause I'm not like them. I think it works, but it's a separator. And so I think this, this question of like, how can we build good habits, break bad habits, but stay in the context that we're in, it runs countercurrent to some of the things we were talking about earlier, like surround yourself with good books and information, surround yourself with people that are doing the kinds of things you want to do. Um, and a lot of people are living in these landscapes where, like, the people around them are going the wrong direction, or at least not supportive of the right direction.
10. JCJames Clear
  I think the hard part about what you just described is it's fight, not flow.
11. AHAndrew Huberman
  Yeah.
12. JCJames Clear
  Right? It's like, it's what you were saying earlier. And it's, it's possible to fight your environment for a while, but it's hard to live that way for the long run. Uh, sometimes I almost view environment as like a form of gravity. Um, and I mean like both the physical environment and the social one. Physical environment is always nudging you to do certain things in certain spaces. Right now, I am sitting here because this is where the chair is. Now, I could sit anywhere else in this room, but I would be sitting on the floor. And so the environment is kind of ushering me to sit in this spot, right? I'm always sort of being nudged. It's like a form of gravity pulling me here for this behavior. I could try to figure out a way to get out of this room that doesn't use the door, but I would really have to, you know, I gotta break through the wall or I gotta climb through the ceiling or something that is very high friction. So I'm always being nudged towards using the door to get out of the space. All of your spaces, that's... Those examples sound like quite obvious, but all of the spaces that you're in are like that all day long. There's always something that is easy and natural and consistent to do with the environment, and you're always sort of being ushered in that direction. So do your physical spaces contribute to the habits that you're trying to build? When they do, it's easier to build those behaviors. When they don't, you're fighting an uphill battle. Um, the social environment is perhaps an even stronger form of that. If there was any one thing that I could add to Atomic Habits that wasn't in there, it would be more on the social environment. I have a chapter on the influence of friends and family, so it's, it's not like I didn't know that it was part of it, but the impact of social environment on our behaviors is so strong and so dramatic. It's almost, it's like that classic line of like a fish in water, they're like, "What is water?" We almost don't even see it anymore because it's, it's just everywhere, it's so pervasive. But we are all part of multiple groups. Some of those groups are really large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be French. Some of those groups are smaller, like what it means to be a member of the local CrossFit gym, or a neighbor on your street, or a volunteer at the elementary school. But all of the groups that you belong to, large and small, have a set of shared expectations, a set of social norms, a set of typical habits that people do in that group. And when your habits are aligned, when they go with the grain of the expectations of that group, they're easy to stick to because you get praised for it, you get rewarded for it, you get welcomed for it. And when your habits go against the grain of the expectations of the group, you get ostracized, you get criticized, you get judged, and nobody likes that. It doesn't feel good. And so humans d- at some deep biological level are incredibly social creatures. We all want to bond and connect, even if it's just your little friend or family unit, like we all want to be part of something and be connected to people. And so when people have to choose between, "I have the habits that I want, but I'm ostracized, I'm criticized, I'm, you know, cast out," or, "I have habits that I don't really love, but I fit in, I belong, I'm accepted, I'm praised," a lot of the time, the desire to belong will overpower the desire to improve. And so I feel like for the long run, the only answer is you have to get those two things aligned. Sometimes, sure, maybe you need to, you know, the harsh ways are like fire your friends or, you know, never see somebody again or whatever.

Episode duration: 2:35:18

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James Clear

Common Habits, Tool: Habit Success & Getting Started

Make Starting a Habit Easier, Tool: 4 Laws of Behavior Change

Sponsors: Lingo & Wealthfront

Writing Habits, Seasons & Flexibility; Adaptability, Tool: Bad Day Plan

Consistency, Flow vs Grind, Master Showing Up, Learning & Practice

Chunking, Getting Started at Gym

Flow Don’t Fight, Dissatisfaction & Effort, Tool: Identity-Based Habits

Friction, Competition & Effort; Credentials

Make Effort Rewarding, Mindset, Tools: Previsualization, Emphasize Positives

Sponsors: AG1 & Joovv

Reflection & Learning, Tool: Self-Testing; Perfectionism, Tool: Curiosity

Striving vs Relaxation, Balance, Tool: Turn On/Off; Hiking, Nature Reset

Identity & Professional Pursuits; Choosing New Projects; Clinging to Identity

Sponsor: Eight Sleep

Criticism; Identity & Growth

Failure, Identity, Sports, Tool: Rebounding & Reaching; Public Failures

Daily Habits, Tools: Day in Quarters; Never Miss Twice; Meal Timing

Daily Habit Timing & Sequencing, Tool: Mindfully Choose Inputs

Creativity, Specialization vs Generalization; Books

Sponsor: Function

Habits & Context, Environmental Cues, Tools for Minimizing Phone Use

Bad Habits, Checking Phone, Tools for Breaking Bad Habits

Physical & Social Environment, New Habits, Tool: Join/Create Groups

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