The Science of Making & Breaking Habits: How to Change Your Life in 1 Month

James Clear 0:00 Procrastinating is choosing to delay a better future. It's choosing to ignore the results that you could be having, the potential that you could be fulfilling. Fix the inputs, and the outputs will fix themselves. Fix the daily habits, and you'll be led to a different destination. Time is precious.

Mel Robbins 0:16 Today, you and I are getting to learn from the incredible James Clear. He's widely regarded as one of the top experts in the world on habit formation and behavior change, whose book on habits has sold 25 million copies. I'm talking about none other than Atomic Habits.

James Clear 0:36 I feel like if I sit there and I ruminate about something, it just gets worse. It gets bigger in my head. But if I take one small action on it, if I just get started on it, now I'm influencing the outcome. You know, now I'm shaping what's gonna happen. Action relieves anxiety.

Mel Robbins 0:49 You said at the very beginning is that the secret to winning is knowing how to lose. How do you start the engine up again, and what's the mistake you see people making?

James Clear 0:58 There's just a period where you just gotta get through them. Life might be bad now, but that doesn't mean it's always gonna be that way. Life might be hard now, but it's not always gonna be hard. And you're gonna be okay. You're gonna make it out the other side. I think we should all give ourselves permission for our habits to shift based on the season that we're facing.

Mel Robbins 1:16 Explain the four laws of behavior change.

James Clear 1:18 The first law is to make it obvious. The second law is to make it attractive. The third law is to make it easy. The easier, more convenient, frictionless, simple a habit is, the more likely it is to be performed. And the fourth and final law is- (beep)

Mel Robbins 1:33 That's amazing. Hey, it's your buddy Mel, and before we jump into this unbelievable conversation with James Clear, you're about to learn that you're not the problem. The fact that you don't have systems is the problem. You're gonna learn these systems. We're gonna get right into it. You're gonna love this. It's gonna help you achieve your goals. But I have a goal too. My goal is that 50% of you who watch here on YouTube are subscribers. And right before we were about to start this episode, my team showed me this. 57% of you who watch the Mel Robbins Podcast here on YouTube are not subscribers. You're the kind of person who likes supporting people who support you. My goal is that we get to 50%. So please, if that subscribe button is lit up, it means you're not a subscriber. Please hit Subscribe. It's free. That's how you can show your support to your friend Mel Robbins, and that way you don't miss a thing. It also tells me and the team, oh my gosh, you love the guests that we're bringing you, the content that we're putting here, and an attempt to support you in creating a better life. All right, thanks for doing that. You ready to break bad habits and lock in new ones using James Clear's research? I bet you are. So let's jump in. James Clear, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

James Clear 2:42 Hello, Mel. How are you?

Mel Robbins 2:44 I am fantastic. I am so excited to be able to have this conversation with you, because your work has made such a big difference in my life. I have bought Atomic Habits and pressed it into people's hands more times than I can count. And to be able to unpack the simple but powerful insights today, I- I've just been looking forward to this since I started the podcast.

James Clear 3:09 Mel, thank you so much. That's very nice of you to say.

Mel Robbins 3:11 Well, it's true. And here's where I

Mel Robbins 3:14 wanna start. What will I experience in my life that could be different, James, if I take everything that you're about to share with us and teach us today to heart and I apply it to my life?

James Clear 3:25 Well, I'll give you three things right off the bat. So first is action relieves anxiety. Action relieves anxiety. So if you're feeling stressed about something, you fear something, there's a problem that's kinda bothering you, taking action on it reduces the fear that you feel about the problem, because now you're influencing the outcome. Second thing is it builds resilience. So in a lot of ways, I feel like the secret to winning is knowing how to lose. And what I mean is it's knowing how to bounce back from a loss. And so many of the things that we'll talk about today are about getting started and about making it easier for yourself to get started, particularly after you fail, after you suffer something. And so the secret to winning is knowing how to lose, and these strategies will teach you how to be more resilient and bounce back from those losses. And then the third thing is better results. You know, um, in a way, procrastinating is choosing to delay a better future. It's choosing to ignore the results that you could be having, the potential that you could be fulfilling. And most of our outcomes in life are a lagging measure of the habits that precede them.

Mel Robbins 4:34 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 4:34 So your bank account is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your, um, physical fitness is a lagging measure of your training habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your reading habits. It's the thing that is the result of the action.

Mel Robbins 4:50 You're basically saying the bank account I see today is a result of the habits that I had like a year ago?

James Clear 4:56 Yeah, almost all of the things that we have now are a result of the daily life, the daily system that we've been following for the last, say, six months or year or two years. You know, it's- it's the things that you do each day that lead you to the outcomes that you have right now. Now look, I'm not saying that habits are the only thing that matter in life, right? You have luck and randomness.

Mel Robbins 5:14 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 5:14 You've got misfortune. There are all sorts of things that can influence the final outcome. But by definition, luck and randomness are not under your control.

Mel Robbins 5:24 Yeah.

James Clear 5:24 And your habits are. And the only reasonable, rational approach in life is focus on the pieces of the situation that are within your control. And so we all so badly... It's this interesting thing in life. We all so badly want better results. You know, we all so badly want to make more money or double productivity or be fit or reduce stress. But the irony is the results are not actually the thing that needs to change. It's like fix the inputs, and the outputs will fix themselves. Fix the daily habits, and you'll be led to a different destination. You know, in some ways, I feel like the two time frames that matter most in life are like 10 years and one hour.So, 10 years is shorthand for, like, what are the big meaningful things you really care about in life? I mean, you s- sit there and think about most of us, like, what do we really want to do? You know, want to have a marriage that we're proud of, or raise kids that are successful, or to build a business that thrives, or to get in the best shape of your life? Whatever it is, whatever that big thing is, it's almost always a multi-year, sometimes a multi-decade process.

Mel Robbins 6:22 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 6:22 So, 10 years is shorthand for, like, what's that big vision?

Mel Robbins 6:24 Yeah.

James Clear 6:25 And then one hour is shorthand for, what can I do in the next hour that contributes to where I wanna be in 10 years? You know, like, never let a day pass without doing something that is gonna benefit you in a decade. And if you can live in those two mind frames, if you can have, like, both this long-term vision and this bias for short-term action, you don't let a day pass without doing something that's gonna benefit you 10 years from now, you don't even need- need to wait 10 years usually. Usually it's, like, a year or two and you're s- shocked by how much progress you've made.

Mel Robbins 6:53 Well, already you are dropping very clear, very simple, and very powerful truths, I'm gonna call them. That action relieves anxiety, which we're gonna get- dig into. That the secret to winning is knowing how to lose. And tell me the third one again about procrastination.

James Clear 7:12 Procrastinating on something important is choosing to delay a better future.

Mel Robbins 7:15 Mm.

James Clear 7:16 So, you know this is important to you-

Mel Robbins 7:18 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 7:18 ... you know this is important to your life, but not taking action on it, now you're just pushing- kicking the can down the road, right? Pushing the results further and further out. And so by, um, you- the question you asked me was, if I take this seriously-

Mel Robbins 7:28 Yeah.

James Clear 7:28 ... and I follow through on these things, how will life change?

Mel Robbins 7:30 Yes.

James Clear 7:31 And the answer is, you'll no longer be delaying a better future, you'll be working toward it. You'll be contributing to it.

Mel Robbins 7:37 Interview's over.

James Clear 7:38 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 7:38 I mean that right there was absolutely... I cannot wait to dig into this. What I would love to talk about first though, in case the person who is listening right now or who's watching on YouTube, doesn't know what a habit is. What is the simplest-

James Clear 7:54 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 7:54 ... definition for how to think about a habit and why are they so important?

James Clear 7:58 Sure, okay. So, good question. I'm gonna define habit in a couple of different ways.

Mel Robbins 8:01 Okay.

James Clear 8:01 So, first way, if you were to talk to an academic or researcher, they're gonna tell you habits are these automatic, mindless routines, things you do without even really thinking about it.

Mel Robbins 8:09 Okay. So, like, how you pull your pants up.

James Clear 8:11 Brush your teeth, tie your shoes-

Mel Robbins 8:12 Yeah, okay.

James Clear 8:12 ... put your pants on the same leg each time.

Mel Robbins 8:14 Okay.

James Clear 8:14 Like, you know, it's just these automatic, mindless behaviors.

Mel Robbins 8:17 Okay.

James Clear 8:17 And it is true that there are many habits that are like that throughout the day.

Mel Robbins 8:20 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 8:20 But there's, I think, a different type of way that we use the word habit to describe most things. Like, if I were to ask you, "Mel, what are some habits you're gonna work on?" You're not gonna say stuff like that. You're gonna say, "I'm trying to get in the habit of meditating every morning," or, "I want to get in the habit of writing every day," or, "Going to the gym three days a week," or whatever.

Mel Robbins 8:37 Yes.

James Clear 8:37 And that is-

Mel Robbins 8:38 All of them.

James Clear 8:38 ... more-

Mel Robbins 8:38 All of them, James. (laughs)

James Clear 8:39 (laughs) Yeah. All of those. Um, that's more like a routine, you know, in a technical, academic sense, it's not automatic the way that brushing your teeth might be. But what you mean is, "I want to do it consistently and, you know, regularly." And so most of Atomic Habits is about that stuff. It's about, how do we pick these big important things in our lives and do them with greater consistency and frequency?

Mel Robbins 9:00 There are these simple systems and things and rules that you're gonna teach us today that- that I love because I think when you're somebody that's struggling to make changes stick in your life or to even get started, you see it as a deficit in your personality. You beat yourself up and say, "I have no willpower. I'm the only loser on the planet-

James Clear 9:20 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 9:20 ... who doesn't have a morning routine." And what I love so much about your work is you're about to show us, no, no, no, no, no, it's not a failure in you, it's a failure in the things that you're gonna teach us.

James Clear 9:31 Well, you know, a lot of the conversation about habits kind of frames things that way, you know? Like if you hear people say, "Oh," you know, "Oh, I wish I just had the discipline to follow through on this," or, "May- maybe if you really wanted to do it, then you would follow through," you know?

Mel Robbins 9:43 Yeah.

James Clear 9:43 "Maybe if you really want to do it, you would have more willpower or discipline or grit." And, uh, you know, I don't want to totally dismiss discipline and willpower and grit, like they're all very important qualities in life, but I don't know that that answer is quite right, you know? I think many people, I bet, you know, most people genuinely do want to improve, genuinely do want to perform at a higher level, genuinely would like to have better results. So, what I would say is, look, if you're struggling to improve, the problem isn't you, the problem is your system. You know, we don't change not because we don't want to change, but because we have the wrong system for change. And if you can have the right system, the right elements in place, then improving becomes much easier.

Mel Robbins 10:22 Well, I flagged that exact quote. I'm gonna read to you from Atomic Habits, page 27. "If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you, the problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again, not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems." And one of the core themes that you're going to teach us today is how to stop focusing on the goal or the change we wanna make and really focus on the system that helps us create that goal. Would you define what exactly is a system?

James Clear 11:07 A system is just a collection of habits. So-

Mel Robbins 11:09 Oh, that's it?

James Clear 11:09 It can be- it can be- it can be really small habits, but it's just- it's a collection of habits that are all oriented toward the same outcome.

Mel Robbins 11:15 Oh, I'm thinking about how to make the habit stick. So, you're first talking about, okay, you've got this result that you want, you have this goal, but what is the system, the daily things that you're gonna be doing-

James Clear 11:25 Right.

Mel Robbins 11:25 ... in order to make this result happen

Mel Robbins 11:28 in the future? Now, before we get into goals versus system, for somebody who hasn't read the book, could you talk about that concept in Atomic Habits, getting 1% better every day?

James Clear 11:41 This is one of the key ideas in the book and it's just this idea that tiny changes add up to a surprising or remarkable degree. So, the math of this, if you get 1% better each day for a year, so 1.01 to the 365th power, you get 37.78 times better by the end of the year. If you get 1% worse, so 0.99 to the 365th power, you drive yourself almost all the way down to zero. I think it's 0.03. Um, and so you have these results that are-... shockingly large or shockingly small based on little tiny actions that you do each day. And I think it's interesting because, you know, like, what is the difference between a choice that's 1% better or 1% worse? I mean, on any given day, not a whole lot. I mean, what is the difference between somebody who reads for 10 minutes today and somebody who doesn't read at all?

Mel Robbins 12:28 Hmm.

James Clear 12:29 Basically nothing. You know, like, reading for 10 minutes does not make you a genius. Um, but if you're the type of person who always goes to bed a little bit smarter than they were when they woke up, the person who always finds a little bit of time to learn something new, yeah, that can be a pretty meaningful difference in wisdom and insight, especially over a 10, 20, 30-year period. So, we all have these habits that we're doing each day, and, um, it's easy to overlook them, but time will magnify whatever you feed it. So, if you have good habits, time becomes your ally. And every day that goes by, you put yourself in a stronger position. If you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy. And every day that goes by, you dig the hole a little bit deeper. And that's really what getting 1% better is about. It's this emphasis on trajectory rather than position. Now, if you had a, a 747 that was sitting on the runway in Los Angeles-

Mel Robbins 13:16 Yeah.

James Clear 13:16 ... and it takes off and it's gonna go to New York, if you nudge the nose of the plane six feet at the start-

Mel Robbins 13:22 Yeah.

James Clear 13:22 ... when it takes off, it, you land in Washington, DC rather than New York City. And it's just about this difference that a tiny change can make, the, the difference that a small improvement or being on a slightly different trajectory can result in. Small changes, when they're compounded over a great distance or a long time, can lead you to a very different result.

Mel Robbins 13:42 It's hard to wrap your mind around the fact that if I just focus on getting 1% better every day for a year, that I end up 37.7 times better?

James Clear 13:55 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 13:55 Can you give me like a, like, like, what? If I do, like, a pushup every day, then maybe at the end of the... Like, no, I'm serious.

James Clear 14:00 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's-

Mel Robbins 14:01 I wanna visualize what this is, because that's amazing.

James Clear 14:03 I think first all, first of all, it's not really about getting caught up in the exact number.

Mel Robbins 14:07 Right.

James Clear 14:07 It's more about the philosophy. It's like an attitude, an approach of-

Mel Robbins 14:10 Got it.

James Clear 14:10 ... "Can I try to find some small way to get better each day?"

Mel Robbins 14:13 Yeah.

James Clear 14:13 Um, the math of it is just compound interest. You know, like, it's just, it's just a compounding curve. And compound interest is almost always surprising what it turns into in the long run, and the effects of your habits can also almost always be surprising what they can turn into. Now, your habits are not exactly like a mathematical formula, right? Like, your, your life is not exactly like some equation that you're gonna calculate. But the principle, trying to find some small way to improve and trusting wh- how that can accumulate and compound over time, that is very true. And it also, I think, is very much how it feels on a given day, which is the actions feel kind of insignificant on a daily basis.

Mel Robbins 14:50 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 14:50 They're very easy to overlook on a daily basis and very surprising what they turn into, good and bad, a year or two or three from now. And so it's really about mastering those small daily actions and what that can lead us to in the long run.

Mel Robbins 15:03 What are the top two or three surprising ones that, if you did 1% better every day, you'd be shocked at where you ended up in a year?

James Clear 15:09 You'd be surprised... If you work on almost anything consistently for, say, two years, uh, you're almost guaranteed to be in the top, you know, one to 5% of the population on it. I mean, nobody else is spending that amount of time on it. So, that doesn't mean that you're gonna play in the NBA if you practice basketball for two years, but it does mean you will be a much better basketball player.

Mel Robbins 15:29 You know, James, let's talk more about this. There is a deeply personal story, something that happened to you, that explains the 1% rule.

James Clear 15:38 Yeah. So, I, you know, I grew up in a family that played lots of different sports and I played baseball for a long time. And when I was in high school, I suffered this really serious baseball injury where I was hit in the face with a baseball bat. And it was an accident. You know, a classmate of mine took a swing and kind of bat came out of his hands and, uh, rotated through the air and struck me right between the eyes. Um, broke my nose, uh, shattered both eye sockets, broke the bone behind my nose, kind of deeper inside your skull. I was air carried to the hospital and I was in a medically induced coma overnight. Um, and then the next day, my vitals had kind of stabilized to the point where they could release me from the coma. And it was a really long road back. Um, you know, I couldn't drive a car for the next nine months. Uh, when I went to my first physical therapy session, I was practicing basic motor patterns like walking in a straight line. I had double vision for weeks. So, it took a while, um, and all I wanted... You know, I was a teenager. I was 16, 17 years old. All I wanted was to get back to being this normal, young, healthy kid before. You know, be able to drive a car and go to baseball and play and whatever. But it was a time in my life when I was forced to start small.

Mel Robbins 16:45 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 16:45 You know, I had to just focus on, "What can I do at this physical therapy session? Am I making any progress from tod- yeah, the last session to this one?" Um, you know, if I can't do anything physically, couldn't play baseball for about a year, then, you know, can I study and do well on this test or try, try to find some small win, some small improvement that I can make? And all the things that we're about to talk about today, I would never have said it that way then.

Mel Robbins 17:07 Yeah.

James Clear 17:07 Like, I wouldn't have said, "Oh, I'm just trying to get 1% better." You know?

Mel Robbins 17:09 (laughs)

James Clear 17:09 Like, I did, I didn't have a language for it. Um, but it was an experience that forced me to realize, um, how small actions can be and still be meaningful.

Mel Robbins 17:20 Yes.

James Clear 17:21 And that progress can take a long arc. I barely played baseball in high school. After the injury, I basically missed my whole, the whole next year. I went to college. The first year, uh, I came off the bench. Uh, second season, I was a starter. Third season, I was team captain. Then fourth year, I was an academic All-American. And that's, like, a five or six year arc from that stuff. And, um, I never played professionally, but I look back on that and I feel like I was able to maximize my potential.

Mel Robbins 17:47 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 17:48 And, you know, we all have things in life that we don't ask for. And this was one for me. It was one of the first things I said when I woke up the next day, was, "I never asked for this." But you have to get out of that self-pity loop. It just does not serve you. A bad attitude and self-pity makes e- every problem harder. And so you're just a- layering on another challenge to the already challenging situation. And so instead, I tried to be as positive as I could about it, you know, and tried to find things to, to improve each day. And again, it took five or six years, but I think that process taught me a lot about building small habits and bouncing back from challenges. And so eventually, 10 years later, when it came time to write the book...... I think the book is better because I struggled. It was better because I had to go through that process. And now I know, just like everybody else, how hard it is to build habits and how long it takes to make progress and, you know, how challenging it can be to see the improvement that you've been wishing for. And so, I think those struggles ended up resulting in better material.

Mel Robbins 18:45 Wow, that, that story really struck me when I read the book, and I'm so glad you shared it because it does illustrate the power of the 1%

Mel Robbins 18:54 rule.

James Clear 18:54 The human mind is a learning machine. Almost every skill that you have today was previously unknown to you. When you were born, you didn't know how to tie your shoes or cut a tomato or make spaghetti or whatever. Um, but you know all that stuff now because you practiced it. And you can get better at anything that you practice. And I think it's interesting if you look at people, what are people spending their time practicing each day? You know, like a lot of people are practicing the art of getting mad on social media. People are practicing the, the fine craft of being fearful and reading about all the ways that the world is falling apart. They're practicing scrolling their phone. You know, like, what, what are you trying to get good at? And I think it's worth it to ask, like, "What am I practicing each day? What am I training for?" And every moment is a repetition, and your brain will automatically get better at the things that you repeat. Uh, whatever you repeat, you reinforce. And so, you wanna make sure you're reinforcing the right things.

Mel Robbins 19:49 What I love about what you just said is that oftentimes when you're thinking about habits, you're thinking about the new ones, and we don't often have that moment of honest reflection with ourselves-

James Clear 20:01 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 20:01 ... where we say, "Wait a minute. I already have a lot of habits. And if I don't like how my life looks and feels right now, whether that's the balance in my bank account or the way that my- I feel in my body or the kind of relationship I'm in or my drinking habits or what I'm doing with my free time, then changing my habits-"

James Clear 20:22 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 20:23 "... is the way I change the circumstances of my life."

James Clear 20:26 So here's an interesting one for you. I, uh, something like scrolling your phone or whatever-

Mel Robbins 20:29 Yeah.

James Clear 20:29 ... mo- most people w- would be like, "Yeah, that's probably one I don't wanna do as much."

Mel Robbins 20:33 Yes.

James Clear 20:33 But what I find interesting are the habits that used to serve me well but don't serve me as well now. That- those have been much harder for me to give up. The way that I think about it is, I like to ask myself this question of, "What season am I in right now?"

Mel Robbins 20:47 Mm.

James Clear 20:47 You know, and life has a lot of different seasons. Sometimes... There can be all kinds of reasons that seasons shift. You know, maybe it's you get married or you have a kid or maybe you move to a city or start a new job. I was just talking to a mom who, she just became an empty nester, and she's like, "You know, for 25 years, I've been taking care of these kids. Now all of a sudden, nobody's here. Like, what season am I in?" And what I've slowly learned, I- I can be a slow learner in a lot of ways, um, is when your seasons change, your habits often need to change. And I found, you know, for me, I- a lot of the time, I'll have a season shift, and then I keep trying to force fit my old habits into this new season. Uh, it takes me 18 months to realize, "Hey, something needs to change." And I think this is an important conversation to have about habits, because people don't say this explicitly, but a lot of the time when people are focused on their habits and they start something new, they don't say it to themselves, but they're kind of thinking in the back of their mind, "What would it look like to be successful at this? Oh, well, I would just do this habit forever-"

Mel Robbins 21:44 Hm.

James Clear 21:44 "... is what it w- and if I stop doing it at some point, that must mean that I failed or I quit or something like that." I- I don't think it has to be like that at all. You know, like, take my writing habit, for example. For the first three years, I wrote two articles a week. Those were about 2,000 words each. Then I signed the book deal for Atomic Habits. Season changes. Can't, can't write those anymore, so that shifted. Then I worked on the book for three years. Now, uh, for the last five years, I've been writing a newsletter once a week. Um, that's much shorter. Um, but at no point in there do I feel like my writing habit failed. Just 'cause I'm not writing two articles a week anymore doesn't mean that, uh, I don't know, I screwed up or something. Um, the habit just needed to change shape based on the season that I was in. And I think we should all give ourselves permission for our habits to shift based on the season that we're facing.

Mel Robbins 22:30 That's so relatable and helpful, because as you were talking about writing, I was thinking, "Well, that's just happened for me-"

James Clear 22:36 Hm.

Mel Robbins 22:36 "... around exercise and around nutrition." The more that I learn about the difference between men and women physiologically, the more I learn about hormone changes in women, the more I'm like, "Oh, wait a minute. Running, yoga, that's not going to help me the way that it used to. I gotta focus on protein, and I gotta focus on resistance training."

James Clear 22:56 Hm.

Mel Robbins 22:57 Different season, different habits.

James Clear 22:58 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 22:59 Makes a lot of sense.

James Clear 23:00 Yeah, I think knowing which season you're in right now is a really helpful thing. There, there's a certain... (sighs) There are, like, some questions I like to ask (claps hands) just for self-awareness.

Mel Robbins 23:08 Yeah.

James Clear 23:08 They, they help bubble up some insights about yourself that then lead to some discoveries about maybe how I should shift my habits or whatever. So, uh, some of the questions I like, one is, "What am I optimizing for?" Different people optimize for different things. You will probably optimize for different things at different points in your life. Sometimes you optimize for making money. Sometimes you optimize for free time or creative freedom. Sometimes you optimize for family.

Mel Robbins 23:32 Yeah.

James Clear 23:32 Uh, but whatever it is, the answer's probably very personal to you and the season that you're in.

Mel Robbins 23:36 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 23:36 So what am I optimizing for? Second question is, "What season am I in right now?" So, we already talked about that. The third one, uh, can be a little bit cutting, but it's if... I, I call it like the, it's kinda like the alien test or something. Imagine, imagine that an alien comes down from outer space, right, and it's gonna follow you around throughout your day. Can't speak your language, can't communicate to you. If it could only see your actions and not hear your words, what would it say your priorities are? The interesting thing, I think especially about smart people...... is you can come up with a good excuse for most things. You have very good reason for why things aren't happening. And so it's for, uh, very easy for you to talk, uh, your way out of why things didn't occur.

Mel Robbins 24:15 (laughs)

James Clear 24:15 Um, but the alien can't hear you. It doesn't care. It's only looking at what you're spending your time on. And, um, it's just a nice way to kind of level set and, you know, say, "Okay. I say things are a priority, but how am I actually spending my time?"

Mel Robbins 24:27 Tell me why these tiny changes create such massive transformation, why it's, frankly, the only way.

James Clear 24:33 First of all, it, it matters because it's doable. You know, you really only have a certain amount of time each day that you can work with. Everybody says, "Oh, you have the same 24 hours in a day," but it is even less than that. I think a more useful way to frame it is, how many hours per day are under your control?

Mel Robbins 24:47 Ooh, I love that.

James Clear 24:48 There's very-

Mel Robbins 24:48 How many, how many hours, how-

James Clear 24:49 There's very few.

Mel Robbins 24:50 (laughs)

James Clear 24:50 You know? There's very few. Um-

Mel Robbins 24:51 Thank you for telling the truth.

James Clear 24:52 And so, uh, really it's about, what do you do with those one or two hours? You know, maybe three. I don't know. But there's, you know, how many are really under your control? And so that amount of time is what you have to work with. And so for that reason, starting small makes sense. Um, but the bigger thing, and I, I think that this is something I've learned over time, uh, and especially through that injury, is how fun it can be to make a small amount of progress. Even if you aren't where you wanted to be yet, you feel good, you know? You have something to look back on and be like, "I got a little bit better today." So much of life is lived in this gray zone. Am I a better spouse today than I was yesterday? Am I a better friend? Did I improve in my career? I, you know, I don't know. It's hard to know on any given day.

Mel Robbins 25:31 Ah.

James Clear 25:31 And so anytime that you can make a little bit of progress and be able to look back on that and be like, "You know what? That was better than yesterday," that feels really nice.

Mel Robbins 25:38 Yes.

James Clear 25:38 Um, and so I think that, uh, that's another reason. And then the third thing, and this is really what getting 1% better is actually about-

Mel Robbins 25:46 Okay.

James Clear 25:46 ... it's an, it's about an emphasis on trajectory rather than position. You know, there's-

Mel Robbins 25:52 And tell me what that means.

James Clear 25:52 Well, there's a lot of discussion about position in life, you know? What's the number on the scale? How much money's in the bank account? What's the current stock price? What are the quarterly earnings? We have all these measurements, all these metrics for determining our current position.

Mel Robbins 26:04 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 26:04 And then if the position isn't what we wanted it to be, if the number isn't what we like, then we get frustrated, or we feel guilty, or we start to judge ourselves or-

Mel Robbins 26:11 "I'm not there yet. Why isn't this working? I haven't made it. I don't have the money. I'm never gonna get out of debt."

James Clear 26:16 And you hear people say things like this all the time. "I've been running for a month. Why can't I see a change in my body?" Um, "Our, you know, team has been meeting every Friday for the last six months. We still haven't shipped this feature," and that, that's when, like, the frustration starts to build.

Mel Robbins 26:27 Uh-huh.

James Clear 26:28 And, uh, so it is not actually about your current position. What instead it is about is your current trajectory. Am I getting 1% better or 1% worse?

Mel Robbins 26:36 How do you know? One of the things, and I love that your last name's Clear.

James Clear 26:40 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 26:40 You have the best-

James Clear 26:41 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 26:42 ... on-brand name-

James Clear 26:43 Just gotta lucky with that.

Mel Robbins 26:43 ... for the way that your brain thinks. But, uh, one of the biggest things that I see from the folks that listen around the world is not being clear about what you want and not knowing what you want. And so is there any way that you think about how to even understand this concept of trajectory, right?

James Clear 27:08 So, I don't think there's one answer. I think there are many to this.

Mel Robbins 27:11 Great.

James Clear 27:11 Um, but first thing is, yes, you're right. Many people la- think what they lack is motivation, but what they really lack is clarity.

Mel Robbins 27:18 Hmm.

James Clear 27:18 Um, you know, you feel like, "Oh, I just need to get more motivated," but what you really need to know is what is, what is the most important thing? What am I working on? The, the motivation is actually quite easy if you're very clear about what the most important thing is. But usually people have seven things that they say are important to them, and then it's not easy 'cause you're being pulled in all these different directions. Um, the second thing is, uh, some of the best advice that I got early on in my business career was, "Try things until something comes easily." And I think you can apply that advi- advice to almost anything. Try things t- until something comes easily.

Mel Robbins 27:48 Huh.

James Clear 27:48 And the point is, there's this common, um, refrain of try, try, try again. You know?

Mel Robbins 27:54 Yes.

James Clear 27:54 "If things don't work, try, try, try again." I think instead, it would be better if it was phrased, "If things that don't work, try, try, try differently." You need to, you need to keep trying. You need to keep showing up, but you need to try different lines of attack. You know, different things work better than others. And so by trying a range of options, especially early in a process-

Mel Robbins 28:13 'Kay.

James Clear 28:13 ... you put yourself in a much better position to succeed. So here, I'm gonna try to tie all this together. So if I could add one thing to Atomic Habits that wasn't in the book-

Mel Robbins 28:20 Yes.

James Clear 28:21 ... it would be this question of, what would this look like if it was fun?

Mel Robbins 28:25 Hmm.

James Clear 28:25 What would this look like if it was fun? What would it look like if meditating was fun? What would it look like if going to the gym was fun? What would it look like if, you know, making a sales call each morning was fun? And that doesn't mean that your habits are gonna feel like the most fun thing in your life. You know, it's not like, "Oh, this will feel like going to a concert or something." But let's take just the, like a common one like exercise. A lot of people go to the gym in January, and I feel like they kind of are going because they feel like they should go-

Mel Robbins 28:52 Yes.

James Clear 28:52 ... or society wants them to go or something.

Mel Robbins 28:55 Yes.

James Clear 28:55 But if we just take 10 minutes and write out, "What are ways that we could live a healthy, active lifestyle?" There's dozens, you know? Go to the gym, kayak, rock climb, do yoga. Like, you can come up with a lot of things, right? And I think you should just write that list out for whatever the habit is that you're working on, and then look at the 10 or 20 or 50 things that you have, and then say, "Which one of these sounds like the most fun to me?" You know, "Which one of these sounds most engaging?" And you're much more likely to follow through on that than you are on something else.

Mel Robbins 29:23 Okay, can I give you an example? Because this is such an important nuance that could truly change your ability to make something meaningful stick. 'Cause when you started talking about the fact that, you know, as, as you're trying exercise, let's say, I have the hardest time motivating myself. I'm very clear that I want to exercise four or five days a week because I want to live a healthy, vibrant life. I want to be hiking into my 90s and 100s. I wanna be able to dance at all my kids' and grandkids' weddings. Like, that's the why, and I know that that means today I gotta do this annoying thing called exercise. And it's always befuddled me that my husband, with zero resistance, zero friction, can just walk right into a gym, motivate himself. My daughter's like that too. Not me. I wander around like an idiot. I get bored.

James Clear 30:15 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 30:15 I can't stay motivated. I don't know.... what I've discovered is that if I go to a class, it's fun.

James Clear 30:23 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 30:23 And so that question, "How could I make this fun? What if this were fun? What would that look like?" That changes everything.

James Clear 30:30 The first key, the first hurdle to clear, is to find things that are genuinely interesting to you, that are genuinely fun to you. You know, the person who felt like it was a hassle at the start, or it kind of feels like it's a chore and they're sort of making themselves do it, as soon as it gets hard, they're gonna stop. They didn't want to do it to begin with. But the person who is having fun, the person who's engaged and interested, the person who's curious and excited about it, they're way more likely to stick with it when it gets hard.

Mel Robbins 30:57 You know, one of the things that I'd love to have you unpack for us is, you know, when someone's sitting around waiting for motivation, and they're struggling to either get started or they're struggling as they're waking up today to do the thing they say that they wanna do, could you unpack for the person listening why you have to take the action first, and how motivation shows up after the action, not before?

James Clear 31:24 So, a habit is a behavior that you want to do consistently. Right? You want to do it-

Mel Robbins 31:30 That you want to do consistently.

James Clear 31:32 That you want to do consistently.

Mel Robbins 31:32 Okay.

James Clear 31:32 Motivation, we all know, sometimes you're motivated, sometimes you're not. The motivation rises and falls throughout the day. So, why would you want a behavior that you want to do consistently to rely on something that fluctuates? It doesn't make sense. And so this is a good reason why you want to scale habits down to a level where they're so easy to do, getting into it is so simple, that you'll do it even when motivation is low. And so, this is another reason for the phrase Atomic Habits, right? It's about making it tiny and small so that you stick to it even when motivation isn't there.

Mel Robbins 32:04 Yeah, but what does that mean to scale down if I'm trying to meditate, or I'm trying to exercise, or I'm trying to make that sales call?

James Clear 32:11 I'll give you two examples.

Mel Robbins 32:11 Okay.

James Clear 32:12 So, there's this concept in chemistry called activation energy.

Mel Robbins 32:15 Okay.

James Clear 32:15 It's how much energy is required to activate a reaction. So you can think about, like, striking a match. There's a certain amount of effort that you have to put in to strike the match and for the flame to start, okay? Your habits are kind of like that. Some habits have really big activation energy. If you wanna do 100 pushups a day, that requires a certain amount of motivation. You gotta keep doing sets of five and 10 throughout the day or whatever. And if it gets to nine o'clock one day and it's time to go to bed, and y- you haven't done your 100 pushups yet, now you gotta kinda motivate yourself quite a bit to get that in before you go to sleep.

Mel Robbins 32:44 I need gasoline for the bonfire in that case.

James Clear 32:46 Right.

Mel Robbins 32:46 Yes.

James Clear 32:46 So, if your, uh, objective instead is to do 10 pushups a day, well then, it's nine o'clock and you still haven't got them in yet, but you're like, "I can probably do 10 before I go to sleep." That's, that's probably doable.

Mel Robbins 32:56 Yeah.

James Clear 32:57 Um, and so you can see these two habits have very different activation energies.

Mel Robbins 33:01 Mm.

James Clear 33:01 They have very different amount of effort that they're requiring from you. So scaling it down is choosing the thing that's easy to do that has small activation energy.

Mel Robbins 33:07 So that would be 10 pushups a day.

James Clear 33:09 Do 10 instead of 100. Read-

Mel Robbins 33:10 Got it.

James Clear 33:10 Instead of reading 30 books a year, it's read one page, right? It's like, stuff like that. Scale it down.

Mel Robbins 33:15 Got it. Okay.

James Clear 33:15 There is something that can be tied to this or is related to this, which i- is a phrase that I feel like I remind myself of a lot, which is reduce the scope but stick to the schedule. So there's so many times where the day kinda gets away from you, you know? Like, thing- things get busy. Let's say you wanted to work out today, and then you look up the clock and, you know, you were planning on doing an hour workout or 45 minutes, and you only have 15 or 20 minutes. In that moment, the conversation I used to have with myself was, "Well, I guess I don't have time to work out today."

Mel Robbins 33:45 Yes. (laughs)

James Clear 33:45 Uh, and then you'd move on. But instead, what I'm trying is to say, "Reduce the scope but stick to the schedule." And so I'll go down, I'll change into my workout clothes and go down to the, my basement and go down to this little home gym area that I have. And maybe I only have 15 minutes and I can only do one set of squats, but that's what I do. And in some ways, I feel like the bad days matter more than the good days. You know, it's showing up on the days when it's not ideal, it's showing up on the days when you don't have energy or time or capacity that keeps the habit alive. And if you keep the habit alive, all you need is time. But if you throw up a zero, now the streak is broken, and sometimes one day can turn into five days and can turn into three months, and then you find yourself wanting to get back on track. And I think rather than asking yourself, "What can I do on my best day?" you should start by asking, "What can I stick to even on the bad days?"

Mel Robbins 34:36 Oh, I love that. So-

James Clear 34:37 And that becomes your baseline.

Mel Robbins 34:38 Okay, so you've already given us two incredible things, which is what if this were fun? What would it look like if it were fun? And as you're thinking about the beginning of a habit, defining it by what could I actually stick to even on my worst day.

James Clear 34:53 Right.

Mel Robbins 34:54 How is it that motivation shows up after the action?

James Clear 34:59 Because you have this feeling of progress. Now you have something that you, "Oh, look, I've made some, I've made some movement forward." You know you have something to look at. It's the difference between, um, hope and evidence. Now you have some evidence, and so you have a reason to believe it. Say, "Oh, look, you know, look at myself moving forward." And that starts to feel really good once you stack a couple of days together. You know, it doesn't... I think this is one of the lessons of my work, which is, it doesn't take much to feel good again. You'd be surprised what you can do with five good minutes. You know, five good minutes of conversation can restore a relationship. Five good minutes of exercise will leave you winded and, like, reset your energy and mood for the day. Five good minutes of writing will make you feel like the manuscript is moving forward again. It doesn't take much to feel good. And so, you just need a little bit to get you s- get yourself back on the path.

Mel Robbins 35:47 That's the entire premise of this podcast, that it's, takes so little to make you feel good again. And once you do, the progress and the momentum kicks in.

James Clear 35:58 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 35:59 If you're the kind of person who's listening and you're like, "God, I've just failed too many times."

James Clear 36:07 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 36:08 And so you feel discouraged about starting again, whether it's putting yourself back out there on the dating scene, or it's dusting off your resume after getting laid off and feeling like, "What value do I have to offer?" Or you tried yet again to lose the weight or to stick to the meditation

Mel Robbins 36:26 and you failed again. So what is the failure premortem?

James Clear 36:29 Okay, so first, you want optimism. My little shorthand is, I, I don't wanna be my own bottleneck, okay? So-

Mel Robbins 36:36 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 36:36 ... um-I try to work backwards from magic at the start. What would the magical outcome be? What would the thing that I really want to achieve look like? What's the optimal outcome look like? Then, the next phase, this is where the failure pre-mortem comes in. So you switch from optimism to pessimism. All right. I know where I wanna go, so now let's be, let's be my own critic for a minute. The failure pre-mortems, it's the, just the simple question of, if we look back six remont- six months from now and this has failed, where does it fail? So it's just you're pre-analyzing where the-

Mel Robbins 37:06 Oh, so this is before-

James Clear 37:06 ... potential points of failure.

Mel Robbins 37:07 ... you even get-

James Clear 37:08 You haven't done anything.

Mel Robbins 37:09 ... started. You haven't done anything.

James Clear 37:09 You haven't done anything yet. But you're trying to be the one to figure out what are the flaws in what I'm about to do?

Mel Robbins 37:14 Okay.

James Clear 37:14 And so the, the failure pre-mortem just says, "If this fails, where does it fail?" And you can come up with all kinds of things like that. Let me give you an example for habits. So, like, let's say that you wanna start going to the gym.

Mel Robbins 37:24 Yes.

James Clear 37:24 And you're like, "Well, if this plan fails, where does it fail?" And y- it might fail because you don't know which gym you're gonna use. So you're like, "All right. I'll pick one that's on the route of my commute each day."

Mel Robbins 37:34 Yes.

James Clear 37:34 So then you say, "Okay. It might fail because I don't have my gym clothes ready." So you're like, "All right. I need to send my clothes out the night before, have my gym bag ready early." I had one person who they were like, "I g- am going to the gym and I wish I could stick to it more, but I ju- this gym doesn't have a water fountain. And so when I go there, I'm like, 'Ugh. I always forget to bring my water bottle.' And that's enough to make me be like, 'I'm not gonna go 'cause they, I, they don't have a water fountain there.'" And little points of friction like that kind- sound kind of silly when you say it, but you're like, yeah, that's a, that's a potential point of failure, and you need to have a plan for getting a water bottle full and make sure that you bring that each day.

Mel Robbins 38:07 Yes.

James Clear 38:08 And so you start to check off these boxes of what are the things that could hold you back from this plan working.

Mel Robbins 38:13 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 38:13 And then you switch back to optimism, because what you don't want is to go into this process feeling like you're doubting yourself to begin with.

Mel Robbins 38:20 Right. I'm screwed. I-

James Clear 38:21 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 38:21 Why am I even doing this?

James Clear 38:22 That's not... That attitude's just gonna make it harder.

Mel Robbins 38:24 Yes.

James Clear 38:24 So you start with optimism, you switch to pessimism, try to poke the holes in your argument, and then you're back, we're back to optimism again. We want everybody on board and feel like we've got the right attitude going into it.

Mel Robbins 38:32 Okay. I love this because one of the things that I immediately thought as you were using the gym example is I immediately could pop into the pessimism mindset.

James Clear 38:43 Mm.

Mel Robbins 38:43 And I think I'm a good problem-solver, but I was like, "Okay. Well, I don't know what to do at a gym." And so I walk around and then feel overwhelmed and intimidated-

James Clear 38:50 Sure.

Mel Robbins 38:50 ... 'cause I'm not quite sure what the routine should be, and then I leave.

James Clear 38:53 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 38:53 The other one is I would immediately see that I would've shot the goal too high-

James Clear 38:58 Mm.

Mel Robbins 38:58 ... and would've started with an hour every day (laughs) for the next six months.

James Clear 39:02 Sure.

Mel Robbins 39:02 And so now I'm like, "Oh, wait a minute. I gotta reduce the time and stick to the schedule, and what could I get done on my worst day? So what could the goal be?" So now I'm using your tools.

James Clear 39:12 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 39:12 And then I finally am now saying, well, I would, about a weekend ago, "This isn't fun anymore." And so I can see how you can anticipate ways in which you would break your own-

James Clear 39:26 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 39:27 ... ability to make it happen.

James Clear 39:29 So, uh, two things here. The first is some of this depends on how you're measuring things. It can really be helpful to pick a different form of measurement. So i- if you take, like, going to the gym, what's the common measurement? Everybody's like, "What's the scale say and how do you look in the mirror?" That's what everybody's measuring.

Mel Robbins 39:45 Yeah.

James Clear 39:45 But let's forget about that. Measure it in a totally different way. So this reader, his name's Mitch, and I mention him in Atomic Habits. When he first started going to the gym, all right, so he lost over 100 pounds. He's kept it off for more than a decade now. And when he first started going, he had this strange little rule for himself where he wasn't allowed to stay for longer than five minutes. So he'd get in the car, drive to the gym, get out, do half an exercise, get back in the car, drive home. And it sounds silly. You know, you're like, this doesn't... This is not gonna get him the results that you want. But if you take a step back, what you realize is he was mastering the art of showing up, right?

Mel Robbins 40:19 Hm.

James Clear 40:19 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 that's, that's the different form of measurement there. He's not measuring the results. He's measuring, "Did I show up or not?" And that gives him something else to win on in the early days. I think this is a pretty deep truth about habits, something that people, like, often overlook, which is a habit must be established before it can be improved. It has to become the-

Mel Robbins 40:45 Oh. Hold on a second. A habit must be established before it can be improved?

James Clear 40:49 A habit must be established before it can be improved. You have to standardize before you optimize. I mean, how often in our lives do we try to optimize things before we get started? You know, you're so busy finding the perfect sales strategy, the best workout plan, the ideal diet to follow.

Mel Robbins 41:03 The best journal.

James Clear 41:04 Right? You wanna, you wanna-

Mel Robbins 41:05 (laughs) Yes.

James Clear 41:05 ... optimize everything from the start.

Mel Robbins 41:07 Yes.

James Clear 41:07 Um, but when-

Mel Robbins 41:08 'Cause it makes me think I'm doing it, James.

James Clear 41:10 Right. That's exactly it. It's that-

Mel Robbins 41:11 It's a form of procrastination for me.

James Clear 41:13 I call it the difference between motion and action. So motion are things that make you feel like you're making progress. So I'm gonna look up a trainer that maybe could help me at the gym. Doesn't matter how many times you look up trainers in your area. It's not gonna do anything to get you fit. Doesn't mean you don't need a trainer. Doesn't mean you shouldn't use one. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that action is never gonna result in the outcome that you want. Doing a set of squats or doing five push-ups, that, now that's something that could get the result that you want. Um, and so, uh, researching business names, I wanna launch a business. Let me... Or designing a logo. Doesn't matter how many times you design your business logo, it's never gonna result in a paying customer. Um, doesn't mean a business doesn't need a logo, but it's just one is motion, one is action. So action is a, a behavior that can get the result that you want. Motion is a behavior that makes you feel like you're making progress.

Mel Robbins 42:05 Ah. Um, one of the things that I love about the way that you think about habits and behavior change is you talk about the connection between identity and behavior. And you write, you know, "Who do I wanna become?" is a way better question to ask yourself than, "What do I wanna achieve?" Why?

James Clear 42:26 I think it's very natural to start with results and outcomes. But the results are not the thing that you really need to change, you know? What you need is to be consistent, to stick with it, and you need to show up consistently, and you need to follow through on, you know, the actions that are gonna lead to that outcome. So-I kind of think of it almost like the layers of an onion.

Mel Robbins 42:43 Okay.

James Clear 42:44 So, the outermost layer of the onion are the results that you want, the outcome. So, let's say lose 40 pounds.

Mel Robbins 42:49 Okay.

James Clear 42:49 Okay? The next layer in is the action, the plan that you have, the, the actions that you take. Most of the time when people want to make a change, they're like, "Yeah, I, you know, I want this result, so I need to do, follow through on this plan. I need to go to the gym four days a week and eat on this diet or whatever." And the implicit assumption is, "If I do those things and get that result, then I'll be who I want to be."

Mel Robbins 43:11 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 43:11 "I'll, I'll be happy with who I am. I'll be more like the person that I hope to be." But the innermost layer of the onion, the core, is who you are, your identity, who, who you become. And so it's like what, how, and who! And instead of starting with what you want and figuring out how to do it and assuming that I will then be the person I want to be, I think it is better to invert that process and start by saying, "Who do I wish to become?" Or, in this example, who is the type of person that could lose 40 pounds? Well, maybe it's the type of person who doesn't miss workouts, and then you're focused on that, not on the weight. And so what it does is by focusing on the identity, it kind of inverts how you think about the habit.

Mel Robbins 43:54 Yeah.

James Clear 43:54 Rather than it being about hitting a certain number on the scale, it becomes about becoming a certain type of person, being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts, in this example. Your habits are how you embody a particular identity. So, every day that you make your bed, you embody the identity of someone who's clean and organized.

Mel Robbins 44:12 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 44:13 If you study biology for 20 minutes on Tuesday night, you embody the identity of someone who is studious. Your habits provide evidence of who you are. This is the real reason, the deeper reason that habits matter. We often talk about habits as mattering because of the external results that they get you. "Hey, habits will help you be more productive or make more money or reduce stress." And, like, look, habits can do all that stuff and that's great, but the real reason, the true reason that habits matter is that every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become. So, no, doing one pushup does not transform your body, but it does cast a vote for, "I'm the type of person that doesn't miss workouts."

Mel Robbins 44:52 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 44:52 And, no, giving one bit of positive feedback to somebody on your team does not make you the world's best leader, but it does cast a vote for, "I'm the type of team member who cares about the people around them." And I think this is a little bit different than what you often hear. You'll often hear something like, "Fake it till you make it."

Mel Robbins 45:07 Yeah.

James Clear 45:07 And I don't necessarily have anything wrong with fake it till you make it. It's asking you to believe something positive about yourself. However, it's asking you to believe something positive without having evidence for it. And we have a word for beliefs that don't have evidence. We call that delusion, right? Like, (laughs) we have this mismatch between what you say you are and what you're actually doing. And so my encouragement is to let the behavior lead the way, to let sending one email or writing one sentence or meditating for five minutes, to let that small action be evidence that in that moment, you were that kind of person. And then as you start to cast votes for that identity, you have every reason in the world to believe it. And so I think this is what really gets habits to stick. It is the reinforcement of your story.

Mel Robbins 45:53 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 45:53 It's the reinforcement of how you see yourself and the identity that you're trying to build. And that's why I say I think we should often start by asking not, "What do I wish to achieve?" but, "Who do I wish to become? And how are my actions reinforcing that?" And if you can get those two things aligned, now you have a really deep through line from your daily actions to this bigger, larger identity that you want to build. And if you can connect the things that you do each day, the small choices, with the person that you want to be in the long run, you can see how important they are even when they're little.

Mel Robbins 46:23 I want to make sure that as you're listening or watching, you really got that question. Who do I want to become? If you start there and you start with a vision for the kind of person you want to become, and then we invert that onion that you were talking about, so you know who you want to become, then you ask yourself, "Well, how do I become that kind of person and what do I need to do?" Now we have a roadmap that leads you to the small daily habits that cast the vote to get you there.

James Clear 46:53 I think what we're ultimately trying to get to is a place where you take pride in being that kind of person.

Mel Robbins 46:57 Well, this brings us to one of my absolute favorite parts of Atomic Habits and your research. This changed my entire mindset, and honestly, changed the type of person I am. And it's the difference between setting goals versus focusing on systems. And so I want to read to you from this section titled Forget About Goals, Focus on Systems Instead. And you write, "For many years," uh, "this was how I approached my habits. Each one was a goal to be reached. I set goals for the grades I wanted to get in school, for the weights I wanted to lift in the gym, for the profits I wanted to earn in business. I succeeded at a few, but I failed at a lot of them. The results had very little to do with the goals I set and nearly everything to do with the systems I followed. What's the difference between systems and goals? It's a distinction I first learned from Scott Adams, a cartoonist behind

Mel Robbins 47:57 the Dilbert comic. Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results." And you write about this, just one example that made so much sense. "If you're a coach, your goal might be to win a championship, but your system is the way you recruit players, manage your assistant coaches, and conduct practice." And you pose this interesting question. "What if you completely ignored your goals and you focused on your system?" And I'd love to unpack this because I do think that this is where I got things wrong for so long.

James Clear 48:38 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 48:38 I was very focused on defining goals.... and I spent little to no time really looking at the systems that create progress toward those goals. Can you unpack this for us?

James Clear 48:50 I was like that too. I think that my nature is I'm naturally very goal-oriented and outcome-oriented-

Mel Robbins 48:56 Uh-huh.

James Clear 48:56 ... and, you know, we all want better results, right?

Mel Robbins 48:58 Uh-huh.

James Clear 48:58 Um, so I don't think goals are ever going to be like a zero in your life and you're never going to think about them, it's just so natural to focus on them.

Mel Robbins 49:05 Yeah.

James Clear 49:05 What I'm trying to encourage here is to focus on the other side of the equation, which is the daily habits that you are following. If I was going to put a little finer point on the language there-

Mel Robbins 49:14 Please.

James Clear 49:14 ... what do I mean by goal and system?

Mel Robbins 49:16 Yes.

James Clear 49:16 Your goal is your desired outcome, the target, the thing you're shooting for. What is your system? It's the collection of daily habits that you follow. And if there is ever a gap between your goal and your system, if there's ever a gap between your desired outcome and your daily habits, your daily habits will always win. I mean, almost by definition, your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results. Whatever habits you've been following for the last six months or year, two years, it's carried you almost inevitably to the outcomes that you have right now. So, where I've kind of come down on this after thinking about it for a little while is goals are good for clarity, they're good for setting a sense of direction, get everybody rowing the boat in the same, same direction. They can be good for filtering, so if somebody comes to you with an opportunity and they say, "Hey, do you want to do this?" You can run it through your list of goals and say, "Well, does this get me closer to what I want or not?" Maybe it makes it easier to say yes or no to that. But the vast majority of your time should be spent focused on building a better system. Goals are good for people who care about winning once, systems are best for people who care about winning repeatedly.

Mel Robbins 50:23 Mm.

James Clear 50:23 You know, if you really want to make progress and make it again and again, if you want to get high performance and keep the performance high, you need some set of systems, some collection of daily habits to keep you up there. The other interesting thing that I realized is that the winners and the losers often have the same goals. You know, if you have a job opening and 100 people apply, presumably every candidate has the goal of getting the job. The goal is not the thing that determines the outcome, it's presentation skills in the interview, who they know at the company, education, experience, like all sorts of things, right? Or, um, you know, th- at the Olympics, presumably every athlete who's competing has the goal of winning the gold medal. You know, the goal is not the thing that determines the outcome. Again, it's genetic ability, talent, coaching, strategy, how much sleep they got the night before, like all sorts of factors. And so, if the winners and the losers have the same goals, the goal cannot be the thing that makes a difference in their performance. It has to be something else, and that something else is the system, it's their daily habits.

Mel Robbins 51:23 So you've talked a lot about this word systems. I would love to have you just break down some, for some of the habits that people tend to take on a lot. What about for saving money, what might be a system just to jog the person who's listening's-

James Clear 51:40 So here's an interesting one that one of my readers uses. Saving money is an interesting, and there's an interesting category of habits, which are things that you basically don't do, and then you need to feel good about it. Like saving money is basically when I don't spend is when I'm achieving this goal, and, you know, it's like not playing video games or don't drink wine. Like things-

Mel Robbins 52:00 Yeah.

James Clear 52:00 ... like that are, uh, tricky to feel good about because you're just resisting doing something. So, I thought this was a clever solution, I have, I have this one reader, he and his wife wanted to eat out less, spend less money eating out at restaurants and-

Mel Robbins 52:13 Yep.

James Clear 52:13 ... cook at home more. But again, if you just, "Well we're not going to go out to eat tonight," that doesn't really feel great. So what they came up with was they opened a separate savings account, and they labeled it trip to Europe, and then anytime that they stayed home, they would move $20 or $50 bucks, or whatever over that they were going to spend that night, they'd move that over to the account. And what they get in the moment is the feeling of, "Oh, we're building toward this vacation that we want to go on." Um, and then at the end of the year, they took the money and put it toward the trip. Um, and so they found a way to take something that usually doesn't have much of a benefit, and give it a positive association, a positive feeling. And so that was part of their system for saving money or for not eating out was, "Well, first we're going to move the money over, and then we're going to choose what recipe, recipe are we making tonight, and then we go into the kitchen and prep it, whatever." And so it's just a simple couple pro- steps, but it makes it a lot more enjoyable.

Mel Robbins 53:07 What about a system for eating healthier?

James Clear 53:11 Eating healthier is interesting and it's a tricky one. Um, I think it provides a good example of people will say something that they think is simple, but it's actually not that simple.

Mel Robbins 53:22 Mm.

James Clear 53:22 They think they're making it easy and simple but they need to scale it down even more.

Mel Robbins 53:26 Okay.

James Clear 53:26 So like let's say somebody says, "All right, I'm just going to focus on one habit, I'm just going to try to eat healthy." Well, you know, what is involved in that, right? Like if you're, if you're currently eating a lot of meals out or ordering a lot of meals, well, first you need to decide what you're going to make, you need a grocery shopping habit, so you got to get the stuff. You need some meal prep habits, maybe you even need new skills, like do you need knife skills or like learn how to do some stuff that maybe you didn't know how to do before? After you make the meal, you have a bunch of dishes that need to be cleaned, so now you need to develop like a cleaning habit of washing those. So there's actually like six or seven things that are all separate habits. So I would say you can try to scale this down-

Mel Robbins 54:03 Okay.

James Clear 54:03 ... and start easy on yourself, and maybe, you know, for like let's take doing the dishes for example, maybe for the first week, you just eat off of paper plates. And no, it's not super sustainable and it's not the thing that you want to do forever, but you're trying to take one element out of the equation so that you make it easier for yourself to do it. Um, another example that I thought was interesting, I talked to one woman who she took this idea of, we talked about it earlier, of what would this look like if it was fun?

Mel Robbins 54:27 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 54:27 So she wanted to start eating healthier and bring her, her lunch into work each day, but she realized the ide- making a salad didn't sound that fun to her.

Mel Robbins 54:35 Yeah.

James Clear 54:35 And so she came up with this phrase that she called a party in a bowl...And so, she would make a salad, but she would do, like, all kinds of wild things at the start, like she would chop up Snickers bars and throw them in, or she would, like, crumble potato chips on top or whatever. She just wanted it to feel like a party in a bowl. And she did that for the first, like, two weeks or month. And then, after a month of bringing her lunch in, she was like, "Okay, now I'm actually making it every morning." Um, then she was like, "How can I make this healthier? Um, how can I, you know, improve the quality of this?" And so-

Mel Robbins 55:04 I- I love, by the way, the potato chips on the salad.

James Clear 55:07 Yeah, sounds great.

Mel Robbins 55:07 I think it- that sounds fantastic.

James Clear 55:09 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 55:09 What a great idea.

James Clear 55:10 It's-

Mel Robbins 55:10 A little crunch.

James Clear 55:11 Right.

Mel Robbins 55:11 A little salt.

James Clear 55:11 Texture.

Mel Robbins 55:12 Yes.

James Clear 55:12 Seems good. Um, but you know, how do you make it fun? How do you increase the odds that you master the art of showing up?

Mel Robbins 55:19 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 55:19 That's kind of, that's the, like, first hurdle to clear.

Mel Robbins 55:22 Yeah, and what I also love is that you're identifying for us the fact that we trip over ourselves because we make the results that we want either too big or too vague-

James Clear 55:34 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 55:34 ... that we underestimate the complexity of the amount of change we're asking ourselves to make.

James Clear 55:38 If you start with perfection as the bar, it becomes really hard to get started.

Mel Robbins 55:42 How do you think, or what have some of your readers said about the systems and habits related to cutting back on something like drinking or vaping or one of those things?

James Clear 55:50 Yes. Let's talk a little bit about breaking bad habits. There's kind of, there's- if- if you wanna break a bad habit-

Mel Robbins 55:54 Yes.

James Clear 55:55 ... there are three different things you could do.

Mel Robbins 55:56 Okay.

James Clear 55:56 So, first thing is you could eliminate it entirely, so cut it out cold turkey, right? Second way to break a bad habit is you could reduce it. So you don't necessarily stop it, you just reduce it to your desired degree. I would say m- a lot of people probably feel this way about their phones.

Mel Robbins 56:10 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 56:10 Uh, "It's not that I never wanna use my phone, I just wanna use it a little bit less or scroll a little bit less," or whatever.

Mel Robbins 56:14 Yes.

James Clear 56:15 Um, and then the third category is you could replace it. So you can eliminate, you can reduce, or you can replace. Those are really your three options, if you wanna break a bad habit. And if you replace it, then you're substituting a new habit in its place. Um, hopefully, one that's more healthy or more productive. Um, let me kind of answer these in reverse order, all right? So, replace it. Habits an- we talked a little bit early on about some ways to define a habit. Here's another way to define it. A habit is a solution to a recurring problem in your environment, right? So it's a solution to a recurring problem that you face. Let's say, for example, you come home from work and it's 5:30 and you're feeling s- exhausted and tired from a long day, right? That is a recurring problem that is gonna happen throughout the weeks and months that your brain has to figure out how to solve. And for one person, maybe they solve it by scrolling on Instagram for 30 minutes.

Mel Robbins 57:04 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 57:05 For another person, the way that they solve it is maybe they smoke a cigarette. For a third person, maybe the way they solve it is they go for a run. And you can see that some of these solutions are healthier than others-

Mel Robbins 57:14 Yeah.

James Clear 57:15 ... but they're all sa- solving the same root problem, which is, "I feel stressed and exhausted and tired after a long day, and I wanna find a way to reset and kind of change my energy." Um, and early in your life, I think particularly in your 20s, you may have this realization where the solutions that you have to the problems that you face are kind of things that you inherited or you picked up from your parents. Uh, you know, what are the odds that the first way that you learn to solve this problem is the best way? Uh, mathematically speaking, it's very unlikely that the way that your current solutions to the problems that you face are the best solutions.

Mel Robbins 57:50 So let me just give you an example. So if you, uh, grew up in a household where you saw mom or dad come home from a long day at work and they poured themselves a glass of wine as a way to unwind, turn off their brain-

James Clear 58:01 Right.

Mel Robbins 58:01 ... step into the evening, if you inherited that habit as the way you solve the problem of, "I've had a long day at work, I'm totally stressed, I want a quick way to de-stress," and the habit is pour a glass of wine or pour a drink, that's an example of the type of thing you're talking about.

James Clear 58:20 Yeah. And I think the first step is not to judge yourself for it or to feel guilty about it. You don't- you don't need to feel bad about it. It's just- it's almost like, sometimes I try to look at my habits almost like I'm going to the zoo. You know how you, like, go and look at an animal, you're like, "Oh, how interesting that they would do that"?

Mel Robbins 58:33 (laughs)

James Clear 58:33 You know, like, "Oh, oh, isn't that silly that they behave in that way?" Like, you kind of look at yourself with that lens. You're like, "Oh, okay, interesting that I'm doing this."

Mel Robbins 58:40 Yeah.

James Clear 58:40 Um, and you just wanna see things clearly. And then once you see how you're actually behaving, well then, there are adjustments that you can make.

Mel Robbins 58:47 Yeah.

James Clear 58:47 And I think at that point, you realize, "All right, it's not my fault necessarily that I'm doing these things or that I learned this way to do it, but now it is my responsibility-"

Mel Robbins 58:57 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 58:57 "... to make the change." The next level is you say, "All right, I'm gonna try to reduce the amount of time that I do this." One way that I try to practice this, so I have a home office, and I have this little rule where I try to keep my phone in another room until lunch each day. Um, usually it ends up being, like, 9:00 to 11:00, 9:00 to noon, something like that. And I can't do it all the time, but I can do it maybe 70% of the time. And whenever I do it, I think it's interesting, 'cause it's like, the phone is just down the hallway, it's only 30 seconds away, but I never go get it. And so I'm like, "Did I want it or not?" You know? On the one hand, I wanted it so bad that when it was next to me I would check it every three minutes. And on the other hand, I never wanted it badly enough that I would be willing to work 30 seconds and go down the hall and get it. And a lot of your habits are like that. They will curtail themselves to the desired degree if you just introduce a little bit of distance or a little bit of friction. The more that, um, you increase friction between you and the behavior, the more likely it is to reduce itself.

Mel Robbins 59:55 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 59:56 So, there are a lot of environmental changes that could potentially work there.

Mel Robbins 59:59 Talk to us about the environment and the role that environment plays in terms of sticking to habits.

James Clear 1:00:08 There's a chapter in Atomic Habits that's called The Secret to Self-Control.

Mel Robbins 1:00:12 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 1:00:12 And there's a story that w- many of us tell ourselves, which is, "Oh, you know, if I was just more disciplined-"

Mel Robbins 1:00:17 Yes.

James Clear 1:00:17 "... if I just had more self-control, then I would be able to do these things."

Mel Robbins 1:00:20 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 1:00:21 But the big takeaway from the research in that chapter, the surprising insight, is that when you look at people who exhibit high levels of self-control, the common pattern across them is not that they have higher discipline than the average person. The common pattern is that they are in situations where they're tempted less frequently.

Mel Robbins 1:00:39 Tempted. Tempted less frequently, okay.

James Clear 1:00:41 ... so that tempted less frequently. Fewer temptations is the single biggest driver of exhibiting high self-control. And so, the, the lesson is, you don't need to try to be more disciplined. You don't need to wish that you were a person with more willpower. You need to s- take a little bit of time to design an environment where you're not tempted as frequently. So, that could mean simple things, like not having chips in the house, or not having cigarettes in the house, or things like that. Um, it can mean more complicated things, like looking at your relationships and saying, "Who are the people that have the behaviors that I wanna have? You know, what, what are the common habits of my friend group or my peer group?" And that's not necessarily saying I never see these people again-

Mel Robbins 1:01:18 Yep.

James Clear 1:01:18 ... but maybe I only see them in pockets, or you know, or in certain situations. And then other people, I'm trying to expose myself to more and hang out with more. And, um, so those are all ways that you can start to think about, where are the temptations in my life? Or where am I having to... Where do I need to go against the grain of the situation to have the habits that I want to have? And where am I working with the gradient of the situation?

Mel Robbins 1:01:42 And working with, because it's actually taking me in the direction of the kind of person I want to become. And working against is, you recognize you're in an environment that is taking you away from the kind of person you want to become. Let's stay for a second on people. What are the systems or changes or ways that, that you think about being surrounded by people-

James Clear 1:02:08 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:02:09 ... that are supporting who you want to become?

James Clear 1:02:12 It's a huge driver of our habits. There, there's a chapter in Atomic Habits, um, about the influence of friends and family on our behaviors.

Mel Robbins 1:02:19 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 1:02:19 And I think if I could write it again, I would even expand it, because it's, it's even bigger than I think I realized. So, humans are very social creatures. We, we all have a deep desire to bond and connect, to, to be part of something. And if people have to choose between, you know, "I have habits that I don't really love, but I fit in, I belong, I'm part of something, I'm supported," or, "I have the habits that I want to have, but I'm cast out, I'm ostracized, I'm criticized," a lot of the time, the desire to belong will overpower the desire to improve. And so as best as possible, you need to get those two things aligned. Um, and I think the way to do it is you want to join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. Because if your desired behavior is normal, as you make friendships and build relationships in that group, you're gonna soak up so many big and little habits from the people that are part of that group. We all belong to multiple groups or multiple tribes. Some of them are large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be French. Some of them are small, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street, or a member of the local CrossFit gym, or a volunteer at the elementary school. But all of those groups, large and small, have a set of expectations for how you act. You know, like take the neighbor on the street example. If I walk outside and look at my neighbor's house and they're mowing the lawn, I might think, "Oh, I need to cut the grass too." And you might stick to that habit for 5 years or 10 years, h- however long you live in the house. Like, we wish we had that level of consistency with our other habits. And why do you do it? Partially you do it because it feels good to have a clean lawn, but mostly you do it because you don't want to be the sloppy one who's, like, ruining how the neighborhood looks.

Mel Robbins 1:04:02 Yeah.

James Clear 1:04:02 So, you want to join groups where your desired habits align with the expectations of the group so that you don't have to run against that friction. One of the best things that I ever did in my entrepreneurial career... So I have no authors in my family, no entrepreneurs in my family. But I, um, looked around and I said, "Who are some other people that are doing the thing that I want to do?"

Mel Robbins 1:04:22 Mm.

James Clear 1:04:22 You know, they're like two or three years ahead of me.

Mel Robbins 1:04:24 Yep.

James Clear 1:04:24 This was like maybe 10 years ago. And I started hosting these retreats where I would get other authors together, six or eight people, and I'd say, "Let's just split the cost of an Airbnb, get together for like two days, and we'll talk about how to build an audience and how to write a book and how to launch a book." Um, so anyway, the point being, that requires a little bit of courage. You know, like I, I reached out to people. I was always worried that I was gonna look like a dummy and, you know, be like, "You want to go hang out for two days?" And everybody would be like, "No." You know? But, um, but everybody says yes, because they're waiting for the same thing, which is people want like-minded people to get together. They're waiting for somebody to gather people together.

Mel Robbins 1:04:59 Mm.

James Clear 1:04:59 So, um, sometimes the spaces are ready for you. Sometimes it requires a little bit of courage to create it. But the outcome is the same, which is you're trying to put yourself in a room with people who have your desired behaviors.

Mel Robbins 1:05:10 James, what are the four stages of building habits?

James Clear 1:05:13 Well, all habits go through this kind of four-step loop here. I can draw it out.

Mel Robbins 1:05:17 Great. So he's grabbing a quick whiteboard, if you're listening.

James Clear 1:05:20 So you have these four stages, al- almost like a, a quadrant, but-

Mel Robbins 1:05:23 Yeah.

James Clear 1:05:24 ... you, you start, and the beginning of it is there's some kind of cue. Okay? So I'll just put a C there for cue.

Mel Robbins 1:05:29 Okay.

James Clear 1:05:29 Right? So you have the cue, and that leads to a craving, which then drives a response, and then ultimately you get a reward. And so you kind of go around the loop like this, right?

Mel Robbins 1:05:40 Cue-

James Clear 1:05:41 Cue, craving, response, reward.

Mel Robbins 1:05:42 Craving, response, reward.

James Clear 1:05:42 Cue, craving, response, reward.

Mel Robbins 1:05:43 Okay.

James Clear 1:05:44 And it's true for little things, like let's say that you, um, walk into a room. The room is dark. And y- the cue is, "Oh, the room's dark, I want to be able to see." The craving is, "I want to be able to see." The response is, "I flip the light switch," and then the reward is, "Oh, now the lights are on, I can see." Um, but it's true for other stuff too. Like the cue might be, um, you're driving down the road and you hear an ambulance come up from behind you. The siren is an auditory cue.

Mel Robbins 1:06:09 Okay.

James Clear 1:06:09 Or your phone buzzes in your pocket. That's a physical cue that starts the habit of checking your phone. Or, um, you see a plate of cookies on the counter in the kitchen. That's a visual cue that starts the habit of you needing a cookie. So you have the cue that leads to the craving. Um, you hear the sa- the siren, uh, from the ambulance. "Oh, now I need to pull to the side of the road." Or-

Mel Robbins 1:06:28 Oh, and the craving is just the impulse to do something.

James Clear 1:06:30 The desire.

Mel Robbins 1:06:31 Got it. Okay.

James Clear 1:06:31 The mo- the desire to do something. So, cue, craving, response, reward. Um-

Mel Robbins 1:06:37 And you know what's interesting is, now I'm understanding as you're explaining a habit...... is that you're not even really thinking about those things. They're just all kind of sandwiched together-

James Clear 1:06:45 Right.

Mel Robbins 1:06:45 ... in that loop you just drew.

James Clear 1:06:47 It can happen almost instantaneously, like, all inside of a whole second, you know? Like, it's ... But it, it, it's very rapid, and it's, um ... Once a habit is established, it's almost entirely non-conscious.

Mel Robbins 1:06:57 How does that connect to the four laws that you created around behavior change?

James Clear 1:07:02 So we have this scientific backbone, these four stages: cue, craving, response, reward. And we know that our behaviors are going through that cycle each day. And what I care about is, how do I operationalize that?

Mel Robbins 1:07:13 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 1:07:13 How do I translate this into something actionable for daily life and work? And so that's why I came up with what I call the Four Laws of Behavior Change.

Mel Robbins 1:07:20 All right. Well, let's go into the four laws.

James Clear 1:07:22 So the first law is to make it obvious. You want the cues of your habits to be obvious, available, visible, easy to see. The easier it is for a habit to be noticed and for it to get your attention, the more likely you are to act on it. The second law is to make it attractive. So this comes back to that question we asked earlier about, "What would this look like if it was fun?"

Mel Robbins 1:07:42 Yeah.

James Clear 1:07:43 The more fun, the more engaging, the more, um, motivating and, or enticing a habit is, the more likely you are to follow through on it. Right? So, make it attractive. The third law is to make it easy. The easier, more convenient, frictionless, simple a habit is, the more likely it is to be performed. And the fourth and final law is to make it satisfying. So the more satisfying or enjoyable a habit is, the more rewarding or pleasurable it is, the more likely you are to feel compelled to do it. The first three laws: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy; those three are about priming you to get started. They're about making it easy to get into the habit this time. The fourth law, make it satisfying, that, like, closes the feedback loop. The behavior's already happened at that point, but the reward is important because it helps you feel good.

Mel Robbins 1:08:32 Mm.

James Clear 1:08:32 And that gets you to show up again the next time. Make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying. If you're trying to build a new habit-

Mel Robbins 1:08:40 Yes.

James Clear 1:08:40 ... if, if you're sitting there and you're thinking, you know, "I have this habit that I wanna do but I keep procrastinating on it-"

Mel Robbins 1:08:45 Let, let's take, let's take exercising, since that's the number one thing people wanna do.

James Clear 1:08:50 "I wish I could get to the gym, but I just haven't been doing that," you can just go through these four laws and ask yourself, "How can I make the habit more obvious? How can I make it more attractive? How can I make it easier? How can I make it more satisfying?" And the answers to those four questions will reveal different steps that you can take. They're naturally gonna generate answers for things that you could do. They're kinda like levers, and when the levers are in the right positions, building habits is easier, and when they're in the wrong positions, building habits is harder.

Mel Robbins 1:09:19 Um, I wanna see if this example maps to those four steps, and it's related to making exercise stick. So making it obvious, one of the things that I did that made a difference is laying my clothes out the night before (laughs) -

James Clear 1:09:36 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:09:36 ... so that when I wake up in the morning, I see the clothes, and that's the cue.

James Clear 1:09:41 Yep.

Mel Robbins 1:09:42 "Uh-oh, I said I would exercise today." I make it attractive by saying I'm gonna go somewhere outside my house, like to a yoga studio or something. Right?

James Clear 1:09:52 I think that's what you did earlier. What ... Didn't you say you didn't like working out on your own, but you do like a class?

Mel Robbins 1:09:58 Yes.

James Clear 1:09:58 So it's, it's choosing-

Mel Robbins 1:09:59 Yes.

James Clear 1:09:59 ... a version of that habit-

Mel Robbins 1:10:00 Yes.

James Clear 1:10:00 ... that is fun and attractive to you.

Mel Robbins 1:10:02 Yes.

James Clear 1:10:02 A class is more attractive.

Mel Robbins 1:10:03 And then, the third one is, I picked it the night before, so now it's easy to know. I don't have to stop and think. I don't have to look at a schedule. I don't have to fit it in 'cause I made it easy because I picked it the night before. And satisfying, there's a coffee shop next door that makes a great iced latte-

James Clear 1:10:19 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:10:19 ... and I have it when I'm done.

James Clear 1:10:23 That's when, that's your reward for when you get done.

Mel Robbins 1:10:25 Yes.

James Clear 1:10:25 So, yeah, I think it definitely maps, and you can imagine lots of versions of this. I do think the obvious piece is often about knowing exactly when you're gonna go or setting your clothes out the night before-

Mel Robbins 1:10:36 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

James Clear 1:10:36 ... or having ... You know, there's some kinda obvious element in your environment there. The attractive piece is usually choosing a version of exercise that you're really excited about. The easy piece, I think, can often be about scaling it down rather than-

Mel Robbins 1:10:47 Oh, so make it 10 minutes.

James Clear 1:10:48 Yeah. Rather ... Yeah, rather-

Mel Robbins 1:10:48 Make it 10 push-ups instead of the other one.

James Clear 1:10:50 Exactly. Rather than an hour, it can be for 10 minutes or whatever. It's, you know, scaling down the, the scope of it. And if you can do more, great. Go ahead and do more, but your, what you consider a success is the smaller version. Um, and then the reward, in the beginning, a lot of the time I think it looks like what you just described, which is it's the latte or it's the, you know, whatever the thing is that, that you want.

Mel Robbins 1:11:09 Yeah. I actually crave it-

James Clear 1:11:11 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:11:11 ... as I'm driving-

James Clear 1:11:12 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:11:12 ... to the yoga studio. I'm not thinking about getting on the mat. I'm like, "Ooh, I get a latte after."

James Clear 1:11:16 Yeah. Sure, which is great. Um, in the long run, sometimes it takes a decade or more, it can become the reinforcement of the identity that you wanna have. So for me, I, (sighs) I work out now, uh, uh, because I ... Yeah, I like the results everybody else wants, right? Like, you wanna look good and stay fit and be able-

Mel Robbins 1:11:33 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 1:11:33 ... to move when you're 70 and, you know, all that stuff. Um, but I also do it because I like who I am when I'm doing it.

Mel Robbins 1:11:41 Mm.

James Clear 1:11:41 Steven Pressfield has this concept where he says ... Uh, he's talking about writing, but he says, in the beginning, you start creating, and you feel kinda like an imposter. You sit down to write. It's kinda hard. It's difficult. You don't really feel like you fit. Um, but a wolf has its territory, and the way that it becomes its territory is by walking it, by showing up every day-

Mel Robbins 1:12:02 Huh.

James Clear 1:12:02 ... by being there. And it's not its territory the first day, but eventually, after it's been there for a while, it starts to feel like home. And all of your habits are kinda like that too. You know, the first day you go to the gym, you feel kinda stupid and foolish. You're like, "Are people, you know, looking at me? Am I doing this the wrong way?" You feel out of place. You go for six months or a year, you start to get a little bit more comfortable. Maybe it still doesn't feel like home yet. You turn around two or three or five years later, and you're like, "This is just part of what I do. This is my territory now." And the only way you develop that level of comfort is by being willing to go through a little bit of discomfort early on. You know, like, sometimes I try to remind myself, "Am I willing to look foolish for five minutes? Or am I willing to be uncomfortable for five minutes?" That's really all you're talking about. My ... So I-... I've been working with a trainer recently, and he told me this story. He- he was teaching a class in the morning, and it was a bad weather day. There was l- it was just rainy and really gross. It was kinda cold and just gray.

Mel Robbins 1:12:57 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 1:12:57 It was just kinda nasty. And he was supposed to have eight people in his class, and he showed up and only two were there. And I- we were talking about it, I- I think that's kinda interesting, you know, because the workout's indoors, right? The workout, once you get to the gym, the workout's the same as it always is. Um, it's no different as, as when it's sunny and the sky is blue.

Mel Robbins 1:13:17 (laughs) So true.

James Clear 1:13:18 Um, but what you really notice there is just how little bit of an edge you need to gain advantage, um, or to, to have a different outcome than most people. Six of those eight people didn't show up, not because of the workout, the workout's the same as always, it's because they didn't wanna be uncomfortable for, like, five or 10 minutes, getting ready, getting through the rain, getting into the car. It was just kinda gross enough that it, n- let them ignore it.

Mel Robbins 1:13:42 Yeah.

James Clear 1:13:42 Um, and so in a lot of ways, what this all boils down to is getting started.

Mel Robbins 1:13:50 Yeah.

James Clear 1:13:50 It's being, are you willing to get started? Are you willing to be uncomfortable for three minutes? And if you can get over that hump, then the rest of it kind of cascades naturally.

Mel Robbins 1:14:01 You write about the two-minute rule. What is that?

James Clear 1:14:03 It's a really easy way to, um, force yourself to get started. I hope that you find all the ideas interesting and useful that we talk about today, but if you can only remember one thing, the two-minute rule's a good thing to remember. And I say that because it can be applied to pretty much any habit. So you take whatever habit you're trying to build and you scale it down to something that takes two minutes or less to do.

Mel Robbins 1:14:24 Ah.

James Clear 1:14:25 So...

Mel Robbins 1:14:27 Meditation.

James Clear 1:14:28 Yeah. Meditate, um, meditate for 20 minutes because- becomes meditate for one minute. Uh, read 30 books a year becomes read one page. Do yoga four days a week becomes take out my yoga mat. And sometimes when I tell people this, they resist it a little bit. They're like, "Okay, buddy," (laughs) you know? "I know the real goal isn't just to take my yoga mat out. I know I'm actually trying to do the workout," you know?

Mel Robbins 1:14:49 Yeah.

James Clear 1:14:49 So you're like, "Okay. If I know it's a trick, um, why would I fall for it?" basically. But there's this great quote from Ed Latimer where he says, "The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door." And man, there are a lot of things in life that are like that, you know? The hardest action is the first movement, the most difficult step is the first one. And once getting, when you're in the work, once you've already started, it's often easier to keep going, um, it's starting the work that is the hard part. All the friction's at the beginning. The- there's this concept in physics, coefficient of friction, the friction is highest when you're not moving. It's once you're moving that things start to go a little bit easier. Momentum works in both ways, you know? Like if you sit on the couch and you ruminate on, you know, how things aren't going well in your life, you feel kinda lethargic, like, it's easy to be low energy and for things to not go well right then. But you start moving a little bit, even if it's just stretched on the floor for five minutes, now you start to move forward and things go, you know, go a little bit faster.

Mel Robbins 1:15:42 You know, speaking of friction, there's a concept that is floating around called habit stacking. What is that?

James Clear 1:15:51 Habit stacking, I think habit stacking's a great, um, approach for building habits. There's a concept that comes from B.G. Fogg, he's a professor at Stanford, and he had a great insight, which is, habits tend to be easier to build or stick to if they're tied to a behavior that you're already doing. So we all have habits that we already do, okay? Like maybe you already make a cup of coffee every morning-

Mel Robbins 1:16:17 Yep.

James Clear 1:16:18 ... and your new habit that you wanna build is you wanna start meditating. So you can stack that new habit on top of the old one. So your habit stack could be something like, "After I make my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds." And then, you know, you can start to chain this together. You could, like, create multiples, so you could say, "After I make my cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds. After I meditate for 60 seconds, I will write my to-do list for the day. After I write my to-do list for the day, I will prioritize them and start working on the first one," or whatever. And now you've got a little stack, a little package of behaviors that happens the same way every time, and you do it each morning. And, uh, t- from talking with a lot of readers, people like to use these at certain moments throughout their day. They're, people like having stacks in the morning. I have a lot of readers who they'll come up with one for what they do when they get into the office.

Mel Robbins 1:17:04 Ah.

James Clear 1:17:04 They'll be like, "I go into the office, I hang up my jacket, I set my purse on the desk, I take my water bottle and I fill it up, and then I sit down and I answer the first email. And I always do it in the same order, and that, like, helps me get into the day and I just know exactly what I'm gonna do when I get there." Um, sometimes you'll see people have one, like a power down routine at the end-

Mel Robbins 1:17:21 Ah.

James Clear 1:17:21 ... of the day, uh, to kinda help them, you know, wrap the day up and get ready for bed and whatever. So you can use it anywhere. Um, I have some readers who have come up with very creative ones. I had one guy who was (laughs) , he was such a bro and really liked going to the gym, and, um, he was not managing his finances well, and so his new habit stack was, "Whenever I drink a protein shake, I will check my finances."

Mel Robbins 1:17:43 (laughs)

James Clear 1:17:43 Um, and it just, it happened frequently enough that it would force him to check in on his budget and stay more on top of it. Um, so you can do, you can do strange ones like that. You have to be willing to experiment.

Mel Robbins 1:17:55 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 1:17:56 Um, you know, I, Atomic Habits, I've- I've tried to lay everything out that I can, like I wanted it, I- I don't know whether I reached it or not, but my objective when I was writing was, I wanna write the single best book that's ever been written about habits. But even so, even if in some magical world I achieved that outcome, you as an individual still have to be willing to experiment. Because what matters is, does it work for your life? You know? And so you gotta, maybe you need to rearrange the habit stack, maybe you need to change when you're inserting things. You know, for one person, putting the, uh, meditating right after a cup of coffee makes a lot of sense. If you have three toddlers and you're trying to get pants on your four-year-old, that's not a good time to meditate, you know?

Mel Robbins 1:18:34 (laughs)

James Clear 1:18:34 So you need to find the right time of day to insert, um, your habits and behaviors.

Mel Robbins 1:18:39 (laughs)

James Clear 1:18:39 And that requires a little bit of experimentation.

Mel Robbins 1:18:41 So for somebody who has a, a goal that's really big, whether it's, "I wanna write, uh, a novel. I wanna start a business. I wanna take on a big project," and they're clear about that, what would you recommend?... is the one habit to build first, since that's such a big goal out there?

James Clear 1:19:04 Interestingly, I would s- I, so I'd say there's probably two things to focus on first. The first is, you probably need a habit of reflection and review.

Mel Robbins 1:19:12 What does that mean?

James Clear 1:19:12 Well, what are the odds that if you keep your head down and you work really hard, that you're gonna be working on the har- the highest and best thing? It's just so unlikely that out of all the things that you could be doing, that you're working on the best thing right now. And so, it, it's this interesting tension because on the one hand, having a great work ethic and working hard is really valuable in life, and, um, it does pay off in some sense. Like, you can't get results without working on things. But, it can also become a crutch, where if you... Like, for myself, a lot of the time, I, I know for many years, like, if I had a problem, my solution was, "I'll just work my way out of it." And, uh, that works for a little while, but at some point it breaks. You know, like, you break yourself down. And then also, you can only work so much. Like, you, maybe if you really grinded, you could work 10% harder than you are right now, but you can't work 100% harder or, like, uh, 100X harder.

Mel Robbins 1:20:05 Yeah.

James Clear 1:20:05 It's not possible.

Mel Robbins 1:20:06 Yeah.

James Clear 1:20:06 Um, but you could work on something else that gets you a 100X the result if you're working on the right thing. Um, and so for any project, you know, this hypothetical question that you asked is, "What if I have this big goal? I have a business I wanna launch. I have, you know, a b- an initiative I wanna start. I have, you know, whatever." Um, there's gonna be many ways to do it, and you need to have at least some time to sit and think each week and come back to saying, "Are we doing this the right way?"

Mel Robbins 1:20:32 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 1:20:33 You know, if we... I think if you, if you have two things in life, if you have a bias toward action and you really move fast, and you continually revisit this question of, "What are we really trying to do here? And is this the best way to do it?" If you can do those two things, and you just keep doing them on repeat, you can really get a lot done in life. But, but you need both. Um, and so that, that's the second thing I was gonna mention is, uh, this bias toward action. It's getting started. It's finding some small way to move now. Um, my little saying that I try to remind myself of is, "Don't rush, but don't wait."

Mel Robbins 1:21:05 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 1:21:06 You know, I find that if I am in the mix, if I'm taking action, if I'm working on things, then that's great. I'd need to be patient. I need to let the results accumulate. But if I'm not actually taking action, I'm not being patient, I'm just waiting. And, uh, nothing's gonna happen in that case. So, both thinking big picture, what are we really trying to do here and is this the best way to accomplish it? And then having a bias toward action and moving fast. Those two things work really well together.

Mel Robbins 1:21:34 Amazing advice. You know, one of the things you said at the very beginning is that the secret to winning is knowing how to lose. What do you do and how do you pick yourself back up if you've had a little bit of a good streak and then you don't go to the gym-

James Clear 1:21:49 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:21:49 ... or you don't write, or you start to drink again? Like, those, like, how do you start the engine up again and what's the mistake you see people making?

James Clear 1:21:58 So, I try to keep this little mantra in mind, which is, "Never miss twice." And so, you know, maybe I show up and I, you know, do the right thing. I've been writing for six days in a row, and then the seventh day I miss. Well, you know, I wish I hadn't missed, but that's okay. Let me pour all my energy into getting back on track the next day. And what you realize is that at the end of the year, those mistakes are just like a little blip on the radar. But that's only true if you never miss twice. It's only true if you get back on track quickly. And I think you see this in many domains, which is the top performers have this interesting quality. They're all human, they all make mistakes like everybody else, but the thing that they share is they tend to get back on track quickly.

Mel Robbins 1:22:40 Mm-hmm.

James Clear 1:22:40 And if the reclaiming of a habit is fast, the breaking of it doesn't matter that much. But it's, it's all about getting back on track that matters. So it's, again, it's this concept of bouncing back from a loss that, um, that is really critical.

Mel Robbins 1:22:53 James Clear, what are your parting words?

James Clear 1:22:55 No matter what the habit is that you're trying to build, it's easy to talk yourself out of it because you know that the results aren't gonna be good right away. But, like, your favorite athlete's first workout was just as bad as yours. You know, your favorite chef's first meal was just as bad as yours. Your favorite writer's first sentence was just as bad as yours. You need to keep going. You need to do the early low-stakes stuff to prepare for the high-stakes stuff, to, to build the capacity and the ability to do the other things. And so, don't overlook the small moments that you have each day. You know, every day has an opportunity built into it. You know, whatever, whatever age you are right now, your future self would love to be in. When you're 70, you would give anything to go back and be 60 again and have the opportunity of those next 10 years. And you should use that as best as you can. And whether that's a small moment, like a little dance recital or some stupid little speech that you're gonna give to your friends, or whatever it is, try to do it well. You know, whatever thing that you have in front of you, try to do it well. If you do it well, if you take advantage of the moment that you have, you earn the right to do more things, you, um, prove to yourself that you have high standards and that you take advantage of the opportunities that are in front of you, and you put yourself in a better position to gain more opportunities. We all have varying degrees of luck or circumstances or misfortune or whatever that come to us in life. A lot of things that we ask for and a lot of things that we don't ask for, but all you can do is try to use the moments that you have to the best of your ability. And the better you do that, the better position you are to, not only build good habits, but have a good life.

Mel Robbins 1:24:34 James Clear, I, I don't even have words. I am so proud of you. I am so grateful for the work that you do.

James Clear 1:24:44 Thank you so much, Mel. I appreciate it. It's great to have you as a fan and as a supporter of the work. And, um, yeah, I hope the audience loves it too.

Mel Robbins 1:24:49 I'm sure they will. And I also wanna thank you for finding time and making time to listen to this episode in particular, and to share it with people that you care about. The amount of takeaways, the amount of just advice and tools that James just gave you, I want you to ask that question, "Who do I wanna become?" And then I want you to follow every single thing he told you, because it will work. I'm gonna keep listening to this. I'm gonna share this with all three of my adult kids and our entire team. This is one of the best episodes we ever done. So, I'm absolutely thrilled that you're here. And in case no one else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you as your friend, that I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to create a better life because James Clear just gave you the roadmap-

James Clear 1:25:37 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 1:25:37 ... for how you do it. So, go do it, and I'll be waiting to welcome you in to the very next episode the moment you hit play. I'll see you there. (instrumental music plays) And thank you for watching all the way to the end here on YouTube. I love that. I love that. And thank you, by the way, for hitting subscribe. If it's lit up, it means you're not subscribed. Just take a second, hit that. It's free. It's a way that you can say, "Hey, thanks Mel. Thanks for showing up here and doing your best to support me in creating a better life." And that way, by the way, if you're a subscriber, you're not gonna miss a thing. Okay. We just dug into habits. So, you're probably thinking, "Mel, what should I watch next?" Oh, you're gonna love this one, and I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play.