Tim FerrissJames Clear, Atomic Habits — Strategies for Mastering Habits
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
140 min read · 27,763 words- 0:00 – 1:55
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- TFTim Ferriss
[upbeat music] Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today is James Clear. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram, @JamesClear. James is a writer and speaker focused on habits and continuous improvement. He is the author of the number one New York Times mega bestseller, I'm adding the mega, Atomic Habits, which covers easy and proven ways to build good habits and break bad ones. The book has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 50 languages. On average, Atomic Habits has sold one copy every 15 seconds since it was published, so by the time I finish reading this intro, two or three copies will have been sold. James is also the creator of the 3-2-1 Newsletter. That's 3 hyphen 2 hyphen 1 Newsletter, which is one of the most popular email newsletters in the world and has more than 2 million subscribers. Each issue contains three short ideas from James, two quotes from other people, and one question to consider that week. We're gonna talk a lot about questions, in fact, shortly with James. You can sign up for free at JamesClear.com. He is a regular speaker at Fortune 500 companies, and his work is used by players and coaches in the NFL, NBA, and MLB. In college, he was an Academic All-American baseball player, and he is an avid weightlifter. For those who cannot see the video, we seem to go to the same stylist. We've got the same handsome bald look-
- JCJames Clear
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... and the same long-sleeve dark shirt look. [laughs] And you can find James at JamesClear.com and, as mentioned, on Twitter and Instagram, @JamesClear. James, it is nice to see you.
- JCJames Clear
Hey, great to talk to you. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
- 1:55 – 8:00
Annual reviews.
- TFTim Ferriss
Absolutely. I'm thrilled to be having this conversation, and I thought we would start with something that's also on my mind, but the topic of annual reviews comes up for some people once a year, and we are now winding down on this year, about to head into the new year. Could you please describe your annual reviews and perhaps just walk us through the process and also describe or explain why, for at least a period of time, you published all of these publicly? You can tackle that in any order you like.
- JCJames Clear
So, you know, it's nice to have a process for a reflection review. I actually think... You know, I'm sure we'll talk a lot about habits in this conversation, and one of the kind of meta habits that's really helpful is some kind of habit of reflection review because it allows you to course correct. Nobody sets out to get off course or to make a mistake or to do something that goes against their values, but we just kind of have this natural drift in life, and as time goes on, we kind of find ourselves in situations where maybe we're not doing the optimal thing anymore, and an annual review is a chance to check in. I also think it's helpful to have shorter cycles of review, so, like, on Fridays, I usually do some kind of short little business review where I look at revenue and expenses and new email subscribers and stuff like that. But at the end of each year, I like to ask myself some big questions. I'm glad you started here because I think that questions can be very useful. If you ask better questions, you can get better answers. But also, questions are very resilient. They're very adaptable to the context, and that's something that's different and perhaps a little bit better than advice. You know, advice is actually kind of brittle and context dependent. Somebody can have a really good plan, a really good piece of advice to give you, but if it doesn't fit your context, then it's actually not great advice for your particular situation, whereas questions are very adaptable. So I think maybe what I should do is just go through some of the questions that I like to ask myself for my annual review and, and throughout the, the rest of the year. So I guess we could say this first category is just kind of like questions that help improve self-awareness or help kind of bring me back to center. So, like, the first thing... and I think actually this might be a question from Derek Sivers or some version of it from him, which is, what am I optimizing for? You know, sometimes people optimize for money, sometimes they optimize for free time, sometimes they optimize for creative output or being able to choose the projects they work on, all kinds of stuff. But that answer probably changes over time. What I'm optimizing for today is different than what I was optimizing for five years ago or 10 years ago, so I think it's a helpful question to keep revisiting. And you need to decide what it is for you. Otherwise, it's easy to kind of slide into this status signaling or just kind of like doing the things that you feel like you're encouraged to do by society or by your friends or peers or your parents or whatever. So what am I optimizing for? Another way of phrasing that is maybe, like, what's the real objective here? Like, what am I actually trying to achieve? So some version of that question. I also like, does this activity fill me with energy or drain me of energy? You can tell a lot just by whether it, like, fills up your cup or not. And ideally, you'll be spending more time in the next year on things that fill you with energy and less time on things that drain you of energy. Speaking of the things that drain you, maybe, like, a sub-question that I like to keep in mind is, does the amount of attention I'm giving this match its true importance? And man, there are so many years when I find that I'm giving something a lot of attention that actually is not that important.
- TFTim Ferriss
Are you asking these questions as you're going through the calendar of your past year? In what set of circumstances or in what context are you asking this question, or are these just broadly speaking questions that you're applying more or less all the time for self-awareness in different types of cycles?
- JCJames Clear
I don't think you need to wait and only do it once a year.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- JCJames Clear
But when I am asking these questions for the annual review, I usually am writing, like, maybe a paragraph for each one, and it's almost like a journaling prompt. And I do have things that I check for this process. There's a lot of measurement, so to speak, that happens throughout the year, even if you aren't thinking about it that way. So, for example My calendar measures how many new cities I went to or how many nights I spent away from home. Those are kind of important things.
- TFTim Ferriss
How do you do that? Oh, I see. It measures it, meaning it logs it.
- JCJames Clear
Right. Like, I can see, like, oh, I was in Dallas from Tuesday to Thursday, and so because I know that I was there, then I'm like, "Well, that was two nights or three nights where I wasn't sleeping in my own bed." And so then at the end of the year, I try to figure out, how many nights did I spend away from home? Is that more than I wanna spend? Is it less? You know, like what... how did that fall for the year?
- TFTim Ferriss
Right. Yep. Totally.
- JCJames Clear
I write down my workouts in a, an actual journal, like a pen and paper journal. So I've got all the sets logged. I have how many workouts I did, and then I can look back on the dates. How many workouts did I do for each month? What was the average number of workouts per month? So a lot of that stuff, I'm not thinking about tracking it throughout the year, but it's kind of there for me as I sit down to review the year.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JCJames Clear
Those measurements are there as I'm kinda going through these questions and then trying to figure out, where did I direct my attention? What am I optimizing for? Am I spending my energy on things that fill me up or things that drain me? Another question that I think is helpful is i- if once you answer, what am I optimizing for, you can ask yourself, can my current habits carry me to my desired future? And that's really about figuring out what kind of trajectory you're on. And if they can, then maybe all you need is patience. But if they can't, something needs to change. You know, like, you need to develop or build some new habits. Another question I love, and this is actually at the core of a lot of what I talk about in Atomic Habits, is, how can I create an environment that will naturally bring about my desired change? Rather than trying to, like, fight this and force my way through, rather than trying to grit my teeth and make it happen even if the circumstances aren't ideal, how can I look around and structure my physical environment, my social environment, and the tribes I'm a part of, and my strategy for what I'm trying to achieve so that it's almost natural that I'm moving in that direction? So I have a bunch of questions. I got, like, 20 that I go through, but those are just three or four that, you know, kinda come to mind.
- 8:00 – 12:24
Habitual accountability.
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, we may come back to the remainder of the list 'cause I am a question junkie. No big surprise there. [laughs] But I wanted to maybe reference the... I shouldn't say the, but one of the key points in the first chapter of Atomic Habits, which is, "You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems," which is a modification of one of my favorite quotes. Wish I could actually speak the original language, but I cannot, alas, from the Greek poet and philosopher Archilochus. "We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training." So to the systems piece, I think about this a lot and have found for myself, and certainly for many people in my audience, that stacking the deck so it is harder to fail goes a lot further than trying to rely on willpower, right? And it's almost difficult for me to imagine precise steps you could take to hone something that is labeled as broadly as willpower. So how can you set up accountability? How can you set up incentives, et cetera? What are some of the systems that you have for yourself for various habits?
- JCJames Clear
So we can pick a couple different habits. Like let's take fitness, for example, and then I'll also do it for, like, writing and business. So for fitness, which I consider to be this, this is kind of one of, like, my core habits. It's one of the ones that I feel like is most important for how I structure my day. But I try to do whatever I can to reduce friction and make it as easy as possible to do it. So the first thing is I give myself permission to reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule. So if my typical workout takes 45 minutes but I only have 15 that day, it's easy to get into this story where you're like, "Ah, I don't have time to do it all. Like, why bother?" But instead, I try to remind myself to reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule, and there have been a lot of days where all I have time for is to go in and do a couple sets of squats, but I'm glad that I did that rather than doing nothing, and it counts for a lot to, like, not throw a zero up for another day. In a sense, in the long run, I almost feel like the bad days matter more than the good days because-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... if you show up-
- TFTim Ferriss
I agree with that
- JCJames Clear
... on the bad days, even if it's less than what you had hoped for, you maintain the habit, and if you maintain the habit, then all you need is time. So it counts for a lot. You also prove to yourself, you know, you can look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the night and be like, "You know what? Circumstances weren't ideal. Situation wasn't perfect, but I still found a way to show up and, you know, like, get some reps in today." So that's the first thing. It's kinda like mindset and approach. Second thing is, and I've gradually increased what I do for this, so I, uh, first it's there's basic stuff like set your workout clothes next to your... Set them out the night before. Have, you know, everything, like, ready to go. Have your water bottle filled up. Stuff like that. But I've gradually kind of reduced the friction even more, and now I used to work out at a gym for, like, 10 years, and so I would do all that kind of stuff. Now, over the last year or two, I built a home gym, and so all I have to do is get down to the basement and I can just work out there, and I'm gradually accumulating more and more equipment. You know, I'm becoming, like, this equipment hoarder. Now I have enough stuff that, like, I don't have any excuses. Like, all I have to do is just walk downstairs and I can be doing that exercise in 15 seconds. So it's really just about reducing friction. Some of that is strategy, too. If you don't have equipment or you don't wanna pay for a gym membership, there are great bodyweight programs or you could just do 10 sprints up and down the sidewalk, and there are, like, almost no excuses if you have the right strategy for reducing friction and just figuring out ways to, to get a decent workout in.
- TFTim Ferriss
I think the reduction of scope that you mentioned is really critical, that if you don't have time for 60, it doesn't mean you have to go to zero. And I'm, I'm guilty of this. This happens to me sometimes, I'm not gonna lie. But I will also just add, if you don't have space for an entire gym, you almost certainly have space for a functional doorstop, AKA kettlebell. You could get one kettlebell Or even build a kettlebell from some basic materials that you can... People can look it up, T-bar kettlebell for swings. And if you can just do one set of swings, I mean, you're gonna hit a lot. And I would love to hear... Well, let's see, a few things, if you don't mind me just-
- JCJames Clear
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... adding my, my commentary.
- 12:24 – 16:57
Systemic scaffolding.
- JCJames Clear
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
So the first is underscoring another thing you said, which is, I don't wanna say it doesn't matter, but it matters much less what happens on the days where you feel like doing the things that you have set out as your habits or, or, uh, goals, behaviors, et cetera. What matters is what happens when you don't wanna do those things, and this is where the systems and the lack of excuses and accountability and so on comes into play. How do you apply this? Well, actually, one more thing, which is the, the exercise piece, I'm glad you brought up first, and many people might think, well, that's fine. That's just exercise. But exercise for me is sort of the cascading upper level of the waterfall, and if you take care of your body, your body takes care of your brain and mood and so many other things. So in a sense, it's the force multiplier category, so I'm glad we spoke about it first. What other types of systems, and I'll sort of put that in air quotes because it could take, I'm sure, a lot of different forms, but what might be examples of systems or scaffolding that you've set up in other areas?
- JCJames Clear
So just a, one quick point on what you just mentioned first. So I think it's worth asking yourself, what habits are upstream from other things that I want to do or other things that set me up-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... for a good day? And what you're kind of describing is that a workout habit, at least for you, and I would say for me, is upstream from a lot of other good things that happen. Like, I get the benefits of the workout, sure, but also I tend to have that post-workout high for an hour or two where I get this good period of concentration. I tend to eat better when I'm training. It's kind of like I don't wanna waste it. It's actually when I'm not training-
- TFTim Ferriss
100%
- JCJames Clear
... that I get lazy and, you know, start eating whatever I want. I tend to sleep better at night because I'm tired from the workout, which means I wake up the next day and I have better energy. And at no point was I trying to actively build better sleep habits or nutrition habits or whatever, but it just kind of came as a natural byproduct of getting that one habit of a good workout in. And it doesn't have to be fitness. You talk to some people, you know, comedians, for example, will talk about how, or athletes will talk about how they have this visualization habit before they step out on the stage, and if they get that in, they kind of recite what a good performance is gonna look like, that helps them perform in the moment. Or CEOs will talk about a meditation habit, and if they get their 15 minutes of meditation in in the morning, that sets them up for the rest of the day being productive. So I think it just comes down to asking yourself, when I'm living a good day, when I'm on, what are some of the key habits that are part of that? And then maybe rather than worrying about everything and trying to hit every little domino along the way, what's the lead domino? What's that first action that's upstream from the other productive things, and can I just pour my energy into making sure I do that today and kind of trust that the momentum will carry me forward? Okay, so your question was, what are some other examples of systems? It can take many different forms. It could be a physical thing that helps you be more productive. So for example, this doesn't work for everybody's job, but it works for mine, and I don't do it every day, but I probably do it 70 to, or 80% of the time, which is I leave my phone in another room until lunch each day. Now, it gives me a chance, it gives me space to just work on my agenda rather than responding to everybody else's agenda. You know? Like, I can actually show up and have a few hours where I can do some creative work. So that's a system, in a sense. It's a physical environment that promotes or benefits the habit that I'm trying to build, which is creative output or writing or whatever. It could be digital things. So for example, each week I write 3-2-1, this weekly newsletter, and there are three short ideas from me, two quotes from other people, and one question in each newsletter, and I have a spreadsheet that has three tabs. One of them is ideas, one of them is quotes, and one of them is questions. And I've got hundreds of ideas that I've generated or quotes that I've run across and read or questions that I've kind of, like, spit balled and then, eh, maybe this could be in a newsletter sometime. And because I have this system, which in this case is just this spreadsheet of raw material, it only takes me an hour or two to write the newsletter because I have a lot to start from. I have good starting material. And so the system of when I read a book and come across a quote that I like, I type it down and put it into the spreadsheet. That's a very simple system, but it makes the process of writing the newsletter each week much easier. So there are many different forms it could take. I mean, it could be almost infinite in its variations, but it's any way that you set up the environment, physical, digital, or social, to make the habit easier and more frictionless.
- 16:57 – 24:09
Capturing good ideas.
- TFTim Ferriss
Let's zoom in on the creative process a little bit, and we're gonna talk about also email lists, building email, because I feel as though what was old is once new again. Always. It's like every few years I have to be like, "Guys, you need [laughs] a way to communicate with your audience that cannot be taken away from you immediately by a platform."
- JCJames Clear
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
I don't know how many times I have to say this.
- JCJames Clear
Email never dies, but everybody talks about how it's dead.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Yeah, it's like the cat came back the very next day. We thought it was a gone, but it wouldn't stay away. I mean, email is not going anywhere anytime immediately, right? So we'll come back to that because it is a vehicle for transmitting some of this creative work as you described. I have read a bit about your use or past use of Asana for capturing ideas. I think this was-
- JCJames Clear
Yep
- TFTim Ferriss
... for Asymmetry at the time, at least in the article I read on every.to. And then I separately read about a 600-page Google Doc that you had put together and were compressing in various ways. Where have you landed with idea capture, maybe web capture? Let's add that in because it may be a separate category.
- JCJames Clear
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
What is your portfolio of tools?
- JCJames Clear
First of all, I don't think the tool matters that much.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JCJames Clear
I think what does matter is crafting great information flows and capturing the good ideas that you come across, and then depending on what you're trying to do, in my case, I'm trying to create books or to write newsletters, using that raw material that you collected to create something great. So I would say-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JCJames Clear
... the big picture game is always the same, which is first I'm trying to craft better information flows. Almost every idea that you have is downstream from what you consume. We don't usually think about it that way, but like when you choose who to follow on Twitter, you're choosing your future thoughts in a sense. You're creating the information flow, what the timeline, what the feed is gonna look like. Or when you choose what book to read or which podcast episode to listen to, you're choosing the thoughts that are gonna arise. Now, you may not necessarily know what they are, but over time you can start to learn which sources of information are higher signal than others. And I almost feel like that is like the main habit to try to build, especially in our current modern society, because information is overflowing and so widely accessible. The person who creates better information flows gets better thoughts.
- TFTim Ferriss
How do you consume? What do you choose?
- JCJames Clear
I've spent kind of an unreasonable amount of time curating my Twitter feed. I think that makes me feel better about spending time on it. I don't-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
... I'm not necessarily saying it's like the best place, but because-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... I have found a really good set of people to follow, I do get-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... useful ideas from Twitter, and it's easy, and I'm probably spending more time on it than I should, so at least now maybe it's a little more valuable. But the single highest thing for me is when I find a book that is relevant to what I'm writing about. If it's relevant to the, the topic, and y- and I mean that in like a more granular fashion. Like let's say for Atomic Habits, for example, I don't mean a book about habits, I mean, hey, I'm writing a chapter on self-control and this book has a story that relates to self-control, or this book has-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JCJames Clear
... you know, a piece of research that relates to that particular chapter. And when I find the right thing, it's hard for me to even get through a page because I'm taking so many notes and it's sparking so many ideas to write about. Like it'll take me an entire morning just to get through like three pages.
- TFTim Ferriss
How do you find the gems that are that dense? I mean, I have my own thoughts on how I approach this, but there are-
- JCJames Clear
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... 100,000 plus books-
- JCJames Clear
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... published a year in the US in English alone, probably, something along those lines. How do you sort of ferret your way through the maze to find some of those books?
- JCJames Clear
First thing is you gotta be willing to quit books fast.
- 24:09 – 27:56
Asana.
- TFTim Ferriss
So you mentioned the tools not mattering so much. Choosing the inputs, we talked about books.
- JCJames Clear
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
For capture, when you're like, "That's good."
- JCJames Clear
I... So you're right
- TFTim Ferriss
That's good. That's good
- JCJames Clear
... I, I do use Asana mostly. It's a very messy process, and Asana's just kind of like a holding ground for it, but I have the app on my phone, and I got it pulled up on my, you know, browser all the time, and so it's always right there. I don't really care what the tool is. Like in this case, this is what I've been using for the last few years. But it just needs to be something that is always present, and as soon as you have an idea, it always goes into one place. You don't have to think about where you're gonna record it, and you don't end up with a random note on your iPhone and another one in an Evernote doc and a third thing in a Google Doc, and, you know, like now it's hard to find the ideas. If you have them all in one place, then it's easier.
- TFTim Ferriss
That's, sounds like the story of my life right now.
- JCJames Clear
Yeah. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] So, which is why I'm very interested in your use of Asana, because Asana, I've used Asana a ton. I still use-
- JCJames Clear
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... Asana for project management, task management, but idea capture wasn't a use case I'd really considered. So would you mind, just for people-
- JCJames Clear
Yep
- TFTim Ferriss
... listening, explaining? I know this is-
- JCJames Clear
So-
- TFTim Ferriss
... gonna seem very-
- JCJames Clear
Well-
- TFTim Ferriss
... like pedestrian, but like how do you do it without stuff getting lost?
- JCJames Clear
Part of this is, again, I'm trying to like simplify things as much as possible, and this is, may- we may talk about this more as we kind of go through the conversation. But I have a really small team. It's me and one employee, and I'm not interested-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JCJames Clear
... in having a large team, and I wanna be as effective and as high leverage as possible, and that means that we need to think really carefully about where we spend our time. And if I always have a bunch of different tools or I'm always switching between different apps, that's just time-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... that's kind of wasted if the job could be done in the same place.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JCJames Clear
And so we use Asana to run the book launch or to run the newsletter calendar or to, you know, like for all the other stuff that we do throughout the day, and so I was like, "Well, I can write it down here just as well as I can write it down somewhere else." And then once it gets categorized, it goes into the appropriate doc for that project. So as an example, let's say I'm reading a book and I come across an idea that's relevant for the newsletter, and it's a quote. So I'll probably label the task or the new thing that I put into Asana, I guess they usually call them tasks, but I label things based on the project it's going to. So I'll just say, "Quote," and then I'll paste the quote in. And it's labeled, and so I'll go through all those quotes or Lindsay, my employee, will go through all those quotes, and we'll put them into the spreadsheet so they're in the right tab. Or let's say the next thing I'm reading, I come across an idea that sparks a thought for me or I'm like, "Oh, that would fit into the next chapter for the book." And so I'll write the idea out, and then I'll label it based on whatever the topic of the book is. So for Atomic Habits, the label might be Habits. And so at the beginning of any idea I come across that would fit for the book, I'll put Habits, and then a lot of the time I'll actually put like a second category for the chapter. So let's say that this particular idea was for the chapter on self-control. It'll be Habits, Self-Control, and then I'll type the idea out. And then, you know, a couple times a week I'll go through everything that's labeled as habits and then put it in the right place in the doc, and then it's all kind of there. You could imagine one way to do this even faster, which is you could just put it straight into the doc that it needs to live in. Instead of putting it into Asana, I could put it straight into the, the 3-2-1 newsletter sheet, or I could put it straight into the chapter for the book. But I've noticed that the problem is I got a lot of projects going at one time and a lot of notes from places where things could live. And so if I'm always having to remember which thing to pull up, then you either end up with like a bazillion tabs open or it just is hard to remember which things need to go where at the exact moment when you have the idea. And a lot of the time I'll have an idea when I'm on a walk or in the middle of a workout, and so I'm not in a position to pull up the book manuscript. I just need to be able to get it down, and then I can sort it later.
- 27:56 – 35:11
Leveraging maximal results from minimal scale.
- TFTim Ferriss
For people listening, what I'm trying to do in this conversation, we'll see how successful it is, is to zoom in and zoom out. And we'll zoom out, and we'll talk about conceptual framework or a particular focal point, whether it's within the Atomic Habits paradigm or outside of it, just given what you focus on, James. And then zoom in so we can take a look at how does James run systems or develop systems in location X in his life, right? So the one employee small team is where I'd like to go next-
- JCJames Clear
Sure
- TFTim Ferriss
... if that's okay with you.
- JCJames Clear
Yep.
- TFTim Ferriss
How do you, I suppose, try to build systems, ensure maximal leverage with a very small team? This is always of interest to me. I have a small team. It has always been of interest to me, like Small Giants by Bo Burlingham. I think the subtitle is Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big or something like that. I've always been fascinated by positive constraints. So one you could set is, "I'm not gonna have a big team."
- JCJames Clear
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
"I'm not going to hire a lot of people." So then you have to make decisions that fall in line with optimizing, not optimizing for that, but operating within that constraint.
- JCJames Clear
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
What are some of the productivity principles, guiding questions, and so on that, that you have?
- JCJames Clear
At first I'll just say like I'm not saying this is how everybody should run their business. It's just how I choose to run mine, and you have to choose what you're trying to, to accomplish. And in my case, like I don't wanna have a big team, but I do wanna make as big of an impact as possible. And so the first question I ask is like, rather than optimizing for money, let's optimize for time. So how do I wanna spend my days? And then I try to make as few choices as possible that violate that answer, and you gotta keep coming back to that. How do I wanna spend my days? What do I want my time to be spent on? And within that, how can we reach the most people possible or make the most money possible, but not without violating that? 'Cause there's like all kinds of things you do. You know, I could staff up, I could build a bigger business, whatever, but like I'm not interested in, in spending my days like that. So that's the first thing is you gotta decide what you're trying to do. A question that I love and that I keep coming back to for increasing leverage, and I try to encourage both Lindsay and I to think about this over and over again, is what is the work that keeps working for us once it's done? So as an example, when Atomic Habits came out, I did a ton of interviews, and some of those interviews were on radio. And I don't really do radio interviews anymore because w- as soon as I get done with that 10-minute segment or whatever it was, all the work that I put in, it vanishes. Nobody's listening anymore. It's off the air. Whereas a podcast like, you know, what we're doing right now is being recorded, and so people can continue to listen to it. And, you know, I've done a bunch of podcasts for the book, and there's somebody somewhere listening to one of them right now. It's almost like there are multiple versions of James out there, and they're all continuing to work right now. And that's an example of, like, the work that keeps working for you once it's done. If you can do one or two things a day that are gonna keep working for you in the long run, man, you end up like two or three or five years later and you just have this tidal wave of previous effort that is working for you. So let me give you a couple different examples and stories from my personal experience. I wrote this article a couple years ago. It was called The Physics of Productivity, and it was just taking like, you know, Newton's three laws and applying them to productivity in kind of this, I don't know, hopefully clever way. And it, it did fine. It didn't... The article didn't blow up or anything, but it was just kind of a normal piece, and it sat there on the site and people would occasionally read it. And then a couple years later, this journalist from The New York Times read that article and they were writing this piece and they, they linked to the original article in it. And it wasn't much. It was just, like, a sentence, but they, they linked to the website. Well, there was this producer for CBS that read the article in The New York Times and then clicked through to my site and sent me an email and said, "Hey, do you wanna come on CBS This Morning and talk about this piece?" And so I was like, "Okay, sure." So they flew me to New York and I did the segment, and it was my first time on TV and so I was all nervous about it, but, like, I tried to do my best and, you know, like, have a good segment. And as soon as it got done, I went over to Gayle King and I said, "Hey, I have this book coming out in 10 months," so this was like 10 months before Atomic Habits. "I would love to come back and do a segment about that-
- TFTim Ferriss
Smart
- JCJames Clear
... when the book comes out." And she said, "Sure thing. Like, we'll have you back. Just make sure that we're your first stop. Don't do any other interviews on TV shows before, before us." And so as soon as I left, I got her email and I sent a message to her and the publisher and everybody and I got on the calendar for launch day, and that was how I got on CBS This Morning for the launch of Atomic Habits. And that ended up being, I think, a kind of an important moment for the launch of the book because it made it feel like a thing. You know? It wasn't just a guy launching a book. It was like, "Oh, this is a bigger event." And I don't know how many books that segment sold. I've tried to calculate it. Probably s- probably more than 1,000, probably less than 10,000, prob- probably somewhere in that range. But as soon as the segment got over, they put that clip on YouTube, and then like two hours later, we took the YouTube clip and emailed it out to my audience, and that was the launch email for the book that day, was like, "Here's my segment-
- TFTim Ferriss
That goes
- JCJames Clear
... on CBS This Morning. The book is out." And so what I'm getting at is that work of writing that article about the physics of productivity, that work continued to work for me in really big ways three or five or six years later, even though the initial article didn't seem like that big of a deal.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JCJames Clear
And the reason it worked out is because that was work that kept working for me once it was done. So any time you create an asset that can compound, a blog post, a podcast episode, even simple stuff like, uh, Twitter posts and Instagram posts are less likely 'cause they kind of have a short half-life, but even those can be examples of putting work out there that is still being recorded and still being stumbled across by people online, and you're creating a large surface area for good things to kind of break your way if you spend time doing that. Now, I think you can even do better than that, which is not only can you create assets that compound and keep working for you, you can do it in a way where they layer on top of each other. So I'll spend 20 minutes on a tweet, and that seems kind of like an excessive amount of time to spend writing, you know, two sentences, but the time that I put into that, I'll put it out there and it's its own little asset. And then maybe if it does well, I'm like, "Hey, I sh- we should use that in the newsletter," and so it goes in the newsletter. And then maybe it becomes the seed of an idea for a longer chapter or an article in a book or something, or it gets added to related ideas that can become something bigger. And so now that 20 minutes is actually doing a lot more work than just gaining a few Twitter followers, and if you can find ways to layer those little assets on top of each other, then you get three or five or six years down the line and you really have a dramatic effect. So those are a couple different ways to kind of like try to operate in a high-leverage way with a really small team.
- 35:11 – 40:25
Rolling with social platform inconsistencies.
- TFTim Ferriss
In the last week, we're recording this towards the end of December 2022, Twitter is one example, has made a number of changes that have suspended a number of my [laughs] Twitter accounts and there's no explanation provided, no particular bad behavior that I or my team can identify, but suspended nonetheless. And then they get reinstated, and then two days later they'll get suspended again. Can't figure it out. But what this means is, much like when, say, Facebook started, I don't wanna say requiring, highly encouraging boosting, AKA paying for promotion of posts to reach your previously organic audience, people's business models and audience size started to effectively disintegrate, right? And having email is so, so valuable, which is why I'm also spending some time on this, and it's important to me. So that's just sort of a background setting the table so that I can ask you when something is going wrong, aside from reaching out to, say, your email service provider and saying, "Hey-
- JCJames Clear
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... is there something funny going... Is something broken? Is there a monkey wrench in the works?"
- JCJames Clear
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
How would you go about figuring things out?
- JCJames Clear
I like to think about it as there's internal distribution, so those are the things that I own. And you really can only own kind of a few assets. Like you can own your website, you can own your email list, you can own your podcast, and that's kind of roughly about it. Pr- And then the other-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... bucket is external. So this is other people's platforms that you can have distribution on, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, et cetera. And as much as possible, I think the web is it is very platform-centric right now, and people spend a lot of time on those platforms.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JCJames Clear
I don't want to be on all of them 'cause I don't have enough time and energy to be good at all of them. But there are probably a few that are a good fit for my audience. So Twitter and Instagram are the two that we've decided to focus on.
- TFTim Ferriss
No TikTok dances coming soon?
- JCJames Clear
No TikTok routines yet.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
Yeah. If I figure out how to tie that into habits, we'll, [laughs] we'll see what comes.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
So I post on those two platforms, and then I try to build an audience there. But also you'll notice a lot of the posts that I put up on there, so Instagram, for example, I have a very weird Instagram account because I don't share any pictures of myself. I'm not, like, not really interested in, like, me as an individual being out there, but it's all about the ideas.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JCJames Clear
And so it's just a bunch of text. But on many of them, at the bottom of the image or in the caption, it'll say, you know, "Here's a quote," and then at the bottom it'll say, you know, "Get more ideas like this. Sign up for 3-2-1," and then it'll have a link to the newsletter. And so the idea is to subtly be encouraging people to go off platform and join one of the assets or one of the pieces of audience that I do own, one of the internal ones like the website or the newsletter or whatever. And so I try to get those things to work together and, like, cross-link between the two, and then they can start to build each other. And I do it the other way as well. Like when I send out a newsletter, sometimes if the ideas are short enough and they would make a good tweet, I'll include a little link under each idea. It'll just say, "Click to tweet." And so now the newsletter is driving action on Twitter. And so the... it all kind of like you create this little spider web, this kind of ecosystem where everything is kind of driving each other and, you know, it all kind of grows together. But the ultimate idea is to try to point back the external platforms to the distribution sources that you do own so that you're not beholden to any particular one when they decide to change their, their strategy or approach.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, which is specifically why a whole s- bunch of stuff is getting banned or shadow banned right now on Twitter. And this is the best theory I could come up with, and it, it... I can't get this verified or denied, is that because some of these accounts which were created for a new podcast that came out have legitimate contact, but they all link out to Apple Podcasts. That's the only-
- JCJames Clear
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... plausible explanation that we can come up t- with for why they have [laughs] been locked. And they keep getting unlocked, so I don't want to make anybody seem like the, the bad guy here. But it highlights the fragility of having something that is entirely dependent on a platform that you don't own. And also if you were to read your terms of service, you're probably giving all of that content [laughs] to the platform as well on some level. And I recall chatting with this guy, this was many years ago, before the organic reach was throttled a lot on Facebook. Chatting with a guy who had a multimillion-dollar business built on a few Facebook pages, and massively successful, and I asked him what it felt like to run those businesses. And he said, "I feel like I have the most profitable McDonald's in the world built on top of an active volcano." [laughs]
- JCJames Clear
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
It could go away at any minute. And I don't want to live
- 40:25 – 44:47
Don't let the algorithm dictate your identity.
- TFTim Ferriss
with that anxiety also.
- JCJames Clear
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
And just to add a few things just to feather them in with your comments. You know, one is it's very important to adapt. I would, I would add something to that, which is it's very important to adapt, but I think it's really critical to have a good explanation for how you are adapting and not to discard for the sake of discarding. And just as an example, to give people a window into my thinking, Reddit and some of these other platforms still can drive a lot of traffic, but they're not sexy and people have started to neglect them, so there's far less competition on some of these older, let's just call it platforms, that are actually still innovating quite well in the case of Reddit. So I've thought about revisiting some of the, the vintage powerhouses because there's been such a mass migration to particularly short-form video. It just seems like a bloodbath. And I would also say something I think you've done very well is set constraints on what you will or will not do, say, on social platforms. Because one of the risks of adapting is that you become a slave to the audience-
- JCJames Clear
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... in such a way that you morph into this funhouse mirror caricature of yourself. And I've seen this happen to a lot of people where they put out 10 posts and the most extreme of those gets the most engagement or feedback or positive likes, et cetera. And so they then put out five more like that. The most extreme-
- JCJames Clear
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... gets the best response. And a year later, not only has their social feed become like the craziest, like infomercial pitchman yelling circus, but this is the greater risk is that they, they in real life have started to become the mask that they've created for themselves. This is a very real risk So setting up the constraints on what you will or will not do in advance before you get on that playing field, I think is really, really, at least for me, very, very important. How d- how do you think about that, or have you thought about that?
- JCJames Clear
Well, this connects to one of the core ideas in Atomic Habits, which is your habits are how you embody a particular identity. So the aspects, the behaviors that you perform each day are reinforcing or shaping the story that you have about yourself. I think it's important to ask yourself, like, "Who is the type of person I wish to become?" You know? Like, "What's the type of identity I wanna be reinforcing?" And your habits are not the only things that influence that in life, like every experience is part of who you are. But by virtue of the fact that they get repeated again and again, you are... They have an outsized influence on your story.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JCJames Clear
And so, you know, the phrase I like to keep in mind is, "Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become."
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, that's a great line.
- JCJames Clear
And so as you show up each day and make another YouTube video or do another TikTok video, you're casting a vote for being that kind of person. And if you let the algorithm run it, if you let yourself kind of fall into this, as you said, mask that you're wearing for the audience, pretty soon you actually are, like, casting enough votes that the bulk of the evidence starts to support that part of your identity. You start to become that kind of person. And this is why I come back to some of those questions that we were talking about earlier, like, what am I optimizing for? Or, how do I want to spend my days? Because you gotta start there and set the positive constraints for yourself. Who's the type of person I wish to become? What am I trying... What kind of lifestyle am I trying to create for myself? And then within that constraint, how can I have the biggest audience? Or, how can I make the most money? Or, how can I make the biggest impact? But, yeah, it's, I think that's a way of trying to anchor yourself and not, like, lose yourself and let the, let the algorithm kinda run the show. So I think your habits and your identity are very connected, and the actions that you take shape or support, they provide evidence for the type of person that you are. And so it's worth asking yourself, like, what are my actions moving me closer to? And you wanna make sure that you're on a good path.
- 44:47 – 50:01
The key to building lasting habits.
- TFTim Ferriss
May I read something from your fantastic website? So this is on identity-based habits. I want to highlight this and add it to what you just said, because I think it's critically important. And feel free to revise any of this.
- JCJames Clear
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
And you can't believe everything you read on the internet, so, so who knows?
- JCJames Clear
Even if it comes from my own website [laughs] .
- TFTim Ferriss
I don't think the CCP has infiltrated your website or anything like that, so let me, let me just give this a read. "The key to building lasting habits is focusing on creating a new identity first." That's the sentence I'd love to get your take on. "Your current behaviors are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are, either consciously or subconsciously. To change your behavior for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself. You need to build identity-based habits." Would you like to add anything to that? The, the creating a new identity first is, I think, the, the piece that is of greatest interest to me.
- JCJames Clear
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
How would somebody go about doing that? Let's say they're listening to this, they're just moving into the new year. James, please tell me, how do I do this?
- JCJames Clear
Well, it's kind of a two-step process. Decide the type of person you wanna be, and then you prove it to yourself with small wins. And the more small wins or the more small habits that you perform-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JCJames Clear
... the more votes that you cast for that identity, the more you build up evidence of being that kind of person. And eventually you start to take pride in that aspect of your identity. And man, once we start to take pride in a part of our story, like, it's much easier to stick with those habits. If you take pride in the size of your biceps, you'll, like, never skip arm day at the gym, you know?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Oh.
- JCJames Clear
Or if you take pride in how your hair looks, you have this, like, long hair care routine, all these hair care habits, and you do them every day.
- TFTim Ferriss
Might be past that point for you and I, my friend.
- JCJames Clear
I think you and I have, have lost that battle.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
Yeah. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
James, may I, may I jump in for one second? What, what is a good way to phrase that? So if someone wants to have, not a mission statement, but some type of statement for, "This is the type of person I wanna be."
- JCJames Clear
I think it's, "I'm the type of person who," blank, for examp-
- TFTim Ferriss
Blank.
- JCJames Clear
So, like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- JCJames Clear
... I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts, or-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- JCJames Clear
... I'm the type of person who shows up on time, or-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- JCJames Clear
... I'm the type of person who finishes what they start. Whatever aspect of your identity that you're trying to reinforce, that's kind of the, the story. You can also phrase it as a question. So for example, rather than saying, "I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts," you could have this question that's related to the identity you wanna build, and you kinda carry it around with you all day. And, like, in this example, maybe the question is, what would a healthy person do?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JCJames Clear
And so you're just kinda walking around all day asking yourself, you know, "What should I get for lunch? Well, what would a healthy person do?" Or, "Should I take the, an Uber, or should I walk to the next meeting? Well, what would a healthy person do?" And you just kinda, like, go around your day and try to make decisions that you feel like support that identity. But I think you start with, who is the type of person I wish to become? So let's say I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And then the second step is prove it to yourself with small wins. So which small actions, what little habits cast votes for being the kind of person who doesn't miss workouts? Well, maybe one thing is rather than doing a 45-minute workout when I only have 10 minutes, I reduce the scope but stick to the schedule and I do a couple sprints. Or I do, you know, five sets of pushups, or whatever it is.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- JCJames Clear
And so you find ways to reinforce your desired identity, even if it's small, especially in the beginning. Because if you can show up consistently, if you kinda master the art of showing up and performing these small habits, you build up this sense of momentum. You kinda start to reinforce and shape that new identity. And the more evidence that you have for it- At some point, you kind of cross this invisible threshold where you're like, "Oh, I guess I am that kind of person." You know, like if you go out and shoot a basketball for five minutes, you don't think, "Oh, I'm a basketball player." But if you do it every day for six months or a year or two years, like at some point you cross this invisible line and you're like, "You know, I guess playing basketball is kind of part of who I am."
- 50:01 – 55:20
How James would promote 5-Bullet Friday.
- TFTim Ferriss
so, like
- JCJames Clear
Sure
- TFTim Ferriss
... I am someone who prioritizes email above all the other platforms and grows it consistently.
- JCJames Clear
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And you may have some familiarity with, with my newsletter and, and how we do things, and I know you and I've had some exchanges before.
- JCJames Clear
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
What might be some small wins or just changes that you would make, things you would add, try, test, anything at all?
- JCJames Clear
So I, I like was browsing your website a little bit before this conversation, and I kind of feel like the main difference... Also, first of all, I just need to say, you already have an enormous email list. So like to do some-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
... sort of intervention on somebody who's got millions of subscribers is like kind of a, a ridiculous premise to start with. But I'll take the question seriously.
- TFTim Ferriss
No, no, I wanna give credit where credit is due. I think you have more... I think that your prioritizing is better reflected in your actions and decisions with respect to email than in my case.
- JCJames Clear
It's interesting you say that. I, that was what I was about to say, is I feel like the only difference, the only primary difference is you emphasize the podcast as your like number one, and I emphasize email as like my number one.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yep.
- JCJames Clear
And something has to lead the day. Now, that, you know, of course this does not mean that's a bad decision by you, right? The podcast is enormous, and it probably is the more important thing for your business. But each person needs to decide what that is. In my case, if you go to my website, it's very clear. Like, if something is gonna be the primary call to action on the homepage, it's the email list, not the podcast or, you know-
- TFTim Ferriss
Right
- JCJames Clear
... it's whatever. So that's just a question that like you need to have is like are we willing to emphasize this more? And if not, then that's a positive constraint you're setting, and you can decide, okay, given that email's going to be number two to the podcast, how could we grow it more?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Well, you know, you've raised such a simple idea for me. Like right now if you look at the homepage, right, it's PODCAST-
- JCJames Clear
Yep
- TFTim Ferriss
... on the top on the banner, and then you have the email sign up, which is sort of right below that to the right. And it could be as simple as like, all right, well, look, this doesn't have to be a forever decision. Let's just swap those two-
- JCJames Clear
Try it out
- TFTim Ferriss
... for a period of time. Make the top the email. The whole thing is email.
- JCJames Clear
Everybody's biased to how their story played out, so I'm biased to say email's the most important. But my, like my stance on it is make the banner on your homepage the email list, and then you can email all the podcast episodes out to these people.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Every time I think about it sensibly, email is the most important because you can-
- JCJames Clear
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... share the podcast much more easily via email than you can share the newsletter via podcast because to share-
- JCJames Clear
Yes
- TFTim Ferriss
... email via podcast requires task switching almost-
- JCJames Clear
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... I don't wanna say always, but probably 90% of the time, if I had to just pull a number out of my ass, people are listening to a podcast as a secondary activity. Very different beast than someone who sits down, opens an email, and clicks on links. They're opening an email explicitly in the case of, of 5-Bullet Friday and s- and perhaps also in the case of, of your email to find things to learn and investigate, right?
- JCJames Clear
Yeah.
- 55:20 – 56:28
What might an outside observer believe are your priorities?
- JCJames Clear
things that came to mind.
- TFTim Ferriss
I wanna share one of your questions, if that's okay. This is from your newsletter. Someone compiled your questions over two years-
- JCJames Clear
Hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... put them in a blog post, and one of them... Let's see. I have many highlighted. This is one that related to my prioritization of email and, as you pointed out, focusing on the podcast, the placement of the mention of 5-Bullet Friday being at the end as opposed to the beginning. And it is, "If someone could only see my actions and not hear my words, what would they say are my priorities?" [laughs] Right. That's a good one. That's a good one. Like, yeah, don't tell me what's important, just show me your calendar, pal. Yeah, okay. There we go.
- JCJames Clear
We all have stories that we tell ourselves. You know, like it's very easy for us to justify internally, but if you're just looking at how you're acting, what are you actually emphasizing?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JCJames Clear
I think we all have felt that pain at various times, which I should say these aren't just questions I come up with for like the readers. Like, these are all things I need to ask myself.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
You know, like pretty much everything I write is d- intended to, to help me get back to center or to course correct.
- 56:28 – 58:54
Success generates opportunities — and distractions.
- TFTim Ferriss
Also, to reinforce something you just said, the, the more success you have, even if it's a small amount, although I, I do think it tends to go somewhat exponential at, at some point, the... There may be exceptions to this, but a- among my friends and peer group, whatever that might mean, uniformly I have seen the more success you have, whether it's a base hit or a double or a home run or 10 home runs, the harder it becomes to focus for a lot of people because in the beginning stages of your career, or maybe mid stages, you're choosing between unattractive options and maybe one or two attractive options. [laughs]
- JCJames Clear
You're trying to generate attractive options. They're like not even there. You're trying to create them, you know, or find them or seek them out.
- TFTim Ferriss
Exactly.
- JCJames Clear
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Once you go from having one attractive option to two attractive options on your menu, things really change dramatically. And then when that goes to 10 things, and then it goes to 10 interesting people with 10 interesting things, it gets harder. So it's... And I'm not saying this to ask my audience to cry a river for me. I don't expect that, you know, woe is me. It's, the- these are quality problems, but you really want to sharpen the ax of asking these types of questions and building these systems before you have your first one or two base hits. Because if you try to sharpen the ax when you are getting, when you are feeling as though you are just up to your neck in water, kind of floating down the rapids, it's gonna be very, very hard. So I would just, I would just say.
- JCJames Clear
Well, success generates not only opportunities, but also distractions.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JCJames Clear
And so in a sense, like success almost kinda eats itself, you know? It's like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... the, you get good at something, and so then that brings new opportunities your way. Some of them are novel or interesting or-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... different, and so you do those, and then you turn around six months later and you don't have any time to do the thing that made you successful in the f- first place. So yeah, you-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... you gotta be careful about what you say yes to.
- 58:54 – 1:05:47
How to break a bad habit.
- TFTim Ferriss
I'd like to ask you about two goals/habits/behavioral modifications that are of interest to me personally and also I would imagine of interest to other people listening. And I'm curious because you've had 10 million copies sold, you've interacted with or certainly observed a lot of your readers, people who have tested different things from the book. Let's start with, well, the two that come to mind, and I- I've actually, I'm good at the second, but the two are cutting back on caffeine and meditating. Right? So the meditating is an addition. The cutting back on caffeine a lot of people would think of as a subtraction.
- JCJames Clear
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
I would love to hear any thoughts you might have on cutting back on caffeine.
- JCJames Clear
Sure. So if you want to break a bad habit, there are kind of three potential paths you could take. So the first is you can eliminate it entirely, so elimination. Second option is you can reduce it, so you could like curtail it to the desired degree. I don't wanna never drink caffeine, I just wanna drink less of it. And the third option is you could substitute it. You could replace it with a different habit. And of those three, oftentimes replacing it is actually the more effective option. So for example, if you get your caffeine from drinking Coke or soda or something like that, then maybe you find out, hey, you know something I really love from this experience is I actually just like drinking a carbonated beverage, and so it's the carbonation that I like, and maybe if I substitute it with sparkling water or something like that, I still get the carbonation sensation, but I don't have the caffeine associated with it anymore. And so that's a way of substituting for that behavior, and you still get something that the experience provides. This is actually kind of an important just like larger picture, big picture thing about habits, which is every habit that you have, we build habits to solve the repeated problems that we face in life. And I'm using problems in a very general sense here. You know, like let's say that you come home from work and you feel tired and exhausted from a long day. Well, in a sense, coming home from work at 6:00 PM and feeling tired is a problem, and especially if you experience it repeatedly, you gotta come up with some kind of solution for that. And generally speaking, we just kind of like try things out in life, and so you can imagine one person solves the problem of feeling exhausted by scrolling Instagram mindlessly for 30 minutes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JCJames Clear
And another person solves that problem by playing video games for an hour, and a third person solves it by going for a run for, you know, 20 minutes. And those are all solutions to the same kind of underlying problem, but some of them are more healthy or more productive or serve us better than others. And what do you think the odds are that the solutions you've come up with to the repeated problems in your life are the optimal one?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
Like, it's just so unlikely that whatever you happen to have stumbled into throughout life is the perfect way or the best habit that serves you most. So I think what I'm trying to get at there is maybe take a little bit of the pressure off yourself and don't worry about judging yourself so much. You're just trying to solve the repeated problems that you face. But once you realize that it's unlikely that your s- current solutions are the optimal solutions, well, now maybe we can step outside and above ourselves and look down and try to come up with a better solution. So rather than drinking a Coke to get the carbonation, we can drink sparkling water. So that's one example for the substitution. If we wanna take the other path of reduction, something I've noticed about myself is if I get a six-pack of beer and I put it in the, the front of the fridge, like in the door, or on a shelf that's like right at eye level, I'll drink one every night just 'cause it's there.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- JCJames Clear
But if I take it and put it on the lowest shelf in the fridge, and like it's kinda all the way back in the corner, I can't really see it unless I'm bending down, it'll sit there for two weeks or three weeks, like, and so I'm like, "Did I want it or not?" You know? Like-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
... if it was obvious, then I grab one, but if it wasn't, then I avoid it. And I think that's a simple question to ask yourself, where do I get my caffeine? Is it coffee? Is it soda? And is that really obvious? Is it like the coffee's sitting right out on the counter? Is the, the soda like the first thing I see at eye level when I open the fridge? And how can I make it less obvious? In Atomic Habits, there are kind of what I call the four laws of behavior change, and it's just this big-picture view of how to build a good habit. And so if you wanna build a good habit, you wanna make your habits obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. And if you wanna break a bad habit, you just do the opposite of those four. So you wanna make it invisible, make it unattractive, make it difficult, and make it unsatisfying. And so I think, how can you make coffee or soda invisible? How can you make it difficult to drink, like keep it outside of the house, et cetera? So there are a variety of strategies you could use here. You know, like let's say you live with a family and other people are gonna wanna drink it, but you don't want to. Well, there's a, there's this little kinda diabolical Tupperware container called the Kitchen Safe.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Yeah.
- JCJames Clear
And it has a, a lock box code on the top of it, and so you could give the other family members the lock box code, but then they don't give it to you, and you just put the soda inside of that, and so it stays in that Tupperware and you can't access it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JCJames Clear
So finding ways to increase friction or to make it difficult or to make it less obvious, those are all ways to potentially curtail the, the caffeine habit.
- TFTim Ferriss
The locking Tupperware, what is it called again?
- JCJames Clear
It's called the Kitchen Safe.
- TFTim Ferriss
The Kitchen Safe. There are a few variations of this, and I know a number of families who [laughs] use them for phones. So they will have-
- JCJames Clear
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... mealtime or evening time or whenever it is, and they'll put the phones in the safe.
- JCJames Clear
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
And that's where they sit until [laughs] the phone-free time has expired.
- JCJames Clear
I've had readers use it for, like, late-night snacking. Like, they'll, you know, like the chips go in at 7:00 PM, or they're just, they just-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
... stay in that Tupperware, and it's set, it's set to lock from 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM. And so they just, you know, they can't get to them late night, and then they-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
... they go to sleep.
- TFTim Ferriss
I'm just imagining myself... So I'll, I'll give you a confession. So I love brownies, and it, it, two days ago, for the first time, made brownies and spice cider. It was like a whole Christmas celebration thing, even though it's not Christmas yet. And I ate all the brownies last night, and [laughs] I'm not proud of this. I'm not beating myself up about it, 'cause I'm gonna, you know, I'm working out. It's, it's fine. It's not a big deal. But I'm just imagining if I put the brownies into this locking container. And do you know what a bear bin is? There are these, like, [laughs] bear-
- JCJames Clear
[laughs]
- 1:05:47 – 1:15:39
How to build a good habit.
- TFTim Ferriss
Let's talk about a positive. And you already alluded to the four principles-
- JCJames Clear
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... or laws or ingredients, but meditating.
- JCJames Clear
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
I think for a lot of folks, meditating is in the air. They've heard about it on this podcast. I know I should do it, I just don't.
- JCJames Clear
Yep.
- TFTim Ferriss
You know, by the time I have my coffee and do this and make the sandwiches for the kids, it's too late. How would you suggest people approach, say, meditating in the morning? Just to use, use that.
- JCJames Clear
Couple things to think about here. So again, let me just run through the, the four laws real quick, just as a primer for this answer. So if you wanna build a good habit, roughly speaking, there are four things that you can do. You want to make it obvious, you want to make it attractive, you wanna make it easy, and you wanna make it satisfying. So obvious, attractive, easy, satisfying. Now, if you're sitting there and you're thinking, "How can I get myself to meditate more?" You can just turn those into questions and you can say, how can I make the behavior more obvious? How can I make it more attractive? How can I make it easier? How can I make it more satisfying? And you'll start to notice different things that you could do. So for example- How can I make meditation more obvious? Well, do you have a clear space where you're gonna do this? You know, like maybe you need a meditation pillow and it's in the corner of your bedroom or it's in the corner of some other room that is the dedicated meditation space, and this is exactly where it happens, so it's obvious where the behavior's going to occur. Make it attractive. There are many different types of meditation, and there are a lot of ways to get into it, and this is true for any habit, by the way. For some reason, I think we often choose habits that we feel like we should do, but it's not necessarily the one that we want to do individually. And there's... You know, there may not necessarily be 1,000 ways to do everything in life, but there's almost always more than one way, and you should choose the version that you're most genuinely excited about, you know, that is most appealing and interesting to you. Because if you're genuinely interested in it, then even, like, there's gonna be all kinds of ways to improve. You'll, you'll find all sorts of things that you could, like, refine or make it better. But if you're not actually interested, if you're, like, not genuinely engaged in the task, even the obvious stuff is gonna feel like a hassle. You know? It, it's gonna feel like a chore even if it's straightforward. So do you want a guided meditation? Maybe it'd be nice to have somebody kind of walk you through it. Or do you want to find a meditation that has, like, lovely music associated with it? Do you not want anything? Do you just want silence and you wanna be able to, like, hear yourself think for a minute or listen to your own breath for five minutes, and that's kind of the objective? But what sounds most attractive and appealing to you? Try to find a version of the habit that you're actually interested in. This actually, I think, connects to the timing piece that you were talking about, Tim, which is, yeah, in the morning is a great time for a lot of people, but if you have young kids and, like, your four-year-old is running around and you're trying to figure out how to get pants on them and you need to make-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
... you know, breakfast for, like, that's probably not a good time to do it. You know? So, like, find a time and a space where that habit can live, where it's attractive and you're not just gonna end up frustrated 'cause you're trying to, like, swim upstream.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JCJames Clear
Make it easy. So rather than doing 15 or 20 minutes or 30 minutes of meditation, which, hey, that sounds great 'cause your favorite guru does it, but listen, like, why not just do 60 seconds? Because if you can master the art of showing up, if you can just do it for a minute and actually stick to that day in and day out, then you're starting to build the habit, and now you have something. You've, like, gained a foothold, and you can advance to the next level. One of the, the things I recommend in the book is called the two-minute rule, and it says just take whatever habit you're trying to build and you scale it down to something that takes two minutes or less to do. So read 30 books a year becomes read one page, or meditate, you know, five days a week for 30 minutes becomes meditate for 60 seconds. And you're just trying to master the art of showing up. You know? Like, a habit must-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... be established before it can be, be improved. It's gotta become, like, the standard before you worry about optimizing it into some perfect thing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JCJames Clear
So make it easy to do. Make it easy to show up. And then the final thing is make it satisfying. Now, if you've done those first three steps well, it's obvious, it's an attractive version of it, it's pretty easy to do, you're probably gonna feel pretty good about yourself 'cause you're at the end of the meditation session now, so, like, that'll probably be pretty satisfying. But you can layer on some kind of additional benefit. You know? Maybe you get to have your favorite type of coffee or your favorite drink after that, or maybe you get to have a bubble bath or a walk in the woods or whatever sounds motivating to you. You know? So find some way to, to add some additional positive emotions to the experience, because if you feel good about it, you're going to want to repeat it. And this is something that in Atomic Habits I call it the cardinal rule of behavior change, which is behaviors that get rewarded get repeated, and behaviors that get punished get avoided. And it's so basic, it's so obvious, but all humans want to feel good. You know? We all want to have positive emotions, to be supported, to be loved, to be rewarded, to have something that feels good. And so how can you get that feeling and associate it with your habits? That's kind of the, the core idea. And ultimately, this connects back to what we talked about with identity, which is the perfect version is when you perform a habit and you feel good because it's reinforcing your desired identity. You know? I'm the type of person who w- wants to meditate each day, or I'm the type of person who doesn't miss meditation sessions. And then even if it's only 60 seconds, you can feel good about doing it because it's reinforcing your desired identity. So that's kind of a quick case study on how to apply the ideas.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, totally, and, uh, d- as you're speaking, I'm thinking about all these other questions and how you could phrase the I'm the type of person who looks forward to meditating, right? Like, how do you make that a true statement?
- JCJames Clear
Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And it actually brought me back to San Francisco many, many, many years ago before I took my first meditation training and so on and so forth. I began... I haven't thought about this in, like, a decade at least. I began with listening to, I think it was We're Gonna Party Like It's 1999 by Prince. One song.
- JCJames Clear
Nice.
- TFTim Ferriss
And in the morning, I would just sit down, lean against the wall, get in good posture, and just breathe deeply while listening to Prince for one song. That was it, and it made a difference. It made a difference 'cause as you said, I've, I've never thought of it in these terms, but I became accustomed to showing up and simply having, however small it might have been, and it was small, a tiny slot in my mental calendar which was when I wake up, I'm gonna sit down and do this thing.
- JCJames Clear
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
And then when I did transcendental meditation training later, and I've experimented with many different forms of meditation since, going from three minutes to 20 minutes was a dilation of the amount of time required, but it wasn't introducing an entirely new species of calendar slot, right? It was already there.
- JCJames Clear
Once you've mastered the art of showing up, scaling it up, increasing the scope is much easier once you're already the kind of person who's doing it every day. You know?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JCJames Clear
Those are good examples. I think actually it may be, I don't know if it's your question, Tim, or I, I feel like I've heard you say it before, but this idea of what would this look like if it was easy, you know? Or-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yep. Yeah, that's a-
- JCJames Clear
... what would it look like to be the kind of person who looks forward to writing, or looks forward to-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... meditating, or looks forward to working out? That's a, it's a question worth taking seriously because you can usually design the habit to feel like, hey, this isn't a chore. Like, this is something, like, this is how I want to be spending my days. And that's really where you wanna get to because for a habit to last, it's gotta be part of your normal lifestyle. It has to be something that, you know, like, you wanna show up and do this each day. And so you're trying to find the version of it that benefits you the most.
- 1:15:39 – 1:57:01
Deconstructing the writing and marketing of Atomic Habits.
- TFTim Ferriss
So let's use Atomic Habits as the case study.
- JCJames Clear
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
How would you deconstruct Atomic Habits, both in its, its writing, but then also its launch, right? Because those are intertwined.
- JCJames Clear
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
In what made it successful, what were the things that really seemed to be the Archimedes levers for producing, to the extent that you can, right?
- JCJames Clear
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
You're on one side of the tennis net.
- JCJames Clear
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
So any examples?
- JCJames Clear
This will probably be a long answer 'cause there's a lot to talk about. So let, let's break it into-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
... two categories, writing and marketing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh-huh.
- JCJames Clear
So, and also, like, the truth is, the honest answer might be like, "I don't know. I got lucky." Maybe that's the truth, but I suspect that there are things, a lot of things you can do to influence the outcome. And so I can... I'll walk you through what I tried to do. So on the writing side, I think you have to operate with this assumption of like, let me create more value than I'm gonna capture to try to produce a hit. The ultimate thing that drives book sales is creating something that is actually genuinely valuable to people, and it has to be so good that people will talk about it. Word of mouth. You know, Atomic Habits has sold over 10 million copies at this point. We could argue, I'd be interested to know what you think the estimate is, Tim, but there's some number of copies that you could sell just by having an audience, and a good marketing plan, and s- sheer force of will, and putting a lot of effort in. Uh, maybe it's 25,000. Maybe it's 100,000. I, I don't know. At s- at some point, there's some number where you can't get beyond that, even if you have a large audience, just by the marketing energy. It has to be word of mouth. And I think certainly once you're in the millions or tens of millions of copies, like, the only way a book grows that much is people recommend it. And I like Seth Godin's measure for this, which is, he says, "If you want word of mouth, you have to create something remarkable." And that means that it's worthy of remark, right? That it's, like, worthy of talking about, and so you have to start with that. So, like, the three things that I always focus on are, am I writing something that's timeless? So if it's timeless and evergreen, then you have a longer period where it could become a hit. If it's something that's just really relevant to the current moment, two years from now, you've kind of passed your window for it taking off.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's like the blog post you wrote that got to the producers for television.
- JCJames Clear
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right?
- JCJames Clear
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
Similar example.
- JCJames Clear
Exactly. Right. Am I writing something that's pretty universal? So that's another, a kind of filter for me. E- everybody has habits. Everybody's trying to build good habits or break bad ones, even if they're not thinking about it, like, carefully. It's just kind of part of life. And so not everybody in the world's gonna buy the book, but pretty much anybody can look at the cover and be like, "Yeah, I get why that would be useful." You know, like, that's, that's a, a thing that, you know, most people are gonna want. So timeless is a universal, and then I feel like you have to pick something that fascinates you because if you're genuinely interested in it, that comes through in the writing. You know, like, I think Morgan Housel has some kind of line where it's like, "Writing for yourself is fun, and it shows. Writing for other people is work, and it shows."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] That's a good line.
- JCJames Clear
People have a good BS meter for that, and, like, you need to pick something you're genuinely fascinated with.
- TFTim Ferriss
Quick side sell for Morgan, The Psychology of Money The title may seem generic. The book is outstanding. I really, really enjoyed it
- JCJames Clear
Yeah, Morgan's great. Okay. So that's, that's kinda like my write something timeless, write something universal, write something that fascinates you, and do all that with the intention of creating something genuinely remarkable or that creates value for people.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- JCJames Clear
That sounds... Those things sound good. I think it's worth asking, like, what does it look like in practice to actually do that? So as some ex- let me just give you some examples
- TFTim Ferriss
And I'm just gonna keep interrupting, 'cause, because I've, I've-
- JCJames Clear
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... had too much caffeine. I'm gonna blame it on-
- JCJames Clear
Sure
- 1:57:01 – 2:02:19
Developing a pre-game ritual.
- TFTim Ferriss
100% agreed. Coming back to the frameworks and principles in Atomic Habits, are there any sections, chapters, principles, anything that you wish more people paid attention to, right? There's something that you put in that gets glossed over or maybe-
- JCJames Clear
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... doesn't stick for whatever reason as much as other things, but you think it or these things are important. I mean, I certainly have examples-
- JCJames Clear
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... from, from my books where I'm like, "Shit, like I don't know if I made a mistake in the way I presented that," but it's, it's not getting its fair shake in the sense of its importance.
- JCJames Clear
Well, sometimes you might just be like, "Maybe I thought that idea was better than it actually was," you know? [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
There might be that too. There might be that.
- JCJames Clear
Yeah, I, I have a couple. So there are two things that came to mind. The first one is there's a little example I give in the book about, maybe about halfway through or 40% through, where I talk about having a pre-game routine and kinda doing things in the same sequence each time, in the same order each time, and that helps get you in the mindset and kind of initiate the habit. So I, you know, I played baseball through college and I had the same pre-game routine that I did before each game, and that kinda like flips the switch in your mind where it's like, "Hey, like it's time to compete now," you know? Like, it's game mode. Or the example I gave in the book was this guy who, he would do his writing at the library, and he would go to the library, sit at the same desk each day, and put on his headphones and play the same playlist. And that, that little sequence was a pre-game routine that got him in the mindset to do his writing habit. And one day he turned around and realized that no music was playing. He just had his headphones on, and it was just, [laughs] it was just silent, but he was writing. And he was like 20 minutes into writing before he realized it. And it's a good example of how like just that sequence of doing it the same way each time and having that same pre-game routine, that little ritual, got him in the mindset. He didn't even need to press play that day. He was just ready to write. And so if you can come up with what that little pre-game ritual is for you, that can be a great way to initiate a habit. And I don't usually see people talk about that. I think, actually, I've heard some examples like this on, on your podcast previously, Tim. Like, I think when you talked to Josh Waitzkin at one point, he... At some, some time he gave this example, maybe it was in his books, maybe it was a conversation with you, where he was competing in this national competition, martial arts, and he was told that he was gonna compete at one time, and they came up to him and he was like sleeping or laying on a, on a bench, and they were like, "Hey, sorry. The timing was wrong. You're actually up in like six minutes." And he was like, "Normally I would've been thrown off," but he had this little pre-game ritual that he did and he tried to... As he developed it over time, it started out maybe it was 10 minutes, and then he tried to compress it so it was seven minutes, and then it was three minutes, and then eventually got it down to where his little ritual was just something he did for like 30 seconds. So they woke him up on that bench and he's gotta compete six minutes later-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- JCJames Clear
... but all he needed was 30 seconds to kinda like get in the right frame of mind, and then he was like, "Okay, now I'm ready to go." And so those pre-game rituals can be really powerful if you make it your own and come up with something that, like, you do every time and it helps get you into the mindset to compete or to perform.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, for sure. Josh has given... Could be his personal example. He's also talked about Marcelo Garcia, who's nine-time world champion in Brazilian jujitsu, arguably, maybe uncontroversially probably one of the best if not the best who's ever competed in Brazilian jujitsu, who, who has a similar ability to throw a switch minutes before he'll compete in a world championship bout. And it applies furthermore to most writers who I have had on the podcast will have some type of boot-up sequence-
- JCJames Clear
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... much like this person who went to the library, and people can take solace in the fact there's no consensus. [laughs] There's no consensus.
- JCJames Clear
It's very personal. I think you need to make it your own, you know?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. And there are also people who will say like, "Yeah, I just dick around for the first two hours. Like it literally... But that's not wasted time because it takes that long for me to just like scribble-
- JCJames Clear
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... or complain about my day on the page-
- JCJames Clear
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... so that I'm filling the page with something, and then it turns into, an hour later, some paragraph that is the nugget of the beginning of what I need to work on that day. So it's not wasted time. That's-
- JCJames Clear
Eventually the pain of not doing it becomes greater than the pain of doing it, and they take action.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, right. Or Neil Gaiman, he's like, "Yeah, I go to the cabin and I'm-" I don't have to write, but I'm not allowed to do anything else. [laughs]
- JCJames Clear
I love that rule. I love that. That's great. Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And BJ Novak also has his own approach. He's done a l- a, a ton of television and film work. And for me, like right now, you know, working on fiction for the first time, over the last, let's call it six months, finding the routine, like how I make the coffee, when I sit down, the exact sequence, how I set up my laptop on the laptop stand, I mean, it's very [laughs]
- JCJames Clear
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... bunk-ish, but it does make a big difference. So that was one, the pre-game sequence.
- JCJames Clear
Yeah. Developing a pre-game ritual that, that works
- 2:02:19 – 2:05:04
How habits align with the expectations of our tribes.
- JCJames Clear
for you, and then the other one that I feel like this is something that if I had to pick a topic that I feel like is more important than I realized when I was writing the book, I would probably say this, and that's the power of the social environment. You know, we are all part of multiple tribes. Sometimes those tribes are, like, large, like what it means to be American, and sometimes they're, they're small, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street or a member of the local gym. But all of those tribes that you belong to, the large groups and the small groups, they all have this set of expectations. They've got a set of social norms for what you do when you're in that group and what the typical way is to act and behave and what kind of habits they follow. And the more that your habits go with the grain of the expectations of the group, the more attractive they feel like to you because it's like, "Hey, I fit in. I belong. I'm part of something." And the more that they go against the grain of the expectations of the group, the harder they are to stick to, especially in the long run. Maybe you can do it for a day or a week or, I don't know, a month or two, but, like, at some point you kinda keep rubbing against... You have this, like, friction where you're conflicting with the group, and it becomes hard to stick to that for the long run. And so the little takeaway that I kinda think of now is you want to join groups, to join tribes where your desired behavior is the normal behavior because if it's normal in that group, then it becomes really motivating to stick to it, you know? And furthermore, the, the kind of like s- ancillary habits that are part of that group, the, the other expectations, are things that you're probably gonna soak up. Like, people will join a CrossFit gym because they think they want to get in shape, but then you turn around six months later and they're all eating paleo and wearing the same brand of knee sleeves, and they buy the same workout gear, and, like, it's all these other habits that they never intended to build, but they just kinda-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... soaked them up because that's what the group was doing. And, ultimately, I think this comes back to this kinda deep need that we all have, which is this need to bond and connect. You know, we all want to be a part of something. We wanna belong. We wanna fit in. 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," or, "I have the habits that I wanna have, but I'm cast out, I'm ostracized, I'm criticized," I mean, most of the time the desire to belong will overpower the desire to improve. So as best as possible, you gotta get those two things aligned and surround yourself with people where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, absolutely. The whole you're the average of the five people you associate with most type of thinking. And
- 2:05:04 – 2:10:52
Optimizing environment for habit adherence.
- TFTim Ferriss
also for people who are starting off the new year or about to and thinking about how to best ensure that you cohere with a group-
- JCJames Clear
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... that leads to these new behaviors, front load it. Make it painful not to do it. Pay in advance [laughs] , right? Make, make some type of bet with one of your friends and you owe each other money if you miss workouts. Like, set it up so it is painful not to do it. [laughs] I know that s- might sound like I'm favoring the stick over the carrot. You're also gonna use the carrots, right?
- JCJames Clear
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
Like, you can use the carrots, but make it compelling from an incentives perspective to do it.
- JCJames Clear
As you said, you can also use the, you know, the carrots. Like, the, the flip side of that is, so, yes, like, make it painful not to do it, and make it easy and frictionless and obvious to do it. You know? Like, try to design your environment so the things that you say are important to you are the obvious and available things. I think one interesting thing you can do is walk into the... Just think about one habit you're trying to build, and then walk into the rooms where you spend most of your time each day, kitchen, office, bedroom, whatever, and just look around and ask yourself, "What behaviors are obvious here?" You know, "What is this-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- JCJames Clear
... space designed to encourage?"
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, that's really good.
- JCJames Clear
And you'll start to notice different things that you can tweak to make it, the good habit, more obvious and easier and the bad habits or the things you want to avoid less obvious and maybe a little higher friction. And making one or two little adjustments like that is not gonna radically transform your life, but if you make a dozen or two dozen or 50 and you're kinda... all of these environments, all these rooms where you're spending space each day are primed to support the habits you wanna build, I mean, you know, now you've got a tailwind rather than a headwind. And so it's become so much easier to appear as if you have great willpower or that you're really consistent when really you're benefiting from the environment that you already set up.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. And I'll also say sometimes one or two changes can make a huge difference. Coming back to my brownie binge yesterday, there's a reason I don't cook brownies all the time, right? There's a reason I don't have chips in my house, because I will eat all the fucking chips. I will eat everything. I love chips. And I, rather than view that as a failing, like, yes, I could take the hard path and, like, crawl on my knees through broken glass to, like, develop the willpower to stare at these chips every day and not eat them, or I can just not have the chips in my pantry.
- JCJames Clear
Sure.
- TFTim Ferriss
So [laughs] these environmental changes-
- JCJames Clear
Put yourself in positions to succeed. A lot of it is positioning.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- JCJames Clear
You know? Like, if you have a dog and you're walking it down the street and your dog doesn't get along well with other dogs and you see one coming toward you- Go to the other side of the street. Don't like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... put the dog in a bad situation, you know? Like, you wouldn't-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- JCJames Clear
... and we... That kind of thing is obvious with our pets or with our friends or our family members. We're like, "Oh, why would you do that to yourself?" And then we do it to ourselves all the time, you know? So like try to design a space where you are being served by your environment rather than being hindered by it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, totally. I think it was... I don't wanna misquote him, but when I had Jerry Seinfeld [laughs] on this show, I think he said something like, you know, "Your mind is a stupid little dog that you have to train." [laughs] Something along those lines. And if you think about it, right, I think now you got me on dog training. I think about dog training a lot, and I trained my dog, Molly, and took it super seriously and worked with all these different trainers and then tried to modify it and so on. Surprise, surprise. And there, there are these basic things where it's like if you talk to somebody and they have a problem because their dog chews shoes, as an example. And you can ask, "Well, where did the dog spend most of its time for its first two months in the house as a puppy?" And they'll be like, "Oh, like ran around the house." And be like, "Where did you have shoes on the floor?" "Yes." And that's how the dog developed a habit of chewing on shoes. But if you crate train your dog and you simply prevent them from chewing on shoes for the first few months, they're not gonna eat shoes. It's just not gonna be a thing, generally speaking. And for humans too, it's like if you don't wanna eat chips every day, Tim Ferriss, then [laughs] like don't leave the shoes on the floor. Don't leave the chips in the pantry. [laughs] Like this is a solvable problem. So I find a lot of reassurance in the fact that, uh, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be brute force willpower. And, and I'm not saying this to you because in place of something nebulous like that, you can set up systems and you can also rank order your habits in such a way that you are looking for the upstream habits that make the downstream habits easier, right? So whenever I have wanted to get in better shape or someone has asked me for advice, they're like, "What should I eat?" And I'm like, "Let's talk about exercise first." Because if you eat well, it doesn't necessarily lead to exercise. But if you exercise, very often you're not gonna wanna spoil the exercise you did by eating a bunch of crap, right? If you exercise and you're like, "Wow, I put in a lot of effort. I feel great," you're going to have this sunk cost fallacy benefit of having put in that effort. You'll be less inclined to screw it up. There'll be too much cognitive dissonance, right? And in making those types of decisions, you, you can actually make behavioral change a lot easier for yourself. And I'm also looking at my environment. I'm like, "Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee." [laughs]
- JCJames Clear
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
So if I wanna reduce my coffee consumption, maybe I should change this room that I spend so much time in.
- 2:10:52 – 2:15:07
Parting thoughts.
- TFTim Ferriss
My goodness. Anything else that you would like to say, James? We've been going now for almost three hours, and I think this is probably a good place to begin to wind down. But is there anything else you'd like to mention?
- JCJames Clear
The trajectory of your life bends in the direction of your habits, and a lot of what we've talked about today, whether it's launching a book or writing a book, whether it's, you know, building an exercise habit or a meditation habit, growing an email list or developing a creative habit, it comes back to consistency. It comes back to doing small things well each day, trying to live one good day, and then waking up again tomorrow and doing the same thing. And the world is very results-oriented, and that's fine, you know. Like that, we all want to get better results. But almost all the results that you want are a lagging measure of your habits. So your bank account is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your physical fitness is a lagging measure of your training habits. Your... Even like silly stuff like the amount of clutter in your living room is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits, you know? So if you want your results to change, the habits that precede them are the things that actually need to change. It's like fix the inputs, and the outputs will fix themselves. And I don't think that means you have to be radical about it. You know, it doesn't mean that you have to upend your entire life. Really, all you need to do is focus on having like five good minutes. You know, like you can do a lot with five good minutes. Like five good minutes of exercise can reset your mood. Five good minutes of conversation can restore a relationship. Five good minutes of writing can make you feel great about the manuscript again. And so it doesn't take much to feel good, to get back on the path, to continue to make progress. And small habits, showing up in little ways, mastering the art of showing up, trying to get a little bit better each day, those are all things that you can keep in mind as you try to just live one good day today and be on a good trajectory. And that really, one of the core ideas of Atomic Habits is getting 1% better today, and it's really about that. It's really not... It's not about measuring it and like, "Oh, is it a 1% improvement or 1.6%," or whatever. It's, it's not about the numbers. It's like a mindset. It's a philosophy. It's an approach that I'm gonna focus on the trajectory that I'm on, and I'm gonna try to stay on a good path, even if it's just in small ways, and then trust that that will compound and multiply and turn into something much greater over time. Because the truth is time will magnify whatever you feed it. You know, if you have good habits, time becomes your ally and all you need is patience. But if you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy and every day that goes by, you kinda dig the hole a little bit deeper. And so the ideas in Atomic Habits, the strategies for, you know, making small changes, for kinda letting these behaviors improve over time, it's all about getting time to work for you. And I think you can start in really small ways and begin to reinforce your desired identity and hopefully this time next year you'll be really happy with where you're at and the progress you've made.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hear, hear. I'm not gonna spoil that with adding any commentary [laughs] that is unnecessary. I think that's a strong way to close. James Clear, you can find him at jamesclear.com or on Twitter and Instagram, @JamesClear. We'll link to everything including the 3-2-1 Newsletter, which everyone should check out, in the show notes as per usual at tim.blog/podcast. James, thanks so much for taking the time. This was great. Took a ton of notes. I have homework. I have changes to make. I have perhaps a few bags of coffee to remove from my immediate space. [laughs] And this has rekindled my enthusiasm, amplified my enthusiasm for the new year. So I appreciate you sharing so much and being so game to play the tennis match of this conversation.
- JCJames Clear
Of course. Thanks, Tim. Really appreciate it, man.
- TFTim Ferriss
And to everybody listening, be just a little bit kinder than is necessary today. That includes to yourself. Set up systems. Remember our dear friend, Archilochus. [laughs] We will not rise to the level of our goal or our hopes, but fall to the levels of our training and our systems. So best of luck to you and thanks for tuning in.
Episode duration: 2:15:28
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