James Clear on Making Small Changes to Your Habits for Big Results

In this episode of the GMB podcast, Andy and Ryan interview James Clear.

James is a guy with many talents and interests, including weightlifting, travel photography, entrepreneur-ing, and habit change, and he has A LOT to say about making changes, particularly when it comes to fitness habits.

So get’yer ears on, ’cause James’s rendition of habit change is the perfect pairing to our own thoughts on the topic.

A few of the topics covered:

• The formula for success when creating a new habit? The 3 Rs: Reminder, Routine, and Reward.
• Why creating an optimal environment will make it a lot easier to create the habits you want.
• The cascading effect of habit change.
• Empowering yourself with “I don’t” messages, rather than “I can’t”.

Links we discussed:

• James Clear’s blog (with a digest of awesomeness, special for listeners of this episode) 
  
• Identity-Based Habits
• Our recent article on where motivation comes from

Transcript

Andy Fossett
All right, breaker one nine are out there on the interwebs. Get your ears on for the Fitness Skills podcast from GMB, where we teach you how to get strong by practicing skills you actually want to learn, and even have fun in the process. I’m Andy Fossett, I’m not only the founder of the GMP policy, I’m also a client. And here on the other line with me is the hero of the GMP epic saga, our program director and head coach, Ryan, C. Hearst. First, Ryan seahurst. Here, James clear is our guest on today’s podcast we’ve been I don’t know why the hell we’ve been having guests on our podcast lately. I guess. We finally scrape the bottom of the barrel of what Ryan is good for.

Ryan Hurst
It, of course, has nothing to do with me running out of material. Of course, of course.

Andy Fossett
But so we’ve got James clear on and James clear is somebody that a lot of our, our listeners and our policy members probably don’t know about. So, James, I’m gonna put you on the spot and just kind of let you introduce yourself, if you don’t mind. For sure. Yeah, well, first, I just want to say thanks for having me. It’s awesome to be on here. And I’m excited to share some stuff. So it should be a lot of fun today.

James Clear
I have had a lot of different touch points with health and wellness. And so I guess the three main areas that I sort of boxed myself into now are one writing about behavior change and habit formation, and how we can use those principles to lead lead a healthier life. And so will I’m sure we’ll get into some of that later. And then secondly is as like a practitioner, I you know, I think research is important. But I also think it’s important to sort of carry the banner and like live a healthy life yourself. So I’m, I compete in Olympic weightlifting, occasionally, I had a long history of being a competitive baseball player. So I’ve been an athlete all my life. And I also in certified, I have my CSCS, and all that stuff. So I’ve done some training of athletes anywhere from eight year olds, all the way up to a professional volleyball player. So through all those different areas, you know, I’ve had like some physical touch points with actually living the stuff out. And then the third thing is, I feel like there are a lot of things that if effect and impact our health that we wouldn’t normally term like health decisions, the type of work you do, the amount of creativity you express in your life, the you know how well your relationships are, and you know, the people that you connect with on a daily basis, I think that all those things manifest themselves in our physical health in some way. And so I do travel, photography, all that I think it’ll be hitting on my 20th Country later this month. So I think that travel and exploration and creativity is an important part of living healthy life as well. So those three areas writing and researching about behavior change, living it out, and being a weightlifter, an athlete, and then also exploring and traveling and creating things on my own dime, I variable, three, three areas of health and wellness. Yeah, Ryan and I especially travel is has been a big thing to us. As you can imagine, having spent some time in Japan, shirts made a huge impact on us. So we’ll probably get into some of that, and creativity

Andy Fossett
later on. And I just want to also mention that you had no way of knowing as James, but when you actually contacted us about being on the podcast, it was like the most perfect timing of anything, that’s pretty much ever happened. Because you, you mentioned that you wanted to talk about habits. And we were just planning to release a course on making a daily exercise a daily movement exploration habit, which is just kind of like, you know, taking the idea of sort of taking the sets and reps out of things, but just having fun with something for you know, 510 15 minutes a day, that gets you to move creatively and move towards being able to build a habit that is more expressive, rather than just, you know, oh, today I have to have, I have to do like, you know, five intervals or whatever. So the timing is just really, really cool. And that’s why we were so excited to get you on here. I’ve actually read your blog before you got in touch. And I knew that you were kind of interested in this sort of side of things. And so it just seemed like a great fit. And so for everybody that’s listening, it’s like, Who the hell is this James guy? Well, you just heard him and the stuff that he’s doing is really, really tightly related to the other side of what we demonstrate in our tutorials and things. And so that’s kind of why he’s here.

James Clear
Yeah, you know, I love that that idea of exploration just doing things for fun as well. I mean, I think that’s so critical. You know, I mean, logically, it makes sense. Anybody who thinks about it, right? Like, sure you want to enjoy the processes that you do, and when you feel like you’re forced to do something, it’s not as inspiring or motivating or enjoyable, but just taking that approach of making sure that you set aside time to be creative or to explore and making sure that it’s, it’s something that you daily do you do typically and on a consistent basis and not something that you just do whenever you feel like it, I think that the cumulative impact of forcing yourself to explore on a consistent basis is huge. And so I think there’s gonna be a lot of people who get a lot out of that out of that idea of like, Hey, let me explore my body a little bit more, let me try something new. Let me put myself in maybe a situation that’s uncomfortable, or that I’m uncertain with that I just don’t know about and see how I respond. And you do get to discover a lot, not just about yourself physically, but also mentally through that process.

Andy Fossett
Yeah, absolutely. And Ryan, I think, lately has been working on his one arm handstand and sort of having the same kind of experience. Don’t you agree with that?

Ryan Hurst
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, what’s very interesting is when I was going through your blog, and looking at things, and particularly, which was the difference between professionals and amateurs, and you know, something, of course, just the one thing that you mentioned, is simply get in there, and just focusing on getting in there. So rather than think about, oh, you know, I should work out this day or whatnot, it’s not a matter of what really, you’re doing, but actually going in there, and making an effort to do it. And this is something as far as me with a one arm handstand, there are days, when it’s tough for me to really get in there and want to do it. Because I mean, I’m doing this every single day, all I do is stain on my hands. And I’m doing up to two, sometimes three times a day, different sessions. And so it can be, it can be difficult in the beginning, of course, it’s kind of fun, you’re excited about it. But as that honeymoon period, I guess kind of starts to wane. You find that that inspiration? You know, why are you doing this, that you have to constantly think about that. And I really enjoyed reading your your article on that, about the difference between professionals and amateurs, and basically what it comes down to is just getting in there and doing it. So creating that habit, creating the habit to just get in there and do it. So

James Clear
Oh, totally. You know, another way that I like to think about it is setting a schedule for yourself rather than a deadline, you know, set goals, a lot of times we put the result first, we think about like, oh, I want to lose 40 pounds in the next 12 weeks, or, you know, whatever the particular goal is that we’re working towards, and if you can let go of that a little bit. And this is something that I think, you know, people who we would term as pros in any field, they do this really well, they sure they have goals that drive that are like, you know, milestones that they’re working towards. But the most important thing for those people is that they show up every day, like when I was lifting on an Olympic lifting team, Columbus, a couple of our lifters, Holley Mangold, who’s our best female lifter actually lifted the the Olympics in London, but then our other male lifters who were top 10 in their weight class, the most important thing for them every day when they showed up was that like, they didn’t miss workouts they never missed, you know, I mean, they always came put their work in. And, sure, there were days where they hit PRs, but there were a lot of other days where they didn’t, or they didn’t feel like being there. But the most important thing wasn’t the result. It was sticking to the schedule. And Exactly, exactly, yeah, like that shift in mindset. I mean, you mentioned you know, the struggle with the one arm handstand I’m, I’m working on doing 100 Good form push ups in a row was like my current local fitness goals I’m working towards. And I’ve been doing push ups for, you know, in the beginning, I thought it wouldn’t take this long. Now, I’ve been doing them for over eight months, and slowly getting up there. And for any goal that you’re working towards, if it’s going to be you know, something that’s challenging you, there are going to be days where you don’t feel like showing up, right, like there’s going to be set. So you don’t feel like finishing, there’ll be reps or you feel like you know, I’m just too tired. But if you can take the emotion out of the little bit, and make your only goal sticking to the schedule, then I think you’ll end up making a ton of progress over long term, rather than just working out when you’re motivated, or when you feel like it.

Ryan Hurst
Absolutely. I agree. And, you know, we see this a lot, you know, people, unfortunately, they get in there, and they think that they can get something overnight, it takes hard work to do what we’re doing. But really just like what you said, it’s just a matter of showing up, you’re gonna have good days, you’re gonna have bad days, and especially on those bad days is when you just need to put your chin down, get in there and do it. And, you know, amazing things can happen. And I’ve talked about this many times before, you know, you show up for your workout, and you might not necessarily think you’re going to have a great workout, you start you’re feeling you know, not like you really want to do it, but you end up having this great workout. And I found this is a big thing. It’s just a matter of showing up. Just show up start workout. And going from there.

Andy Fossett
Yeah, totally. And another thing that’s really interesting that James said is that we tend to focus on the result, but just scheduling the work, actually, in a lot of ways can be so much more powerful for getting that result, a lot of the cognitive research on like high performance and habit and that kind of thing they do on musicians. I don’t know why i mean i It’s probably just because everybody loves a little funk. But the thing is they do They study musicians and elite musicians and virtuoso musicians. And most people who are great musicians don’t start out thinking I want to learn how to play X song. Right? They they start out by setting aside a certain amount of time each day that they’re just going to practice their instrument, you know, and over time, they can play all the damn songs, but they’re not working on one song, they’re just setting aside that time they schedule you’ll one hour a day or two one hour sessions or, you know, depending on their their thing, they schedule that time and set it aside. And that’s just their practice time. And they do it whether they feel like it or not, they might have a good session, they might have a lousy session, but the elite musicians are always the ones who are follow a very disciplined routine. Rather than just chasing goals. It’s not always about just like being fired up about a goal all the time.

James Clear
So another way that I like to think about this, and this is i This is something that, you know, I’ll use running as an example, just to make it concrete, but you can apply it to anything. So, you know, say you wanted to run like three miles today, right? Like, that was your goal. And then you’re like, Alright, I’m gonna run three miles this afternoon. And your your day gets going, your day gets away from you, you look up at the clock, and it’s like, oh, I only have 20 minutes left. That’s not enough time for me to change my shoes and you know, change my clothes and go do three miles. And so what I would have done in the past, I think what a lot of people do is you come up with reasons for doing something else to it, right? You’re like, oh, well, I don’t know, 20 minutes is enough time. So I’ll go ahead and be smart about this and use that time, you know, for something else that I can do, and then I’ll work out tomorrow. But the shift in the thinking and the way that you can apply this to use it so that you always stick to that schedule that we’re talking about is instead of worrying about the goal or the you know, the vision you had at the outset, just stick to the schedule, but reduce the scope. So you can tell yourself like, well, maybe 20 minutes isn’t enough time to get changed around three miles. But it is enough time to get changed and run five sprints, right and the individual impact of sticking to your goal in a smaller way of reducing the scope, not that big, but the cumulative impact of always sticking to the schedule and never missing workouts. That’s huge. Because you can tell yourself internally, you know, the situation wasn’t ideal, the circumstances weren’t the best, but I still found a way to make it work. And if you can prove that to yourself over and over again, then you’ll develop the willpower and the motivation or you know, the fortitude to always stick to that schedule, and then you’re going to make huge gains.

Andy Fossett
Yeah, and I can see that that would, like you said, you prove that to yourself over and over again, I think that’s really key too. Because when we talk about motivation, and, and that kind of thing, a lot of it is based on our past experience. And we’ve proven to ourselves again and again that we that we fail, we’ve proven again and again, that we’re not going to reach our goals, we’ve proven again and again, that we just don’t have what it takes to be successful at certain things. If we let that be our mindset, then it’s so easy to just give up to see that there’s 20 minutes available, and just be totally comfortable throwing that away, you know, but if we can prove to ourselves that we can use just just 20 just five minutes even effectively, then we’re building we’re building that momentum in a positive direction.

So sorry, I had to take a sip of my instant coffee swill there. Speaking of habits, I have a coffee habit, and I love drinking coffee, and I get this really good coffee. But every time I finish it and the next shipment doesn’t come yet, I’ve still got my coffee habit. So I ended up drinking crappy coffee, even though I hate it. And I consider it a punishment to myself for not ordering it sooner. So that’s that’s just my own habit.

James Clear
Imagine if your workouts were like that, you know, you didn’t have access to a gym. So you’re forced yourself to run like sprint five hundreds on repeat.

Andy Fossett
Right? Well, it’s the same kind of thing. You know, and maybe maybe the workout would be more rewarding than the coffee habit probably would be actually. Probably. Yeah. Cool. So let’s talk a little bit about. So we’ve talked about, you know, if you can create this momentum and have this schedule that you stick to, then you know, it’s a great thing, you can do a lot of stuff. So what can we do, James based on based on what you’ve studied, and based on what you’ve seen, that can help us create these habits or create this schedule that we’re actually going to stick to?

James Clear
Sure. So I think there are two things that we can look at. And then we can apply them to pretty much any situation or life not just health stuff. So the first is, and we’ve we’ve sort of hinted at it already a little bit. The first is a concept that I call identity based habits. And the idea is and I mentioned this earlier, a lot of times when we pick a goal, we put the result or the performance or our appearance first, right we put like I want to lose 40 pounds in 12 weeks or I want to increase my squat by 100 pounds in the next 16 weeks or whatever it is right we pick some lofty goal that we’re driving towards and I think goals are great if you already are the type of person who can achieve them. And what I mean by that is that it comes down to the identity or the type of person that you believe that you are, if you’re sitting on the couch right now and aren’t or aren’t in the consistent habit of working out, where you’ve only worked out maybe once in the last three weeks, or you know, three times the last two months, then internally, it’s hard to believe that you’re the type of person that can make those significant changes. The reason that we convince ourselves of it is we see like a transformation on TV, you know, someone who lost 60 pounds, and you know, three months or whatever, and we think, Oh, well, I would love to have a transformation like that. And it’s really easy to get yourself motivated and jacked up about that. But then, as far as building an actual habit, and having the basis for that result, you don’t have that. And so I think that the goal should be to form the identity first, and then move on to the goals or the results later. And so for the, for the example of someone who wants to lose weight, it could be, you know, the the identity that you want to build as become the type of person who never misses workouts, you become that type of person, then you can be the type of person who loses 40 pounds and you know, 12 weeks or whatever. But you need to develop the habit first. And so, by starting with that identity, you can start to develop the type of person that you want to become and prove it to yourself with many small wins. You know, for those first, like two months in the gym, the only goal is don’t miss workouts, and you just show up, you don’t care about the performance, you don’t care about the results, or any of that. And once you’ve proven the identity, then you can move on to the actual goal. So the first piece is building that identity. The second piece, is what I call the three R’s of habit change. And I first learned this from BJ Fogg, who’s a professor at Stanford. And this same cycle has been mentioned in some books recently, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg is a good book on this if you want to read more about it. But the basic idea is this all habits in your life, whether it’s health, or anything else, follow the same three step pattern. And the first step. And these are the three R’s that I talked about. The first R is reminder. So for example, someone calls you your phone rings, that’s the reminder, the second step is the routine. And that’s the actual action that you do the habit itself. So your phone rings, that’s the reminder, you pick up the phone and answer it, that’s the routine. The third R is reward. And this is the benefit for doing the behavior, this is why you do it, or what causes you to do it. So in the case of your phone, it rings, that’s a reminder, you answer that’s the routine, you find out who’s calling or satisfy your curiosity for why they’re calling you. That’s the benefit. And what happens is that if the benefit is positive, it creates this positive feedback loop that tells your body next time you get that reminder, do that same thing again. And this happens, the same sequence happens, whether it’s bad habits, like people who you know, start to form alcoholism, or maybe start smoking or biting their nails, you get some trigger some reminder that causes the routine to happen. And then some benefit from doing it that tells you next time you get that trigger, do it again. But it also works the same way for good habits. And so you can start to manipulate your behavior a little bit to make the good things easier. And the bad things harder, you know, if you can put distance between you and that reminder that it’s harder to do the bad behavior, if you can pick a behavior that you already do, then you can have a trigger that makes it easier to remember to do the good thing. I’ll give you an example of that. So I have, you know, been working on little ways to make me you know, happier, more mindful, more present in my life. And so I started a routine every time I sit down for dinner, I tell my CEOs myself one thing that I’m grateful for that day, and the trigger is a behavior that I already do, I’m always going to sit down for dinner. And so I try that and use that as a reminder for the new behavior. And you can follow the same sequence for whatever the type of goal is that you’re trying to achieve.

Andy Fossett
Very cool. I like that. And so just to refresh that you’ve got what are the three R’s again,

James Clear
so the first R is a reminder, and that’s a trigger or the cue that causes you to do the behavior. The second R is the routine. And that’s the actual habit what you what you’re actually doing the action. And the third R is the reward and that’s the benefit for doing it. And another way to think of this, if you have a routine that you don’t like that you aren’t, aren’t happy with or a bad habit that you want to break. You know, for example, let’s say you come in from work each day and you sit down on the couch and it’s hard for you to get back up or you know, get into the motivated mode to go work out after that. Then you can figure out what the what the what the reminder is what the trigger is for doing that. So for example, maybe you could take your couch and turn it away from the TV, if your couches and facing the TV, you don’t sit down and start watching TV for three hours and miss you know the going to the gym or you can manipulate the reward so the reward is you get to sit down on the couch and you know hang out with your kids or your family members or something and you know, once that gets started, you don’t want to leave If you could figure out a different way to get that same reward, there’s something active. And so you could substitute behavior, instead of sitting on the couch or sitting in the living room and us all talking and enjoying each other, maybe we could go outside, and I don’t know, you know, do something active and get that benefit as well. And so you can come at it from either angle. But if you understand the sequence of how it works, then you can use that and substituting in your life and whatever way makes the most sense.

Andy Fossett
That’s great. So it’s, so it’s those three factors. And if you are missing any one of them, then you might, there’s a higher likelihood that you’re going to have trouble building the new habit, right. So if you don’t know what the reward is, if you if you don’t have a routine that actually works, and if your reminder doesn’t actually remind you, if those three things aren’t working together, then that’s why we’re having trouble with creating new habits. If we want to create a habit that sticks, we need to make sure that we look at those three aspects, and that they all line up together and work sort of in synergy to try to make us actually follow through and keep doing the thing.

James Clear
Yeah, that’s so critical, you bring up a lot of good points there. You know, a lot of times when we try to start a new behavior, it the reason we may not stick to it after a while, it could be that the reminder is bad, you know, maybe putting a post it note on your mirror isn’t actually doing it like you need to tie it to something that you already do. Yeah. Or maybe the reward isn’t really beneficial, maybe you don’t really care about the reward you’re getting. So find a way to get a reward that you do value. And so those are yeah, those are all really good points you made about it.

Andy Fossett
Excellent. Very cool. Ryan, you got anything interesting about this?

Ryan Hurst
Not really, I’m just I’m just really interested to hear what James has to say. Because already I’m thinking of different ways that I can apply this to students, and you know, doing some great stuff for our GMB people. So

in a lot of different ways, you know, if you think about ways to structure their workouts or their daily routines to make those behaviors easier, then it just makes it that much easier to follow it and start living a healthy lifestyle. Yeah, and the three R’s. I mean, that’s great, very easy to remember. And very applicable, you know, once you get it down, and just like what you said, you know, once you can get it for each particular student.

James Clear
Wow, this is good stuff. Yeah. Cool. You know, another thing that I think you guys might enjoy about this is a concept that I call environment design. And this applies directly to the sequence. So if you understand this, and this can be really powerful for fitness as well.

The basic idea is actually, I got a good little story about this. And then I’ll give you a real example of how I used it. So the the Imagine that you’re looking at a graph, all right. And on one side of the graph, there are a bunch of countries that are all a really high numbers 9798 99%. And then on the other side of the graph, there’s a bunch of countries that are all really low numbers 10% 5% 8%. And this was a study that was done by a researcher at Duke. And what he was looking at were the percentage of people in the population who committed to being organ donors who were willing to donate their organs. And in one group and the really high group, there were countries like Sweden, and then in the really low group, there were countries like Denmark, and he was like, What’s the difference between these two countries like Sweden and Denmark seem very similar culturally, they’re in close geographic proximity to each other. Why would Why would there just be this huge different like, are the people in Denmark just jerks? And they don’t want to give people their organs? You know, like, what’s the deal. And when he looked at it, what he found was the people who were in countries that had really low rates of organ donors, they were sent a form by the government that said, if you want to be an organ donor check here, the people who are in countries with really high rates of organ donors were sent a form by the government and said, If you don’t want to be an organ donor check here. So the difference between was between opt in and opt out. Now, the lesson is that if you were to ask somebody, are you an organ donor? Like most people would think, Oh, that’s a personal decision that I made, or it’s, you know, it’s his decision that I have a reason for why I am or why I’m not. And so we think that it’s like this thing that we actively think about, but the truth of the matter is, whether or not you’re an organ donor has more to do with the type of form that you’re sent than anything else. And I think that it’s easy for us to consider and think, oh, yeah, sure the people in our lives can impact decisions that we make. But the truth is that the forms you’re sent the signs you read, the things that are on your desk at work, the things that are on your kitchen, counter at home, the type of gym you workout, in are the different things that you surround yourself with when you’re trying to be healthy. These are all things that play a role in the choices that you make and the healthy you have. And so if you can optimize the things around you to make those good behaviors easier, and those bad behaviors harder, How much easier would it be to live a healthy life? And so I had two examples of how I’d use this. The first was, I always like I wanted to start flossing, but I can never remember to floss and you know, I always brush my teeth for my whole life, right? It’s like no, no problem. I brush my teeth. Morning night. But it was just a pain like I never remember take the floss out of the drawer. I hated unwinding the long school and like, you know, cutting circulation off to my fingers. It was just ridiculous. So I, what I did was, I looked at the situation, I was like, Alright, what’s preventing me from doing this, and I realized that I wouldn’t, I wasn’t remembering to take it out. And I didn’t enjoy the process. So I went and bought some of those pre made flossers, and then bought a bowl and set it right next to my toothbrush. And this sounds like a silly, stupid little change. But what happened is that because I changed the environment, I never forget to floss. Now it’s right next to my toothbrush, I put my toothbrush down, I pick a floss syrup, I floss my teeth every day. And if you can make little changes like that, like how much easier is life. And so another one is that there’s this research that shows that the color of your plate, if the color of your plate matches the color of your food, then you’ll automatically eat 30% more. And so they tested this by having like two lines of people. And they had one pasta sauce that was pre mixed with a white sauce. And then they had another pasta sauce that was pre mixed with a red sauce. And then they would randomly give people white or red plates. And when the color of the pasta they had match the color of their plate, they automatically served 30% More because to their mind, they can’t tell the difference as much they can’t see the portion that’s clearly. And so because the contrast isn’t there, they automatically scoot more on. And so I started thinking about this, I was like, What can we how can we use that to make it easier to eat healthy or to have like healthier diet. So the optimal color, I think, at least from what I can tell would be like a dark green, because you would automatically over serve yourself. dark green vegetables, broccoli, spinach, you know, leafy greens. And then you would automatically underserved foods that a lot of people are trying to limit potatoes, starches, pasta, things like that. And that’s another example of something that you don’t think about at all, but you just optimize your environment. So if you can have these little changes in your environment, you can make the habit so much easier for yourself without even having to worry about them. That is really

Ryan Hurst
cool. And actually, I’m going to try that out with my kids. Because their plates, it’s really interesting, but their plates are white, they have little, you know, cute characters on them, of course of five years on three year, three year old, but they eat a ton of rice, which, you know, it’s not necessarily bad, but they like to eat more rice and veggies. And so I’m actually gonna try that out. That’s really interesting, you know, just changing the environment and see how that goes. So good stuff, man.

James Clear
Cool. Yeah, let me know what happens. That’d be interesting to see. Yeah, really? Yeah, subject, force your family into research. My wife will be up for it too. So that’d be great.

Andy Fossett
Nice. So that’s really interesting stuff. And I think that, you know, if we all like, think about it just a little bit. And I mean, obviously, we make so many micro decisions every day, we can’t possibly comprehend all the factors that go into all of them. But if we really look at anything, that we’re not satisfied with anything that we want to change, and just take them one at a time, and think about the small decisions and the small factors that influence those decisions. I’m sure that, you know, we can easily find one or two things about anything we’d like to change, that we could just create a slightly better environment for making the decision we’d like to make instead of the one we end up defaulting to.

James Clear
Yeah, I mean, you want a really easy one, like just take the cookies off of your kitchen counter and put them in the pantry or in a cabinet or something, right? Like, it’s so it sounds so simple, but I see it with myself all the time, if I have a snack sitting on the counter, it doesn’t even matter if I’m hungry, like I don’t even hide, I just see it, and I’ll eat it. And so if you take away the visual cue, and this is another like really basic, just like very actionable way to think about it, if you if you want to make good, good behaviors and good habits easier than reduce the number of steps you need to take to do them, right, like, you know, there, for example, if you want to go or if you want to exercise more frequently, well, if you need to get dressed and get changed and get in your car and drive to the gym. That’s a lot of steps between you and working out. Yeah. Whereas if you decide, oh, I’ll just do a bodyweight workout in my apartment, then great. Like that’s, there’s not many steps there at all. So if you can reduce the number of steps for the good behaviors, you make them easier to do. And if you can increase the number of steps for the bad behaviors, you make them harder. Do you know if you if you want to smoke and there’s cigarettes sitting on the table, there’s not really a whole lot between you and the cigarette, just some willpower, but if you don’t have any in the apartment, you need to drive five miles down the road, the nearest gas station, there’s a little bit more between you and it makes it harder to do.

Andy Fossett
Yeah, and that’s a really good example. I mean, the cookies too soon, as you said that I was thinking about to when I used to be a school teacher and I’ve mentioned previously I have this coffee habit, which I don’t think is a bad habit at all. I mean, I love coffee, and but I never really was much of a snacker but when I worked at a school, we always had snacks next to where the coffee was. So every time I would get up to get a cup of coffee I would have like a little cracker or a cookie or something. And I realized after a few weeks that man, I’m eating a ton of cookies all the time. And I’ve never really eaten cookies really much since I was a kid. And I had to, you know, rethink things. And I actually had to set times for my coffee that I knew all the cookies would be gone. Because it’s still there. Yeah. Yeah.

James Clear
Yeah. I mean, you think it’s like a decision that you actively make, you know, like, on the cookies, but yeah, it’s just, and they you know, another way to think of it, this is something I thought of, as you were giving that example, there was some research that was done. And this is like very applicable, if you’re, if you’re a person who’s in the type of situation where like, you go to get coffee, and cookies are in front of you, or you, you know, are out to dinner, and the waiter offers you like a dessert menu or whatever. If you’re in the situation where you’re tempted and feel like you need to say no to a bad behavior, it’s better to tell yourself, I don’t do that, then I can’t do that. So, you know, like, the difference between the mental shift is huge. There was a research study done, where they had people do these two different things. They told the one group like, oh, when you’re tempted was something, tell yourself, I can’t eat ice cream, for example. And then they told the other group when you’re tempted, tell yourself, I don’t eat ice cream. And the difference is that don’t is a very like psychologically empowering phrase. It’s like a, you know, it’s a choice, where it’s like, oh, I’m that type of person. Whereas I can’t it’s like a very restrictive phrase, it’s like, oh, well, I’m not allowed to do that, or I’m on a diet that tells me I can’t do it. And what they found was that there was a huge difference in the percentage of people who would make healthy choices versus unhealthy choices. I think they after the study, you know, after they told them to tell each other don’t or can’t, they offered them a chocolate candy bar, and 61% of the people who said I can’t ate it, but only like 36%, who said, I don’t ate it. So there was like a significant difference in the availability to resist temptation, by using that empowering phrase.

Andy Fossett
That’s awesome. And that brings us actually back to the identity of identity based habits again, which is also very interesting, because we GMB, we kind of go through cycles with our blog posts and our topics that we kind of hit on. And recently, we were talking about motivation a lot. And one of the things that we wrote about was, you know, that thing of, you know, is it really that you want to have a six pack or whatever? Or is it that you just want to be the kind of person who is active and healthy, and it really hits on that identity thing. And I think that that’s just a great thing that I I’m not that kind of person I don’t I’m the kind of person who chooses this is really much more empowering and much more, much more intrinsic motivation and self driven than external motivation and society or an approval driven, like a lot of the decisions that we tend to make.

James Clear
Yeah, I love that. I would agree with you. Absolutely. I think I liked how you guys framed that as well, for your audience. I think that’s, that’s really useful. You were mentioning motivation, a lot there. And I was just thinking of something that a little tool that I used when I used to play baseball that allowed it easier for me to sort of get into the routine. Actually, I use this with weightlifting all the time. And the idea is, you know, earlier we were talking about like, you know, some days you just don’t feel motivated, right, like Ryan, you’re talking about the handstands and everything. And what I did and you guys might have the similar thing is I have like a pregame routine for where every time I would pitch right, I would have like the same cycle, the same sequence that I would go go through right, grab a baseball, grabbed my glove, get up out of the dugout, jog to the one foul pole drug costs, the other one do my stretches, and I had the same sequence I did like the same way every time it was probably about 20 minutes in total all the way from like getting started to finishing my bullpen session before the game. And what happened was that even on the days where I was like kind of feeling in a funk or wasn’t like really jacked up before the game, by the time I got done with that sequence, that pregame routine, I was ready to go every time and so I do the same thing. Now when I go to the gym I do like the same cycle of like 10 air squats I pick up the bar do a little bit of like snatch work a little bit of like squad movements, and by the time I get done with this whole routine that starts with me, you know like putting on my lifting shoes and ends with me doing you know a couple of dynamic warmup exercises by the time I get done with that I’m always ready to go whether or not I came into the gym motivated.

Ryan Hurst
That’s interesting because I do the exact same thing every single time that I you know, get ready for my one arm handstand. I go through the same warmup I do it the same way and make sure that I’m you know, getting into my other handstands first progressing towards getting into that one arm handstand and putting myself in that frame of mind. You know, even like you said, even if I am maybe having a crappy day, by the time I get ready to actually start the one arm handstand hold, I’m ready and I’m in a completely you know, different frame of mind and really interest seeing stuff,

James Clear
you know, you see it in, in all different areas of life too. Like I know, they’re like comedians who recite the same like cycle of you know jokes and stuff themselves before they go out on stage or that you know, if there are public speakers that have like their routine before they present CEOs who have like a meditation habit in the morning, you see it pretty much anywhere. They’re like top performers. And you see that that routine or that ritual based thinking or that ritual, those ritual and then habits before their actual event? Because it does that I mean, does exactly what you’re saying where it pulls you into the frame of mind to perform.

Andy Fossett
Yeah, that’s why Spinal Tap started every show with big bottom. There was no actual I’m sorry. Anyway, so that’s really awesome. I’d like to ask you, maybe for a couple of maybe concrete examples, I’m gonna, a couple of things I was thinking about. So we talked about identity based habits on in some very positive ways. But also, I think it’s really easy to get negative identity based habits, like for example, like I’m a smoker, or we also get emails sometimes from people who say, Oh, I’d like to do this exercise, but I’m too stiff, or I’m inflexible, or I’m old, or I’m whatever. How do we break these identity? Identities that don’t serve us?

James Clear
Sure. That’s a That’s a great question. Because I think it’s something that we all deal with. And so, you know, and so, there are two things, I think the first is it, you know, I like to flip it from rather than focusing on like, the negative identity, or the identity that you don’t like about yourself, let’s focus on what you do want to build right where you want to become. And the one way, the only real way that I know to do that is to through like a series of very small wins. And we talked about, you know, starting with, Okay, the first thing is, let’s make sure that you can become the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts, forget about the performance, forget about the results, just focus there. Once you do that for two months, then you can move on to you know, the next let’s figure out what how I want to program it, or what I want to get done. And each workout I know, I’m going to be here anyway, what do I want to accomplish? And then, you know, after those two months, you can move on to what type of fitness goals Am I going for. So you’ll like very small steps, repeated over time, and gradually prove it to yourself. The second thing is that and this can be really useful. I have a friend who smoked at least a pack a day, if not two, for five years. And he recently quit smoking, but not that recently. He’s been he’s quit smoking about two and a half years ago now and hasn’t had a cigarette and I was talking to him about is like, how did you make this this change? Right? How did you switch from your from smoking so much to being smoke free? And he said, one of the things that helped him the most was that instead of telling himself, I’m going to try to quit smoking, or I’m not going to be a smoker or whatever. He was like I was returning to not smoking. It’s not that I was quitting smoking, I was returning to be returning to be a nonsmoker.

Andy Fossett
That’s interesting. So he just floated back to neutral.

James Clear
Exactly. And I think, you know, for a lot of this doesn’t apply to everything in life. But for a lot of things in life, you know, you weren’t always the way that you are now, or you didn’t always have the negative behavior, the negative identity, maybe that you’re associating with yourself right now, you know, like a lot of people, you weren’t overweight, 10 years ago, or when you were a child, or you weren’t a smoker, when you were five, you know, it’s not that you, you’re not destined to have this negative identity that maybe you think you have now, right? You can return to being the type of person who doesn’t do that, because you already were the type of person who didn’t do that at some point. And so I think that mental shift can be very empowering and helpful as well

Andy Fossett
Awesome. Cool. So there’s one more thing I want to ask. And this is something since we’re talking about habit change, I want to ask you, is there like a threshold or a limit? Or some sort of, like, I don’t know, maximum amount of changes that’s possible at once? Is there a limit to like a certain number of small changes you can make concurrently that equals one big change? Or is it like, some sort of Malthusian thing where there’s like a limited sort of change pie that you can only a bit at a time, you know,

James Clear
yeah, that’s, that’s a really great question, too. And I am, you know, there are different schools of thought on it. My personal opinion is that I tried to focus on building one new habit at a time. So rather than trying to change everything, I just tried to change one thing. And then once I get that to a level where I’m confident that I’m going to stick to it, then I can try to, you know, add something new to the mix. But I do think there’s a limit BJ Fogg, the professor from Stanford that I mentioned earlier, he thinks that people should try to train three new habits at once because the benefit and now the all these when I say new habits, like these need to be small things, you know, like I get the flossing example earlier. Yeah. He thinks that the benefit of that is that you can teach yourself how habits in general work and As you teach yourself the process more, you make it easier for yourself to stick to change long term. So those are the two different ways to think about it. I think that regardless of how you go about it, the most important thing is, you know, not getting dead set on any particular number, but just finding something that works well for your particular life and your circumstance, and that you’re comfortable with. Another way to think about it. And something that has been critical for my success. And I think this applies to pretty much everyone is that there’s this idea called a keystone habit. And a keystone habit is one good behavior are the type of thing that you do each day, that just sort of naturally pulls everything else in line. For me, this is fitness and like working out, if I work out or train a particular during a particular day, then I automatically want to eat better. It’s weird, it’s like, you know, I can maybe get away with eating worse because I exercise but I naturally want to eat better, because I already exercise. And so I want to take care of my body more and give myself good nutrition, I sleep better. And so as a result, I’m more productive and more energized when I wake up in the morning. And I concentrate better. And so all of these things, you know, I didn’t focus on building a habit for concentration and for sleep. And for diet, all I did was let’s focus on the one keystone habit, make sure I get my training in today. And I know the rest of this stuff will kind of fall in line. And so if you can figure out where that cascading effect comes from for you, then that can be a very powerful way to make a lot of change without actually having to worry about every little detail.

Andy Fossett
That’s awesome. And then it’s still back to the reminder and the routine and the reward. If you can stack all those up on one of these Keystone Habits that kind of pulls other things along with it, you can actually make some very significant changes. Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan Hurst
I was just gonna say I just, I just love how you explain that. Because I see that a lot with you know, my students and people because it’s, they come in, and I say, Okay, let’s just focus on this one thing for right now. But you see that they want to change other areas of their life. And it’s not necessarily that it’s a difficult change for them, then it’s, as you said, it’s a natural thing. And they want to do it. And that habit just becomes natural. So, you know, similar to what you were saying, you know, just putting the bowl by your toothbrush of those philosophies that you had it just you don’t even really have to think about it. It’s just something that you end up wanting to do, because it’s there. And that’s just great stuff. We like to say, especially, you know, if you’re working on something major, let’s say like, for example, my one arm handstand, yeah, you just want to focus on that, and not really worry about other movements, but, but along those lines, too, if there are smaller things that you want to do, maybe just get out and move your body, you know, doing a couple of different things together, I think is also really good. Great stuff, James.

Andy Fossett
So very cool. Well, that’s about all I really have that I want to talk about. I think that it’s been very, very useful and very applicable to pretty much Well, everyone, not just everyone in the posse, but anybody who who has a heartbeat can can make use of this stuff. And James explained it very well and made it really easy to understand. Not getting too sciency are getting too, too complicated, where there’s like nine steps to a habit. And you have to have your goals have to meet this, like eight part checklist or anything. But you know, it’s very easy to put together very easy to use. And I think that everyone can really look at this, look at their lives and apply it somehow. Right? Do you have anything else you want to add?

Ryan Hurst
No, just I learned a lot today, I just want to say thank you, James, for being here with us. It was for sure.

James Clear
Ya know, I’m happy to do it. And, you know, I think you both have hit on it throughout the conversation. But the most important thing is really, that you can take action on it, like, you know, I mean, and you’re joking about the science and everything there. But there’s a lot of truth in that people make things way too complicated. And the people who you know, who end up suffering because of it are, you know, people like you and I and everyone listening who wants to actually make change in their life. And it’s like, why makes things so complex? No actually make it possible for people to actually make real change. And actually, well, while we’re on that, I know that a lot of people will be looking for more information on this stuff. And, you know, we definitely were able to cover some some good stuff here. But if you want more info on identity based habits, you know, the science of how to change that whole three hour thing that I talked about earlier. And then also some more on like motivation, some of the other concepts that we talked about, just to make it easy on everybody. I went ahead and put together like a download page for all that stuff is. And that’s it James clear.com/g MB for gold metal bodies. And so you guys can just go there, just Jas co.com/gmb And I’ll just put it all in one place just so you don’t have to search all over the internet for it.

Andy Fossett
Excellent. And yeah, and we’ll have the link right below the podcast. So on the blog post, so if you’re listening to this on iTunes or something, go to the damn blog. And that’s where you’ll find all of that goodness. Alright, James, thank you very much. It’s been enlightening and entertaining as all good conversations should be and we really appreciate it.

Ryan Hurst
Yeah, no problem. I mean, when you guys are scraping the bottom and bottom of the barrel I’m happy to be there and, you know, help out so it’s been great. Thanks.

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