Most Replayed Moment: The Mid-Year Reset - Atomic Habits Author On How To Get Back On Track

Who do you want to be by the end of the year? James Clear is the bestselling author of Atomic Habits, one of the world’s most influential books on habit formation, decision-making and personal growth. In this moment, James Clear explains how to reset when you feel off track, choose the habits that actually move your life forward, and stop wasting energy on goals that no longer fit the season you’re in. He reveals exactly what is quietly shaping the person you’ll become in 6 months, and how to regain that control. Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/8lScRqw2r4b Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/6G0ZgSz2r4b Watch the Episodes On YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos James Clear: https://jamesclear.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  Earlier on when you said that ambitious people, they have lots of aspirations, lots of habits they want to start. I was thinking about myself and thinking, there's probably 30 habits that I would like to acquire. I'd want to be better at writing. I want to be a runner. I want to be better at speaking. I want to be a better friend and be more attentive with my friends and make sure I text them on their birthdays. All of these new habits that I want to pursue, how does one know which one to aim for first? Is there a framework for knowing?

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's some things that you can do. I don't think, to your point earlier about sometimes the riskiest thing is just to take a long time making a decision. You know, maybe you should just pick one and work on it and then you can get on to the next one. But I do think there's some level of strategy, which is a good place to start is by asking yourself, which habits are upstream from other good things happening? So, for example, I know that if you were, maybe the question to start with is when you live a good day, when you feel dialed in, when things are like rolling along well for you, what tends to be part of that day?

• 1:02Steven Bartlett?

  Sleep.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  You know, okay, great. So that's, you know, I would say for me, sleep is definitely one. I would say getting my workout in and usually reading and writing are a part of it. But I think I could just boil it down to reading. If I just read like 10 pages, that often sparks the writing. So like, reading is like the fuel for writing for me. So, so I could say get a workout in and read for five minutes or 10 minutes. Those are the two things that are part of a good day. And what happens is they're upstream from a lot of other good things happening. For example, if I get the workout in, yeah, I feel good. I get the benefits of the workout. But I also have a post-workout high for like an hour or two. So my focus and concentration is better. I sleep better at night because I got the workout in. Now I'm tired. I tend to eat better when I work out. It's when I'm not working out that I eat terribly.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  That's why, I don't know, it's kind of like I don't want to waste it or something. So at no point was I trying to build better focus habits or sleep habits or nutrition habits. Those just came kind of as a natural consequence of getting the workout in. So what are those things that you do that are upstream from other good things happening? I think those are good like anchor habits to start and focus on. If I could add another one for myself, I would say it's a little bit of time. It's really just time to think, but it's time to reflect and review. There's this interesting thing that happens if you, if you have a really good work ethic, if you have a strong work ethic and working hard has gotten you far in life, it kind of becomes a crutch. You know, you, for a long time I was like, if I ever had a problem, I was like, well, I'll just work my way out of it.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  You know, just work harder on it until I figure it out. And that, that's great. That's really powerful for a lot of things. But at some point it breaks, you know, like you can maybe, if you really try, maybe you can work 10% harder or 20% harder. But there's some limit. But if you work on the right thing, well, you could get 100x the result or 1000x the result. And so if you just keep your head down and work hard, it's very unlikely that you'll be spending your time in the highest and best way. And the only way to figure that out is to have time to reflect and review, time to think. You know, so you need enough time to think to figure out what should I be focused on next? And so I think that is, it's almost, reflection and review is almost like the meta habit

• 3:13Speaker 01

  that is above all others, because if you give yourself time to reflect and review, then you can troubleshoot your habits and figure out how to adjust them.

• 3:20Steven Bartlett?

  I was thinking as you were saying that, that that time to reflect and review is actually also a review of, are my current systems moving me closer?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:28Steven Bartlett?

  When, when, when you're talking about that, I was thinking of times in my life where I was so close to like the picture and I was so in the trenches doing the thing that I hadn't come up to even say, actually, is there a system I could put in place to solve this problem over the next five or 10 years? Like, for example, is there a person I need to hire? So actually, should I go into the hiring process versus be in there fixing the problem myself? Should I spend 10 hours this week on hiring a candidate to do this or should I be doing it? But sometimes you get so caught up in the trenches, when, especially when things are tough and difficult and moving very quickly that you don't review your systems. And also, when you're talking about systems, I thought about how systems sometimes expire.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah.

• 4:05Steven Bartlett?

  Because things change.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  That's a great point. And I think this is probably one of the most overlooked things with habits. A lot of the time when someone sits down and they want to build a new habit, they don't say this. But what they kind of assume is what it would mean to be successful with this habit is that I do it for the rest of my life, you know? And that if at some point I'm not doing it, then that must mean that I failed or I quit on it. But that's not how it is at all. Like, things have a season, you know? And so habits have to change shape over time. Let's take my, my writing habit, for example. I, the habit that launched my career was I wrote a new article every Monday and Thursday, and I did that for three years. So the first three years, 150 articles, you know, write twice a week. That was a great habit. There were like 2,000 word pieces or so. But then I signed the book deal for Atomic Habits. I didn't have the capacity to do that and also write the book.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  So that had to change. I wrote the book for like three years and then the book came out. And now I write a newsletter once a week and that's much shorter. But I kind of feel like my writing habit is maintained that whole time. It just changed shape. But that's fine. It just needed to shift based on the season. But I don't know, people, they get so attached to one form of a habit sometimes that they don't realize that it's no longer serving them. And I think that's the, one of the trickier things to give up is a habit that used to be good for you, that used to work well, but no longer serves you in your current season. It's, I find that I'm kind of a slow learner with that.

• 5:25Steven Bartlett?

  I guess parents can probably really relate because they're forced to basically change their goals and therefore their systems would have to, I mean, you're a father of three, so you probably know this much better than I do. But has there been systems that you've had to sort of?

• 5:38Speaker 01

  I think there's lots of inflection points in life. So having kids is one of them. Starting a new job, moving to a new city, you know, it can be big stuff like that. I just talked to a mother who, her kids moved out, so she's now an empty nester. You know, she's like, last 25 years I've been parenting all these kids and now finally they're all out. But it feels all, in some sense, it almost feels like a loss of identity. You know, like I thought I was one thing and now, you know, it feels like things have shifted. But also it just signals an inflection point in life and a new season that you're in. And when your seasons change, your habits often need to change with it.

• 6:10Steven Bartlett?

  And you talk about this four burners theory, which I guess dovetails into what we're talking about here, where you use this to kind of think about what habits to pursue in any season of life. But also a phrase that I've heard so often, specifically from mothers on the show, comes to mind, which is that you can't have it all at the same time. And I've heard that, I think, four or five times, different mothers in particular, which is, I mean, says something about society.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:33Steven Bartlett?

  Have said to me that they've had to realize that they can't have it all at the same time.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  For sure. So this is not my concept. This is the idea that I came across. It's called the four burners theory. And it breaks life into these four burners on a stove. So you have work and career is one, you have family, friends, and then personal health or, you know, yourself basically is the other. The idea is that for the burners to really be going well, you can't have all four on at the same time.

• 6:58Steven Bartlett?

  And burn it being the stove?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  The stove, yeah, yeah, the stove top. So you have, you can choose, you could have three going on at kind of like a mid level. But if you really want them to do well, you can only have two on at the same time. And, you know, who knows? I don't know if it's true or not or whatever, but it's an interesting idea. And what it does is it gets you to realize, yeah, a fundamental part of life is trade-offs. And you cannot be good at everything at the same time. So this is true across projects. If you choose, try to do seven things at once, spreading yourself thin in seven different ways, very hard to be excellent. For me, what I think about is life has a series of seasons and life has a series of sequences. So let's say, it's not, it's not always exactly 10 years. But let's say the big movements in life are roughly 10-year buckets, right?

• 7:43Speaker 01

  So like for me, building my first business, that was kind of like a 10-year thing. And eventually it led to the launch of Atomic Habits. You maybe get five or six of those in your adult life. Some of those things make sense to do in a different order than others. Like, if you want to travel the world and see a bunch of places and party in Ibiza, you're probably not going to do that in your 60s. You know, like, I mean, you can, there's no, nobody's saying you can't. But it's, some things are probably better sequenced in other, you know, in other spots. Obviously, there's, you know, especially for women, there's a certain limit on if you want to have a family, what decades that happens in. So, yeah, it's just, it's just a matter of sequencing and prioritization. If you look at the like tapestry of your life, what do you want the big movements to be? And where do those seasons need to slot in? Yeah, it's a, it's a, there is no right answer.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  But it's interesting, as soon as you realize it's a finite number and as soon as you realize that trade-offs are always going to be a reality, you have to deal with that in some way. I've decided that right now, while my kids are young, like I'm, I'm going to turn the career burner down. And that's fine. It's not going to be how it was for the last 10 years. But that's okay, because they're only five once, you know, they're only turning six once. They only go to second grade once and I want to be there for all that. So there are always trade-offs.

• 8:55Steven Bartlett?

  I think that sequence point is super, super interesting. It got me thinking because you're right, there are sort of some constraints, whether they're biological constraints or in the case of your kids, like just natural constraints that mean this, this season can only happen now.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Here, right.

• 9:08Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  There's also some things like, you know, both of us are fairly young entrepreneurs. I'm so glad that I started a business in my twenties rather than my 50s. Doesn't mean you can't do it in your 50s. There's no, nobody's saying you can't. It's just that it makes things a lot easier for the next decade. You know, it's easier for me to be there for my kids now because I have control of my time because I did the business part in the previous decade.

• 9:30Steven Bartlett?

  Because you took the risks.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and that doesn't mean it's always going to work out or whatever. It doesn't mean that you're going to be able to perfectly plan it all. But you just see how the sequences can, can stack up in that way.

• 9:41Steven Bartlett?

  And how important do you think, when we're talking about habits, do you think repetition is? Because there's so many of these sort of well-known concepts or frameworks in habit formation. One of them is that habits take roughly 66 days. One of them is that it's about repetition. Does repetition really matter?

• 9:57Speaker 01

  It definitely does. I mean, repetition is how habits form. The 66 days number comes from one study that came out that found that on average it took about 66 days to build a habit. If you look at the study, the range is pretty wide. So if you pick something really simple, like drinking a glass of water at lunch each day, that might only take two or three weeks to form. If you look at something more complicated, like going for a run after work every day, that might take seven or eight or nine months to form. And so I don't know that 66 days really tells you anything. It doesn't, it doesn't tell you that this is how long it's going to take for your habit to stick. I mean, it, the range is wide. Sometimes when people ask me, how long does it take to form a habit? My answer is forever, because if you stop doing it, then it's no longer a habit.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  And what I'm kind of getting at with that is that habits are not a finish line to be crossed. They're a lifestyle to be lived. And so we approach our habits as if it's a finish line. Oh, let me do this 30 day cleanse and then I'll be healthy. Let me do this 90 day sprint and then the product will be shipped. I won't have to worry about it anymore. And it's like, most things in life, especially the big, important things, they're endless. They're endless battles. So just because you went to the gym yesterday earns you no bonus points for tomorrow. Like, you still have to show up tomorrow. Just because you were a good spouse yesterday earns you no bonus points for tomorrow. You still have to be loving and caring again. And so, all the things that really matter are endless battles. And it's not about crossing a finish line, it's about living that kind of lifestyle. And so, yes, it is true that repetition matters.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  And yes, it is true that the habits will become more seamless and automatic and maybe a little less effortful as you repeat them more. But that doesn't mean that you'll never have to think about them or worry about them again.

• 11:39Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think much about what's going on in the brain when repetition occurs? Like, what is it that's making it easier? If I've been on a roll with the gym, I've been going for 60 days in a row. Why does it feel easier on day 61?

• 11:52Speaker 01

  That's a tricky question, because if you were to talk to an academic and they would tell you, like, a habit is this automatic, non-conscious behavior. Really quick, simple things, like brushing your teeth, tying your shoes, every time you pick up a pair of barbecue tongs, you gotta tap them together twice. Like, stuff that you don't even really think about, okay? That's actual habitual behavior. But if I were to ask you, what are some habits you're trying to build? You would say, I'm trying to go to the gym four days a week, or I'm trying to write every morning, or I'm trying to meditate five days a week, or whatever. And I know what you mean when you say that. You mean, I want it to be this routine, this practice that I do consistently. But, like, writing every day is never going to be mindless the way that brushing your teeth is. Going to the gym is not going to be automatic the way that tying your shoes might be.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  And so, the things that we... There's a little bit of sloppiness in the word habits and how we use it in life. It's not... They're not automatic, mindless routines most of the time. Most of the things that we want to be habits are not like reflexes, they're routines and rituals that we do consistently. So, having said that, it is true that after you've gone to the gym for a month or two, it does start to get easier. And I think there's a number of forces that kind of work in your favor there. One is, you've figured a lot out about what it takes to get into the gym. What time am I going? What route do I take? How do I pack my bag? Do I need to bring a water bottle, or is there a water fountain at the gym? Like, all those sorts of things are little one-time costs that you gotta figure out

• 13:19Speaker 01

  early on, that once you're into a pattern, you already know them. The water bottle thing sounds like a small thing. I heard from someone who said, I always forget to bring my water bottle, and they don't have water fountains at this gym, so like, sometimes I skip the workout because of that. It's like, it's remarkable how little friction it takes to pull us off course. And so, figuring out all of those things is something that, once you're a month or two in, you've crossed all... You've fought all those battles, and now you know how to do it. So that makes it easier. The other thing is, you start to build friendships, start to build connections, you start to know the people there, you feel comfortable there. There's this concept Stephen Pressfield talks about where, if you have a wolf and it's roaming around, eventually it starts to feel like it has its territory. And early on in the process, a creative process, writing a book or whatever, you go into the

• 14:04Speaker 01

  office for the first time to write the first chapter of the book, and you kind of feel uncomfortable, it feels like it's not you yet. You go to the gym on the first day, you feel like people are judging you, do I look stupid? I don't know how to do this. But after a while, it becomes your territory. It's just like the wolf. It starts to feel like your home court. And so, that familiarity, I think, also makes it much easier to stick to the habits, once you start to feel comfortable there. And that takes a little bit of time. And then the last piece is identity. The more that you start to follow this habit, the more you repeat a habit, the more you reinforce being that type of person, the more you start to have that element of your story. I think this is one of the most important things for building habits and getting habits to stick, which is how your habits reinforce your desired identity.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  We often start by asking, what do I wish to achieve? But I think, well, we really should start with this, who do I wish to become? What are my actions reinforcing? What are my actions taking me closer toward? In a sense, every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become. So, no, doing one push-up does not transform your body, but it does cast a vote for, I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And no, writing one sentence does not finish a novel, but it does cast a vote for, I'm a writer. And no, sending one bit of positive feedback does not make you like the world's best leader, but it does cast a vote for, I'm the type of leader who cares about their teammates. And individually, those are small things, but collectively, you build up this body of evidence for being that kind of person. It's a little bit different than what you often hear.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Like, you often hear people say something like, fake it till you make it. And I don't necessarily have anything wrong with fake it till you make it. Like, it's asking you to believe something positive about yourself. But, behavior and beliefs are a two-way street. And so, what you believe influences the actions you will take, and the actions you take also influences what you will believe. And my encouragement, my suggestion, is to start with the action, to let the behavior lead the way. To make one sales call, or meditate for one minute, or do one push-up, and let that, in that moment, be evidence that you were that type of person. If you go outside today and you shoot a basketball for five minutes, you don't instantly think, oh, I'm a basketball player. But if you do it every day for the next three months, or six months, or a year, at some

• 16:15Speaker 01

  point, you cross this invisible threshold where you have to admit, I guess playing basketball is like kind of an important part of who I am. I guess it's part of my identity. And once you adopt a habit as part of your story, once it becomes part of how you see yourself, it's not just like, I need to go for a run, it's like, I am a runner. I go, I do this because this is part of who I am. Then you'll fight to maintain the habit, right? Then it becomes easier for it to stick. And so, the connection between habits and identity, I think, is ultimately how you really get habits to stick for the long run.

• 16:45Steven Bartlett?

  It reminds me of a study I was reading recently that said, if you speak to someone in terms of giving them an identity versus using a word as an adjective, the behavior occurs. So, an example would be, if you do something for me, and I say, do you know what, James? You are a kind person. In the studies, people become more kind. But if I say, that was kind, or that action was kind, people are less kind. So, if I can give you feedback that embodies your identity, then you're more likely for that behavior to occur. So, with my team, and this is maybe giving a bit of the game away, I will often refer to them as an identity. I will say, you are an innovator, you are an experimenter. Because from the studies I've read, that increases the probability that they embody that identity.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  There's another study that did it for voting. So, people were more likely to go and vote a few seconds, like, I am a voter, you got them to identify as, I'm a voter, rather than, are you voting today? And so, same thing. There's an example in Atomic Habits I talk about. Imagine two people who are trying to quit smoking. And so, the first person gets offered a cigarette, and they say, oh, no thanks, I'm trying not to smoke. And the second person gets offered, and they say, oh, no thanks, I'm not a smoker. And so, the first person is trying to resist something that they still see themselves as, but the second person no longer sees themselves as the type of person who smokes. And, yeah, some of the evidence and research suggests that, once you adopt those identities, it's easier for you to stick to the behavior.

• 18:08Steven Bartlett?

  Reminds me of the research from Leon Festinger, the guy that came up with the term cognitive dissonance. The way that I understand the concept of cognitive dissonance is that, if I have a perceived identity of myself and something external threatens that or challenges it, we're not good at living in contradiction. I'm not good at... So, for example, I'm an accountant right now, and I hear that AI is doing accountancy work amazingly well. Now, I've invested 10 years in that accountancy degree, I see myself as a great accountant. My sort of initial reaction will probably be to either dismiss my current identity as a great accountant, that's gonna have a great career in the future, or to dismiss the AI. And he talks, well, people that have studied his work talk about how we're very poor at

• 18:50Steven Bartlett?

  being able to hold two contradictory things to be true at the same time. So, we tend to protect our identity.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yes. There's something incredibly powerful about this that also ties into habits, which is that a lot of our identity, not the whole thing, but large portions of our identity, are tied to our relationships. I'm a father, I'm a husband, and so, like, it's the connection that we have with others. Our social bonds influence the picture that we have of ourselves. This is something that widely influences our habits. You know, so we are all part of multiple groups. Sometimes that group is large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be British. Sometimes that group is small, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street or a member of this family or a member of the local CrossFit gym. But all of the groups that you belong to, large and small,

• 19:37Speaker 01

  have a set of shared expectations for how you act, have a set of social norms for what you do in that group. And when your habits go with the grain of the expectations of the group, they're pretty attractive, you know, like you want to stick to them. You get praised and rewarded for it, you fit in. And when they go against the grain of the expectations of the group, they're kind of unattractive and you get criticized and it doesn't feel good. And so if people have to choose between, I have habits that I want, but I'm cast out, I'm ostracized, I'm criticized. Or I have habits that I don't really love, but I fit in, I belong, I'm part of something. Most of the time, the desire to belong overpowers the desire to improve.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  And so you want to do something different, but you also know you're going to be heavily criticized for it. You're going to at least add friction to your relationships. And we don't want to live with that dissonance, that dissonance of I can have this, but I also create friction here. One of the lessons, I think, one of the big takeaways, if you want to build better habits and get habits to stick, particularly for the long run, is you want to join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. Join groups where you can rise together, where the people that you're surrounded by have the type of habits that you want to have.

• 20:53Steven Bartlett?

  It reminds me of this, um, this thing that appeared in Jeff Bezos's shareholder letter about resisting the equilibrium.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  I didn't know about this. Go ahead.

• 21:02Steven Bartlett?

  So in Jeff Bezos's shareholder letter, he writes to shareholders that when referring to Amazon's ability and desire and need to innovate through the future, he says, he makes a comparison to Richard Dawkins' book called the, I think it's The Blind Clock Baker?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, the, yeah, Blind Watchman?

• 21:17Steven Bartlett?

  Blind Watchman, yeah, yeah. And says that essentially all living organisms live in this constant battle to resist their equilibrium. And actually, death itself is when we become our environment. Because right now, me and you have a huge amount of energy expenditure to be different from our environment in terms of temperature, in terms of acidity, et cetera. And he's making the comparison, which sounded a lot like what you just said, that if you want to, that all living organisms are in this constant battle to be different from our environment. And the more different our environment is, the harder the fight. So if I go to the desert, my body has to put out even more energy to be a different temperature, to be a different sort of acidity than the environment.

• 21:59Steven Bartlett?

  But if I want to make my life easier and make that fight easier, then go into an environment where my environment is the same as my internal state.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  That's great. The, I think that punchline of the more different your environment is from the habits that you want to build or from whatever equilibrium you're trying to achieve, the harder you will have to fight to maintain. And that is a fight that you can do for, I don't know, a day, a week, a month, but it's some limited amount of time. At some point, it just is draining to try to grind against the environment all the time. Sometimes I view environment, both physical and social, almost like a form of gravity. You know, like the, the physical environment that we're in right now, okay? It's always nudging you in certain directions. Like I'm, I'm sitting in this chair right now, talking to you. I could be sitting anywhere else, but I would have to sit on the floor, right? The, the environment of the chair is ushering me to this spot.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  It's almost like a form of gravity pulling me here rather than getting me to go somewhere else. When we leave this room, if I wanted, I could try to do something crazy and break through a wall or climb through the ceiling or whatever, but I'm going to go through the door because that's where the environment is naturally nudging me toward. It's where that behavior happens easily. And all of our spaces are like that. You're always being kind of pulled toward what is natural and easy and consistent in that environment. So how can you prime your environment to make those the things you want to do? That's for physical environment. Social environment is the same. You know, it's all, you're always kind of being pulled toward what the behaviors are that are natural there. What are the social norms? What are the things that people get praised and rewarded for? What, what is the culture typically calling you to do?

• 23:35Speaker 01

  And that's where I think the answer is you want to surround yourself with groups who have the behaviors you want to have. Join groups where your desired behavior is normal. If it's normal in that group, then you can rise together.

• 23:48Steven Bartlett?

  So I mean, that, that must mean getting rid of certain people in one's life. And sometimes those people are hard to get rid of because they're families, their moms, their dads.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Sure. And I, you know, I'm a little, uh, sometimes you hear people say things like fire your friends, you know, or whatever. Like, and I, I'm not, I'm not all the way there. Uh, I, I think that yes, it is true. Sometimes you have, um, an extreme circumstance or a particularly toxic person or something like that. And yeah, like, you know, you probably, maybe you should not be around them. And that, those can lead to very hard decisions. But I would say for the majority of life and the majority of your relationships, what we're really talking about here is not getting rid of relationships. We're talking about finding specific places where that habit can thrive. So here are some examples. There's a number of studies that have shown that it tends to be easier to build a new habit in a new environment. So for example, if you, well, first let me back up.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  There's an interesting way to define what a habit is, which is that it is a behavior that is tied to a particular context. So for example, your habit of watching Netflix might be tied to the context of your couch at 7:00 PM. And whenever you walk into your living room and you're by your couch and it's in the evening, you're kind of naturally being pulled toward picking up the remote and doing that because that's the context the habit happens in. So if you want to build a new habit, and again, these studies have found that it tends to be easier to build a new habit in a new environment. Well, let's say you want to start a habit of journaling. Well, you walk into your living room in the evening and you sit down on the couch. You're like, I'm going to start journaling, but you're naturally, you know, your brain is kind of like, well, it's time to pick up the remote and turn on the TV.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  That doesn't always mean that you need a brand new space, like a new building or a new room to do every habit in. But you could do something like, you could get a chair and put it in the corner of the room. And that becomes the journaling chair. And the only thing that you do when you sit in that chair is you journal for five minutes. So now you have a new context that is tied to the behavior that you want to perform. And in the social sense, so this is what we were talking about previously, you want to be able to create a space that is a safe place for that environment, for that habit to live or for that habit to thrive, let's say. Sometimes there, those spaces are ready-made. Like, uh, let's say you want to do yoga four days a week, but you look around your family or your friends in your apartment that you're living in, nobody else is interested. They don't want to do it too. You do it in the living room, you kind of get made fun of, or you're stepping on other people's space.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  They're like, I'm trying to do stuff in here too, you know, it's just kind of inconvenient. Well, you can go to a yoga studio and that's a place where for that hour, you can be surrounded by a group where your desired behavior is normal. You don't have to fire any of your friends. And you can just go to the place where that habit can thrive. And I think each habit likes to have that. It likes to have somewhere where it can exist in a way that it's going to be supported or in a way where the environment makes it easy. Sometimes the environment is ready-made like that, other times it's not. So for me, one of the most useful things that I did in my entrepreneurial career, I had, I had no entrepreneurs in my family, no authors. So I had this thing that I kind of wanted to do, but I, I didn't have anybody close to me that I could like look to. First six months I was entrepreneur, I sent like 300 cold emails

• 26:49Speaker 01

  just to other people that were like a year or two ahead of me. Someone who seemed like you're actually doing this thing where, you know, you've got this online audience and you're, you're writing about stuff you like. Maybe 30 people got back to me. Uh, I did like a little, you know, Zoom call or whatever, and we, you know, we chatted and connected. And then I met some of them at a conference like six months later. So I was six months in, I knew like maybe 10 people that I had met in person and I had like 30 that I had reached out to. So now it feels like, okay, at least I know a couple of people who've done this thing. And I started hosting these retreats. Every, once or twice a year, I'd get six or eight authors together. And I'd say, let's just rent an Airbnb, we'll split the cost. And we can talk about how to build an audience and how to grow your, you know, email list

• 27:30Speaker 01

  and how to write a book and launch it and, you know, all the stuff that we were kind of focused on. It was almost always like the best six months, uh, best weekend of my year because I would have six months worth of stuff that I need to execute on after that was done. That's kind of like going to a yoga studio for yoga, but you had to create the space. I was always worried that I was going to look like some dork, you know, and like invite everybody and they would all say no or whatever. But everybody wants the same thing. You know, they're all waiting for somebody to create the space for like-minded people to get together. So sometimes you need enough courage to create the space yourself. But the punchline is the same, which is you're trying to surround yourself with people where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.

• 28:11Steven Bartlett?

  What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.