Latest / Motivation study / The Art of Systems _ James Clear

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The Art of Systems _ James Clear · Motivation study

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So if you're building a habit, there are roughly four
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: different stages that every habit goes through Q craving response
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: and reward. So pretty much every habit follows that cycle.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: And you can see that, you know, this, uh, paperclip
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: strategy does kind of play into this a little bit.
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  Speaker 2: I came across this guy named Trent Durstman.
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  Speaker 1: He had this job where he was a stockbroker in Abbotsford, Canada,
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  Speaker 1: and he had this one simple habit that he used
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: to end up becoming the top performer in the firm
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: and building the biggest book of business there over like
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  Speaker 1: the next couple of years. And it was this simple
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: strategy of paperclips. So all he did is whenever I
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: make a call, I'm going to make a sales call
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to take one paperclip and unmoved over.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: And then I'm going to make another sales call. I'm
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: going to take another paperclip and move it over. And
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  Speaker 1: he had a hundred paperclips in the jar and his
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: goal every day was to move a hundred from one
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  Speaker 1: jar to the next. And that was all he did.
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  Speaker 1: And with that one simple habit, he ended up building.
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  Speaker 2: This huge book of business. queue, you have the paperclips
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  Speaker 2: on the desk, right?
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: So like, not only do you want to make the
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: sales calls for a business standpoint, but you also have
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  Speaker 1: these staring at you every morning when you come into
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  Speaker 1: your desk. And so it's a little bit of a
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  Speaker 1: visual reminder, reminds you, prompts you to think, okay, all right,
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  Speaker 1: I do want to make these calls and try to
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  Speaker 1: drive more business or, you know, build, build up the, um,
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  Speaker 1: make another successful sales call that craving gets you to
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: pick up the phone, which is the actual response. And
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  Speaker 1: then the reward is I get to move the paperclip over.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: And now I feel like, yeah, you get the little
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: ting jingle in your ear of the paperclip hitting and
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: And you know, it just gets, it adds to the
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  Speaker 1: reward effect. What I think is most interesting is how
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  Speaker 1: do we take this? How do we take these four
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  Speaker 1: steps that basically all behaviors go through and then translate
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: it into something that we can use and apply in
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: daily life and work.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I live running.
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  Speaker 3: When you said that you're ambitious people, they have lots
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  Speaker 3: of aspirations, lots of habits they want to start. I
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  Speaker 3: was thinking about myself and thinking there's probably 30 habits.
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  Speaker 2: That I would like to acquire.
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  Speaker 3: I'd want to be better at writing. I want to
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  Speaker 3: be a runner.
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  Speaker 2: I want to be better at speaking.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: I want to be a better friend and be more
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: attentive with my friends and all of these new habits
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  Speaker 3: that I want to pursue. How does one know which
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  Speaker 3: one to aim for first? Is there a framework for knowing?
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I do think there's some level of strategy, which is
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: a good place to start is by asking yourself which
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: habits are upstream from other good things happening. So for example,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I know that if you were maybe the, maybe the
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  Speaker 1: question to start with is when you live a good day,
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  Speaker 1: when you feel dialed in, when things are like rolling
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: along well for you.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: What tends to be part of that day? Sleep, you know? Okay, great.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: So that's, you know, I would say for me, sleep,
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  Speaker 1: sleep is definitely one I would say, uh, getting my
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  Speaker 1: workout in and usually reading and writing are a part
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: of it. But I think I could just boil it
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: down to reading. If I just read like 10 pages
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  Speaker 1: that often sparks the writing. It's like reading is like
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  Speaker 1: the fuel for writing for me. So, so I can say,
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  Speaker 1: get a workout in and read for five minutes or
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  Speaker 1: 10 minutes. Those are the two things that are part
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  Speaker 1: of a good day. And what happens is they're upstream
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: from a lot of other good things happening. For example,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: if I get the workout in, yeah, I feel good.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I get the benefits of the workout, but I also
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  Speaker 1: have a post workout high for like an hour or two.
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  Speaker 1: So I, my focus and concentration is better. I sleep
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  Speaker 1: better at night because I got the workout in.
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  Speaker 2: Now I'm tired.
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  Speaker 1: I tend to eat better when I work out. It's
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  Speaker 1: when I'm not working out that I eat terribly.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: It's kind of like I don't want to waste it
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  Speaker 1: or something. So at no point was I trying to
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  Speaker 1: build better focus habits or sleep habits or nutrition habits.
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  Speaker 1: Those just came kind of as a natural consequence of
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  Speaker 1: getting the workout in. So what are those things that
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  Speaker 1: you do that are upstream from other good things happening?
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  Speaker 1: I think those are good like anchor habits to start
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  Speaker 1: and focus on. If I could add another one for myself,
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  Speaker 1: I would say it's a little bit of time. It's
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  Speaker 1: really just time to think, but it's, it's time to
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  Speaker 1: reflect and review. There's this interesting thing that happens. If you,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: if you have a really good work ethic, if you
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  Speaker 1: have a strong work ethic and working hard has gotten
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  Speaker 1: you far in life, it kind of becomes a crutch.
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  Speaker 1: You know, you, for, for a long time, I was like,
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  Speaker 1: if I ever had a problem, I was like, well,
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  Speaker 1: I'll just work my way out of it. You know,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I'll just, just work harder on it until I figure
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  Speaker 1: it out. And that, that's great. That's really powerful for
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  Speaker 1: a lot of things. But at some point it breaks,
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  Speaker 1: you know, like you can, maybe if you really try,
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  Speaker 1: maybe you can work 10% harder or 20% harder, but
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  Speaker 1: there's some limit. But if you work on the right thing, well,
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  Speaker 1: you can get a hundred X the result or a
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  Speaker 1: thousand X the result. And so if you just keep
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  Speaker 1: your head down and work hard, it's very unlikely that
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  Speaker 1: you'll be spending your time in the highest and best way.
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  Speaker 1: And the only way to figure that out is to
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  Speaker 1: have time to reflect and review time to think, you know,
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  Speaker 1: so you need enough time to think, to figure out
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  Speaker 1: what should I be focused on next? And so I
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  Speaker 1: think that is all it's almost reflection review is almost
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  Speaker 1: like the meta habit that is above all others, because
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: if you give yourself time to reflect and review, then
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  Speaker 1: you can troubleshoot your habits and figure out how to
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  Speaker 1: adjust them. You start thinking, even if you don't say
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: this explicitly, you think like, what would peak performance look like?
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  Speaker 1: You know, if I could really get my habits dialed in,
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  Speaker 1: what could I do? And you start imagining five, six,
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  Speaker 1: seven things that you would do and what all of
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: them would look like in the perfect form and so on. And,
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  Speaker 1: I think instead of asking ourselves, what could I do
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: on my best day? It's better to start by asking,
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  Speaker 1: what can I stick to even on the bad days?
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  Speaker 1: And that becomes your baseline. That becomes the first step.
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  Speaker 1: And now that you have this floor that is achievable,
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  Speaker 1: even when you're tired, even when you're exhausted, even when
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  Speaker 1: you don't have much time, now you can show up
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  Speaker 1: and feel like you're succeeding, you know, and then you
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  Speaker 1: can progress from there. One of the most motivating feelings
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  Speaker 1: to the human mind is feeling of progress. If you
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  Speaker 1: feel like you're making progress, even if it's smaller than
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  Speaker 1: what you ultimately hope to do, you have every reason
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  Speaker 1: to move forward. But often we become like a victim
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  Speaker 1: of our expectations. We spend all this time optimizing the
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: perfect plan and then expect things to go perfectly out
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: of the gate. And you had it so built up
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  Speaker 1: in your mind that once you don't hit that mark
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: in the first or second or third day, it falls apart.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: You know, really what we're talking about there is you
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  Speaker 1: just need to be okay with being inconvenienced or uncomfortable
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: for like five to 10 minutes, getting dressed, getting through
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  Speaker 1: the rain, getting into your car, getting the gym. The
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: workout is the same that it's always been.
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  Speaker 2: It's the same.
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  Speaker 1: You're in the same gym that you are in the
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: summer when the weather's beautiful or whatever. So it's really,
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  Speaker 1: can you handle that? Like five minutes of inconvenience. And
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  Speaker 1: so many things in life are like that. Can you
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  Speaker 1: master that little moment? And if you can, and you
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  Speaker 1: can still get started, that's when you gain an advantage.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody works out in the good days, but on the
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  Speaker 1: days when you feel stressed and tired on the days
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  Speaker 1: when the weather's bad and it's kind of inconvenient on
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  Speaker 1: the days when you don't really feel like it, can
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  Speaker 1: you show up? Even if it's in a small way,
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  Speaker 1: one of my little mantras that I try to keep
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  Speaker 1: in mind is reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule.
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  Speaker 1: So the normal scope, Might be, I write for 30
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  Speaker 1: minutes and then you look up at the clock and
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  Speaker 1: you're like, I only have 15. And sometimes what happens
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  Speaker 1: in your head is you're like, oh, I don't have
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  Speaker 1: enough time to write today. Or you're like, oh, I
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  Speaker 1: was planning to work out for 60 minutes. And you
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  Speaker 1: look up and you're like, time got away from me.
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  Speaker 1: I only have 20 minutes now. I don't have time
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  Speaker 1: to go to the gym. It's easy to talk yourself
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  Speaker 1: out of it, but reduce the scope, but stick to
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: the schedule. It's like, well, I only got 20 minutes
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  Speaker 1: instead of 60. So I'll just get in there and
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  Speaker 1: do a couple sets of squats and that's it. And
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  Speaker 1: I've had so many workouts that have been like that
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  Speaker 1: where you're like almost, you know, it's easy to be
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  Speaker 1: kind of disappointed. You weren't able to do the whole
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  Speaker 1: thing that you wanted to do, but you didn't throw
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  Speaker 1: up a zero. And if you don't throw up a zero,
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  Speaker 1: you maintain the habit. And if you maintain the habit,
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  Speaker 1: all you need is time. And so the bad days are.
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  Speaker 2: More important than the good days. In that sense, you
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  Speaker 2: need to figure out how do you show up even
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  Speaker 2: when it's not optimal.
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  Speaker 3: Is there anything that you've learned, any frameworks, any tactics
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  Speaker 3: for making sure you get past that first five minutes
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  Speaker 3: so you can get into the flow of the habit?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's multiple things.
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  Speaker 1: So first thing is try to prime the environment to
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  Speaker 1: make the first action easy. Prime the environment to make
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: the first action easy. So let's say writing, for example,
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  Speaker 1: I find that for myself, the biggest point of friction
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  Speaker 1: is choosing what to write about. Once I've actually finally settled,
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  Speaker 1: this is the thing I'm writing today. Then I can
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  Speaker 1: get into it and I'm off and running. Um, but
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I'll sit there for two hours just debating whether it's
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  Speaker 1: the right thing to be focused on writing or not.
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  Speaker 1: You know, should I work on this chapter? Should I
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: work on something else or whatever? So what I've started
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  Speaker 1: to do is sometimes I will write the first sentence
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  Speaker 1: of what I'm going to write and just leave it
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  Speaker 1: on the Google doc right there and then leave. And
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  Speaker 1: the next day when I come back, I'm already in, right?
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  Speaker 1: Like it's already, the first sentence is already written. So
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  Speaker 1: now I'm just writing the next piece of what's coming
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: rather than trying to choose what to write about. Another
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  Speaker 1: one that I've done sometimes is I will write, sometimes
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: we'll write the topic or I'll write the sentence.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: On a post-it note.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: And I'll put it on top of the keyboard. And
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  Speaker 1: so when I come into the office, it's right there
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  Speaker 1: in front. I can't, you know, I got to pick
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: it off the keys to log onto the computer. And
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  Speaker 1: so it's like, remember, this is what you're writing about
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  Speaker 1: right now. You know, so it's just trying to make
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: it easy to get in. I have a bunch of
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: readers who do stuff like set their running out running
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  Speaker 1: clothes out the night before, you know, so they're right
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: next to the bed.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: You got your clothes and your shoes there. I.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: One woman, I just talked to her at an event.
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  Speaker 1: She came up afterward and she said, I actually sleep
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: in my running clothes and just get out and put
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: her shoes on and goes right out the door.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: But you're trying to prime the environment to make the
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: action easy. Okay.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: So how can you set up the spaces that you're in, uh,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: to prime those habits? I think one really interesting question
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  Speaker 1: to ask, walk into the rooms where you spend most
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: of your time each day, your office, your living room,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: your bedroom, and then look around and ask yourself, what
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: is this space designed to encourage? What behaviors are easy here?
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: What behaviors are obvious here? And the good habits that
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: you say you want to build, are those the path
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: of least resistance? Is that the obvious thing in this environment?
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: And if not, maybe you can make some adjustments to
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: try to make the good habit easier and the distractions
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: maybe a little bit harder. So that's first thing, prime
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: the environment to make the action easy. Second thing is
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: if there's like one principle that is probably the single
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: most important for building habits, it's make it easy. Just
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: scale it down and make it easy. I refer to
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: it sometimes as the two minute rule. So take whatever
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: habit you're trying to work on. You scale it down
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: to something that takes two minutes or less to do.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Read 30 books a year becomes read one page or
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: do yoga four days a week. becomes take out my
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: yoga mat. Sometimes I will mention this to people and they.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Resist a little bit.
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  Speaker 1: You know, they're like, okay, buddy, like I know the
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: real goal isn't just to take my yoga mat out.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: You know, no, I'm actually trying to do the workout.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So this is some kind of mental trick and I
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: know it's a trick.
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  Speaker 2: Then why would I fall for it? Basically. But there's
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: this guy, I mentioned him in atomic habits. His name's Mitch.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: And, he went to the gym and for the first
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: six weeks he had this strange little rule for himself
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: where he wasn't allowed to stay for longer than five minutes.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: So get in the car, drive to the gym, get out,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: do half an exercise, get back in the car, drive home.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: And you're like, this sounds silly, right? Clearly this is
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: not going to get the guy the results that he wants.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: But what you realize is that he was mastering the
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: art of showing up, right? He was becoming the type
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: of person that went to the gym four days a week,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: even if it was only for five minutes. And so
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: I think this is kind of a deep truth about habits,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: which is a habit must be established before it can
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: be improved. It has to become the standard in your
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: life before you optimize and scale it up into something more.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: There's that quote from Ed Latimore where he says, the
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: heaviest weight at the gym is the front door. There
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: are a lot of things in life that are like that.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: And so by trying to make it easy to master,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: easy to get started, then you're in the game.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Now you're in the arena. There's all kinds of things
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: you can improve from there.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: A lot of the time when someone sits down and
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: they want to build a new habit, they don't say this,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: but what they kind of assume is what it would
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: mean to be successful with this habit is that I
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: do it for the rest of my life. You know,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: and that if at some point I'm not doing it,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: then that must mean that I failed or I quit
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: on it.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: But that's not how it is at all.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Like things have a season, you know, and so habits
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: have to change shape over time.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Let's take my, um, my writing habit.
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  Speaker 1: For example, I, the habit that launched my career was
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I wrote a new article every Monday and Thursday, and
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: I did that for three years.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: So the first three years, 150 articles, you know, right.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Twice a week. That was a great habit.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: They were like 2000 word pieces or so, but then
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: I signed the book deal for atomic habits. I didn't
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: have the capacity to do that and also write the book.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: So that had to change. I wrote the book for
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: like three years and then the book came out and
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: now I write a newsletter once a week and that's
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: much shorter, but I kind of feel like my writing
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: habit is maintained that whole time. It just changed shape,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: but that's fine. It just needed to shift based on
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: the season. But I don't know people, they get so
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: attached to one form of a habit sometimes that they
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: don't realize that it's no longer serving them. And I
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: think that's the, one of the trickier things to give
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: up is a habit that used to be good for you.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: They used to work well, but no longer serves you
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: in your current season. It's, I find that I'm kind
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: of a slow learner with that. A fundamental part of
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: life is trade-offs and you cannot be good at everything
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: at the same time. So this is true across projects.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: You choose, try to do seven things at once, spreading
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: yourself thin in seven different ways.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Very hard to be excellent.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: For me, what I think about is life has a
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: series of seasons and life has a series of sequences.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: So.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Let's say it's not, it's not always exactly 10 years,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: but let's say the big movements in life.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Are roughly 10 year buckets, right?
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: So like for me building my first business, that was
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: kind of like a 10 year thing and eventually led
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: to the launch of atomic habits. You maybe get five
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: or six of those in your adult life. Some of
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: those things make sense to do in a different order
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: than others. Like, if you want to travel the world
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: and see a bunch of places and party in Ibiza,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: you're probably not going to do that in your sixties.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: You know, like, I mean, you can, there's no, nobody's
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: saying you can't, but it's some things are probably better
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: sequenced in other, you know, in other spots. Obviously there's,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: you know, especially for women, there's a certain limit on
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: if you want to have a family, what decades that
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: happens in. So yeah, it's just a, it's just a
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: matter of sequencing and prioritization. If you look at the
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: like tapestry of your life, what do you want the
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: big movements to be and where do those seasons need
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: to slot in? Um, yeah, it's a, There is no
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: right answer, but it's interesting that as soon as you
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: realize it's a finite number, and as soon as you
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: realize that trade-offs are always going to be a reality,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: you have to deal with that in some way.