36: Uncovering the Habits and Routines that Make People Live Better

James Claire on the show today. James is an entrepreneur, writer, and weightlifter. He writes about behavioral psychology, habit formation, and performance improvement. In other words, he writes about how small habits can change our lives and society for the better. In his writing, he blends inspirational stories, academic science, and hard earned wisdom, a combo that I really truly appreciate, which is why I reached out to James, and I'm really excited he's on the show today. Echo, thank you

so much for having me. It's great to be here. Cool. I thought we could talk a little bit before we dive into all the work you're doing about your actual own personal development as a human being. What were you like as a kid, Were there any like themes in your early childhood, like in terms of your interests, in terms of, you know, the things you were attracted to in your environment that could help explain how you became

who you are right now. Yeah, I think so. I mean, looking back, you can kind of connect the dots a little bit. I don't know that I had any of these ideas when I was going through the process, but I was definitely really curious as a little kid. My parents tell story all the time about how I, you know,

I would sit like in a little backpack. My dad would carry me around when I was you know, one, two, whatever, and I would just be staring people down the whole time because I was just trying to like soak everything in. And I really enjoyed reading and stuff. But I think you could divide my childhood and adolescence into two different categories where I spent most of my time. So the first is like what I would call just learning and exploration. So I liked school, you know, I was good at school.

I enjoyed the process of learning and reading and everything. So that was kind of like my nerdy side, you know. In fifth grade, some friends and I created this robotics club where we like built legos and made a little conveyor belt and would write computer programs and you know, to make the conveyor belt run and stuff. So it sounds like you would have fit in really well at my undergrad Carnegie Mellon. You would have been one of

our friends. Okay, so you'll see maybe maybe. But I was always surrounded by people who were smarter than I was, so I was like soaking up the stuff that they were doing, but I was never the like mastermind behind it. And then the other part, so that's like the nerdy part is one side, and then the other half was athletics. So my dad played minor league baseball for the Saint Louis Cardinals, so growing up I wanted to be, you know, professional baseball player and all this stuff. So I ended

up playing for seventeen years. I played all the way through college, and that kind of half of it was sort of the same thing. I was always surrounded by athletes who were better than me, and so I was learning a lot and picking up a lot for them. But I was never really you know, the mastermind on the field or the you know, the top athlete. I was never the fastest and strongest guy. But combining those two things, I ended up learning a lot about myself.

And I had a really serious injury in high school. I got hit in the face of a baseball bat and I ended up being air cared to the hospital and fractured both my eye sockets and couldn't breathe on my own, and I had multiple seizures the next twenty four hours, and it was really long ordeal. I couldn't drive for the next eight months, so it was like a really long road back, and five years later I ended up being an academic All American my senior year

at college. And so the road from being injured and not being able to play and not being able to drive a car and not being able to play baseball for a whole year all the way back to making a team and becoming an academic All American, I learned a lot about small, consistent progress building, you know, making like a one percent improvement or a small improvement each day, embracing these like daily habits that kind of gradually accumulated to me getting back on the field and then becoming

you know, an active player and then becoming a starting pitcher. And I didn't really have a choice other than to do things in small chunks because that's all I could handle in that process. Back So, athletics was the other part of my adolescence in childhood that definitely taught me a lot. And now I get to talk about something that kind of combines both of them. You know, behavioral psychology.

It can be super nerdy and interesting and all sorts of stuff to learn, very mentally stimulating, and you can apply it to all sorts of things in life, not just like productivity habits and work habits, but also health habits and weightlifting, which is what I do now, sports psychology, mental and physical performance. And so that's kind of how those two worlds combined and got us to where we

are now. I've kind of mentioned in applied psychology, right, like, how do we take psychology make a practical for everyday uses, for everyday experiences. How do we kind of bridge the gap between theory and people who are doing really exciting and important research and practice and you know, and people who are like you know, using those ideas to go build something or do something or And I try to be that bridge as best I can between those two worlds. Yeah,

I think you do a good job of it. Thank you? Are you self employed at this point, like you don't have a boss. So I've been self employed for five years, So the first thank you. For the first two years, I tried a bunch of ideas that you know, didn't work and I didn't know what I didn't know. I kind of view that period now looking back on it as the period where I incubated my skill set, so

to speak. You know, I didn't know what WordPress was, how to build a website, or what an email list was, or how to program or code, and so I had to teach myself like all those things as I went through and you know, how to do web design, how marketing and direct response copywriting works. Why would someone sign up for a product or an email list? Why would

someone buy something? And that actually is what got my start in the psychology, as I started selling consumer psychology to figure out, like, why would someone buy anything if I'm going to create this business? And that led me down the rabbit hole of behavior change and behavioral psych and then I got really interested in that particular area. So have you ever had a boss in your life? I've never had a legit job. If we want to

put it that way. I mean in high school, I had summer jobs, of course, and so I had bosses there. And then when I was in graduate school, I worked at a medical practice in between my first and second year for that whole summer internship periods, so whatever those three or four months, and so I had a boss then. So you know, I'm familiar with like clocking in and

clocking out and getting a paycheck and stuff. But as far as like after I graduated and had my degrees, I've never had like an actual job since I got out of grad school. What are those degrees, because that's not something you talk about a lot. Yeah, my undergraduate degrees and buyomechanics. So it was mostly chemistry and physics. So I was like a science guy in undergrad and

then come on, you're smart then. And then in grad school I got my MBA, so I was focused on like strategic health care management at the time, which is why I worked at that medical practice. And I took a couple classes in the School of Public Health as well, because that's what I thought I wanted to get into. And I still really, you know, really find medicine and

health fascinating. But then I, you know, I started writing about behavior change with regards to health, and then that's you know, evolved into what James Claar dot com is now and to kind of close the loop on this entrepreneurship discussion. So I for the first two years, I tried a bunch of other ideas, experimented with things. One of the best piece of advice I got was try

things until something comes easily. So I probably tried five to ten ideas over that two year period, and then you know, two or three of them started working better than the others, and I was like, oh, okay, so I'll stick with these and you know, learn from trial

by fire and learn from experience. But through that whole period, as I was studying behavioral psychology and consumer psych I was writing about habits and what I was learning, like on the back end in private, I was writing about, you know, oh, these behaviors psychology ideas could apply to my weightlifting habits, or my nutrition habits, or productivity and

writing habits. And that document got to be like sixty pages long, and I was just a huge whimp and didn't publish anything because I was like, oh, it's not ready yet. People won't like it. It's totally, you know, different than these other business ideas I'm trying. And eventually November twelfth, twenty twelve, was the first day that I put something up on jamescare dot com and I tried to take my emotion out of it and said, all right, I'm not going to judge how good or how bad

it is. I'm not going to worry about like what my reputation is and how people feel about it. I'll just try to publish something every Monday Thursday. And so I stuck with that for the last three years, and then you know, within a year that had taken off and became my full time I shut down the other business ideas which were profitable and making money, two of them more, but they weren't making a ton of money. And James clare dot com took off. So I've been

doing that full time for three years now. So yeah, there's this common theme in you're writing about kind of taking your emotions out of it and keeping staying focused on the process and not the goal and stuff like that. So and this stuff tails with your own life, so you certainly try to walk the talk, and it's very clear that's something you try to do. Yeah, I think that's really important. Actually, you know, it's hard enough to have an opinion, to have a good, sound, well researched opinion.

But if we're being honest, anyone can have an opinion, you know, Like you can write something fairly easily. The friction to getting your idea out is relatively low, but

to be a practitioner right is much different. And to I think, I hope that it makes my writing compelling and accessible and believable and trustworthy because I realize how hard it is to put some of this stuff to practice, you know, Like there are areas where I succeed, like I do a pretty good job with writing consistently, and I do a pretty good job with lifting and working out consistently, but there are other areas where I struggle a lot. Like one of them that I'm working on

this year is nutritional habits. And it's not that I eat terribly, but I rarely cook as many meals as I should. So it's it's really a cooking habit that I'm trying to build, and that's been a struggle for me in the past. Sleep habits, So I have this

rule where I don't cheat myself on sleep. But last year, and I've been really good about the last six months, but the six months before that, I had this really hard period where I wouldn't cheat myself on sleep, but I was staying up way too late, working on stuff till midnight or one am. And then all of a sudden, if I'm not going to cheat myself on sleep and get eight or nine hours, well that means I'm sleeping

until nine or nine thirty. And you know, we have this weird This is a whole separate conversation about sleep, but we have this kind of like guilt associated with our culture where even if you're productive but you sleep in, then you're like lazy. But I didn't like that because I do perform better in the morning and I feel better about the rest of the day if I'm up at you know, six thirty or seven then and I'm

getting into my work by seven thirty or eight. And so anyway, those are just two examples of things that I feel like I am pretty good on and two things that I struggle with. And I feel like that makes the writing better because I realize how hard it is and I have to experiment with different ideas to try to put these things into practice and make them work. And you know, anyone can share an opinion or a solution, but to actually put that into practice day after day

in your own life is much harder, for sure. And when you say getting into work, do you mean like going to the office in your house? Right? Yeah, I have a tense so I work out of the home office just to quirefy, okay, very cool, very cool. You see, you live a life that a lot of people want to live, right, and so you are an inspiration to

a lot of people. And you, I mean you try to talk about how you got to be the way that you are and things that you can do, something that you've influenced Me and my best friend Elliott, who's a philosophy professor at Barnard, we intentionally did an integrity report this year. Oh cool, and like you're change our lives too, So thanks, Yeah, yeah, that's great. I really

liked the process of doing that. Integrity is one of those interesting things where like if you were to ask anybody, like if I were to ask you, do you do business with integrity? Or do you know, do you conduct your work with integrity? Well everyone's going to say yes, no, one's going to say no. And I actually don't think people are like lying. I think they actually believe it

for the most part. But what happens is that there are all these situations we find ourselves in where your boss asks you to do something, or you you know, really want something happy, you want this business to get built, or you want to you know, to write a book, or you want to succeed in some fashion, and you come up with this just this once excuse for this

particular circumstance, because the situation is different this time. And you do that five, ten, fifteen times throughout the year, and then you turn around at the end of the year and you're like, oh, you know, maybe I found myself in a different place than where I would have said if you were to just say, what are your values?

What do you live by? So for me, the Integrity Report is just a way to sort of make myself stand up, be publicly accountable, and more importantly, make those issues come to the forefront more frequently, just so that I'm at least thinking about them, so that I don't let those justice once exceptions pile up, you know, year after year, and suddenly I'm running my business in a way that you know, it's just a little bit removed from maybe what I would have done if you were

had to have me write my values out on paper and write exactly what I you know, what I envisioned. Yeah. In addition to constant reflecting on your life and your goals and where you are, you also quantify a lot of your stuff. I noticed, you know, in one report I read, you quantified how many times you went to the gym last year, for instance. That's a big finding in the science of motivation, right, that constantly quantifying these

things is very helpful. Yeah. You know those your speed is signs if you're driving down the road and there's like a little radar and l shit, you know, speed limit is thirty five, you're going forty two or whatever, and you know, I'll put it up there. So that sign is really just a feedback loop, right, It's it quantifies what's happening, gives you an accurate measurement on this is where you stand and you see it, and so you that feedback acts as the trigger, the stimulus for

your next action, which is to slow down. And you know, research has shown that those your speed signs tend to decrease speed by about ten percent on average, and they tend to stick with you for miles down the road. But what I thought was particularly interesting is that they continue to work. So even if you have already seen a sign like that and you come across another one six months later while you're driving, it will work again. It will decrease your speed by about ten percent on average.

And I think the measurement is a really key part of that. You know, there are multiple things around here. It's automatic, for one, so it doesn't require you to do anything. It just gives you that feedback really quickly, you know, on its own. But to come back to this measurement idea that you brought up, I think it's important to quantify and measure the things that are important to you so that those numbers can act as a

trigger or a stimulus for your next response. I don't necessarily think that tracking the number of workouts I do in a month, or tracking how much way to lifting each workout, or tracking the number of articles I write each month or in a year. I don't necessarily think that that one little practice is going to change, you know, my life entirely. But maybe it'll provide a five or ten percent bump in my motivation or in my consistency

or in the work that I do. And if I can accumulate some of those bump scenarios that are important to me, then I think it's important that you know that I spend the time to quantify and measure. And the other thing is it actually isn't that hard to measure that stuff. It doesn't really take that long. It's just foreign to us in a lot of ways, and so we're not used to it. But once you get into it, like tracking my workouts now, I mean it takes me thirty seconds. While I'm at the it's like nothing,

you know. So to me, it's almost like why wouldn't I do it at this point? But in the beginning, there's this, you know, this friction or this tension around starting something new that can make it feel weird or a little bit of a hassle. Just you maybe follow this question I want to ask you. Do you do weightlifting competitions? Now? Uh? Yeah, so I haven't done any in the last year, but I was on an Olympic weightlifting team in Ohio before I moved to North Carolina. Hey, yeah,

we talk about a lot. Yeah, I have it on my list to like move into talking about workout and weightlifting habits. You know, I wasn't that great, but we have some really good lifters. Holly manguald Our best female lifter lifted at the Olympics in London in twenty twelve. Our coach Marknello was the TMOSA coach there in London. Drew and Bob two or two of our top ten male lifters. They were both top ten in the country.

So I anyway, my only point is by doing that process, I learned a lot about what it looks like to show up consistently and you know, work out what it means to be a part of the team with like athletes of that caliber. So yeah, it was. It was a great experience for me. And I haven't done any competitions within the last year or so, but it is on my schedule to do something once I you know, yeah, yeah, to do something here in the near future. Very cool.

So let's get into the nitty gritty of habit formation and changing habits. So you've written a lot on this topic. First of all, how long does it take really take to build a new habit? Yeah, the answer is I mean, you hear these like kind of urban myths and legends it takes twenty one days, or it takes thirty days, or you know whatever. Do those seem to be the two most popular numbers. But the answer is the answer

everybody hates. It depends but what scientists found. There's a research study done at University College London on this and so you can basically look at it as a spectrum and it depends on the difficulty of the habit, how you know, large or complex it is. It also depends on, you know, a bunch of situational and environmental factors, like what you have around you, what kind of influences do you have, what kind of people do you live with,

what kind of environment do you live in. But on the short end, really easy habits that you know, like drinking a glass of water at lunch might take you eighteen to twenty one days somewhere you know, three four weeks something like that. More difficult habits like going on a run three miles after work each day or something that might take you six eight months. But the span was anywhere from eighteen days to two hundred and fifty

some days. And the point of this I think, you know, on average, it was sixty six days to build a new habit. So that's kind of the you know what the head line was, the research study on average takes sixty six days. But I think on a more practical level, what we can say about that is it's going to take months for these new behaviors to be built, you know, And so rather than viewing this as an event, I think too often we view building habits and new behaviors

as like a finish line to cross. It's like, oh, I built the habit of working out, I'm done now. Or I built the habit of you know, writing once a week for three months, I'm done now. I have that habit. But it doesn't really work that way, and you know, it's more of something that you continue to show up to. Right if you if you built the habit of working out and did it for six months and then just stopped and never worked out again, well it doesn't you know, it doesn't really help that much.

So I think viewing it more as a process rather than an event or as a you know, as this ongoing system that you're going to commit to, rather than this finish line that you're just going to try to cross after twenty one days or thirty days is probably the best way to approach it. That makes a lot of sense. And a lot of people complain about how their motivation wanes, and you know, you really talk about how what separates those who reach these goals those that don't.

Actually a bunch of things that separate those that don't. One is identity, right, can talk a little about the identity aspect to this. Yeah, so I call this identity based habits is the phrase that I use for it. And the basic idea is, you know, I think you can kind of say that can imagine behavior change or new habits is kind of like an onion, and on the outermost layer of the onion is the results that we get, the performance. So these are the things that

we're always looking at. Right, let's double revenue, let's increase our productivity, let's lose forty pounds, let's you know, whatever it is. It's the result on the outside, and those are the things that we set our goals around. Then on the next layer in that's like our actions. And you know, if it's take the weight loss example, since it's a common one. If the goal is lose thirty pounds in four months. Then the action piece might be workout four days a week or something like that. Well,

usually the conversation kind of stops there. We think about the goals we want, we think about the steps we need to take to get them, and then we say, all right, we just we just need to do it. And if we don't do it, then it's because we didn't have enough motivation or willpower, or the circumstances weren't right,

or whatever we chalk it up to. But I would say that there's also a deeper layer, you know, one layer in from the actions that we take, and that layer is the identity or the beliefs or the mindset that we have and that identity. To give you an example, so let's take the weight loss one. So if the goal is to lose thirty pounds in four months, and the action is to work out four times a week, well, the question I like to ask is who is the type of person that could get that result or who

is the type of person that would do that thing? Well, the answer is, the type of person who could lose thirty pounds in four months is the type of person who doesn't miss workouts like that would be their identity.

And so rather than focusing on the outcome or the result, or rather than worrying about the action, let's focus on building the identity of the type of person who could achieve the result that you want, whether that's writing a book or learning a new language, or losing weight or whatever. And if you have that identity, then you can trust that the actions and the results will just come as

a natural consequence of becoming that type of person. No, I love that, And the reason why I love it it's a nice compliment to the research I've done on the importance of falling involved with the future image of yourself called Epaul Turns, the famous creativity researcher, wrote a beautiful article called the Importance of Falling Involved with Something, and he argues in that paper that identity is the most important thing we could do to help realize these

future images of ourselves. Is what carries people through. I don't know if you're aware of his famous so long entitudinal study where he followed from the fifties and sixties, like in elementary school, and they're still following this cohort fifty years later, and he found that that falling in love with the future image of yourself part was like the number one best predictor of adult creativity, better than IQ, better than like every measure of academic prowess he could

throw in front of them. So it's a really cool study. And what you're showing is it's nice compliment to it because just dreaming is not the only part of the equation. There's also the doing part. But what it's going to get you to do the doing, and it's really having part of your dainty as well. They're the kind of person who's going to work hard even when you don't want to. You know what's interesting as I think about it,

I didn't know about that site. It's very fascinating. So then okay, so let's say we leave that thesis right, this idea that okay, let's become the type of person who can achieve these things, or let's focus on building that identity or falling in love with the future you as you put it, all right, So then the question for me is all right, the next step after that, So it's good to say that. So then how do we get to the practical side, right, like, how do

we put it in practice? And what I find is that those two layers as two interlayers I mentioned, So the actions that we take and the identity that we have, they're kind of they feed off each other. It's not a one way street. And I had a coach in high school, a basketball coach, who said confidence is just

displayed ability. And I remember hearing that and thinking, Oh, it's interesting, right, Like, a lot of time people will tell you to go into something like oh, you're going to give this public speaking thing, like just be confident believe yourself, right, Or you're gonna be shooting a free throw in a basketball game, just be confident, believe it's

going to go in. Well, like, that's true. On one hand, confidence is great, But the way that you actually build it, the way that you actually believe it that it's going to happen, is by proving it to yourself, right, is by displaying your ability. And then you're like, yeah, of course I'm confident myself because I know I've actually done

it before. And so for me, it's like, all right, how do we build that little that feedback loop where you can actually prove that you're doing something that the future you it's getting you to the future you So you're doing something you haven't done before, but you're proving it to yourself, so you're confident that you can do

it and you have the identity. I think the answer, at least the best one I've come up with yet, is for you to do it in incredibly small incremental steps, which is why I believe in these like one percent changes, small habits and so on. It's just a big enough improvement, just a big enough step or a small enough step.

I guess you could say, toward the future, you that it is moving the needle forward, but it's also small enough that you can achieve it, and it will give you a little bit of a confidence boost, a little bit of an identity shift, where you say, yes, I believe that this is something I can actually be and achieve, and then you just repeat the process a thousand times until you actually get to the future you. Yeah. I mean, this is quite groundbreaking stuff, and it could be applied

to a very wide swath of activities. I don't see you writing too much about dating, for instance, but do you ever have these these dating coaches? Do they ever contact you, like, you know, wanting to apply some of your ideas to like approach anxiety and stuff like that. Interesting, No I have well, I have I have had a couple relationship experts or what's the term now that they use anyway, but I've had a few maybe that have reached out. But that's interesting. I haven't even thought about

applying it in that way. One area that I was surprised that I have a lot of readers who are into finance and trading and you know and whatnot. I think that a philosophy of one percent gains of compound growth certainly applies to them. But also this idea of like showing up consistently and just like build what's the identity that you want as a trader, rather than being reactionary to whatever happens in the market and letting that

shift your actions and choices. How are you focusing on building the identity and the consistency around you know, what you want to become. So, I mean, it really can apply it to any sort of goal you have. But you know, again, you are you say some counter two

of things. You say that focusing on goals can actually limit your long term growth, for instance, and you say focus more on systems that are Folleah, Well, you know what's interesting about that I think so, So I'm not going to say goals are useless, because I don't think that's true. I think what goals are good for is setting direction for yourself and you know, developing a sense of clarity and a sense of purpose around where you're moving.

I think you see this a lot. I think as we get older, maybe we get a little bit better at it, but I think you see it a lot, in particular with students or people as they graduate and start their career. They don't have necessarily really pinpoint clarity on what they want, and I don't think that's like

a knock on them. I think that sometimes that's just a consequence of where we're at in our lives, Like you need this exploration period throughout your twenties sometimes to figure out, like, hey, what am I meant to do and what really speaks to me. But my point is it's really hard to make a lot of progress if you don't have a clear direction that you're moving in. So goals can be good for that. They can be

good for setting a direction. However, if you know what direction you're moving in, having a goal doesn't really do a whole lot for you, and it's the system and the consistency and the work that you do day in and day out that makes the difference. You know, Like, take so Alabama football just won the national championship again. When they started their year, they probably all knew exactly what their goal was, right, Like, Okay, the goal is to win the national title. There's no debate about what

direction we're moving in. But you could effectively say they could just put their goal on a shelf and not even think about it for the next nine months year and all they and if all they worried about was the system that they committed to it practice each day, would they still make progress? Would they still potentially win? And I would say that, yeah, maybe they. You can kind of divide systems and goals like this, like, if you're a coach, your goal might be to win the championship.

Your system is what your team does in practice each day. If you're a writer, your goal might be to write a best selling book. Your system is the writing process that you follow each week. You know, you could say, if you're an entrepreneur, your goal might be to build this successful business, and your process is the sales and marketing process that you do each week. So we all have directions that we want to go in, but the way to get there, the way to walk that path,

is through a system. And so that's why I feel like systems are more important than goals. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So what's a big myth of passion and motivation that you see constantly being perpetuated. I don't know. There are probably a few. I would say. The one thing is just that like we often do this guilt trip or this shaming around not having enough motivation or not having enough willpower, and we act like, oh, that's the reason you don't get to your goals. But

in truth, motivation is very fickle. It's probably not best By definition, a habit is something you do consistently, and motivation is something that ebbs and flows. So you don't want something you're going to do consistently to rely on something that ebbs and flows. So you know, there's a popular So there are a bunch of studies on implementation intentions. But one of the ones I like to talk about

is about exercise. And so they had three groups. First group, they said, we want you to track how often new exercise over the next two weeks. So just the control group. Second group, they said, we want you to track off new exercise and we're going to show you this motivational pamphlet and video on the benefits of exercise, why it promotes heart health, blah blah blah. So this was the

motivated group, since we're talking about motivation. Then group three they gave the same presentation to so they were equally motivated, and they said, we want you to track your exercise over the next two weeks, but we're going to have you do one other thing, and that thing is write down, I will exercise for twenty minutes on this day, at this time in this place. So they had to state a very specific implementation intention about whether or not they

would work out well. The results came back the cohort about thirty one thirty three percent somewhere around there worked out out okay, So about one third of them worked out over the next two weeks. The motivated group, the motivation essentially faded almost as soon as they left, you know, like within a day, and thirty one percent of them worked out over the next two weeks, so equal to the control groups, the motivation had no impact whatsoever on

their long term behavior. And then the third group, ninety percent of them worked out over the next two weeks. So it's like triple double or triple what the other motivation group was. And so implementation intentions or commitment devices, all these different strategies we have, those can lead to better long term behaviors. And I think that the myth around motivation is that motivation is what we lack to

build the habits that we want. And my argument would be often it's about environment design and structuring the world around you to promote those good behaviors and prevent the bad ones, and that makes more of a difference than motivation. I think a lot of time we look at people are like, oh, they have six pack ads, they must be so motivated. I wish I had the willpower you do. And even though those people don't know it, they often

live in an environment that promotes those behaviors. They're surrounded by people who also promote those behaviors and do the

same things. So they're surrounded by a supportive environment with similar ideas, and we can chalk it up to motivation and willpower, but often there are other forces at play that make those good habits easier and those bad habits harder, and just to give you some examples, you know, like let's talk about breaking some bad habits, you know, if you I wrote about some of these in the article earlier this week that I was working on. If you have a gambling habit, you can put yourself on the

band list. You can volunteer to put yourself on the band list at the casino, or on it for an online gambling site. So now, all of a sudden, it's not about having the willpower to not do it, like, oh, I just don't have the motivation, I don't have the willpower to resist the urge. Well, structure the environment so that it makes it easier on you rather than harder.

You can set up automatic savings plans to save more money for your emergency fund each month, right, So like now it's not, oh I wish I had the willpower you did to not go on a shopping spree and save money for my emergency fund. It's like, no, design the environment to make those behaviors easier for you. Anyway that you can structure the world around you to make the good habits easier and the bad behaviors harder, I think is much more powerful than relying on motivation or willpower.

I really like you made that point, and also the importance of the culture. My dear friend Amelia Latti studies this concept called CISU, which yeah, really big in Finland, and I think you wrote an article about her work on CISU and she was really excited that you wrote that. But I think that speaks to the systemic sort of cultural influence on something. I mean, in that culture in Finland, you know, having that extreme determination is a really good thing, right,

It's like, yeah, it's something we encourage. But our American culture is kind of interesting. We say that we really value that, but then we really value talent when it comes down to it in terms of like standardized tests and focus and all that stuff. Anyway, just a couple more minutes, you know, we'll wrap this up. I really like this thing you wrote once. You said, personally, my goal is not to reduce life to the fewest amount of things, to fill it with the optimal amount of things.

And I think at the end of the day, you know, when you talk about how the central question you're interested in is how can we live better? I think that kind of really gets to the center of how we can live better in a lot of different ways, especially in my own field of positi psychology, that would agree with that. How have you been trying to do that lately in your life? Yeah, it's a good question, you know.

I think this year one of the things I'm focusing on is kind of this ruthless elimination of the in essential, and one of the analogies I like for this idea of you know, I'm not trying to get to the least amount of things. I'm trying to get to the optimal amount of things. Or I'm not trying to get to the least amount of responsibilities. I'm trying to get

to the optimal amount of responsibilities. You know, I'm not necessarily trying to avoid work or to live a spartan lifestyle that makes me feel like I'm sacrificing and not getting to enjoy the world around me. But I am trying to be cognizant of the fact that there are many things that creep into our lives that we don't necessarily need, or that don't provide nearly as much value as maybe we assume on the surface, or don't really make us better people for those who live around us

or for ourselves. And so the analogy that I like to use with this is one of a rose bush. You know, I think we often assume that as humans we are like trees. We grow wider, and we can grow taller and throw more responsibilities on because we'll just add some more branches, and you know, we just continue to go up and up and bigger and bigger. And that's a natural consequence, especially if you're an active, busy, interested, intelligent person, those things are going to come into your life, right,

You're going to have more opportunities. It's just how it is. The longer you live, the more people you'll meet, and the more you know, opportunities will come across. So if you don't trim those away, then you are going to try to force yourself into this tree situation where you need to get bigger and bigger. The problem is, human beings are not really like trees. We have this finite amount of energy and amount of space in our lives, and so I think that, you know, for a plant analogy,

we're more like a rose bush. In order for a rose bush to fully blossom, you have to trim away some of the buds, and many of those buds are actually good they could become a flower, they could blossom in some way, but if you don't trim them away, then the few remaining ones can't flourish. And so that's kind of where I'm trying to get to at this point, is saying which areas of my life, which buds do

I want to flourish to the fullest degree. And in order to do that, there are going to be some things, and in many cases they're good choices. They're not waste of time that I'm going to have to say no to in order for me to get to that optical amount of stuff. And yeah, and so that's kind of where I'm at right now. I love it. And that leads to my final question for this interview. So what other things matter in your personal life other than habit formation?

How much is happiness and well being and other things? I don't want to be ask you a leading question, but tell me what else matters in your personal life? Sure? Yeah, So I think one of the questions is sometimes this conversation. I don't know if this is what you had in mind when you ask the question, but sometimes the question around habit formation is like, well, if I spend all my time building these habits, So I ever get to

enjoy anything? Do I just become a robot? Do I just become automated and just worry about like, oh, system after system, And my argument would be no, it doesn't have to be that way at all. The question that we need to ask is where does the value come from? So, you know, sometimes there are things in our lives that there's a lot of value just in being a beginner, you know, like having a beginner's level of knowledge on

politics and the upcoming election. Maybe you're not into politics, but just being able to have a conversation on it and at least know the lay of the land, and you know, you spend thirty minutes of your time figuring it out or you know, three hours of your time, some beginner level of investment that can be really useful. There are other things where the value comes from mastering that behavior, you know, like take exercise. Since this is

an example we've used throughout this interview. Does the value of exercise come and doing thirty minutes or three hours of you know, work on it and over the course of a year. Probably not. There's probably not a lot of value to be gained there. But by showing up consistently time after time, then you can really start to reap a lot of benefits through that, you know, mastery. I guess writing is another one where I think there's a lot of benefit is to be gained from mastery.

And it depends on the person. Depends on your skill set, for one, what your strengths are and whether those align with the thing that you're trying to master. And it just depends on your you know, your interests and the conversations that you want to have. But for different people, sometimes the value will be at the beginning of the curve, and sometimes the value is going to be in mastering

that thing. And so if the values at the beginning, don't worry about building a habit around it, don't just you know, get the knowledge that you need and then move on. And as far as the place for happiness and serendipity and surprise in my life, I try to create situations where I can get a lot of that. You know, I'm fortunate because I can set my schedule in you know, and have a successful business running and

so on. I try to do three to five international trips a year, mostly just for photography and kind of creative exploration and so, you know, one that teaches me a little bit about creative habits and stuff and how you can't really plan sometimes those you know, those creative moments. But two, it just you know, just allows me to increase my surface area for luck and for interesting things

to happen. So I certainly don't think that I try to plan out all of my days, although I do have some of those what I would call like anchor tasks that my day revolves around, and then the rest of it is, you know, kind of filled in by hopefully some good and exciting stuff. I love that answer.

I guess my question was more personal, though, about the things that matter to you in life other than like goals and habit And I know the answer though, Like I've read your integrity report and so you mentioned things like you want to increase your social connectedness, your service and things like that, and those are things that aren't necessarily related to goal. I mean, there are goals, but you're not doing them because you want to reach a goal.

You're doing them because you want to savor the moment, right M. Yeah, they're like this year, in particular, I'm focusing on doing a monthly dinner series and then hosting maybe one or two retreats throughout the year that are just there because you know, I feel like it will add to my social wellbeing and add to my ability to you know, connect with other like minded people and so on and not. You know, I'm not selling anything.

I'm not looking to get some business result on. I'm in a I just you know, spend some time surrounded by other interesting people. So yeah, there are things like that. Obviously, the weightlifting of photography are kind of two of my personal hobbies I guess I would put that are like closely related but not about goals and habits. Yeah, and then you know, spending time with friends and family. I try to make multiple trips home and stuff like that.

So there's there's plenty of things that you know, I spend my time on that don't necessarily get measured or quantified. You know, like we talked earlier, it sounds like you're really living a full life, living a good life. And thanks for all the great work you're doing, James, Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on. Its great. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with

doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just to s thought provoking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode, or here are past episodes, you can go to the Psychology Podcast dot com, dot