This week on the podcast, I speak with James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. James is an expert on habit formation who offers not only theories backed by science, but also practical strategies that will help you achieve powerful, atomic-level results.
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On this episode, James and I had a really productive discussion on a range of topics from the journey of putting the book together, how alarm clocks fail me (or I fail alarm clocks), turning off the internet router at 10 PM to keeping the beer at the back of the fridge and Crossfit.
Specifics that we covered on the show include:
- Designing and Defining Atomic Habits: Two main lenses to look the book through (02:08)
- The two-minute rule in scaling down a habit and actually making it stick (05:09)
- Importance of slowing down and awareness for effective behavioral change (08:11)
- Having a variety of small things organized toward the same goal (11:53)
- Solutions for setting up efficient timing (17:02)
- Strategies for building good seasonal habits (21:29)
- Tools to make habits stick and break through biases (28:58)
- The three reasons/meanings behind the use of the term “atomic” (32:42)
- Creating a journal that makes it easier to build habits that is useful but not fixed (37:24)
“Many of our behaviors are socially reinforced… When the social reinforcement is so strong, we overcome the obstacles in our environment. The key insight there is you want to join a tribe, a group where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. Because if it’s normal in that group, then it’s going to seem attractive to you to do it even if it’s not convenient.” ~ James Clear
Relevant Links
- Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich | Amazon
- The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris | Amazon
- Baron Fig’s Clear Habit Journal
- Use Freedom to Block Websites, Apps, & the Internet
- Facebook Newsfeed Eradicator
- Distraction-free YouTube (Chrome extension)
- Trello.com
- James Clear
- @jamesclear on Twitter
- @james_clear on Instagram
- James Clear on Facebook
I learned a lot from reading Atomic Habits and through my conversations with James and I’m sure you will too. And make sure to catch the next episode where I have Joey Cofone as my guest for a back-to-back habit tracking and intentionality goodness.
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