James Clear’s Guide to Turning New Year's Resolutions into Lasting Habits

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$149 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$299 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

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1:19Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down. Be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

2:10Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It's that time of the year where we reflect on the past 12 months, what we did, what we didn't do, what changes we want to make in 2025. Who's the person we want to be next year? Usually it's different than the person we were the previous year. We're not like, I'd like to stay exactly as I was. Mark Cerullus talks about that. He says, you know, to keep on being the person you've been is like the gladiator in the games who's all torn to pieces and torn up and begging to be spared so they could do it again the next day and have the same results, right?

2:58You want to be different next year. That's what resolutions are all about. And I've known today's guest for many, many years. I knew him before, I think many of you knew him. I was just in Canada and I was talking to Jason Gaynard, who's founder of this thing called Mastermind Talks, which is where I met James, because I was doing a panel on book publishing. at this conference. And James was in the audience. He had this popular email newsletter and he was thinking about doing a book. And I remember we talked and he ended up doing that book. And it's been amazing to watch. One of the biggest books, not just the last couple of years, but of all time, like millions and millions of copies, Atomic Habit, it's his sold.

3:40You know, it's his blueprint for getting out of a rut, for taking productive steps, building better habits. and I've known James a long time. So I wanted to ask him like, what does he think of New Year's resolutions? How can we get better at doing them? How can we have better habits this year? And one of the reasons I want to ask him is I've been thinking a lot about this for the Daily Stoic New Year and New You Challenge. We do this every year and it's like basically 21 days of Stoic inspired challenges to kick off the year. It's awesome. It's one of my favorite things to do. Thousands of Stoics all over the world doing it together.

4:12I have habits that I do every day that I started when we first did this. Six years ago now, seven years ago, I don't even know how many years we've been doing. We've been doing it so much. We've been doing it for so long. It's one of the best, most fun, most rewarding things about Daily Stoic. And we spend like all year trying to come up with these challenges and we want them to really work for people. So I had some questions. I actually asked James about a bunch of days that we were working on in the challenge so I could tighten them up. So this is a bit of a preview of that. Also, if you want to join us in the Daily Stoic New Year and New You Challenge, you can do that.

4:50Head to dailystoic.com slash challenge to sign up. I'll link to it in the show notes. Let's start the year up by not procrastinating. Let's just sign up for it now. Don't say, OK, I'll do it towards the end of the year. I'll do it on the first. No, do it now. Sign up and I'll see you in Daily Stoic New Year and New You. Definitely grab Atomic Habits if you haven't read it. You know, sometimes there's those books that just sell and sell and sell and you're like kind of resent it or you judge it for being so popular. There's books I've done that for. I did that with The Empire of the Summer Moon.

5:16And then I was like, oh, I did that with Killers of the Flower Moon. I saw it in a million airports. And then finally I read them and I was like, oh, this is why it's in every airport. This is why it sold so many copies. So James has a lot to teach us. The first episode I did with James was way back in 2021. I was going to throw a chunk of that on here, but I don't think I am. I think I may run that episode again after this one. I'll run it maybe in January because it was a great conversation and James does have a lot to teach us. But yeah, if you haven't read Atomic Habits, you should. In the meantime, here's me sitting down for about 30 minutes with James.

5:55He and I kept talking after we turned off the mics. He's working on a project and wanted my advice. And again, putting into practice. I'm just so impressed with this dude. I think you'll really like this interview. And speaking of groups doing stuff together, finding accountability. Maybe you'll find that in the Daily Stoic New Year New Challenge. We've got some live Q &A sessions with me. We've got this community platform we set up. It's going to be awesome. And you can join us at dailystoic.com slash challenge. And in the meantime, let's just get into the episode. Here we go. Grab a copy of Atomic Habits from the Painted Porch and follow James Clear on Instagram and all the other platforms at James Clear.

6:36Talk soon.

6:40So I have this habit that I do every year, which is I try to pick like a word that I want to use as my sort of like, not mantra for the year, but a word that I want to influence all the decisions that I make. So like a couple of years ago, it was stillness. This year it was systems. I haven't come up with a good word for 2025, but do you do that or what do you think of that as a practice? practice i don't do it but i know many people who do uh in some in my my personal family who do yeah i think it's a cool practice i think it's a good idea to give you a sometimes i think about you know you look at life through it's almost like you're looking through different windows you know it gives you a different window to view all the the opportunities that you have and the challenges that you face for the year and that's kind of nice to have a little bit of a different frame to run things through maybe it you know reveals something yeah it gives you like a value to check your decisions against.

7:33Yeah. You know, people talk about the, like the law of attraction, you know, it's like you want more money, think about money, you want more whatever. But I think actually we should call it the law of attention because all it really is, is when you start thinking about something, once you start paying attention to it, you naturally notice opportunities for it and areas where it pops up. And this is like that, you know, you pick stillness and you start seeing areas where, you know, that can apply in life. You pick, you know, like one thing I'm thinking a lot about recently is like leverage or how do I get more out of each unit of time or how do I get more out of each unit of effort?

8:04And when you have that frame, it gives you a different way of thinking about that, seeing the things that you face each day. So yeah, I like it. That's a great word. I might actually steal that leverage because sometimes you're thinking about like, yeah, for me, it would be how can I get more out of what I'm already doing as opposed to just trying to do more and more. One year, the word was less, but I think leverage is actually a more positive way of expressing that same idea. I don't do the theme thing or the word thing for each year. But if I did, that probably would have been my word for this year.

8:39And my little shorthand for it is fewer moves, but bolder strokes. So how can I get the same outcome and fewer moves? Or how can I perform the same type of moves rather than working harder, but get a better output from them? So yeah, it's not always possible, but if you approach life with that lens, then you start to notice areas where it can turn out to be a reality. Well, I think that's very common is we say we want certain things or we want our life to be a certain way, but then if we look at our individual choices, they're often not in accordance with getting closer to that. They often take us further away.

9:16So people say stuff like, family is the most important thing, but if you actually looked at their day-to-day choices, They're valuing many things over family. Now, some of that is just a reality of life. You have to do it. But we want certain outcomes or we say we're adhering to certain strategies, but then we're making tactical decisions that are not in alignment with that priority or that strategy at all. It's really natural. One of the questions I try to ask myself a lot is, what do I, I approach it in different ways, but you could say one version of the question is, what am I optimizing for?

9:51so sometimes you optimize for free time or time with family sometimes it's for making money sometimes it's for creative freedom but the answer changes for not not just across people it will change within you you know like i'm optimizing for different things now than i was five years ago or ten years ago so that question i find helpful another question is what season am i in right now you know sometimes you're in a season where the work burner is cranked on high and you're really focused on, you know, performing well there. Other times the friends or family burners cranked up. But when your season changes, your emphasis or your habits often need to change, you know, what value you're emphasizing is going to shift.

10:30And then the last way that I think about it is what basically the question is, what do I want my daily lifestyle to look like? Not do I, what do I want my results to look like? Because if you do it based on results, or you do it based on the opportunities that come your way, that's when it's really easy to get into talking yourself into, oh, let me do this because it's a cool thing. But if you do it based on what you want your daily lifestyle to look like, and then you say, I'm going to draw a box around what I want my day to look like. And inside of that box, how can I make the most money, reach the most people, make the biggest impact, you know, and so on, but not if it's outside of it.

11:06But most people start the other way around, which is they say, how can I make the most money or reach the most people or make the biggest impact or, you know, get the result that I want. And then they kind of draw the box around that and convince themselves, oh, I would be okay with living that lifestyle. And what you end up with is talking yourself into a lifestyle that you don't actually enjoy that much, just because you were chasing the outcome. Or you've told yourself that your day to day life now is not what you want. But it's so you can get to a point where in the future, you will have that day to day life.

11:37And it doesn't tend to work out that way. So people will set up a day-to-day life for the bulk of their existence that they don't enjoy, that doesn't prioritize the things they want, so that yes, someday when they can retire, they can move to the place they want to live or organize their day around the things they want to. Now, of course, life is about delayed gratification, but there is something about sort of presuming a tomorrow or a golden years or whatever that I think the Stokes would say is a tad arrogant, you know, there's the humility of delayed gratification. And then there's also the arrogance of, oh, I can get to that later, or someday I'll be able to.

12:17Your last point is a good one. You know, delayed gratification is a big part of life. And I think what is it that allows people to strike this balance well and gracefully? And what is it that kind of prevents people from doing it? I think a lot of it is patience and persistence, you know, So most people, so if we kind of layer on the things we're talking about here, so we've got, you have a certain kind of lifestyle that you'd like to live day to day, but you also make these promises to yourself and you realize delayed gratification and investing in the long term is a big part of life. And that's how we do get better results.

12:48And life is easier when you get better results. And then what we were talking about a minute ago with leverage, how do I get more output from each unit of time I'm putting in? How do I get more out of less? If you kind to start to layer all those things together, what you realize is there aren't actually that many things in life that allow you to check all those boxes that allow you to both have a good daily life and generate the long term returns that you want and have get it, you know, get a great output from the effort that you're putting in. And so I think a lot of people just get impatient with the answers, they don't come up with a good answer for it right away, because there aren't that many things that can do all that.

13:24And so then they kind of give up and they settle for something less. and I think one of the lessons is reflection and review is a really critical part of living a good life. You need to carve out a lot of time to think about what type of day do I want? What type of lifestyle do I want? What are my opportunities and what's available to me? What resources do I have at hand? And how can I piece these things together and align them with my personal interest in a way that allows me to live a good daily life and also get the long term rewards that I want. And there probably aren't going to be just like 100 things that pop up as an answer to that question, you're probably going to need to think about it and lean against it.

14:04I mean, in a sense, it's something that you never fully get an answer to. It's a process. It's a question that you continue to lean against for your whole life. And you kind of figure out the art of living as you go. But by having the question just by walking around and carrying that ambitious question in the back of your mind, you go a long way toward getting an answer. And I think a lot of people give up on it too soon. And that's why they end up with, you know, substandard answers and kind of have to settle for something, something less.

14:38Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, Thought this isn't going to work. Stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields.

15:17and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in. We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that.

15:58If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance of the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that. But I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

16:45My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It over the holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

17:23Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

17:43I have a little quote that I have framed in my office. It's from Seneca. He says, too many people lack the fickleness to live as they should and instead simply live as they have begun. So I think one of the things that happens is a set of assumptions or a path made sense at a time or a setup or an arrangement made sense at a time where we just didn't have anything better. And so we start doing a thing and then we lack that sort of fickleness is an interesting word because we see it mostly as a negative word, but we lack the ability to tweak and to change and to experiment to try to potentially find something better.

18:23So we just keep going down the path that we always went. We were choosing majors in college and one seemed slightly more interesting than another. And then 40 years later, we're still lawyers, even though we don't actually like this thing anymore. And we didn't even know that much about it when we decided to go to law school or whatever. Insert any path that you can take in your life for law school and being a lawyer there. But this idea of like, I moved here because it made sense at the time does not mean you have to continue out your days that way. Or you're a person who wakes up early. maybe you're actually a night owl or you, your business keeps you up late.

19:01And so you don't know that actually you're a morning person, but this willingness to tweak and experiment and try different ways of doing things. That's how you ultimately do get to that day-to-day satisfaction that we're talking about. Yeah. Seneca says fickleness, but maybe in modern language, we would say like adaptability or being flexible. You know, it's, it's, you don't have this rigid way of living life. Like if you, if you need things to be a certain way, then you're being held hostage by the situation. You know, you're it's actually the what's that quote, it's something like the oak tree fought against the storm and broke, but the willow tree bent and survived.

19:35It's like you need some amount of, you know, flexibility and adaptability. It's actually the flexible and supple things in life that survive. And it's the rigid and fixed things that break and are brittle. I think there's that line by Lao Tzu where he says, like, the way of the living is to bend and to adjust. And the way of the dead is to, you know, be brittle and rigid. And so there's a lot of there's a lot of that. Sometimes we talk about consistency as like this rigidness, you know, this discipline, oh, to be consistent, it means to be the type of person who always grits through it always makes it happen, no matter the conditions of the situation.

20:10But in real life, I think consistency is often adaptability, it's flexibility, it's when you don't have enough time, you do it in the short way, or the smaller way, when you don't have enough energy, you do it in the easy way. When you don't have the skills, you figure out a way to do it, you know, in a more beginner style. And so it's the ability to flex and adjust to the circumstances, but not throw up a zero for that day and still show up. That is actually what consistency looks like. And of course, we all want to perform, you know, better and to try to do more. But it's actually not letting zero days creep in.

20:46That is what consistency really looks like. Yeah, I read about this NFL kicker once who like he was anti-ritual like he didn't ever want to be like these are my lucky socks this is the way I trot on the field like he was really almost paranoid about not creating patterns because then you need them to be a certain way and I think if you're a habit oriented person or a routine oriented person it can almost become like a sort of a religious thing or a compulsion where you're like I have to have it this way and that's great insofar as you can control your environment day to day. But the reality is you can't.

21:23Like when I talk, I try to think, here's the system or the order of things that I like to do it in to get the best performance. But I also kind of lean into those days where that gets blown apart because the flight is delayed or I'm sick or something happened. I go like, this is me getting practice doing it in a different way so I can feel comfortable knowing that whatever the circumstances are, I can perform that I'm not so rigid that I'm actually fragile. There's an interesting story about Josh Waitzkin, you know, him, the, you know, the chess guy and then martial arts and whatever. He was doing this martial arts competition.

21:57It was like the national championships or something. And I think he was in Thailand or Taiwan or somewhere where English was not the primary language. And there was a mix up in the schedule. He thought that he was performing at a, you know, a later time. And so he was taking a nap on the bleachers. He thought he was competing like six hours from then. And they came up and woke him up and they said, Hey, actually, you're supposed to be on the mat in like five minutes. And you need to walk across the, you know, the stadium or whatever. And so he went from being asleep to needing to compete in this high level competition, like right away.

22:27And he said earlier in his career, he had this pregame routine, this ritual, like you had mentioned, like a lot of athletes do, where it was like 12 minutes or 10 minutes. And then eventually he what he started to do was he started to compress it. And you know, in that moment, he didn't have 12 minutes, but he had already practiced compressing it down. Eventually, I think he got it down to something under like 30 seconds. And he could just do that little ritual and, you know, 15 seconds and be ready to compete. And I like that, you know, that kind of thinking of like, okay, it is nice to have an on switch where you feel like, okay, I need to be ready to go now.

23:01And I need to have some signal to my brain that we're getting started. But the more that you can compress that sequence, the less brittle, as you say, you are, you You know, if you need to step on a leaf and walk counterclockwise three times and go through some mantra, like you don't have time for that, you know? Especially when you have kids, because your life is just an endless series of your routines being blown apart. And not only if, you know, sort of religiously sticking to those routines, it's not just unrealistic. If you were to somehow manage to do it, it's coming at the expense of someone else, right?

23:34By nature, your comfort and your way of doing things is no longer the priority. So you have to kind of get good at being like resilience to me is the ability to perform and continue to operate no matter what's happening. And so if you need it to be a certain way, you're not resilient. You're the opposite of resilient. Right. Yeah. The more you are more mentally tough if your mood and your performance is not dependent on your conditions. You know, if you if you're dependent on favorable conditions, you're actually not that tough. So I don't know. So it's a tricky thing, but I think this also comes back to that theme that I've kind of had for the year, which is fewer moves than bolder strokes.

24:12It's like, okay, I don't have time for a lot of moves. You know, it forces you to choose very carefully. If I have limited hours, if I have unfavorable conditions, if I'm not in an ideal situation, I don't have time for 20 moves. I have time for two. And how can I make sure that those are getting me the output that I want? I was thinking about one of those for this year. I was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to come up with one meal and this is going to be like my go-to meal. I'm not going to eat it every day, but it's going to be the, if I don't know what to order, if I don't have much time to cook, if there's not much in the fridge, like this is my thing.

24:46Like this is my go-to, it's decently healthy. It doesn't take a lot of time. It doesn't have a lot of, you know, and I'm just going to be like, that's my thing. So whatever happens, that's kind of like, I talked to Les Snead, the GM of the Rams once. And he said like, you have to have panic rules. Like, what do you do when coverage gets blown or something happens? Like this is going to be like my panic meal when I don't know what my normal thing is, when I don't get to decide this is, I'm just going to hit this button and do that thing. Yeah. I like the idea of having good defaults. You know, sometimes the way I phrase it is, what do you do when you have nothing to do?

25:19So like for a lot of people, when they have nothing to do, when they've got a 10 second break while they're standing in line at the store, or when they, you know, have five minutes in between a meeting, what they do is they scroll on their phone. They pull up social media, they look at, you know, whatever they they they have a default mode that they go into when they have nothing to do. And what I've really tried to do, I'm still working on this, I definitely don't have this figured out. But what I've true what I've tried to do is have a better answer to what do I do when I have nothing to do.

25:47And right now, my answer is I have this book that I'm working on. And so when I don't know what to do, when I've got an in between moment between meetings, when I don't have anything that's instantly happening, I've opened up that doc and I start editing. um yeah and so it's just a much better thing for me to do in those in-between moments and you're kind of describing that for food which is yeah when i don't know what to eat or when i'm not sure what i'm having for lunch i'm having this and it's nice to have a couple good answers to things like that in life because you what happens is you turn around you know in three months and if you were just scrolling your phone 47 minutes a day was eaten up on instagram and you didn't really feel it at all and it didn't do anything and instead 47 minutes a day is spent editing this document and all of a sudden the book is finished and you're surprised by how much progress you've made.

26:33Yeah, it's kind of actually, it's like you're, it's your version of that word. Like, you're like, I work on the book. When I don't know what I'm doing, I work on the book. And for me, it's, it's usually like my note cards. If I don't know what I'm supposed to do, if I somehow have a magical day where I have more time, it's like, I have this big stack of books that I have to process that I've read that I have to do my note cards on. And I'm just going to do a couple pages. And if you can kind of have the idea of like, you have this big thing that you're chipping away at, and it gets your extra time.

27:02Yeah, that's a, that's a good thing. Because you always know what to do. You know what to do. Right? Yeah. If you don't know what to do, then you end up choosing whatever's in front of you. But if you have something that can guide you, then you know, you end up using that time much more effectively. How do you think about like, I have habits that I was more consistent with in the past, that I've fallen off from for whatever reason. How do you think about reengaging with an old good habit, like picking up where you left off? It's a good question. And this is something that I've, I don't know if I would say I've changed my thinking as much as I have learned something that I didn't know over time.

27:40People don't usually say this explicitly, but in the back of their mind, when people set out to build a habit or they're thinking about being good at their habits, they kind of think, what would it look like to be successful at this would mean that it would mean that I do it every day for the rest of my life is kind of that I would not miss it anymore after I after I started. And in reality, I first of all, I don't think that's a good standard for what makes a habit successful. And also, I don't even know that it really is optimal. Instead, what I have been encouraging people to do a lot more recently is what if you just let your habits change shape based on the season that you're in?

28:15And I don't think it means that you abandon the habit, but it does mean that you refine it or you edit it. So like, let's take my writing habit as an example. I would say that I had a good writing habit for the last 12 or 13 years. But in some sense, if you're being strict about it, you could say that I broke that habit a couple of times. Like, for example, for the first three years that I wrote, I wrote a new article every Monday and Thursday, and they were like 3000, 2000 to 3000 word pieces. And I did that for three years. And then I signed the book deal for Atomic Habits. And I didn't have the capacity to do that and write the book.

28:47so I switched to writing the book for the next three years and I did still did some writing on my site but I wasn't really doing it in the same way and then now the last like five years I've been writing a weekly newsletter which is much shorter you know it's like maybe 500 words at most but that gets written once a week and I think it's fine that the writing habit has changed shape over time it doesn't need to look the same my exercise habit is a similar story like for a while before I had kids like I was working out I was training for longer sessions maybe it was like 90 minutes, you know, and then, you know, we had a period there when kids are little, when you got toddlers, and it was like, listen, the most I can possibly carve out is like 45 minutes at a time.

29:24And that's just what it's going to look like. And there are a lot of days when all I had was like 15 or 20 minutes, and I would just go in and do like one set of squats. And, you know, that doesn't look like a full workout, but it's a lot better than doing nothing. And so anyway, I think if you have a habit that served you well, and you're sitting there thinking, I would love to reclaim this. I would love to bring this back in my life in some way. I mean, one of the first questions to ask is, what would it look like if this changed shape a little bit? And what is the right shape for this habit in my current season?

29:57And then there's a second question to ask, which is, what would this look like if it was fun? You know, like what sounds fun to you changes over time. But you'd be surprised. I don't know. I feel like a lot of people choose habits because they think they should have them or like their peers want them to have them. They feel guilty that they don't have them. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's like people were like, oh, I should read more. And it's like, well, that's fine. But like, what would it look like if it was fun for you? You know? Yeah. So that doesn't mean every habit in your life is going to be like the most fun thing that you do.

30:24You know, it's all it's going to feel like going to a concert or something. But pretty much any habit can be more fun than the default. And I think it's worth it to lean your head against that and try to come up. OK, you want to exercise? Great. Let's brainstorm like 50 different ways that you can live an active life and then pick the one on that list that sounds the most fun to you. Or like I had one woman who she felt like she was eating out for lunch too much. She wanted to bring her salad in and, you know, make a salad each day. And she just kind of felt like making a salad sound a little bit like a chore.

30:52And she wasn't quite ready to like she when she said she wanted to do that, she ended up feeling friction and not doing it. So she asked herself this question of what would this look like if it was fun? And she started making sure I think she called it a party in a bowl. So you know, in the beginning, she would like sprinkle potato chips on it or you know, she would do things that you wouldn't consider healthy, but it made it fun. And then And once she had done this for like a month or two, and it was already, you know, it was kind of more established and she was bringing it in every day. Well, now there's all kinds of ways you can improve the habit.

31:19But I think starting with fun and starting with what is the right shape, those are two good ways to reclaim a habit you've lost. Yeah, my writing habit has evolved similarly. I think originally it had to be discipline, black and white, you do it or you don't do it. And now I feel like I've slowly, steadily lowered the stakes of it. So now it's like, did I make a positive contribution to my writing today? So sometimes that's editing. Sometimes it's writing. Sometimes it's adding. Sometimes it's deleting. Sometimes it's a huge contribution. Sometimes it's a little contribution. But as long as I'm doing the thing, that's checking the box, you know?

31:54It all needs to be moving forward. Yes. I love this magical phrase also that I don't think we say enough in this society, which is more often than not. you know like we're we're all or nothing or do you do it every day yeah are you the best in the world as it as opposed to like more often than not do you eat healthy more often than not did you you know not hit the snooze button more often than not did you do the thing and cumulatively more often than not if you do something you're going to end up in a pretty good space now there's some things you don't want in your body so more often than not i don't do heroin right there's Not at all.

32:32But I think most things, it's like more often than not, are you bringing your lunch from home as opposed to grabbing fast food? For most people, the switch between what you were doing before and more often than not is going to be significant, if not transformative. Huge. Most people are not even close to the level of consistency they think they are. You know, like most people are not even doing stuff like half the time that they think they're doing it. So if you are actually doing it more often than not, that's that's a huge jump in performance. And I would even say for most areas of your life, let's call it 80 to 90 % consistency is probably a better place to live than like 99 % consistent.

33:12You probably for most things, you probably don't actually want the lifestyle that would allow you to be 99 % consistent. You know, the person who like, has not missed a single run in 17 years, that is it is such a big part of their life that there are lots of other trade-offs that they're making that you probably don't want actually you know it probably require you to change your life in a really dramatic way to be that consistent with it but if you make if you do your run 90 of the time well that that's probably great and that still means you got the flex to deal with the rest of life um and you know so i i would say that's for most things that's probably the right place to live yeah more more often than not are you more often than not making a positive contribution are you more often than not doing the thing, as opposed to I need to become a totally new person living a totally new life doing everything in a new way.

34:04It's just and yeah, your point of, of like, hey, so you consistently did it 99 % of the time for five years, and then you came to loathe it. And so you stopped doing it, or you quit or you got burned out. Or you were even really good at that thing. But you strained all of your personal relationships in the process, you know, like, Like what's the cost of success? And there are a few things in life, like literally most of us maybe have one or two things that are worth extreme sacrifice and everything else can be more often than not. Yeah, and I think about it with running. It's like, I don't want to miss a day and then I get hurt because I forced it on a day.

34:43And then I miss more days than I would have had I just taken this one day off. I think about that trade off all the time. Longevity is its own form of greatness. You know, stay in in so many ways, health and fitness business, like staying in the game is actually the true long term achievement, like to have the business provide for your lifestyle for 40 years, rather than being a flash in the pan for three years. That is its own form of greatness to continue to be able to remain healthy and continue to work out rather than running a peak marathon time one year. That is its own form of greatness.

35:19And so, I mean, people got to decide what they want to prioritize. Some people are doing it to be the very best at that thing. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that most of the time and in most ways in your life, staying in the game is a big part of success. Yeah. And look, most things are not professional sports that have a real expiration date on them that has a ticking clock. Like one of the great things about writing is that a lot of writers are doing their absolute best work in their 80s or 90s. But if you want to do that in your chosen field or profession or whatever habit we're talking about, then you got to start thinking as Peter Atiyah talks about, which is like, okay, backing out from that faraway outcome, what are much more sustainable habits or what's much more long-term thinking that you have to engage in here?

36:08Because what you're proposing now or how you're behaving now is simply not sustainable.

36:41Pacific Life Insurance Company New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

36:55Most people need consistency more than they need intensity. You know, we talk ourselves into the intensity piece. I want to do a silent meditation retreat for a week. You know, I want to run a marathon, you know, I want to, you know, whatever. But actually, what you want is to become a meditator, you know, do it for five minutes a day for the next year. Forget about the silent meditation retreat or like, what you want is not to read 30 books, you know, in a year, what you want is to become a reader, you know, find a way to fall in love with it. What's the fun way to do it? How are you you know, how's reading enjoyable for you?

37:24So you're trying to build a lifestyle, you're trying to foster an identity, you're trying to embody the type of person that you want to be with the behaviors that you're doing each day. And once it becomes part of your lifestyle, part of your story, you start to assign some level of your identity to that you start to, you know, take pride in being that type of person, it becomes a little bit easier for it to stick for the long run, it becomes a little more sustainable. And then, you know, the results and the performance and all that, of course, it matters. But it's easier to optimize that stuff when it's actually part of your lifestyle, rather than to, I don't know, try to come up with some perfect plan from the beginning.

38:02Yeah, like three, three days a week, running three days a week for a decade is a much more impressive accomplishment than running a marathon. But they don't give you a medal for for one of them, right? So we sort of tend to go towards the clear and quantifiable, the competition or the group activity, as opposed to figuring out how to become the kind of person that does the thing consistently. And the results of success are highly visible. You know, we only talk about things like once the outcome happens, we talk about, oh, they ran the marathon in XYZ time, or, you know, you'll never see a news story that's like, man eats chicken and salad for lunch today.

38:42It's only a story when it's like man loses 150 pounds, you know, right. And so the results of success are highly visible. And the process of success is kind of invisible and hidden from view. And so I just think because we live in such a results oriented culture and society, and that's what it gets talked about. It's easy to undervalue the lifestyle and the process. And that's really the thing that you need to fall in love with. It's not it's everybody wants the results, like who doesn't want good outcomes? That's but that's not the thing. It's do you love the lifestyle? Do you like living in that way each day?

39:17And if so, the results will naturally come. So last question, because I think it pertains to that. And here we are sort of at the end of the year. How do you think about New Year's resolutions? If you had to give someone a better way of thinking about it than just starting on January 1, I'm not drinking anymore. Starting on January 1, I'm taking a walk every day. What's a better way to frame this idea of resolutions? Because I do think seasons are important. And the idea of a new year and starting over, there is something psychologically important there. But there's a reason most resolutions don't stick.

39:50Well, there's actually some research around it that shows that, you know, they call the research calls it the fresh start effect. But what they found is the beginning of a week, so Monday, the beginning of the month, first day of the month, or the beginning of the year, January 1st, they give you this feeling, the psychological feeling of a fresh start. and that can be a good time to start something new. So, you know, obviously one lesson there is you don't have to wait till January 1st. You could start the first of the next month or the first of, you know, Monday of next week or whatever. But I don't think there's anything wrong with using the natural energy of the season to get you going.

40:23So if, you know, if that's motivating to you, great. Like motivation rises and falls. So if you happen to have it, capitalize on it and go ahead and use it. But I think the tricky part is there's this standard for New Year's resolutions, this way we think about it where we're like, I'm going to pick this thing and whatever. But I would encourage you rather than start by saying, what are the results I want this year? I mean, the most common New Year's resolution is do some form of exercise. So everybody sits there on December 27th and they think I'd like to lose 40 pounds. So my resolution is going to be I'm going to exercise and I'm going to go to the gym four days a week or whatever.

40:59And instead, I would encourage you to say rather than starting by asking yourself, what do I wish to achieve? Let's start by asking, who do I wish to become? So who's the type of person that would not, you know, that would go to the gym four days a week? Well, maybe it's the type of person that doesn't miss workouts. And this gives you, you can see how this gives you a different lens going into the year, rather than saying, I'm going to try to lose this amount of weight by this date and work out four days a week. Instead, you say, I'm going to try to be the type of person who doesn't miss workouts.

41:31And I'm going to try to foster that identity. And it doesn't matter if it's two minutes, or if it's 20 minutes, or if it's an hour, but I'm going to try to find a way to show up today and build, you know, my little phrase is, every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. So how can you cast a vote, even if it's a small one, for being that type of person? I think if you have that lens for your New Year's resolutions, it gives you a different way of thinking about it for, you know, for the next year. It just has to be more often than not. Yeah, exactly. Amazing, man.

42:00Well, this is awesome. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Ryan.

42:06I thought that was a great interview. I love talking to James. He's one of my favorite people. And, you know, I just texted him the other day. I texted him because I was down with my family in Rosemary Beach on the Gulf Coast of Florida. There's two bookstores I like there. There's Sundog, and then there is The Hidden Lantern. And I was at The Hidden Lantern, and I'm walking by and they have these cool dioramas. My son points them out. They're these like dioramas of like a bookstore. There's like a Shakespeare bookstore. They're these like little cool intricate art projects. And I look over at this, at one of the little dioramas of a bookstore and you can just make out the little book in the front is Atomic Habits.

42:50And I thought, oh man, how cool is that? So I sent it to James, another bookstore photo So I was in First Light the other day and I noticed they had two different copies of Atomic Habits. And it's like one said 5 million copies sold and the other said 20 million copies sold. I just I had to send a picture of that to James, too. You're just I don't know. I've worked hard over the years to be excited for my friends when they succeed. And James has more than succeeded. He has succeeded to an astonishing degree. I mean, just just to sell a million copies of something is insane. to sell 5 million copies of something that's insane, to have two editions that span 15 million copies sold.

43:32It was just totally insane. You know, one of the things that I talked about with James is like a word for the year. And I'm still working on mine. I'll have it by the time we do the New Year, New Year Challenge. But to my wife and I were just talking about earlier today, this idea of like unmasking, you know, masking is a way to describe like the face you put on the performative elements of being a person in the world. And some of it is good. Some of it's socially conducive to a functioning, you know, planet. And then other parts, you know, you're pretending to be something you're not, you're performing for someone else.

44:14You are humoring someone else. You're not speaking your true feelings. You're doing too much for other people's benefits at the cost of your integrity, the cost of your own well-being, the cost of your authenticity, I guess. And one of the things we're talking about is like, I don't know if that's strong enough to be the word of the year, but that's something we're going to work on this year, a practice we want to practice more throughout the course of the year. And then the other one we were talking about, like recycling is the wrong word. Reusing is the wrong word. Conserving is the wrong word.

44:51But I had this suitcase that I've had for, I don't know, six or seven years. It was a very nice, very expensive suitcase. And the handle ripped off. And my first instinct was like, oh, I'll just buy another one. What's the newest? What's the best? What's the one that Wirecutter recommends? I'll just get something better. Because I don't love this suitcase. I mean, it has some things I like, some things that work well. And then it also tips over pretty easily. And so I was like, like, oh, this is my chance. And then I was like, you know what? This was expensive. So let's see if there's a warranty.

45:18And the warranty, you know, ended up covering the repair if I had to pay to send it in. And so, you know, I mean, I travel a lot for business. It's a business expense. I could easily afford, you know, a top of the line suitcase. But I was like, I'll just get this repaired. I'm my Red Wing boots, which I just sent in to get new soles on. You know, how can you make the stuff that we have last? How can we get rid of the stuff we don't need? not get stuff we don't need, and then continue to use and reuse stuff that we do need. So again, neither of those are exactly what I want. I'm hoping that in the next month or so here, like the right word will just come to me.

45:58But I'm thinking about it. I'm riffing on it. And, you know, it just strikes me, James is someone I've known now for a long time. And we have shared a lot together. James, Mark Manson, Shane Parrish, Tim Urban, Nir Eyal, Josh Kaufman, who am I forgetting? Steve Kam. Is that everyone? I'm forgetting, I'm sorry. We had this mastermind group. So one of the ways that you build great habits is by surrounding yourself with people who have the habits that you wanna have, right? Who are a little bit further on than you or who have different way of doing that. Well, the group of us were all in this mastermind, this group we put together.

46:39I've mentioned Mastermind Talks is a different one. This is something James threw together. It was crazy to watch James set up what became this massive book. Like, I think people think, you know, success just happens. No, it doesn't. A lot of times it was meticulously planned and charted. And to watch James do that for like three-ish years, I think, we all got together in Sedona. James set it up. He rented this house. We were all there. And then we just talked. We just gave each other ideas, talked about things we were struggling with. We gave each other unsolicited feedback and solicited feedback.

47:15I became a better writer, a better podcaster, a better creator, a more balanced human being because a couple of the other guys, they had kids that were older than mine. I just learned a lot from this. I got a bunch of better habits from that. So if I could give you one sort of atomic habit, right? Because that's what he's saying when he says atomic habits. An atomic habit is like an atom is the smallest unit there is, right? Everything is made up of atoms. So when you're talking about atomic habits, part of what he's saying, part of the play on that title is like these sort of foundational building block habits.

47:53One of them for me is like be part of a scene, be part of a group, find your people. I have a chapter about this in the book that I'm writing now. Find the people, the scene you need to be a part of that makes you better, that draws the best from yourself. It was wonderful to watch James do that. And some of those people have become dear friends. I've seen their books go on to be successful. We text each other all the time. Anyways, all of this is to say I'm just excited for a new year. I'm not excited for everything the new year is going to bring. I have some dread about that, some doubts about that, some anxiety about that.

48:28But I'm excited for the parts of 2025 that I control, which is who I am inside those events, who I'm going to be. And so I'm really excited for New Year, New You. I see it as a chance for you to see this thing that me and the Daily Stoic team have been working on now for quite some time. It's, you know, we start working on this thing like in August. We start getting serious about it because we do a new one all year. It's not the same course every year. We come up with sort of very specific challenges. So I'm excited for you to see that. And I'm excited to do the challenges myself, because that is the point.

49:07It's supposed to be a challenge. It's supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be uncomfortable. They're supposed to develop new patterns, new pathways, new ways of doing things. And the first time you try stuff, it's hard. It's awkward. It's weird. It doesn't feel right. So I think the Daily Soap New Year New Year Challenge is going to be awesome. It's influenced by James's work. It's influenced by the Stoics. Obviously, it's influenced by the experience we have of doing this thing over the years. So you can head over to dailystoic.com slash challenge to join us and thousands of other Stoics all over the world.

49:38It's going to start on January 1st. Don't procrastinate. Let's get after it. I'll see you in there.

49:51Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode.

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