View the Show Notes Page for This Episode Become a Member to Receive Exclusive Content Sign Up to Receive Peter’s Weekly Newsletter James Clear is the author of the New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits. His extensive research into human behavior has helped him identify key components of habit formation and develop the “Four Laws of Behavioral Change.” In this episode, James provides insights into how both good and bad habits are formed, including the influence of genetics, environment, social circles, and more. He points to changes one can make to cultivate more perseverance and discipline and describes the profound impact habits can have when tying them into one’s self-identity. Finally, James breaks down his “Four Laws of Behavioral Change” and how to use them to create new habits, undo bad habits, and make meaningful changes in one’s life. We discuss: Why James became deeply interested in habits [2:00]; Viewing habits through an evolutionary lens [6:15]; The power of immediate feedback for behavior change, and why we tend to repeat bad habits [9:30]; The role of genetics and innate predispositions in determining one’s work ethic and success in a given discipline [14:45]; How finding one’s passion can cultivate perseverance and discipline [23:30]; Advantages of creating systems and not just setting goals [29:30]; The power of habits combined with self-identity to induce change [36:45]; How a big environmental change or life event can bring on radical behavioral change [50:45]; The influence of one’s social environment on their habits [54:30]; How and why habits are formed [1:00:45]; How to make or break a habit with the “Four Laws of Behavior Change” [1:09:45]; Practical tips for successful behavioral change—the best strategies when starting out [1:16:30]; Self-forgiveness and getting back on track immediately after slipping up [1:30:45]; Law #1: Make it obvious—Strategies for identifying and creating cues to make and break habits [1:40:00]; Law #2: Make it attractive—examples of ways to make a new behavior more attractive [1:48:00]; Law #3: Make it easy—the 2-minute rule [1:59:00]; Law #4: Make it satisfying—rewards and reinforcement [2:03:45]; Advice for helping others to make behavioral changes [2:06:15]; and More. Connect With Peter on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube
Chapter 1: Why is understanding habits important?
And I tried a bunch of different things. There's a little device called an outlet timer. You can buy it for like 10 bucks on Amazon. You plug it into an outlet and you can set the time for when it kills the power from that outlet. And so like if you plug your internet into it, then like the internet shuts off at 10 p.m. or whatever you set it for.
So I tried different things like that, but then you could just pick your phone up and get around it. But the thing that finally made it stick was getting a dog because the dog is going to get up at 7 a.m. Whenever I go to sleep, it doesn't matter. And I need to go take it for a walk. And you can only do that for a few days before you're like, all right, I'm not going to play this game anymore.
I'm going to bed at 10. It's because it was fairly hard to reverse that got it to stick. And I think, you know, in the case of having a kid, they're going to be there every day now. Maybe you could rationalize it a bunch of times before that, but that's not going to change. They're going to be around.
And weirdly, because presumably this person's wife was pregnant, so they obviously saw that throughout the whole pregnancy, but that didn't get them to change. But once the child is there, man, it's really immediate. You're taking a puff and you have those little eyes looking back at you. The feedback loop is even tighter than before. So I would imagine both of those things probably play a role.
But more generally speaking, those kind of irreversible or hard to reverse lifestyle changes also tend to be big drivers of quick behavior change.
I can only think of one dramatic habit I changed that has stuck. And it is the silliest thing, but I always bit my nails growing up, bite them nonstop. Invariably what happens is you'd get a little infection because you bite too close. And it was like, my mom was always like, God, that is such a disgusting habit. Like it just looked horrible.
The day I decided to change it was the day I got my first interview for med school. You apply to medical school and then all of a sudden the envelopes start coming in and you've got these interviews. Just as I got that first envelope and I realized, oh, I'm actually going to go and be interviewing, at least for me, I didn't interview to go to college.
This was the first time I had to do an interview. And I don't know, just something came over me. I was like, wait a second, dude, you can't be the guy that's showing up to an interview with these horrible looking nails. You have to cut this out. You are going to get a nail clipper and you are going to start clipping your nails like a civilized human being. And that was, I don't know, 25 years ago.
And today, like when my nails get long, I'm a guy who likes short nails. So I'm always sort of trimming them. I can't imagine that I once bit them. It just seems so strange to me. It's a silly example.
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Chapter 4: What role does genetics play in forming habits?
You'd be amazed at how much that habit and that addiction could cause a person to do something that at the surface doesn't seem that logical. Use dirty needles and needles would break in their abscesses. And you'd be down there and you'd be sort of draining a huge baseball size pus filled abscess that's got broken needles in it. And this person is very sick.
I mean, this is a person who's now risking their life. due to this. And they would be back in a month with the same thing in a month and a month later, the same thing over and over again. And tragically, eventually a lot of these people would die.
But I remember at some point saying to these folks, this was the best advice I could offer, which was not very helpful, was, I don't think you can go back to the same place you live. I think you need new friends. Now, that's not a very helpful thing to offer somebody who probably doesn't have many choices.
But the point was like, how could you expect this person to go back to the same place that they were living in the same environment? With all of the same people doing the same things and say, well, you just got to resist it. It doesn't make sense. Presumably someone who decides they want to stop drinking alcohol really ought not go into a bar that much anymore.
Environment is like a form of gravity pulls on you and you can resist it for a little bit, but maybe a day or week or a month. But at some point it just starts to drain on you, sucks you back in.
And to your point about going back to the environment that prompted the behavior in the first place, I mean, this is one of the stories I share in Atomic Habits, but it was the surprise that we saw from the Vietnam War, which is so many soldiers were getting addicted to heroin and drugs when they were over there.
And then they came back and we were like, what are we going to do with all these addicted soldiers? And it turns out that 90% of them or more ended up being fine because they didn't go back to the place where they got addicted. They went home to their friends and family and they didn't have all the same signals that were prompting them to pick up the habit.
And so they were able to drop it much more easily than we thought they would. And compare that to the typical drug addict who does the reverse. They go into rehab and that's where they leave all of their cues and influences behind. And then once they get clean and they detox, we send them back to the same place where they got addicted before. That is much, much harder uphill battle.
So environment, I think it's kind of like the invisible hand that drives our behavior. As you said, it's kind of like water, you know, fish and water. We don't realize it, but we all have these things that we say are important to us. Oh, I would like to lose weight or I'd like to build a business or I want to finish a book. But then you look around the spaces where we live and work.
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Chapter 7: How do environmental changes influence habits?
In your book, you write about this horrible accident you had when you were playing baseball. I believe that was high school or was it in college?
Yep. Sophomore year of high school.
During that period of your life, were you someone that others and your peers would have looked at you and said, oh God, that James, that guy is so disciplined. I mean, he just has what it takes to always get the job done and he never indulges in the wrong things and always does the right things. Like, were you one of those guys that was just a beacon of quote unquote discipliner?
Were you a normal guy or were you someone who had a hard time doing what was right?
Well, I wasn't someone who had a hard time, but it depends on the context. Keep it simple, like homework, sports, those things. So with school, definitely. I always liked school. I was like the nerdy kid on the sports teams I was on. But in the science lab or something, I was like the jock, which is kind of funny how you change based on the room that you're in.
And so I always felt like I kind of played that middle ground between those two. I think it helped me learn how to get along with both groups and, you know, was helpful socially and all that. But earlier in my life, I think I thrived more in school than I did in sports. I barely got to play in high school.
That's one of the punchlines of that early story in the book is I ended up playing a total of 11 innings in high school. Now, I kind of blossomed once I got to college and ended up being an academic All-American by the time I graduated, but that came much later. So it really sort of depended on the context.
But generally speaking, I would say, yeah, people probably thought that I was disciplined, but I do think it depended on where we were. If it was just looking at school, then I think people would say that. If you're looking somewhere else, then maybe not.
Was there an area that you struggled with from a behavior standpoint?
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