The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Changing your Identity to Change your Habits With James Clear

James Clear’s journey resulted in the intersection of entrepreneurship, health, and creativity. The byproduct of this intersection was an deep study on how habits impact our lives. In this interview we discuss the process of creating identity based habits in order to change our lives.

How habits impact entrepreneurship, health, and creativity
Lessons from the baseball field that James has applied to his life
Why you can design your own options for things in life
Post traumatic growth vs post traumatic stress
Learning to treat your failures as data points
Why mistakes and failures are required for mastery
The importance of changing habits gradually
How volume, repetition and routine help us deal with failure
Why basics and foundational pieces of mastery truly matter
Designing your environment to reduce activation energy
The myth that you can’t miss a day with a habit

James Clear writes at JamesClear.com, where he shares strategies based on proven research and real-world experiences that make it easier to stick to good habits and live a healthy life

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Duration:: 1h 10m
Broadcast on:: 05 May 2014
Audio Format:: other

As you probably noticed this month, we're bringing you our "Life of Purpose" series and revisiting some of our most transformative episodes, tune in to explore expert insights and practical strategies on help, performance, and community well-being, all aimed at helping you achieve personal and professional fulfillment. If you sign up for the newsletter, you'll not only get recaps of the key ideas in each interview, but at the end of the series, you'll receive our free "Life of Purpose" ebook. What you have to do is go to unmistakablecreative.com/lifepurpose. As you encounter more failures and realize that you survived and that you can continue to move on and that it doesn't prevent you from being a success and you're not dead, whether that's in business or your art or your life in general, the easier it becomes. Not that it's easy to go through the failures, but I think it's easier to work past them and continue to move forward rather than letting them derail you for months on end. It's always going to suck to go through something that you care about and fail on it. Like it's never easy in the moment, but the more that you overcome it, the easier it becomes to continue to move past it over and over and over again. I'm Srini Rao and this is the unmistakable creative podcast where you get a window into the stories and insights of the most innovative and creative minds, started movements, built driving businesses, written best-selling books, and created insanely interesting art. For more, check out our 500-episode archive at unmistakablecreative.com. Expand the way you work and think with Claude by anthropic. Whether brainstorming solo or working with the team, Claude is AI built for you. It's perfect for analyzing images and graphs, generating code, processing multiple languages, and solving complex problems. Plus, Claude is incredibly secure, trustworthy, and reliable, so you can focus on what matters. Curious? Visit claud.ai and see how Claude can elevate your work. Explaining football to the friend who's just there for the nachos? Hard. Tailgating from home like a pro with snacks and drinks everyone will love? Any easy win. And with Instacart helping deliver the snack time MVPs to your door, you're ready for the game in as fast as 30 minutes. So you never miss a play or lose your seat on the couch or have to go head-to-head for the last chicken wing. Shop game day faves on Instacart and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three gross re-orders, offer valid for a limited time, other fees in terms of play. Let's take a look at the price. James, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks for taking the time to join us. For sure. Thanks for having me, man. It's great to be here. Yeah. Well, I should say welcome back because you and I have known each other for quite some time. But, you know, in the past, you know, when we were vlogcast, FM, we took a very sort of different approach to what you've been working on. But what really got me interested in everything you're doing is all the work that you've been doing on medium. But before we get into that, tell us a bit about your background, your story, and how that has led you to where you're at. Sure. So the last couple of times we talked, sort of early in my entrepreneurial journey, and I guess there's sort of two or three different pieces of this that all come together. So the thing that I write about now, what I spend most of my time doing is writing about behavioral psychology and habit formation and all these ways that we can be more consistent with the work that we do and the health that we have in our last, you know, just the things that we spend our days working on. And I write about that every Monday and Thursday at JamesCler.com. And I often say that I'm an entrepreneur, a weightlifter, and a travel photographer. So it's sort of the examples I give or the things that I spend my time doing and that I write about falling to one of those three categories, entrepreneurship and business, health, weightlifting, and creativity and art when I'm creating photography. So those are sort of the three practical examples that I draw upon a lot, and they're the areas of my personal story that I come back to and try to use to deliver some practical experience and ideas. But the central threat that ties it all together is this idea of habit formation and consistency and tiny gains and small wins and using that to continually improve. So I guess that's sort of the short overview. So okay, James, what I'm really curious about is kind of the journey that has led to the conclusion of, you know, of this idea of, you know, focusing on habit formation. Yeah. So I guess the first place that started, I've been an athlete for a long time. You know, growing up, my dad played my only baseball for the same most cardinal. So I always want to be like him. And so I played a lot of different sports growing up, but I ended up playing baseball in college, and then I worked this medical practice and orthopedic medical practice for a little while. I was a biome mechanics major. So the point I'm getting to here is that I've had a lot of different touch points with health and fitness and wellness and science. And so those have always been that interplay between health and science and athletics and fitness has been important for me. And then at the same time, once I finished graduate school, I was working in the center for entrepreneurship and I was analyzing venture capital investment in the region. And what I got done, I was like, hey, I'd really like to start my own business as well. And this is when, when I first got started about three or four years ago, and as I started rolling out my business and sending out different emails or changing the way that like a word words were organized on my website, all these different things I was doing for my business. I noticed that the way that I worded things changed the type of actions that people would take. And that might sound simple, like, oh, you change a headline, more people will read an article or won't, or more people will buy a product or they won't. But I was really interested in this, like, how do the messages that we come across impact the actions that we take on a day that exists, whether that's the things that are on your kitchen counter at home, how does that impact what you eat, things that are on your desk at work, how does that impact your creativity or your productivity? So I got interested in this idea of how the world around us designs our behaviors and actions. And that happened with entrepreneurship, but because I had this background with health and fitness and wellness and medicine, I naturally started applying all those behavior change concepts to that area because that was, like, you know, part of just part of my life. So that was when I started thinking about this link between behavior and health and behavior change and habits. And that was, I don't know, probably about two years ago that I really started diving in and reading all the research and looking at different studies and talking to professors and reading books on it and everything. And I've been writing on James Sure. Yeah, well, I think we've talked about this before, but there's that famous Steve Jobs quote about, like, you know, you can connect the dots looking backwards, but looking forward it, you know, you never like see it that way. And I think that my life has followed that path or I could say the same thing. You know, like looking back, there were a lot of entrepreneurial things that I did either growing up or in college that, but at the time, if you ask me, I never would have said, oh, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. There were also a lot of like relatively adventurous things that I did, but looking at the time, if you would ask me, I wouldn't have said, oh, I'm going to go be a trout, a star and a trout around the world. But those small decisions all added up and it's like, oh, looking back now, yes, you know, it makes sense to look back and see where I'm at today and what it plumes that. So I think, I think, you know, that story, I think is similar for most people, like there's something relatively unique about that other than the fact that it's just been my experience. And I think that the lesson is like many small decisions can end up making a really big change for you. And so for me, each time that I chose to do something adventurous or each time that I chose to develop my own ideas, that led to something much bigger down the line. So like as some examples of entrepreneurial things, when I was in college, I designed my own major. I just looked at the book. I saw the 50 some majors that we had available and I was like, well, none of those fit me that well. And so I just drew my own up and submitted it to the Academic Affairs Council and they approved it. But at the time, like, I didn't think all that's entrepreneurial, but that's a relatively entrepreneurial thing to do to look at the options and be like, none of these work for me. I'm going to build my own. And so I think that there were many small decisions like that that ended up guiding me in the direction I'm in now. One of the things that, you know, we were talking about, because, you know, for those you guys listening, James and I have had to do this recording a second time. Last time we were speaking, you had brought up an injury that you had had with baseball and I wanted to go back to that. And you said that that injury was a pretty significant experience in your life. And the question that came for me from that was the idea of two types of people. You know, we had Sean Acor here and he said, you know, there are two types of people in the world. Those who experience post-traumatic stress, but an exceptional group of people, many of who seem to have made their appearances on this show, who experience post-traumatic growth. And I'd love for you to, you know, tell us your thoughts on any, what is it you think that differentiates those types of people, or at least, you know, what's been your experience with that? Yeah. So, well, my first, I guess, first of all, so my injury with baseball, I got hit in the face of the baseball bat, my sophomore year of high school and a very serious injury broke with the eye sockets and fractured a bunch of phones in my, in my fall, and anyway, I was, couldn't breathe on my own for the day. I had multiple seizures over the next 24 hours for the next like eight to nine months. It was a long recovery process, but I ended up making my way back after that and like five years later, so I became an academic All-American my senior year at playing baseball in college. And so it was a, it was a long road back and there was this, you know, this whole recovery and challenge associated with it, but I didn't learn a lot about myself through that experience. Like what I was willing to sacrifice for, what was important to me, just like how, how do you respond to challenge and, you know, whether you bring like positivity to that or whether you like let it sort of eat you up and knock you down. And so I don't know, you know, I love, I love Acres work. I like his, this idea of post traumatic growth and using challenge and, and resistance and barriers to be like a springboard for the next thing for you, rather than something that, that pushes you down permanently. I think one thing that comes to mind, I have this conversation with a friend of mine named back and she, she, so her name's back to him. She worked to the science museum, but she's not a scientist and she was telling me about the things that she learned at the science museum. And she said one thing that surprised her was the way that scientists treat failure. And that is that, you know, when a scientist designs an experiment, there are, there are all sorts of outcomes that could occur, right? There are things that they expect or like positive outcomes based on their hypothesis, whatever, then their negative outcomes or failures or things they don't expect. But just because they get a negative outcome doesn't mean that like they as an individual or failure, a scientist doesn't look at failure like that. A scientist treats failure just as another data point. And so every piece of data that they get, whether it's good or bad, is something that allows them to be guided in the right direction of the future. And I like that idea of thinking of failure as a data point, thinking of failure like a scientist. And I think that's one way that you can use this, that you can embrace this idea of like post-traumatic growth, right? You have some failure, you have some challenge, but it's just another data point for you. How can we use that to guide you towards some type of growth in the future? I love the idea of failure as a data point because I think that there's, I think it completely strips it of sort of the negative connotation around it and all our sort of emotional attachment to it. I mean, I think that what happens often with failure is that it really starts to become part of our identity. We get it confused. We think, "Oh, this happened to me and this is who I am," which is, which unfortunately is one of those things that I see over and over and it's so detrimental to your ability to accomplish anything. Oh, I think that's so true. We like, so often we use our failures as an indication of like who we are as a person or how much self-worth we have, which is kind of absurd if you apply it to other contexts, right? Like, if you were to go to a restaurant, for example, and sit down and order a meal and it was like, you didn't like it or it was just poorly cooked or it was a failure of a meal, so to speak, you wouldn't be like, "Oh, I'm bad at eating now," like projection on yourself, right? It's like some assessment of your self-worth or your behavior, but we do that in all sorts of other contexts, right? And so I think that this idea, this is another quote, another way of thinking of it that I like to keep in mind. The Danish physicist Niels Bohr, he has this famous quote that an expert is someone who has made every mistake possible in a very narrow field. And if you think about it that way, it's like, "Oh, mistakes or failures are required for mastery. You have to fail because only the person who understands all the barriers and the challenges and the setbacks can be an expert on the topic because they've dealt with everything that they could deal with now." And so this idea of like making every mistake possible in your narrow field, I kind of like that too because it shows how essential failure is for success, not that there's something on the opposite ends of the spectrum. So one other thing, James, that I'm very curious about, this is something that I run into quite a bit, is that it's really easy to listen to what you just said and understand it intellectually and say, "Okay, well, that makes complete sense." But altering your behavior to align with that is a whole different ballgame because the thing is that we can hear you say that, but it's still entirely possible that somebody's going to feel defined by the failures of their life. So I'm very curious how we separate ourselves from it. I mean, what your thoughts are around that? Yeah. Well, I think there's probably an obvious complex issue that there could be many pieces of, but there are two things that I think for me that I come back to a lot. So one is that it will get easier as you do it more. So as you encounter more failures and realize that you survive and that you can continue to move on and that it doesn't prevent you from being a success and you're not dead, whether that's in business or your art or your life in general, the easier it becomes. Not that it's easy to go through the failures, but I think it's easier to work past them and continue to move forward rather than letting them like derail you for months on end. It's always going to suck to go through something that you care about and fail on it. Like it's never easy in the moment, but the more that you overcome it, the easier it becomes to continue to move past it over and over and over again. The second thing is that for me at least one of the most crucial things whenever I fail is to have some type of schedule that gets me back on track as quickly as possible. One of the things I write about a lot is that top performers in any industry are not different from you and I in that they never make mistakes or that they have it all figured out. They fail all the time too. They just get back on track more quickly than somebody else and it's this idea of not embracing an all or nothing mentality with whatever the project is that you're working on. You see this a lot for some reason with diets and nutrition in particular, people will start with some habit or goal with nutrition and then if they get off their diet or they don't follow it for a little while, they have this all or nothing mentality where it's like, well, I screwed it up so I completely blew it and then they either go off and binge eat for a week or they just completely give up for a month or two and then it takes a few months or a few weeks before they get motivated again, they're like, okay, I've got to get back on track and try this again. But if you avoid that all or nothing mentality and realize that mistakes will be part of it and almost plan for failure, expect it to happen at some point, not that you're ever rooting for it but you understand it's going to be part of the process, then you can develop a schedule that helps you get back on track more quickly and I'll give you some examples that I've used in my own life. So I mentioned earlier, I write every Monday and Thursday, I publish a new article. Well, a few weeks ago, I published an article that I wanted it to be good. I thought it was going to be okay but then the story I used just did not, I didn't mess up that well, I published it and some of the feedback I got was like, well, this isn't that great. People were like, I don't like the story used here. So it just didn't, it didn't perform well, it was a failure and some sort, it was a mistake of some sort but I published that on Thursday but guess what, I already have my schedule to get me back on track on Monday. If I wanted, if I didn't have any schedule and I published that, I could just spend weeks on it and thinking about how I got negative feedback on it, how it wasn't up to my standard and then it would take me a while to get motivated to write something again. But instead, I'm trying to take the emotion out of it, it's not about how any one individual article does, it's more about sticking to the process of always publishing something on Monday and Thursday. And if you have a process for always doing the work and you go through a volume of work, then eventually the big wins are going to be there. And for me, it's the same way, I love using weightlifting as an example because it works so well for this, I think, you know, I lift and go to the gym and train every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and I cannot predict which days I'm going to set a PR in the gym. But I know that if I show up every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, there's going to be a day in there where I put up a decent number, but it's only by committing to a volume of work and having a routine of a schedule that I ever get to that point in the first place. So I think one of the best ways to overcome this idea of failure or setback or to change your behavior, as you say, is to develop some type of schedule for you that works and it's got to be one that works for you. For me, it took a year and a half before I got to my writing schedule, I tried all sorts of things like writing once a month, I tried writing every, you know, five days a week, and eventually I've settled on this pattern of Monday and Thursday, that's what works well for me. So I think having that routine is one way to overcome this idea of behavior change in the face of failure. So a lot of stuff here that I really want to talk about in more depth, I really appreciate that you brought up the fact that it gets easier to do as you do it more. And you know, Greg Hartl and I have talked about this and you guys listening have heard us has mentioned this sometimes is that you constantly keep leveling up, right? You think, okay, well, I took this risk and I think for me, the leap was gargantuan from saying, hey, we're selling a $3 book now come to our conference with 60 people. That was that was that took a big sort of mental shift. But I think what's interesting is exactly what you have described happened to where suddenly you start to believe you're capable of things that you weren't capable of before because you've done something so far outside of what's comfortable. And you know, the thing is, I appreciate the also brought up that it doesn't have to be a drastic thing because it's so much of my change also has happened very, very gradually. And this idea of volume, routine and schedule, you know, it's funny because I have a post on medium titled how writing a thousand words a day changed my life. I mean, some of you listening have probably ended up here because of that. But I think that that volume routine and schedule has made such a huge difference because then you're not set. It's like you said, you're not so attached to the outcome of this any one thing. It's like, I'm not going to be permanently labeled by this shitty piece of writing that I did. Yeah. I totally agree. There's, uh, there's a great story about this, um, this art teacher. And he took his classroom and divided it into two groups and everybody on the right side of the class. He said, you're going to be graded at the end of the semester based on the quantity of work that you do. So this is a ceramics class. It's going to be the amount of pots that you create during the semester. I'm just going to, you know, pick up a bag and weigh them. And if you created 50 pounds, again, a 40 pounds, get a B and so on. And then on the left side of the class, he looked over and said, okay, you're going to be graded purely on the quality of your work. You don't have to create anything more than just one ceramic piece, but it has to be the most perfect piece you could create. And at the end of the class, the end of the semester came to grade and when he was grading all the pots, it turned out that all the best ones came from the group that focused on repetition, the quantity group, who was creating pots every single day. And the reason is because they were sitting down and working on their skills and learning from their mistakes and understanding like how you actually craft a, you know, a perfect ceramic piece rather than sitting around like coming up with ideas and theorizing all what perfection would look like or trying to plan out the process, they were actually honing their skills. And I think that that's the same idea of volume and repetition, right? It's like there will be plenty of failures in there, but the only way to get past the failures is to go through the volume of work to begin with. So most of the time we try to prevent failure by being like the quantity group, by sitting around and theorizing on how we'll succeed or coming up with the perfect business idea or the best business plan or writing down our best ideas and goals for XYZ initiative. But it's only by actually going through the volume of work that you develop skills to get past all those challenges and actually produce something excellent. So one other question around that. So this is around sort of balancing things, right? Because you get to a certain point where I think that there are certain decisions you have to make, I think as a business owner or as anybody where the consequences of your actions have higher costs when you get to a certain point, you know, for example, you're doing something like an event, make their mistakes that will cost you a lot more than screwing up a blog post, for example. And how you sort of balance that and still maintain that when you get to that level. I think to me, that's also the kiss of death to innovation, right? In a lot of companies, they become so comfortable with the process that's gotten them to where they're at, that they're afraid to take new risks and I'm really curious how you maintain the balance between those two things. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's hard. I often write that, you know, I'm not an expert in any sort of somebody who's like learning and in the arena battling on this stuff too. And I think that this is one of those issues that I saw a lot to learn about that we all do. That it's something that you're constantly assessing. One interesting thing you noted about companies who maybe get complacent with where they're at and then they, you know, they lack the innovation. Maybe they got them there in the first place. Here's this idea and this is true for individuals as well. In the beginning, you stretch yourself with, by pushing to learn these new skills, right? Like if you're trying to learn how to play the piano, everything is a challenge in the beginning, but then once you become competent at it and can play a few songs or can reach the level of competency that you were hoping to get to in the first place, we continue to practice and companies are the same day. You show up at work and you practice your, you know, whatever your skills are that your company does, making better decisions or reaching out to potential partners, making sales calls or whatever to see or practicing these things over and over. And at some point, we reach a level of competency that for some reason we become comfortable with. It's like, oh, we're good enough of this now. And so we stop stretching ourselves that in the way, in the beginning that we did. So like, you know, once you learn a couple of piano songs, maybe you just keep playing those and you're practicing the same things over and over again, but in the beginning, when you're first learning those, you're really being stretched. So I find that as I study more of the, these top performers, whether they're athletes or artists or entrepreneurs, they, the people who really excel, they have this ability to continue to stretch themselves and not fall into some type of complacency with their practice, even after working for a very long time. I wrote an article recently about Jerry Rice, who's a famous wide receiver in the National Football League of San Francisco 49ers. And even after he was, he went through, you know, high school and was a great player. He ended up being an all-American in college. He gets drafted in the first round of the NFL draft. And even after all this, like he has a very high level of competency, the, the type of off-season work that he did to hone the precision of the routes that he ran and to increase his endurance and strength levels, it was, it was incredible, like how he continued to stretch himself, even after achieving some high level competency. So I feel like that's something that we can all think about, like, how am I being vigilant on the practice that I'm doing today? What am I doing? Am I just doing it the same way that I have been doing it for a little while? Am I at a stage where I'm comfortable or am I still trying to stretch myself to some degree? Another example, there's a, there's a study that came out of Case Western of famous composers. And the, this researcher looked at the 500 most famous pieces of music over like this 400-year period or so. And what he found was that for every single composer, they didn't produce a single one of these like masterworks before year 10 of their career. There were only three exceptions and those came in years eight and nine. So basically, he called this the 10 years of silence. And so, so the idea is you have to practice for 10 years, you have to stretch yourself for 10 years before you can get to something that's truly excellent. And I like keeping that in mind, that's one thing that I learned from baseball. You know, I, I played baseball for 17 years, but it wasn't until I, wasn't until I spent like 15 years of practice that I actually became like relatively decent. And so a lot of times I like to keep that in mind with my business and entrepreneurial work as well. It's like, am I as good as I want to be right now? Well, if not, have I spent 15 years working on it? And so I kind of like that idea of continually stretching yourself through a very long period of time. I know it's interesting because it makes me think of the fact that we had you here two years ago and part of bringing you back is to see if we can have a very different conversation than the one we had before. And you know, for those of you guys who are up for a painful experience, but a lesson demonstrated is to listen to the interview I did with James, which is unedited and has some serious weird issues with sound, like a coaster we can guide knocking on my door to ask if you can fix the faucet and compare it to what you're hearing now or anything that you've heard in the last six months and you'll hear a pretty dramatic difference between the two types of interviews, the types of questions, the flow, all of it. And the thing is that, you know, I constantly, part of the reason I try to look for guests that you may not find on another podcast or that are so out there and wacky is, okay, can I take this bizarre story and turn it into something interesting, or can I challenge myself? You know, in another example, you know, James that I'll share with you is we found a guy who wrote a comedic translation of the Bible, I'm like, this is risky. It could piss some people off, but let's see what happens here. And I think that it's that because it's like you said, the minute you get sort of comfortable and content with where you're at and the quality of what you do, you just, you stop pushing it. You know, I mean, I saw this documentary on Michael Jackson and said that he wanted to go down in history as the greatest performer of all time. And I think it's pretty unanimously agreed that he accomplished that. But the thing is that he was never satisfied. He was never so content with the quality of his work. You know, it's like, hey, thrill or sold a million albums. Well, let's go out, do it. You know, and that's what we're always every time I listen, I go back and I listen to an interview and I think, okay, how could this be better? And how do we just outdo what we've done so that we keep raising the bar? You know, the other great thing about that is that it keeps you focused on the work that matters rather than allowing you to get bored with it and then looking to some other unrelated or not as important place to try to make something successful. And what I mean is that like most people realize, like, let's just take the classic blogger online or a writer of any type. Most people realize that it's the article that makes the difference, right? It's like the quality of the work of that actual piece. But people end up getting bored writing articles every week. And so rather than stretching themselves and trying to produce something that's greater in that very simple context, like, how do I write a better article, they end up looking to other places for solutions like, oh, maybe I need a better social media strategy or maybe I need, you know, whatever else, like something else that's not nearly as important. And I think you can see the same thing in all sorts of areas. I was talking to a fitness coach the other day. And he said that the most dangerous thing to any client is a bored coach. And what he means is that if the coach gets bored with the basics, then they stop teaching the basics, the foundational stuff that really matters and they have you do weird exercises that don't make that much of a difference or that, you know, don't provide the biggest benefit. But it's because they're bored with the basics and they're not focusing on how I can improve these foundational things that really matter that causes them to make decisions that aren't as important. And so I think this idea of always thinking about how you can stretch yourself on these fundamental areas of your business or your work or your creation so that you can just do better work on the things that matter. It also helps you and helps prevent you from getting distracted on the things that don't matter as much. 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You know, what's interesting about this is I was just writing about something very similar this morning about the creative process and how I think you have to create things that you want to consume. I think it's really interesting that you're out of a fitness coach needing to be excited because I think about it, you know, when I get to the end of a conversation or an interview or any piece of creative work that I've done and if I'm thinking to myself, "This doesn't move me in any way," or I don't want to, I wouldn't want to consume this, and I think if you're not excited about your own work, it's going to come through no matter what. And that's something that once you really get that, then you feel there's no compromising. You set a standard, you draw a line in the sand and you just do anything you can to stick to it, which means, I think I haven't told you this James before, but I've stopped interviews in the middle of them and told the person I won't publish the interview because I'm willing to do that because I'm so dead set on making sure that at the end of it, I get something that I like. Well, and I like that too, because it becomes about the quality of the work and not about the outcome, and that I think is like a really important place to get to regardless of what you work on. Like, the thing that stands to test the time is the work you've done and how valuable it is and how helpful it is to others. Not whether you did like a million dollar product launch with it or, I don't know, like all the other outcomes that you could associate with it, whether it's money or we loss or, I don't know, all sorts of other things, but it's the quality of the work that stands to test time. So that's the thing that you should focus on the most. Well, James, let's do this. As you've probably heard me say a thousand times, let's shift gears. One of the things you talked about is how the world that we've designed around us shapes our actions. And I really want to start getting into the core of what really intrigued me about the work that you've been up to. And I remember you brought up a phrase called identity based habit creation last time we were here. So how do we use the world around us and shape the world around us to really create habits and have actions that move us towards what we want to have happen in our lives? Sure. Yeah. It's a great question. It's a big question. I think there are all sorts of ways that we try to change our behavior. Stanford professor BJ F. August fond of saying that there's only one way to radically change your behavior and that's to radically change your environment. And the more that I research on environment design and choice architecture and the way that the world around us shapes our actions, the more I start to agree with that. Just to give a rough example, if you take a hundred people and place them on a beach, most of them will feel relaxed and relatively stress free. If you take those same hundred people and place them in a war zone, most of them will feel anxious and stressed and uptight and fearful. And that's completely independent of who they are as people, what they believe about themselves, their life experiences, it's simply a response to their environment. And that's an extreme example, but it works on small scale stuff as well. The things that you encounter each day, the environment you live and work in, it shapes your behaviors. And sometimes that's the external environment like the things on your kitchen counter and whether or not you'll eat them or here's an interesting example. If you package things in tin foil, then you don't see them as well, so you can package your leftovers like that, you're less likely to eat them, and then if you package them in like Saran wrap or plastic wrap. And so this idea of like, there's all these little things that can shape your behavior and your environment. So we can talk more about environment change and environment sign in a minute. But the idea behind identity-based habits, I think, is crucial as well. And you can use environment design to help drive this, and there are other things that you can do as well. So I'll explain the concept first and then give some examples. I first came up with this idea after talking with a physician, but the basic idea behind identity-based habits is most people focus on what I would call the outer layers of behavior change, things like your performance or your appearance or the outcomes that you have. If you ask most people to set a good goal, like take weight loss, for example, since that's a popular one, they might say, "Oh, I want to lose 20 pounds in the next 4 months." And that's fine to have like a specific goal, but the problem is it's all focused on this outcome. So if you get to the end of 4 months and you've only lost 12 pounds, for example, you feel like a failure because you didn't hit this arbitrary number that you've made up in the first place. But that's exactly the opposite of how you should feel because you're making progress on the goal. You're actually much closer than you were 4 months ago. So you should feel good about yourself, but we don't because we focus on the performance of the appearance. Those are the outer layers of behavior change. The inner layer, though, is your identity or the type of things that you believe about yourself. And what I find is that often we try to achieve some type of behavior change without changing the underlying identity or the beliefs. Every action that you perform is driven by this fundamental belief about whether it's possible or not. And sometimes we can fake ourselves out and force ourselves to go to the gym if we don't believe that we're the type of person who works out or force ourselves to make a sales call if we don't believe that we're good at marketing. But if you change the beliefs that you have, then the actions become so much easier. And so I think this is one reason why it's so hard to stick to new habits is because we're often trying to achieve this performance of this appearance-based goal without changing our underlying identity. As an example, if you take the workout example, it's like, "Okay, I want to lose 20 pounds in 4 months." You're focused on that or you could ask yourself, "Who's the type of person who could achieve this goal?" Well, it's the type of person who doesn't miss a workout. So then you just focus on building the identity of being someone who doesn't miss workouts rather than focusing on the outcome. Once you build the identity and you're like, "Oh, I'm going to be here every day," then you can worry about moving on to the results and the performance. And I actually have a real example of this. I was speaking with a reader. I had lunch with him. I said that he lost over 100 pounds over the course of a year or two. And when he first started going to the gym, he set this rule for himself, where he wasn't allowed to stay at the gym for longer than five minutes. He could go for five minutes, but he couldn't stay for six. And he did this for like four or five weeks. And then at that point, he was like, "I'm coming here all the time. I kind of feel like staying for longer." So he focused on building the identity of someone who doesn't miss workouts first. And then he moved on to the performance and appearance-based stuff. Then he moved on to, "Okay, I'm going to be here all the time. How do I actually improve?" And I think that's the foundation of identity-based habits. It's like, how can I become the type of person who could achieve this? And then I'll worry about the outcome later. Awesome. I absolutely love it. I love that notion of how can I become the type of person who achieves this, which is really the such a powerful way to look at all of these things that we want to accomplish. Because you're right. I mean, it can seem so overwhelming to make changes in our lives when it seems like, "Oh, you read about somebody's million-dollar launch, or everybody does something epic every single day." And I always say, "Everybody's life looks far more epic than yours does online." Even though you could be accomplishing something, there's always somebody who seems to be doing something better. But I want to go back to the idea of environment design, because I think this is really important. And I want to get tactical about how design the environment in order to really create these habit changes and create these identity changes. Because if what you're saying is true, then I believe that we can control some of it, right? Yes, absolutely. So the basic rule that I let you in mind, there's plenty of signs on this. I've written multiple articles about it like, you know, give you the links to those people want to read more. But the basic idea, if you want to put this into practice, is the idea of structuring your environment to make the good behaviors easier and the bad behaviors harder. It's pretty simple. There are two steps. So the first step is if you want to stick with a good habit, then reduce the number of steps required to perform that behavior, structure your environment in a way that there are fewer steps between you and the good habit. If you want to break a bad habit, increase the number of steps required to perform that behavior. So, for example, let's take the habit of watching TV. Maybe you thank you waste too much time watching TV, you wish you could break that bad habit. One way to increase the number of steps between you and wasting time like that, unplug your TV, put it in a closet, pick up the remote, put it in like the bottom of the drawer somewhere. So you've increased the number of steps required. If you want to watch something on TV, if you really want to watch it, you can go to the closet, take the TV out, move it back to living room, plug it in, and go get the remote and turn it on. And by increasing the number of steps, you can automatically make it easier to avoid doing that. Same way, if you want to drink, like say, a good habit, you want to drink more water. If you filled up a bunch of water bottles and placed them around your workspace or around your house at home, it's going to be more likely that you're going to drink it because you're always surrounded by it. There are fewer steps that you have to take if all you have to do is just reach over and pick up a glass of water. And this idea of increase the number of steps to reduce a bad habit, decrease the number of steps to promote a good habit, that can be applied to almost anything. So I think that's like a pretty simple way to think about it. And BJ Fogg refers to this approach as like designing for laziness. In other words, you're changing your environment so that your default decision or the decision you would make when you're lazy is a better one. So if the environment around you is designed for better choices, it's a lot easier to make better choices. You know, it's interesting you say that because even Sean Acre talks about this in his books. He calls it activation energy, but you're absolutely right. I mean, I've mentioned this before. I said, you know, if I wanted to write a thousand words or if I want to write every day, the one simple thing that enables me to do that is I literally put a moleskin notebook out in the office that I work in the night before and I put a pen there and I put a book that I want to read in the morning and literally every single day to the point where it's such a part of my routine that the routine gets thrown off. If I don't get to do it, I literally just start the same way every morning. It hasn't changed probably for with the exception of maybe a week because I wasn't at my home base, it literally, I mean, even when I travel now, I have to wake up in the morning and I have to read a book and I have to write something in a moleskin and but the big step of that, the one simple thing that made that possible was exactly what you said. I literally putting it out the night before. Yeah. A lot of people say the same thing for all types of health habits, like if they want to go running after work or, you know, in the morning or whatever, if they will set their running shoes out and their workout bag, their gym bag out the night before, then there's like, it prevents that barrier from being there and so it's more likely for them to fall through in the morning. And I love the writing sample because I have something similar that I follow with like my reading routine each morning, but it's designing a space that sort of makes it easier for you to have like an on-ramp, so to speak, for initiating your habits and here's another way to think about it. So there's, in the book, Getting Things Done by David Allen, he talks about this idea of the two-minute rule and his little, it's like a procrastination hack for him where it's, if you can do something in less than two minutes, then do it now. So like the simple stuff, like making a phone call, you've been avoiding or doing the dishes or throwing in a load of laundry or whatever, if it takes you less than two minutes to do it, then go do it now. Well, I think we can adapt that for habit and behavior change. And the way that I like to think of it is there's this sort of physics of life. There's this inertia that follows any action that you start. So once you get started on something, it's much easier to follow through. And oftentimes the hardest part about writing in the morning or going for a morning run or meditating or whatever it is you're working on is just initiating the behavior. So what I like to think of is not every habit can be finished in less than two minutes, but pretty much anything can be started in less than two minutes. So to combine this with the environment design piece, how can you design your environment in a way that lets you get started on the things that are important to you in less than two minutes? So for working out in the morning, maybe that's setting out your gym bag and your shoes. For writing in the morning, maybe that's setting out your moleskin notebook and a piece of paper or a pen or whatever. But how can you structure your environment so that you can get started in less than two minutes? And if you can do that, then you can shift your mindset a little bit to, I'm not going to worry about the outcome or how big or grand or amazing this thing is that I'm working on. My only goal is to do that two minutes start. And if I do that, then I can stop them if you talk about running routine, for example, if you put your shoes on and step out the door, that's your only goal. You don't even have to run three miles or whatever it is that you were going to do. It doesn't matter. All you have to do is that two minutes start. What we find, of course, is that once you get that two minutes start going, you naturally start putting one foot in front of the other or start writing down and flipping the pages or whatever. It's much easier. There's this inertia that comes with starting. And so I like thinking about that as how can I design my environment to promote getting started? Not necessarily finishing or doing something amazing, but just getting started. So I love it. I mean, there's so much beautiful material here to work with that really, I think, propels us forward when we think about all this stuff. One of the things that I've found and I'm curious to hear your thoughts around this is that often when we make change, and I know this because I'm as guilty of it as anybody, like I just finished reading Sean Acre's second book and he had all these things that were like, wow, these are really cool things to incorporate into your life. And my first temptation was I'm going to do all of them this week. And I think you know where I'm going with this, James, is that I was like, wow, these are all really cool. And it's funny because I know that I've tried it in the past and the activation energy and the writing a thousand words a day thing was the one that stuck and that transformed. I guess my question is, you know, how do we stack habits to make really, really big changes? So I think obviously it's, well, for me, I like adding just one change to the time, first of all. So that's some people have different approaches, but my preference is just change one thing at a time. And so what I mean by that is like, let's say, this is just an example for my own life. So I had this a couple of years ago, I had this push-up habit where I was like working on doing these push-ups every day. So I just focused on that. And once I did that for like three or four months, and I was like, okay, this is part of my daily routine, then I added in a writing habit and I just focused on the writing habit for a few months. And then once I finished that, then I get added in something else. So it was, it's not that you only do one new thing and then you abandon it after a while. It's just that wait until it becomes part of your daily routine and natural for you and then add something else, which sounds simple enough. But when it comes to stacking habits, my favorite tactic to employ, so to speak, I don't even know if it's the tactic, so much as it is just trust in the process, but it's something that a lot of people refer to as keystone habits. And what I mean is that I find it more useful to have a sense of clarity and focus on the few things that really pull the rest of your life in line rather than worrying about making 40 changes at once. And so for me, my keystone habit is lifting and going to the gym. And if I do that, then like, here's all the things that fall in line. If I show up and train every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, then first of all, I'm getting exercise in so I feel good about myself. Secondly, I tend to have much more clarity and focus, especially when I get back from the workout. And so I write better. I produce better work. I naturally sleep better because I'm tired when I go to bed that night. So that means the next morning I wake up and I have better energy to provide to my work and whatever I'm working on. For some reason, I tend to eat better when I work out. Like I could if I wanted to be like, oh, I worked out, I can eat whatever I want, but my mental model is more like, oh, I worked out, I don't want to waste this now. So I tend to eat better meals, bigger meals, whatever. So I have more energy. All these things happen naturally. I don't think anything about focus or sleep or nutrition. I just focus on doing the workout, the one keystone habit that naturally pulls the rest of this in line. And you'll often hear other people talk about their keystone habits like CEOs, for example, a lot of people swear by a lot of CEOs swear that is daily meditation habit that they have. Like if I get in my 10 minutes or my 15 minutes in each morning of meditation, then my day sort of flows, I solve problems better and so on. If I don't get that in, then I feel like off-kilter for the whole day, I, you know, things sort of get out of whack more easily. I don't handle stress as well. And so for them, that's their keystone habit or their, you know, their one behavior that pulls the rest of their like line. So my encouragement is for some listening, this would be think about what are the things that you've done on days when, when things seem to go right. And you'll often, you know, can come up with a list of two or three things that might be a keystone habit for you. And then it just comes down to experimentation. Try it out. Like just focus on this. Does that tend to help? And this doesn't mean that you can't focus on adding in new things, right? Like I focused on adding my writing habit, even though my keystone habit was fitness. But by doing that, you can simplify the mental burden of making these changes. You don't have to change everything in your life. Just focus on one or two core things and trust that the rest of it will fall in line. It's funny that you say that because even, you know, when I look back at when I started to surf, it was bizarre, but I got into the habit of surfing and somehow it translated into all these other things in my life. And I see that over and over again with other people too, they find something that is habitual, like a good habit, and it starts to bleed into other aspects of their life. And I think that we underestimate the power of that because I'm listening to you thinking, I'm like, okay, you know, like I've cultivated the writing habit and I realized that part of making changes and growing is adding other habits and I haven't. I've kind of dabbled and failed. But listening to you talk about, okay, maybe, you know, I don't give myself enough time to develop that. But I think that's one of the other things is we're so hard on ourselves. It's like the all or nothing attitude. It's like, you know what, I went six days in a row and on day seven, I couldn't do the two minute meditation. So that was a disaster. I'm not going to do it again. And that's literally is a personal example from my life from just the last few days. And you know, I thought, okay, well, that's ridiculous. I'm just going to start it over. Big deal. You know, it's not like the consequences of that are dire, but at least I'm starting over. Yeah. Well, there are two things to this. So one, there was a study done on habit formation, like how long does it actually take to form a new habit? It's really difficult about this. The basic idea is it depends on the habit. Like if you're, you know, trying to drink a glass of water every day at lunch is not as hard as maybe like trying to go for a two mile run every day. So there are going to be a different, different amounts of time on how long it takes to form a habit. But the really interesting thing that I thought to the habits that they looked at took anywhere from three weeks to eight months before they became automatic behaviors, before they became habits. And basically, keep in mind that you should be working for months on things before they become part of your daily routine, automatically, rather than getting down on yourself a few. You know, this idea of like 21 days or 30 days to a habit, it gets thrown out. It's not necessarily true. But the interesting thing from the study is that it showed that there is no indication that missing a single day, like whether it's in the beginning, the middle five months in, 10 months in, missing a single day has no measurable impact on whether or not you maintain a habit long term. So in other words, you literally can plan for failure because it doesn't matter if you go for six days, miss for one, and then, you know, start a new stream. So keeping that in mind, I think is great. Like the science backs this up. It's more about long term like don't keep your focus much wider in scope than on like what happens on any individual day. The second thing is there's this famous story about Jerry Seinfeld, you know, like famous comedian and one of the most successful comedians of all time. And this was early on in his career. He was opening up at, well, he was the main change headliner for the night at this company club. And there was this other comedian named Brad Isaac who was there opening for him and he caught Seinfeld backstage and he said, "Hey, Mr. Seinfeld, do you have any tips for a young comedian? You know, I'm just trying to get better." And he said, "Well, the secret to being a better comedian is to write better jokes and the secret to writing better jokes is to write every day. So this is what you should do. Buy a wall calendar that has every day of the year listed on it. And you can get these at, you know, Walmart or Amazon or wherever for $10. And so Seinfeld says, "Buy this wall calendar, put another wall." And every day that you do your task of writing jokes for five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes, whatever, take a sharpie and put an X on that day. And he was like, "You might have a couple of false starts, but eventually you're going to get a string going, right? You'll get this chain of five, six, seven, eight, nine days in a row." And when you get to that point and you have this string of Xs, your only goal becomes don't break the chain. That's so you don't worry about how good or how bad the jokes are you write about whether or not you'll use them and show some time about whether or not it's the best thing you've ever written about how long you write, just focus on not breaking the chain. And if you do that, then you're going to write enough to write better jokes and you'll be successful. And so I wrote an article about this story and people really gravitate towards that and they started creating chains for, you know, exercise routines or for making sales calls for their business or for reaching out to potential partners for their nonprofit or whatever. You can apply it to all sorts of different habits, but the basic idea is that think about how long this chain is that you're creating and this comes back to this volume of work and this repetition idea that we talked about earlier. And then also realize that if there happens to be a break in the chain at some point, that doesn't change how much success you can have with the habit of the long run. So it's more about there may be a few days where there's an X missing, but you want the chain to be, you know, filling up as many days as possible over the long term. And so if you combine those two ideas, I think it's a powerful way of thinking about habits and realizing that it's much more about the long term process and the consistency than it is about your performance in any one individual day. I think it's I think it's really cool that you brought up that it's funny because the pressure to not break the chain, I think is so daunting for people. And even for me, that has until I've heard it put that way, I was like, wow, I thought the goal is like literally there's no break in the chain at all, which sounds impossible at times. And I really appreciate your perspective on that because I think that that suddenly you don't feel this intense pressure that, you know, it's a do or die sort of thing. It's like, okay, if I can't make this happen for 21 days, I'm never going to be able to cultivate the habit. And I'd never thought about it that way. I mean, yeah, I mean, there are some mornings when I get up and I don't want to write. And it's just happened. But I realized that's a habit that took almost four to five months to cultivate. And it's really interesting to hear thinking about it over the long term, which, you know, that kind of takes me to my next question that sort of brings us really full circle in terms of the conversation we've been having. You know, one of the things that you said is that a lot of this for you is really kind of it lives at the intersection almost of entrepreneurship, creativity, and health and fitness. And I'm really curious about how, you know, we can build it into all three areas of our lives. I mean, specifically creativity. I mean, how does this influence something like creativity? Yeah. So I've been reading a lot about creative routines, great artists and writers and posers and everything. And how much, you know, they all have their own idiosyncrasies and they all have their own ways of approaching things. But the one thing that you can never get past with all of them is that the only way that they created great work was by creating work often. And sometimes for some people, that was only two hours a day for some people that was six hours a day for, you know, whatever. But I think the main point is they always came back to their work on a consistent basis. And we often think, and I thought this for a long time, that creativity is some inspired thing that strikes us at, you know, the right moment. I was talking to Todd Henry, who is an author and at the time, you know, Todd's book was coming out and I said, Todd, you know, this is before I had my Monday Thursday writing routine. I said, I've only been writing when I feel motivated or inspired. Like, I'm interested in to know what you think about that because I feel like I'd get my best ideas whenever I have this first inspiration. And he looked at me and said, well, that makes sense. Like, I only write when I'm inspired too. It just happens to be every day at 8 a.m. So I realized that this is like the difference between someone like me who writes inconsistently or just, you know, whenever they feel inspired, someone who's basically an amateur and someone who produces great work on a consistent basis or is always delivering something new and creative. Someone like Todd is a professional. And I think the difference is amateurs can create work when they feel motivated. Professionals create work on a schedule. And that's the difference between professional creatives and amateur creatives who think that they need some type of spark to do great work. And really it comes down to the, you know, the same thing that I mentioned earlier, like, I can't predict which days I'm going to go into the gym and set a PR, but I know that if I lift every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, there'll be some days that I do good work. And I find that now that I have my Monday Thursday writing schedule, it's the same way. On average, writing two posts a week is about eight or nine a month. And if I write eight or nine, then I know that two or three will be decent. I don't know which two or three will be, but it's only by committing to that consistency that the sparks of creativity come out at some point. So I feel like that for me is how to apply habits to creative tasks is less set up a routine and a schedule so that you can deliver on a consistent basis and trust that only by delivering consistently do the sparks of inspiration come out. So James, let me, let me ask you this. This is something that just came to my mind as we've been talking about all of these things. And yeah, I mean, you've given us an amazing set of tools to work with. Expand the way you work and think with Claude by anthropic, whether brainstorming solo or working with the team, Claude is AI built for you. It's perfect for analyzing images and graphs, generating code, processing multiple languages and solving complex problems. Plus, Claude is incredibly secure, trustworthy and reliable, so you can focus on what matters. Curious? Visit claud.ai and see how Claude can elevate your work. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. 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To learn more and take your gift giving to the next level, visit 1800flowers.com/audio. That's 1800flowers.com/audio. And there are thousands of people probably who are going to hear this, and I can't help but think they're going to be a few who go out and actually use what you've talked about and actually make changes in their lives and actually put it to work. And then a group who, despite knowing intellectually everything that you've talked about, understanding it and having the capability to do it, don't do anything with it. And I'm wondering what you think distinguishes those two groups? Sure. So there are all sorts of things that could come into play, reasons why you may procrastinate or, you know, in the words of Stephen Pressfield, like given to the resistance that prevents you from doing things. But I think one useful idea to keep in mind or something that's maybe practical that we can all take away and try to put this stuff into action with that I like to use is this idea of reducing the scope but sticking to the schedule. And so what I mean is that oftentimes we don't get started on something because the idea of creating something grand or wonderful that, you know, the thing that we want to create seems a little too much to start. And so the scope of the project is really big in our hits and that prevents us from getting going. But all you need to do, as we've talked about earlier, is just get started. And so for me, the nice idea is how can I find a way to reduce the scope of this, but still sick to my schedule and get something out? So, you know, if I'm feeling kind of sick or I don't feel that great and I, you know, the idea of doing an entire workout, the scope of this workout is too big, then well, how can I just do like 15 pushups a day? Maybe I can get that in even if I feel a little under the weather. That's a way for me to reduce the scope of the workout, but still stick to the schedule and train every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If I need to write an article, but I don't feel like I have any good ideas or I don't feel like there's something that, you know, that is going to be really compelling. Well, how can I reduce the scope of this and make sure I get something out today, even if, you know, maybe I can only write five good sentences. Well, maybe five good sentences is all I can provide today, but at least I stuck to the schedule. Another example, like if you want to go out and run today or if you want to meditate, for example, like I want to meditate for 20 minutes and you look up the clock and you only got 10 minutes left before you have to leave, well, a lot of people would say something and I would have done this in the past, like, well, I don't want to waste this time. So maybe I'll just, you know, answer a couple emails and then go off and do the next thing because that way at least I'll be productive even though I couldn't fit in what I wanted. Well, I think the better way to think about it is, all right, I might not be able to meditate for 20 minutes, so maybe I can do five or 10. So how can I reduce the scope of that but still stick to the schedule? And the power of this, I think, is that on an individual basis, doing these small things that aren't as great or as grand as you hoped, it's not, it doesn't make that big of a difference. But on a long-term basis, it's huge because it proves to yourself the situation wasn't optimal. The circumstances weren't as good as I hoped, but I still found a way to stick to my schedule and get things done. I also proved to myself that I'm the type of person who can do this work, even when the situation is an ideal. And once you do that, then we get back to this identity-based habits thing, right? You prove it to yourself over and over and over again in many tiny ways and eventually it becomes your identity. And once it becomes your identity and the type of thing that you believe about yourself, like for me now, I just write an article every Monday and Thursday, it's who I am, it's part of my identity. And it's not something that I'm forcing upon myself, I just believe that I'll do it because I've proven it to myself many times in many small ways. So by reducing the scope, but sticking to the schedule, you eventually get to a point that is much more powerful than any one individual outcome. And that is that you believe that you're capable of the thing that you're working on. That was awesome. Seriously, for those of you guys listening, you should go back and play that part again seriously, that was easily one of the most useful things I've heard in a really long time. As far as advice that can be put to use and make drastic changes, James, I gotta say, I'm really, really happy I reached out to you to bring you back. You know, we're getting close to the end of our time together. So I want to wrap things up with one final question. Our show is called the unmistakable creative. And you and I have been down this road together for quite some time, having sort of parallel journeys. I mean, we've both been at this for probably three or four years and we've seen the web change. We've seen it evolve. We've seen it get noisier, probably noisier than it's ever been in any time in history. So my question for you is, you know, what is it that makes somebody or something unmistakable? You know, I think that so often we try to come up with an answer that like, how can I be unique in my business? How can I come up with an idea that no one's ever thought of? How can I do work that no one has ever done before? And you know, first of all, most stuff has been done or thought of in some context, at least. So I think coming up with unique ideas is perhaps impossible. You know, we're all replicating something if only nature and not someone else's idea, but we're all getting influence from other areas, I guess is a better way to put it. But I think that to come up with something unmistakable or something that's uniquely yours, often it happens at the intersection of ideas, not because you came up with one brilliant idea that no one's ever thought of before. So what I mean is that, you know, I write about, I write about behavior change and habits. But the thing that makes my take unique is that I come at it with a perspective of an athlete, someone who played baseball and who competes in Olympic waylifting now, as someone who is an artist who creates photography work on a consistent basis. And as someone who's an entrepreneur and understands the marketing and the business pieces of it, and it's at the intersection of those three things that makes my take unique. And I think it can be the same way for anybody else. Like, where are the areas that are interesting to you? And where's the intersection between some of those things such that your take on a topic is different or more unmistakable than that which someone else provides? Nice. Well, James, I have to say, I am, like I said, really, really thrilled that we've had a chance to have you back here as a guest on the unmistakable grid. And I love that you brought up this intersection of ideas as being one of the keys. And it's so true. I mean, I look to everything that we've done and, you know, what we've done, you know, you look at it, we've blended my writing, Sarah's artwork, you know, other people's speaking skills, I mean, everything we do in the world today is about an intersection of ideas. I mean, it's such a fundamental part of our creative process. So I really, really appreciate everything that you've shared with us today. And I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share some of your insights with our listeners that are unmistakable creative. Yeah. Thanks for much for having me. I really appreciate it. I know if some people are looking for, you know, some of the articles I mentioned earlier or more information on that, obviously JamesCler.com is finding and check my work out there. But I also will put together a page specifically with links to some of those resources and they can get that at JamesCler.com/uc for unmistakable creative. So I'll just cover exactly what we talked about in this interview and just give some more resources there so that I don't have to go searching for it. And for those of you guys listening, we'll wrap the show with that. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Unmistakable Creative Podcast. While you were listening, were there any moments you found fascinating, inspiring, instructive, maybe even heartwarming? Can you think of anyone, a friend or a family member who would appreciate this moment? If so, take a second and share today's episode with that one person because good ideas and messages are meant to be shared. Expand the way you work and think with Claude by anthropic. Whether brainstorming solo or working with the team, Claude is AI built for you. It's perfect for analyzing images and graphs, generating code, processing multiple languages and solving complex problems. Plus, Claude is incredibly secure, trustworthy and reliable so you can focus on what matters. Curious? Visit claud.ai and see how Claude can elevate your work. Hear that? It could be the sound of your phone dinging every time you sell a product with TikTok ads this holiday season. If you've ever thought about advertising your business on TikTok now is the time to do it. You can drive more customers to your website, sell products right in the app, and you can even use TikTok's creative tools to easily make content and find creators to help sell your products for you. But you have to start now, so head over to getstarted.tiktok.com/holiday24 and drive more holiday sales today. Have you ever felt a twinge of worry about AI taking over your job or diluting your creativity? What if you could turn that fear into creative fuel? We've just published an amazing new ebook called The Four Keys to Success in an AI world, and this is more than just a guide. It's a deep exploration into the human skills that AI can't touch. The skills that are essential for standing out and thriving no matter how much technology evolved. We're talking about real differentiators here like creativity, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and much more. Inside you'll find actionable insights and strategies to develop these skills, whether you're a creative person, a business person, or just simply someone who loves personal development. This isn't a story about tech taking over, it's a story of human creativity thriving alongside AI. Picture this AI as your creative co-pilot not just as a tool, but a collaborator that enhances your unique human skills. The Four Keys ebook will show you exactly how to do that and view AI in a new way that empowers you instead of overshadows you. Transform your creative potential today. Head over to unmistakablecreative.com/fourkeys. Use the number 4 K-E-Y-S that's unmistakablecreative.com/fourkeys and download your free copy. [BLANK_AUDIO]

How habits impact entrepreneurship, health, and creativity
Lessons from the baseball field that James has applied to his life
Why you can design your own options for things in life
Post traumatic growth vs post traumatic stress
Learning to treat your failures as data points
Why mistakes and failures are required for mastery
The importance of changing habits gradually
How volume, repetition and routine help us deal with failure
Why basics and foundational pieces of mastery truly matter
Designing your environment to reduce activation energy
The myth that you can’t miss a day with a habit

James Clear writes at JamesClear.com, where he shares strategies based on proven research and real-world experiences that make it easier to stick to good habits and live a healthy life

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