079: Atomic Habits with James Clear

Episodes The Bearded Tog

March 27, 2019

Atomic Habits with James Clear

Every New Year’s, the discussion for many is about resolutions and habits. Who do we know has stuck 100% consistently to their habits they’ve wanted to form and new life initiatives?

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits: Tiny Habits Remarkable Results helps us understand why we form certain habits and most importantly how to start new ones that will help our lives be better.

Tips from James on Building Atomic Habits

The goal is to have great strategy, great decisions, and great habits. They all work together for a great life.
If you can, leave your phone in another room until lunch each day. This will carve out productive time.
Modern technology has shaped our habits a lot. We slide into habits when we have a whim of desire – sometimes this does not serve us well.
Humans are wired to seek the path of least resistance, but it’s not serving us as well as it has in the past. For example, in the past, you would have to expend calories to eat (forage or kill something to eat), but now, we can drive through a drive-thru and never expend a single calorie.
We can do a lot of things at the same time now – and we have devices that do everything. Use this to your advantage rather than your disadvantage.
Habit stacking: anchor a new habit to an old habit. If you want to start meditating, and every morning you already make a cup of coffee, you create habits by saying “after my cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds”. You can start adding these to each other in a sequence.
Breaking your goals down into habits will help you explicitly make a plan to get where you want to be.
A habit is something reliable and stable. You want habits to be so small that you can still follow through on it even when you don’t have motivation.
Two minute rule: take whatever it is you want to accomplish, and break it down into something that will take less than two minutes.
A habit has to be in place before it can be improved. Start small, focus on the first action, and find success.