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  • Let me tell you a story.

  • So it's a story about a strategy and approach philosophyone that I've been thinking

  • a lot about.

  • And it starts with a guy, that maybe you haven't heard of.

  • His name is Dave Brailsford.

  • And to set the stage for this, I want to tell you a little bit about British Cycling.

  • So about 15 years ago, early 2000s, British Cycling hires this guy named Dave Brailsford.

  • And at that point, last like 100 years, British Cycling had been incredibly mediocre.

  • They had won a single gold medal back in 1908.

  • They had never won the Tour de France, which is the premium race in cycling, the premier

  • race.

  • And so they hired this guy named Dave Brailsford to change that.

  • And in fact at the time, they were so mediocre that when they went to buy a new set of bikes,

  • they're getting like 200 from a top manufacturer in Europe, they actually weren't even given

  • quotes from the manufacturer because they didn't want other teams to see the British

  • riders using their gear, for fear that it would hurt sales.

  • And so they brought Brailsford in, and they said: “What's your plan for changing this?”

  • He said: “Well, I believe in this philosophy that I call the aggregation of marginal gains.”

  • The way that he described it is the 1% improvement and nearly everything that you do.

  • So they started with a bunch of things you would expect the cycling team to start with.

  • So for example, they put slightly lighter tires on the bike.

  • They got a more ergonomic seat for the riders to sit on.

  • They had their outdoor riders wear indoor racing suits because they were lighter and

  • more aerodynamic.

  • They had each rider wear a biofeedback sensor so they could see how they would respond to

  • training and then adjust it appropriately for the person.

  • But then they did a bunch of things you wouldn't expect a cycling team to do.

  • So they split tested different types of massage gels to see which one led to the best type

  • of muscle recovery.

  • They taught each rider how to wash their hands to reduce the risk of infections, they wouldn't

  • get a cold after and get sick.

  • They also figured out the type of pillow that led to the best night's sleep for each rider

  • and then brought that on the road with them to hotels when they were competing.

  • And Brailsford said if we can actually do this right, if we can execute all these little

  • 1% improvements, then I think we can win a Tour de France within 5 years.

  • He ended up being wrong.

  • They won in two years and then they repeated again the third year with a different rider.

  • And then after one year break they won two more; so they've won four out of last five

  • now, have gone to British cyclists.

  • But it was at the Olympics in London in 2012 and this kind of strategy really came to a

  • fruition.

  • They won 70% of the gold medals available.

  • And so this idea that small improvements, tiny habits, little choices are not just a

  • cherry on top of our performance, not just like a nice thing to have but actually can

  • be the key that unlocks significant success.

  • That's an idea that I want us to carry with us as we go through the rest of this presentation.

  • And one way to think about it is just kind of basic math, like if you just look at the

  • numbers.

  • If you were able to improve by 1% each day for an entire year and those gains compound,

  • you would end up 37 times better at the end of the year.

  • And if you were to get 1% worse, you would little yourself almost all the way down to

  • zero.

  • And what's interesting here is that everybody wants a transformation, right?

  • Everybody wants a radical improvement, want rapid success.

  • But we fail to realize that small habits and little choices are transforming us every day

  • already.

  • That these times when you make a choice is slightly better, slightly worse, a little

  • mistake or a small error, 1% better or 1% worse that these things compound over time.

  • And habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.

  • And so if you can learn to master those, then you can make time work for you rather than

  • get against you, right?

  • Good habits make time your ally.

  • Bad habits make time your enemy.

  • And so throughout the rest of this presentation I want to talk about how we can do that.

  • Today I'm going to teach you how to build the habits that you need to get the results

  • that you want.

  • And in order to do this, I'm going to take you through a framework for building better

  • habits.

  • And I'm also going to share a personal example of how I use this.

  • So my writing habit.

  • If you don't know I write at Jamesclear.com, write about how to build better habits, improve

  • performance and generally live better.

  • Over a million people visit the site each month.

  • There's over 400,000 subscribers on the weekly email newsletter.

  • And it all came out of the simple writing habit.

  • So for the rest of this talk, there are four stages of habit formation.

  • I'm going to take you through each of those four.

  • All right.

  • So the four stages are: Noticing; Wanting; Doing; and Liking.

  • Noticing; Wanting; Doing; and Liking.

  • You cannot perform a habit or take an action if you do not notice something.

  • I need to see a coffee cup sitting on the side in order to pick it up first.

  • But if it's not in my realm of knowledge, if I don't know it exists I can't do anything

  • about it.

  • But then I need to want it.

  • I need to want to drink coffee and pick it up.

  • If I don't desire it or crave it, then I will not take the action.

  • Then there's doing.

  • You actually do the habit.

  • And then I need to enjoy the reward.

  • You need to enjoy drinking the coffee to repeat it again.

  • So noticing; wanting; doing and liking.

  • Let's talk about each one, and as we do this, I'm going to give you a little bit of research

  • about why it works.

  • I'm going to give you practical action steps, at least one for each that you can use to

  • implement in your life.

  • NOTICING So one of my favorite things about noticing,

  • one of my favorite strategies for discussing it, it's called Implementation Intentions.

  • And there are hundreds of studies on this, over 100 studies on implementation intentions,

  • if you feel like digging out and getting into the research.

  • But if not, I'll just give you the simple version here.

  • So one of my favorite studies is about exercise.

  • And they had three cohorts in this study.

  • So they had first cohort, they said I just want you to track how often you workout over

  • the next few weeks, right?

  • So that's the standard cohort, the control group.

  • Second group is that we want to track often your exercise, we're also going to give you

  • a motivational speech, presentation, talk about the benefits of heart health, why habits

  • are good for you, so on.

  • So this is the motivated group, all right.

  • The third group; they got the same presentation, so they are equally motivated and then they

  • did one thing differently.

  • And that one thing was they filled out this sentence.

  • They said: during the next week, I will for taking all these 20 minutes of vigorous exercise

  • on this day at this time in this place, right?

  • They specifically stated their intention to implement the behavior.

  • So implementation intention.

  • Here's what happened.

  • First group, one out of three of them worked out.

  • Second group: motivation did nothing.

  • As soon as they left the researcher's facility the next day they were motivated.

  • It's like reading a book or watching a YouTube or listening to a motivational speaker and

  • then you forget all about it 20 minutes later.

  • But the third groupthe group that has specific plan for how they were going to implement

  • the behavior, nine out of ten of them worked out.

  • So you can increase your odds of success 2x to 3x just by having a specific plan.

  • And this is the insight: many people think that they lack motivation, when what they

  • really lack is clarity.

  • They think that they need to get more motivated that they need willpower in order to execute

  • on a habit.

  • If I just felt like writing, if I just felt like meditating, if I felt like working out,

  • then I would do it.

  • But in fact, they don't have a plan for it, so they wake up each day thinking I wonder

  • if I'll feel motivated to write today, wonder if I'll feel motivated to workout today.

  • But instead you can take the decision-making out of it by explicitly stating when, where,

  • and how you want to implement the habit.

  • So here's how I did this with my writing habit.

  • I decided that on November 12, 2012 which was a Monday if you check, that was going

  • to be the first day that I published an article.

  • And I was going to publish every Monday and every Thursday.

  • That was my implementation intention.

  • That was my specific plan.

  • Didn't matter how good or how bad it was; it didn't matter how long or how short it

  • was.

  • It didn't matter how I felt about it.

  • If all I could do was write three good sentences that day, then that was getting published.

  • But I did that, and I did it for three years.

  • And that was how the site grew.

  • It was just that core habit that drove the growth.

  • So you need to give your goals a time and a place to live in the world, right?

  • Give them space on your calendar.

  • Now it sounds easy to say let's just start a plan, let's write down exactly what you

  • should do and then maybe you'll follow through on it.

  • But of course, we all know that there are challenges that arise.

  • It's not quite that easy.

  • Failure Pre-Mortem So here's a little strategy that I like to

  • use to make sure you can come up with a better plan of action.

  • And it's called the Failure Pre-Mortem.

  • So the way that it works is you think about the habit, the project, the goal, whatever

  • the most important thing is that you want to work on.

  • And I want you to imagine fast forward six months from now and you fail, and then tell

  • the story of why you failed, what happened, what challenges did you encounter?

  • What was that took you off course?

  • When I do this with businesses, sometimes we call the kill the company exercise.

  • So everybody sits around, thinks about ways to kill the company in the next six months.

  • And once you have all that stuff laid out on the table in front of you, you can start

  • to make better choices about how to develop a plan.

  • You can start to have if-then plans.

  • So not only do I want to exercise for 20 minutes on Monday at 5:00 p.m. but also if I do not

  • exercise because I have to take my kid to practice or whatever, then Tuesday morning

  • at 7:00 a.m.

  • I would go in, right?

  • You can have ways to adjust for these challenges.

  • So core point about noticing is it's hard to change something if you're not aware of

  • it.

  • And one way to become more aware of the opportunity to take action is to have a specific plan

  • for what is going to happen.

  • All right.

  • STAGE 2: WANTING One of the most overlooked drivers of habits

  • and human behavior is our physical environment.

  • So let me tell you a quick story.

  • This comes from Harvard.

  • So these researchers at Harvard went to Massachusetts General Hospital and they had a very interesting

  • question.

  • They wondered if they could change people's behavior without talking to them at all, without

  • giving them anything to do, without trying to motivate them, but how can we shift their

  • behavior without asking them to do anything?

  • So theythis is a drawing of the cafeteria at the hospital.

  • This is drawn to scale.

  • So the shaded pink boxes are areas where there are refrigerators that have soda in them.

  • The two black boxes on the side are water, all right, refrigerators, water and then all

  • the other tables are food in the cafeteria.

  • Now they made a few little changes.

  • They turned the pink boxes into ones that also had water.

  • Okay, so they just addedbut these refrigerators still have soda available; they just added

  • water to it.

  • And then they had a bunch of little rolling carts and they put those around the cafeteria

  • too, so you can switch back and forth and see that, they just added a couple things.

  • Now what happened?

  • They didn't talk to anybody; didn't do anything.

  • But over the next six months, people drank 25% more water and 11% less soda.

  • And it's interesting because if you went up and talked to anybody sitting there and you

  • asked them why are you drinking this, everybody would have a reason.

  • They'd say, well I felt like drinking soda, I felt like drinking water.

  • But in fact, many of them chose to drink it simply because they were presented with it.

  • And this is an interesting insight about our desires.

  • Your environment often influences them.

  • We want things, simply because they are an option, right, simply because they are in

  • front of us at the time.

  • You walk into any living room in America, where do all the couches and chairs face?

  • They all look at the TVs, like what does that room design to get you to do?

  • We wonder why we sit and watch so much TV, it's because our desires are shaped in that

  • way.

  • So thankfully, you don't have to be the victim of your environment; you can also be the architect

  • of it.

  • You can decide to design something to make your good behaviors easier and your bad behaviors

  • harder.

  • So when it comes to habits you want to practice your guitar more frequently, put it right

  • in the middle of your living room, so you run across all the time.

  • You want to read more?

  • When you make your bed in the morning, take the book you want to read; put it on top of

  • the pillow.

  • When you come back that night, pick it up, read a few pages, go to sleep.

  • For me, I used to buy apples all the time and then I would put them in the crisper at

  • the bottom of the fridge and they would sit there for three weeks and go bad.

  • And I finally open it up and see them again, you get mad.

  • And then eventually I bought a bowl and put it right in the middle of the counter.

  • And so then when I buy apples I put them there, I see them every day.

  • And now I eat them all the time.

  • Many of our desires are simply shaped because we have an environment that shapes us in that

  • way.

  • So the moral of the story is I've never seen someone stick to positive habits in a consistent

  • fashion in a negative environment.

  • Maybe you can overpower it once or twice.

  • Maybe you can have the willpower to do the right thing on one day.

  • But if you're constantly fighting against those forces, it's going to be very hard to

  • follow through.

  • So don't rely on willpower and self-control.

  • It's a lot easier to stick to better habits when you're presented with better options,

  • right?

  • So what does this mean for writing?

  • So, one, I leave my phone in the other room which it is in the other room right now, because

  • I'd like to show it to you.

  • That's kind of the pen.

  • But I also on my home screen have no applications, so you can't see anything.

  • I have to swipe over and then tap into certain folders to get to social media.

  • Takes at least three clicks for me to get to any social media app.

  • It's not that big of a deal but it just prevents me from being mindless and just pulling it

  • up and tapping on Instagram just because it's right in front of me.

  • And then I also started something this last year which has been really effective.

  • Every Monday my assistant will log me out of all social media and reset the passwords,

  • and then not give them to me until Friday.

  • And then on Friday I get the passwords and get to enjoy social media again.

  • Also I am going on vacation for the next two weeks.

  • So if you see me posting on Tuesday, I'd only hear about it because I'm allowed to be on

  • there.

  • I'm not locked out for this week.

  • So the core idea here is that you want to put more steps between you and the bad behaviors,

  • and fewer steps between you and the good behaviors.

  • And it is far easier to stick to good habits if you are living in an environment that is

  • inclined to push you in that direction.

  • All right.

  • STAGE 3: DOING So quick story here.

  • There's this professor at the University of Florida; he's retired now.

  • He was a photography professor; his name's Jerry Uelsmann.

  • And at the beginning of the semester he would have this film photography class, and he'd

  • bring the class in and he would split him into two groups.

  • He said everybody on this side of the room, you're going to be graded on the quantity

  • of work that you do this semester.

  • And everybody on this side of the room you're going to be graded on the quality of work

  • that you do this semester.

  • And he further explained it by saying that for your film photography, you're going to

  • be responsible for having 100 pictures.

  • If you do 100 photos over the course of the semester, that'll be an A. If you do 90, it'll

  • be a B.

  • If you do, it'll be C, and so on.

  • So it's quantity.

  • For this group, you only have to produce one photo but it has to be the most perfect photo

  • that you can make, the best photo that you can make.

  • An interesting thing happened.

  • At the end of the term, all the best grades came from the quantity group, not from the

  • quality group.

  • And what ended up happening was that while people were busy experimenting, making mistakes,

  • learning, how to play with composition and so on, they would come across a really great

  • photo.

  • And while the quality group was busy theorizing about what perfection would look like, and

  • how to take the perfect photo and not actually honing their skills, they ended up only making

  • something mediocre average.

  • And the important insight here, especially for habits, is that in the beginning, the

  • most important thing is just to shut up and put your reps in.

  • Just make sure that you hone the skill, right?

  • And you can start to think of itthe way that I'd like to think of it is that any

  • outcome that you wish to achieve is just a point along the spectrum of repetitions.

  • So if you have few reps, the more reps, and you can imagine an easy goal, moderate goal,

  • hard goal.

  • The more reps that you put in, the more likely you are to achieve that goal.

  • So maybe Point A is, let's stake fitness: squatting a hundred pounds, Point B is squatting

  • 200, Point C is squatting 300, maybe you need to put in a hundred reps or a thousand reps

  • to get to point A. Maybe it's 5000 to get to point.

  • Maybe it's 10,000 to get to point C. And this is actually very similar to what

  • I saw with my writing habit.

  • So after six articles at 100 subscribers, after 23, a thousand, after 96, 34,000; 177,

  • hundred thousand, 243, and so on.

  • And every rep that I put in, every article that I published was something that was moving

  • me closer to the next outcome on that spectrum.

  • But you can't get around the fact that the repetitions matter.

  • So every outcome is just a point along the spectrum.

  • And this brings us to an interesting point: which is that if getting your reps in is incredibly

  • important, then that means learning how to start is incredibly important.

  • Because each repetition, really any consistency with the habit is just an exercise in getting

  • started each day.

  • You can get started over and over again and that's what consistency is.

  • So you can make it as easy as possible to start.

  • I want to give you a little strategy for doing that.

  • I'd like to call it the Two-Minute Rule.

  • Now this is adapted.

  • So David Allen has the two-minute rule for productivity.

  • And his rule is that if it takes two minutes, just do it now.

  • So like throwing in the laundry or washing a dish or calling somebody back, it takes

  • two minutes or less, just do it right away; don't plan it; don't wait; just do it now.

  • Now for many of the habits and behaviors that we want to perform, they're going to take

  • longer than two minutes.

  • If you go to the gym, you're not going to work out for just two minutes.

  • But any habit can be started in less than two minutes, whether it's writing, working

  • out, meditating, anything.

  • And so the goal here is that you want to optimize for the beginning of the task.

  • You want your habits to act as an entrance ramp to a bigger routine.

  • One of my favorite examples is this Twyla Tharp, great choreographer and dancer.

  • She said that she had a two-hour workout routine that she did every morning.

  • But the habit was not the workout routine.

  • The habit was: she would wake up, walk down to the street, and then hail a cab.

  • And that was the only thing she'd focus on it.

  • As long as she hailed the cab and got in the car, she knew that she was going to end up

  • at the gym and then do the rest of the workout.

  • So she put all of her energy into starting.

  • Now what I like to say is you should optimize for the starting line, not the finish line,

  • right?

  • So often when we think about habits, goals, routines, achievements, it's all about the

  • milestone.

  • We think about how much weight we want to lose, how much money we want to earn; how

  • many subscribers we want to have; it's all fixed on the finish line.

  • But instead if you can optimize for the starting line and make it as easy as possible to get

  • started and get your reps in, often the outcomes just come as a natural result.

  • Okay.

  • STAGE 4: LIKING So the only reason that we repeat behaviors

  • is because we enjoy them, because we like the reward.

  • If we don't enjoy the experience along the way, we're unlikely to stick with it.

  • And that means that you need to figure out ways to bring a reward into the present moment,

  • because good habits have a problem.

  • And that problem is that for good habits, the immediate consequence is there.

  • There's a cost that happens in the moment but the reward is often delayed.

  • If I go to the gym now, it's cost me time and energy and effort.

  • But the reward is I'll be fit three months from now or not get sick ten years from now

  • or so on.

  • The reward is delayed.

  • Bad habits are often the reverse.

  • If I eat a doughnut right now, the benefit is: it tastes great and I get a hit of sugar

  • and it's awesome.

  • And the consequence is delayed, right?

  • I get overweight three weeks from now, or three months from now or so on.

  • So you need to figure out how to bring the reward into the present moment to stick to

  • a good habit.

  • And someone else who's going to be speaking here, Seth Godin, had a very nice little quote

  • about this, he says the best way to change long-term behavior is a short-term feedback.

  • And one way to think about that is that long-term behaviors, sticking with writing for years

  • on end, or going to the gym and so on, they have those delayed consequences.

  • So you need a way to enjoy it in the moment.

  • All right.

  • There are many ways to do this, but I'm just going to share one today.

  • SEINFELD STRATEGY I like to call the Seinfeld strategy, and

  • the story is from Jerry Seinfeld, famous comedian.

  • Early in his career, he's speaking at a comedy club.

  • He's presenting, performing that night.

  • And this guy named Brad Isaac is opening for him.

  • And backstage, Brad Isaac catches Seinfeld and he said, “Mr. Seinfeld, huge fan years,

  • do you have any tips for young comic?

  • Do you have any recommendations for how to be better?

  • And Seinfeld thought for a second; he saidWell the secret to being a better comedian

  • is write better jokes.

  • And the secret to writing better jokes is writing every day.”

  • So here's I think you should do: get a wall calendar, where you can see every day of the

  • year mapped out on it.

  • And then any day that you do your task of writing jokes for 15 minutes, I want you just

  • put an X on that day.

  • And you'll have a couple false starts here and there.

  • But at some point you're going to get a little bit of a chain going, right, you get four

  • or five, six, seven, eight days in a row.

  • And at that point your only goal becomes to: don't break the chain.

  • It doesn't matter how good or how bad the jokes are; doesn't matter if it makes it into

  • your material.

  • Just don't break the chain.

  • And what's interesting about this is that by measuring your progress, you get an immediate

  • reward in the moment, right?

  • The reward of like having a great stand-up routine forty days from now or 40 weeks from

  • now or whatever is notit's so delayed that you need something in the moment that

  • makes you feel good.

  • So if you do those 15 minutes you can cross that off.

  • That's a way to get an immediate hit, a little bit of a reward by tracking it.

  • NEVER MISS TWICE Now I like to do

  • I like to add one more thing to this: which is never miss twice.

  • So, many people they'll get a chain going and then they fall off track and they feel

  • bad about it feel, like oh, I ruined it; I had this great thing; now it's over.

  • The streak is gone.

  • But what you find when you look at top performers is not that they don't make mistakes; they

  • make mistakes just like everybody else.

  • But they can just get back on track more quickly.

  • And in fact, if you could just adhere to this one rule: never miss twice, then you would

  • even if you fell off-track every single time after you got back on track, you still would

  • do it 50% of the time.

  • And so this basic strategy is very useful, and I've seen people use the Seinfeld strategy

  • for working out.

  • I used it for tracking how often I was writing, every Monday, every Thursday; I didn't want

  • to break the chain.

  • I have videographer friends who every day that they do thirty minutes of video processing,

  • that's their X, so you can adapt it for almost same thing.

  • All right.

  • So the four stages: noticing; wanting; doing; liking.

  • Now I'd like to close by talking about why habits are so important.

  • And to do that, I want to share a little story about the Ship of Theseus, which is this ancient

  • Greek parable story about this ship that goes into Athens, Greece and parks in the dock.

  • And as it's there, it's used year after year some of the boards start to wear away, some

  • of them start to go bad.

  • And so whenever one board is bad, they take the board out and change it and put a new

  • one in.

  • This process continues for 25 or 30 years until every board that was on the ship has

  • been changed out for a new one.

  • And philosophers for centuries have asked: is this the same boat?

  • Is this the same thing that was there before?

  • It's both entirely same and entirely new.

  • And I would say that your habits can be the same way.

  • We often fear that in order to achieve something new to become someone new, we have to abandon

  • everything that we are.

  • But in fact, that's not how it works.

  • Change can happen plank by plank, board by board, habit by habit.

  • And gradually you can become someone new.

  • With consistency and repetition, you can actually change not only your results but actually

  • your identity.

  • And the reason that this is true is because the more evidence that we have for a belief,

  • the more likely we are to believe it.

  • So if you go to church every Sunday for 20 years, you believe that you're religious.

  • If you study Spanish every Thursday night for 20 minutes, you believe that you are studious.

  • The actions that you take provide evidence for who you are.

  • And it's not that habits matter more necessarily.

  • On an individual basis each moment in life matters.

  • But what ends up happening is that over the broad span of time, things that you do once

  • or twice fade away, and things that you do time after time, day after day, week after

  • week accumulate the bulk of the evidence for what you believe about yourself.

  • And so every action that you take is actually a vote for the type of person that you want

  • to become.

  • If you want to become someone new, then you can take a new action and begin to accumulate

  • evidence for that identity, for that belief about yourself.

  • And that the more votes that you cast, the more likely you are to win the election.

  • You don't need to be unanimous; you don't have to be perfect all the time.

  • You just need to have the body of work, right?

  • So true change is actually not behavior change; it's not results change; it's not process

  • change; it's identity change.

  • The goal is not to becomethe goal is not to read a book; it's to become a reader.

  • Goal is not to write a book or write an article; it's to become a writer.

  • Goal is not to run a marathon; it's to become a runner, to become a type of person, to develop

  • an identity.

  • And the way to being something or becoming someone is through doing something.

  • So every time you sit down to write, every time you practice that habit, you are being

  • a writer.

  • Every time you play a sport you're being an athlete.

  • Every time you practice painting or music or whatever, you're being an artist.

  • Your identity emerges out of the habits that you have.

  • And so here's the secret to this talk: it's not just about getting you to make small changes.

  • It's not just about putting a book on your pillow or putting an apple on the counter.

  • It's actually by getting you to believe something new about yourself, think possible about yourself.

  • And habits are not only the method through which we achieve external measures of success,

  • like losing weight or earning more money or meditating and reducing stress.

  • They are also the path through which we achieve internal change and actually become someone

  • new.

  • They're the path through which we forge the identity that we have, the deepest beliefs

  • we have about ourselves, our sense of self.

  • And so if you can change your habits, you can change your life.

  • Thank you.

Let me tell you a story.

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