Designing Environments for Habit Success

I've had many leading experts on this show, including Matthew Walker, and they've all said the same thing about sleep. They've said it's the biggest positive investment you can make in your own performance. You can have the best strategy in the world, but if you're consistently tired, poor decision making will follow and eventually cause other things to fail in your life. So if you're looking to optimize your recovery, you should start looking at what you're sleeping on Our sponsor, Helix, makes high quality mattresses tailored to your body. It doesn't matter if you run hot, sleep on your side, or need something firm. Helix has a mattress for you. And I asked them recently to send one to a member of my team, and Juan received it. And we travel a lot. So when he's home, quality sleep really matters. And he told me he's getting the best sleep of his life. and the data backs it up with eighty two percent of people in a Helix study saying they saw an increase in their deep sleep. And with a one hundred and twenty night trial, you've got four months to prove it to yourself. You can get twenty seven percent off at helixsleep d. com slash diary. That's helixleep d. com slash diary Elilyning when you said that ambitious people, they have lots of aspirations, lots of habits they want to start, I was thinking about myself and thinking There's probably thirty habits that I would like to acquire I want to be better at writing, I want to be a runner. I want to be better at speaking. I want to be a better friend and be more attentive with my friends and make sure I text them on their birthdays and you know all of these new habits that I want to pursue. How does one know Which one to aim for first. Is there a framework for knowing? Yeah, there's some things that you can do. I don't think to your point earlier about the Sometimes the riskiest things just take a long time making the decision. know maybe you should just pick one and work on it, and then you can get on to the next one. But I do think there's some level of strategy, which is A good place to start is by asking yourself which habits are upstream from other good things happening For example, I know that if you were maybe the question to start with is when you live a good day, when you feel dialed in, when things are like rolling along well for you, what tends to be part of that day? Sleep, you know Okay, So that's you know, I would say for me, sleep is definitely one. I would say getting my workout in. and usually reading and writing are a part of it, but I think I could just boil it down to reading if I just read like ten pages That often sparks the writing ike to reading is like the fuel for writing for me. So So I could say get a workout in and read for five minutes or ten minutes Those are the two things that are part of a good day And what happens is they're upstream from a lot of other good things happening. For example, if I get the workout in, yeah, I feel good. I get the benefits of the workout. But I also have a post workout high for like an hour or two, so my focus and concentration is better I sleep better at night because I got the workout in and now I'm tired. I tend to eat better when I work out. It's when I'm not working out that I eat terribly. I don't know, it's kind of like I don't wantan to waste it or something. So at no point was I trying to build better focus habits or sleep habits or nutrition habits. Those just came kind of as a natural consequence of getting the wor So what are those things that you do that are upstream from other good things happening? I think those are good like anchor habits to start and focus on. But If I could add another one for myself, I would say it's a little bit of time it's really just time to think, but it's time to reflect and review. There's this interesting thing that happens. if you have a really good work ethic, if you have a strong work ethic and working hard has gotten you far in life It kind of becomes a crutch You know, you for a long time, I was like, if I ever had a problem, I was like, well, I'll just work my way out of it. You know, just work harder on it until I figure it out And that's great. That's really powerful for a lot of things. But at some point it breaks. you know, like you can maybe if you really tri, maybe you can work ten percent harder or twenty percent harder, but there's some limit But if you work on the right thing Well, you could get a hundred X the result or a thousand X the result And so if you just keep your head down and work hard, it's very unlikely that you'll be spending your time in the highest and best way. And the only way to figure that out is to have time to reflect and review. time to think You know, so you need enough time to think to figure out what should I be focused on next? And so I think that is alost it's almost Reflection review is almost like the meta habit. that is above all others, because if you give yourself time to reflect and review, then you can troubleshoot your habits and figure out how to adjust them I was thinking as you were saying that that time to reflect and review is actually also a review of are my current systems moving me closer because when you're talking about that, I was thinking of times in my life where I was so close to like the picture and I was so in the trenches doing the thing that I hadn't come up to even say, actually, is there a system I could put in place to solve this problem over the next five or ten years. Like for example, is there a person I need to hire? So actually should I go into the hiring process versus being in there fixing the problem myself? Should I spend ten hours this week on hiring a candidate to do this, or should I be doing it? But sometimes you get so caught up in the trenches when especially when things are tough and difficult and moving very quickly that you don't review your systems. And also when you talk about systems, I thought about how systems sometimes expire Yeah, because things change. That's a great point. and I think this is probably one of the most overlooked things with habits. A lot of the time when someone sits down and they want to build a new habit, they don't say this, but what they kind of assume is what it would mean to be successful with this habit. is that I do it for the rest of my life You know, and that if at some point I'm not doing it, then that must mean that I failed or I quit on But that's not how it is at all. Like things have a season, you know, And so habits have to change shape over time Let's take my writing habit for example. The habit that launched my career was I wrote a new article every Monday and Thursday, and I did that for three years. So the first three years, one hundred fifty articles you know, write twice a week. That was a great habit. There were like two thousand word pieces or so But then I signed the book deal for a Tom of cabins. I didn't have the capacity to do that and also write the book. So that had to change book for like three years and then the book came out and now I write a newsletter once a week. And that's much shorter I kind of feel like my writing habit is maintained that whole time, it just changed shape, but that's fine. It just needed to shift based on the season But I don't know. peopleople they get so attached to one form of a habit sometimes that they don't realize that it's no longer serving them. And I think that's the One of the trickier things to give up is a habit that used to be good for you, that used to work well, but no longer serves you in your current season. I find that I'm kind of a slow learner with that. I guess parents can probably really relate because they're forced to basically change their goals and therefore their systems would have to, I mean, you're a father of three, so you probably know this much better than I do But has there been systems that you've find to sort of? I think there's lots of inflection points in life. So having kids is one of them, startarting a new job, moving to a new city. know, it can be big stuff like that. I've just talked to a mother who her kids moved out, so she's now an empty nester. You know She's like the last twenty five years, we've been parenting all these kids, and now finally they're all out It feels in some sense, it almost feels like a loss of identity. You know, like I thought I was one thing and now, you know, feels like things have shifted U but also just signals an inflection point in life and a new season that you're in. And when your seasons change, your habits often need to change with Can you talk about this four burners theory I guess dove tells into what we're talking about here where you use this to kind of think about what habits to pursue in any season of life, but also a phrase that I've heard so often, specifically from mothers on the show comes to mind which is that you can't have it all at the same time. And I've heard that I think four or five times different mothers in particular, which I mean, says something about society. Yeah. have said to me that they've had to realize that they can't have it all at the same time. for sure So this is not my concept. This is this idea that I came across, called the four burners theory And it breaks life into these four burners on a stove. So you have work and career is one You have family, friends and then personal health or, you know yourself basically as the other The idea is that for the burners to really be going well You can't have all four on at the same time. And burn happ being stve. The stove. Yeah, ye, the stove top. So you have you can choose, you could have three going on at kind of like a mid level, but if you really want them to do well, you can only have two on at the same time. and You know, who knows? I don't know if it's true or not or whatever, but it's an interesting idea. and what it does is it gets you to realize Yeah, a fundamental part of life is trade offffs cannot be good at everything at the same time So this is true across projects. If you choose try to do seven things at once, spreading yourself thin in seven different ways, is very hard to be excellent. For me, what I think about is Life has a series of seasons and life has a series of sequences So Let's say it's not always exactly ten years, but let's say the big movements in life are roughly ten year buckets, right? So like for me building my first business, that was kind of like a ten year thing and eventually led to the launch of it. You maybe get five or six of those in your adult life? Some of those things make sense to do in a different order than others Like If you want to travel the world and see a bunch of places and party in a visa, you're probably not going to do that in your sixties. You know, like I mean, you can, there's nobody's saying you can't, but some things are probably better sequenced in other, you know, in other spots. Obviously, there's, you know, especially for women, there's a certain limit on if you want to have a family, what decades that happens in. So yeah, just it's just a matter of sequencing and prioritization. If you look at the like tapestry of your life, what do you want the big movements to be? And where do those seasons need to slot in Um It's a it's there is no right answer It's interesting that as soon as you realize it's a finite number And as soon as you realize that trade offffs are always going to be a reality to deal with that in some way. I've decided that right now when my kids are young, like I'm going to turn the career burner down. And that's fine. It's not going to be how it was for the last ten years, but that's okay because they're only five once, you know, they're only turning six once They only go to second grade once and I want to be there for all that Um There are always trade offffs I think that sequence point is su super interesting. youve got me thinking because you're right, there are sort of some constraints, whether they're biological constraints. or in the case of your kids, like just natural constraints, that mean this season can only happen now here. right? Yeah There's also some things like bothoth of us are fairly young entrepreneurs I'm so glad that I started a business in my twenties rather than my fifties. It doesn't mean you can't do it in your fifties. There's nobody saying you can't. It's just that it makes things a lot easier for the next decade. You know, it's easier for me to be there for my kids now because I have control of my time because I did the business part previous decade. the risks. Yeah. and that doesn't mean it's always going to work out or whatever. It doesn't mean that you're going to be able to perfectly plan it all You just see how the sequences can to stack up in that way And how important do you think when we're talking about habits do you think repetition is? Because there's so many of these sort of well known concepts or frameworks in habit formation. One of them is that habits take roughly sixty six days. One of them is that it's about repetition Does repetition really matter? It definitely does. I mean, repetition is how habits form. The sixty six days number comes from one study that came out that found that on average it took about sixty six days to build a hait If you look at the study, the range is pretty wide. So if you pick something really simple like drinking a glass of water at lunch each day That might only take two or three weeks to form If you look at something more complicated, like goinging for a run after work every day. That might take seven or eight or nine months to form And so I don't know that sixty six days really tells you anything. It doesn't It doesn't tell you that this is how long it's going to take for your habit to stick. I mean, the range is wide Sometimes when people ask me how long it does it take to form a habit My answer is forever becausecause if you stop doing it, then it's no longer a habit And what I'm kind of getting at with that is that Habits are not a finish line to be crossed. They're lifestyle to be lived. You know, And so we approach our habits as if it's a finish line, Oh, let me do this thirty day cleanse and then I'll be healthy Let me do this ninety dayays sprint and then the product will be shipp. I won't have to worry about it You know, and it's like Most things in life, especially the big important things, they're endless. They're endless battles you know, so Just because you went to the gym yesterday earns you no bonus points for tomorrow. Like you still have to show up tomorrow. Just because you were a good spouse yesterday earns you no bonus points for tomorrow. You still have to be loving and caring again Um, and so All the things that really matter are endless battles, and it's not about crossing a finish line, it's about living that kind of lifestyle. And so yes, it is true that repetition matters, and yes, it is true that the habits will become more seamless and automatic and maybe a little less effortful as you repeat them more That doesn't mean that you'll never have to think about them mer or worriry Do you think much about what's going on in the brain when repetition occurs. Like what is it that's making it easier? If If I've been on a roll with the gym, I've been going for sixty days in a row, Why does it feel easier on day sixty one That's a tricky question because If you were to talk to an academic and they would tell you like a habit is this automatic nonconscious behavior, Really quick, simple things like Brushing your teeth, tying your shoes Every time you pick up a pair of barbecue tongs, you gota tap them together twice. you know, like stuff you don't even really think about, okay That's actual habitual behavior But if I were to ask you, What are some habits you're trying to build? You would say, I'm trying to go to the gym four days a week, or I'm trying to write every morning or I'm try to meditate you know, five days week or whatever And I know what you mean when you say that, you mean I want it to be this routine, this practice that I do consistently. Like writing every day is never going to be mindless the way that brushing your teeth is. you know, goingo to the gym is not going to be automatic the way that tying your shoes might be. And so the things that we there's a little bit of sloppiness in the word habits and how we use it in life It's not they're not automatic mindless routines most of the time. Most of the things that we want to be habits are not like reflexes. They're routines and rituals that we do consistently So Hving said that It is true that after you've gone to the gym for a month or two, it does start to get easier. and I think there's a number of forces that kind of work in your favor there One is you figured a lot out about what it takes to get into the gym What time am I going? What route do I take How do I pack my bag? Do I need to bring a water bottle or is there a water fountain at the gym? Like All those sorts of things are little one time costs that you gott to figure out early on that once you're into a pattern, you already know them You know, the water bottle thing sounds like a small thing. I heard from someone who said, I always forget to bring my water bottle and they don't have water founts at this gym like sometimes I skip the workout because of that. You know? It's like it's remarkable how little friction it takes to pull us off course. And so figuring out all of those things is something that once you're a month or two in, you've crossed all youve, you know, you've fought all those battles and now you know how that makes it easier The other thing is you start to build friendships, start to build connections, you start to know the people there, you feel comfortable there There's this concept Stephen Pressfield talks about where You know, if you have a wolf and it's roaming around. Eventually it starts to feel like it has its territory And early on in a process, a creative process, writing a book or whatever, you go into the office for the first time to write the first chapter of the book and you kind of feel uncomfortable. It feels like it's not you yet. go to the gym on the first day. feel like people are judging you. Do I look stupid? I don't know how to do this. After a while, It becomes your territory. It's just like the wolf. It starts to feel like your home court And so that familiarity, I think also makes it much easier to stick to the habits. you know, once you start to feel comfortable there And that takes a little bit of time And then the last piece is identity The more that you start to follow this habit, the more you repeat a habit, the more you reinforce being that type of person. The more you start to have that element of your story I think this is one of the most important things for building habits and getting habits to stick, which is how your habits reinforce your desired identity We often start by asking what do I wish to achieve? But I think what we really should start with is who do I wish to become? What are my actions reinforcing? What are my actions taking me closer towards In a sense, every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become So No, doing one push upp does not transform your body But it does cast a vote for I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts And no, writing one sentence does not finish the novel, but it does cast a vote for. I'm a writer And no, setting one bit of positive feedback does not make you like the world's best leader, but it does cast a vote for unm the type of leader who cares about their teammates. And individually, those are small things, but collectively, you build up this body of evidence for being that kind of person. Hmm, It's a little bit different than what you often hear. like you often hear people say something like Thake until you make it I don't necessarily have anything wrong with fake at team make it. likeike it's asking you to believe something positive by yourself Behavior and beliefs are two way street And so what you believe influences the actions you will take And the actions you take also influences what you will believe And my encouragement, my suggestion, is to start with the action to let the behavior lead the way make one sales call or meditate for one minute or do one push up and let that in that moment be evidence that you were that type of person You know, if you go outside today and you shoot a basketball for five minutes, you don't instantly think, oh, I'm a basketball player If you do it every day for next three months or six months a year, at some point you cross this invisible threshold where you have to admit I guess playing basketball is like kind of an important part of who I am. You know, I guess it's part of my identity And once you adopt a habit as part of your story, once it becomes part of how you see yourself, it's not just like I need to go for a run, it's like I am a runner No know, I go I do this because this is part of who I am then you'll fight to maintain the habit. R Like then it becomes easier for it to stick. And so the connection between habits and identity I think is ultimately how you really get habits to stick for the long It reminds me of a study I was reading recently that said, if you speak to someone in terms of giving them an identity versus using a word as an adjective, the behavior curseor. an example would be if you do something for me and I say, you know what, James, you are a kind person. In the studies, people become more kind. But if I say that was kind, or that action was kind peopleeople are less kind. So if I if I can give you feedback that embodies your identity, then you're more like likely for that behavior to occur. So with my team, And this is maybe giving a bit of the game away I will often refer to them as an identity. I will say, you are an innovator. You are an experimenter. becausecause from the studies I've read that increased probability that they embody that identity. There's another study that did it for voting. So people were more likely to go and vote if you said like I am a voter, you got them to identify as I'm a voter rather than are you voting today? And so same thing There's an example in atomic Habits that I talk about Imagine two people who are trying to quit smoking, you know, And so the first person gets offered a cigarette and they say oh, no thanks, I'm trying not to smoke and the second person gets offer and they say, Ohh no thanks I'm not smoker And so the first person is trying to resist something that they still see themselves as but the second person no longer sees themselves as the type of person who smokes And u Some of the evidence and research suggests that once you adopt those identities, it's easier for you stick to the behavior Reminds me of the research from Leon Festinger, the guy that came up with the term cognitive dissonance The way that I understand the concept of cognitive dissonance is that if I have a perceived identity of myself and something external threatens that or challenges it We're not good at living in contradiction. I'm not good at. So for example, I'm a an accountant right now and I hear that AI is doing accountancy work amazingly well. Now I've invested ten years in my accountancy degree. I see myself as a great accountant might My sort of initial reaction will probably be to either dismiss my current identity as a great accountant that's going to have a great career in the future. or to dismiss the AI And he talks people that have studied his work talk about how we're very poor at being able to hold two contradictory things to be true at the same time. So we tend to protect our identity. Yes. There's something incredibly powerful about this that also ties into habits, which is that A lot of our identity, not not the whole thing, but large portions of our identity are tied to our relationships I'm a father, I'm a, you know, husband, I'm you know, And so like it's the connection that we have with others. Our social bonds influence the picture that we have of ourselves This is something that widely influences our habits. You know, So we are all part of multiple groups. Sometimes that group is large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be British. Sometimes that group is small, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street, or a member of this family or a member of the local crossfit gym All of the groups that you belong to, large and small Have a set of shared expectations for how you act, Have a set of social norms for what you do in that group And when your habits go with the grain of the expectations of the group They're pretty attractive. you know, like you want toit to, you get praised and rewarded for it. you fit in. And when they go against the grain of the expectations of the group It's kind of unattractive. you get criticized and it doesn't feel good. And so if people have to choose between I have habits that I want I'm cast out, I'm ostraced, I'm criticized or I have habits that I don't really love, but I fit in, I belong I'm part of something. Most of the time, the desire to belong overpowers the desire to improve And so you want to do something different, but you also know you're going to be heavily criticized for it or you're going to at least add friction to your relationships And we don't want to live with that dissonance, that dissonance of I can have this I also create friction here One of the lessons, I think, one of the big takeaways, if you want to build better habits and get habits to stick, particularly for the long run is you want to join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior Join groups where you can rise together where the people that you're surrounded by have the type of habits that you want It reminds me of this u This thing that appeared in Jeff Bezos's shareholder letter about resisting the equilibrium. H I didn't know about this card So in Jeffzos's shholder letter he writes to shareholders that when referring to Amazon's ability and desire and need to innovate through the future, he says he makes a comparison to Richard Dawkin's book. called the think it's a blind clock yeah the Blind W watchman bllame watchan theahah. And says that essentially all living organisms live in this constant battle to resist their equilibrium. and actually death itself is when we become our environment Because right now me and you have a huge amount of energy expenditure to be different from our environment in terms of temperature, in terms of acidity, etcetera. And he's making the comparison which sounded a lot like what you just said that If you want to that all living organisms are in this constant battle to be different from our environment And the more differentnt our environment is the heart of the fight So if I go to the desert, my body has to Even more energy to be a different temperature, to be a different sort of acidity than the environment. But if I want to make my life easier and make that fight easier, then go into an environment where my environment is the same as inter my internal state. That's great. I think that punchline of the more different your environment is from the habits that you want to build or from whatever equilibrium you're trying to achieve the harder you will have to fight to maintain. And that is a fight that you can do for I don't know, a day, a week, a month, but it's some limited amount of time At some point, it just is draining to try to grind against the environment all the time. Sometimes I view environment both physical and social Almost like a form of gravity You know, like the physical environment that we're in right now, okay, it's always nudging you in certain directions. Like I'm sitting in this chair right now talking to you. I could be sitting anywhere else, but I would have to sit on the floor, right? The environment of the chair is ushering me to this spot. It's almost like a form of gravity pulling me here rather than gettingiving me to go somewhere else. when that we leave this room If I wanted, I could try to do something crazy and break through a wall or climb through the ceiling or whatever, but I'm going to go through the door because that's where the environment is naturally nudging me toward. It's where that behavior happens easily All of our spaces are like that. You're always being kind of pulled toward what is natural and easy and consistent in that environment So how can you prime your environment to make those the things you want to do? That's for physical environment Social environment is the same You know, it's you're always kind of being pulled toward what the behaviors are that are natural there. What are the social norms? What are the things that people get praised and rewarded for? What is the culture typically calling you to do and That's where I think the answer is you want to surround yourself with groups who have the behaviors you want to have. Join groups where your desired behavior is normal If it's normal in that group, then you can rise together So I mean, that must mean getting rid of certain people in one's life and sometimes those people are hard to get rid of because theirre famies they theirre momums, their dads. Sure. And I you know I'm a little sometimes you hear people say things like fire your friends, you know or whatever. like and I'm not I'm not all the way there. I think that yes, it is true. sometimes you have in extreme circumstances particularly toxic person or something like that. And yeah, like you you probably maybe should not be around them. And those can lead to very hard decisions. But I would say for the majority of life and the majority of your relationships, what we're really talking about here is not getting rid of relationships. We're talking about finding specific places where that habit can thrive So here ares some examples. There's a number of studies that have shown that it tends to be easier to build a new habit in a new environment So for example If you well, first let me back up. There's an interesting way to define what habit is, which is that it is a behavior that is tied to a particular context. So for example Your habit of watching Netflix might be tied to the context of your couch at seven PM. And whenever you walk into your living room and you're by your couch and it's in the evening, you're kind of naturally being pulled toward picking up the remote and doing that because that's the context thebit happens in So if you want to build a new habit, And again, these studies have found that it tends to be easier to build a new habit in a new environment. Well, let's say you want to start a habit of journaling. Well, you walk into your living room in the evening and you sit down on the couch, and you're like, I'm going to jouraling you're naturally you know, your brain is kind of like, well, it's time pick up the remote and turn on the TV That doesn't always mean that you need a brand new space, like a new building or a new room to do every habit in But you could do something like you could get a chair and put it in the corner of the room And that becomes the journaling chair. And the only thing that you do when you sit in that chair is you journal for five minutes. So now you have a new context that is tied to the behavior that you want to perform. And in the social sense, so this is what we werere talking about previously You want to be able to create a space that is a safe place for thatvironment for that habit to live or for that habit to thrive, let's say Um Sometimes those spaces are ready made. like let's say you want to do yoga four days a week, but you look around your family or your friends in your apartment that you're living, and nobody else is interested. They don't want to do it too. You do it in the living room, you kind of get made fun of or you're stpping on another people's space. they're like, I'm trying to do st in here too. You know, it's just kind of inconvenient Well, you can go to a yoga studio and that's a place where for that hour, you can be surrounded by a group where your desired behavior is normal. You don't have to fire any of your friends, and you can just go to the place where that habit can thrive And I think each habit likes to have that. It likes to have somewhere where it can exist in a way that it's going to be supported or in a way where the environment makes it easy. Sometimes the environment is ready made like that. O times it's not So for me, one of the most useful things that I did in my entrepreneurial career I had no entrepreneurs in my family, no authors. So I had this thing that I kind of wanted to do, but I didn't have anybody close to me that I could like look to first six months that I was an entrepreneur I sent like three hundred cold emails just to other people that were like a year or two ahead of me. Someone who seemed like you're actually doing this thing where you know, you've got this online audience and you're writing about stuff you like Um Maybe thirty people got back to me. I did like a little, you know, Zoom call or whatever, and, you know, we chatted and connected. And then I met some of them at a conference like six months later. So I was six months in, I knew like maybe ten people that I met in person and I had like thirty that I had reached out to. So now it feels like, okay At least I know a couple of people who've done this thing And I started hosting these retreats Every once or twice a year, I get six or eight authors together