[S4E9] Atomic Habits by James Clear

We all want to have better habits. With more than 20 million copies sold, Atomic habits has become the de facto manual on habits and one of the most touted self help books of a decade. In this episode, well discuss the books key points and how they can be applied to our lives and careers. Welcome to business Books and company. Every month we read great business books and explore how they can help us navigate our careers. Read along with us so you can become a stronger leader within your company or a more adept entrepreneur. This month we read Atomic Habits by James Clear. First published in 2018, it has quickly become one of the best selling self help books of all time. Clear meticulously studied the psychology and practical side of forming good habits and eliminating bad habits. He then created an easy to read how to manual that can be applied to just about any habit. But before we get into the book, let's introduce ourselves.

I am David Short. I'm a product manager.

Hi, I'm Kevin Hudak, chief research officer at a Washington, DC based commercial real estate research and advisory startup.

And I'm David Kopeck. I'm a technical author and associate professor of computer science at a teaching college. Let's start by talking a bit about the motivation for James clear to write atomic habits.

Yeah, James was a star baseball player in high school and college, and he was actually hit in the face with a flying bat at the end of his sophomore year of high school. After a terrifying hospital stay that he goes into in the book, but it included a medically induced coma, he emerged a slightly different player and a slightly different person. In the years that followed, he embraced good habits in pursuit of constant improvement, and he ultimately ended up winning ESPN's academic All american accolades in college. For him, addressing habits was the key to unlocking his full potential. By 2012, he had started an email newsletter that grew by the dozens of thousands year over year, and he was publishing articles on jamesclear.com dot by the time he hit 100,000 plus readers. He was enlisted by Penguin Books to write this book, and he tells us about that process in the very beginning. In 2017, he also started the Habits Academy, and he's trained over 10,000 aspiring leaders from Fortune 500 companies, sports, the medical profession, etcetera. So he really had a lot of exposure early on with his email newsletter that just kept growing. And then ultimately with the Habits Academy, he's encountered so many different people, so many different leaders, and has heard their stories of good habits, bad habits, and they're all encapsulated in this book.

Thanks for that Kevin now, before we get into the details of the book, I was hoping we could address something pretty basic. What is a habit?

So, I'm sure we all know this, but just to quote directly from the book, in this case, a habit is a routine or behavior that is perform regularly and in many cases, automatically. But I think it's really the things we do all the time. So, you know, what are the activities that each day when you wake up, you perform? Each day before you go to bed, you perform. What are the things that you do habitually and clear goes into a lot of detail about, uh, you know, the, the details of a habit, which I'm, I'm sure we'll get into down the line.

So, just to give some more examples, what are some examples of your own good and bad habits? David and Kevin?

So every morning I wake up, I log on to my work computer, I check slack and email. I make a plan for the day. I then will brush my teeth, take a shower, sort of get motivated for the, whatever rest of the day. I don't actually eat breakfast each morning. So that's a habit that I've changed over my life. I don't drink coffee every morning anymore. That's a habit that I used to have that I've changed. And then in the evening, similar kinds of activities. I brush my teeth, I read a book, and I tend to meditate. So a number of habits that I've built up over time.

You're telling us all good stuff. What's one of your bad habits, David?

I will drink soda. I think that's one of my worst habits. I will eat unhealthily sometimes. I don't know that's really a habit, but it does happen more often than I'd like. There are plenty of things that I wish I didn't do as much.

So you're a choir boy. Okay, Kevin, what are some of your good habits and some of your bad habits?

Well, I was going to say short. Sounds like a genuine Marcus Aurelius over here with his self realization and all those good habits. I'm very, very jealous.

Yeah.

Uh, you know, I'd say on the, on the good habit side, uh, one thing that I've been really committed to is drinking a lot of water. I used to be, you know, short mentioned soda. I used to be a big diet coke drinker. But adding in water to my life has been incredible. I recently joined a gym and started going, and we'll have more on that later when we start talking about good habits and the laws of good habits, I'd say another one was I was a copy editor during college and that gave me a real appreciation for quality control and proofreading. Then to some extent, some working from home habits, right. I'm currently working from home part of the time. And I think what short mentioned about adding some routine and some good habits to simulate the office when even you're at home and then having a separation for those places. And on the bad habits side, I would say sleep schedule, preparing for sleep screen time at night, all of that or things is that I do. James Clear has a very clear antisocial media and sort of pro meditation bias. So I was interested in hearing more about that in the book.

Yeah, that's great. And I'll just add some of my own good habits and bad habits, I don't know, since we're going around the room. So I'm a meticulous philosopher. I always floss twice a day, sometimes more. I am somebody who eats pretty healthily, so I always am watching that. But on the bad habit side, I bite my fingernails, like all the time kind of nasty, right. And this book I'm hoping is going to help me stop that.

Well, he calls that out exactly right in the book for people who bite their fingernails. So you just have to change your identity.

Kopec yeah, yeah. Okay. While we're talking about habits, and again, before we get into the book, just so we have more stuff to talk about as we talk about the details of the book, what are some habits that have helped you in your careers? So what's a habit that you've maintained throughout your career or that you've introduced as your career has progressed that's helped you become more successful?

Jeff, you know, one example that James wrote about that really stuck out to me was when he was talking about reframing potentially bad habits or symptoms into good ones. I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but for years I was the focus group moderator conducting interviews with CEO's of Fortune 500 companies as part of our research projects. I would almost get a little bit of a stage fright, right? He called it the pregame jitters and he framed it in terms of his athletics and his baseball career. But I would get those pregame jitters heading into moderating focus groups or giving big presentations. And so one thing I did was really change my own self perception of that to be more anticipation, right? And the nerves were not necessarily fear of failure, but instead it was anticipation of success. And it was also just understanding that I cared so much about something that I did have nerves about it, right. That I wanted to deliver a great product. So thinking through and reframing those kind of negative symptoms into something positive was big for me. I also thought the 1% improvement rule that he mentioned as well, right. So rather than accomplishing an amazing feat in one day, or becoming a significantly different manager or worker, or learning a programming language, I've been trying to live that 1% better each day rule, right. Or in some ways, even the Goldilocks rule that he mentions, which is always working on tasks that are right at the edge of your current abilities, or at least incorporating some tasks or some behaviors that are at the edge of your current abilities. It allows you to sort of push into new and potentially unfamiliar areas to remain motivated, right. Improve and grow. And then finally, one thing he mentioned was this idea of pointing and calling. He referenced it with regards to japanese railways that the conductors and the train teams do very vocal and visual signals to maintain high reliability and safety and make sure that they're checking all those boxes. At my previous job, when I was a pollster, analysis and quality control inspired by that kind of system, when youre working at a polling firm or now what I do with my real estate consulting, its really a team collaborative effort, and youre constantly referencing and pointing and calling to the data and socializing it throughout the team. And I thought those three things really stood out to me as good career and business habits.

Clay, a couple ill add are one just kind of meeting focused things that have become habitual for me. One is one on ones between me and my direct reports, weekly between me and my manager, weekly between me and skip level reports, either way, on a monthly basis. Another is development conversations. That was something I didnt do earlier in my career that ive added later. I now have monthly development conversations between me and my direct reports and within the my manager. I also kind of talked about it earlier, but frankly, I think these are kind of bad habits that I have, which is the, you know, checking email and checking slack in the morning. I would probably prefer that I don't become so, uh, reliant on the pings of other people that are, that I'm letting that drive my day. I should probably, you know, reflect on what the most important things are before I go and, you know, let other people disrupt with, you know, their requests for, for my or my team's time. So, definitely, like, opportunities that I think I've, I've noticed as I was reading through the book to, to make changes in the work habits as well.

Well, one thing too that I meant to bring up. So for a long time I would write very long emails. And now, with some mentorship from one of my bosses, I've been more clear and more concise and really trying to get to the point and have the sort of background or show my work in the documents and deliverables that I'm sending. And so again, we'll mention accountability partners later. But that mentorship and that accountability partner is very important, that sort of thing, particularly when it's an email that's being sent to multiple people.

I'll just say two of my own that have really helped me in my career. One that James Clear actually mentions is writing every day, something that he was doing himself before creating this book. I have an email newsletters. There's about 500 subscribers in Burlington, where I live that subscribe to my newsletter, and I have a little column in it. I've been running it for a little over five years, and every day I write, even if it's just a couple sentences, something for my column. And that keeps my writing juices flowing because I have a side career as a technical author. I've written five books, and writing is something that you only can be good at if you read a lot. So I'm a consistent reader. So I have a good habit of reading regularly, including the books for this podcast, of course, but also writing regularly. You have to write a lot to become a decent writer. If you just write once in a while, you're not going to be a great writer. And so just doing that every day, even if it's just a little bit, even if it's just those few sentences, and if it's something professional that other people are going to read, and it can't be just garbage, you're going to get better. And that's something he addresses later on in the book. One other habit, and it's one that David brought up, is being on top of my email. I'm really meticulous about replying to people quickly, and I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from both colleagues, bosses, and students as a professor, saying, you know, Professor Kopec is super responsive. He always gets back to me right away, even sometimes at 02:00 a.m. i write to him and he sends an email back right away and I don't let my inbox build up. And people really appreciate that. People like when you get back to them quickly. So now let's get into meat of the book a bit. Let's talk about how clear explains that habits are formed. How is a habit formed?

And I think we all intuitively understand this, but I like the framework that he puts around it. So ill describe it a little bit and then ill go into the framework. It really is just about seeing results that we like in some way, right. Ultimately, theres some kind of pleasurable result that we typically get. And thats the reason that we continue to repeat the thing that we do. And it may be that we get success in our careers or we see positive, you know, changes in our life as a result of the things. Or it may be that we just got a dopamine rush or some other, you know, chemical reaction that may mean it's still not really great for us, but we're, we're getting some kind of pleasure out of it. So specifically, the way that clear breaks it down is the cue craving response reward loop. And so the idea there being that you first have to have some kind of cue for the habit, there's got to be something that triggers you to say, this could cause the habit to happen. From the cue, youll then get a craving, which is some kind of desire for the pleasurable thing thats going to come at the end of the habit. That craving will then induce you to respond, which is actually doing the habitual thing. And then after you do the habitual thing, you will get that reward, which, again, is some kind of pleasurable thing that takes place afterwards, which maybe again, some actual positive thing. You know, you take a walk and you see yourself lose weight, but that's going to be like a very long term thing. So you're probably not going to have like, short term rewards in that case. Or you, you know, smoke a cigarette and you get a nicotine high, and, you know, you very quickly get that, that reward from the action that you're taking.

Thanks for that, David. So there's this clear loop, this clear set of steps. We understand now how they're formed. Another thing about habits beyond how they're formed and is how they are connected to our identity. Why is identity important, according to clear, with regards to habits?

Yeah. Identity for clear is really the core of habits, right. It's the idea. This process includes these two key steps. One is deciding the type of person you want to be, right, your identity. And two is proving it to yourself with small wins. You know, he focuses, for example, on rephrasing tasks, processes outcomes with an actual identity, which really is kind of the rising tie that lifts all boat, right? You may say that you have a goal or you want to create a habit of going to the gym x many times a week. Right. That's just a goal or that's a process to get there. Right. But the identity is I want to be someone who doesn't miss going to the gym or I want to be someone who is consistently focused on their fitness. Identity is about what you believe. He gives the example of quitting smoking. Right. If you say, or you use a statement, like an action statement, that is, quote, I'm trying to quit, that smoker still believes they're a smoker. If you say, for example, I'm not a smoker, that's now the identity. And it's a stronger motivator, it's a stronger driver to actually reach the desired end outcome.

Thanks, Kevin. So we have to think about who we want to be, and that's going to help us form habits around that identity. Let's talk about some of the laws of forming those habits. Clear gives us four of them. What are those four laws?

So the four laws, I'll say them aloud, then I will sum them up. The first law is make it obvious. Two make it attractive, three make it easy, and four make it satisfying. So for the first law, make it obvious. The most important part is to clearly name, call out, even record, and write down your good habits that you plan on doing to make them obvious to yourself. To support this, he then recommends that we use implementation intentions. I will do x action at y time. He tells us to stack habits back to back so that they cluster together almost like neurons in your brain that sort of fire automatically and connect to each other. A big part of making it obvious is also designing an environment that helps you maintain those good or healthy habits. The second law make it attractive. This is about how to actually follow or behave with good habits. He mentions temptation bundling here, which is pairing something you want to do but might otherwise not, with something you need to do. He also says in this section about making it attractive to join a culture or even an affinity group where the desired behavior and outcome is the norm. Right? It's freely accepted, it's encouraged. He also mentions here motivational rituals or activities that make the habit even more enjoyable. Short. Well get into these inverses later. But if you were trying to quit smoking, you wouldnt want to join the culture of the outdoor smoking break and hang out around those folks. And you wouldnt want to create a ritual that when the clock hits 315, its time to go out for a cigarette. The third law of good habits is to make it easy. This is about more than just following or behaving with good habits, but making them sustainable, making them automated. He mentions reducing friction here, so reducing the steps that are required for your good habit, priming the environment to make automation and sustaining that habit even easier. He calls out these decisive moments, which I thought were super important. There's small choices that have big impact, right? Like putting on his gym clothes right when he gets home, Clear says. So there's no other option than to work out, because if his gym clothes aren't there prepared, he said, he might sit on the couch and watch Netflix and need a pint of ice cream. The two minute rule is also something he mentions in this chapter, and that's when you add habits that take no more than two minutes at first or have an unexpectedly delightful short commitment time, and then stack those with the other habits. Those are the quick wins that I mentioned in the identity section earlier. He mentions automation here for the make it easy law, automation wherever possible. And that's how you can guarantee sustainability of the habit. And then finally, the fourth law was make it satisfying. This is when we go beyond just sustainability of the habit. Right. But get to that long term accomplishment. This means immediate rewards and reinforcement. Using habit trackers is something James clear recommends, using accountability partners like I mentioned before, and even having some end of year check ins and reviews, and then what he calls integrity assessments at the half year point. One big thing here, too is his idea of never missing twice. Right. When you miss twice, you miss doing your good habit twice. Your lack of a good habit has actually led to a bad habit. So those are the four laws making it obvious, making it attractive, making a habit easy, and making it satisfying.

Trey. Thanks for that, Kevin. And that missing twice thing that's happening with my newsletter is if I miss a day, I have like an auto thing that says, oh, I was away today. Which is usually true if I do miss a day. And then I feel really, really like, oh, if I miss another day, that's going to be so embarrassing.

Do you even do it on the weekends?

I do it on the weekends, yeah. It's every day. It's literally every day. So I've written, I guess like five years. I've written more than 1617 hundred of those little daily columns.

Missing once is an anomaly, right. Missing twice is a pattern. Right? A habit.

Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Okay, so those are the laws for forming a good habit. Throughout the book, he also talks about the opposite. How do we invert those laws if we want to break a bad habit?

Yeah. So I'm going to kind of mimic Kevin there. I think I had kind of the same idea, but I will credit him because we didn't talk about it beforehand, but I'll list them out and then I'll go into a little bit of detail. So the inversion of the first habit which just to call back to Kevin was make it obvious is make it invisible. The inversion of the second habit, which was make it attractive is to make it unattractive. The inversion of the third law, which was to make it easy, you'll never guess, is to make it difficult. And the inversion of the fourth law, which is to make it satisfying is to make it unsatisfying. So you can again imagine what these might mean. But going back over it, making it invisible is really about taking away the visibility of the habit that you want to avoid. So if you're used to eating ice cream, you know, don't have that readily available, get it out of the freezer, get it out of the fridge, you know, if you have to go somewhere in order to do it, it's going to be less likely that youre going to actually do it. The second one is make it unattractive. So in that its really about trying to set your mindset around the negatives of it. So if previously you thought of cigarettes as an opportunity to socialize with friends and thought of it attractively, instead think of it as something thats going to make you smell bad and make people who arent smokers not want to spend time with you, you know, invert that habit, frame it as unattractive. The third law is make it difficult. So again, I kind of talked about it a little bit with invisibility. If you just don't see it at all then you're not going to confront it. Making it more difficult is again a way that will make you less likely to to deal with it. So just increase the, the number of steps you're going to have to take in order to do this habit. So again, if you are smoking, throw out the cigarettes you have to like leave in order to go buy them. If you are eating too much then get a bunch of good fresh fruit and foods that are going to be easy but don't have any of the bad things around you. The final one is make it unsatisfying. So again, inverting the idea of making a good habit satisfying. When you make something unsatisfying, you're really inverting the reward you're getting yourself to not feel good about whatever it is that you end up doing. You don't want yourself to do. And so he gives a couple of different ways, but I think the most compelling one, and Kevin kind of went into this a bit earlier, is getting an accountability partner. So really have someone else that you're going to have to talk to about this. So have someone else you're going to commit to giving updates. And, you know, if you do that thing that you said you weren't going to do, you have to tell them and you have to let them know, oh, like I screwed up, I did this thing, you're going to feel some guilt about that. And so you're really not going to want to take that action that, you know, you feel bad about. Youre not just going to internalize it, youre actually going to externalize having to tell it to someone else. And, yeah, I really thought this whole framing was a really compelling portion of the book, Trey.

Thanks for that, David. So believe it or not, you actually have covered Kevin and David, the heart of the book in those last two questions. But there are some kind of periphery techniques that clear teaches throughout the book, but especially towards the end that I would call hacks for making it easier to form good habits or break bad habits. So I was hoping we could go into a few of those and ill start with one of my favorites and one of the ones that really spoke to me because I know its been a problem in my own life, having a unique space for each of your habits. For example, if you want to be a good sleeper and have good sleeping habits, you shouldnt probably have a tv in your room where you sleep because thats probably going to distract you. And then youre combining two spaces, an entertainment space with a sleeping space. It's just an example, and that might not be true for everybody. I'll tell you how this has applied to my own life. We have a four bedroom house. We're very lucky, right? And I used to have my own office. And then we used to have an office, a guest room, and we have our bedroom, et cetera. Right. And then after we had kids, I lost my office. And it was a big point of contention between me and my wife is I actually wanted the kid. I wanted to keep the guest room and have the kids have to share a bedroom and so I could keep my office. And she was really against it, and I gave in and I gave up my office. Okay. Now, she's probably right about a lot of it in that the kids sleep better having their own spaces, probably, than if one's much younger than the other, and he's screaming or she's screaming, and then they're waking each other up. It's probably better for them that they have their own bedrooms, but for me, it has just destroyed my productivity at home. So I now have a desk that I put in the guest room. But the guest room, it's kind of like, it's not my space. It's not my office space. It has other stuff going on in it. And I have a desk downstairs I put. But it's kind of like just in the middle of everything. It's like off the side of our dining room. And so now I don't have a clear space for my habit of writing. I'm a writer, and I need space to write. You need complete quiet. I'm a programmer, right? I need space for programming. I need complete silence, and I don't have that anywhere in the house. And so it's destroyed my habits. Even if I am ready, in charge and doing all the other right things to be a writer, to be a programmer, not having the right space to do it in has just destroyed my productivity. To just to illustrate this, right before I had kids, I wrote three books in three years. Since I had kids, in the last four years, I managed to write one book. So you can see how the productivity truly just, like, nosedived. Not having a space for my habits, not having a space for my good writing habits, my good programming habits, et cetera. What were some other hacks in the book that you found compelling?

Just speaking to your example, Kopec, which I think is great, is one thing that he mentions as one of these hacks, is essentially the quote that clear uses is a good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses. He actually used the Dilbert creator Scott Adams, who was looking for areas where you could be in the top 25% of the population. He came down to drawing better than most people, but also having some comedy better than the average stand up comedian. Right. With you, I think I know that you're expanding into covering parenting and your unique take on parenting as well. And I think you're almost finding that kind of value wedge there, combining your life, your perspective as a specialist in programming and technology with parenting. And I noticed that on your Facebook profile. So I just wanted to add that I think you're doing a great job there at creating that new game, both as a publisher, a programmer, and a parent.

Well, thanks for that, Kevin.

But just getting back to the life hacks that we were talking about. One of my favorite ones that he mentioned was reducing friction for the good habits, setting up your kitchen the night before, set yourself up for success, putting your workout clothes out so that they're very visible as one of the laws of good habits, but then also increasing friction for the bad habits. Right. He mentions an anecdote where he would unplug his tv so that when he wanted to watch something, he had to do it with some intentionality. Right. And even he said one rule was that he would state the show that he wanted to watch and so he wasn't just loading up his tv and browsing for hours. And Kopec, just like you, I removed a tv from my bedroom. Right. He mentions that in the book, and I've never gone back. And it's been a great decision. The one that also really resonated with me was the two minute rule. Right. Short but consistent events and activities as part of your habits. When I recently joined a gym, without having read this, even I decided to only go for as long as I was comfortable. Right. And I told myself, it's okay if I stay for only 15 to 30 minutes and do some cardio. It's more important that I actually went to the gym. It makes the gym a place that I want to go. And additionally, because I have a fantastic accountability partner in my girlfriend, Ally.

Thanks for that, Kevin. That makes a lot of sense. And those are some great hacks. Okay. Towards the end of the book, clear gets into the idea that actually forming these habits is great at first, but it can actually, any habit, even a good habit, can become problematic as we become very, very comfortable with it. How so? How can actually even a good habit become problematic if we get into too much of a comfort zone?

To be honest, I didnt like this part of the book as much as some of the other stuff. But I still think he has a good point, which is that you should reflect on the habits that youre taking, because if you dont, you can become complacent. You can just get into a rut. Right. A habit is not necessarily always going to be the right thing, and you may want to change those habits over time. You know, if Kopec had started his daily writing routine when he was younger, it certainly would not have been, you know, an email newsletter to someone else. So, you know, having that ability to reflect and recognize that there are potentially new ways to adapt what it is that you, you may have been doing beforehand can be really important. And so I think it's true that like you want to always look back at your I your routines. I think to some degree I do want to reflect on the suggestions for habits that atomic habits talks about on a regular basis because it is a good opportunity to go back, think about what has become habitual for you, and are these things good or bad? And has something changed so that there might be an alternative that might be similar to what you were doing before but even better for the new times?

I like this section of the book in part because he mentioned a pretty important truth, which is that good habits aren't necessarily glamorous. Maintaining good habits is actually very boring, and clear mentions that at some point with automation, you may actually be creating new errors with your habits and just not picking up on them, or not achieving that new growth that you desire through that good habit. Also, when you start to take too much pride in it, the habit can actually become your new identity. Clear says rather than identify as a baseball player or a strong athlete alone, like he may have been doing in his life at some points, instead consider your identity. I'm the type of person who is mentally tough and who loves a good challenge, which then makes that identity agnostic of specific sports or activities. And instead it becomes eternal, right? It becomes eternal and adaptable. I like the fact that he said good habits are actually boring. If you talk to people with good habits, exceptional habits who have helped them succeed, theyre going to say some of their activities are boring, right? Like going to the gym, meal planning. Sticking to it is the most important part. Reassessing those habits and your identity at certain points throughout the year, throughout your life. Thats why I really love that he introduced this idea of doing an end of year review or strategizing session with yourself and maybe with your accountability partners, and then doing a half year integrity check, right? You're asking yourself questions like why am I doing certain things? And what may I be missing as I automate more? And how do I make this habit, this identity, more sustainable and more satisfying?

Trey thanks for that, Kevin. Now, thinking about the book more at a big picture level, I'm wondering if you found the book to be credible. And what I mean by that is there's a lot of assertions made in the book. A lot of them come from the world of psychology. The author himself is not a psychologist. Do you feel that he did sufficient research, had enough evidence to back up all of the assertions made in the book? Do you feel the book was thoroughly vetted? Do you feel that the book was authoritative on its subject matter so at.

First, when I was reading the book, and this is more of my slip up, my error, he was citing some sources, or he would cite scholars, he would cite historical figures and what they said. I didn't realize that at that point, he had about 25 pages of footnotes in the back of the book. That really backs up a lot of the concepts that he's sharing with us. But still, I felt that the inclusion of those footnotes, the inclusion of those comments and quotes throughout the manuscript itself sometimes felt a little thin, almost like a drive by shooting. I also thought, while it was credible, I think one of the, you know, when we read Christopher Voss's book never split the difference. He specifically mentioned in his anecdotes, his vignettes of some of his students, that they were indeed his students or they weren't his trainings, and he kind of delved a bit deeper into their stories, their thought processes, and how Vos himself would coach them. Right. He was giving us their background, the problem they faced, the negotiation they faced a how Vos coached them, and then how they overcame, built better habits, built better negotiating tactics to drive success. And I thought that that served Chris Voss book really well in this case. Knowing now that James Clear has his habit academy, I would have liked to have seen more explicit call outs, right. And maybe some longer form stories kind of matching that sequential nature of the Voss anecdotes and vignettes. And I think because of that in the clear book, sometimes the identity of the book itself, or clear's voice was struggling a bit. Right. It was a balance between sort of true self help books and maybe a little bit of Malcolm Gladwell peppered in there as well. But he never really embraced either side of that. But I still thought it was credible and authoritative, given his experience and of course, its popularity, how well it's reviewed, that certainly speaks for itself as well. But at some points, I felt like he was kind of getting into maybe too many generic evergreen quips and kind of power phrases, just kind of too clever and almost too cute by half. Throughout the book, he also mentions repetition to the point of getting boring, right? So just like I mentioned before, how sometimes good habits become boring and they should be boring because they're not necessarily glamorous. And I've mentioned in this podcast before how I love it when some of these books get a little meta about what they're trying to achieve and the structure and the form of the book.

Right.

In this case, he kept repeating the laws of good habits and filling them in at the end of every chapter in that kind of rubric, cheat sheet style that we've discussed. And I thought it was really exceptional and it really made sense to me that structure of the book, reading the book and just by habit at the end of each chapter of his checklist, his four laws, the backup behind him in a way clear was almost using his own model to enforce upon us those good habits, forming good habit as we read through the actual book.

I would also say that in general it felt credible, but to be honest, I don't think it's highly cited. So I think in general a lot of the advice just feels intuitive. It feels believable. He does refer to certain psychologists and whatnot and so he kind of a little bit shows his work, but it's not, there's a lot of asterisks in the book but theyre not really like footnotes to this scientific study shows that this is proven. But I do think it genuinely feels like hes done a good job of reading the best stuff about habits and done a lot of personal experimentation and whatnot. He does refer to studies and whatnot sometimes, but yeah, I think its more pop science than it is hard science for sure.

He mentions neurons but then sort of uses it as a clever turn of phrase or like one of those power phrases. I said he doesn't necessarily get into the cognitive and behavioral brain science aspects of it.

Yeah, I mean one thing about it is a lot of the advice in the book is obvious. It's stuff you already knew before you read the book, but nobody just ever wrote down for you or said out loud and hearing it again and maybe backed up a little bit by some anecdotes and a few studies he's readdez makes it stick in your mind more. So I agree with everything that both of you said and it's not trying to be an academic book. But at the same time I think he does enough to back up what he's saying. And the fact that a lot of the advice is self evident doesn't require as much backup as maybe a book on a more, let's say, complicated subject might. Okay, now that the two of you have read this book, is it going to lead to any changes in your work life? You don't need to tell me about your personal life, like we don't need to talk about me biting my nails, but is there anything in your work life that's going to change for you and your careers and your habits for your careers now that you read atomic habits?

So I do almost wish we were recording this a month from now or maybe three months from now, and that we could both or all of us could reflect on. We tried to implement some new habit. Did we actually succeed in doing it through this? So maybe we'll need to provide a addendum to a later episode or something on the, on any of this. But I did do the exercise in the book. I did document a bunch of the different, you know, habits that I think I have. And then I did have a couple that I added that I want to try to add. So I want to try to, like, focus on spending more time with my wife, specifically in certain time periods. I'm not going to go into the details of it on this podcast, but I did try to make them, you know, specific in order to, to be hopefully more, more executed per the, the advice of the book. And taking a walk is another one that I'm trying to implement. So, like, getting outside, getting the sun, and spending time walking each day is another habit that I'm trying to add for myself. So we'll see if I'm able to succeed. I again, associate it with a specific time, but I'm not going to go into the details here.

Okay, Kevin, what about you? And the question was about career. David didn't follow the question, but that's okay. How do you think you're going to change in your career, Kevin, as a result of reading this, any career habits?

Yeah, I think for, on the career side, I was going to say that this idea that, that law of making the habit very visible and not kind of hiding the ball is super important. Again, I've been working, like I said, on email communications, given everything is so virtual now, I think for career as well, just the idea of balancing hybrid work environments and setting up an environment that facilitates that and then adding some habits that make the home workspace more like the actual commercial office workspace is going to be important. I was just going to add on a personal note, like I mentioned, I just joined a gym. And to shorts point, I really think, where he mentioned, I wish, you know, we were recording this a month later. You know, I think for me, I actually might go back and reread this in a month, right after I've sort of had my first month of, you know, being a gym member. And it's almost going to be like what James clear calls that assessment of integrity. Right. Or that sort of mid year check in for sure.

Okay, thanks for that, Kevin. Kevin. David, is there anything else in the book that we didn't get around to talking about that either of you wanted to mention.

One thing I think we didn't mention was habit stacking. And so that was an idea that I think could be pretty effective, which is around adding another good habit to some pre existing habit that you might have, which maybe its not even necessarily a good one. Right. But associating something that youre already doing with something else so that it can get you to do that other thing. So if you are always having a cup of coffee and you want to start spending 1 minute of mindfulness or something, maybe youll say, im going to do my 1 minute of mindfulness before I get my cup of coffee. And so now you have this kind of positive thing that you enjoy already, and you now start to associate it with this other habit that you're trying to add for yourself. So I think habit stacking is a good one that I'll try to embrace as well.

Ian, one thing that we haven't talked about was given our shared Dartmouth lineage as Dartmouth alums, I was surprised to learn one of his vignettes, that John Henry Patterson was a Dartmouth grad who essentially popularized the cash register. So James clear used it as an anecdote for automating good habits, in which essentially the cash register, which only unlocked when there was a sale, and you would put the money in, you would put a corresponding receipt that that automation emphasized good habits. By deleting the bad habit of potentially stealing, he ended up seeing his revenue go up by $5,000 in his stores, the equivalent of, I think he said, $175,000 or so in today's dollars. And James John Henry Patterson ended up starting the national cash register Company.

Thanks, Kevin and David. Okay, so let's think about, again, the book as a whole. If you had to say, this is the thing that I really took away from it, this is the most valuable thing from the book for me personally. What was it for the two of you? What was your biggest takeaway from the book?

The heritage or the meaning of the name? Atomic habits. Right. That big outcomes and good habits start small and at that foundational atomic level. And I think that that gives me a level of hope and optimism that you don't have to boil the ocean overnight, and that some of these things, like the two minute rule, lead to even better outsized outcomes. Start very small with that first step.

Trey.

For me, I think it really is kind of the cheat sheet that he repeats throughout the book. I think that was really the key to the whole thing. So the four laws around creating bad habits, the four inverted laws around breaking bad habits. I think really those critical components are what ill take away, Trey.

For me, the biggest takeaway was actually about how much our habits are determined by our environment. Trey and I mentioned earlier the thing for me about my office and not having a proper home office anymore and how much thats affected me. And I have thought about it before, but this book really put it in focus. But he talks about in the book how our habits are not about just willpower. I always thought I was somebody who had pretty good willpower. I dont have a lot of big vices, but I think a lot of that is just following a lot of the laws in the book. And ive been following them over the years without knowing that theyre laws of habits. He gives an interesting example in the book that really made a big impression on me about folks who, during the Vietnam War, soldiers, american soldiers who got addicted to heroin out in Vietnam, and then they would come home to the United States and not anymore be addicted to heroin. 90% of them, he said, stop being addicted when they came home to the United States. And thats not how, as he says in the book, we normally think about drug addiction. We normally think about drug addiction as something that somebody has thats their problem, not the problem of the environment that theyre in the. But at least in the case of these soldiers, it was that it was such a bad environment out there fighting the war in Vietnam. It was leading them to do drugs, and there were a lot of other people doing drugs around them. And then they would come back home to their normal lives in the states, and they weren't in that bad environment anymore, and they could give it up. So anyway, the bad habit of doing drugs, according to clear at least, was largely a product of the environment. And so I really never thought about certainly drug addiction that way. I did a little bit, I mean, but not to such a great degree. And it's made me think about how a lot of the things that are problematic in my career and my personal life have to do with how my environment is not properly set up. And it's actually made me think about my dad. My dad, who was an incredibly prolific author and just worker in general. He's a really hard worker. Wherever we lived, he always made sure he had whatever house we bought and we moved a lot. He had like an incredible office space. And now I see why that was so important. And I think as a kid, I was like, oh, it was like his office. It wasn't like off limits to me. But it was like, it was really like his space. And now I see how important that is. And not everyone's privileged enough to have the ability right now. I don't have my own home office space and I can't afford to build another room or something on the house. But if we can find maybe ways around that in our lives, its so important. Having the right environment is so important. And this book has really emphasized that for me. Jeff okay, so now the most important question, the question that all of our listeners are on the edge of their seats waiting for us to answer. Do you recommend this book? And if you do, who should read it?

So, to be totally honest, I dont really recommend this book. I mean, its very popular, I think, for clear reasons, but I do think we have conveyed the vast majority of the value. And I would frankly say what I said before, the cheat sheet for the book, I think is literally 80% of the value of the entire book. But that being said, it is not a bad book by any means. Theres a reason that its popular. Its a very readable book. I think anyone could enjoy it. I just think its very repetitive. Um, I think a lot of the stories that I'd read in it, I'd heard before. And so, like, I think it has a good framework, but I think that's kind of it. Like, I mean, it, it did kind of grow out of a blog and stuff like that. So like, I get it. Like, I don't, I don't blame the author or anything. He got, you know, new value out of the same material. So I certainly think I learned things from it, but I do think, like so much of it was from like that cheat sheet that I can't really recommend the whole book.

Yeah. Echoing short I definitely agree with him on kind of the structure and the value of this book being in that cheat sheet that we've mentioned quite a bit. The rubric for the four laws of good habits versus the inverse laws as well. I would recommend it, though, for me personally. For example, as I'm embarking on this gym, weight loss and fitness journey, I think it was pretty encouraging for me to read some of these vignettes and to be exposed to that sort of a rubric cheat sheet. So I would recommend this book to those who are really embarking on any sort of initiative to form some of these good habits when you have an acute need for this book, for the encouragement, for the advice that's contained therein. But I wouldn't necessarily recommend this for career professionals who are looking for career advice and management growth and training. Like some of the other books that we've reviewed on this podcast, he actually mentions in the back of the book that he's posted on his website, jamesclear.com comma, some bonus chapters that apply the four laws and other concepts to the business world. But even there, its really just how the good habits, the laws of good habits apply to product marketing. He didnt really apply it to leadership in your organization or management skills, working in collaborative teams with your peers, etcetera. The habits and examples that he mentions didnt apply to those many facets of the business world. It was more well, one of the laws of good habits is make it visible and make it obvious. Well, he equates that to making sure you have good product visibility on the shelves, talking more to product marketers than to folks who are looking for actual leadership development in business. So I think there was probably a missed opportunity to apply this book and the laws of good habits to career growth and creating and keeping good habits in the professional world. But I do hope for our listeners that we did bring out some of those comparisons, some of those analogs in this podcast.

Yeah, I agree with you, Kevin. For me, we're a business books podcast, right? And weve started this season doing a couple self help books. But this book is not really going to help you as much in your career as say the other self help book we did, how to win friends and influence people. That book really has some great advice that can help anybody no matter what career theyre in. This book, I think will help you a lot more with your personal life than it will with your career. Although certainly theres habits that we could be better in and we talked about some of them in this episode. He just doesn't use them a lot as examples, so it doesn't make it as concrete for career advice. On the other hand, I do recommend the book as a whole. I think it is explaining things that, yes, when you hear them are obvious to you. But sometimes you need to have something written down and read about with anecdotes for really to make a big impression on you and lead you to making changes. Even if it's obvious there was nothing in the book that kind of blew me away, with maybe the exception of that anecdote about the Vietnam soldiers that I mentioned earlier. But other than that, I mean, everything in the book, I was kind of nodding my head as I read it, but it's written in a very easy to read manner. I mean, I read the hardcover and it was about 250 pages. Right. But there's so many blank pages in the book, which was really weird, actually. There's a lot of blank pages between chapters and between parts. The books actually probably less than 200 pages of actual content if you take away the diagrams of the blank pages. So its super easy read. He makes it very digestible. Its very easy to follow. And I think if you are having any kind of personal struggles, its useful. I think theres a reason it sold more than 20 million copies. But I agree with you, Kevin. I dont think its super applicable to our careers in the same way that how to win friends and influence people.

Washington I don't really disagree with anything you said there kopeck the one thing I just want to add is it's just really not a book. It's a series of blog posts that he turned into a book. And I really think the vast majority of it is there. I think you're right again. I definitely did learn things from it and I did nod along. And I think you're right. I think you sold it in the right way. It is going to give exactly what you described. It's not even 250 pages. It's a blog post that got turned into a book, a series of blog posts.

Yeah, but you know what? Its like a $15 book, right? And if it helps you, like, whatever the struggle is in your life, whether thats giving up alcohol or, you know, or losing weight or trying to stop biting your nails, whatever it is. Right. Like its worth that $15. I mean, if it gave you a little bit of insight into how to do that a little better, I think theres a reason that its such a popular self help book. Okay. We are actually at the end of our season, believe it or not, guys, it's been incredible doing another season with the two of you. But we're not going to do all of our, how wonderful we all are right now because we're going to do one more episode. We're going to do an end of season four finale, and that's going to come out probably sometime next month. And we're going to look back, talk about the books that we loved, give you some of the books we didn't like so much, and also give you a little bit of behind the scenes. How do we actually go about picking books? How do we attract authors and what episodes this season performed? Well? What didn't? And we'll have some fun, too. So looking forward to having that decompression with the two of you next month. Is there anything either of you want to plug? And how can our listeners follow you on social media?

You can follow me on xavidg short.

You can follow me on X at.

Hoodax basement Hudaks, and I'm on X at Dave Kopeck. D A V e K o P e C. Almost didn't spell my own name while there. Don't forget to subscribe to us on your podcast, player of choice. Don't forget to leave us a review. We actually read all the reviews, and we'll see you next month. Have a wonderful month. It.