January 23, 2019

Why You Need Atomic Habits with James Clear

47 minutes

This episode is brought to you by Your Clockwise Week—a personalized weekly structure built around your actual life, not an ideal one. If your week feels full but not fitting, you can learn more at mikevardy.com/yourclockwiseweek.

This week on the podcast, I speak with James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. James is an expert on habit formation who offers not only theories backed by science, but also practical strategies that will help you achieve powerful, atomic-level results.

On this episode, James and I had a really productive discussion on a range of topics from the journey of putting the book together, how alarm clocks fail me (or I fail alarm clocks), turning off the internet router at 10 PM to keeping the beer at the back of the fridge and Crossfit.

Talking Points

Designing and Defining Atomic Habits: Two main lenses to look the book through

The two-minute rule in scaling down a habit and actually making it stick

Importance of slowing down and awareness for effective behavioral change

Having a variety of small things organized toward the same goal

Solutions for setting up efficient timing

Strategies for building good seasonal habits

Tools to make habits stick and break through biases

The three reasons/meanings behind the use of the term “atomic”

Creating a journal that makes it easier to build habits that is useful but not fixed

Quote

“Many of our behaviors are socially reinforced… When the social reinforcement is so strong, we overcome the obstacles in our environment. The key insight there is you want to join a tribe, a group where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. Because if it’s normal in that group, then it’s going to seem attractive to you to do it even if it’s not convenient.”

Relevant Links

Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich | Amazon

The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris | Amazon

Baron Fig’s Clear Habit Journal

Use Freedom to Block Websites, Apps, & the Internet

Facebook Newsfeed Eradicator

Distraction-free YouTube (Chrome extension)

Trello.com

James Clear

@jamesclear on Twitter

@james_clear on Instagram

James Clear on Facebook

I learned a lot from reading Atomic Habits and through my conversations with James and I’m sure you will too. And make sure to catch the next episode where I have Joey Cofone as my guest for a back-to-back habit tracking and intentionality goodness.

Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.

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If this episode resonated, I’m exploring ideas like these more deeply in my upcoming book, Productiveness. You can follow along as it takes shape at mikevardy.com/productiveness.

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By Mike Vardy

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