Your outcomes in life are often a lagging measure of your habits.
We think the thing that needs to change
is the bank account or the test score or the number on the scale
but actually the thing that needs to change
are the habits that precede those outcomes.
Rather than making the goal the default,
the thing that you focus on almost exclusively
let's make the system the default
and then only check in on the goal occasionally
to see if we're moving in the right direction.
Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment
it's actually not the thing that you're looking for.
We think the results are the thing that needs to change
but it's actually the process behind the results.
Like if you have a messy room, let's say your bedroom is mess
and you set a goal to clean that room
you can get motivated and do it for two or three hours
and then you turn around you have a clean room for now.
If you don't change the messy habits that led to a dirty room in the first place
then you turn around two weeks later and you have a messy room again.
And so actually you don't need a clean room you need better cleaning habits
and then your room will always be clean.
You don't need to lose weight you need better eating habits
and then your weight will always be around where you want it to be.
You don't need more money you just need better financial habits
and then you'll always have enough money to manage the thing that comes up.
And umm...
I think that's one of the reasons why small habits matter so much
they don't necessarily transform your life overnight,
right, right away, like doing one pushup does not transform your body
but it does cast a vote for being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts.
Or meditating for one minute
might not give you an immediate sense of calm in your life
but it does cast a vote for being a meditator.
The real goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner.
The goal is not to write a book, the goal is to become a writer.
Because once you have adopted that identity
you're really not even pursuing behavior change anymore
you're just kind of acting in alignment
with the type of person you already see yourself to be.
It's kind of like true behavior change is really identity change
because once you've changed that internal story
it's way easier to show up each day,
you're not even really motivating yourself that much to do it
you're just like this is who I am now.
There's sort of this like yo-yo effect
you know, like someone trains for a half marathon and then they run the race
and that race motivated them to train for the last three or four months.
And then the race ends and they stop and take a week off
than a week turns into two weeks than two months and so on
and then they turn around like four months later like,
man, I haven't ran in months like I need to sign up for a new race or something.
Because if it's all about the goal
as soon as the goal is achieved you don't have that motivating you anymore.
But if instead it's about being a runner
then even once, even once you finish the race
you still have a reason to show up again the next week
because you're like, well, I just, that's what I do is I run,
- that's who I am. - Right?
And so I think that that's a more...
in pretty much any domain
true long-term thinking is really goalless thinking.
It's much more about
being that person, developing that identity, following that system
and then you just happen to realize your potential along the way.
So what you come to realize
is that your habits reinforce a particular identity
and sometimes this can be positive and sometimes it can be negative
the story could be things like,
I'm bad at math or I'm terrible at remembering people's names
or I'm not good at remembering directions.
And all of those stories... that's just an internal story that you tell yourself
but each time you have an experience that reinforces that
the story gets solidified.
And so I think the method, the- the takeaway here
is that every action you take
is kind of like a vote for the type of person that you want to become.
And if you can master the right actions, if you can master the right habits
then you can start to cast votes for this new identity
this desired person that you want to be.
Good habits become easy habits
when you can learn to find joy in delaying gratification.
There's no rush
build for the long term guys.
It's as if they're standing at the foot of a mountain, they can see the summit
they can see the thing they want, I want to make an impact
what they don't see is the mountain.
This large immovable object
you can go up fast, you can go up slow I don't care
but there's still a mountain.
What they don't understand is that life,
that relationships and career fulfillment
are a journey.
There's no app for that.
I got nothing
you've got to go through the slow plotting, annoying, meandering process
called career and life.
Everything in my life, when something got hard, I quit.
I wasn't great at reading, I wasn't great at writing so I just quit.
I couldn't catch on as fast as you,
I had to work harder than you, so I quit.
Like man, if I could just go that distance, that extra mile
to just go, ju- just to finish
I want to feel victory and victory for me wasn't winning, it was just finishing.
This is one of the things that's challenging about building better habits
is that they're very easy to dismiss on any given day
right like what is the difference between
eating a burger and fries for lunch or eating a salad
not a whole lot on any given day
your body looks basically the same in the mirror, the scale hasn't really changed.
It's really easy to dismiss it in your mind and say, "Oh, this is kind of insignificant"
but you know you turn around 2 or 5 or 10 years later
and you realize, "Oh, wow, those daily choices really did add up."
It's just much harder to see on a granular basis.
The cost of your good habits is in the present
and the cost of your bad habits is in the future.
And the fact that we prioritize the present over the future
ends up making a lot of habit change difficult for that reason.
The ultimate form of intrinsic gratification
is a reaffirmation of your desired identity.
So if you...
if your desired identity is
I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts or I'm an athlete.
Every time you're doing a squat literally, you can be in the middle of the rep
and you're already getting gratified
because you're acting in alignment with the type of person you want to be.
It's like, "Oh, I just did that rep, I didn't miss this workout,
that feels good"
Umm, now, I do think it takes a little while to get to that point
where that actually feels like you.
You know, you can imagine somebody goes to the gym for the first week or the first month
they don't quite identify that way yet
because they haven't spent enough time there.
Steven Pressfield
I think it's in "The War of Art" he has a piece where he talks about a wolf
and how the wolf develops a territory right?
But the only way that it develops a territory
is by being there, by walking around the terrain every day
and then it starts to feel like this is mine, this is my home.
And he talks about writers doing that by like
you make the chair and the computer and the desk in your office
your territory, becomes your terrain.
And I think that that is true for most habits too
like when you walk into the gym for the first time you feel very uncertain
it's not your territory, you don't feel like it's your terrain.
But once you show up again for a week or month or year
at some point you cross this invisible threshold
where it starts to feel like, "Yeah, this is for me" or "I belong"
and that I think... once you've crossed that stage
it becomes more likely that you can get that kind of reaffirmation of your identity
and start to instantly feel gratified.
But there are other things that you can do in the short term
to feel more gratified while you're working on those habits.
So here's just one little tactic,
let's say that you're either
trying to work out or build a habit of meditating or something
and so each time you do your habit of meditating for five minutes
you have this little jar of marbles and you've got like 100 marbles in there
and 90 are red and 10 are blue
and after each instance of your habit
you walk over and you pull a marble out of the jar.
And if you pull out one of the 90 then nothing happens
it's just like a pat on the back, good job you did what you're supposed to.
But if you pull out one of the 10
then you get some kind of reward, that's exciting to you
maybe you get to watch Netflix for an hour and not feel guilty
or go for a walk outside or take a bubble bath
or buy yourself a new jacket, whatever it is,
like something that that feels rewarding.
And what you just did was you introduce an element of immediate gratification
and of like surprise and delight to the whole process.
And so...
yeah, that first week when you're meditating
you still might not identify as a meditator
or you still might not have a sense of calm watch over your life
but you have this other interesting thing that is rewarding right away
that maybe gets you to stick with it
while you're waiting for those long-term rewards to accumulate.
Well, so we do have and this definitely plays an important role in habits
we do have a bias toward the present
and that makes sense, right?
That example I gave about like finding a berry bush
you know, 100 meters away.
Well, you should in fact go get the food that's close by
and not the food that's on the other side of the mountain
because that just makes logical sense, you'd rather have it now
especially when we were not in modern society, right?
For 99.999% of human history
we're just trying to survive like every other animal.
And so, umm...
you should try, you should prioritize
immediate food, immediate shelter, immediate water, immediate safety.
And in fact our brains are wired to do that.
But modern society is a whole different ballgame
because we have all these things
that actually you should prioritize delayed outcomes.
So you go to college now and then you graduate in four years.
You save for retirement today and then you retire decades from now.
You show up at work this week and then you get a paycheck in a month.
And so, it's actually like there are all kinds of things we do in modern society
that require you to delay gratification
and that runs a little counter
to what our wiring is or what our pref- biological preference is.
There's a sort of an a misalignment of rewards
that often happens with habits.
So there's an immediate outcome, an immediate reward
and then an ultimate reward.
And for your bad habits,
one reason bad habits stick so readily that they they form so easily
is because bad habits often the immediate reward is favourable. Right?
Like what's the immediate reward of eating a doughnut
it's kind of great. It's sweet, it's sugary, it tastes good.
It's only the ultimate reward
if you repeat that habit for 6 months or a year or two years
that is unfavorable.
Meanwhile, good habits are often the exact opposite
the immediate reward of going to the gym or going to the gym for like a week
isn't really that great your body's probably sore.
You don't have much to show for it, your body looks the same,
the weight hasn't really changed
but if you stick to that for 6 months or a year or two years
then the ultimate reward is favorable.