Change Your Habits, Change Your Life

There are exceptions, but for most activities in life, you don’t get much out of “one” anything.

Working out once, reading one book, or eating one healthy meal is certainly a positive, but it’s when we are able to repeat these activities, day after day, that we start to make real change.

Of course, most people recognize this; it’s the doing that is hard. To that end, I’ve pulled together resources from three thought leaders (Dr. Andrew Huberman, Dr. B.J. Fogg, and James Clear) who have helped me better understand how humans are wired for change to pursue upgrades in my own life.

Dr. Andrew Huberman, host of the podcast Huberman Lab, is a neuroscientist who studies a wide range of human behavior topics on his show.

Huberman’s dives are deep, so I often recommend him as a second, or third, source to dive into, but I found Huberman’s information regarding the three “phases” of the 24-hour clock, and how each phase relates to our ability to perform new tasks, to be HIGHLY useful, and also thoroughly enjoyed Huberman’s take on “task bracketing”.

The Science of Making & Breaking Habits episode complements the approaches suggested by BJ Fogg and James Clear exceptionally well; even if you are relatively good at adding new tweaks to your routine, I highly recommend this discussion.

Dr. Andrew Huberman

Dr. BJ Fogg, founder of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University, has done an exceptional job of translating his academic research into actionable real-world knowledge.

In short, Fogg noted that whether or not we perform an action depends on our level of motivation, along with the difficulty of the task (Fogg Behavior Model), and that if something is easy, getting it done depends less on motivation; hence, Tiny Habits allows us to take a crawl, walk, run approach by starting with VERY easy benchmarks: doing one push-up, or meditating for fifteen seconds.

You can get into the full story behind the realizations that led to Fogg’s book, Tiny Habits, in his appearance on The Doctor’s Farmacy: Make Behavior Change Stick with BJ Fogg.

To get information from Fogg in a more bite-sized format, check out his discussions with Jim Kwik on the podcast Kwik Brain; Fogg has discussed forming new habits as well as strategies to untangle old habits.

BJ Fogg, PhD

James Clear, author of the best-seller Atomic Habits, takes a similar approach to BJ Fogg (as you might guess from their respective titles!)

As it happened, I came across Dr. Fogg’s work shortly before one of my brothers first purchased Atomic Habits - hence the ordering here - but either is an outstanding resource.

Clear has appeared on many podcasts, but two that I have enjoyed are his appearances on The School of Greatness with Lewis Holmes and The Daily Stoic with Ryan Holiday.

James Clear

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