Well, you always need this balance of exploring and exploiting and kind of early on when you don't really know what's working, you got to explore a lot. And then once you find a couple of things that work, you keep doubling down on that. And then once things stop working, you explore some more.
But you never fully give up on exploring. You know, like it's it's nice to continue to to dip your toe in and try new things and look for different angles. And, you know, like you never know what you can unearth and discover.
Hi, I'm James Glitter, author of Atomic Habits and an entrepreneur, and you're on Behind the Brand with Brian Elliott. Everyone, welcome to another episode of the show. James, welcome.
Hey, thanks so much for having me. I usually ask my guests, how did you get this job? I stumbled into it, I guess. I, you know, I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
I didn't want to be an author. And so 10, 15 years ago, when I was starting my entrepreneurial career, I launched some different projects or tried to build an iPhone app that flopped. I built some other websites that kind of fumbled around and failed. And I realized that the reason those early projects were struggling was because I didn't have an audience. And so at the time, everything I was reading was saying, hey, you should build an email list.
You should start writing a blog so you can get email subscribers. Then once you have an audience, you'll have somebody you can launch your next project to. And that made sense to me.
And so I started writing. I started a couple of blogs and then eventually kind of learned how to build an email list. And a couple of things happened that were surprising.
The first thing is that I liked writing. I didn't really think that that was going to be something that I gravitated toward, but I liked that. I was a science guy in college, and so I always thought that I was going to be more involved in the sciences, or I don't know, that I would be doing something more like that. And I didn't really think much about English and writing and so on. But when I got to choose the topic, when I could write about whatever I wanted, I really liked that.
So I enjoyed that part of it. And then the second thing that was surprising was that I turned out... to be like pretty good at building an email list.
And whatever quality or combination of traits that you need to build an audience, I like that stuff. Like I like writing consistently. I like thinking about design and conversion and how the website is laid out. I like building partnerships with other companies and brands to get more distribution or to drive traffic to the website. And you kind of need that blend of traits to build an audience.
And so I like those two things. And that led me down this path of writing. And the habit that kind of launched my career was that I wrote a new article on my blog every Monday and Thursday for the first three years. And so that twice a week writing is what led to the growth of JamesClear.com and ultimately the book deal for Atomic Habits.
Put a time step on that. Are we talking about 2012 here? Yeah, so I started my entrepreneurial career in September of 2010. The first 18 months, I'm kind of fumbling around, trying a bunch of different stuff. Nothing's really sticking or working.
I'm taking a couple of freelance clients on the side to make ends meet. I moved into my parents'basement for 11 months at one point. So I was living there. And then around November of 2012, so November 12th, 2012, was the first article that I wrote on JamesClear.com. And I started from zero there, but I did, over those two years prior, develop some skills at least.
I at least knew how to build a website or how to start an email list. Like I... I was starting from zero in terms of audience, but at least I had some knowledge. And so it was November of 2012 was when that twice a week writing habit started. And that led me through the fall of 2015 when I started shopping book ideas around publishers and ultimately signed the deal that became Atomic Habits.
I was on the same path as you, about the same time period. I was at a big Hollywood studio, Universal Pictures. And in 2008, I cut the cord and then started my new startup heading, you know, headlong into the Great Recession.
Those are tough times. That was not, you know, an easy go. But at the same time, it was exciting because I remember blogs were a thing.
Like, influential bloggers, they were the influencers of the time. I'm just curious, though. Let's unpack building an email list because I think it's...
Still relevant more than ever as a direct way to reach people and build a community So what types of things were you doing? You sort of alluded to the fact that you were? Consistent, but like what other things do you think go into the makeup of building a quality community via an email list?
I think there are three big things, you know the at the time I actually thought I was late, you know I thought I thought all the big email lists had been built already and even now that I'm a decade into it, I feel like, oh, it's actually still quite early. You know, my email list now is 3 million, three and a half million people. And the next million person email list is getting started right now.
You know, there's somebody out there right now starting today on the next huge one. So it's still very early. But I would say those three things.
So the first and the thing that you it's the least sexy answer, but is the thing you can never get around, which is every marketing strategy works better with great content. And so you always have to come back to this like North Star of can you make it as useful as possible? Can you deliver the most value possible? Can you live by this mantra of always give value before you ask for value? Um, and you, you have to do that.
Otherwise the other stuff doesn't work that well. Um, and why do you think that is? It's just because so much competition.
Well, there's, there's more competition now. Um, but I mean, I think it's something even more basic than that. It's kind of just this law of reciprocity for humans, which is you want to trust people once they've proven their value.
Um, you know, you're more likely to believe in something once it's. been proven to you rather than just somebody selling it to you. And so, you know, I give away 98% of my content for free. Um, you know, I've written hundreds of articles on the site.
I put the newsletter out for free every week. I'd publish a bunch of stuff on social media. Um, atomic habits is really the only written thing that I've charged for.
Um, and that's like $12. And so it's very interesting the way that it works now, but the internet enables such broad distribution and scale that it is an enormous advantage to have a large audience. And so if you're willing to give away a lot of value for free, you can earn the trust of a lot of people. And then once you have a lot of trust and once you have a large audience, there are plenty of ways to make money. You know, and I don't, I don't really know.
All I can say is that that works well for my business. You know, I don't claim for that to be the best strategy for every business. Um, but for my particular thing, it works really well. So, um, the first step is writing great content. And when I was writing two articles a week, I was spending the shortest I ever did an article in was eight hours.
Um, most of the time it would take about 20 hours. And so that's, you know, there's a 40 hour week right there. If you write two, the longest articles I ever did were like 50 or 60 hours, but that was rare.
That was, you know, I can count on one hand, the number of times I did something like that. So Um, but if you put 20 good hours into an article and do that twice a week for three years, you turn around with a couple hundred that you've written and it turns out that most people haven't put that level of effort into a particular topic. You know, I had this kind of feeling of imposter syndrome early on where I talked to a friend and I said, you know, like, I don't have a degree in this. Like, who, you know, who am I to talk about it?
And he was like, well, the way you become an expert is by writing about it every week. And so. I kind of internalized that and just tried to pour my effort into making the best article I could twice a week. And, you know, you turn around two or three years later and you're in a good spot. So that's the first piece is writing great content.
I would say the second element of building an email list is design. So, you know, you could have excellent content and you put that on your website. But it turns out that what you have is a really leaky bucket.
So people come and visit. but then you don't really convert them at all. You don't get anybody to join the email list. And I would say that mostly comes down to design. And I use design in a broad sense here.
I'm including the copy that's on the website. So that's the positioning that you have for your topic. It's the promise that you make to people about what they'll get when they sign up.
And it's the positioning of the forms and how they're designed and the colors used and all that kind of stuff. Now, I generally think of those elements that I talked about. The two most important are the position of the forms.
So did you get them above the fold? Are they really easy to see and easy to identify on the site? And then the second is the positioning of the content.
So the promise that you make to people about what they're going to get when they sign up. Like when you join my email list and sign up for 321, you know that you're going to get three short ideas from me, two quotes from other people, and one question to think about. And I'm going to send that message out each week.
And it's going to help you do things like build good habits and break bad ones, make smarter decisions, be more productive or more creative. And that's kind of the promise that I'm making to the reader. So if you're interested in those things, that's what this newsletter does. And, you know, there are many other newsletters that talk about different things, but they all do a good job of positioning themselves well if they have a large audience. And then the third and final bucket is basically traffic.
So it's how do you. Once you have a good bucket that's, you know, retaining a fair amount of water and you've got great content that's on the site, how do you pour more water in the bucket? How do you get more people coming to the to the website?
And the answer to this one is trickier because the Internet moves fast and the answer kind of changes basically every two years. So like where I get my traffic from now is different from then where I got it from in two years ago or in 2014 or whatever. Um, you know, there was a couple year period where I got a ton of traffic from Quora.
They had, they had like a blog function for a while and I would publish article on my site and then I would take that article and republish it on Quora, but with links back to my website and back to different pages. And if it went over well, there was a period where Quora would actually email out the top posts on their site to their users. And so occasionally I would get lucky And one would go well and, you know, they'd send a ton of traffic my way. So, um, but they don't do that anymore, you know? So like that was there for a little bit, but then it's gone.
Um, I have a couple of friends who they built huge audiences and 20, like the 2012 to 2014 range when things went viral on Facebook. And there was just, that was like the rise of Upworthy and some of these other brands. It was, it was a huge time for Facebook traffic. And now, now it's very different.
It's kind of more, you have to like pay to play basically. Um, but there are always new things coming like LinkedIn works pretty well right now. Um, up until, you know, a year or so ago, Twitter was a good Avenue. Obviously YouTube is a really good discovery engine, a little bit trickier now because that's video and not necessarily text, but there's always new stuff coming.
Um, in my case, the one that worked really well was, and this was, you know, probably sounds basic now, but 10 years ago, nobody was really doing this. Big websites like Men's Health or Inc. or Entrepreneur Magazine or whoever, they would often republish articles from other outlets. So like Men's Health might take an article from Shape Magazine and then they would republish it on their site. And so I just went to the editors of those publications. I said, hey, you guys are already doing this republishing thing.
Just treat me the way that you're treating some of these bigger brands. And so I'll send you my two best articles from each month. I'll give them to you for free.
But you have to keep the links in there. And so, um, you know, they would get free content and I would get free traffic. They would drive a bunch of people back to my site and I get a bunch of subscribers and so on.
And that worked really well for like a three or four year period. And I drove a lot of my early subscribers that way. So, um, the avenues are always, always changing, but I think that those three general categories, are you creating great stuff? Do you have solid design and you're getting pretty good conversion? And have you figured out one or two ways to drive traffic?
Those are, I think, the main ways to grow an email list. I like it. Nice summary, very succinct. Everything I would expect from James Clear. I like the way your brain works.
I can kind of see it, the wheels turning in there. Mine works very similarly. A follow-up question to that is, do you consider yourself a solopreneur? In other words, I'm thinking about all this tweaking and tinkering and... adjusting your making.
Are you doing this by yourself or do you have a team? Yeah. So I kind of have had different chapters.
Um, the first five years was all me. Um, and once I signed the book deal for atomic habits, I use some of that advanced to hire my first employee. And so, uh, the next like five years was me and Lindsay. She, her name was Lindsay.
Um, she was with me for seven years and then she just left to be an entrepreneur and do her own thing recently, which is great. I'm really happy for her. Um, and I hired a replacement. And so she's been with me for like a year now. And so it's just, I don't consider myself a solopreneur in the sense of like, I don't know, labeling myself that way or whatever, like having a badge of honor about it just being one person.
But I do only have the intention of building a business that's very small and having a very small team. And for the last seven years, it's just been me and one person. And for the first five years, it was just me. And I don't. ever intend for the business to have like 25 employees or 50 employees or anything like that.
I like being small. And part of my reason for that is what I would call the cost of consensus. So there are a lot of hard costs in business. There's like your expenses and software and all this other stuff that you pay for. And sometimes there are these variable costs that come in.
And that's kind of obvious, but the one that is maybe the greatest expense for any business that is almost invisible. is the cost of consensus. It's the cost of getting everybody on the team on the same page and agreeing that we're working on the same thing and rowing in the same direction.
And the bigger the team gets, the higher the cost of consensus gets. And I tried to calculate one time how much it cost me to have an employee, not just with their salary and what I came up with in terms of the amount of time that has to be spent to manage people, the number of meetings you need to have to be on the same page versus just doing the work yourself. and a bunch of other stuff is that like 90% of the cost of having an employee is not their salary.
It's not the paycheck. It's all the other stuff that goes with the cost of consensus. And so, you know, who knows if my estimate is right or not, but I do generally like the idea of let's keep the business lean. I'm kind of like.
allergic to meetings and to what I would call like pre-work. Like all of the, so much of what you consider to be like stuff that happens in business, having conversations about hiring somebody, having conversations about promotions, anything related to HR and payroll, all the meetings that you have that happen before the actual work occurs, all of that is pre-work. It's not, none of that is the actual value that customers pay you for. It's just stuff that you have to do to get to. the hour that you spend where you do provide the real value.
And so I'm trying to cut out as much of that as possible. I love that. This series, we talk a lot about brand and branding.
Of course, there's, you know, blue chip brands out there, the Nikes, the Levi's, the up and comers, the Viore's. And then there's personal brands. And building a personal brand is really important these days, especially. Um, and people come to this show to learn how to build their brand from experts who've done it.
What would you say is the James Clear brand? Well, ultimately any brand is just the work that you do. So in the beginning, or you can try to frame it up as something else.
You can make a promise about something. Like for example, when I started 321 at the top of the newsletter, I wrote the most wisdom per word of any newsletter on the web. So that's me trying to establish the brand.
of what 321 is. If you want a short newsletter that gives you the most value and most wisdom possible in like five minutes, it's this newsletter. But that's only true if I deliver on it, right?
It's only, it's only proven to be true by me actually shipping newsletters over the last five years that have delivered on that promise. So you can do some shaping of the brand through strategy and design, but ultimately your brand always, um, It always becomes the actual work that you do. So I would say that's how it's defined. And so in my case, I would say James Clear's brand and what I strive to do, but also what the work has become, is it's useful nonfiction topics that are practical and actionable for your life and are explained in a straightforward and simple way. And so...
you know, if I do a good job of those things that atomic habits and three, two, one, and the articles on my website and even a tweet or something I share on social media, it is a useful topic that is explained in the straightforward way. And, um, that's what I'm hoping to do, but ultimately it's the work that measures whether that happens or not. I like it.
Uh, dig a little deeper on that, which is, so who's it for? And this is a question I think. You know, and I'm talking to the audience down here too, if you're thinking about building your brand, a lot of us have made the mistake, me included, you know, we create something that we've imagined everybody wants. We have this brilliant idea.
We, you know, we maybe make a prototype or we write a blog post or write a book and put it out there in the world and like, ta-da, you ring the dinner bell, hope everyone comes to get it. But sometimes it doesn't happen. And so a better approach is to, instead of like, try to find customers for your products is to find products for your customers.
So it's like, you know, find demand first. So who's it for? So this would usually be a terrible answer, I think. But something I say occasionally is habits are for everyone, you know? And so I try to write about topics that are timeless and universal.
And I like those those categories because it gives you better chance of success. If it's a really broad market, if there's enormous demand for it, I don't need to win everybody over. You know, I can just have a small segment and still have a successful business. So I do like things that are like that.
Now, having said that, I think there are a couple tests that you can do that help avoid the pitfall that you just mentioned, because I have done that too. I've tried to pursue projects or, you know, create a product that you thought was clever, but it turns out people didn't actually want it. So one of my first rules is that you should never try to create demand.
You should only tap into a demand that already exists. So, um, what do people already desire? Um, You can get at this in a couple different ways. So like if we're talking about books, I like writing books that are in categories that already have books that have sold over a million copies. So if you can't find an example of a book that sold a million copies in that category, I don't think there's enough desire already.
Now, sometimes authors really resist that, creators really resist that because they're like, well, this is what I want to write about, you know, this is what I want to create. And my response is, that's fine. And the secret, is that you actually can write about whatever you want, but what I'm talking about is the positioning and the framing.
And so if you can get the positioning right, the inside, you can actually take it almost any direction. It's really, in the case of a book, it's really about nailing the first 5,000 words so that the positioning is right and the book is tapping into a desire people already have rather than saying, hey, you can't write about this. So as an example, Um, later in Atomic Habits, I talk about deliberate practice. Now, if you're not familiar with it, deliberate practice takes like 30 seconds to kind of unpack, you know, you need to explain the concept and how it's different than regular practice and so on. But habits aren't like that, you know, like just by virtue of growing up in society and kind of being part of culture, we all sort of know that having good habits is favorable and having bad habits is unfavorable.
And I don't need to explain to anybody why you would want. have those things. And so it could have been a book about deliberate practice where I talk about habits, but instead it's a book about habits where I talk about deliberate practice.
And I think the difference in how those two books would sell is enormous. You know, now I don't need to convince you to care about the topic. I just need to convince you that, Hey, if you're only going to read one book about habits, atomic habits is the one to read.
Um, and that's a much different, uh, pitch than trying to get somebody to care about something that they don't understand why they should care about it. So I think, uh, I think positioning is crucial. Yeah, go ahead. Uh, so it just leads me down a path of thinking.
Were there, what were the alt titles for atomic habits? I had a huge spreadsheet. I have like 400 titles that I brainstormed for the book. Um, and what ended up happening was there was, you know, you brainstorm a bunch that you know you're not going to use. You're just kind of like trying to play with words and play around with stuff and see if it leads you down an interesting path.
So, you know, there's maybe 200 of those that you're like, oh, well, I was never going to choose that. I'm just kind of in the brainstorming. But then you look at another 100 or 200 and you're like, well, maybe this is what the book could be about.
Like for a while I thought, well, maybe instead of habits, maybe it's a book about behavior change in general. And that seemed even broader at the time. And I thought, well, maybe that would be a good idea.
But then I decided there's not. People care more about habits than they care about behavior change, just as a term. And so I didn't really like that. Then there's other stuff that's like, maybe you make it about productivity. And I thought that sounded a little too businessy, maybe a little too niche.
Like, what about all the fitness habits or the writing habits or parenting habits? You know, I felt like the book would apply to those things. I didn't want to rule those readers out with the title.
And so then you end up with this package of... uh titles and subtitles that are about habits similar to atomic habits and i started split testing those you know i would test them on my website i'd test them with some polls that i ran i'd test them with social media ads and i ended up with like eight that were all sort of testing kind of at the same level and there wasn't any meaningful separation and at that point it just becomes an artistic decision where you're like okay which one of these do i feel like is best and uh so that's ultimately kind of how i got there you Can you share like the runner ups? There was the surprising power of small habits.
That was a that was one for a little while that I considered. There were a bunch of different versions of atomic habits and maybe atomic is not like like maybe atomic habits is still the title. But do you want to play up the atomic thing in the subtitle? Like, you know, how to get a chain reaction of amazing results or something like that.
But that felt like a little heavy handed. Um, and then there's other stuff where like atomic wasn't involved, you know, so I just wanted to lean on the like tiny changes, remarkable results sort of thing. Um, so there's, there's kind of a, there are a couple different formulas that a lot of, uh, titles follow. And these aren't like, these aren't like known formulas that authors use.
This is just me backing into it from observing what a lot of titles do. But the most common formula is the blank of blank. So The Power of Habit the power of positive thinking, the subtle art of not giving an F, the, um, you know, life-changing magic of tidying up, uh, you know, and so these are all the psychology of money, the blank of blank. And a lot of times it's the art of blank, but it's, it's the blank of blank.
Um, sometimes they'll start to throw a modifier on it, like the life-changing magic of tidying up. It's not just the magic of cleaning or something like that. Um, but whenever the title does it well, they tend to have an element of contrast that's involved.
So the life-changing magic of tidying up, you're like, well, I thought tidying up was a small thing. Now you're telling me it's life-changing. Or another formula is like rich dad, poor dad.
So you contrast these two things. But you have this element of contrast that makes the title interesting. In my case, tiny changes, remarkable results.
So another formula that's pretty common is you take the topic that the book is about. And then you add a modifier to it. So Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willing.
So it's a book about responsibility and taking ownership, but it's not just responsibility. It's the extreme version of that. Or Deep Work by Cal Newport.
It's not just regular work, it's deep work. And so by adding a modifier, you can kind of make a phrase that's otherwise not that interesting or compelling. You can sort of make it your own.
So I kind of used a blend of these. So like atomic habits is that it's, you know, not just regular habits. They're atomic.
They're both tiny and they're powerful. And titles are tough because they have to do a lot of jobs. You know, they need to hopefully they have an element of contrast like I just talked about, which makes it interesting. So like in my case, small thing, big result.
Second thing they have to do, which sounds so obvious, but a lot of titles don't do it. They need to tell you what the book is actually about. So.
In my case, the subtitle is an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones. So that tells you what the book's actually about. A lot of titles do this kind of keyword stuffing thing where they're like, you know, how to be happy, make millions and live your dream.
And you're like, OK, that's not even really what the book is about. You're just kind of stuffing stuff in there that you think people will like. And then the third thing that they have to do is a good a good title owns real estate in the reader's mind.
So I think. you know, a lot of the time a good title is almost a little weird or strange when you first hear it, like The Four-Hour Workweek. It's a little, it seems a little odd, you know, or like Atomic Habits. You'd probably, before the book, you wouldn't have described habits as atomic.
You might have said they were small or little, but you wouldn't have said atomic. That would sound a little strange. And that's actually a good thing because then you can own that real estate in the reader's mind.
And I think a great title does all three. It has contrast. It owns the real estate and it tells you what the book is actually about. And, uh, it's hard.
It's hard to do all three of those things in a short punchy way. I love that insight. That was super fun inside baseball. I know you were both baseball players. Uh, what, what position do you play at?
I was a pitcher pitcher. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
I did a little pitching. I did a little catching. They moved me to third base. Then I didn't grow as big. And so they moved me to second base.
I ended up playing the infield. Yeah, awesome. So, 2018, you write this book, 15 million plus copies later, multiple, multiple countries translated into different languages. What have you observed as the most surprising thing?
that people have taken away from your book. In other words, you're trying to teach people, it seems, how to have better habits, how to eat the elephant one tiny bite at a time. That's been tremendous insight for me, not being overwhelmed and doing my thing. What have you observed? Just anecdotally heard other people talk about how the book has benefited them.
It's really gratifying to write something, to have people find it useful. You know, I still consider it to be kind of like a minor miracle that anybody is paying attention. You know, like you just you write this stuff on your blog and then now all of a sudden I'll see a picture on Instagram of somebody in India or Dubai or Australia reading it.
And you're like, how did the idea even get over there? You know, I mean, it's kind of so it's sort of unbelievable that it's spread the way that it has. You know, I tried really hard to make every idea in the book useful. And so the first draft of Atomic Habits was like 710 pages. And the finished version is 250. And I kind of wanted the opposite problem that a lot of business books have.
You know, you hear that classic credit critique, which is this could have been a blog post, basically. And so I, you know, I was like, well. Let me start by writing way too much, and then I'll just cut out everything that isn't excellent. And I think it worked well.
And I do think that, or at least I hope, that a lot of the ideas in the book are really genuinely useful. And one nice thing is that when I look at feedback, whether it comes in through social media or if you look at reviews on Amazon or Goodreads, people mention different things. It's not like it was just one idea.
And that's the thing that stuck with everybody. Like different people pull different things out of the book. And that I feel like is a really nice thing because I don't, my stance is that there actually is no one way to build better habits. There are many ways. And my job is not to tell you like the way to do it.
My job is to try to empower you and equip you with a broader tool set. And if you have a bigger toolkit, then you're better positioned to figure out which strategy works for you. Now, having said all of that.
I would say the one thing that has surprised me is that there was a lot that was already written about breaking things down, making them small, and about getting better results. And that's usually the thing that we talk about when we talk about habits. Hey, habits will help you make more money or be productive or get fit or reduce stress. And it's true that habits can do those things.
But one of the biggest things that people gravitated to from Atomic Habits is this concept that Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. So it's that your habits are how you embody and shape your identity, not necessarily the focus on results. Now, there's still a lot in the book about driving better results, but that has been interesting, I think, to see is that really what a lot of people have gravitated to, what the aha moment was for many readers, was when they made this shift from worrying about their results. or using their habits to drive better results and instead asking, who is the type of person I wish to become?
How do my habits reinforce that? How do my habits cast a vote for being a certain type of person? And then trusting that if I build that identity and foster that identity, that the results will kind of come along the way. So I would say that's probably been the biggest surprise. Yeah.
Can I tell you mine? Can I give you a little testimonial? Well, so I bought the book just like the rest of the world.
And during that time, I was having a bit of a health crisis. I mean, it wasn't the kind of crisis that you went through with your injury, but I was 30-something and finding myself having debilitating headaches. And I really thought, oh, shoot, do I have a brain tumor?
Am I dying? So I got all the health checks. It turned out everything was fine, but I was just having these really uncurable headaches.
I bought your book. I started reading it. I went down a path of learning that I needed to change my diet and nutrition and sleep habits and all that thing. And the number one takeaway from the book, if I could just net net, it was that.
It was like the habits that you create help you become the person that you want to become. And so for me, there was lots of triggers causing my own problems. One of them was eating poorly. Specifically, I had a sweet tooth.
And I had to say, because it was really hard. I was addicted to sweets. In my glove box, you could find a little box of hot tamales. I would just have little snacks stashed everywhere.
I could get down a sleeve of Oreos before you even blink. I was just bad. Just a sweet fiend. And so when I read that in your book, I thought, I'm someone who doesn't eat sweets anymore. That's just who I am.
I am... Someone who doesn't eat sweets and I'm someone who goes to bed on time and I am someone not like I don't do that It's like this is who I am. This is my identity.
This is who I want to become that helped me so much James I can't thank you enough that just so crystallized What I needed to do and I suppose I thank you amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that and I'm glad it was helpful You know, that's like I said, that's the whole the whole point is to try to be useful. So anytime Anytime somebody finds it helpful, I think it's just the best. So thanks for sharing that.
And I've stayed on that path. Thanks to that advice, uh, that process. I haven't, uh, binged or, or, you know, gone back, uh, since 2018. So I've been on this clear path for what, six going on seven years.
So, um, how about you? Are there any non-negotiables in your life? You know, talk about routines, food systems, et cetera. What are some of these non-negotiables for you? There were before I had kids.
Um, I, I, uh, I, you know, so there are, there are some things that if you just look at, uh, my behavior, then you're like, well. Even if he says it's non-negotiable, it says it's negotiable. It must be pretty non-negotiable. Like I've never missed an issue three, two, one, for example. So that's been going on for, you know, five years and, you know, comes out every week.
So clearly that's something that is non-negotiable. I've been training consistently in the gym for about 15 years now, but I have had periods, you know. post a baby being born or, uh, you know, I had my elbow operating on at one point or whatever.
There's just like stuff that I've had pockets of a month or two where I haven't done it, but I don't know that I've ever gone like say eight weeks without getting a workout in. Um, so, you know, I've had, I've had pockets where it's been down, but, uh, for the most part, I've been pretty consistent for a decade plus. Um, other than that, I would say that it's more project based.
So here's a, this actually reveals, I think, an interesting insight about habits, which is a lot of the time when I talk to readers about habits, I'll do a keynote or something and people, you know, ask questions afterward. What you realize is that in a lot of people's minds, even if they don't say this explicitly, what they think it means to be successful with a habit is they would pick a habit and they'd start doing it and then they're going to do it forever until they die. Like that's what they would think it would mean to be successful.
And I actually think it's quite rare that you would have a habit that would fall into that category. I think most of the great habits that will serve you really well throughout your life, they probably have a season. Or even if they don't have a season where you just never do it again, they have a season for that shape that they take. So let's take my writing habit, for example.
You know, I mentioned for the first couple years, for the first three plus years, I wrote a new article every Monday and Thursday. So that was the shape of that habit at that time. And it worked really well for me. And then I signed the book deal and I spent the next three years writing Atomic Habits. And the writing habit needed to change shape in that period.
And so I wasn't publishing every Monday and Thursday. I was publishing one new article and then I would republish an old article once a week. So I, you know, and then I, after a while I switched to just once a week. So it, you know, it shifted. And then starting in 2019, after the book came out.
and I'm kind of doing a book tour and doing a lot of events and a bunch of other stuff. I started publishing three to one. And so now it's not an article, it's a shorter newsletter, and that's once a week. And I have had a consistent writing habit for the last, you know, 12 plus years. So I think in general, we would probably say I do a pretty good job with my writing habit.
But if I was judging myself off of, oh, I don't publish articles twice a week anymore, you know, I would feel bad about it. And I think, um, You need to have at least enough flexibility that you can figure out the shape that your habit needs for the current season that you're in. And so this interesting insight arises, which is that the way to be consistent is actually to be adaptable.
You know, we often talk about consistency as discipline, stubbornness, the willingness to grit through it no matter what the situation has. But in reality. What it often means is adapting. If you don't have enough time, you scale it down. If you don't have much energy, you do the easy version.
You know, you like figure out a way to not throw up a zero for that day and to show up, even if it's smaller than what you ultimately hope to do. And if you're good at being adaptable, then you maintain the habit. And if you maintain the habit, then all you need is time. And so flexibility and adaptability, I think, are kind of a big part of that discussion. I like that because then that also helps us avoid sort of this self-sabotage, which is, you know, inevitable if we feel like we're failing.
And then we start beating ourselves up. And then, you know, I was speaking for myself, it sort of becomes this, you know, spiral. And you're just like, well, fuck it then. We're talking about doing like a running habit. And he was like, you know, I'll do this for three weeks or whatever.
And then one day I won't have enough time to go for a 45 minute run or whatever the plan was. And so I'll miss. And then I'm like, well, what happens then? And he says, well, you know, I start this self-talk where I'll say, you know, oh, I knew this was going to happen.
Like this always happens. You always try to get in shape and then you fall off track. And then, you know, like why even bother basically.
And my view is like, why does it have to be that way? You know, like we don't have to turn this into this whole evaluation of your self-worth. The little phrase that I like to keep in mind is reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule. So, you know, maybe you do the 45 minute run for the first three weeks and that's great.
But then you turn around in the fourth week and you only have 20 minutes. And what a lot of people do is they think, oh, I don't have time to do the full thing, so I have to miss it today. But my phrase is reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule. So go run for 15 minutes. You know, there's no reason that it has to become this bigger thing, like find a way to be adaptable and to not throw up a zero.
And even if you do less than you would ultimately hoped, it still feels good to make progress. And you can channel that into the next time and show up, you know, maybe you get to do 45 minutes the next time. But it's it's about finding ways to continue to show up even when the circumstances aren't ideal.
Yeah, I love that advice. That happened to me actually recently. I came back from a flight from New York.
I was just wiped out. I didn't feel like doing anything, but I'm just like, you know, I'm committed to doing something. So I just took a, you know, 45 minute walk with my dogs.
I couldn't get to the gym. Uh, I was just exhausted, jet lagged, you know, but I was like, I'm just going to get out and move my bones a little bit. And that was good enough for that day.
And then I, you know, then I recovered and got back, got back at it. Um, inch my way through my workouts. You know, like I starting is always the hardest part. So there's all there's like tons of times where I don't feel like starting. So what I'll do is I'll say, OK, just do the first set and then see how you feel.
And so I'll go I'll do the first set. And then, of course, as soon as you start moving, you start feeling a little bit better. But even then, I will still have times where I don't feel like finishing it.
So I play this little trick on myself where I write the next set down in my workout journal. So I kind of record my workouts manually. And I think, well.
I already wrote that set down, so I need to do that one. And so then I do that one, and then I write the next set down right away. And, you know, I wait in two or three minutes between sets or whatever, and, like, time goes by, and I'm like, all right, this guy already wrote the next set down, so now I got to show up and do that one. So I just kind of, like, inch my way through. And you'd be surprised how often you end up turning around 45 minutes later and you got a good workout in.
I love that. I kind of do a version of that, too. I'll sandbag myself.
So, like, I get the... Maybe I put two plates on, right? I'm doing like 225, lifting really heavy.
And I'm like, ah, shit, this is really heavy today. And I'll go, I know you're supposed to do eight of these, but just do two. Cause that's all you just do two. Two is fine.
And then you get it up off the bar and you start lifting it. And you're like, ah, maybe I could squeak out three, four. Okay. Five.
And then maybe get to five. All right. So kind of sandbag myself mentally. Um, and then once like it's, this works better if you've had a little If you've been working out for a little while, like a couple of years or something, and you're kind of, you know, a little bit more experienced or familiar with your body. But sometimes I will play this little game with myself where I say, okay, I'm, I'm only going to do what feels easy.
You know? So like I, I'll go in and I'll like warm up, pick a weight that feels easy. And then you're like, okay, like I'm a little loose.
I'll, I'll pick like a slider heavy weight, but still something that feels fine. You know? And like, I'm, and you end up, you're going to end up getting a really good workout.
And if you like, you know, I'm not trying to do max effort, but I am trying to like work. the muscle and where it moved the weight. And, um, yeah, you'd be surprised like where you can end up with that. And I like that, that mindset of, okay, I'm going to do the sets, but I'm just going to do what feels easy.
It makes it feel unintimidating to me. You know, it's like, oh, okay. Like there's no reason I can't be doing this.
And it almost makes it a little bit more fun. And, uh, so yeah, I don't know if those little mindset tricks are, are good to get through some of the days. Talk about this idea of temptation bundling, you know, like, uh, giving yourself an incentive.
If I if I do this and I can get reward myself with this Researcher at the pen and she she had this little insight This is where this temptation bundling idea comes from at the time she was really into reading The Hunger Games and so this was like when that book series was out and everything and She knew all she really wanted to do when she wasn't working was like dive back into the book But she was like I still need to go to the gym like do a workout. So She created this little rule for herself where she was only allowed to read or listen to The Hunger Games while she was on the treadmill. And that became her temptation bundle.
So it's basically this combination of something you want to do, so reading the book in her case, with something you need to do, like going for a run. And people can use it for all kinds of stuff. Like, you know, processing your inbox, over-do-work emails is something a lot of people procrastinate on or avoid.
But maybe what you want to do is watch your favorite show. And so you could say, well, I can only have my show on in the background if I'm working through my inbox or something like that. So it's just this concept of trying to pair something you want to do with something you need to do.
And it doesn't always work, but you can come up with like some pretty clever pairs. Like I only listen to my favorite podcast when I'm folding laundry or when I'm like chopping vegetables for dinner or something like that. And so the thing that you kind of are procrastinating on now, it seems a little bit more fun and engaging.
Did you discover anything like that? Those types of hacks or brain hacks while you were writing the book? I have.
So I didn't have anything like immediately like a temptation bundle that helped me write the book. But I did have quite a few things that I did that were like sequencing like that that helped a lot. So the main one was and I have this example in the book, put my headphones on.
and turn on the same playlist every time that I sit down to write. And it's remarkable how well this still works for me. Like when I hear that first song start, my brain is like, oh, you need to start writing. Like my fingers are like ready to move.
Um, and so it takes a little while to get into that rhythm, but once you've done it 10 or 20 or 30 times, it's almost like flipping a switch in your mind. And it's kind of like the pregame routine has started and you, the on-ramp to that habit is smoother and easier. So I really like stuff like that, little things that can kind of get me in the right mindset to get started.
I feel like broadly. You could say that with building habits, there are two big problems that everybody faces. The first problem is getting started, and the second problem is sticking with it.
But if you really think about it, what does it mean to stick with something? It just means that you get started each day. And so really, you could say all problems boil down to making it easier to get started.
And so whatever strategies you come up with that reduce the friction of taking the first step, or starting the first minute, or doing the first rep, That's almost always really high value stuff in terms of getting habits to stick. I think that's great advice. It sounds like what you're saying is you've got to customize it for what works for you.
I'm thinking of like, you know who David Goggins is? You know, David Goggins doesn't take any bullshit. And especially he doesn't take it from David Goggins.
So like when he wakes up and he's like, it's too cold or it's raining outside or I'm tired. He just berates himself. and says, you know, you're doing it, you pussy, you know, get up out of bed. And then he like remembers all the hateful comments that people have given him.
That's what incentivizes him to get up out of bed. All those that have wronged him or kicked dirt in his, sand in his face. That doesn't work for me.
You know, I've got to find other techniques. And I love the suggestion about the playlist because that's very Pavlovian, right? Like one of my favorite shows.
Yeah. And one of my favorite shows is The Office. And I remember that scene where Jim is conditioning Dwight with the Altoids and he plays the little cue from the computer. Remember?
And Dwight's like, I feel like I need a mint. That's what you're talking about. It's like condition your brain, even subconsciously.
It becomes the subconscious thing. It's like, you know, you get yourself in a good mood or positive, you know, momentum. And then before you know it, you've done. eight or 10 reps or you've accomplished the goal. So I love that idea of customization for whatever works for you, just as long as you do it.
Can you talk a little bit more about this idea? I've heard you say that people want incentives, not advice. Can you explain that a little bit more?
Well, nobody really wants advice. They only want what they hope the advice can get them. So, you know, the reason we give advice is because we think, well, maybe it'll help me get the results or, you know, something like that. But if you look at what people actually do or what they actually follow, people basically never follow advice unless it aligns with the incentives. And so it's really it's really just I mean, at some level, it boils down to what is in your self-interest.
And that can mean a lot of different things. Does it help you achieve the result that you want? Does it help you gain status or increase your station in society?
Does it help you solve a basic core problem of life like food or shelter or, you know, things like that? There are many different forms of self-interest, but incentives ultimately tend to align with that. And I'll give you a story, and maybe this will help illustrate what I'm trying to get at. So. In the, I think it was in the early 90s, but somewhere around that time frame, Boeing, the airplane manufacturer, made the shift from manually driven planes to software driven.
And on the first test flight, where they're going to try out this new software, they required that the engineers who build the software be on the flight. And partially there were some reasons for that, like, you know, they wanted to see how it responded and they may make some adjustments in flight. But also, I just always thought like, man, what a beautiful alignment of incentives, you know, like better get it right because your neck is on the line too. And I think if we ask, you know, if we're honest with ourselves, are the incentives that cleanly aligned in most of our organizations or governments or institutions?
You know, a lot of the time the answer is no. And I think a simple way to try to figure this out is to ask yourself three questions. So one, who's doing the work?
Two, who reaps the rewards? And three, who bears the consequences? And when the incentives are aligned, it's often the same person that's doing the work, that's reaping the rewards, and that's bearing the consequences.
And when the incentives are misaligned... Somebody else is doing the work. Somebody else is getting the reward and somebody else is bearing the consequence.
And incentives are tricky because there's, there are multiple going on at once. It's not just about optimizing for one thing and society is complicated and there are a lot of relationships and a lot of priorities to balance. And so it's not always possible to have the incentives aligned cleanly, but it is such an important driver of behavior that I do think it's worth.
putting some real effort and some real thought into that question and leaning against it for six months or a year or two years and trying to figure out for your business or for your project or for your life, can you get the incentives more cleanly aligned? And when you can occasionally find those situations where it really is like win-win or to use the term from the office, win-win-win, when you can do that, it's really beautiful and it works so well. And you're not like trying to swim upstream. And when the incentives aren't aligned, you're always kind of trying to find a hack or a second workaround or some other way to force fit things in. So I think that it is, even though it's a tricky problem, it's worth thinking about carefully.
I like it. So are you thinking about building new businesses outside of the, let's say, outside of your lane? So, you know, you've. You've been doing this now consistently, you know, arguably since 2012, but most recently since 2018, you're on a path. You're speaking, you've got, you know, you're actively writing, you're building community, you're connecting people.
But are you thinking about launching a new business or new businesses outside of the scope of what you're currently doing? Well, so the immediate answer is I'm. thinking about ways to expand the scale of what I'm currently doing.
So you've got atomic habits, and as you said, you can do keynote speaking, or you can, you know, launch the newsletter off the back of that or whatever. There's other things. Yeah.
So I want to talk about, I'm talking about like new, new ventures that you haven't ventured in before. Yeah. So the most different thing that I've done is, um, Adams, which is the app that I launched. So that now all of a sudden I'm in software, you know, it started out as a writer, as an author.
Now there's this like whole new software project, but even that is an extension. of the Atomic Habits brand and IP and thinking and so on. It's an app that helps you build better habits.
I'm also doing some investing, right? So like I'm investing in new businesses. I'm not doing the work, but I'm, you know, like dipping my toe in or being exposed to businesses in that way. I think I will always be an entrepreneur first and an author second.
I don't think I'm, you know, if I'm fortunate enough to live to be 80 years old or something, I don't think I'm going to turn around and have like 30 books. You know, maybe I'll have three or five or something like that. So writing will always be a part of what I do.
But I think being an entrepreneur will always be the tip of the spear. And I definitely am interested in starting other businesses, but I'm not going to do it just to do it, you know, just to like be a serial entrepreneur. I'm going to do it if I have something that I feel like I can't not do, you know. I remember thinking this when I was starting out as an entrepreneur because I didn't have any entrepreneurs in my family or any close friends that were entrepreneurs.
And so I'm reading all this advice about being an entrepreneur, all these, you know, trying to learn from other people who are doing it. And a lot of the things that I was hearing was something along the lines of, hey, this is going to be really hard. You probably shouldn't do it.
And I remember reading that and being like, well, maybe, but I kind of still have to do it. And I... I honestly think those are like maybe the people that should be entrepreneurs are the people who are told, listen, this is probably not a good idea and it's pretty unlikely to work. But even if you hear that, you still are like, I need to do this thing. And that's the kind of person that should go for it. And so what I'm waiting for is another project where it's like, listen, this is probably an uphill battle.
Like, yeah, you were able to do this thing and as an author and that was great, but like this is a different industry and your previous success doesn't buy you any bonus points here. And, uh, it's probably going to be really hard and you're unlikely to succeed. And I still feel like, yeah, but I still got to do it.
Um, so I don't have anything that's like that yet, but I can definitely see there being another chapter in the future where that is true. I'm going to push back a little bit. So let me ask you the different way. If you could trade jobs with anyone or any industry, you know, like off camera, we talked a little bit about, uh, my friend and client, Ken Mitchell, who's got, you know, 60, 60 plus. Restaurant businesses, they're all a little bit different.
And in your neck of the woods, like, do you have any interest in jumping into the restaurant business? Like where are your passions at outside of what you're doing? Like if you could just trade jobs with someone to even test the waters for like, you know, a couple of months without risk. Yeah. I, I, where are my passions at is an interesting question because I think I have a brain that is very easy for me to get excited about a lot of different things.
And so restaurants, yeah, for sure. Like that sounds really cool. I would love to do something like that. Creating a boutique chain of luxury five-star hotels. Yeah, that sounds like really interesting.
I think that could be fun. There's all kinds of stuff related to software that could be interesting. I don't think I would want to touch social media.
That seems like too thorny of a problem. And like there is no way to be happy running a site that's that big. But a lot of other software businesses I think could be really fun. Something that could potentially have like net negative churn and just become like a compounding machine.
That there's some element of that that's kind of cool to my mind. So there are lots of things that are like that, that sound interesting to me. I would say that topics I wrote about were kind of like that too. I had this thing early on the first like six months or year where I wrote about a bunch of different things, not just habits. I wrote about how to have better squat form in the gym or the medical system in America.
And when I wrote about some of those other topics, the feedback from the audience was kind of like, well, that's nice, but maybe keep it to yourself. you know? And when I wrote about habits, that was when people were like, Oh, I want to hear more from you on that. And so I'm kind of looking for the overlap and the Venn diagram of what I'm excited about, which is a lot of stuff and what people actually want to hear from me on, which is a much narrower set. So, um, yeah, I think, I think in that sense, there are a lot of things that light me up.
That said, I was sitting in a restaurant in Chicago a couple months ago and I was eating alone. And, uh, so, you know, I was just sitting there kind of people watching and enjoying the meal. And I don't know anything about the other people in the restaurant, you know, but I'm kind of looking around and there've been plenty of people who seemed happy and like they had good lives and so on. Um, but I went all around the restaurant and I thought, I don't want to trade places with anybody. Um, and so I guess what I'm saying is I have a ton of respect for all kinds of entrepreneurs and there are many different ways to live a great life.
And there are plenty of people who have. better lives than I have in some sense, but I have enough. And, um, I don't, I don't have this feeling of wanting to trade or of wanting to do something different.
I just want to appreciate what I have and to try to make the most of the opportunities that I have. And so in that sense, I'm like really satisfied. And, uh, I want to do things cause I'm like being pulled into them, not because I'm trying to like run away from the last thing or run away from some element of my life. And so, yeah, I feel, I feel good.
I respect that. Can I share what's on my mind? And I want to go back and visit this James Clear Boutique Hotel, what it might look like or feel like or what amenities it might have. So put a pin in that.
I'm super happy and fulfilled in my business. I run a production company and we make all kinds of TV commercials and original content. You sort of mentioned Marie Kondo's book. Marie's my client.
I love Marie. And I love Japan. So I did a study abroad there, and that's how I speak fluent Japanese. And actually, recently, I've been thinking about one of these cities I visited in Hokkaido, which is northern Japan. And they are known for their incredible milk and dairy products.
And I was thinking about making a bespoke butter brand, just a little like passion project. It's the most incredible tasting dairy you've ever had. Maybe second only to New Zealand, which has the best milk on the planet, apparently. But Hokkaido milk is number two.
And I was thinking how cool it would be. One of my favorite butters is this Kerry Gold. I don't know, it's like this Irish brand, right? So I was thinking, man, it would be cool to maybe create this bespoke butter brand.
based on imported Japanese butter from Hokkaido. Because that's, you know, everyone knows Hokkaido who is from Japan. Maybe North America doesn't know about it yet. But like, for sure. Yeah, Sapporo Olympics.
Olympics were in Sapporo in 76. But yeah, I was thinking about this idea of creating a little butter brand. I think it's really cool. I love, I mean, this is kind of like the boutique luxury hotel thing too, which is like...
Small scale, curated experience, really high quality product. And so I love stuff like that. And I love purchasing things like that too, because, you know, I like really like using something that's a quality product or that you can sense a lot of care and thought was put into it.
As an entrepreneur, it's interesting hearing you talk about it. And then. realizing I need to like realign my mindset or something.
I, you know, for the last 10 plus years, I have been in this mode that is all about optimizing for reach and scale. And so, you know, getting millions of email subscribers, selling millions of books, increasing distribution around the world, getting translated into 60 plus languages. Like I'm trying to make the biggest splash possible and increase distribution to the greatest degree possible. So the first thing I think when I think about this boutique butter is, yeah, but you're only going to make like 700 units a year, you know, like it's not going to be, it's not going to scale.
And that's not the point of the project, right? It's to scale. So you like, I guess what I'm getting at is for me, for my like little brain, I'm not in that chapter right now.
Like I'm still in the scaling chapter. And so I feel like the resistance I have to the boutique hotel or to whatever, um, is mostly based around that. It's around like how limited the distribution might be or how, how much time and effort I put in there versus could I spend that same time and effort selling another million copies or getting distributed in another country or something like that.
Um, and, uh, yeah, like there, this doesn't scale is not the only reason to run a business. And like a lot of things about my business are not choices made around that. Like I only hire one employee, you know, I'm not trying to scale the staff.
So on like one hand I live that. in some ways, but then obviously in other ways, my mindset like isn't there yet. Um, so I don't know. It's, it's interesting. I think it's just a question of like what lights you up the most.
And ultimately it becomes a measure for how do you want to spend your time rather than like what leads to the most scale and revenue? You know, I've, I've realized I had this, um, moment of growth, I guess we'll call it in my business with like personal decisions too. So Again, for 10 years, you know, I feel like I'm knocking on every door trying to get people to pay attention.
Like, hello, please. Will somebody read this article? Like, you know, can you please take a look at this? And so you're paying very careful attention to the reach that you have with the work that you're doing and how to reach more people.
And so I'm thinking about how my time is spent. How much is each hour worth? Should I be investing it in a better way? How can I invest my time to get the highest output and so on?
And eventually I came to this realization, which is. That works pretty well for the business. It actually works very poorly for other areas of my life. Like nobody's ever going to pay you to go to the park with your kids or to take your wife on a date or to get coffee with your dad.
And so the, whatever the, however you value your time, whatever the cost of your hour is, doesn't matter for those choices. And the same thing is kind of true for building this boutique butter brand or whatever. It's not really about.
the scale and the reach and the revenue. It's just about you want to invest your time in something that you love. And I feel like that's almost a mindset that's like post-economic, you know, like most people don't have the luxury to make choices like that. And for so much of your career, you're chasing this, um, you know, opportunity to not have to worry about money and to be able to just spend your time on what you love. And when you finally get there, It's hard for a lot of people to get out of that mindset because the switch has been turned on for so long that you're like, oh, I need to suddenly be a different person or look at things in a different way to make those choices.
Yeah, well said. And I think kind of bring it full circle to your advice about building habits. It's a custom job.
So, you know, we're sort of talking about this. idea that Maslow came up with all these years ago about these hierarchy of needs. At the top is fulfillment.
And so how are you fulfilled? Some people, I'm thinking about my brother-in-law, who could have been this incredible, talented sportscaster. I mean, he knows every sports fact. He's like a Bob Costas kind of guy.
He just knows everything. He's risk. He doesn't like risk.
And so he got a stable job and he's doing great. And he's been working nine to five for the past 20 years and just, you know, clocking in, clocking out. And he's got a very safe, stable thing. And that's how he feels fulfilled.
Risk doesn't bother me as much. Of course, you know, it's a little unsettling at times, but like I am a bit more adventurous. And so how am I fulfilled? I'm fulfilled trying new things.
I get what you're saying. Like you've got a tiger by the tail. You don't want to let go. You've got this building community, good things are happening, you see a future. Maybe, you know, you actually end up spending more time with your family because...
you're now getting these economies of scale. Get it. I think it was like 3M or maybe it was also Google.
And they give their employees, I think, 10% of their time or 20% of the time to go out and do new things. And if I was going to give any advice from people who have the kind of mindset that I do, I would say the best time to go out and try new things is when you're feeling great. and fulfilled in your business, when your family life is going great, when everything, like don't go out shopping when you're starving or desperate.
Like that's the worst time to try new things because you don't have a lot of room to fail. It's like, you know, you're on a razor's edge and venturing out could like cause this mortality versus things are going great for me. Things are going great for you. Maybe this is a time for you to say, I'm a I'm going to put aside 5% of my time or money and try something that may not work.
And if it doesn't work, no big deal. You know, and that's not how I think about this butter idea. It's like, now's the time for me to do a little experimentation because I can. Well, you always need this balance of exploring and exploiting.
And kind of early on when you don't really know what's working, you got to explore a lot. And then once you find a couple of things that work, you, you know, keep doubling down on that. And then once things stop working, you explore some more, but you never fully give up on exploring. You know, like it's, it's nice to continue to, to dip your toe in and try new things and look for different angles. And, you know, like you never know what you kind of unearth and discover.
I, um, your question or your, the way you were getting at about what fulfills you. I didn't even really know this about myself until recently, like maybe a year or two ago, but I think the answer is pretty clear for me now, which is I'm happiest when I'm creating. And that can be. that could be creating a book or writing a newsletter.
So something small or something written like that, it could be building a business. Um, I bought a cabin about an hour from our house that I'm like building a new trail system. So that's like a very physical thing.
Um, but as long as I'm creating something new, um, I'm happy. And so it's really the process of calling forth something that didn't previously exist that it provides the most meaning to me. And, um, so I don't know what shape that'll take in the future, but I'm sure that I'll keep going down that path in some way. I love that. Let me take us out on a T.S.
Eliot quote. We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all of our exploring will be to end where we first began and to know the place for the very first time. I mean, we were just sitting back, you know, chopping it up.
reminiscing about the good old days and all that, you know, tracking my roots where I came from. But like I say, man.