Podcast: The High Performance
Published Date:
Mon, 27 Feb 2023 01:00:19 GMT
Duration:
1:15:46
Explicit:
False
Guests:
MP3 Audio:
Please note that the summary is generated based on the transcript and may not capture all the nuances or details discussed in the podcast episode.
James Clear is a writer and speaker, known for his bestselling book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. Atomic Habits spent every week of 2021 on the New York Times best-seller list, usually in either the No.1 or No.2 spot and it has been translated into more than 50 languages. In this episode, James shares his insights on achieving your goals, building new habits and how to stay on track.
They discuss the importance of finding the balance between contentment and struggle that allows you to perform at your highest level. James has learnt the best techniques to manage his time and keep himself focused. He shares why it’s important to not cling too tightly to your identity, “it takes courage to walk back down the mountain”.
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**Navigating the Balance Between Contentment and Struggle:**
- **James Clear:** Fulfillment comes from fulfilling your potential, not clinging tightly to your identity.
- **Jay Comfrey:** Every action is a vote for the type of person you want to become.
- **Clear:** Habits reinforce your identity, and progress requires walking back down the mountain to grow.
**Avoiding the Trap of Over-Pursuit:**
- **Clear:** Chasing more money can lead to a worse daily life if you're already meeting your needs.
- **Comfrey:** Greatness reveals itself on bad days when you're not coasting on the good ones.
**Overcoming Ambiguity and Clarifying Intentions:**
- **Clear:** Complexity often masks simplicity; removing ambiguity requires effort and self-reflection.
- **Comfrey:** Clarity comes from focusing on the most important things and avoiding distractions.
- **Clear:** Not taking on too many projects and knowing what you're optimizing for are crucial.
**Filtering Inbound Demands and Opportunities:**
- **Clear:** Success attracts distractions, necessitating a system to handle and filter inbound requests.
- **Comfrey:** Placing a value on activities, considering leverage, scale, and reach, can aid in decision-making.
- **Clear:** Prioritizing work that keeps working once it's done can lead to high-leverage outcomes.
**Finding a Sense of Mission and Purpose:**
- **Clear:** His sense of mission is to be useful and impact as many people as possible.
- **Comfrey:** A sense of purpose directs decisions and helps make trade-offs.
**Letting Go of Ego and Status in Pursuit of Growth:**
- **Clear:** Clinging to your current identity hinders growth; progress requires letting go and starting anew.
- **Comfrey:** Many people fear this leap of faith, but it's often less scary than imagined.
**Embracing Self-Awareness and Reflection:**
- **Clear:** Behavior change starts with self-awareness and continual check-ins.
- **Comfrey:** A process of reflection can help identify what you truly want to achieve.
- **Clear:** Helpful constraints can prompt creativity and lead to better outcomes.
**Designing a Lifestyle that Serves You:**
- **Clear:** Aim to design a business and lifestyle that serves you, not one that chains you.
- **Comfrey:** Constraints can help you start and lead to unexpected, valuable outcomes.
**The 1% Rule and Continuous Improvement:**
- **Clear:** The 1% rule is about making small, consistent improvements over time.
- **Comfrey:** It's not about perfection; it's about progress and building momentum.
- **Clear:** Focus on the process, not the outcome, and celebrate small wins along the way.
**Avoiding the Comparison Trap:**
- **Clear:** Comparing yourself to others can lead to discouragement and self-criticism.
- **Comfrey:** Everyone's journey is unique; focus on your own progress and growth.
- **Clear:** Embrace the idea that you're always a beginner, and there's always more to learn.
**Finding Your Edge and Unique Contribution:**
- **Clear:** Identify your strengths, interests, and values to find your edge.
- **Comfrey:** Your edge is where you can make a unique contribution to the world.
- **Clear:** Don't be afraid to experiment and try new things to discover your edge.
## Podcast Episode Summary:
**Atomic Habits and Achieving Peak Performance**
* James Clear, author of *Atomic Habits*, shares his insights on achieving goals, building habits, and maintaining focus.
* The key is to find a balance between contentment and struggle to perform at your highest level.
* Clear emphasizes the importance of patience and consistency in achieving long-term success.
* The "never miss twice" philosophy encourages individuals to quickly recover from mistakes and reclaim positive habits.
* Clear advocates for embracing struggle and challenge to develop resilience and appreciate success.
* He highlights the significance of finding groups where desired behaviors are the norm to align personal habits with social norms.
* Clear suggests the concept of "river jumping" to explore different industries and learn from peak performers in various fields.
* He emphasizes the value of deconstructing successful strategies and implementing relevant elements into one's own approach.
**Key Points:**
* **Goal Optimization:** Clearly define what you want to achieve and ensure your actions align with your ambitions.
* **Signals of Progress:** Look for early indicators of progress to gauge whether your current habits are leading you in the right direction.
* **Social Constraints:** Surround yourself with people who support and encourage your desired behaviors.
* **River Jumping:** Explore different industries and learn from peak performers to gain new perspectives and insights.
* **Deconstruction:** Analyze successful strategies and adapt relevant elements into your own approach.
* **Patience and Consistency:** Maintain patience and consistency in your efforts to gain a competitive advantage.
* **Never Miss Twice:** Quickly recover from mistakes and reclaim positive habits to minimize the impact of setbacks.
* **Embrace Struggle:** Welcome challenges and difficulties as opportunities to grow and develop resilience.
* **Balance of Contentment and Struggle:** Find a harmonious balance between contentment and struggle to achieve optimal performance.
# Podcast Summary: The High-Performance Podcast with James Clear
**Key Insights:**
1. **Balance Contentment and Struggle:**
- Optimal performance requires a balance between contentment and struggle, allowing you to perform at your highest level.
- Don't be afraid to throw in a zero occasionally; nobody is perfect.
- It's better to show up and maintain the habit than to miss a day altogether.
2. **Small Habits Lead to Big Wins:**
- Focus on building small habits that are easy to stick to, rather than trying to overhaul your entire life overnight.
- The key is to master the art of showing up consistently, even on bad days.
- Over time, these small habits will compound and lead to significant improvements.
3. **Choose Habits That Fit Your Personality:**
- Find a version of the habit that is enjoyable and fits your lifestyle and personality.
- This will make it more likely that you'll stick with the habit over the long term.
- Experiment with different approaches until you find one that resonates with you.
4. **Identify Your Upstream Habits:**
- Identify the habits that have a positive impact on other areas of your life.
- Focus on building these habits first, as they will have a ripple effect on your overall well-being and performance.
- Examples include waking up early, working out, and eating healthy.
5. **Prioritize Sleep, Exercise, and Reading:**
- Prioritize getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, and reading consistently.
- These habits are crucial for maintaining a good day and living a high-performance life.
6. **Trust Yourself and Start Early:**
- Trust your instincts and start pursuing your goals early on, even if it means going against the grain.
- Don't let fear or doubt hold you back from taking action.
- The sooner you start, the more time you have to learn, grow, and achieve your objectives.
7. **Master the Art of Showing Up:**
- Focus on showing up consistently, even when you don't feel like it.
- This is the key to building habits and achieving long-term success.
- Start with small, manageable goals and gradually increase the challenge as you progress.
8. **Define Your Identity and Align Your Habits:**
- Define the type of person you want to become and align your habits with that identity.
- Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to be.
- By aligning your habits with your desired identity, you reinforce your sense of self and make it more likely that you'll achieve your goals.
**Overall Message:**
Your habits shape your identity, so choose them wisely. Focus on building small, consistent habits that align with the person you want to become. Over time, these habits will compound and lead to a high-performance life.
**Summary of the Podcast Episode: James Clear on Achieving Goals, Building Habits, and Staying on Track**
1. **Introduction:**
- James Clear is an author, speaker, and expert in habit formation.
- His book, Atomic Habits, has sold millions of copies and has been translated into more than 50 languages.
- In this episode, James shares his insights on achieving goals, building new habits, and staying on track.
2. **The Balance Between Contentment and Struggle:**
- James emphasizes the importance of finding a balance between contentment and struggle to perform at one's highest level.
- He has learned effective time management and focus techniques.
- It's important not to cling too tightly to one's identity; "it takes courage to walk back down the mountain."
3. **Key Insights from James Clear:**
- The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door. Just get on with it. Just begin. Open the door.
- Everything you do casts a vote for the person you want to be. Even a small step gives you a cast of vote.
- Writing a line doesn't finish a novel, but it casts a vote for you being a writer.
4. **Ollie Sallies' Journey from Employee to Entrepreneur:**
- Ollie Sallies, a guest on the podcast, shares his journey from running a ski school in the Alps to founding Ski Yodel, a technology-led company that aims to make skiing more accessible.
- He discusses the challenges of starting a business, including the difficulty of raising investment and managing a team.
- Ollie also talks about the impact of the High Performance podcast on his entrepreneurial journey, both positively and negatively.
5. **The Importance of Community in Entrepreneurship:**
- Ollie emphasizes the importance of community in entrepreneurship, particularly in building a business that customers feel they own and are a part of.
- Ski Yodel's crowdfunding raise, which attracted over 500 investors, is an example of how community can be leveraged to support a business.
6. **Conclusion:**
- The podcast highlights the importance of finding balance, embracing struggle, and building a supportive community to achieve high performance in all aspects of life.
[00:00.000 -> 00:08.640] Hi there, I'm Jay Comfrey. This is High Performance and this is an amazing episode. I can't wait
[00:08.640 -> 00:13.680] for you to hear this because this is the podcast that reminds you it's within. Your purpose,
[00:13.680 -> 00:18.160] your story, your ambition, they're all there. All we do is unlock it by turning the lived
[00:18.160 -> 00:22.720] experiences or the great learnings from the planet's highest performers into your life
[00:22.720 -> 00:28.280] lessons. And right now, we have a really special episode because today we welcome
[00:28.600 -> 00:30.960] bestselling author, James Clear,
[00:31.320 -> 00:35.680] who delivers us one of the most compelling episodes of this podcast since we
[00:35.680 -> 00:38.960] started three years ago. Here's what's in store.
[00:40.280 -> 00:44.240] Every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
[00:49.520 -> 00:53.200] And I think this is the real reason, the true reason that habits matter, is that they reinforce your identity. You know, the tighter that you cling to your
[00:53.200 -> 00:57.480] current identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it. Who is the type of
[00:57.480 -> 01:00.880] person I want to cast votes for? What is the type of identity I wish to reinforce?
[01:00.880 -> 01:10.160] And how are my habits shaping the story that I have about myself? And if you can get those two things aligned, then the results can kind of come as a natural byproduct
[01:11.720 -> 01:17.640] Man, you'd be surprised how often people are already making enough money to support their life
[01:17.840 -> 01:20.400] But then they choose to make more money
[01:20.460 -> 01:30.180] But live a worse daily life if you're already at that threshold to choose to make more money and live worse days seems like an awful trade. If you only show up on
[01:30.180 -> 01:35.420] the good days, you're not really getting any separation between you and the average person.
[01:35.420 -> 01:39.540] In a way, greatness only reveals itself on the bad days.
[01:39.540 -> 01:48.640] Oh man, right, so we recorded this just recently. James was in the US, we were both in the UK,
[01:48.640 -> 01:51.520] and sometimes I hate it when we're not with the guests because I just feel like I don't
[01:51.520 -> 01:55.840] get a connection, but this was the total opposite. Like James was fully invested, really keen
[01:55.840 -> 02:01.320] to come on the podcast, shares so much with us. And I have honestly taken a whole bunch
[02:01.320 -> 02:04.400] of things away from this that have already changed the way that I interact with people
[02:04.400 -> 02:06.440] on a daily basis, the way that I think, the way that
[02:06.440 -> 02:10.720] I live my life. I'm really really excited for you to hear this one. So I'm just
[02:10.720 -> 02:15.720] gonna shut up and let James take it away. I'm just over the moon and excited that
[02:15.720 -> 02:19.080] you get to hear the kinds of learnings and lessons from a best-selling author
[02:19.080 -> 02:26.400] who has such a unique take. Just do one thing for me, okay? Listen to this and then share it
[02:26.400 -> 02:32.940] because I want so many people to hear this episode. Enjoy, James Clear with myself and
[02:32.940 -> 02:40.320] Professor Hughes on the High Performance Podcast.
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[04:54.280 -> 04:57.000] James, thank you again for joining us on High Performance.
[04:57.000 -> 04:58.480] Yeah, of course, of course.
[04:58.480 -> 05:00.360] Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you.
[05:00.360 -> 05:02.800] Let's start with this question.
[05:02.800 -> 05:06.800] In your mind, what is high performance? There are kind of two things come to mind either
[05:08.520 -> 05:16.460] Fulfilling your potential so, you know, we are capable of so much but it is so rare to have a moment where you are fully utilized
[05:16.980 -> 05:21.160] So fulfilling your potential thing seems like it qualifies related to that
[05:21.820 -> 05:27.680] Not being your own bottleneck, we are again capable of so much but talk ourselves
[05:27.680 -> 05:34.320] out of so many opportunities, of so many achievements, attempts. You know, in many ways,
[05:34.320 -> 05:39.760] the hardest thing is not to keep winning but to keep reaching because you often talk yourself out
[05:39.760 -> 05:49.680] of trying something else. So if you're not your own bottleneck, you're in a position to be, to fulfill your potential. Those are the two things that struck me first.
[05:49.680 -> 05:55.200] Okay, so human beings first appeared on earth around two million years ago. So
[05:55.200 -> 06:00.600] why are we still talking ourselves out of things? Why are we still our own
[06:00.600 -> 06:04.040] bottleneck? Why have we still not managed to get to this point where we
[06:04.040 -> 06:06.500] fulfill our potential? Because it feels to me like every generation
[06:06.500 -> 06:09.000] learns all the things the previous generation learned.
[06:09.000 -> 06:10.000] Yeah, that's probably true.
[06:12.500 -> 06:14.000] Trade-offs, I guess.
[06:15.400 -> 06:16.900] A lack of self-awareness.
[06:17.300 -> 06:18.700] Competing priorities.
[06:19.100 -> 06:20.900] I think all these things play a factor.
[06:21.600 -> 06:24.000] Not being clear about what you're optimizing for.
[06:24.300 -> 06:28.520] No one's out there trying to make a poor decision. You know, nobody is trying to waste their
[06:28.520 -> 06:33.980] time or be ineffective. I think it's just that life is dynamic and what we were
[06:33.980 -> 06:37.960] previously optimizing for may not be what we should be optimizing for in the
[06:37.960 -> 06:42.520] moment. Or maybe we've entered a new season of life and we're slow on the
[06:42.520 -> 06:45.800] uptake. We kind of are still inheriting the
[06:45.800 -> 06:50.660] inertia or the old habits that we've been following and we haven't upgraded or improved
[06:50.660 -> 06:52.660] our strategies yet.
[06:52.660 -> 06:59.340] Maybe what we really want is a little bit different than what is socially accepted or
[06:59.340 -> 07:05.760] what we would be praised for or what the people around us want. And so we're forced into this
[07:05.760 -> 07:10.680] tension between choosing what we feel like we want internally and what we feel
[07:10.680 -> 07:17.360] like we'll be praised and supported for. And in many cases, the desire to belong
[07:17.360 -> 07:23.400] will overpower the desire to improve. And so this desire that we all have to bond
[07:23.400 -> 07:27.000] and connect, to be a part of community, to fit in with our friends and family,
[07:27.000 -> 07:31.000] sometimes that conflicts with fulfilling your potential.
[07:31.000 -> 07:36.000] It's really being forced into these trade-offs over and over again that makes it a continuous battle
[07:36.000 -> 07:45.500] to try to return and refocus on what matters most to you or clarify what is important in this season, so that you can recommit to those habits
[07:45.600 -> 07:49.140] and maybe shape your environment or your social groups
[07:49.240 -> 07:52.040] in a way that supports it, rather than hinders it.
[07:52.140 -> 07:54.680] So, if we're talking about removing ambiguity
[07:54.780 -> 07:57.140] from our world, James, I think that's a really appropriate
[07:57.240 -> 08:01.320] place to almost jump in with you, because your writing
[08:01.420 -> 08:04.860] is brilliantly unambiguous. You know, like, it's a real,
[08:04.960 -> 08:06.480] it's a great compliment
[08:06.480 -> 08:09.320] that I was saying to Finn, our producer before
[08:09.320 -> 08:11.680] that when you're reading your book,
[08:11.680 -> 08:13.520] like what often occurs to me is that
[08:13.520 -> 08:15.160] the ideas are very familiar,
[08:15.160 -> 08:16.720] but the way you express them
[08:16.720 -> 08:18.680] is really clear and unambiguous.
[08:18.680 -> 08:22.800] So how do you remove ambiguity from your world
[08:22.800 -> 08:27.120] to keep that clarity of intention and purpose behind what you do.
[08:27.760 -> 08:33.920] Complexity often is just like kind of a mask or a disguise. And, you know, what we really want
[08:33.920 -> 08:40.080] is actually pretty simple most of the time. But getting to the root of that, sifting away through
[08:40.080 -> 08:46.900] all of the noise and finding the signal, takes a lot of effort and a lot of work. You know, I don't know that I have this figured out
[08:47.000 -> 08:48.100] any better than anyone else.
[08:48.200 -> 08:49.900] You know, I struggle with all the same things
[08:50.000 -> 08:52.100] everybody else struggles with, and that's why I write
[08:52.200 -> 08:53.600] about the topics to begin with.
[08:53.700 -> 08:55.900] You know, my publisher said to me
[08:56.000 -> 08:57.700] when I was working on Atomic Habits,
[08:57.800 -> 08:59.400] we write the books we need.
[08:59.700 -> 09:01.700] And, you know, I definitely felt that way.
[09:01.800 -> 09:03.200] I mean, I, you know, do I procrastinate?
[09:03.300 -> 09:04.600] Sure, all the time. You know, like,
[09:04.700 -> 09:06.520] have I focused too much on the goal
[09:06.520 -> 09:07.520] and not enough on the system?
[09:07.520 -> 09:08.760] Yeah, absolutely.
[09:08.760 -> 09:11.760] And so it's really a lot of these messages
[09:11.760 -> 09:15.720] are reminders to myself to refocus on the process
[09:15.720 -> 09:17.560] or try to commit to building better habits,
[09:17.560 -> 09:19.080] to get back on track quickly
[09:19.080 -> 09:22.360] and not let one mistake become a dozen mistakes.
[09:22.360 -> 09:25.240] So I don't know that I have a good answer
[09:25.240 -> 09:26.880] to how to live a life with clarity,
[09:26.880 -> 09:29.800] but some of the things that I try to do
[09:29.800 -> 09:32.720] include not doing too many things.
[09:32.720 -> 09:35.240] So if you're optimizing for too many things at once,
[09:35.240 -> 09:37.840] it's very hard to remain clear.
[09:37.840 -> 09:39.760] You just have too many irons in the fire.
[09:39.760 -> 09:41.200] There's too much going on.
[09:41.200 -> 09:44.800] That is easy to do when you're choosing
[09:44.800 -> 09:47.680] between a good use of time and a bad use of time.
[09:48.400 -> 09:53.440] It becomes harder to do, and I think this becomes increasingly true as you get deeper and deeper
[09:53.440 -> 09:59.280] into your career, that it becomes harder to do when you're choosing between good uses of time
[09:59.280 -> 10:27.000] and great uses of time. In a sense, the most dangerous things on your to-do list, the things that are most likely to remove clarity and cause confusion and smart people are so good at coming up with like valid excuses or
[10:27.280 -> 10:29.280] developing stories that sound really
[10:29.880 -> 10:35.080] Reasonable so you'll look at that list and you'll be like, oh, well, I need to do this
[10:35.080 -> 10:38.920] Like this is number three, you know, like I have it on the list for a reason. This is a good way to spend time
[10:38.920 -> 10:40.120] I'll be productive
[10:40.120 -> 10:46.860] But the truth is items three through five are actually the greatest distraction to doing items one and two
[10:47.220 -> 10:52.560] Because you can convince yourself that you're being productive while still avoiding the highest leverage work
[10:53.080 -> 10:54.400] so
[10:54.400 -> 11:00.180] Not taking on too many projects. I think is a really crucial part of it. Obviously, there's sort of a
[11:00.760 -> 11:05.840] Connecting point there like a pre step which is you need to know what you're optimizing
[11:05.840 -> 11:06.840] for.
[11:06.840 -> 11:09.280] You need to know what, what is the most important thing.
[11:09.280 -> 11:10.520] And that requires a little bit of self-reflection.
[11:10.520 -> 11:15.560] Can I just dive in and ask you a little point on that, James?
[11:15.560 -> 11:20.280] So when we created High Performance, it was basically meant to be a podcast.
[11:20.280 -> 11:30.000] It wasn't meant to be a podcast and a book and a live tour and corporate speaking and appearing on TV and radio shows and all of the other things that it's become, right.
[11:30.000 -> 11:37.000] So it's almost procrastination is so easy now for us because there are so many things demanding our attention.
[11:37.000 -> 11:48.560] So I totally get what you're saying and I am, I mean, we've been recently writing a theater show and it's number one on the list, but it's number three in terms of the things I've been working on because there
[11:48.560 -> 11:51.240] are easier things just to move higher up the list.
[11:51.240 -> 11:52.960] So I'm totally with you.
[11:52.960 -> 11:56.280] My problem is the things I'm doing rather than what I should be doing.
[11:56.280 -> 12:01.200] I can't, I feel I can't get rid of because they're coming our way without us asking for
[12:01.200 -> 12:02.200] them.
[12:02.200 -> 12:03.960] And I'm sure lots of our listeners will feel the same.
[12:03.960 -> 12:05.200] What would you say to them?
[12:05.200 -> 12:08.560] John Glaser Yeah, it's a really good point. I think
[12:09.200 -> 12:13.520] success has this quality where it tends to eat itself. You know, you do something well,
[12:13.520 -> 12:19.040] and because of that, new opportunities come your way. And if you just think about like each day has
[12:19.040 -> 12:28.000] a certain amount of surface area where you live those 24 hours, and things happen, you know, somebody comes up to the door and they knock on it or people send
[12:28.000 -> 12:30.800] messages to your inbox or you receive something in the mail.
[12:30.800 -> 12:34.900] You know, it's very unlikely if you keep living days that you're not
[12:34.900 -> 12:36.800] going to have distractions creep in.
[12:36.800 -> 12:39.500] That's just kind of part of how the cycle of life works.
[12:39.500 -> 12:44.500] And so you need to develop a system as that inbound increases for
[12:44.500 -> 12:45.480] handling and filtering all of it. And so you need to develop a system as that inbound increases for handling
[12:45.480 -> 12:47.040] and filtering all of it.
[12:47.040 -> 12:49.960] Sometimes it requires like a really extreme move.
[12:49.960 -> 12:52.360] Like in my case, once the book took off
[12:52.360 -> 12:53.800] for the first couple of years of my life
[12:53.800 -> 12:55.480] or first couple of years of my business,
[12:55.480 -> 12:57.920] I would answer every email that came in.
[12:57.920 -> 12:59.600] Sometimes I was even sending emails.
[12:59.600 -> 13:01.640] Like I was, you know, somebody signed up to the email list
[13:01.640 -> 13:03.920] for the first like 10,000 subscribers,
[13:03.920 -> 13:05.860] which was usually just, you know, 50 a day
[13:05.860 -> 13:06.700] or something like that,
[13:06.700 -> 13:07.800] I would send emails out and say,
[13:07.800 -> 13:09.060] hey, thanks so much for signing up,
[13:09.060 -> 13:10.320] like really excited to have you here.
[13:10.320 -> 13:12.720] And then you get over 10,000, you can't do that anymore.
[13:12.720 -> 13:15.520] So then you just respond to the inbound that comes in.
[13:15.520 -> 13:18.520] And then you get over 100,000 or 500,000 or whatever it is,
[13:18.520 -> 13:20.880] and then you can't respond to the inbound anymore.
[13:20.880 -> 13:22.880] So now the whole inbox is just shut off
[13:22.880 -> 13:24.600] and it's just, I'm not a responder.
[13:24.600 -> 13:26.280] And I don't love that solution,
[13:26.360 -> 13:30.440] but I needed an extreme filter like that because otherwise there was no time left
[13:30.480 -> 13:34.400] to write the next book or to do the thing that got people to come in the first
[13:34.400 -> 13:35.240] place.
[13:35.320 -> 13:40.080] So you kind of have to be continually upgrading your filter for what you say no
[13:40.080 -> 13:40.920] to.
[13:40.960 -> 13:44.880] And that's a really hard thing to learn because sometimes things that like
[13:44.880 -> 13:45.440] previously,
[13:45.440 -> 13:49.840] you know, two years ago, this opportunity would have been the most exciting thing to come across
[13:49.840 -> 13:55.280] your desk all week. And now you have to say no to it. And so it's difficult to kind of learn that.
[13:56.080 -> 14:02.640] So is it about placing a value then on the things that come in? Because as an optimist,
[14:02.640 -> 14:05.440] I go everything at 100% and think everything
[14:05.440 -> 14:10.520] could be the next amazing opportunity. So is this about what's the value of that? You
[14:10.520 -> 14:15.000] know, like I suppose my mind thinks, well, hey, sending an email to everyone could be
[14:15.000 -> 14:20.000] the golden ticket that separates you from every other author and brand builder on the
[14:20.000 -> 14:21.460] planet, you know?
[14:21.460 -> 14:30.480] Another way I like to think about it is what is the work that keeps working for me once it's done? So, you know, I heard this phrase one time
[14:30.480 -> 14:34.380] about email. It was this executive from Microsoft and he said, email is where
[14:34.380 -> 14:39.720] keystrokes go to die. And if you think about it, you know, throughout the course
[14:39.720 -> 14:43.240] of your life, you have a certain number of keystrokes. We all do. We don't know
[14:43.240 -> 14:46.940] exactly what the number is, but there's some limited finite amount of times
[14:46.940 -> 14:48.700] that you're gonna touch the keys.
[14:48.700 -> 14:51.560] And the more that you spend those keystrokes
[14:51.560 -> 14:53.000] on answering emails,
[14:53.000 -> 14:54.880] the more you're spending those keystrokes
[14:54.880 -> 14:56.400] on one individual person,
[14:56.400 -> 14:57.720] or maybe two or three,
[14:57.720 -> 14:58.560] but for the most part,
[14:58.560 -> 15:00.520] it's just individual communication.
[15:00.520 -> 15:02.520] But if you spend those same keystrokes
[15:02.520 -> 15:05.000] on writing an article that gets posted to the blog,
[15:05.000 -> 15:08.000] well now a million people could potentially read it.
[15:08.000 -> 15:13.000] And so that is a way of leveraging those keystrokes in a much more high leverage way,
[15:13.000 -> 15:17.000] and that is also placing a value on the activity.
[15:17.000 -> 15:19.000] It's not necessarily a monetary value.
[15:19.000 -> 15:23.000] It's more thinking about leverage or scale or reach, but that's another way to do it.
[15:23.000 -> 15:25.100] And then also that question that I just mentioned,
[15:25.100 -> 15:28.160] what is the work that keeps working for me once it's done?
[15:28.160 -> 15:29.840] Something like this is a good example.
[15:29.840 -> 15:31.800] You know, we record this interview,
[15:31.800 -> 15:34.200] and after we're done, a year from now,
[15:34.200 -> 15:35.480] somebody could listen to it,
[15:35.480 -> 15:38.380] and this work, this time that I'm putting in right now,
[15:38.380 -> 15:40.240] is still gonna work for me,
[15:40.240 -> 15:42.080] even after this hour is complete.
[15:42.080 -> 15:45.760] I'm trying to find ways to kind of like multiply my effort
[15:45.760 -> 15:48.560] rather than to spend it once and then it's gone.
[15:48.560 -> 15:52.120] But one of the obvious points that stems from your answer
[15:52.120 -> 15:54.840] there, James, is that they all direct back
[15:54.840 -> 15:57.080] to an original source.
[15:57.080 -> 16:00.600] Now, some people refer to this as a sense of purpose
[16:00.600 -> 16:02.720] or a sense of mission.
[16:02.720 -> 16:05.840] What would you say is the sense of mission that you're on
[16:05.840 -> 16:10.640] that gives you that clarity to then make those decisions?
[16:10.640 -> 16:12.840] It's probably still a little squishy
[16:12.840 -> 16:14.600] and not like super clearly defined,
[16:14.600 -> 16:17.920] but generally I would say it's trying to be useful.
[16:17.920 -> 16:20.560] I try to maximize for reach rather than revenue.
[16:20.560 -> 16:22.600] So I'm always trying to like impact
[16:22.600 -> 16:23.880] the most number of people
[16:23.880 -> 16:29.600] and not worry as much about the money side. If you do that well, then the money side usually tends to take care of itself.
[16:29.600 -> 16:33.200] You know, the person with the largest audience usually has a lot of opportunities for driving
[16:33.200 -> 16:38.240] revenue. So it tends to work out fine. That's kind of my general sense of mission is can I
[16:38.240 -> 16:42.880] create something useful? Can I try to be as useful to the broadest number of people possible?
[16:43.440 -> 16:50.320] You know, there's a little bit of a personality thing associated with that, which is, you could, like for a long time, I thought about
[16:50.320 -> 16:55.040] going to medical school. You know, a doctor makes a really meaningful difference in a smaller number
[16:55.040 -> 17:01.520] of people's lives. So it's like a really high touch, but lower volume sort of thing. Whereas,
[17:01.520 -> 17:07.840] you know, like 10 million people have read Atomic Habits, I don't think anybody is under the impression that the book is making as big of a difference
[17:07.840 -> 17:13.640] as like your doctor might make. So it's not as high touch. So it's a, it's a lower touch
[17:13.640 -> 17:18.340] impact, but it's a much broader surface area. My personality gravitates towards that more
[17:18.340 -> 17:22.520] and is interested in that. So it's kind of figuring out what, what you're particularly
[17:22.520 -> 17:25.120] interested in. There is another thing I wanted to mention
[17:25.120 -> 17:29.040] kind of connected to these last two questions and how you filter your time and thinking about
[17:29.040 -> 17:33.360] sense of purpose and all that. A lot of the things that you're saying yes to, you may be saying yes
[17:33.360 -> 17:37.760] to it because your ego is involved or because status is involved or because you're going to
[17:37.760 -> 17:42.560] be praised for it in a certain way. And when you say, oh, it's hard for me to give that up,
[17:43.520 -> 17:45.140] it maybe is just hard for you to give that up, maybe it's just hard for you
[17:45.140 -> 17:48.660] to give it up because you're like, you know what, I've already invested like 10 years
[17:48.660 -> 17:52.320] in my career, and if I give this up, then that means all that time was kind of wasted
[17:52.320 -> 17:55.900] or I lose a little bit of the status that I had in the industry.
[17:55.900 -> 17:59.840] And sometimes that's required to continue to grow.
[17:59.840 -> 18:04.080] You know, the tighter that you cling to your current identity, the harder it becomes to
[18:04.080 -> 18:05.480] grow beyond it. And some of the people that I admire the most, identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.
[18:05.480 -> 18:07.880] And some of the people that I admire the most,
[18:07.880 -> 18:09.680] some of the entrepreneurs I've seen grow the most,
[18:09.680 -> 18:11.240] some of my friends,
[18:11.240 -> 18:13.640] they have this willingness to kind of walk back down
[18:13.640 -> 18:14.640] the mountain a little bit
[18:14.640 -> 18:17.080] and then maybe climb an adjacent peak,
[18:17.080 -> 18:19.840] but that requires a lot of courage to walk back down
[18:19.840 -> 18:23.040] for a little bit, to look foolish, to start something new,
[18:23.040 -> 18:25.000] to maybe give up or release a little bit
[18:25.000 -> 18:29.560] of the status that you had before so that you can try again and become a beginner over
[18:29.560 -> 18:35.160] again that requires a lot of courage and people are a little scared of that perhaps perhaps
[18:35.160 -> 18:40.840] rightly so but I think generally it's not as scary as you think it might be and the
[18:40.840 -> 18:45.140] ability to say no to some of those things that you feel like I have to do this a
[18:49.000 -> 18:49.360] Lot of the time the reason you feel like you have to do it is because of the story in your mind
[18:54.340 -> 18:54.940] about the status that you have or about the other role that you occupy or the position you want to
[19:00.700 -> 19:05.000] Cling on to and if you're willing to let release that a little bit it becomes easier to focus on the new thing James I think that's so powerful and I I know there'll be lots of people listening to this as we speak, thinking,
[19:05.000 -> 19:11.000] there's loads I do because of what other people think of it, or what society makes of it, or what my ego believes.
[19:11.000 -> 19:17.000] You're the king of process. And if people are understanding what you're saying,
[19:17.000 -> 19:21.000] but then are scared to make that decision, because as you said, it's a big one,
[19:21.000 -> 19:25.040] what would be the processes that they should consider
[19:29.760 -> 19:34.160] to make this leap of faith? The process of behavior change almost always starts with self-awareness. So, you know, it's really, it's a conversation you have to have with yourself. And
[19:34.160 -> 19:38.080] I also don't think that it's something that happens once. It's something that probably is
[19:38.080 -> 19:43.280] a continual check-in. So having a process or a habit of reflection and review, whether that's
[19:43.280 -> 19:45.120] once a week or whether it's once a year
[19:45.120 -> 19:47.080] or whatever cadence makes sense for you,
[19:47.080 -> 19:48.440] that can be really helpful.
[19:48.440 -> 19:49.600] Basically what we're just saying is,
[19:49.600 -> 19:51.620] hey, you need some time to step back and think.
[19:51.620 -> 19:53.040] I've done this a couple of different ways.
[19:53.040 -> 19:55.560] One interesting thing I did about a year or two ago,
[19:55.560 -> 19:57.760] I woke up each day and for two weeks,
[19:57.760 -> 19:59.800] I opened a blank page of my notebook.
[19:59.800 -> 20:02.800] And the first thing I did was I wrote at the top of the page,
[20:02.800 -> 20:05.340] what am I really trying to achieve here?
[20:05.340 -> 20:09.100] And it's surprising how much my answer changed
[20:09.100 -> 20:10.380] over the course of two weeks.
[20:10.380 -> 20:12.100] You would think after like two or three days,
[20:12.100 -> 20:13.860] you'd be like just feeling kind of like a dummy
[20:13.860 -> 20:15.420] and you're like, it's always just the same thing
[20:15.420 -> 20:16.580] over and over again.
[20:16.580 -> 20:19.060] But actually your answer changes a lot.
[20:19.060 -> 20:20.220] You know, there were a lot of things
[20:20.220 -> 20:22.560] that I wrote down early on that turns out
[20:22.560 -> 20:23.920] that was just a middle step
[20:23.920 -> 20:25.400] and it could have been cut out entirely. Or there were things that I wrote down that on that turns out that was just a middle step and it could have been cut out entirely.
[20:25.500 -> 20:27.300] Or there were things that I wrote down
[20:27.400 -> 20:28.600] that I thought I wanted,
[20:28.700 -> 20:31.000] but actually, if I gave it a little extra thought,
[20:31.100 -> 20:32.200] it was like, well, actually, that's something
[20:32.300 -> 20:33.400] my parents want me to do.
[20:33.500 -> 20:35.300] That's something that my peers want.
[20:35.700 -> 20:37.300] Like what, for example, James?
[20:37.400 -> 20:40.100] The general idea is that I was writing mostly about
[20:40.200 -> 20:41.700] what do I want to achieve in my personal life?
[20:41.800 -> 20:42.900] So, you know, we were building,
[20:43.000 -> 20:44.200] we're like, I have young kids now,
[20:44.300 -> 20:46.240] so we're in the middle of kind of building a family.
[20:46.240 -> 20:47.920] So it was stuff focused around that.
[20:47.920 -> 20:51.440] And then the second thing was, okay, I wrote this book, it's this bestseller.
[20:51.440 -> 20:52.720] Now what am I going to do next?
[20:53.360 -> 20:57.120] And, you know, I kind of had to wrestle with that for a little bit,
[20:57.120 -> 21:01.680] because there's, on the one hand, you could just like chase whatever the book brings in.
[21:01.680 -> 21:03.680] So you could say, okay, I'll do more speaking,
[21:03.680 -> 21:08.040] or I'll turn it into a consulting company company and we'll have an atomic habits certification and
[21:08.040 -> 21:11.920] all that kind of stuff. And there are a lot of other authors that do that kind
[21:11.920 -> 21:14.600] of thing. I'm not criticizing them at all, like that may be the right choice for
[21:14.600 -> 21:19.080] them. To me, that sounds like a nightmare because then I got to have a managing 50
[21:19.080 -> 21:22.600] consultants. I have like this huge team. I don't, I don't want to be a manager. I
[21:22.600 -> 21:27.400] don't want to have a big team. And so if I was just writing down the obvious answer,
[21:27.400 -> 21:29.680] where it was like, oh, let me just grow revenue,
[21:29.680 -> 21:32.960] then I end up living a lifestyle that I don't actually want.
[21:32.960 -> 21:36.040] And man, you'd be surprised how often people
[21:36.040 -> 21:39.600] are already making enough money to support their life,
[21:39.600 -> 21:42.240] but then they choose to make more money
[21:42.240 -> 21:44.160] but live a worse daily life.
[21:44.160 -> 21:46.680] And to me, that seems like a terrible trade.
[21:46.680 -> 21:48.200] Now, of course, there's some threshold,
[21:48.200 -> 21:50.200] you know, like you gotta take care of your needs,
[21:50.200 -> 21:52.500] but if you're already at that threshold,
[21:52.500 -> 21:55.040] to choose to make more money and live worse days
[21:55.040 -> 21:56.740] seems like an awful trade.
[21:56.740 -> 21:59.720] And so often we talk ourselves into doing that.
[21:59.720 -> 22:01.880] That's such a powerful point, wow.
[22:01.880 -> 22:04.120] I think that was something that helped me a little bit
[22:04.120 -> 22:06.240] was that process of doing that for two weeks,
[22:06.240 -> 22:08.920] and I realized, you know what, what I should start with,
[22:08.920 -> 22:11.020] and this is a line from my buddy John,
[22:11.020 -> 22:13.480] who's one of my entrepreneurial friends,
[22:13.480 -> 22:16.320] he says, the thing we start with
[22:16.320 -> 22:19.000] is how do I want to live my days?
[22:19.000 -> 22:21.660] And then inside that box, I can ask,
[22:21.660 -> 22:23.000] how can I make the most money,
[22:23.000 -> 22:24.560] or how can I reach the most people,
[22:24.560 -> 22:29.460] or how can we do the most interesting thing? but only inside that box, not outside of it.
[22:29.460 -> 22:33.500] And if you start with that, you end up with a very different set of answers than if you
[22:33.500 -> 22:37.760] just start by asking, how can we make the most money or how can we reach the most people
[22:37.760 -> 22:39.720] or how can we do the most interesting thing?
[22:39.720 -> 22:45.080] Ideally, the objective here is to try to design a business, to design a lifestyle that you
[22:45.080 -> 22:49.280] feel like serves you, rather than feeling like you're chained to this thing that you
[22:49.280 -> 22:50.280] created.
[22:50.280 -> 22:53.840] I like questions like that, questions that prompt self-reflection and get you to maybe
[22:53.840 -> 22:57.520] think about it with, let's call them helpful constraints.
[22:57.520 -> 23:02.020] If you have those helpful constraints, you often come up with a very different answer,
[23:02.020 -> 23:03.800] and I think often better answers.
[23:03.800 -> 23:07.000] That reminds me, I remember reading years ago
[23:07.000 -> 23:09.400] an interview with Jack White from the White Stripes
[23:09.400 -> 23:11.880] where when he used to go in the studio,
[23:11.880 -> 23:15.000] they'd sort of pull up different demands in a hat.
[23:15.000 -> 23:17.600] It might be like you can only play certain chords
[23:17.600 -> 23:20.840] or certain instruments and then you'd pull it out
[23:20.840 -> 23:22.040] and that would be the rule for the day
[23:22.040 -> 23:24.640] where those constraints force them to be creative
[23:24.640 -> 23:30.000] rather than just get into the usual habits and routines that stifle creativity.
[23:30.000 -> 23:33.920] Oh, that's so good. I haven't heard that story. But you know, the other nice thing about that is
[23:34.880 -> 23:39.040] it gives you a place to start. And it's often better to have some kind of constraint to work
[23:39.040 -> 23:42.880] around than to have a completely blank canvas, because then that can be sort of paralyzing.
[23:43.520 -> 23:46.920] When I was working on 321, which is my newsletter now,
[23:46.920 -> 23:48.960] and it has, you know, it's got two million subscribers,
[23:48.960 -> 23:50.460] and it's this, you know, this thing that's become
[23:50.460 -> 23:52.220] kind of a big part of my business,
[23:52.220 -> 23:54.440] but I started it in 2019,
[23:54.440 -> 23:57.680] and I had already had a newsletter for years,
[23:57.680 -> 23:59.620] and what I had been previously doing
[23:59.620 -> 24:01.680] was writing two articles a week.
[24:01.680 -> 24:03.480] And they were, you know, 2,000 words,
[24:03.480 -> 24:05.420] and I would spend 20 hours on each one,
[24:05.420 -> 24:07.420] and it was, you know, it was kind of a big lift.
[24:07.420 -> 24:09.440] But then, when I'm working on Atomic Habits
[24:09.440 -> 24:11.440] and writing the book, I couldn't do that anymore.
[24:11.440 -> 24:12.440] I just, I was tapped out.
[24:12.440 -> 24:14.020] I didn't have capacity to write the book
[24:14.020 -> 24:16.120] and write the newsletter in that way.
[24:16.120 -> 24:18.940] And so, I was looking for a different way
[24:18.940 -> 24:22.360] to have a newsletter, and I started with the constraint
[24:22.360 -> 24:24.920] of, okay, let's imagine that I only have, like,
[24:24.920 -> 24:25.900] two hours a week
[24:25.900 -> 24:27.520] to do this instead of 20.
[24:27.520 -> 24:28.760] What would I do?
[24:28.760 -> 24:32.240] Then I threw an extra layer on it, which is,
[24:32.240 -> 24:34.060] is there a way, if you could just imagine
[24:34.060 -> 24:36.000] all the universe of possibilities
[24:36.000 -> 24:38.000] for how you could create a newsletter,
[24:38.000 -> 24:40.020] is there some version out there
[24:40.020 -> 24:42.060] that I could do in two hours a week
[24:42.060 -> 24:44.360] that is not just as good as what I'm doing now,
[24:44.360 -> 24:46.520] but is actually better than what I'm doing now,
[24:46.520 -> 24:49.000] that actually people get more value out of
[24:49.000 -> 24:50.860] than what I'm currently sending them.
[24:50.860 -> 24:53.960] And I mean, I'm kind of optimistic about stuff like that,
[24:53.960 -> 24:56.360] but I like doing thought experiments like that.
[24:56.360 -> 24:57.920] And I have to think, you know,
[24:57.920 -> 24:59.760] you're not gonna be able to think of everything in the world
[24:59.760 -> 25:01.700] but there's gotta be something out there
[25:01.700 -> 25:03.640] that's better than what I'm doing right now
[25:03.640 -> 25:05.240] and fits that constraint.
[25:05.240 -> 25:06.960] And as soon as you accept that,
[25:06.960 -> 25:09.440] as soon as you say, you know what, there probably is,
[25:09.440 -> 25:10.980] then it's just this little quest
[25:10.980 -> 25:13.320] to try to find what that thing is.
[25:13.320 -> 25:16.280] And, you know, I don't know if I hit the mark or not,
[25:16.280 -> 25:18.360] that's kind of for the subscribers to decide,
[25:18.360 -> 25:21.140] but I do think 321 has worked so well
[25:21.140 -> 25:24.560] that it is evidence that I didn't totally miss.
[25:24.560 -> 25:28.280] You know, like there's something about it that's working really well in that format,
[25:28.280 -> 25:31.480] and it's such a better fit for the time constraints that I have.
[25:31.480 -> 25:35.400] We can't have you on High Performance without talking about 1%.
[25:35.400 -> 25:41.440] It's been mentioned by some of our guests, the focus on the 1% making anything you do,
[25:41.440 -> 25:42.720] everything you do.
[25:42.720 -> 25:45.360] What questions should we be asking ourselves
[25:45.360 -> 25:48.160] if we have the desire to be in that 1%
[25:48.160 -> 25:50.600] and we need to make sure that our actions
[25:50.600 -> 25:53.760] are living up to our ambitions?
[25:53.760 -> 25:55.760] The first question we mentioned previously
[25:55.760 -> 25:57.960] in the conversation, what am I optimizing for?
[25:57.960 -> 25:59.520] So that's up to you to decide,
[25:59.520 -> 26:00.600] but you got to be clear about it.
[26:00.600 -> 26:01.840] You know, it's very unlikely
[26:01.840 -> 26:03.760] that you're going to just stumble your way
[26:03.760 -> 26:08.960] into peak performance. You probably have to be at least somewhat clear about where you're going to
[26:08.960 -> 26:15.360] spend your time and why. So what am I optimizing for? The second question is probably something
[26:15.360 -> 26:21.840] along the lines of, can my current habits carry me to my desired future? And how do we know that
[26:21.840 -> 26:28.280] though? Signals of progress is probably the short answer. Some form of feedback. When I started out my entrepreneurial
[26:28.280 -> 26:31.280] career, I started a bunch of different websites over the first two years. Just
[26:31.280 -> 26:34.240] tried a couple different things, see if they work. I started it, I tried an iPhone
[26:34.240 -> 26:37.120] app, I didn't create it. I paid a developer like a thousand bucks to make
[26:37.120 -> 26:41.320] it. And all of those projects, let's say, or there were four or five different
[26:41.320 -> 26:49.920] things over that two-year span, they were okay, but they didn't really do a whole lot. They were fine, but I could tell this wasn't the thing. But I did hone
[26:49.920 -> 26:54.800] my skills, and I did learn how to build a website. I was picking up some things, but nothing was
[26:54.800 -> 27:01.120] really taking off. And then I started writing at jamesclear.com. This was about two years in to
[27:01.120 -> 27:09.320] starting my entrepreneurial quest. And I had just been doing freelance gigs on the side to make money and make ends meet.
[27:09.320 -> 27:15.560] And within three months of writing there, it was pretty obvious that this was the best
[27:15.560 -> 27:17.400] idea that I had had so far.
[27:17.400 -> 27:26.920] Email subscribers were coming faster, people were more engaged, it just was clicking better. And most things that go well,
[27:26.920 -> 27:30.760] they tend to have at least early signals of progress.
[27:30.760 -> 27:33.580] It's very unlikely that it just completely falls flat
[27:33.580 -> 27:35.280] and then it's like, well, if you just stuck with it,
[27:35.280 -> 27:37.200] it's gonna turn out to be something.
[27:37.200 -> 27:39.720] It may not be what you want right away,
[27:39.720 -> 27:41.200] but you've got some signals
[27:41.200 -> 27:43.080] that things are going moving forward.
[27:43.080 -> 27:44.880] So I think that's what you need to look for
[27:44.880 -> 27:45.980] are signals of progress.
[27:46.000 -> 27:47.240] And that depends, you know,
[27:47.240 -> 27:48.920] differs depending on the thing that you're doing.
[27:49.160 -> 27:51.240] If I take another example from my personal life,
[27:51.280 -> 27:55.600] so I've been training in the gym for, I don't know, probably 15 years now. Um,
[27:55.640 -> 27:59.480] and then before that I was an athlete and so I was loosely in the gym with the
[27:59.480 -> 28:00.400] team and stuff like that.
[28:00.620 -> 28:05.000] So I've been around the gym and weights for a long time. And,
[28:05.520 -> 28:07.640] you know, I think just the way that I got into it,
[28:07.640 -> 28:10.440] my dad was kind of interested in Olympic lifting and some of my friends were
[28:10.440 -> 28:11.960] kind of interested in power lifting.
[28:12.120 -> 28:16.560] So I did more of those movements when I got done with my athletic career.
[28:17.520 -> 28:17.560] Um,
[28:17.560 -> 28:20.960] and it wasn't until like three years ago that I started doing more bodybuilding
[28:20.980 -> 28:23.840] style stuff. And it took me a long time.
[28:23.840 -> 28:25.200] It took me a decade before I stumbled
[28:25.200 -> 28:29.520] into that, but my body just seems to respond better to that kind of training. I guess the
[28:29.520 -> 28:33.760] two things to kind of wrestle with there to think about, first you need to know what you're optimizing
[28:33.760 -> 28:38.720] for, but then secondly you need to be willing to experiment a little bit and try new things.
[28:38.720 -> 28:42.800] And as you're willing to do that, you're looking for these signals of progress and eventually you're
[28:42.800 -> 28:45.760] like, okay, this is a path that's a little more fruitful.
[28:45.760 -> 28:47.800] So I think, what am I optimizing for?
[28:47.800 -> 28:51.460] Can my current habits carry me to my desired future?
[28:51.460 -> 28:55.940] Related to that, there's probably a little bit of like a, you're almost being ruthless
[28:55.940 -> 28:58.820] with yourself about where you're actually spending your time.
[28:58.820 -> 29:04.640] So one little thought experiment I like is, let's say aliens came down and they can't
[29:04.640 -> 29:05.400] talk to you, but
[29:05.400 -> 29:07.360] they can just watch you throughout the day.
[29:07.360 -> 29:11.400] If somebody could see you, but they could only watch your actions and not hear your
[29:11.400 -> 29:14.680] words, what would they say your priorities are?
[29:14.680 -> 29:19.520] So you can't convince them, you can't tell them any stories, they can't be sold on your
[29:19.520 -> 29:22.280] reasoning, they can only watch your behavior.
[29:22.280 -> 29:26.040] And if you ask yourself questions like that, you start to realize like, oh,
[29:26.040 -> 29:28.280] I say that I'm optimizing for one thing,
[29:28.280 -> 29:31.620] but actually my behavior doesn't match up with that as well.
[29:31.620 -> 29:33.640] It's good to have a plan for how to change that,
[29:33.640 -> 29:35.440] but just being aware of that,
[29:35.440 -> 29:38.740] just noticing the gap between what you say you want
[29:38.740 -> 29:40.000] and what you're doing,
[29:40.000 -> 29:41.680] that alone, just noticing it
[29:41.680 -> 29:43.640] will often change your behavior a little bit.
[29:43.640 -> 29:44.480] So you're kind of like,
[29:44.480 -> 29:46.300] first you're kind of like narrowing your focus and figuring out, am I on the behavior a little bit. So you're kind of like, first, you're kind of like narrowing your focus
[29:46.300 -> 29:48.460] and figuring out, am I on the right path?
[29:48.460 -> 29:49.900] And then once you're on the path,
[29:49.900 -> 29:51.140] you're trying to figure out,
[29:51.140 -> 29:52.780] how can I move down it more quickly?
[29:52.780 -> 29:54.180] How can I multiply the effort
[29:54.180 -> 29:56.580] in the minutes and the hours that I'm putting in, and so on.
[29:56.580 -> 29:59.220] So they're all great tips on getting started,
[29:59.220 -> 30:00.940] but what stops us?
[30:00.940 -> 30:03.660] What are the common mistakes that people make?
[30:03.660 -> 30:05.800] There are probably a couple different ones, you know,
[30:05.800 -> 30:06.720] and I'm sure there's more
[30:06.720 -> 30:08.320] that I'm not even thinking of right now,
[30:08.320 -> 30:12.360] but social constraints or social environment
[30:12.360 -> 30:13.680] plays a huge role.
[30:13.680 -> 30:18.680] So you might be able to do whatever habits you want to do
[30:18.880 -> 30:22.880] for a day or a week or I don't know, a month or two,
[30:22.880 -> 30:29.960] but if they go against the grain of the groups that you're around if they create friction with the people that
[30:29.960 -> 30:34.640] you're surrounded by or the people you work with it's really hard to overpower
[30:34.640 -> 30:38.920] that friction for a long time maybe you can do it for a little bit but at some
[30:38.920 -> 30:48.480] point if people have to choose between you know, I have habits that I don't really love, but I fit in. I belong,
[30:48.480 -> 30:52.960] I'm part of something. Or I have the habits that I want to have, but I'm cast out,
[30:52.960 -> 30:57.840] mostracized, and criticized. I mean, a lot of the time people choose to belong, to fit in,
[30:57.840 -> 31:03.440] rather than choosing to do the thing that they say they would like to achieve. So what you really
[31:03.440 -> 31:05.560] want is to get those two things aligned.
[31:05.560 -> 31:08.960] You want an alignment between your desired outcome,
[31:08.960 -> 31:11.120] your daily habits that you're trying to follow,
[31:11.120 -> 31:14.640] and the social norms of the groups that you're in.
[31:14.640 -> 31:18.040] So if you can find groups where your desired behavior
[31:18.040 -> 31:21.080] is the normal behavior, then you can rise together.
[31:21.080 -> 31:22.800] So I think that's probably one of the biggest
[31:22.800 -> 31:28.800] long-term things is, can you surround yourself with people who also want what you want. And I'm not saying you have to do it for
[31:28.800 -> 31:34.240] 24 hours a day, but at least for the amount of time that you're investing in your craft, can you
[31:34.240 -> 31:38.480] be around them for that portion of time so that you're not trying to go against it when you're
[31:38.480 -> 31:44.240] spending effort on it. What questions do you ask yourself for the people that get to have a seat
[31:44.240 -> 31:49.480] on your bus? I don't really filter it like that. I like, I don't filter, I don't ask questions about
[31:49.480 -> 31:52.400] the people around me. I'm like, oh, can they still have a seat or not? You know, can they
[31:52.400 -> 31:58.520] stay around or not? Um, it's more like I think about the project that I want to achieve or
[31:58.520 -> 32:02.560] the thing that I'm trying to create. And then I ask myself, who are people that are already
[32:02.560 -> 32:05.680] in that world? Who are people that are already doing that kind of thing?
[32:05.680 -> 32:07.280] And can I hang out with them?
[32:07.280 -> 32:10.480] So it's less about like, who's allowed to be around me,
[32:10.480 -> 32:14.320] and more about like, who would I like to expose myself to?
[32:14.320 -> 32:18.160] Who would I like to be surrounded by or influenced by?
[32:18.160 -> 32:21.840] As an example, when I started out as an entrepreneur,
[32:21.840 -> 32:23.520] I knew I wanted to have a business.
[32:23.520 -> 32:25.800] I didn't even really know that I wanted to be an author.
[32:25.800 -> 32:28.840] But gradually, I started to figure out, oh, hey, I kind of like writing.
[32:28.840 -> 32:31.040] I'd like to do that a little bit more.
[32:31.040 -> 32:33.000] I didn't have any authors in my family.
[32:33.000 -> 32:34.600] I didn't have any friends who were authors.
[32:34.600 -> 32:39.240] I didn't have anybody around me who was doing that thing or building a business like that.
[32:39.240 -> 32:43.360] So I sent a bunch of cold emails, reaching out to people, went to conferences, tried
[32:43.360 -> 32:44.680] to meet some people.
[32:44.680 -> 32:48.600] It took like probably two years or so, but gradually I got to know maybe, let's say,
[32:48.600 -> 32:52.440] 20 to 30 people who were kind of doing that thing.
[32:52.440 -> 32:58.320] And the best thing that I did was I started putting together these author retreats, and
[32:58.320 -> 33:02.460] I would host like six or eight people, and we would just split, you know, a house or
[33:02.460 -> 33:08.560] an Airbnb for three nights, and then we would all get together and just talk about how to launch a book or how to build an audience or,
[33:08.560 -> 33:13.200] you know, what we're writing on and just all the things that, all the problems that we were dealing with in our businesses.
[33:13.200 -> 33:18.720] And I tried to find people who were like a year or two ahead of where I was at,
[33:19.000 -> 33:23.680] so I could still provide value because I was still doing the same thing, but I, man,
[33:23.680 -> 33:30.480] I learned so much from them and I would always leave those sessions and I would have like six months worth of
[33:30.480 -> 33:33.220] stuff that I needed to execute on.
[33:33.220 -> 33:38.160] And so that's kind of what I'm thinking of when I say you want to join groups where your
[33:38.160 -> 33:40.760] desired behavior is the normal behavior.
[33:40.760 -> 33:47.920] You know I would leave that session and then it'd be like you know what now I know like six people who they're making a living doing it, you know,
[33:47.920 -> 33:50.400] we're like talk to a normal person and ask them.
[33:50.400 -> 33:53.080] Hey, do you think you could sell a hundred thousand books that like that sounds kind
[33:53.080 -> 33:57.600] of outlandish, but now I could be like, well, actually, like I know three people who did it,
[33:57.600 -> 33:59.440] you know, so like maybe it's not that crazy.
[33:59.440 -> 34:03.920] I mean, at least I could look at their playbook and try to figure out how that could work for me.
[34:03.920 -> 34:10.720] It doesn't guarantee success, but I think it does make success more believable or more palatable.
[34:10.720 -> 34:16.000] It gives you a pathway. And once you start to see what it looks like, then you can start to
[34:16.000 -> 34:19.280] piece it together for yourself and try to figure out a version that works for your life.
[34:21.920 -> 34:26.120] On our podcast, we love to highlight businesses that are doing things a better way so you
[34:26.120 -> 34:31.400] can live a better life. And that's why when I found Mint Mobile I had to share. So Mint
[34:31.400 -> 34:36.080] Mobile ditched retail stores and all those overhead costs and instead sells their phone
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[35:22.080 -> 35:25.720] Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan, bring your phone number
[35:25.720 -> 35:28.400] along with all your existing contacts.
[35:28.400 -> 35:33.000] So ditch overpriced wireless with Mint Mobile's limited time deal and get premium wireless
[35:33.000 -> 35:39.000] service for just $15 a month. To get this new customer offer and your new 3 month unlimited
[35:39.000 -> 35:46.160] wireless plan for just $15 a month go to mintmobile.com
[35:42.720 -> 35:49.440] slash HPP. That's mintmobile.com
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[35:49.440 -> 35:55.080] 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash
[35:52.600 -> 35:57.280] HPP. Additional taxes, fees and
[35:55.080 -> 36:03.840] restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for
[35:57.280 -> 36:05.360] details. So can I ask you about a guest that
[36:03.840 -> 36:06.120] we've had on the podcast before was a guy called
[36:06.120 -> 36:07.120] Russell Cain.
[36:07.120 -> 36:12.320] He's a really successful comedian here in the UK, James, and he spoke about a similar
[36:12.320 -> 36:17.200] idea, but he introduced us to a concept called river jumping.
[36:17.200 -> 36:21.600] So he was saying sometimes if you're in an environment where maybe comedians don't want
[36:21.600 -> 36:27.200] to help other ones out, for example, How can you sort of go into different industries
[36:27.200 -> 36:31.200] and look at the parallels of, say, it might be a fighter
[36:31.200 -> 36:33.200] and how does a fighter prepare?
[36:33.200 -> 36:36.200] So how we could then apply it to being a stand-up comic
[36:36.200 -> 36:38.200] was the example he used.
[36:38.200 -> 36:41.200] So what occurred to me in your case was that
[36:41.200 -> 36:44.200] you're in pretty rare territory in terms of
[36:44.200 -> 36:46.400] a copy of Atomic Habit sells somewhere
[36:46.400 -> 36:48.400] in the world every 15 seconds.
[36:48.400 -> 36:54.560] So how do you surround yourself with people that are in that similar rare territory then?
[36:54.560 -> 36:57.360] Yeah, like again, I don't really think about it that way.
[36:57.360 -> 37:00.880] I mean, I'm not like really worried about measuring, you know, my success compared to
[37:00.880 -> 37:02.680] somebody else's or something like that.
[37:02.680 -> 37:06.120] It's more just like, what cool thing do I wanna create and who are people that I can be around
[37:06.120 -> 37:07.600] that are doing that kind of thing.
[37:07.600 -> 37:09.840] But I do like the idea of river jumping.
[37:09.840 -> 37:12.600] I like the idea of diving into these kind
[37:12.600 -> 37:15.040] of disparate fields, seeing what peak performance
[37:15.040 -> 37:16.880] looks like there, seeing what other people
[37:16.880 -> 37:20.080] are interested in, and what can I learn from that.
[37:20.080 -> 37:22.300] I think both strategies can be useful.
[37:22.300 -> 37:29.400] So, Mickey Stevenson was this musician and talent kind of coordinator, talent recruiter
[37:29.400 -> 37:30.400] for Motown.
[37:30.400 -> 37:35.040] And he was the one that got Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross and the Supremes and like a
[37:35.040 -> 37:39.920] bunch of these really famous artists to come to Motown and create their music in the 60s.
[37:39.920 -> 37:44.480] And he told me this story that he, I can't remember who it was, but he was watching somebody
[37:44.480 -> 37:49.400] perform and at the concert he was like, man, this is a really great show.
[37:49.400 -> 37:53.400] And he gets about halfway through and he's looking around and he starts deconstructing
[37:53.400 -> 37:54.460] what's going on.
[37:54.460 -> 37:56.260] How many lights do they have on stage?
[37:56.260 -> 37:58.240] How many musicians are up there now?
[37:58.240 -> 38:01.880] How long between the sequences, like how long does each dance routine last?
[38:01.880 -> 38:03.720] And then when do they switch to the next one?
[38:03.720 -> 38:05.080] He starts just looking at like,
[38:05.080 -> 38:08.240] how are they assembling this really killer show?
[38:08.240 -> 38:10.940] And that's something that I think is probably best done
[38:10.940 -> 38:13.200] in your industry, rather than river jumping.
[38:13.200 -> 38:14.760] That's something that you look at the people
[38:14.760 -> 38:16.040] who are really succeeding,
[38:16.040 -> 38:18.200] and then you try to deconstruct the things that you see
[38:18.200 -> 38:19.140] that are cool.
[38:19.140 -> 38:21.600] Whenever you see something that really lights you up,
[38:21.600 -> 38:23.800] you should start to like pull that apart a little bit
[38:23.800 -> 38:26.000] and see what the pieces are that it's made of.
[38:26.000 -> 38:32.000] And you'll start to notice different things that you can do. I mean, there's this other story, Mr. Beast, the YouTuber who's got, you know,
[38:32.000 -> 38:38.000] like over 100 million subscribers and one of the most popular YouTubers in the world. He's got this little clip where he talks about,
[38:38.000 -> 38:49.920] in the early days, like, you know, 10 years before he was this massive success, he and his friends would just get on YouTube. They would get on like a call Skype call or zoom call for, you know, like six hours a day
[38:49.920 -> 38:55.600] and just look at YouTube videos and talk about what does the thumbnail look like? How long in
[38:55.600 -> 38:59.440] between transitions? How long is the video in total? Like what's the lighting? They're
[38:59.440 -> 39:04.320] deconstructing everything about it. How do you write a great title? And that deconstruction
[39:04.320 -> 39:06.440] process is a really important part
[39:06.440 -> 39:09.420] of succeeding, because once you know what the ingredients
[39:09.420 -> 39:12.080] are, then you can start to make your own recipes.
[39:12.080 -> 39:14.160] You know, like it doesn't mean you have to use everything
[39:14.160 -> 39:16.600] that everybody else is using, but you start to see
[39:16.600 -> 39:19.160] what the commonalities are, and you can start to put it
[39:19.160 -> 39:21.560] together for yourself in a way that fits your style
[39:21.560 -> 39:22.940] or your personality.
[39:22.940 -> 39:25.840] So I think that is best done in your own industry.
[39:25.840 -> 39:27.280] But once you've done that,
[39:27.280 -> 39:28.880] once you've built this skillset
[39:28.880 -> 39:32.160] where you've deconstructed what it looks like in your space,
[39:32.160 -> 39:34.560] then river jumping is super powerful
[39:34.560 -> 39:36.240] because you go and you say,
[39:36.240 -> 39:37.440] okay, I'm just trying to become
[39:37.440 -> 39:38.960] the world's greatest YouTuber
[39:38.960 -> 39:41.200] and look at how do we produce these awesome YouTube videos.
[39:41.200 -> 39:43.680] And you have all this insight on how they're deconstructed
[39:43.680 -> 39:46.500] and what the elements are. And then you're like, Hey, I'm going to go to
[39:46.500 -> 39:48.680] this formula one race, and I'm going to look at their pit
[39:48.680 -> 39:51.900] crews and see how they operate. And you pick something out
[39:51.900 -> 39:53.820] about how that works, where you're like, you know what, if
[39:53.820 -> 39:56.700] we implemented that idea, we could probably upload two videos
[39:56.700 -> 39:57.580] a day instead of one.
[39:57.940 -> 39:59.960] And I'm so pleased that we've gone here because I think it
[39:59.960 -> 40:02.800] plays into two things that we believe on this podcast are
[40:02.800 -> 40:05.480] hugely important in taking your life
[40:05.480 -> 40:06.840] where you want it to go,
[40:06.840 -> 40:10.700] but are also under-celebrated and underspoken about.
[40:10.700 -> 40:13.040] Patience and consistency.
[40:13.040 -> 40:15.880] Neither are particularly sexy,
[40:15.880 -> 40:18.040] but how important do you think they both are?
[40:18.040 -> 40:18.880] Yeah, they're crucial.
[40:18.880 -> 40:20.400] I mean, there are a couple different ways
[40:20.400 -> 40:21.600] to gain advantages in life.
[40:21.600 -> 40:23.120] You know, you could have like more money,
[40:23.120 -> 40:24.320] you could move faster,
[40:24.320 -> 40:29.280] or you could just be more patient. And being patient is definitely a competitive advantage.
[40:29.280 -> 40:34.640] You know, a lot of people will choose the projects they take on, or the style of work that they do,
[40:34.640 -> 40:40.160] or the way that they approach a particular problem based on time constraints. And if you're
[40:40.160 -> 40:46.260] willing to be more patient about something, you can take on projects that most people would like avoid entirely.
[40:46.260 -> 40:49.280] So patience can really be valuable.
[40:49.280 -> 40:50.860] In order to execute on that,
[40:50.860 -> 40:52.700] in order to capitalize on your patience,
[40:52.700 -> 40:54.180] you need to have consistency.
[40:54.180 -> 40:56.460] And so they kind of go hand in hand.
[40:56.460 -> 40:59.380] Consistency, you know, there is some nuance to it.
[40:59.380 -> 41:01.660] Seth Godin has a line where he says,
[41:01.660 -> 41:04.040] what really matters is being better.
[41:04.040 -> 41:07.960] And to be better, you often need to be different.
[41:07.960 -> 41:10.520] But the thing about consistency is that being consistent
[41:10.520 -> 41:11.720] is different.
[41:11.720 -> 41:15.560] And so a lot of the time, the way to be better
[41:15.560 -> 41:17.760] is just by doing the thing everybody else knows
[41:17.760 -> 41:20.420] they should be doing, but doing it more consistently.
[41:20.420 -> 41:22.240] That is different, that is better.
[41:22.240 -> 41:29.000] And so in that way, the fundamentals do provide an edge if they're applied over a longer time span than usual.
[41:29.000 -> 41:38.000] And so greatness can often just be being good but over a longer time span, doing the reasonable thing but over a longer time span.
[41:38.000 -> 41:50.160] And if you can do that, if you can maintain that level of consistency, then you end up with a very different result. One of my favorite lines in your book, James, is the never miss twice philosophy.
[41:50.160 -> 41:56.560] We did an interview with a, he's a British sporting great called Jamie Peacock.
[41:56.560 -> 41:59.600] He's a Titanic rugby league player.
[41:59.600 -> 42:06.120] And he quoted your book directly about how that had been at the heart of his whole success
[42:06.120 -> 42:09.880] was that if you made a mistake, you don't miss twice.
[42:09.880 -> 42:13.920] You double down and you make sure your next move works well.
[42:13.920 -> 42:18.160] And I'd like to explore that with you because I think that one of the things we often talk
[42:18.160 -> 42:21.520] about on the podcast is we embrace failure.
[42:21.520 -> 42:26.520] Failure is where the learning happens, but it's about getting smart quickly
[42:26.520 -> 42:31.040] as well. Would you tell us a little bit more about that philosophy and why it's so important?
[42:31.040 -> 42:37.400] Sure. Well, first a little, just a little point on your thought about embracing failure.
[42:37.400 -> 42:42.320] I feel like this is something you hear from a lot of people who talk about, you know,
[42:42.320 -> 42:48.500] especially like Silicon Valley startup culture, you know, failures almost praised like, you know, things like that. And there is
[42:48.500 -> 42:51.600] an element of truth to it. I don't think that you should be
[42:51.600 -> 42:54.500] scared of failing because then that prevents you from reaching
[42:54.500 -> 42:57.500] that prevents you from trying. But I also think there's kind
[42:57.500 -> 43:01.000] of an opposite side or another side of the coin that's important
[43:01.000 -> 43:05.200] to emphasize, which is you're never trying to fail. Like that's not the
[43:05.200 -> 43:10.080] objective, you know, just because it's not like we're okay with it in the sense that, oh, it's
[43:10.080 -> 43:14.160] fine. Like I didn't get the result I wanted that let's just stick with that. You know, like I'm,
[43:14.160 -> 43:19.440] I am in fact trying to do my best every time. I am in fact trying to figure out a solution that
[43:19.440 -> 43:24.800] works. I am in fact trying to get an exceptional result. Failure is never the objective,
[43:23.540 -> 43:29.060] I am in fact trying to get an exceptional result. Failure is never the objective, but I'm not scared of it, you know, like it's not going
[43:29.060 -> 43:31.200] to prevent me from trying.
[43:31.200 -> 43:37.720] And in fact, I would say that actually many people, their fear of failure or their fear
[43:37.720 -> 43:43.540] of how they'll be judged or what other people might think or whether it will appear impressive
[43:43.540 -> 43:45.440] enough for, you know for what they're hoping
[43:45.440 -> 43:49.760] to instill on the people around them.
[43:49.760 -> 43:56.260] That general fear, that worry, whatever form it takes, it ends up becoming like a brake
[43:56.260 -> 43:58.340] and it stops the car.
[43:58.340 -> 44:00.660] It prevents you from moving forward.
[44:00.660 -> 44:05.160] My encouragement is to say, listen, let fear be the gas pedal, not the brake.
[44:05.160 -> 44:07.720] And so I have all those same fears.
[44:07.720 -> 44:11.360] You know, I'm worried about what the people who know me well will think of the next project
[44:11.360 -> 44:12.760] I'm going to create.
[44:12.760 -> 44:18.040] When I started writing, I still, this is even to this day, I still have never shared an
[44:18.040 -> 44:22.480] article that I wrote on my personal Facebook page with like all the people who knew me
[44:22.480 -> 44:25.040] from high school or college or things like that.
[44:30.320 -> 44:33.760] And why is that? In the beginning, it was because I was worried about what they would think. I was worried that they would look at it and be like, oh, you know, look at this dumb little blog this
[44:33.760 -> 44:39.040] guy has. So that sense of belonging was powerful then. Oh, for sure. I mean, it's power. It's
[44:39.040 -> 44:42.400] powerful. Yeah. It's powerful for all of us. You know, I mean, we all want to belong. That's one
[44:42.400 -> 44:48.800] of the deepest needs that we all have. This is why those trade-offs are hard to manage, because we all do want to fit in.
[44:48.800 -> 44:53.840] We all want to connect. And also, sometimes people will say things like, well, don't don't care what
[44:53.840 -> 45:00.320] other people think of you. It can be useful in a context, but there's a very good reason why we care
[45:00.320 -> 45:05.000] about what other people think of us, which is it tends to serve you very well when
[45:05.000 -> 45:06.720] people think well of you.
[45:06.720 -> 45:09.560] It's very beneficial to have friends to have support.
[45:09.560 -> 45:12.680] Not only does it feel good, it also provides you opportunities.
[45:12.680 -> 45:14.240] It provides you love and affection.
[45:14.240 -> 45:16.800] It provides you support in your life that you need.
[45:16.800 -> 45:21.360] So to care what other people think about you is like perhaps the most natural thing in
[45:21.360 -> 45:22.560] the world to do.
[45:22.560 -> 45:30.400] The question is not whether to care, it's just when to care. Rather than letting my worries about what other people think of me
[45:30.400 -> 45:36.400] prevent me from writing or prevent me from creating, instead I just used it as fuel to say,
[45:36.400 -> 45:40.640] okay, listen, you just need to get to work now. You know, like you need to put even more effort
[45:40.640 -> 45:49.200] into this so that you can make it truly great, so you can create something that you're proud of. And if you use it as the gas pedal and not the brake, then it becomes a driver
[45:49.200 -> 45:55.760] of creative output rather than a hindrance for it. The more that I kind of study or come across,
[45:55.760 -> 46:01.200] read about people who are like peak performers in their particular industry, the more that you
[46:01.200 -> 46:05.920] realize like everybody makes mistakes, you know, none of these people are perfect and
[46:11.400 -> 46:15.540] One kind of commonality across them is that they tend to be good about getting back on track quickly It's not that they're good about never making mistake. They slip up too, but
[46:16.060 -> 46:19.420] Most of us I think have felt this from going through life, which is
[46:19.940 -> 46:25.920] It's almost never the first mistake that ruins you, you know, it's like the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows
[46:25.920 -> 46:29.440] It's letting one mistake become a new habit or a new pattern
[46:29.440 -> 46:33.080] And then you turn around three months later and you're like, oh I lost that the last three months
[46:33.440 -> 46:38.140] But if you can never miss twice if you can correct the mistake quickly
[46:38.880 -> 46:42.180] Then you know you get to the end of the year and it doesn't really matter that much
[46:42.180 -> 46:48.400] The the mistakes are just kind of a blip on the radar. So, Never Miss Twice is just a philosophy, it's an encouragement,
[46:48.400 -> 46:53.840] it's a reminder to get back on track quickly, to reclaim the habit. And if the reclaiming
[46:53.840 -> 46:57.440] of a habit is fast, then the breaking of it doesn't matter that much.
[46:57.440 -> 46:58.440] Mason Jones
[46:58.440 -> 47:02.780] Can you tell me your opinion of struggle, please, James? Because we think a lot of people
[47:02.780 -> 47:07.560] come to this podcast because they think that learning from great people will free them from struggle and it will give
[47:07.560 -> 47:12.160] them that sense of achievement, which we all know lasts for a very short amount of time
[47:12.160 -> 47:16.520] before you chase after something else. And, you know, it was Seneca who said, he who has
[47:16.520 -> 47:21.040] won a victory over the meanness of his own nature and has not gently led himself but
[47:21.040 -> 47:25.280] has wrestled his way to wisdom. Seneca there talking about the fact that it's
[47:25.280 -> 47:28.440] the struggle that we should embrace, that, you know, the man who's walked through the
[47:28.440 -> 47:32.940] shadow of the valley of death is the one who deserves admiration. What's your relationship
[47:32.940 -> 47:33.940] with struggle?
[47:33.940 -> 47:37.760] Dr. John Gallagher I probably lean more towards Seneca's style
[47:37.760 -> 47:42.600] and approach. I think that being comfortable with challenge, being comfortable with struggle,
[47:42.600 -> 47:46.160] seeking it out in pockets is a really good
[47:46.160 -> 47:50.800] strategy. As you kind of go through life, we all get beat up by life a little bit. You know,
[47:50.800 -> 47:56.560] we all face challenges. And, you know, like when my parents were my age, they had three young kids.
[47:56.560 -> 48:02.640] My sister had cancer at the age of three. So they probably weren't trying to seek out struggle
[48:02.640 -> 48:06.280] in that moment. You know, like life was giving them plenty to handle on their own and
[48:07.240 -> 48:11.060] That's fine. I don't think we need to try to act like we need to do more than that
[48:11.060 -> 48:15.780] You know, sometimes life just deals you a bad hand and you need to deal with it as it arises
[48:16.080 -> 48:20.240] But when life doesn't challenge you I think it's great to challenge yourself
[48:20.800 -> 48:25.760] Because you kind of hone that ability you hone that strength to manage some of those
[48:25.760 -> 48:31.200] more difficult times. Also, this idea that, and I know that you don't believe this, but just based
[48:31.200 -> 48:36.160] on how you asked the question, oh, let me succeed and then I'll free myself from struggle. I think
[48:36.160 -> 48:40.160] there's this Alan Watts quote where he says something like, you know, the brightness of the
[48:40.160 -> 48:47.120] stars is only visible because of the darkness of the space behind them. And so you actually need the contrast.
[48:47.120 -> 48:50.800] You can't without the contrast, you don't notice how bright the stars are.
[48:50.800 -> 48:55.760] And the same thing is true for the good feelings that you want to have in your life.
[48:55.760 -> 49:03.640] The reason it feels really good to win a Super Bowl or to launch a bestselling book or to
[49:03.640 -> 49:06.560] get through some period of difficult trial in your life
[49:06.560 -> 49:10.760] is because you had to struggle so much or put so much effort in ahead of time to get
[49:10.760 -> 49:11.760] there.
[49:11.760 -> 49:16.140] It's because it's so hard to do that by doing it, you can feel proud of yourself.
[49:16.140 -> 49:22.440] And it's the contrast between all those dark periods that came before and the triumph that
[49:22.440 -> 49:25.480] you're feeling right now that gives you the feeling of elation.
[49:25.480 -> 49:29.860] If there wasn't any dark period before it, then there would be no contrast there and
[49:29.860 -> 49:33.480] you probably would just feel like kind of neutral the way you do on most days.
[49:33.480 -> 49:37.960] In that way, you almost can't have success without struggle because they're just, they
[49:37.960 -> 49:41.400] require each other to provide the necessary contrast.
[49:41.400 -> 49:44.680] There's so much about life where opposites are both true.
[49:44.680 -> 49:45.360] You know, it's not
[49:46.320 -> 49:50.880] should you train or should you rest? It's well, you actually need both. And the question is,
[49:50.880 -> 49:55.360] do I need to train right now or do I need to rest right now? And so it's really a question in most
[49:55.360 -> 50:01.040] areas of life, not about what to do, but about what to emphasize in this moment. And I think
[50:01.920 -> 50:05.120] that also is true when it comes to struggle and challenge.
[50:09.760 -> 50:14.240] Sometimes struggle gets glamorized so much. We almost think like if you're the type of person who works really hard and you're very ambitious, you almost feel like it has to be a struggle,
[50:14.240 -> 50:18.560] otherwise it's not worth it. There's like some kind of, you know, there's a badge of honor
[50:18.560 -> 50:23.360] to be worn if you're always like struggling so much. Look at how hard I'm working.
[50:23.360 -> 50:27.920] Look at how much I'm suffering. And so that must mean that I have value I don't think it has to be
[50:27.920 -> 50:32.700] like that either there are going to be moments like that for everybody and when
[50:32.700 -> 50:36.440] you need to step up and have that kind of mindset you better be ready for it
[50:36.440 -> 50:40.200] and not scared of it but that doesn't mean that you need to live your life in
[50:40.200 -> 50:44.780] a state of perpetual struggle in a state of perpetual suffering there's nothing
[50:44.780 -> 50:49.920] wrong with having peace and contentment there's nothing wrong with having peace and contentment. There's nothing wrong with stepping back and relaxing for a little
[50:49.920 -> 50:56.400] bit. And in fact, it's probably the balance between the two and emphasizing them at different times
[50:56.400 -> 51:02.320] that allows you to perform at an even higher level. So it's not a question of either or,
[51:02.320 -> 51:05.000] it's both and, but it's just when.
[51:05.480 -> 51:07.840] So is it okay to throw a zero some days?
[51:08.400 -> 51:12.600] I think so. I mean, nobody's going to be perfect. It's it's not the objective
[51:12.600 -> 51:13.720] though. Again,
[51:13.720 -> 51:17.640] it's very easy to get into this style where you're like giving yourself excuses
[51:18.120 -> 51:20.520] and you're like, Oh, well it's okay to, you know, not show up.
[51:21.120 -> 51:23.840] What I've come to find. So I had a day like this last week, actually,
[51:24.320 -> 51:28.000] there was a day, I think it was Wednesday or Thursday last week, I really didn't
[51:28.000 -> 51:31.960] feel like working out. I've been on a really good streak where I haven't
[51:31.960 -> 51:36.960] missed in quite a while and I just, I went to the gym and I was like, I just
[51:36.960 -> 51:41.080] really don't feel like doing anything today and it would have been very easy
[51:41.080 -> 51:48.240] for me to give myself a story about putting up a zero that day. But instead what I said was, okay, you know what?
[51:48.240 -> 51:50.620] Like you can reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule.
[51:50.620 -> 51:52.220] You don't have to do the whole thing if you don't want to,
[51:52.460 -> 51:56.940] let's just do the first set and see how you feel. So I did that. And you know,
[51:57.020 -> 51:58.900] I felt a little bit better. So I was like, I'll do the next one.
[51:58.940 -> 52:01.140] And then I just kind of got through the whole workout that way.
[52:01.420 -> 52:10.640] And I got to the end of it and it wasn't like anything to write home about. I mean, I didn't have an amazing lift or anything like that, but I didn't miss. And I told
[52:10.640 -> 52:16.000] my wife when I came, uh, came back afterward, I was like, you know, in a way I almost feel like
[52:16.000 -> 52:21.360] the bad days are more important than the good days, because if you show up on the bad days,
[52:21.360 -> 52:29.680] then you maintain the habit. And if you maintain the habit, then all you need is time. But if you only show up on the good days, you're not really getting
[52:29.680 -> 52:34.960] any separation between you and the average person. Everybody shows up on the good days.
[52:34.960 -> 52:40.040] In a way, greatness only reveals itself on the bad days. That's the only time that you
[52:40.040 -> 52:47.640] get any separation between the average performance and the exceptional one. So you need little mental tricks to help you get through it.
[52:47.640 -> 52:50.380] And it's not the objective to have a zero.
[52:50.380 -> 52:52.640] It's fine, everybody's going to have them occasionally.
[52:52.640 -> 52:54.480] And I don't think you should berate yourself
[52:54.480 -> 52:57.280] when it happens, but it's better
[52:57.280 -> 52:58.920] if you can find a small way to show up
[52:58.920 -> 53:00.240] than to do nothing at all.
[53:00.240 -> 53:01.120] I love that, James.
[53:01.120 -> 53:03.760] There's an example that really resonates with me
[53:03.760 -> 53:05.440] as you're saying it about,
[53:14.960 -> 53:16.320] I used to work in boxing and there was a young guy who was supremely talented, who was exceptional,
[53:21.280 -> 53:25.560] so he would never set his alarm clock to run, but he would run when he woke up or he'd always be five minutes late into the gym and he'd be building a distraction
[53:25.560 -> 53:28.560] so that you'd never really call into task on it.
[53:28.560 -> 53:30.640] And his talent got him all the way up
[53:30.640 -> 53:33.960] to fighting for a title.
[53:33.960 -> 53:35.840] And after halfway through the fight,
[53:35.840 -> 53:37.240] he was winning the fight easily,
[53:37.240 -> 53:41.200] but then it then came down to grit and resolve
[53:41.200 -> 53:43.600] and being able to find a way through.
[53:43.600 -> 53:45.680] And he'd never practiced those small habits
[53:45.680 -> 53:49.040] of showing up on a bad day or getting through it.
[53:49.040 -> 53:51.440] And he ended up losing the fight on it.
[53:51.440 -> 53:54.240] And I remember his trainer saying precisely that to me,
[53:54.240 -> 53:55.560] he's not lost a fight tonight,
[53:55.560 -> 53:59.000] he's lost it over the last 10 years of constantly
[53:59.000 -> 54:01.960] see like not showing up on a bad day.
[54:01.960 -> 54:03.760] That's an interesting point.
[54:03.760 -> 54:04.600] It's a good little phrase.
[54:04.600 -> 54:08.320] You know, he didn't lose it tonight. He lost it over uh, over the last 10 years. There are a lot of things in
[54:08.320 -> 54:12.560] life that are like that, you know, where it's actually all the, the sum of all these little
[54:12.560 -> 54:17.280] moments before the sum of your preparation that determine the outcome in a lot of ways,
[54:17.280 -> 54:22.000] like the outcome of atomic habits was baked in months and years before it happened. You know,
[54:22.000 -> 54:25.840] it was all the articles that built the audience. It was all the revisions of the manuscript.
[54:25.840 -> 54:29.920] It was all the prep for the marketing and the launch that happened months before a single
[54:29.920 -> 54:30.640] copy was sold.
[54:30.640 -> 54:34.720] It was actually all of that that was just potential energy getting released when the
[54:34.720 -> 54:35.760] book came out.
[54:35.760 -> 54:37.840] And there are many different things like that in life.
[54:37.840 -> 54:41.840] I also think it's worth saying, like, I don't know anything about this particular story
[54:41.840 -> 54:47.160] other than what you just told me, but, you know, most people never even make it to the title fight, you know, so this guy was
[54:47.160 -> 54:48.160] there.
[54:48.160 -> 54:53.360] Um, and that also should count for something, you know, um, there, people just have different
[54:53.360 -> 54:55.340] personalities and different makeups too.
[54:55.340 -> 54:56.340] And that's okay.
[54:56.340 -> 54:58.960] You know, like people have different things that they want to emphasize.
[54:58.960 -> 55:07.780] And in a lot of ways, I think when you see truly fantastic outcomes, when you see really exceptional outcomes, it's this perfect matching, this perfect blending
[55:07.780 -> 55:12.320] of personality and talent and situation.
[55:12.320 -> 55:15.300] I heard a phrase one time, grit is fit.
[55:15.300 -> 55:16.920] And their point is like,
[55:16.920 -> 55:19.240] when you are well-suited to an environment,
[55:19.240 -> 55:21.560] when you are perfectly fit for the task
[55:21.560 -> 55:24.620] that you're working on, then yeah, you're really gritty
[55:24.620 -> 55:28.840] because it's the kind of thing that you're genuinely interested in that plays to your strengths
[55:28.840 -> 55:31.640] that addresses your natural curiosities.
[55:31.640 -> 55:35.800] And so in a lot of ways, that's kind of the first big hurdle, the maybe the most enormous
[55:35.800 -> 55:41.560] thing to try to figure out is what is something that is naturally aligned with what I really
[55:41.560 -> 55:46.280] want to do or the way that I'm encoded, the way that I'm, you know, put together.
[55:46.280 -> 55:49.240] And if you can find yourself a situation like that,
[55:49.240 -> 55:51.980] then you're in a place where you're gonna find
[55:51.980 -> 55:54.020] like endless ways to improve
[55:54.020 -> 55:56.380] because you're just naturally interested in it.
[55:56.380 -> 55:58.480] You'll always be unearthing and discovering
[55:58.480 -> 56:00.960] new little things that you could tweak.
[56:00.960 -> 56:04.380] If you're in a situation where you're not that well-suited
[56:04.380 -> 56:12.000] to it, or you're doing it just because other people are telling you you should, or you kind of are being like nudged into it, even the obvious improvements are going to feel like a hassle.
[56:12.000 -> 56:19.000] So that's another question that I really like asking, which is what's the version of this habit that would be the most fun for me?
[56:19.000 -> 56:25.560] What's the version of this habit that feels like it's the best fit for my style and my personality.
[56:25.560 -> 56:30.160] There's not like infinite ways to do things in life, but there's almost always more than
[56:30.160 -> 56:31.200] one way.
[56:31.200 -> 56:35.320] And so you should choose the version of that habit that feels best suited to you and your
[56:35.320 -> 56:36.880] style and your personality.
[56:36.880 -> 56:39.200] And if you do that, you're in a much better place to improve.
[56:39.200 -> 56:41.960] So give us an example of that in your world then.
[56:41.960 -> 56:45.420] A lot of people, especially in January, when the year's getting started,
[56:45.420 -> 56:47.180] they choose an exercise habit
[56:47.180 -> 56:48.860] because they feel like, oh, I'm supposed to go to the gym
[56:48.860 -> 56:50.220] or I want to get in shape this year
[56:50.220 -> 56:52.340] or this is something I should do.
[56:52.340 -> 56:54.660] But I like lifting weights,
[56:54.660 -> 56:56.700] but not everybody wants to train like a bodybuilder,
[56:56.700 -> 56:58.020] and that's fine.
[56:58.020 -> 57:02.020] You could kayak or rock climb or ride a bike or do yoga.
[57:02.020 -> 57:04.200] There's an endless number of ways
[57:04.200 -> 57:08.760] to live an active lifestyle, and you should choose the version of that habit that is most exciting
[57:08.760 -> 57:09.840] to you.
[57:09.840 -> 57:13.420] Another one, I did an interview with Tim Ferriss one time and he was telling me that when he
[57:13.420 -> 57:19.200] did his meditation habit for a long time, when he first started, his actual, his meditation
[57:19.200 -> 57:23.160] was he would listen to a song from Prince and he would sit and meditate while the song
[57:23.160 -> 57:24.520] was playing.
[57:24.520 -> 57:30.720] Writing is another example. You know, I have gradually found that I like writing in shorter chunks. When, uh, when I
[57:30.720 -> 57:35.600] first signed the book deal to write Atomic Habits, the editors were encouraging me to write chapters
[57:35.600 -> 57:40.320] that were like six to 8,000 words, but that's not really my style. Like I, I like writing things that
[57:40.320 -> 57:44.400] are two or 3,000 words. And so eventually I was like, you know what, the structure of this book
[57:44.400 -> 57:47.040] is just going to be different. And so what would this book like if
[57:47.040 -> 57:51.040] it was going to be fun for me to write? Well, it's still going to be a lot of work, but it's
[57:51.040 -> 57:54.880] going to be a lot more fun if I get to write in my style. So the chapters are short. So that's
[57:54.880 -> 57:59.840] just, you know, there are a lot of different ways that that can express itself. But that basic idea
[57:59.840 -> 58:03.840] of asking yourself, what would this look like if it was enjoyable? What would it be like to be
[58:03.840 -> 58:05.720] someone who has fun doing this
[58:05.720 -> 58:08.620] habit, and then trying to find or structure the version of
[58:08.620 -> 58:11.080] that? I think it just puts you in a much better place.
[58:11.360 -> 58:14.400] And what habit have you stumbled upon that you'd share with us
[58:14.400 -> 58:17.400] that has the biggest impact on the rest of your day, you know,
[58:17.400 -> 58:21.160] on a personal perspective, the early morning allows me to bounce
[58:21.160 -> 58:23.800] from thing to thing to thing. And I actually think that
[58:23.820 -> 58:25.520] getting up early is one habit
[58:25.520 -> 58:30.240] that maybe impacts seven or eight further down the line. Well, that's actually the key, I think,
[58:30.240 -> 58:36.160] what you just mentioned, which is to ask yourself, which habit is upstream from other good things
[58:36.160 -> 58:40.240] happening for me? And, you know, it's easy when you sit down and think about the habits you want
[58:40.240 -> 58:44.640] to change, especially for ambitious people. It's easy to start to get really aggressive about it
[58:44.640 -> 58:47.760] and be like, you know what, what would peak performance look like? Here's the seven things
[58:47.760 -> 58:52.160] I'm going to start doing. And you know, you come up with this big plan. And instead I would say,
[58:53.040 -> 58:58.800] how about we back out a little bit and ask ourselves, what could I stick to even on my bad
[58:58.800 -> 59:09.280] days? Let's start there with the floor. And then we try to figure out what is the one or two things just one or two little moves that if I do this each day I tend to live a good day
[59:09.280 -> 59:15.040] so your example is waking up early which is a good one for me my workout habit is
[59:15.040 -> 59:19.260] the one that kind of anchors the rest of my day if I work out then yeah I get the
[59:19.260 -> 59:23.440] benefits of exercise and that's great but I also I have a post workout high
[59:23.440 -> 59:26.800] for like an hour or two where I get like really good concentration.
[59:27.400 -> 59:33.200] I tend to sleep better at night because I'm tired from the workout, which means I wake up the next day and I have better energy.
[59:33.720 -> 59:35.760] I tend to eat better when I'm working out.
[59:35.760 -> 59:39.800] It's when I'm not working out that I kind of like, oh, who cares, you know, like I'll eat whatever I want.
[59:39.800 -> 59:45.440] Now at no point was I trying to build better nutrition habits or sleep habits or focus
[59:45.440 -> 59:49.520] habits, but all those things kind of came as a natural byproduct of just making sure that I got
[59:49.520 -> 59:56.320] the workout in. Some other common ones you'll hear people say, a lot of performers, comedians or
[59:56.320 -> 01:00:00.960] basketball players or something like that, they'll have a visualization habit. If they do that before
[01:00:00.960 -> 01:00:04.880] they step out on stage or step out onto the court, they're more likely to have a good day.
[01:00:04.200 -> 01:00:06.280] If they do that before they step out on stage or step out onto the court, they're more likely to have a good day.
[01:00:06.280 -> 01:00:08.880] Creatives will often talk about having a daily walk.
[01:00:08.880 -> 01:00:10.360] That's kind of their anchor habit.
[01:00:10.360 -> 01:00:13.260] They do that and the rest of the day kind of falls in line with the creative juices
[01:00:13.260 -> 01:00:14.560] get flowing.
[01:00:14.560 -> 01:00:19.920] So I think it's as simple as asking yourself, when I am really on, when I'm living a good
[01:00:19.920 -> 01:00:22.520] day, what are some of the key parts of that day?
[01:00:22.520 -> 01:00:26.320] And you'll probably come up with two or three things that work well for you.
[01:00:26.320 -> 01:00:27.640] And I would say start there.
[01:00:27.640 -> 01:00:31.800] You know, like, man, if you can knock down that one key habit that is upstream from a
[01:00:31.800 -> 01:00:35.440] lot of other good things, you're living a lot of good days there if you can just get
[01:00:35.440 -> 01:00:36.520] that done.
[01:00:36.520 -> 01:00:39.800] And then once you've established a foothold and kind of mastered the art of showing up
[01:00:39.800 -> 01:00:43.880] consistently with that habit, well, now you have a lot of things that you could improve
[01:00:43.880 -> 01:00:45.360] or, you know or advance from there.
[01:00:45.360 -> 01:00:47.400] James, this has been a masterclass.
[01:00:47.400 -> 01:00:51.240] I thank you for being so generous and sharing it.
[01:00:51.240 -> 01:00:55.280] We then have a quickfire of questions that we'd like to throw at you.
[01:00:55.280 -> 01:01:01.000] So the first one is, what are the three non-negotiable behaviors that you and everyone around you
[01:01:01.000 -> 01:01:02.440] must buy into?
[01:01:02.440 -> 01:01:04.920] The part about everyone around me is throwing me a little bit.
[01:01:04.920 -> 01:01:06.720] I don't really, I don't think about it like that.
[01:01:06.720 -> 01:01:09.520] Like, I'm really not trying to force people to do stuff, you know?
[01:01:09.520 -> 01:01:12.480] Like, I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to keep my eyes on my own paper
[01:01:12.480 -> 01:01:14.240] and focus on what I'm doing.
[01:01:14.240 -> 01:01:16.560] So, sleep is my big non-negotiable.
[01:01:16.560 -> 01:01:18.160] I try to get, try to get enough sleep.
[01:01:18.160 -> 01:01:19.680] It's hard when you got little kids, you know?
[01:01:19.680 -> 01:01:21.840] Like, I got two young ones running around, but, um,
[01:01:22.480 -> 01:01:24.320] working out, which I already mentioned.
[01:01:24.320 -> 01:01:28.760] And then I, for a long time, I would have said writing, but I actually think I'm going to
[01:01:28.760 -> 01:01:33.680] put reading in that category, because what I found is that if I'm reading consistently,
[01:01:33.680 -> 01:01:35.480] the writing comes naturally.
[01:01:35.480 -> 01:01:38.040] Those are three things that are really crucial for me to live a good day.
[01:01:38.040 -> 01:01:42.720] What's one piece of advice that you'd give to a teenage James just starting out?
[01:01:42.720 -> 01:01:46.320] Well, for my specific situation, I probably would have said,
[01:01:46.320 -> 01:01:49.280] trust yourself and start earlier.
[01:01:49.920 -> 01:01:53.760] You know, like there are a lot of things in life that your family
[01:01:53.760 -> 01:01:58.000] and your friends often want you to be safe and you want to grow.
[01:01:58.880 -> 01:02:00.880] And those two things are not always aligned.
[01:02:01.600 -> 01:02:04.880] And so realizing that, you know, that if you do something a little
[01:02:04.880 -> 01:02:05.520] bit different
[01:02:05.520 -> 01:02:06.360] than what they want,
[01:02:06.360 -> 01:02:07.700] it doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad.
[01:02:07.700 -> 01:02:09.880] It also doesn't mean that if they don't support you
[01:02:09.880 -> 01:02:11.280] in the way that you were hoping,
[01:02:11.280 -> 01:02:12.480] it doesn't mean they don't love you
[01:02:12.480 -> 01:02:14.200] or they don't want good things for you.
[01:02:14.200 -> 01:02:16.200] It just is a difference in priorities.
[01:02:16.200 -> 01:02:17.960] They want safety, you want growth.
[01:02:17.960 -> 01:02:19.600] And those are two different things.
[01:02:19.600 -> 01:02:22.440] So that's more for me personally though.
[01:02:22.440 -> 01:02:23.400] If we're talking about like,
[01:02:23.400 -> 01:02:25.840] what do I think is good general advice for a teenager or what
[01:02:25.840 -> 01:02:30.200] is something you would tell, you know, an 18 year old?
[01:02:30.200 -> 01:02:33.700] I think it mostly comes down to focusing on getting started and being consistent.
[01:02:33.700 -> 01:02:37.760] So I always encourage people to start with what in the book I talk about the two minute
[01:02:37.760 -> 01:02:42.040] rule, take whatever habit you're trying to build and you scale it down to something that
[01:02:42.040 -> 01:02:43.760] takes two minutes or less to do.
[01:02:43.760 -> 01:02:49.200] So read 30 books a year, it becomes read one page or do yoga four days a week becomes take out
[01:02:49.200 -> 01:02:50.740] my yoga mat.
[01:02:50.740 -> 01:02:56.220] And the real key there is that you're encouraging yourself to start small because you want to
[01:02:56.220 -> 01:02:58.160] master the art of showing up.
[01:02:58.160 -> 01:03:01.820] You know, you want to become the type of person that does it consistently.
[01:03:01.820 -> 01:03:06.700] There's that quote from Ed Latimer where he says the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door.
[01:03:06.700 -> 01:03:09.080] And, you know, there are a lot of things in life
[01:03:09.080 -> 01:03:10.080] that are like that.
[01:03:10.080 -> 01:03:12.160] And encouraging yourself to find ways
[01:03:12.160 -> 01:03:13.320] to make it easy to show up,
[01:03:13.320 -> 01:03:15.000] to make it easy to open the front door,
[01:03:15.000 -> 01:03:17.080] to make it easy to get started.
[01:03:17.080 -> 01:03:19.160] That's where the battle always begins.
[01:03:19.160 -> 01:03:22.000] And you can really get in your head
[01:03:22.000 -> 01:03:25.080] about trying to theorize or come up with the best plan.
[01:03:25.080 -> 01:03:26.320] I mean, we all do this.
[01:03:26.320 -> 01:03:31.940] We want to come up with the best sales strategy or the perfect diet plan, the ideal business
[01:03:31.940 -> 01:03:33.720] strategy.
[01:03:33.720 -> 01:03:39.160] But we often do that because we tell ourselves like, oh, I need to learn more before I can
[01:03:39.160 -> 01:03:40.940] take action.
[01:03:40.940 -> 01:03:45.000] But the truth is, the best way to learn is often by taking action.
[01:03:45.000 -> 01:03:48.760] The best way to learn is by getting in the arena a little bit, get started, gain a little
[01:03:48.760 -> 01:03:54.040] bit of a foothold, try a few things out, see what works for you, and then improve and update
[01:03:54.040 -> 01:03:55.500] and iterate from there.
[01:03:55.500 -> 01:03:59.880] And so the two-minute rule kind of pushes back on that perfectionist tendency, gets
[01:03:59.880 -> 01:04:04.320] you to master the art of showing up, and start to get some results.
[01:04:04.320 -> 01:04:08.600] And the final question from us, this is your one last message to the people that have listened
[01:04:08.600 -> 01:04:09.840] to this fascinating conversation.
[01:04:09.840 -> 01:04:12.680] Thank you for being so generous with your time.
[01:04:12.680 -> 01:04:18.080] What would you like to leave ringing in their ears, your one golden rule to a high performance
[01:04:18.080 -> 01:04:19.080] life?
[01:04:19.080 -> 01:04:22.080] Well, we talked a lot during this conversation about what are you optimizing for?
[01:04:22.080 -> 01:04:24.200] What are you trying to achieve?
[01:04:24.200 -> 01:04:26.200] And I think a different way to frame that is around what kind? What are you trying to achieve? And I think a different way to frame that
[01:04:26.200 -> 01:04:28.720] is around what kind of identity are you trying to build?
[01:04:28.720 -> 01:04:31.560] What's, who's the type of person you wish to become?
[01:04:31.560 -> 01:04:33.600] You know, for high performing people,
[01:04:33.600 -> 01:04:35.620] they often focus on results.
[01:04:35.620 -> 01:04:38.000] And that's fine, like I get it too, you know,
[01:04:38.000 -> 01:04:39.520] like I'm really interested in results
[01:04:39.520 -> 01:04:42.320] and we all want to achieve great outcomes.
[01:04:42.320 -> 01:04:44.800] But I think it's often better to start
[01:04:44.800 -> 01:04:47.000] not with what do I want to achieve, but, but I think it's often better to start not with what do I want to achieve,
[01:04:47.000 -> 01:04:49.240] but who do I wish to become?
[01:04:49.240 -> 01:04:50.980] And then the connection back to the,
[01:04:50.980 -> 01:04:52.280] everything we've talked about,
[01:04:52.280 -> 01:04:54.400] back to this discussion of consistency,
[01:04:54.400 -> 01:04:56.280] back to this discussion of small habits
[01:04:56.280 -> 01:04:58.320] and showing up each day,
[01:04:58.320 -> 01:05:00.700] every action you take is like a vote
[01:05:00.700 -> 01:05:03.160] for the type of person you wish to become.
[01:05:03.160 -> 01:05:05.240] And I think this is the real reason,
[01:05:05.240 -> 01:05:07.480] the true reason that habits matter.
[01:05:07.480 -> 01:05:10.760] It's not because habits will help you make more money
[01:05:10.760 -> 01:05:14.240] or reduce stress or get in shape.
[01:05:14.240 -> 01:05:16.680] They can help you do those things and that's great.
[01:05:16.680 -> 01:05:18.840] But the real reason that habits matter
[01:05:18.840 -> 01:05:20.760] is that they reinforce your identity.
[01:05:20.760 -> 01:05:23.660] It's like each action is like a little vote,
[01:05:23.660 -> 01:05:31.360] building up some evidence for being that kind of person. So no, doing one pushup does not transform your body, but it does
[01:05:31.360 -> 01:05:36.320] cast a vote for I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And no, writing one sentence does
[01:05:36.320 -> 01:05:42.000] not finish the novel, but it does cast a vote for I'm a writer. And so take a little bit of time to
[01:05:42.000 -> 01:05:45.200] think about that. Who's the type of person I want to cast votes for?
[01:05:45.200 -> 01:05:47.440] What is the type of identity I wish to reinforce?
[01:05:47.440 -> 01:05:50.080] And how are my habits shaping the story
[01:05:50.080 -> 01:05:51.600] that I have about myself?
[01:05:51.600 -> 01:05:53.920] And if you can get those two things aligned,
[01:05:53.920 -> 01:05:56.960] then the results can kind of come as a natural byproduct.
[01:05:56.960 -> 01:05:58.640] James, I can't thank you enough.
[01:05:58.640 -> 01:05:59.460] Thank you so much.
[01:05:59.460 -> 01:06:00.440] Really appreciate the opportunity.
[01:06:00.440 -> 01:06:01.680] Thank you for being so candid
[01:06:01.680 -> 01:06:03.480] and answering with such clavity.
[01:06:03.480 -> 01:06:04.320] Thank you.
[01:06:04.320 -> 01:06:08.000] ♪♪ Thank you for being so candid and answering with such clavity. Thank you.
[01:06:09.000 -> 01:06:10.000] Damien. Jake.
[01:06:10.000 -> 01:06:12.000] Where do we begin breaking that one down?
[01:06:12.000 -> 01:06:19.000] That was phenomenal. That's really one of the most enjoyable interviews I think that we've ever had the privilege of doing.
[01:06:19.000 -> 01:06:27.340] Let's do this a bit differently then. Let's tell people what we wrote down, because I think that's a good insight into what resonated with us and it may well capture. So the first thing I wrote down with a big
[01:06:27.340 -> 01:06:33.300] exclamation mark is you don't stumble in. And I think that's a really good sort of takeaway
[01:06:33.300 -> 01:06:37.420] for me from this conversation is that these things don't happen by accident. You don't
[01:06:37.420 -> 01:06:42.820] develop atomic habits by just kind of hoping that you will, you know, it is specific decision
[01:06:42.820 -> 01:06:47.200] making, it's hard work, it takes thought and it takes process.
[01:06:48.160 -> 01:06:48.960] You don't stumble in.
[01:06:48.960 -> 01:06:50.320] Steve McLaughlin
[01:06:50.320 -> 01:06:54.880] I love that one. I love the, the one that you tell us about join groups of those that already
[01:06:54.880 -> 01:06:59.520] have the desired behavior. I think that idea that we've spoken about it before, aren't we,
[01:06:59.520 -> 01:07:04.640] about peer pressure and that old quote that you become the sum total of the people you spend most
[01:07:04.640 -> 01:07:05.440] time with.
[01:07:05.440 -> 01:07:10.160] But I think when you look at who's doing what you want to do and hanging around with them and
[01:07:10.160 -> 01:07:15.120] picking the brains and then following on from that, that idea of if you were an alien and you
[01:07:15.120 -> 01:07:19.760] couldn't hear somebody's justification, you could just observe them. What, what behaviours are they
[01:07:19.760 -> 01:07:25.440] doing that you can deconstruct? I thought that was immense. Let fear be the throttle, not the brake.
[01:07:26.080 -> 01:07:29.440] That is one I'm going to take away with me. And I also like the fact of, because, you know,
[01:07:29.440 -> 01:07:33.440] I talk a lot about struggle. I think struggle is great. You know, it isn't the, I always say when
[01:07:33.440 -> 01:07:39.520] Man United, you know, beat, I don't know, Kingsland Town, 5-0, they don't celebrate,
[01:07:39.520 -> 01:07:46.120] right? When they beat Man City 1-0, they do. Yeah. They've scored four goals less because it was a struggle to score the one.
[01:07:46.560 -> 01:07:49.080] It wasn't a struggle to score the five.
[01:07:49.080 -> 01:07:52.440] And I think that's where we have to remember the thrill comes not from the
[01:07:52.440 -> 01:07:54.240] achievement, but from the struggle to get there.
[01:07:54.240 -> 01:07:55.360] So I loved that.
[01:07:55.600 -> 01:07:57.800] Do you know, I think there was a really good takeaway for you as well here,
[01:07:57.800 -> 01:08:01.280] because let's just sort of paint a picture for people that know you from this
[01:08:01.280 -> 01:08:02.760] podcast, but don't know you other than that.
[01:08:02.760 -> 01:08:08.000] Like you are the ultimate people pleaser, right? You know, you want to be there for people. You've got
[01:08:08.000 -> 01:08:11.560] so much knowledge. You want to help people. You've got people, you're a bit like a scratching
[01:08:11.560 -> 01:08:16.960] post for a cat. You've constantly got people wanting time with you. I think what he's learned
[01:08:16.960 -> 01:08:23.120] about either pricing himself out of the market or just being really ruthless about the things
[01:08:23.120 -> 01:08:25.420] he does and doesn't do. I could sort of see
[01:08:25.420 -> 01:08:28.640] you nodding along. I think there was a, there was some good takeaway for you personally
[01:08:28.640 -> 01:08:29.640] there, wasn't there?
[01:08:29.640 -> 01:08:31.480] Jason Vale Oh mate, there was that one bit where he, he
[01:08:31.480 -> 01:08:35.720] already spoke about the idea that you can have like a really ideal life and then you
[01:08:35.720 -> 01:08:39.480] make it worse to go after something else. And that's for me-
[01:08:39.480 -> 01:08:40.760] Steve McLaughlin And why are you going after it?
[01:08:40.760 -> 01:08:43.120] Jason Vale Yeah, that just hit me in the gut, that one
[01:08:43.120 -> 01:08:50.720] that made me think that, like, like you're right, I'll tell you a daft story that years ago I got myself in a
[01:08:50.720 -> 01:08:55.280] bit of trouble because I was doing a people-pleasing job. I agreed to go and
[01:08:55.280 -> 01:09:00.320] help a charity and I basically needed four hours to do the job in but I only
[01:09:00.320 -> 01:09:04.000] had three hours to be able to do what I needed to help this charity and get back
[01:09:04.000 -> 01:09:05.600] to what we're supposed to be doing.
[01:09:05.600 -> 01:09:08.040] And I kept thinking, I'll work out a way.
[01:09:08.040 -> 01:09:11.160] And I didn't, and I ended up driving too fast
[01:09:11.160 -> 01:09:15.640] and getting in trouble for breaking the speed limit.
[01:09:15.640 -> 01:09:18.720] And I remember speaking to the solicitor
[01:09:18.720 -> 01:09:19.760] that I had to get involved.
[01:09:19.760 -> 01:09:21.280] And he said to me, he said,
[01:09:21.280 -> 01:09:24.800] nobody gives a shit, you were doing the action.
[01:09:24.800 -> 01:09:25.200] Don't keep justifying your, why You were doing the action. Don't keep
[01:09:25.200 -> 01:09:30.080] justifying your, why you were doing it or it was for charity. I was trying to help
[01:09:30.080 -> 01:09:33.320] somebody. No givers gives a shit. They give a shit the fact that you were
[01:09:33.320 -> 01:09:38.240] driving like an idiot at one stage. And I think that was a big wake-up call. That
[01:09:38.240 -> 01:09:42.520] was one of his signals of progress for me of having to do something different.
[01:09:42.520 -> 01:09:44.760] But that hit me like a...
[01:09:44.760 -> 01:09:46.920] The problem is, how long ago was that thing
[01:09:46.920 -> 01:09:47.920] with the charity?
[01:09:47.920 -> 01:09:49.560] Steve Marr 10 years ago.
[01:09:49.560 -> 01:09:51.480] Jason Vale But I think you still do it though. That's
[01:09:51.480 -> 01:09:53.560] 10 years ago. And I still think like...
[01:09:53.560 -> 01:09:56.480] Steve Marr I know, I know. What's the thing that...
[01:09:56.480 -> 01:09:59.360] Jason Vale So maybe this is the conversation. Doing the
[01:09:59.360 -> 01:10:05.320] things that actually make your life worse. But why are you saying yes to them? What else? Greatness
[01:10:05.320 -> 01:10:10.360] reveals itself on the bad days when you still turn up and you do it, even on the day when
[01:10:10.360 -> 01:10:13.560] you don't want to, I think it's great. And the final one from, from my perspective, the
[01:10:13.560 -> 01:10:20.520] heaviest weight at the gym is the front door. Like just, just get on with it. Just begin.
[01:10:20.520 -> 01:10:21.520] Open the door.
[01:10:21.520 -> 01:10:23.920] Steve McQueen Yeah. I think, I think the last one I'd chuck
[01:10:23.920 -> 01:10:29.000] in is that that one idea of everything you do casts a vote for the person that you want to be.
[01:10:29.000 -> 01:10:34.000] So even just doing that small step gives you a cast of vote that writing a line doesn't finish a novel,
[01:10:34.000 -> 01:10:37.000] but it casts a vote for you being a writer.
[01:10:37.000 -> 01:10:40.000] And that kind of thing is really powerful.
[01:10:40.000 -> 01:10:44.000] Honestly, I can't advocate how much I took away from that.
[01:10:44.000 -> 01:10:46.440] That's great. Thank you for your time, buddy.
[01:10:46.440 -> 01:10:47.440] Thanks, mate.
[01:10:47.440 -> 01:10:49.440] It was a real privilege that one.
[01:10:49.440 -> 01:10:54.440] Well, it's time for Damien and I's favorite part of any episode of High Performance, the
[01:10:54.440 -> 01:10:57.760] chance to meet the people and speak to the people who are listening to the podcasts.
[01:10:57.760 -> 01:11:01.960] And this is a really fun one for me because I'm about to speak to someone who's not only
[01:11:01.960 -> 01:11:05.360] the son of a guest who's been on the podcast, not
[01:11:05.360 -> 01:11:08.380] only a man that runs a business that I've actually invested in, but also my neighbour.
[01:11:08.380 -> 01:11:13.640] So it feels a bit odd, Ollie, that I'm talking to you in my house, Damien's in his house
[01:11:13.640 -> 01:11:17.360] and you're in your house and I could have just crossed over the road and had this conversation
[01:11:17.360 -> 01:11:18.360] with you. How are you?
[01:11:18.360 -> 01:11:19.360] Ollie Sallies I'm good, Benny. I'm good. No, thanks for
[01:11:19.360 -> 01:11:21.040] having me on. I really appreciate it.
[01:11:21.040 -> 01:11:23.840] Ben Mollis Right. So obviously people will be going,
[01:11:23.840 -> 01:11:29.800] oh, I see. Jake's invested in Ski Yodel, Ollie's business, and therefore he's getting Ollie on the podcast
[01:11:29.800 -> 01:11:31.360] to get more people.
[01:11:31.360 -> 01:11:35.400] The truth is though, you're here because of what high performance has done for you as
[01:11:35.400 -> 01:11:36.400] an entrepreneur.
[01:11:36.400 -> 01:11:40.480] So would you mind just sort of basically sharing your journey from, you know, when you lived
[01:11:40.480 -> 01:11:43.480] in London and you were employed to what's going on now?
[01:11:43.480 -> 01:11:45.520] So, yeah, like real short story. I used to run a ski school in the Alps and lived in the Al you were employed, to what's going on now? Richard Pinchotty So yeah, like real short story,
[01:11:45.520 -> 01:11:48.560] I used to run a ski school in the Alps and lived in the Alps for 10 years and
[01:11:48.560 -> 01:11:53.600] then came back to work in the city in London and kind of during that period of like being on the
[01:11:53.600 -> 01:11:57.680] consumer end of the ski market, I kind of found it bizarre that the ski market hadn't really caught
[01:11:57.680 -> 01:12:02.240] up with the rest of the sort of the travel market in terms of how technology had embraced, yeah,
[01:12:02.240 -> 01:12:08.680] the whole sort of travel market as a whole. You can book a flight on Skyscanner anywhere around the world. You can go onto booking.com, Airbnb.
[01:12:08.680 -> 01:12:12.640] And the ski market was kind of stuck in its ways in terms of still having to phone up
[01:12:12.640 -> 01:12:18.520] agencies and spend days waiting for listing availability and being able to book. So it
[01:12:18.520 -> 01:12:22.240] was kind of during that period that there was an opportunity for me in terms of where
[01:12:22.240 -> 01:12:29.020] my career was to actually go and set uh, and set up a company and, and try and, uh, bring technology into the space for the
[01:12:29.020 -> 01:12:32.540] better, uh, and to target a market that, you know, that demand technology and
[01:12:32.540 -> 01:12:35.240] also trying to just make scheme more accessible for everybody.
[01:12:35.860 -> 01:12:38.000] So that was kind of very much the ethos of what we're doing.
[01:12:38.000 -> 01:12:39.980] So we are very much a technology led company.
[01:12:40.120 -> 01:12:43.100] We founded the business, uh, about four weeks before COVID kicked in.
[01:12:43.520 -> 01:12:48.000] So, um, that is of course, it's challenges that is of course a challenge up to where we are now.
[01:12:48.000 -> 01:12:53.200] So Wally, a lot of people might have that idea where they see this potential opportunity,
[01:12:53.200 -> 01:12:58.960] but actually taking it from idea to execution and taking that risk when it sounds like you
[01:12:58.960 -> 01:13:04.960] had a good job working in the city is the bit that's doing the heavy lifting for me.
[01:13:04.960 -> 01:13:05.160] I'm interested in, tell us a little bit about bit that's doing the heavy lifting for me. I'm
[01:13:05.160 -> 01:13:08.860] interested in, tell us a little bit about taking that risk and the courage
[01:13:08.860 -> 01:13:13.200] required to do that. My wife and I kind of had long discussions about it and
[01:13:13.200 -> 01:13:15.960] she was employed at the time and it probably was like the only real kind of
[01:13:15.960 -> 01:13:20.200] opportunity where you know we just had our first kid and it was a
[01:13:20.200 -> 01:13:23.080] massive risk but it was something I was passionate about. There was an idea that
[01:13:23.080 -> 01:13:27.440] I knew that there was a genuine gap in the market.
[01:13:27.560 -> 01:13:30.760] And if we did it well, we did it right, then actually we could scale it quite
[01:13:30.760 -> 01:13:34.800] quickly, but to answer your question, the timing was right, but I had no
[01:13:34.800 -> 01:13:36.240] idea how difficult it was going to be.
[01:13:36.400 -> 01:13:38.000] So tell us about the difficulties then.
[01:13:38.280 -> 01:13:38.640] That's right.
[01:13:38.760 -> 01:13:43.360] I think, yeah, I think firstly, um, you know, the biggest challenge for us is
[01:13:43.440 -> 01:13:46.640] for me was, you know, we were building a tech company.
[01:13:46.640 -> 01:13:47.960] I'm, as I say, to quote,
[01:13:47.960 -> 01:13:50.440] probably one of the least techie founders of a tech company.
[01:13:50.440 -> 01:13:52.600] You'll come across actually not having that initial
[01:13:52.600 -> 01:13:55.120] kind of CTO, chief technical officer type of support
[01:13:55.120 -> 01:13:56.720] at the very beginning.
[01:13:56.720 -> 01:13:59.040] So I think that was sort of the hardest bit,
[01:13:59.040 -> 01:14:00.920] is then going out there and finding that,
[01:14:00.920 -> 01:14:02.560] that's kind of support network.
[01:14:02.560 -> 01:14:04.160] And then it's actually just somebody,
[01:14:04.160 -> 01:14:05.000] some of the bits
[01:14:05.000 -> 01:14:06.520] that I didn't envisage to be so hard,
[01:14:06.520 -> 01:14:09.480] things like building a team and managing a team.
[01:14:09.480 -> 01:14:10.440] And one of the big things again,
[01:14:10.440 -> 01:14:13.140] as a tech company is raising investment.
[01:14:13.140 -> 01:14:15.080] When you kind of combine those all together
[01:14:15.080 -> 01:14:16.920] and it's kind of everything's kind of on your shoulders
[01:14:16.920 -> 01:14:19.960] as a single founder, it can be a lonely place at times.
[01:14:19.960 -> 01:14:21.600] And I think that's where, if I'm being honest,
[01:14:21.600 -> 01:14:23.800] high performance has had such an impact.
[01:14:23.800 -> 01:14:26.120] But I'll be honest, positively and negatively for me.
[01:14:26.120 -> 01:14:27.920] And when I say negatively,
[01:14:27.920 -> 01:14:29.600] it comes down to the fact that
[01:14:29.600 -> 01:14:31.200] when I'm doing well with work,
[01:14:31.200 -> 01:14:32.840] I love listening to your podcast.
[01:14:32.840 -> 01:14:34.840] But actually, my biggest fear in life,
[01:14:34.840 -> 01:14:37.840] I had this whole fear of failing.
[01:14:37.840 -> 01:14:39.040] And when I'm not doing so well,
[01:14:39.040 -> 01:14:40.240] that negativity kicks in,
[01:14:40.240 -> 01:14:41.760] and that's when I don't tune into the podcast.
[01:14:41.760 -> 01:14:43.600] But actually, that's when I need it most.
[01:14:43.600 -> 01:14:47.040] Why do you think then that you don't tune into it when things are a struggle?
[01:14:47.040 -> 01:14:50.320] Richard Martin – Well, my confidence has been knocked. I find it difficult to then tune into
[01:14:50.320 -> 01:14:54.960] the pod and, and, um, I kind of hear these, you know, these, you know, these stories and I go,
[01:14:54.960 -> 01:14:59.200] I'm not good enough. I'm not, you know, I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I can't achieve what
[01:14:59.200 -> 01:15:02.960] these guys are now, you know, are now saying on the podcast. And so it almost has a sort of
[01:15:02.960 -> 01:15:06.160] a negative connotation on how I feel, which is, which is ridiculous
[01:15:06.160 -> 01:15:08.800] because that is, it's like going for a run or, you know,
[01:15:09.080 -> 01:15:11.280] jumping on a tennis court when, you know, when you're feeling low,
[01:15:11.360 -> 01:15:13.840] Chloe kicks me out the house and says, you know, go for a run.
[01:15:13.840 -> 01:15:15.240] And of course, it makes you feel better.
[01:15:15.240 -> 01:15:16.360] And it's the same as the podcast.
[01:15:16.360 -> 01:15:19.040] It has been, I love listening to it.
[01:15:19.040 -> 01:15:23.080] And but there are times where, you know, I just, yeah, I find it a struggle.
[01:15:23.360 -> 01:15:27.600] So so tell us about the kind of pressures that you do put on yourself then,
[01:15:27.600 -> 01:15:32.560] because that's a really intriguing response. Now we've obviously had your brilliant dad
[01:15:32.560 -> 01:15:38.640] on the podcast as one of our guests. Is some of it about living up to his expectations?
[01:15:38.640 -> 01:15:43.200] So I always envisaged I'd be in the army, I'd join the army, and I was growing up in an army
[01:15:43.200 -> 01:15:45.760] background, I was on an army campus all my life. I went, and I always thought I was going to join the army. Everyone said, you know, what are you going to do? I'm going to in the army, I joined the army and I was growing up in an army background. I was in an army camp all my life.
[01:15:45.960 -> 01:15:47.640] I went and I always thought I was going to join the army.
[01:15:47.640 -> 01:15:48.720] Everyone said, what are you going to do?
[01:15:48.720 -> 01:15:50.240] I'm going to join the army and join the army.
[01:15:50.320 -> 01:15:51.680] I don't think I ever really meant it.
[01:15:51.880 -> 01:15:54.480] And so I went and did my RCB whilst my father,
[01:15:54.680 -> 01:15:57.680] so the regular commissions board, become an army officer.
[01:15:57.880 -> 01:15:59.720] And my dad was head of the army at the time.
[01:15:59.920 -> 01:16:04.000] So I kind of went to this, to the regular commission board
[01:16:04.200 -> 01:16:06.440] and 200 other potential officers there.
[01:16:06.440 -> 01:16:12.520] And it's a two day test and being a damn it and it is a surname that it's a bit different.
[01:16:12.520 -> 01:16:16.040] People kind of knew who I was and it caused a bit of tension and I failed.
[01:16:16.040 -> 01:16:18.000] I failed my regular commission board.
[01:16:18.000 -> 01:16:19.000] I didn't get into it.
[01:16:19.000 -> 01:16:20.560] It's a fantastic being an army officer.
[01:16:20.560 -> 01:16:28.260] And it was one of the hardest things I've ever experienced in my adult life because
[01:16:28.260 -> 01:16:29.260] I just got so embarrassed.
[01:16:29.260 -> 01:16:32.200] It was the embarrassment of it all.
[01:16:32.200 -> 01:16:35.320] Because everyone knew I was going, everyone knew people that were there, they were like,
[01:16:35.320 -> 01:16:36.320] Oh, Olly Dallin, General Dallin's son.
[01:16:36.320 -> 01:16:39.320] And my mates were like, Oh, you're going to Sanders.
[01:16:39.320 -> 01:16:42.080] I told everybody I was going to go to the army.
[01:16:42.080 -> 01:16:43.800] I look back at that still quite negatively.
[01:16:43.800 -> 01:16:48.800] It had a massive impact. It's, thank you so much, Oli, for coming on and sharing the
[01:16:48.800 -> 01:16:53.360] entrepreneur story, but also like that much more personal stuff, I think about wanting to follow
[01:16:53.360 -> 01:16:57.680] in your dad's footsteps. You know, obviously every single person at that time would have seen the
[01:16:57.680 -> 01:17:02.800] name Danit written there and known that your dad, you know, Lord Danit, who's been on the podcast,
[01:17:02.800 -> 01:17:07.920] as we say, you know, was the head of the British army. Like that's a, it's a huge thing to talk about. So listen, thank
[01:17:07.920 -> 01:17:12.280] you, mate. And I think I just want to wrap up by talking about community. Cause I know
[01:17:12.280 -> 01:17:17.320] that as we speak, there's a crowdfund raise going on for Ski Yoda, which is your business.
[01:17:17.320 -> 01:17:22.040] I think trying to bring people on the journey with you is such an important part of what
[01:17:22.040 -> 01:17:25.080] high performance stands for. And I kind of get the impression that actually,
[01:17:25.080 -> 01:17:27.040] Ski Yoda was kind of similar.
[01:17:27.040 -> 01:17:31.280] Building a community and not running a business in an old
[01:17:31.280 -> 01:17:32.880] fashioned way where you're like, we're a business,
[01:17:32.880 -> 01:17:34.760] we're successful, you all come and spend your money.
[01:17:34.760 -> 01:17:37.600] But instead creating a business where the people listening to
[01:17:37.600 -> 01:17:41.720] this conversation can be investors, but can be more than that.
[01:17:41.720 -> 01:17:43.640] They can genuinely be part of the business.
[01:17:43.640 -> 01:17:45.840] Why do you think that is such a, an important part of
[01:17:45.840 -> 01:17:47.860] entrepreneurship in, in modern business?
[01:17:48.160 -> 01:17:51.960] Community for us is so important and, um, fundamentally, you know,
[01:17:51.960 -> 01:17:56.800] we're building this, this company that I want our customers to own.
[01:17:56.880 -> 01:17:59.400] Um, and is accessible to everyone.
[01:17:59.520 -> 01:18:02.840] So yeah, our community, we did a fundraiser two years ago.
[01:18:02.940 -> 01:18:06.240] Uh, we have 507 plus investors at that time.
[01:18:06.240 -> 01:18:07.920] They're out there championing the business for us.
[01:18:07.920 -> 01:18:09.720] And I think it's a hugely important part
[01:18:09.720 -> 01:18:11.440] of what we're doing as a company.
[01:18:11.440 -> 01:18:12.260] I love that, Oli.
[01:18:12.260 -> 01:18:13.600] I think that's one of the big things
[01:18:13.600 -> 01:18:15.660] that we've found on the podcast
[01:18:15.660 -> 01:18:18.440] is creating that community that lifts and inspires
[01:18:18.440 -> 01:18:22.400] and supports each other is where the real good stuff happens.
[01:18:22.400 -> 01:18:24.120] So thank you so much.
[01:18:24.120 -> 01:18:25.040] I'm really inspired by listening to it. No thank you so much. I'm really inspired by
[01:18:25.040 -> 01:18:26.240] listening to it.
[01:18:26.240 -> 01:18:28.240] Jake Humphrey No worries, thanks guys, appreciate it.
[01:18:28.240 -> 01:18:50.960] Oh, well, what did you think? Do you know what? Do me a favour, ping me a message on Instagram right now and let me know what you thought of that. I'm at Jake Humphrey. And you know what? There's only two things I'd love you to do. First of all, subscribe to this podcast so you can get more incredible content like that on a weekly basis. It's free. It's free, this content, and I want
[01:18:50.960 -> 01:18:56.640] you to hear it and get it and react to it and learn and grow from it. And secondly, I'd love
[01:18:56.640 -> 01:19:01.200] you to share this. Please just ping a link to it on your Instagram, on your WhatsApp, on your
[01:19:01.200 -> 01:19:09.240] LinkedIn. It doesn't matter where you are on Twitter, whatever, just share it, because this could be the conversation that changes the game for somebody else.
[01:19:09.240 -> 01:19:13.360] And huge thanks to James Clear for coming on High Performance and sharing so much with
[01:19:13.360 -> 01:19:30.000] us. We'll see you soon for another cracking episode of the High Performance Podcast. ♪♪
[01:19:30.000 -> 01:19:40.000] ♪♪
[01:19:40.000 -> 01:19:43.000] ♪♪
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