Transcription
Yo, what is up, guys? It's your boy Qo, and today we're going to talk about part three of the signs behind habits for the book *Atomic Habits* by James Clear, which is to make a habit seem easy because the easier something seems, the more likely we are to do it, and the more likely we are to keep doing it. For this video, you will learn three things: Number one is how to avoid this one crucial mistake that 99% of people make when starting out a new habit. Number two is how to prime your environment to make good habits easy and bad habits difficult. Number three is how to automate a new habit, which, in other words, means doing it without thinking about it. This is your boy Q talks, who delivers true talk. Let's get straight to it.
Chapter 11 is called "Walk slowly but never backwards," and you know I read this chapter many times. If I had to pick out one simple thing that could get you to understand the whole chapter, it would be this: when starting out a new habit, focus on repetition rather than preparation. That is the number one mistake that people make when starting on a new habit. You know, you get stuck trying to find the optimal plan before you start taking action. James Clear calls this "motion." Motion is when you're planning, preparing, strategizing, learning—that is good and all, but it is not taking action. When motion becomes a form of procrastination, you are off to a bad start. As V once wrote, "The best is often the enemy of the good." You won't become the best at something unless you start doing it. You learn best through trial and error, right?
Let me get you to understand it a little bit better. If I outline 20 ideas for articles I want to write, that's motion. If I actually sit down and write an article, that's action. If I search for a better diet plan and read a few books on the topic, that's motion. If I actually eat a healthy meal, that's action. And guys, I've been through it too, right? I mean, when I first started off my YouTube channel, I would waste so much time trying to plan the perfect YouTube video before I even started to record it. I mean, I would read the book, and I still do that, by the way, don't worry. But then I would highlight everything that I found important, and then from the highlights, I would type them down in a Word document. On the Word document, I would categorize and change up the words or the phrases so that I had the perfect script for when I started filming. But when I did start filming, I would never even look at the script. I simply pressed record, I would say my thoughts about a chapter, and then I would end the video. Look at the video, analyze, adopt, do it again—trial and error. I kept doing it until I found the best YouTube video for me. But if I simply read the script and made a video, I would never have been happy with the video. And so guys, focus on action rather than motion. Record that video; don't plan it out. That's what I do now, and I find that I save myself so much more time and I have much better videos, right?
And so, if motion is so bad, why do we do it? Well, sometimes it is because we do need to plan and strategize, which can be good sometimes. But more often than not, it is simply a way for you to think that you're improving without running the risk of failure. And guys, that is never something that you should do because failure is inevitable if you want to be successful. You know, my channel is all about the secrets to success from everyday millionaires, right? And every millionaire I can tell you has gone through failure. And so do not be scared of it; go towards it. Focus on action.
Now we're on to chapter number 12. Chapter 12 is called "The law of the least effort," and this law is the law that we all apply in our day-to-day lives. If you had to pick between the easier choice and the harder choice to get the same result, you'll always choose the easier choice, right? And so, if you were to look at the average person's daily habits, you'll find that there are habits that don't require too much motivation: scrolling on TikTok, watching Netflix, taking a nap. These are all things that are easy to do. You can think of a habit as an obstacle to getting what you really want. For example, watching TikTok is an obstacle to getting entertained; meditation would be an obstacle to feeling relaxed; dieting would be an obstacle to losing weight. And so the goal here is to make these obstacles as easy as possible. Right? James Clear calls it friction. The friction is the obstacle, and the goal is to reduce the friction. A great way to reduce this friction is through a technique that James Clear calls environment design. This is when we optimize our environment to make a habit easier. For example, when choosing a place to start out a new habit, it would be good to choose a place that is along the path of your daily routine. For example, if you want to start going to the gym every day, it would be good to pick a gym that is along the path of your way to work. There are many different ways that we can optimize our environment. For example, if you want to start reading a book every night before going to bed, well, it would be nice to put a book on your pillow every morning before leaving the room so that when you get into your room at night, you have a book waiting there for you on your pillow, right? That reduces the friction of having to go all the way across the house to go and get that book. For me, I journal every morning, and so it would take—it would be a lot of friction if every morning I had to go and pick out a piece of paper from my notepad, pick out a piece of pencil from my desk, and then start writing. But what I do is I optimize my environment so that I have a piece of paper and a pencil on my desk when I wake up. And so now all I have to do is pick up the pencil and start writing, right? James Clear has a friend who is a master when it comes to daily habits, and he explains that when he walks into a room, everything is in its right place. "Because I do this every day in every room, stuff always stays in good shape. People think I work hard, but I'm actually really lazy. I'm just proactively lazy. It gives you so much time back, and it really does; it makes for more productive time because you end up doing what you said you were going to do." And so we can inverse this law by making habits that we don't want to do difficult by optimizing our environment. Let's say you want to stop watching TV. Well, after every time you stop watching TV, unplug the TV so that when you think about watching it again, you won't really want to do it because you have to plug it back in. Even better, why don't you pick up that TV and put it in a drawer or in a closet? When your environment is like that, you really won't want to watch TV because there's going to be too much friction to be able to watch it. Does that make sense? Because it makes sense to me.
On to chapter 13, which is called "How to stop procrastinating by using the two-minute rule." The two-minute rule is what is going to get you to start automating your habits, even the hard ones. You'll be able to do them without even thinking about it. Okay, so the two-minute rule is when you pick out a habit that you want to start doing, but you only do it for two minutes every day. Let's say you want to start walking; well, you go out that door and you start walking for only two minutes. Let's say you want to start going to the gym; well, you go to that gym, but when you start working out, only work out for two minutes. You want to start journaling every day; well, pick up that paper, pick up that pencil, but only write for two minutes. And so why is it that we do this? Because it will become an automatic process of just doing the foundation of the habit, right? Once you start making that a habit, then the rest will become easy. For example, you start going on your phone, you start scrolling; you think you're only going to do it for two minutes, but you end up doing it for 20 minutes. You think you're only going to eat a little bit of chips, but you end up eating the entire bag. When we start doing something in little quantities, we end up doing them in big quantities. That's how it works. And if you think it is a stupid thing to do, try it out. Put that timer on and do it every day. Eventually, you'll get so used to doing it for two minutes every day that eventually you'll be like, "Well, I do this every day for only two minutes; why not just go a little bit longer?" And yeah, you'll find that it really helps you out when it comes to automating your habit. It'll be like a thing that you do without even thinking about it, like I said it would, right? And so yeah, guys, even—even for me, I was doing it, and I was getting so pissed off that I was only doing it for two minutes that I would dread it if I didn't go over two minutes. And so before I started the habit, I would dread going for two minutes, but now I want to go for two minutes. Makes sense? All right, guys, this is it for my three chapters; this is it for the third law; and this is it for this video. So I hope you guys learned something. I hope you guys apply what I taught to you guys today, or more specifically, what James Clear taught to you guys today, and I hope you guys have a good day, or a good night, good morning, a good everything. So yeah, guys, Q talks is out.