What is the role that identity plays in terms of habit formation?

Ultimately, I feel like identity may be the most important thing with habits. Your habits are how you embody a particular identity. So when you make your bed, you embody the identity of someone who is clean and organized. If you study biology for 20 minutes on Tuesday night, you embody the identity of someone who is studious. The act of doing it is proof that you are that type of person. And eventually you start to build up this body of evidence for being that way. You have every reason in the world to believe it. So when you show up at the gym today, you are casting a vote for being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. When you sit down and make one sales call, you are casting a vote for being a salesperson. When you write one sentence, you are casting a vote for being a writer. And no, doing one push-up does not transform your body, but it does cast a vote for that identity. It does provide evidence for being that type of person. And eventually as you build up that body of evidence, you start to take pride in being that way. And I think that's where you get to this really resilient place in terms of building your habits. When you start to take pride in being that type of person, you will fight to maintain the habit. You know, it becomes the opposite situation. Now instead of trying to force yourself to do it, you're trying to maintain it because it's a part of your identity that you believe in that you want to keep.

You know, if you take pride in the size of your biceps, you never skip arm day at the gym. You know, if you take pride in how your hair looks, you have this long hair care routine. You do it every day. The goal is not to read a book. The goal is to become a reader. You know, the goal is not to run a marathon. It's to become a runner. The goal is not to do some silent meditation retreat. It's to become a meditator. It is to install and adopt this identity that this is the type of person that I am. And I think ultimately that's why small habits matter so much. You know, behavior and belief is like a two-way street. You know, what you believe will influence the actions that you take, but the actions that you take can also influence what you believe about yourself. And you know, every time you show up and do it in some small way, you prove to yourself a little bit, hey, maybe I am that kind of person. And so my encouragement, my suggestion is to let the behavior lead the way. To start with some small action and then prove to yourself in that moment that you were that kind of person. And as you start to foster and build that identity, sticking with the habit becomes easier.

How do we create an environment that makes behavior change inevitable?

I think that's one of the best questions. How can I create the conditions for success? You know, how can I design an environment where my desired change is easy? A lot of the surface level conversations about habits that people have are about discipline and willpower. You know, people will look at a professional athlete and they'll say, "Man, if I was just as disciplined as them..." I talked to one guy who played for the Philadelphia Eagles and he said, "during my career, everything was designed for us. We would go to the stadium and we have professional trainers and nutritionists. The food is prepared for us. All the workouts are designed, coaches are on us every day to do the right drills in the right order... there's this environment where the conditions for success have been fully created." He said after I retired that was the hardest time for me to stick to it. People would look at me as a professional athlete and think "wow, how disciplined are you," but in fact, what I was, is I was benefiting from my environment and all of us are like that. And so I think you can look around your own environment and say "how can I do a better job of creating the conditions for success?" Let's forget about me being a more disciplined person or being someone with superhuman willpower and let's try to make it as easy as possible for me to do the things I want to do each day.

So, a couple questions I think are helpful. One is walk into the rooms where you spend most of your time each day, your office, your living room, your kitchen, bedroom, and just look around and ask yourself, what is this space designed to encourage? You know, what behaviors are obvious here? What behaviors are easy here? And you'll start to notice that it's designed for certain things. You know, a lot of people feel like they watch too much TV, but walk into any living room, where do all the couches and chairs face? What is this room designed to get you to do? I'm not saying you need to rearrange your entire house, but you know, you can notice that if you put the healthy food out on the counter and it's visible, you're much more likely to eat it. One of the examples in the book is that I used to buy apples and I would put them in the crisper in the bottom of the fridge and I would kind of like forget that they were there. They were just tucked away in the drawer and then I'd find them in like a week and like two of them had gone bad. I'm wasting food and I'm wasting money. So instead I just bought this little display bowl and I put them on the counter just visible and now you grab one whenever you walk in and they're gone in two days. And so it's just a change in the environment. Are you creating conditions where the change that you want or the behavior that you want is obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying? And the more that you can do that, the more likely it is that you'll follow through. You want to be able to walk into the rooms that you're in each day, and the good habit is the path of least resistance. It's the easiest thing to do. And a lot of the time you walk into rooms and it's the distractions that are easier to do and you feel like you're swimming upstream and trying to fight your environment to make a change happen.

Am I creating the conditions required for success? What is this room designed to encourage? And then how can I make this behavior more obvious? And there are a number of ways that you can do that. Like some of it is just, if you want to go for a run, take your running shoes and your clothes, set them out the night before. I have one guy who he sleeps in his running shorts, so he just gets up, all he has to do is put his shoes and a shirt on, then he's out the door. He's just trying to make it as frictionless as possible. I take my phone and I try to leave it in another room until lunch each day. So that just gives me from like 9 to noonish where I can work on my own agenda and not respond to everybody else's agenda. I'm not interrupted. And if I have my phone next to me, I'm like everybody else. I'll check it every three minutes just because it's there. But I have a home office and so I put it in a different room. It's just down the hall. It's only like 30 seconds away. But I never go get it. And so many behaviors are like that. It's like, well, did you want it or not? You know, like in the one sense, you wanted it so bad that you would check it every 3 minutes when it was next to you, but in another sense, you never wanted it bad enough that you would work for 30 seconds and walk down the hall to get it. And so a little bit of friction can sometimes go a long way in shaping a behavior.