James Clear's most atomic idea isn't a habit. It's this (#82)

And Clear's most important behavior isn't a habit either

Is habit formation the key to self-improvement?

If you can repeat a “good” action for a significant amount of time,¹ the argument goes, those little good actions can shift from being effortful to automatic. That is, the behavior will soon require little to no thought or effort. Sounds pretty great.

You would think James Clear would agree that habits are the panacea of change. After all, he did write a book called, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way To Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones—a book that sold, like, 20 million copies.

But that’s not the strongest message of the book.

Don’t get me wrong—much of the book is about habits: what they are, how to build good ones, how to break bad ones. But, Clear hedges. He basically says that no change will last unless you have this final, non-habit element.

It’s called “identity.”

What does Clear mean by “identity,” what does it have to do with habits, and how do you get the best of both worlds? And how does Clear apply this in his personal life?

Those answers are the subject of today’s OGT.

Identity-Based Habits

There are three levels to change, Clear says.

1. Changing outcomes

2. Changing process

3. Changing identity

Of which, habit is only associated with the second layer:

The first layer is changing your outcomes. This level is concerned with changing your results: losing weight, publishing a book, winning a championship. Most of the goals you set are associated with this level of change.

The second layer is changing your process. This level is concerned with changing your habits and systems: implementing a new routine at the gym, decluttering your desk for better workflow, developing a meditation practice. Most of the habits you build are associated with this level.

The third and deepest layer is changing your identity. This level is concerned with changing your beliefs: your worldview, your self-image, your judgments about yourself and others. Most of the beliefs, assumptions, and biases you hold are associated with this level.

Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe.

Clear says most people only focus on outcomes, but that they should focus more on “identity-based habits”— ones that align with who you want to become. Changes not aligned with identity, he adds, will fail.

Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last

…

It’s hard to change your habits if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to your past behavior. You have a new goal and a new plan, but you haven’t changed who you are.

The goal is that the habit fits in with, rather than acts in opposition to, who you are. Clear says that you establish these “identity-based habits” in a two step routine:

It is a simple two-step process: Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

First, decide who you want to be. This holds at any level—as an individual, as a team, as a community, as a nation. What do you want to stand for? What are your principles and values? Who do you wish to become?

Second, you start implementing these tiny actions—“votes in favor of an identity,” as he later calls them— that are the subject of the book.

Your identity emerges out of your habits…Each habit is like a suggestion: ‘Hey, maybe this is who I am.’

Third, you turn into these actions.

Ultimately, your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself…Quite literally, you become your habits.

At the end of each year, Clear performs an “Annual Review.”

He asks himself three questions:

(1)   What went well this year?

(2)   What didn’t go so well this year?

(3)   What did I learn?

Then, midway through the following year, he conducts an “integrity report”to see if he’s keeping up with it.

It’s not just about looking back. A good Annual Review is also about looking toward the future and thinking about how the life I’m living now is building toward a bigger mission.

Basically, my Annual Review forces me to look at my actions over the past 12 months and ask, “Are my choices helping me live the life I want to live?”

The OGT: Who not what

“Dig deep down, and ask yourself: ‘Who do you want to be.’ said Arnold Shwartzeneger, “not what but who.”

In that great speech, I think that Arnold was getting at what Clear is getting at above when he says that “behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last.”² It’s that nothing is going to endure without continuous alignment and conviction. And even if it does last for some time, you might find you arrived where you didn’t want to end up.

I’m sure this has happened to you: you picked up a new habit or routine—going to the gym, meditating, eating salads everyday. You did it for months, maybe even years, but then dropped it intentionally, or lost it unintentionally, after a big change happened. You got married, you had a kid, you broke your clavicle, or, I don’t know, COVID. Why didn’t your habit— which is meant to be automatic— continue ad infinitum?

Because many more things have to carry you through than the simple and inflexible trigger→behavior→ reward of the habit loop. Habits are strong, but “dumb,” mechanisms—like so many automatic machines in a factory. The machines will run, but someone has to run the factory.

That’s why when I played guitar everyday of my life for about five years, but then gave it up in a day, I didn’t have a hint of “automaticity” or “stickiness” that supposedly comes with a habit. That’s not who I wanted to be anymore.³ Or when I meditated for about 4-5 years straight and dropped it easily within a week. How? I stopped believing in it.⁴ The factory boss changed direction.

Not only do we require the pre-work of identity -this is who I want to be—and continuous work of habit reinforcement—see, look at my actions, this is who I am— but, as Clear shows with his annual and 6-month reviews, we also require reflective and evaluative work—did I act like who I said I wanted to become? If not, why not? Do I really want to change? And, if so, what do I need to change?

Only then will we head towards where we want, and who we want, to be.

And then, well, then we’ve got to do it all over again.

___

For more on big ideas like identity, reviews, and endurance revisit

• President John Quincy Adams redirected his struggling life,

• how Seth Rogen “made it” and

• What Jerry Seinfeld does to review his work.

1. The actual period of time is unclear. We know only that it’s more than 30 days, but can be up to a year or more

2. Clear is not the first to point this out in the context of habit. Charles Duhigg made a similar point The Power of Habit. Duhigg, a Pulitzer-winning journalist, found that if people don’t “believe” in the new behavior that they would, in times of stress, revert back to more visceral actions.

3. I traded that time for writing and reading.

4. Not in the sense that I don’t believe it’s powerful. I think it is and was for me in two ways.

One is that it changed my perspective. It made me see that (1) there was this constant thought machine moving in my brain, (2) that the thought machine wasn’t me, and that (3) I could, for moments at a time, step away from it to make choices. Second, it offers state change— you meditate and you feel refreshed, calm, and weirdly energized. Aside from those, it’s a good discipline, it can teach self control, and if you like it (ideally, love it) awesome. I still do it, just on an as wanted or needed basis.

What I became less convinced of was the “trait change,” as opposed to “state change.” Most of the studies with significant change in traits or brain matter or anything like that are monks with 10,000 hours of practice. I wasn’t going to commit that time. And even those people that do approach those hours (and I’ve taken classes and retreats with some of them) haven’t rid themselves of any human traits that we have— they’re, at times, jealous, anxious, angry, etc.

I think of meditation, in one sense, like the sauna or plunge. It’s great for state change, even perspective change. It’s a great discipline. But if you’re doing it for “longevity” or some massive claim about the science of the brain changing, I just don’t see it.

I’d rather take a jog or journal.