How small habits and a two-minute rule can help your productivity

the keys to a productive life can be found in science that's according to author James Clare who says breaking down tasks into small achievable goals leads to higher productivity think about that for a second he applies Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion to achieve these targets clear rights Newton's three laws of motion can be used and as an interesting analogy for increasing your productivity simplifying your work and improving your life more than four hundred thousand users subscribe to clears newsletter I'm one of them on habits and performance his work has been used by the teams in the NFL NBA and MLB as well as leaders of Fortune 500 companies James clear is here good morning good morning so tell us about your new the new work that you're doing sure so habits are really important because they compound over time so you know if you were able to just get 1% better each day for a whole year you'd end up almost 37 times better by the time you're done with it so they seem like really small choices right in the moment it seems like nothing in order to make these choices but over the span of our lifetimes they end up making the difference between who you are and who you could be all right the New York Times is coining that term essentially micro progress to describe breaking it down into small units to achieve a bigger goal what's a way to start that sure so I like to talk about the 2-minute rule and the idea here is that you want to downscale your habit until it only takes two minutes to do so for example going for a run might be down scaled into just tying your running shoes or folding laundry is down scaled into fold the first pair of socks or started yeah the idea is that we often optimize for the result but instead we should optimize for the starting line not the finish line yeah you said don't look at the big picture of success you should really concentrate on just do something well if you when you achieve a result you really only change your life for the moment like achieving your goal you know if you have a goal to clean your room for example then your room is clean now but if you don't change the habits the packrat sloppy habits behind that goal then you're gonna have a messy room two weeks from now why our habits important James well habits of course give us the results that we want so they you know they can help us earn more money lose weight or be more productive but the real reason that habits matter is because each action that you take is like a vote for the type of person that you want to become so they they help you embody the sense of being that type of person each time you write you are a writer each time you play the violin you are a musician each time you workout you are an athlete and so your habits are the method through which you embody your identity and develop your sense of self your self image we are what we repeatedly do tell me if there's a huge problem I've got let's say addiction to technology how do I take a massive thing like that I want to fix and break it down into manageable pieces sure well I mean we're all addicted to our phones you know we have our smartphones on us all the time where do you leave your phone out at night in my hand as I cuddle it with it I mean deal with right there phone is the last thing they see when they go to bed at night yeah the first thing you see when they wake up in the morning so one thing that you could do is just move your phone to a different place to charge it so you could charge in the bathroom for example set your alarm there and then the only goal here is just to reduce the amount of time that you're on mindlessly browse while you're laying in bed what about those initiating actions that cause me during the day to go change it do I have to get habits to get me from being triggered well these cues are everywhere right and so for example if you look on my phone I've tried to reduce some of the cues so that I have no app screams right and the goal here is just to increase the friction a little bit so I can still go to Instagram for example and swipe over and then it's inside this nested folder but I just don't want to do it mindlessly and so the whole idea with habits is to try to increase the amount of friction that are associated with bad habits to put more steps between you and the bad behaviors and fewer steps between you you're the expert at the table what's your best habit do you think I feel probably the best one is that I leave my phone in another room until lunch each day and so that gives me like three to four hours of focus productive work to just you have any friends do you have a wife but make a habit of reading his newsletter that's yeah yeah I'm raving about we kept using Sir Isaac Newton so we should at least point out quickly you know one of those three laws bright objects in motion tend to stay in motion yeah getting started it allows you to develop the most effective form motivation which is dress and so if you can see yourself giving these small wins then you have a reason to continue working and if you start in just a small way then you're gonna want to keep going thank you that was my goal this year it's like don't worry about just get on the treadmill and walk for 10 minutes and all of a sudden you're there it's 30 minutes it's 40 minutes you started it just started thank you James they're very nice to meet you

Channel: CBS Mornings

Views: 155,035

Keywords: video, cbs, news, James Clear, productivity, habits

Id: GECcjrYHH8w

Length: 4min 46sec (286 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 07 2018