DYFConf Notes: James Clear – How to develop better work habits.
- 3 things: write (jamesclear.com 200k subscribers, 30k visitors/mo ), teach (seminar habits), speak
- 5yrs entrepreneur. blog after in parents basement after MBA
- struggled a lot. Lost money on different apps
- Started studying consumer psychology
- Shift in the way he viewed his accomplishments/goals.
- Shift from goals to writing everyday at 8am
- Difference from amateurs and professionals: professionals do things on schedule Commit to.
Plan of Action (5 steps)
Warren Buffet: Personal pilot of Warren. “If you’re still my pilot in 5 years then I’ve failed you”. Come up with list of things you want to accomplish. Circle your top 5. Do the 5 things. The rest of the list? Avoid them at all costs. Items 6-25 are easy to rationalize but aren’t important to your business. Simplify. Be ruthless about the things you trim away.
Charles Schwab (from 1900s). Bethel Steel. At the end of each day, write 6 things that are important for you to do the next day. Order them by priority. Do the biggest priority first. Prioritize.
Design your environment. Put the popcorn on the top shelf BJ Fogg (?). What are the default actions in your workspace. Your living room is designed to watch your TV. Reduce the number of steps between good behaviors. Increase number of steps between bad behaviors.
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Leave phone in another room
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Remove all icons from the Desktop and phone.
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Plugin for Chrome that blocks facebook newsfeed eradicator
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Recipe Time on computer that observes where all time is spent -> List fed into Freedom app that strategically blocks sites (cnn, new yorker, gmail, etc). Don’t have to rely on will power. It’s automated.
Track and measure. Stock Broker in Canada (Trent mutual friend of Nathan Barry and James). Had one simple habit. Every sales call would result in a paper clip being moved from one bin to another. We ignore the fact that we should just be doing the basic work. Everyone ignores that. Trent figured out the most important thing to do. He setup a visual cue and measured his progress. Measure backward instead of forward. Take previous day/weeks data and measure your progress. Tight feedback loop. Where is the trend in the metrics? What needs to be improved?
Dave Braislford. Cycling Coach. Aggregate of Marginal Gains. 1% improvement in everything you do. Typical things that riders measured. Also did unusual things. Hand soap, pillows to sleep on. Cycling team won the Tour de France in less than 5 years. Commit to the process and repeat.
Q&A:
What steps do we need to take to execute 5?
A repeating of the previous 4 steps feeds into step 5.
Further Reading:
Martha Graham on the Hidden Danger of Comparing Yourself to Others
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“It’s not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions.”
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“We are often terrible judges of our own work”
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“Your responsibility is to create… to share what you have to offer from where you are right now”
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“Your concern is to do the work, not to judge it.”
The Theory of Cumulative Stress: How to Recover When Stress Builds Up
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Your health and energy are a bucket of water.
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Sleep, nutrition, medication, stretching, laughter, and other forms of recovery fill up your bucket.
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Lifting weights or running, stress from work or school, relationship problems, or other forms of stress and anxiety drain your bucket.
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Stress is cumulative.
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Stress from extra workouts, building a business, finishing projects, parenting your young children, or dealing with a bad boss all adds up.
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Refill your bucket on a regular basis.
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Recovery is not negotiable.
Kai Davis’s Notes on James’s Talk
Site: http://jamesclear.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/james_clear