#200 — Creatures of Habit

Only the first 33 minutes of this episode are available on the paywalled podcast version (the BLACK & WHITE podcast logo). If you’d like to hear the full 1 hour and 8 minutes of this episode and gain access to all full-length episodes of the podcast, you’ll need to SUBSCRIBE here. If you’re already subscribed and on the private RSS feed, the podcast logo should appear GOLD & WHITE. Sam Harris speaks with James Clear about habit formation. They discuss the difference between creating good habits and discontinuing bad ones, the role of the environment, the misalignment between immediate and long term outcomes, the remembering self vs the experiencing self, goals vs systems, the compounding of incremental gains, the role of attention, the four laws of behavior change, “temptation bundling,” and other topics. James Clear is an author and speaker focused on habits, decision-making, and continuous improvement. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Entrepreneur, Time, and on CBS This Morning. He is a regular speaker at Fortune 500 companies and his work is used by teams in the NFL, NBA, and MLB. His book Atomic Habits is a New York Times bestseller and has sold more than 9 million copies worldwide. Website: www.jamesclear.com Twitter: @jamesclear  Instagram: @jamesclear   Episodes that have been re-released as part of the Best of Making Sense series may have been edited for relevance since their original airing.