This Is How to ACTUALLY Achieve Your Goals (data-backed)

Sam Parr

Alright, Charles, I want to show you something. In 2014 I wrote about how I lost weight, but previously I used your book a year earlier because I had a bit of a drinking issue and it was, frankly, kind of ruining my life. I read your book and the idea of the **habit loop** changed my life. That's why I'm so excited to talk to you — your book changed my life probably more than any book I've ever read, and I have read probably thousands of books. I'll tell you the story. Basically, I had an issue with alcohol and I read your book. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I distinctly remember it is that "a habit doesn't go away; you just have to change part of the routine and replace it."

Charles Duhigg

"That's exactly right."</FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

One of the ways that people continue being stuck on this treadmill — and this sounds very *oversimplified*, but it's true in my case — is you start craving carbohydrates the day after you drink. You still crave them because I was drinking about 20 beers a day, and I still craved the sugar. So I actually made a small habit: every time I wanted to drink alcohol — a beer — I ate a pack of M&Ms. That sugar replacement *actually* helped me kick booze. Then I replaced that with nonalcoholic beer, and I got fat along the way. I thought, "I'll get fat, and then I'll... I'll kick that habit later."

Charles Duhigg

I love this, because you're exactly right. So, for folks who aren't familiar with it: the *habit loops* are what research tells us make up every habit in our life. About 40–45% of what we do every day is a habit. Every habit has three components: there's a **cue** (a trigger for the automatic behavior), the **routine** (for example, picking up a beer and drinking it, or going for a run if you have an exercise habit), and the **reward**. When we perform the routine, it delivers a reward to us—whether we're aware of it or not. Over time, our brain begins to associate the cue, routine, and reward into a little package that happens almost automatically. At the core of it—you're exactly right—is **craving**. There’s a researcher, Dr. Anne Graybiel at MIT, who has studied habits. What she found is that if you create a habit in, say, a rat's brain for running a maze, then remove the rat from the maze for literally years and later put it back in the maze, that habit reemerges instantaneously. This happens because the neural pathways associated with the cue, routine, and reward have gotten thicker and thicker. So when you try to extinguish a habit by simply saying, "I'm going to stop drinking," or "I'm going to white-knuckle it and give up cigarettes," the neural pathway still exists. You still have the craving and the urge. You're exactly right: the key is don't try to extinguish the habit; try to change it. Find a new behavior—like eating M&M's—that corresponds to the old cue and delivers something similar to the old reward. In doing so, you're effectively overriding that neural pathway in your brain.

Sam Parr

And I did this with the help of a doctor. I was like, "Look..." The doctor said, "Just get fat for a little while; we'll figure that out later." So I got fat, and that's when I wrote a blog post about how I lost weight. The way I lost weight was very simple. There was this idea called a *"keystone habit"* — I don't know if you invented that term, but it's crazy because it's a term everyone uses now. Basically, my keystone habit was to put my running shoes next to my bed and sleep in my workout gear. That morning, when I woke up, I was already in my running gear. When my feet touched the floor, they went into the shoes.

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, that's a really smart cue. And, yeah, I actually did come up with a phrase: *"keystone habit."* </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Did you really? That's awesome.

Charles Duhigg

Well, my wife is a biologist and there's this concept of *keystone species*. I was talking through this idea, which exists in the scientific literature but had never been called this, and we're like, it's kind of like a *keystone habit*. What I love about what you just said is that there's a writer named David Epstein — he's written a bunch of books. He will also sleep in his workout clothes, and it's because that cue, when you wake up and you throw your feet out of bed and you're already in your clothes, that cue just makes it so easy to take the next step and go out the door. When you are running, you're not even thinking about running as you start. You're just kind of on autopilot; you're doing what feels natural.

Sam Parr

Yeah.

Charles Duhigg

**And this is the power of habits:** we can choose the behaviors that we want to encourage, and we can make them not a product of willpower or white-knuckling it, but rather something that happens automatically because there's this part of our brain, the *basal ganglia*, that exists just to make habits. That's what ultimately makes us successful: choosing the habits we want, figuring out how to design them by paying attention to the cues and rewards around them, and then making those behaviors so automatic that you don't have to decide to go for a run in the morning, you don't have to decide to skip that beer, you don't have to decide to sit down and pound out all those emails you've been thinking about—it just happens automatically. As a result, it feels much easier.

Sam Parr

I—my last company, I think we had about 30 employees when I sold it. My current company is at around that number now. Both of those stages are when systems and processes start to really matter. There's this phrase in the CEO world: **"You don't rise to your willpower; you fall to your systems."** It means the system is what dictates whether you're going to be successful or not—not willpower or how you feel. In a company, you have to have systems because that's what you fall back on; that's what you default to.

Charles Duhigg

That's — and that's what you rely on. Can I ask you: when you've thought about the *systems* you've created, now that you guys are at **30 people** and the systems really matter, what's a **system** that you've developed that you're really proud of? Like an institutional, organizational habit?

Sam Parr

I'll give you one really simple example. But I will say, people like me—**entrepreneurs**, *entrepreneurial people*—the skill set required to start things is typically the exact **opposite** of a process-creating skill set.

Charles Duhigg

Oh, interesting.

Sam Parr

I work my ass off at creating and sticking to processes, but it does not come naturally. I'll tell you one that has made a huge difference. Every day at **3 p.m.**, the company stops for ten minutes and we clean — we clean the office. I cannot stand clutter at our office. What I'm trying to convince my staff of (and it's actually working) is that they're doing this at their homes and everywhere: we're just trying to *sweat the small stuff* and do the small things really nicely. It starts with cleaning your bed, or making your bed.

Charles Duhigg

Yeah.

Sam Parr

And so I'm *really proud* of that.

Charles Duhigg

And I'm sure you're giving everyone this sense of accomplishment. Right? Cleaning up the clutter is not that big an accomplishment. But to come together and have someone say, "**This is who we are. This is how we prove to ourselves what we stand for,**" that's *enormously rewarding*.

Sam Parr

Yeah.

Charles Duhigg

And it actually gets to this other thing that's really interesting about psychology, which is what's known as **revealed versus stated preferences**. Oftentimes when you ask people, "Do you want to exercise every day?" they'll say yes — "I want to exercise every day; it's really important to me." But when we look at their behavior, they exercise like twice a week. The revealed preference is actually different from the stated preference, and our brain pays attention to that. Our brain is kind of skeptical of our stated preferences, but it pays attention to how we behave to figure out who we really are. So this act of cleaning up every day at 3:00 AM — and sure, you could skip a day and the company isn't going to fall apart — it's not about organizing the clutter. It's about revealing to ourselves, proving to ourselves, that we are the kinds of people who do this; we are the kinds of people we say we are. That's really powerful.

Sam Parr

Alright, so this episode is all about **excellence**. A while back I shared my personal framework for building excellence in my own life, and the team at **HubSpot** turned it into a 30-day operating system that you can check out right now. It breaks down the systems that have taken me ten years to figure out and shows exactly how I use them day to day. These are systems that genuinely changed my life, so if you want to build a good life, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, let's get back to the show. "How many copies did *The Power of Habit* sell?"

Charles Duhigg

Gosh. Worldwide, it's sold over **10 million** now.

Sam Parr

That's crazy.

Charles Duhigg

"It's been great. Yeah, and the best part is just getting emails from folks — with stories like yours — that say, 'You know, I struggled with drinking for years, and then I finally figured out how to think about the *cues and rewards* to make this easier to overcome.' That's what's really meaningful."

Sam Parr

"That's crazy, man. That's a lot of copies. Did you...? What were you before you were a reporter?"

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, so I was a reporter at **The New York Times**. In fact, I continued being a reporter there for a number of years after the book came out. Weirdly, the same year that *The Power of Habit* came out, I won a **Pulitzer Prize** for a series I had done at The New York Times. So 2013 was kind of a crazy year.

Sam Parr

Was that the Apple series?

Charles Duhigg

That was the Apple series. Yeah, yeah—exactly, the Apple series. One of the things I learned: I was talking to Jim Collins, the guy who wrote *Good to Great*, last night on stage because he has a new book out. He talked about "the bewildering fog of success," and that year, 2013, was exactly that for me. On paper it was the best year of my life: I had a best-selling book and I won a Pulitzer Prize. In reality, it was the hardest year of my life because—and you know this—when success comes it can catch you off guard with all of its demands and emotions. So that was a big year but, in retrospect, a tough year. Since then I've written a couple more books, including *Super Communicators*, which you'd mentioned, and now I write for The New Yorker.

Sam Parr

I remember I felt defensive of you when *Atomic Habits* came out because you were my guy. I'm friends with James, and I'm sure you are too. But when I saw *Atomic Habits* come out, I was like, "But I already read the original — this is just kind of..."

Charles Duhigg

"That's very nice of you. The truth is, I'm *all for whatever it takes* to get it into people's hands. It feels so good to be the master of your own habits. It feels so good to be the person you want to be. So, whatever it takes to get that *empowerment* into people's lives, I am all for that."

Sam Parr

“It’s like a lot of our listeners are **type‑A go‑getters** who are probably a little neurotic at times. Maybe they’re like me — I’m pretty emotional and I react to things fast, which is kind of silly. Is there a way you’ve seen many of these type‑A people use the *power of habit* at work or in their careers to be more productive?”

Charles Duhigg

Yeah. You know what I hear a lot from executives is them saying, "Look, I was in this bad pattern that I didn't even recognize was a pattern." Which is: I knew I had to write an email — a tough email. I didn't want to deal with the question the email was asking. I knew I might disappoint someone, so I would put it off. It would sit in my inbox. I'd say, "I'm gonna deal with this later," and hours would go by, days would go by. What's happening during that time is there is a *cognitive load*, a cognitive burden associated with the email going unanswered. There's a part of your brain that says, "You've got this task you need to get done," and it's an unpleasant task. You don't like thinking about it; you shy away from it. But the more you shy away from it, the more it becomes like *this monster in your head*.

Sam Parr

And sometimes it's the *smallest stuff*.

Charles Duhigg

Totally. What we know is that if you build the habit of immediately replying—you hit reply and just deal with it right away—the benefits are huge. Now, you might not write the most polished email on the face of the planet. You might not have all the time to think it through, so you have to ask: *Is this something I can respond to right away?* If it is, reply. When we get it off our plate, what we're doing is freeing up our brain to think about other things. Our brain is constantly keeping track of the thousands of things that might be threats, opportunities, or crises. The more we clear our brain and give it space to think about the good stuff—the opportunities, the ways to move forward, the new ideas—the more we're empowering ourselves to actually get things done.

Sam Parr

So, as we speak, I have **349** unread text messages.

Charles Duhigg

Okay.

Sam Parr

And I have a shitload of voicemails and tons of Twitter and Instagram DMs. The amount of inbound notifications—partly because I'm on a podcast and have a lot of listeners—is huge. But even if you're not, the amount of inbound notifications people get is **unsustainable**.

Charles Duhigg

So, just because you get an email that looks like "we have this instinct to hit reply" does not mean you have to reply. Another habit that's equally important is just to **ignore**. The fact that somebody sends me an email does not create an obligation on my to-do list to respond to them. What it does is give me the option to choose: do I want to respond? Very similarly, because there's an overwhelming amount of stuff that comes in, I try to be really disciplined. My first instinct is just to **hit delete**. Often someone will send me a really interesting article or something I think, "Oh man, I should really go back and read that." Instead, I hit delete because I know I'm never going to go back and read it. I don't think we have to get to "inbox zero" or interact with every single thing that's sent to us. What we should have is a habit to **graze over** it and to forgive ourselves for hitting delete. Ultimately, the most important choice we make is where to spend our **attention**. If we're making that choice based on the whims of other people because they send us an email or a DM, then we're not actually making a choice — we're abdicating that responsibility.

Sam Parr

It's sort of like... I think we had Tim Ferriss on, and people make fun of Tim Ferriss because they're like, "Dude, you're working more than four hours a week, you know what I mean?" So he sort of created his own little trap. When you have bad habits in your life, I have to imagine that people—your buddies—mess with you; they're like...

Charles Duhigg

Oh no — my wife is *merciless*.

Sam Parr

What **bad habits** do you still have that you have been unable to break?

Charles Duhigg

So here's the thing about habits: in our brain there's no such thing as a "bad habit" or a "good habit." The basal ganglia is the part of our brain that creates habits. It evolved to do that, and every animal on earth actually has a basal ganglia. If we couldn't form habits, we would not have evolved — we'd have to spend too much time thinking about whether to pick up a rock or an apple and take a bite. Habits are really, really important. To our brain, however, the process is simple: if there's a pattern of a **cue**, a **routine**, and a **reward**, the brain will make that pattern easier and easier to perform. It doesn't label habits as good or bad. It's up to us to decide which habits are beneficial and which are not, and which ones we want to encourage or discourage. I have lots of habits that others might call "bad," but they are habits I choose. For example, once or twice a week I like to have a cocktail when I come home from work. Some people might view that as a bad habit, but for me it's a pleasant signal that I can relax. Others may see it differently, but it speaks to what I enjoy about life. What my research has taught me is that you get to choose your habits. Just because other people think a habit is good or bad does not mean it has to be that way for you. The key is to have *agency* — control over your life. We do this not just by focusing on the behavior itself, but by looking for the cues and the rewards, the leverage points we can use to change and become the person we want to be.

Sam Parr

And frankly, it's challenging. It's challenging to decide which is the thing. Yeah. I think I call myself a *high-functioning* person. I think I have a lot of horsepower. The strength of that is that I can run through a wall, and the weakness of that is that I can run through a wall. I have this thing called a *five-year diary*, where every year on the same day—or every day on a page—I write how I feel that day. Then the next year I see the same page, so I can see how I was feeling a year prior. I was joking with Sean, my co-host on this podcast. I said, "Dude, I wrote about this thing in my journal this day last year and I complained about the same problem." I'm like, if I'm supposed to be this high-functioning person who changes, adapts, and grows, I'm sure not doing it. What the hell—why can't I change? So it's sort of interesting that you become a prisoner of habits. What you said was cool, because you do want to become this person who can change their life. But the fact is, in my opinion, most people don't change. I think it's really because it's almost impossible to change.

Charles Duhigg

Well, what I hear in that diary you mentioned is what's known as a **cognitive routine**. So what are you really doing when you write that one line? Writing one line isn't life-changing — it's not like you sit down and write a one-liner about how you feel and everything changes. What you are doing is creating a mental habit for yourself. The most important habits tend to be mental habits. In psychology, they're known as *cognitive routines*, and their job is to allow us to think more deeply when thinking deeply is hardest — when we're feeling stressed out, overwhelmed, or short on time. If you only have time to write one line in a little diary, that cognitive routine, that mental habit, causes you to pause and look at the previous year. You might catch yourself saying, "Okay, I'm stuck in the same rut I was a year ago." Maybe you didn't even recognize that before, or if you did, you weren't paying attention to it. This habit forces you to think about the rut and ask yourself: Why am I in this rut? How do I get out of it? Do I really care about it that much? Those cognitive routines — the mental habits we build — are really, really powerful because they allow us to make decisions without being exhausted. One of the most powerful for me is when I come home from work and describe my day in excruciating detail to my wife. She doesn't really care about all the specifics of the meeting I sat through, but I'm not doing it for her—I'm doing it for me. This is my cognitive routine to help me review my day and figure out what I did well and what I did poorly. Building those cognitive routines, those mental habits, is how we end up becoming successful. It's those small little habits that determine whether we're using our attention wisely or not.

Sam Parr

You have this book called *Super Communicators*. I haven't read it yet, but I read a great article on it. When I was younger, I read this book called *How to Win Friends and Influence People*.

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, Dale Carnegie.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it changed my life. I'm not naturally a very good conversationalist or a good people person—my family calls me *a little neuro-spicy*. I kind of had to learn. I had to read a few playbooks on how to have normal interactions. *Dale Carnegie* kind of changed my life. There were a handful of takeaways from that book. One of them was basically: if you have a conversation with someone and let them do most or all of the talking—if you ask them about their lives and themselves—they're going to think it's the greatest conversation they've ever had. And your book, *Super Communicators*, did a good job. I believe the premise of the book is that you took it a step further: if you ask not only more questions but also different types of questions within a framework—questions that fall under specific "buckets"—you'll get people to open up more. Is that right?

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, that's exactly right. One of the things we know is that, first of all, we are all super communicators at one time or another. We all know the right thing to say to our friends to make them feel better. Sometimes you walk into a meeting and you know exactly what to say to get everyone on your side. But there are some people who are consistent **super communicators** — people who seem to connect with anyone, anytime. The difference between them and everyone else is not an inborn capacity. It's not that they were born with a gift of gab. Rather, they think about communication a little more and recognize that communication is just a set of very simple skills that, if practiced, become habits. When you start practicing and using these skills, you can treat everyone like your best friend and they'll often respond the same way. One of those skills is asking questions. Consistent super communicators ask 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. Some of those questions are simple invitations into the conversation, like, "What did you think about that?" or "Did you see that movie?" But some are what are known in psychology as **deep questions**. A deep question asks about values, beliefs, or experiences. That can sound intimidating, but it can be as simple as this: Instead of asking a doctor, "What hospital do you work at?" ask, "What made you decide to go to medical school?" That second question invites them to tell you who they really are. They might tell you about their dad getting sick and seeing doctors help him, or that they wanted to be a healer for their community. Deep questions allow us to really connect with others because they invite people to tell us who they are. The best part is it's natural to answer a deep question yourself. You might respond, "Oh, you became a doctor because you saw your uncle get sick — that's really interesting. I became a lawyer because I had a brother-in-law who got arrested when I was a kid, and I thought that was really wrong." Now we're having a conversation about who we are; we're connecting with each other. That connection means we're going to trust each other more, like each other more, and — more importantly — be able to hear each other much more accurately.

Sam Parr

This sounds like such a dumb question, but why do I care? Why do I want someone to think that I'm a *super connector*? Why do I want them to open up to me?

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, absolutely. So, there are a couple of ways. First of all, you don't have to communicate with everyone. Sometimes you're going to get in the Uber and you just want to check your phone in the back; you don't want to have a conversation with the driver. That's okay. You don't have to have any conversation you don't want to have. But there are times when we do want to connect with other people. The reason is that we are a *prosocial species*. The way our brains have evolved is to push us to connect with others, because connecting over time has been the most successful strategy for building things: communities, families, products. When we connect with someone—when we communicate with them, even if we disagree about some pretty fundamental things—there is an almost subconscious process that happens in our brain that we're powerless against. If I feel connected to you—if I feel like you're listening to me and I'm listening to you, and that we're actually connected somehow—then, within neuroscience, this is known as *neural entrainment*. In that moment we trust each other more. Trust is at the core of prosociality. I can't police you all the time to see if you're a threat or if you're being genuine. All I can do is try to figure out whether I can trust you enough to let you live in the hut next to me without fear that you're going to come in and kill me. The way I figure out whether I should trust you, like you, and want to work with you is by connecting with you. If that connection feels genuine, it doesn't mean I'm going to give you my life savings, but it means that, for the time being, I've decided this person is at least trustworthy enough: I know who they are, they know who I am, and I have a hard time seeing them betraying me. As a result, we can live side by side peacefully. If you think about it in business, trust is everything. The reason you're successful in business, in life, and in romantic relationships is because you figure out ways to connect with other people that are not just transactional but are real.

Sam Parr

That's— that's fascinating. So I can ask questions that get... I think you said **"value-based."** What else can I do?

Charles Duhigg

Okay, so the first thing is: ask more questions. Ask these deep questions. The second thing is that you need to be having the same kind of conversation as the person you're talking to. To explain this, I'll give you an example. When I started writing Super Communicators, one of the reasons why was because I had fallen into this bad pattern: I'd come home from work, I'd start complaining about my day, and I'd tell my wife things like, "My coworkers don't appreciate me" and "My boss doesn't realize what a genius I am." She would give me some good advice. She might say, "Why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better?" But instead of being able to hear her advice, I would get even more upset and start saying, "You should be outraged on my behalf. You should be on my side." I couldn't figure out why there was this tension between us. So I went to these researchers and they said the main thing that's happening is: when you're having a discussion, you think you know what that discussion is about — you're talking about your day or next year's budget — but actually, inside your brain there are a bunch of different kinds of conversations all happening at the same time. In general, these conversations tend to fall into one of three buckets: - **Practical conversations** — where we're making plans together or solving problems. - **Emotional conversations** — where I tell you what I'm feeling and I don't want you to solve my feelings; I want you to empathize. - **Social conversations** — which are about how we relate to each other and to other people, and the identities that are important to us. They said all three of these conversations are equally important and all three will probably happen during a discussion. But if you and the person you are talking to are not having the same kind of conversation at the same moment, you cannot fully hear each other. You definitely won't feel connected, and your trust in each other will not go up. So the key — the second big skill, in addition to asking more questions that consistent super communicators have — is **pay attention to what kind of conversation is happening**: does this feel practical, emotional, or social? What kind of words is the other person using? Then match them. What's known within psychology is the **matching principle**. For example, if you're talking about next year's budget and you say something like, "Look, I'm really anxious that we get this right because I don't want to lay people off," as a super communicator I should be hearing, "Oh — you're actually having an emotional conversation right now. We're not talking about the budget; we're talking about how you feel, and I need to empathize with that before we can start talking about practical things." I need to say to you, "I understand exactly what you're feeling. I feel exactly the same way. My number one goal here is that we don't have any layoffs; we get to protect our people. With that in mind, can we talk about the budget — how to actually get that done?" In other words, with your permission, can we move from an emotional to a practical conversation together? When I do that, what I'm doing is signaling to you that I'm listening, I understand your mindset, and we are getting aligned. We are getting neurally entrained — we are getting in sync — which means we're going to hear each other much better and we're going to trust each other more.

Sam Parr

I'm obsessed with history. I've read biographies on a lot of the presidents. Three presidents that are very, very different—and are very effective communicators—are **George Washington**, **Bill Clinton**, and **Donald Trump**. They communicate drastically differently, but I would argue they're all very effective. I absolutely agree. George Washington was significantly more stoic and mysterious; he spoke seldom, and when he did, you listened no matter what. He had this regal status. Bill Clinton was very charming. Donald Trump—his "shtick" is more crude: more like riffing with you, like "we're... we're boys."

Charles Duhigg

Oh, absolutely. In fact, as a reporter I've been to a lot of **Donald Trump** rallies. Whether you like Donald Trump or intensely dislike him, going to a rally is well worth the time because what you see is he is a super communicator. He uses the exact same thing I just talked about: he proves he's listening to the crowd by leaning into the type of conversation they want to have. On a stage, Donald Trump will say something and if the crowd starts applauding or overreacting, he'll say it again and then start riffing on that. That's why, from a stage, he often says things that in retrospect look a little crazy — he's feeding off the crowd. The crowd is telling him what to say. If he gets up on stage and says something emotional like, "I worry about the future of the nation because we're being overrun by immigrants," and the crowd goes nuts, he'll lean into that. He recognizes this is an emotional conversation. This is not about the practicalities of immigration reform; it's about people feeling like they're lost at home, like they're losing ground. And he'll lean into that. I've also met with Donald Trump one-on-one in settings where he's meeting with reporters. The dude asks questions constantly. A lot of the questions are about him — "What do you think? Why do you think these people hate me so much?" or "What do you think about this thing that I did?" Instead of giving little speeches, he's asking questions. He's drawing you into the conversation. The truth of the matter is that we are all really good at communication because we're a pro-social species. Our brains have evolved to be good at communication. The people who are best at communication aren't born that way; they think about communication. **Bill Clinton** is a great example. If you ask Bill Clinton, "Were you always a good communicator?" he says no. He says that when he was a kid he actually had trouble making friends; he didn't know how to talk to other kids. But in high school he really studied how kids talked to each other. Because his parents got divorced, he had to be the peacemaker between them, and he trained himself to think a little bit more about communication. That's what makes him a great communicator — and all of us can do that.

Sam Parr

I'm not a Donald Trump supporter, but I'm intoxicated — I think he's hilarious. I have to set aside the fact that I don't agree with what he said, but I can still acknowledge that it's funny. "Were you intoxicated when you met him?"

Charles Duhigg

No, I was not intoxicated when I met him. I would also say I'm not a **Donald Trump** fan. As a reporter, I try not to be a fan of anyone who's running for office because you have to be skeptical. I will say this about Trump: he comes off as being very **authentic**. This is another thing that *super communicators* do really well—you believe that you're seeing the real version of them. The way we actually create a sense of authenticity has been studied a lot. Often we'll do something that's a little bit *vulnerable*. We tend to misunderstand what the word "vulnerability" means. We think it's like crying on each other's shoulders or something like that. Actually, vulnerability is a very specific thing that happens inside the brain. Vulnerability is a neural cascade that occurs when I say something to you that you could judge. If, in that moment, you withhold judgment—and more importantly, if you share something about yourself that I could judge in return—then we will feel closer to each other. So think about when Donald Trump is on that stage, you know, that weird dance he does.

Sam Parr

Yeah, that.

Charles Duhigg

Like, it's not—it's not an attractive dance, right? He's not a—he's not a graceful man on his two feet. And yet it's incredibly endearing because it's **vulnerable**. Now, it's not vulnerable in a way that makes him open to attack. It's vulnerable in that he's sharing something that you could judge. You could say, "That's the dumbest dance I've ever seen in my entire life." But when you withhold that judgment, you actually feel closer to him. One of the things that he does—and that all great leaders do—is reveal things about themselves. They allow these moments of vulnerability: "I'm going to say something that I know you could judge. I'm going to make it available to you for your judgment." Because in that moment you will believe I am **authentic**; you will believe you're seeing the real me. And that's really, really powerful.

Sam Parr

I think that word—I hate the word *authenticity*. I hate it. I'll explain why: I think it's bullshit. I actually don't think you should be "authentic," because the fact is that we're all performing. I want to convince this girl to go on a date with me. I want to convince an employee to work at my company. I want to convince someone to do anything. Telling someone to be "authentic" is like saying, "Just be yourself and they'll like you." No. Don't just be yourself. Change yourself so you are a better person, and then people will like you.

Charles Duhigg

So I'm gonna push back a little bit, because I actually think— I think what you just said is *authenticity*. I don't think authenticity means...

Sam Parr

"It's all an act."

Charles Duhigg

I think authenticity is choosing—not necessarily which act, but which part of myself I want to expose. The truth is, in this conversation you could have spent the whole time just telling me how impressive you are, all of your successes. Instead, the aspect of yourself you chose to share is a really curious person who doesn't have all the answers, who recognizes that luck is part of it and hard work is part of it, and who wants to understand how to get better. I don't think that's an inauthentic display of who you are. I think it's you *authentically choosing* which part of yourself to share with the world. I understand skepticism toward the word "authenticity"—it has become such a bugaboo, meaning so many different things. For me, it means genuinely wanting to connect with another person, wanting to connect on both their terms and my terms, and saying, "Look, this is who I am. I want you to know the real me, at least to some degree." That doesn't mean I'm going to tell you everything about my childhood trauma or my drinking problems, but I want you to be able to know who I am on some level—the real me—and I want to know the real you. It's that act of *saying* "I want to be authentic" or "I want to be vulnerable" that creates the connection. It's not the authenticity itself; it's the act of saying, "I'm willing to be vulnerable with you because I want to connect with you." That is the first and most important step for us actually feeling connected to each other.

Sam Parr

Who's a **super communicator**? That's a famous person that I should go and study.

Charles Duhigg

Gosh, that's a really good question. I mean, there's so many of them. Honestly, one of them is **Steve Jobs**, and we don't think of Steve Jobs as a super communicator, right? Everything about Steve Jobs is that he could be a jerk to his employees and he created this "reality distortion field." But if you go and watch interviews with Steve Jobs, what you see is him constantly, authentically sharing who he is, then asking questions and proving to the other person that he's listening to them. There are a number of speeches he gave at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where the clips that get put on social media are the parts about doing LSD or about his vision. But if you watch the entire time he was in that classroom, what you see is that Steve Jobs—one of the most famous guys on earth—spends about a third of the time asking the students questions: "What do you think about that? Why did you make that decision? What was your experience when you picked up this device?" He is a guy who genuinely not only wants you to understand him—he wants to understand you. You get that feeling. That's the **Bill Clinton** thing. I've met Bill Clinton also, and the truth of the matter is Bill Clinton genuinely wants to charm and know the people he is talking to.

Sam Parr

What did he say to you that was an example of *charming*?

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, I'd written this article, and it's clear that one of his aides had briefed him that I'd written it. He comes up and says, "Man, that article you wrote — it was just great. It was just great." Then he asks, "What was the thing you carried away from it? Because you must know so much about this — it must have been so powerful for you. What did you carry away?" Of course, the *former President of the United States* is asking me about my work. I'm like, "Oh, Mister President, let me tell you — I'm so glad you read that." I was *bowled over* by it. But what he did was ask me a question and he seemed genuinely curious about the response. And, to be honest — and maybe I'm just a sucker — I believed him. I believed that he actually wanted to know because he's a curious guy; he wanted to know what I had learned, and I felt wonderful as a result.

Sam Parr

What's a good, famous example of a speech or a moment in time that you—two or multiple examples—that you... where you're like, "That's a textbook example of *super communicating*?"

Charles Duhigg

Oh, so one of my favorites is **Ronald Reagan**. If you remember, this is a long time ago, so you might have been too young—and I was actually too young myself. But when **Ronald Reagan** was running for his second term, there were all these questions about his mental acuity. Right? There were articles about the fact that his memory was failing. And he gets up on the stage to debate **Walter Mondale**. This is the second debate—Walter was...

Sam Parr

Was younger than him.

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, Mondale was younger than him, and Mondale was seen as a wunderkind. He had never lost an election before and was regarded as incredibly smart. Ronald Reagan gets up on the stage and one of the first things he says is a joke: > "I want you to know that during this debate I will at no time make fun of my opponent's youth and inexperience." Everyone laughs because they realize what he's referring to: Reagan is preempting the criticism that he is too old and that his memory might be failing. By saying it first, he does two things. First, he appears *vulnerable*—he's admitting there's a criticism he's aware of, exposing something others could judge. Second, by making a joke of it, he completely disarms the issue. In that moment, his mental acuity stops being a campaign issue. Now, if you remember, later in his second administration this does become an issue, because it turned out he was suffering from what people thought were early signs of Alzheimer's dementia. That would have been a legitimate issue to bring up during the election, but Reagan used that rhetorical jujitsu—being a little vulnerable and joking about it—so the attack lost its teeth. That's an example of *super communication*, and he connected with people in a surprising way in that moment.

Sam Parr

So, asking *value-based* questions. Yep—getting *tactical vulnerability*.

Charles Duhigg

Yep. What else? First, figure out what kind of mindset or conversation is happening. Are you in an emotional mindset, or are you in a practical mindset? The last point is: **super communicators succeed because they not only listen, but they prove that they're listening.** There's this myth that the key to listening is "close your mouth and open your ears." That's the first step, but study after study shows that it's not enough on its own. The real key is to make listening an active process — to prove to the other person that you are paying attention to what they're saying. You actually just did this really well: you repeated what I said. You were like, “Okay, here are the three things I've heard from you.” By doing that, you prove you're paying attention. If I'm in a conversation with someone — particularly a conflict conversation where we're disagreeing — I should use a technique called **"looping for understanding."** Step one: ask a question, preferably a deep one. For example, "Tell me why this issue is important to you. Tell me what you really think about this question — why this matters." Then listen to the answer. Step two: repeat back, in your own words, what you heard. The key here is not mimicry. If I just mimic you, it doesn't work. The goal is to prove that I've actually been thinking about what you've been saying and that I've been paying attention. For example: "I heard you say that you wear your workout clothes, and what I'm really hearing is that working out is a keystone habit for you. It's a way that you tell yourself who you are — you prove your discipline in the morning." Step two is repeating back what you're hearing and adding something to it. Most people do steps one and two intuitively as they get older. Step three — which I always forget — is to ask if you got it right: "Did I hear you? Am I understanding the role that exercise plays in your life correctly? Did I get it?" In that moment you're asking for permission to acknowledge that you were listening. If the other person acknowledges that you're listening, they become far more likely to listen to you in response. That's social reciprocity — when we think someone's listening to us, we want to listen to them. So, super communicators prove they are listening. They don't just sit there and ask question after question. They layer on proof that they're paying attention by saying things like, "It's so interesting you mentioned that because something similar happened to me," or, "I want to ask you about this thing you said before, because it reminds me of this question I've been thinking about." They show they're paying attention, and in doing so we believe them — because, in fact, they are listening.

Sam Parr

Dude, this is so interesting, and it becomes *meta*. As you're, like, telling me things, I'm like, "Alright, I have to make sure that I do a loop when he's like..."

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, but then the nice thing is: first of all, you do a lot of this stuff *intuitively* because you are... it's a good...

Sam Parr

Not intuitive, I'm telling you. I had to learn all this. I was a really uncomfortable 14‑year‑old. And do you know what **changed my life**?

Charles Duhigg

What's that?

Sam Parr

I don't mind admitting this because I'm happily married, but I read books on how to meet women when I was 14 and 15. I looked like *Napoleon Dynamite* — really goofy-looking and uncomfortable. I didn't have a lot of guy friends; people didn't particularly like me. I read all of these books on how to pick up girls. It wasn't about hooking up — although that would've been awesome, which didn't happen — it was about wanting to be accepted. I read practically every book you could find about how to pick up a girl. What you learn is that it starts with tactics: how to have a conversation. But then you realize the secret is becoming a good person who's *worthy of love* and worthy of other people's attention. That is the **true secret**, and that's a good one.

Charles Duhigg

Okay, so I'm going to say something that I think is really interesting. You, as an authenticity skeptic, what you just told me was really *authentic*. Right — you told me that you read books about "picking up girls," which is something that, in your head, you know I could judge. I could be like, "Oh, this guy's a dirtbag; he's the kind of guy who reads books on picking up girls." But by sharing that with me — by saying something that I could judge, by being a little bit vulnerable — it actually brings us closer together. You're exactly right: **authenticity** is not having a trick in my back pocket that I can use. If it's not genuine, it's not real; people are going to feel that. Authenticity is actually sharing with you who I really am, with full knowledge that you could hold it against me, but trusting that you won't — because we're going to learn things about each other that make us feel closer.

Sam Parr

"You're not — I wouldn't say that you're the *most prolific author*. Well, in terms of books, it seems like you find a topic and go super deep."

Charles Duhigg

So, I have this basic desire with everything I write, which is to write something that I genuinely believe *twenty years from now* someone can pick up and just love it. And actually, I do this myself. I buy old copies of magazines. I just bought *In Cold Blood* by Truman Capote [book], which kind of created the true‑crime genre.

Sam Parr

Yeah, one of my favorites.

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, it's wonderful. I found a copy of the original *New Yorker* magazine that it was printed in.

Sam Parr

And I...

Charles Duhigg

I bought it online from eBay. As a result, if your goal is to write something really big, it does take time. In part, it takes time because you don't know what the *big idea* is when you start the process.

Sam Parr

Speaking of old magazines, I collect old magazines here.

Charles Duhigg

"Here's a—oh wow—the first issue you have. The first issue of *George* is going for $10,000 online right now."

Sam Parr

I've had this for *three years*, my friend.

Charles Duhigg

Really.

Sam Parr

I'm a **Kennedy** historian, and I owned a publishing company, so I had these. I still get my *Thrasher* magazines by *Skate*.

Charles Duhigg

Oh, it's amazing.

Sam Parr

I read that you cold-call — I think I read that you cold-call **900 people** to get sources for a book. Is that right?

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, yeah. It was actually—so it was the Apple series. The series is about looking at the global economy through the lens of **Apple**. Getting people inside Apple to talk is really, really hard. It's a very secretive company. What I did was decide the only way I could do this was through mass pitches. I went on **LinkedIn**, looked for people who were former Apple employees, and emailed them. I would write: "My name is Charles Duhigg. I'm a reporter. This is what I'm working on. Can you please talk to me?" The yield was really low—about three or four percent of people even bothering to respond. But all you need is **two or three great sources** to introduce you to other sources. This has always been my reporting technique: if you want to write something great, if you want to create anything that's great, you just have to be willing to waste a lot of time because you don't know what's going to pay off. You don't know which person you're going to email who's going to say, "Yeah, I have all these files I can share with you." I think a big part of making important, big things is being okay with spending an entire week where nothing productive seems to happen. You try again and again and again, and none of it pays off—because that is the process of finding something amazing.

Sam Parr

And so, it's interesting to say that a lot of your productive time *feels unproductive*.

Charles Duhigg

Well, I think that's a key. The idea: the book is called *Smarter Faster Better*, and the idea behind it is, as I mentioned before, that throughout history the killer productivity app has been thinking more deeply—particularly when thinking deeply is hardest.

Sam Parr

"So, tell me about your routine then. Let's say you had a deadline for an article, or a deadline for a book—what is your daily routine in order to *think deeply*?"

Charles Duhigg

So, oftentimes I won't have a deadline. I'll try—and basically not have a deadline—so I have all the time I need. My process for thinking deeply is that I do **to-do lists** in a very specific way. My **to-do list** at no time has more than three things on it and, hopefully, it only has one for the day. I have a memory list — all the things I want to get done — and that goes on my memory list; that's very long. But the night before, every night, I look at the memory list and choose what is the number one thing on my **to-do list** for the next day, and I'll write that down. This is actually a routine, a cognitive routine that forces me to think about priorities. Periodically during the day I force myself to take a break and just take a step back and ask myself: the way I spent the last hour, is it getting me closer to that one thing on my **to-do list**, or is it actually me distracting myself?

Sam Parr

So, you only do *one*? Would you consider a successful day just doing one thing?

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, I mean, it's going to be a big thing. Like my to-do list for tomorrow—because it's Saturday, but I have a to-do list—is to come up with the outline of my next book. Now, I'm not going to be able to do that in a day. That's a huge task, but I intend to sit down at 9:00 AM with a pad of paper and just start outlining. Those outlines are going to be terrible. Then I'll get up at 10:30 or 11:00 and go get a snack, and I'm going to ask myself: am I writing stuff down just to write stuff down, or is this actually getting me closer and closer to understanding what the outline is? There is so much in life that can distract us from what's important, and the people who are most successful are the ones who empower themselves to be **masters of their time and their attention**.

Sam Parr

I think—if I had to guess—you read a lot, and you've written **three or four** different books on drastically different topics. You're like an *onion*: you have layers of interesting knowledge. What have you read in the last year—whether it's a book, an article, a podcast, or a YouTube video—that you would suggest I consume? </FormattedResponse>

Charles Duhigg

So, okay. There are a couple of books. There's a novel called *Voidstar* — it came out about seven or eight years ago and is written by a computer scientist. It's about AI, and first of all it's just a great novel. It's fun to read, particularly because we're living through this age of AI. He's the first writer I've encountered who tries to actually get inside an AI's head and ask: if people were interacting with AI, what would that look like? An AI isn't going to be like a human; it's going to be something significantly different. I found that book to be really, really profound. In addition, David Epstein has a new book coming out called *Inside the Box*, which is about how **constraints** actually make us better. When we have constraints around us — when we have fewer resources than we need, or when we create artificial limits for ourselves — it pushes us to be more creative and more productive. I think that's been really, really important because we live in an age of surplus and excess. If you're starting an AI company, the first thing you do is raise billions of dollars. What David is saying is: avail yourself of that surplus if you can get it, but when you're thinking about how to make decisions, give yourself constraints. It's the constraints that show you the right path forward.

Sam Parr

"Dude, you're *really* fascinating to talk to. Did you... you make me wanna become an author?"

Charles Duhigg

"You should be an author. You're fascinating to talk to, too. You have the natural disposition for it—the *curiosity*."

Sam Parr

I don't know if I've got the grit for it; it seems really hard. For any of your best works—like *The Power of Habit* or some of your articles—did you at any point feel... were you like, "Something's here, something's here; this is gonna hit"?

Charles Duhigg

Yeah. So I think what happens is, very similarly... oftentimes the chapters that get the most attention are the chapters where I was like, "Oh, that wasn't my best chapter. I could've—I should've done better." I cannot reread my stuff. If I reread my stuff, it's painful. It's so bad; I could've done so much better. But I will say that there is usually a place where I'm like, "You know, I would actually read this." There's something going on in that section that, if I encountered it in the wild, I would read it. That doesn't mean it's poetic or perfect, but there's just something there that I find personally captivating. The trust I'm having, the bet I'm making, is this: if I find it captivating, there's going to be at least some other people like me who also find it captivating. So I wrote this article for *The New Yorker* about a guy named **Chamath Palihapitiya**.

Sam Parr

Yeah, the **SPAC** thing. Yeah — I was... I like that stuff.

Charles Duhigg

Yeah, it was about **Chamath** and about SPACs. It was kind of like—Chamath is kind of like a con artist. That's not fair, but Chamath is an operator, right? He's a guy who *sells a dream* pretty actively. So I wrote an article about him selling the dream and why, actually, sometimes in economic cycles the salesperson—the "bullshit artist"—is the most important figure, because he helps everyone else believe in what the economy can be. It was an article; it didn't do that well. Not that many people read it, but I loved it because I would have read the hell out of that thing if I'd come across that article in a magazine. I would have read it two or three times. That's ultimately what I'm trying to do: write something that amuses and delights me so much that I would read it, and hopefully other people will too.

Sam Parr

What? Yeah, man. I'm leaving this conversation *invigorated*. What?

Charles Duhigg

Oh, good — me too.

Sam Parr

"What age did you become successful *financially*?"

Charles Duhigg

Oh, actually—after *Power of Habit*. So I would... let's see. I was probably in my late thirties.

Sam Parr

Were you, like, broke?

Charles Duhigg

No, I wasn't broke. I wasn't broke—I was working as a reporter for *The New York Times*. But one of the reasons I wrote *The Power of Habit* was because I was really happy being a reporter, and my wife was pregnant with our first kid. We were living in New York, and I was like, "I don't know that we can afford to live in New York with kids on my salary." I'm a reporter; I don't earn that much money. The only way that I could make this work was to go write books. I needed a secondary line of income to be able to continue living in New York and to maintain the lifestyle that we have. And I will say—I'm curious if this is true of you as well—once I started making money, the "scarcity mindset" was with me for a long time. Actually, it's still kind of there. It's still there. It stays with you if you grow up with scarcity.

Sam Parr

"It doesn't go away. It's *traumatic*."

Charles Duhigg

And it also teaches you that **money does not solve your problems**.</FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

I think it removes so many problems. I've talked about this on the podcast, and this is a very douchey thing to say, but I say it all the time: the people who say "it doesn't make you happier" are doing it wrong. It *definitely* makes you happier because it removes so much uncertainty. We have quite similar tendencies. I've noticed this about you: you're quite paranoid. We've agreed that you're one of the best-selling authors of all time, and yet you say you're a horrible author. I think there's a commonality—not with all successful people. I know a lot of successful people who felt they were great, who knew they were going to be great, and who were confident the whole time. But there's a whole other subset of people, which I think I fall into—and it sounds like you do too—which is: "I'm shit. I have to prove myself. I suck. I suck so much. I have to do this, it's all gonna go away." Frankly, it's exhausting, but I do find it very useful.

Charles Duhigg

I totally agree. I think of it as a **cultivated anxiety**, and I think you're right — it's actually a blend of those. If you asked me objectively, "Am I a good writer?" I'd say, look: I've been writing for 20 years, man. I spend all my time thinking about how to write in ways that make people desperate to finish the chapter they're writing. So, objectively, I am a good writer. But it's also this cultivated anxiety: my previous books were okay, but I want to try something new for my next book, and that could fall on its face. I need to work really hard to make sure it doesn't. I think both of us probably do that, right? Success is a combination of feeding the insecurities that push you to be better and also taking comfort in the securities that you can be better — you know what you're doing if you push yourself hard enough.

Sam Parr

The thing that I love about capitalism and business — and I'm not even that into business — is that capitalism offers some of the more practical ways to bend the earth to your will. What I loved about my journey of going from fat to skinny is: check this out — *I manipulated myself*. Isn't that awesome? I changed my tiny world, my body. I set a goal, and I did it. That's what I like about entrepreneurship. Even if it's just a small business, it doesn't matter what it is. It's a really cool, very practical way to kick a dent in the world and say, **"This is my world that I've created,"** even if it's just my bedroom.

Charles Duhigg

Absolutely. And that is *mastery*, right? Mastery is envisioning something in the world and then making it real. It is so satisfying.

Sam Parr

Thanks for doing this. I...

Charles Duhigg

Thank you. Thanks for having me on — this is *super fun*.

Sam Parr

"I hope you realize how much of an impact you've had on me." </FormattedResponse>

Charles Duhigg

Thank you — I really appreciate you saying that. I **love the show**; I love listening to it. By the way, when you come out to California, let me know. We'll go... do you surf? Poorly? Okay. I surf poorly every single day. Great — we'll go surfing together in Santa Cruz. It'll be fun.

Sam Parr

Alright, let's do it. Alright, that's it — *that's the pod.*