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A
Foreign.
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Hey Everybody. Welcome to ABA Inside Tracks preview of our winter 2026 book club on Atomic Habits. For those of you who are new to our book clubs, we do these every single season. And, and except for our September supervision book, these are all specifically made and voted upon by our patrons@patreon.com ABA Inside Track. Anyone at the $10 and up level, you're able to join at any level. But at that $10 and up level, you're able to get access to these book clubs, the full 2ish hour version of the episode right away. We do eventually put these out in the free feed about a year out. But the other benefit, in addition to getting the material right away and getting to vote on the books, we do that in June and is the 2 CES you will get for listening to this are absolutely no additional charge. It's just the subscription as well as for our listener choice episodes, as well as getting everything a week ahead of time. So you're ahead of the game. That's what we like to do. It's a big thank you. So again, if you want to hear the rest of the episode we're doing, head on over to patreon.com abainsidetrack but in the meantime, we hope you enjoy our discussion of the our general thoughts and the first couple introductory chapters of the book Atomic Hand Habits. Please enjoy. Hey everybody. Welcome to ABA Inside Trek, the podcast that's like reading in your car, but safer. I'm your host, Robert Perry Crews, and with me as always. Actually, wait a minute. It's not the same people as always because this is one of our special seasonal book club episodes as voted on by our patrons@patreon.com ABA Inside Track. Every season we take our little behavior analytic research discussion podcast and, and turn it into a little book discussion podcast. And this is our winter 2025 book club. Or is it spring? I can't get. I think it's winter.
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C
It's winter.
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B
It's winter time. So I already said my name, but who else is joining me for this little book soiree?
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C
I'm here. Jackie's here.
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A
Hello. And it's me, Diana Perry Crews.
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D
And saving best for last as always, Alan Haberman, book club guy.
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B
Oh, boy. All right. So.
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A
Hey, Alan. Good to see you.
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B
Good to see Alan. We are, we're, we're hopping right into this recording. People jumping out of cars and get home driving because we've only got a limited amount of time and it's the holiday season.
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A
So Whoopi action movie around.
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B
It's only so much.
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A
Jackie is done hanging onto the side of a semi truck as she's.
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C
I absolutely am. So just be warned. Be warned, everyone.
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B
Jackie's got one of those Flintstone cars where, you know, you got to put your feet on the ground and, like, move it along.
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A
Oh, yeah.
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B
But let's get started. This winter book is Atomic Habits by James Clear, which is a book that I think. Jackie, you had recommended this for the list, correct?
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C
It was my book. I love this book. I read it before the book club. So. And I was like, we should read this book.
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B
And people agreed and voted to read this book as well. So, folks, if you're getting this on our free feed, we hope you enjoy this first kind of discussion generally about the book. And then for folks who are joined at the $10 and up level on Patreon, we'll be able to get the full recording right now. You're going to just keep listening. Don't, don't stop. We'll eventually release this on the free feed. It's about a year out, but Jackie says, don't delay. And I don't know, do the rest of us say don't delay on Atomic Habits? Let's start by doing some general thoughts about the book.
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A
I say, don't delay. This is a quick book. It's an easy read. It is. What is it? What are those kind of books called? Motivational. You're like, I could, I could do this. I could do better with my life and I'm going to be a better person moving forward. Great to start the year off. I don't know when this is being released, but sometime in the beginning of 2026. So great. If, if you're thinking about like, how do you want to get your life in on gear for 2026? This is a great book. I found it to be inspirational and I wouldn't don't sleep on it. Call now.
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B
It's not thick enough to be a good pillow. So I would also not sleep on it. Allan, how about you?
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D
I think that one, it's well written and it like, it's definitions of what habits are and in terms of like behavior analytic sort of terminology in layman's terms mixed together make a lot of sense. Even if the author isn't necessarily trained in behavior analysis. But consistent my sort of issue or response was it's not the most friendly to people that are maybe like adhd who like I found a lot of this, like, I've read this so many times and heard these things so many times and it is not been effective. It's not an effective place to start. I'll put it that way with trying to like address habits. If you have issues with like focus, attention, reward, sensitivity, it's the. Just not necessarily where I would start.
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A
It's definitely speaking. Sorry, go ahead.
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D
I was gonna say if you had like, you know, like if you're in a place where it seems like habits would fix things, it's like, well, maybe some like coaching counseling to help you understand where the struggles are and maybe do some values work so that you're maybe more sensitive to reward systems. And you know, that might be helpful. But I, I got really frustrated with some of what's in this book because I'd heard it so many times and had found it not helpful earlier in life.
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A
Maybe I've just never read a self help book before. I don't know. So for me, it's coming at me for the first time.
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C
I have read a self help before and I do not have adhd and I use the book to transform my entire morning. And so now I have this beautiful. I've stacked habits in the morning and so now I have this beautiful morning routine that really sets me up for the day and I have the books to think and I love self help books. But. But I also read, you know, a self po. A self help book every single morning.
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A
So you do.
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C
I am the self help book guru of the group.
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A
I do think that he speaks a lot from his personal experience. So like, what has worked for him and the examples that he picks are clearly the ones that like, you know, gel for him because he references like fitness and exercise a lot and that is a big area of his interest. So like that I'm like, what if we branch out a little bit in terms of examples? I'm gonna say, hear what you're saying.
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B
My largest negative of the book is it felt like at every example he was working so hard. Like, you could almost like see the tension and the sweat on his brow when he's like, what's an example? That's not how I increased my reps at the gym. I just can't think of it. And he does think of them. He definitely has other examples. But. But there is this return. And again, I would say if I didn't know kind of his story, because he sprinkles historian, I'd say maybe he just was like, well, I think my audience is people who want to, you know, work on their health or work on their exercise routines. But. But it definitely was, you know, from his life. He's like, I use this for my writing and I use this for my exercising. And I guess considering he looks like he's in good shape on his like webpage and he wrote a million seller book, I guess, you know, he's not, not just a atomic habit writer, but he's also a client as they, as they said. So that, that was kind of if, if you're like I hate exercise or I don't want to talk about exercise, you will have moments in the book that maybe don't resonate with you.
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A
Yeah, it's not the whole book.
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B
No.
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A
Like he does kind of pull from that well several times.
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B
There's a little bit of a dude bro voice in, in the book though. No, I, I did find it well written and organized.
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C
I agree with you, Rob. Yeah, there's a. It is a little bro y how he wrote it. I also, when I first picked up the book, I did pick it up because it is a bestseller, but also because I had been reviewing the atomic repertoire when I was talking about observational learning and the atomic repertoire and behavior analysis is like fine grained units of behavior that come together to make more complex operands. And so I was like, oh, I wonder if that will align. And so that is why I actually picked the book up.
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B
To see if they matched well.
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D
And just, just so that I don't come off sounding like, you know, a wet hand about it. It is good. It is logical as someone who has done my work to be less, you know, driven by my inattention qualities. I could see some of this being like very helpful. Also that work has come as I've become a behavior analyst. So it's like, oh yeah, I understand. Q Reward all of that. That all. So it is, yeah, it's, it's well done. So I can see why people find it helpful. Just a big caveat to that. The audience that might crave it might not might get frustrated with some of it.
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B
Yeah. One thing I kind of, I want to throw out to the group and see what you think. As much as this is meant to be, you know, A Everyone can read this semi pop psychology book. I mean not exactly pop psychology in the sense that it is very well researched. There is something about how Clear has taken so much. Clearly he has read some Skinner. I don't know which skin clearly, but he's read haha some of it and he's read a lot of other habit books. He does seem like he has taken like all the good Ideas, put them in the book. And to some extent I kind of feel like if someone came to me at like a party or something and said, oh, what do you do? And I explained my job and they said, I don't understand human behavior at all. I don't understand values, psychological flexibility, no clue at all. And if you talk about abc, I'm going to get bored or throw a drink in your face. I might say, you know what, this is not a bad book to read if you kind of want to understand just the very basics of things like, you know, basic behavior change and some of the basics of act, though he never specifically labels that, but the idea of value, you know, working towards values and adding values as sort of a motivating operation. So in some ways I feel like his book has explained a lot of what we do in ways that are probably more easily digestible by the vast public than some of what we've all been able to do. Maybe not us, but you know, others not us. We're great at it.
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D
I mean, I could see that point. I think that a lot of what he does or what he talks about, there's obviously, or it seems to me that exposure to like coaching, which is like a big part, like health and wellness coaching or business coaching, probably two forms of coaching, he seems very familiar with a lot of that, like research and writing does come from people who have experience in our field or were influenced by people in our field. And it's, we still contribute to those fields. So I think that's probably why some of it is familiar. So familiar in that I don't know how much he's read Skinner so much as people. He has read people who have read people who have read Skinner.
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A
Yeah. And he references Skinner like right there in the beginning. Yeah, yeah, yep.
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D
So, but I can't see him necessarily diving into, you know, science of human behavior and being like, I'm going to write Atomic Habits. It's not necessarily that, that related, you.
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B
Know, he might make it a habit. I'm going to read research based articles more often than the books that then cite those that I then cite as, you know, my, my, you know, citation chain of my writing. I don't know. I was very shocked reading this because I was worried. Every time we do book club, we try to find books that sort of, you know, go through that, that narrow path of everyone would be interested in hearing about the books or reading the book, but they have to be behavior analytic. And this was one. Without knowing anything about it. I was very worried. We Were going to read the book and be like, oh, crap, we just read a whole book, and there's no way we can record on this thing because it is just so much like, believe in your dreams and, you know, start small and just like, nonsense manifest. And in some ways, this is one of the most behavior analytic books we've done. Barring books that specifically have behavior analysis in the title. It's more behavioral analytic than a lot of the supervision books.
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D
I trusted Jackie to recommend a good book for an ABA podcast. I'll put it that way, Rob. So, no, I did not have that.
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B
Mis. Would. Would misdirect us. But you know how, like, I put books on that list that there's a part of me that's like, I skimmed this book. I'm pretty sure it's going to make it, but I have a fear as I'm reading it, like, is this enough? Is this enough?
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D
That's a. That sounds like a Rob problem.
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B
Oh, okay. Nurture effect. I was a little nervous about nurture effect, but that one was really good. That was baby analytic.
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A
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I enjoyed this book. End of podcast.
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B
Yeah, that's it. It's great. You should read it. Go for it. You know, you might not use everything in there, but you may. So.
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A
Okay. No, no, no. I don't want to say anything further, actually, at all.
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B
We got, like, over an hour and a half to go.
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A
I'm satisfied with my podcast.
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D
Not over an hour and a half. We have one hour and 28 minutes.
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B
Oh, okay. So just brief, brief author bio. James Clear is not unlike some of our books where, oh, they, you know, he was an Oxford fellow and wrote this book in the 30s. No, he seems like he's just a dude who loved learning about habits. And he went to college with a baseball scholarship and then was injured and couldn't do sports. And he seems like he had a period of his life where he didn't quite know what he was going to do with himself. And he just sort of, you know, kept looking at habits as part of his exercise routine and in different forms of behavior, and then decided he wanted to start writing and sharing some of the things he's learned. So he used this. These methods, which, again, he did not invent any of these. He has just packaged them very efficiently. And then he started writing and as a habit, was writing and writing and started writing on a website in 2012 and sort of using these habits, was able to build up a following and then sort of put it all together and said, you know what? I think I can write a book because I have enough people who like what I have to say. And he started consulting and then made the book and that's it. He focused a lot on habits, about injuries, recovering from his own injuries, sports injuries, his sports performance. And then really felt like, you know, there was so much to pull from biology, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology. And they kind of, you know, smushed it all together. A lot of what's in this book. If you've ever read Charles Duhigg's the Power of Habit, I have not read that book. But he does pull a lot of ideas from that book. I think the thing he seems to add is really maybe values based practice in your habits. That did seem to come more from what he learned from psychology and behavior analysis than he did from that book specifically.
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A
I've seen Sister Act 2 back in the habit.
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B
Oh, but there.
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A
Did they reference that?
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B
No, I don't. He might have watched it in preparing for the book, but I can't guarantee that anything was learned from that movie. I don't think we learned anything from that movie other than we don't need Sister Act 3. One was great enough. And then also, you know, he looked a lot into reinforcement practices. So a lot of this book really comes at this, the idea of building habits from one of improving your environment, looking at how do you make meaningful reinforcement systems and how do you tie your habits into values? Which is not something I ever thought about when it came to habits. I thought about it in terms of changing, you know, other behaviors or other psychological and flexible patterns or experiential avoidance, but never in terms of like, like Jackie was saying, like, huh, how am I going to get up in the morning? Or like, what's my morning routine going to be? So I, and I thought that was actually a really, really good addition to the habit literature. Again, maybe not. I haven't read everything ever on habits. But as far as as we've seen. And he definitely, like Dinah, you said he shouts out Skinner a whole bunch as and believes, you know, when he comes it all together, he smooshes it all into a habit making sandwich. And his quote, I believe it is one of the first models of human behavior to accurately account for both the influence of external stimuli and internal emotions on our habits. Now, I don't think James Clear invented anything in this book necessarily so. Perhaps not. But I think it does look at habits in a way that we don't always think about. Maybe some of us do based on our practice, but in Terms of looking at the ABCs and also adding in, you know, motivation in ways that I don't know if we always, if we always plan for at that molecular atomic level. So that's brief. A brief James Clear summary.
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A
Yeah, I liked that he basically like got started doing this because he started a blog back in those blog days. He was like at the right place at the right time and kind of like Julie and Julia, you know, like the lady who like wrote all of, or she did all of Julia Child's cookbooks and then wrote a blog about each of the recipes. Like, she got really famous doing that and he got really famous doing this. And we, we were at the right place, the right time doing podcasting in kind of like a similar way.
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B
So James Clear is like the guy who wrote that. My dad says, yeah, Twitter account and then got a TV deal out of it. Yeah. Remember that period, everyone where you just had to be on the Internet and you got a TV or book deal. Those are the days.
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A
He has sustained interest, you know, throughout this entire time in what he has to say. So he has good stuff to say.
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D
Sake.
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A
I'm not saying that it was not, not appropriate for him to get that type of audience.
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B
I did subscribe to his newsletter and we did not, we weren't able to add it into this discussion, but he did just release a follow up to this book, the Atomic Habits workbook. Nuclear Habits, which I was planning on. I was going to try to buy and like skim through it or see a copy of, but there wasn't enough time for it to, to ship before we were recording because it literally was just announced in his newsletter this week, which might have been like Wednesday or Thursday. So didn't think it was going to make it in time. But again, if you read this book and you love it, then there's a workbook if you want to sort of do some of the exercises in it with some more guidance. And his website has a lot of the things like his habit tracker that he talks about. It does have a lot of visuals. So if you're not sure how you would put this together or you want to make even less friction in your behavior change, personal behavior change project. He's got all sorts of visuals that you can use and grids and sheets you can use. I actually found a lot of the visuals he used in this book to be very descriptive as to what he was talking about, which I find a lot of books just tend to have pictures and they're like, look, it's a picture or it's extraneous to what you're reading in the text. And I found pretty much everything kind of went together. Like, he definitely edited this book down to just what you needed. All right, any other big thoughts on the book before we move into the. Let's talk about what's in the book, the content discussion piece.
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D
I would just, I would challenge trainees and student analysts who read this book to go through and really be a great place to practice. Like what behavior analytic terminology? Like, what's the like. Because in a couple places he combines things in really interesting ways in terms of like antecedents. And he's like, is he talking about learning history here? Is he talking about an M.O. here?
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A
Yeah, yeah.
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D
Because like, I think that would really help, help future behavior analysts understand like why this is effective and then how to like either for themselves or for maybe clients that need this kind of intervention make reading this useful professionally. Even experienced behavior analysts should probably do that. Doesn't help. It doesn't hurt to get practice with the terminology. I would say.
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A
Yeah, there were many times reading this that I was like, oh, I really want to give this to my trainees, you know, some of it for those reasons. Just in terms of, let's think about the application of behavioral principles to your own life. And then on top of that, I think that there are some good components of advice here on how they can manage this really difficult and stressful time in their lives where they're trying to balance school, work hours, accrual, studying, like all of the components. There is just, it is really a lot. So there, I think there are some good pieces in here.
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B
I also, for trainees, I also appreciated kind of to, to, you know, the point we're discussing now really the sense of so much of this book you'd expect, you know, you pick up a book called Atomic Habits, you expect it's going to blow some smoke and be like, you know, if you want to dream it, you're going to do it. And I don't think I've read a self help ish book that was very focused on like, you need to set up your environment. It doesn't matter how much you're like, I want it or I believe in it. If you don't actually physically change what's in your space to make it more likely. You engage in the new behavior and then think about what is the reward you're going to set for making a simple response effort and then just get into the habit of practicing some of these small steps and then Build it. You'll never improve your behavior. Which is kind of brave because you think about how many books are, you know that they're going to make money off of. If you do this, it will change your life. This is one of the first books I think I read. They're like, if you do this, every day will be just the tiniest, maybe little bit bit better. And by the time you're dead, you'll say, you know what? I improved a lot across my lifespan.
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D
I know. I would just, Yeah, I would just say that. I think the. Probably the market is saturated on that first type of book.
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A
Yeah. Although I hadn't read any of them apparently.
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B
But they seem to keep selling. People keep writing them. I'm wondering if they're.
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D
Well, maybe, maybe if you would stop reading them, Rob. They wouldn't make enough.
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B
I don't read them, Alan. I'm too busy reading whatever we got next. Yeah, Jackie. What's the Jackie. Jackie had to jump off her. Her phone to switch. Switch mics so she, she can't hear right now.
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A
She jumped off the semi truck.
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B
Oh, yeah. Do you want to say what, what, what book you got her for. For her birthday party? Didn't you, didn't you get her a book for her birthday? It was a self help book. Do you not remember?
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A
For her birthday, I got her a book bag that said will break for little free libraries. I don't know what you're referencing.
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B
You bought a book.
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A
Oh, that's her Secret Santa.
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B
Oh, that was your Secret Santa present.
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A
And it's called Let them.
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B
I've heard that book.
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A
She's not online right now, so she doesn't know. But actually she does know because she said that when it arrived at her house, it didn't say from Santa like it was supposed to. It just said from Robert Perry. So she figured it out that it was me.
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B
I'm not, I'm not really interested in that. I've read it, but it sounds a.
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A
Little not not she like those books. I haven't read it either.
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B
You'll like it. I liked Atomic Habit. We'll see. I don't know if Let them make it in the book club list for next year.
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A
No.
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B
All right, well, let's dig into the book a little bit and you know, we'll go a little bit longer on our, on the preview because I think it does kind of get into some of that first chapter. You're going to know really quickly whether you agree with us that this does seem like a behavior analytic book. And there's going to be something of value in it for you or that doesn't sound sound like a match for you. You know, the first couple chapters really focus on the basics. So it's kind of the basic discussion of behavior change. Before he gets into the model, which you all know as an ABC behavior analysis. That's not what it's called here though. And I actually like his terms. I don't want to say better than our field, but I, I, I like his terms. I want to use them if I'm describing behavior change going forward because I think they, they will resonate more with, with your listener, with your audience. So one thing I do appreciate in this book is that every chapter starts with a fun little anecdote that describes a group that used some portion of this model or a model for change because they all came before the book so they couldn't have read this book and then use the model. So these are all behavior change processes that have occurred for various people. Like the first chapter is about the British cycling group that changed all their habits by using many of the principles in this book. They also used performance enhancing drugs perhaps. So I guess that's, that might be missing in your model if you're not making the change. Maybe you need like HGH or something is what that.
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A
It made me think of the triplets of Belleville.
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B
Oh, it totally did, yes.
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A
Yeah. But the, the point was that they looked at even tiny little incremental changes that they could make to their outfits that they were wearing or the way that they were exercising or like little bitty changes on their, on their bike, how the bikes were transported and all of these tiny changes over time made the team so much better. And then they, you know, won it all. They were the prettiest princess.
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B
And from that the idea of it's, it makes more sense to make tiny improvements for a long period of time because it's really, really easy to make, you know, non improvement because 1% better every day for a year sounds like who cares? That's a lot of work for very little payoff. But at the end of that year you're 37 times better than you were. I guess it depends on what you're quantifying, what your habit is going to be. Whereas it's easier to get worse at things because if you get 1% worse, you get to zero pretty, pretty quickly. And really sort of it's the same, it's the same with behavior change long term as it is for investment. It's not about, well, I gotta Put a million dollars in or I'll never be a billionaire. It's about put 50 cents in every day and comp. And that will compound compounds.
- [26:19]
A
Exactly right. Because if you start at 10 and you add, oh no, let's start at 100. If you start at 100 and you add 1%, now you're at 101. But then you're going to add 1% to 101. So you're not just adding 1 now, you're adding 1.1. Is that right? I don't know if I did the math exactly right on that, but yeah. So it's compounding over time.
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B
I like his quote here. Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. So again, as long as you are doing, and I think that's a message we don't necessarily pass along. I mean, I know for me, I've gotten so used to reading so much research where a lot of times you're looking at procedure to results and you're looking at a graph where it's like, demonstrate, you know, turn on, turn off behavior or something like changing criteria. Where it's like, look, we made the jumps. And sometimes it's really easy to forget the scale or the time frame that the folks are working under because you're like, I read that paper in 15 minutes. It didn't take 15 minutes for the behavior change that they're describing. It took weeks or months to do. I mean, we've read studies where the results go over an entire year. Like some of our studies were looking like a school year and they have to end the study because summer vacation, right? And sometimes forgetting that behavior change is rarely a all or nothing shift. I like that. He has a good metaphor of progress as an ice cube, which I think I'm going to use the next time someone is like, yeah, you suggested this token economy and I used it for five minutes and the kid yelled at me and I hate your plan. I'm throwing it in the garbage of like, you know, change is like an ice cube. I'll say every minute it might be changing one degree and it seems like nothing is happening, but suddenly at 32 degrees, you'll see it change rapidly and melt.
- [28:06]
A
Do you have a pipe in that scenario? When you're imagining yourself, I should get.
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B
One, I'm going to get a pipe and I'm going to use that metaphor all the time because I am already so much fun to be around. Can I make, can, can I make. You know what? Let's see, let's that 1% increase. I had the pipe the ice cube metaphor.
- [28:22]
A
This is a good reminder for us in our field because there is so much of what we do that is incremental change, like you're saying, Rob. And I think, you know, many of us are drawn to this field because we find those small changes reinforcing in terms of, you know, social significance. And that can be a challenge sometimes to maybe help parents kind of also identify and find those incremental changes reinforcing. But the, it's always going to be true that we are drawn to large, big, immediate changes just as a species. Right. And that is really attractive to all of us. But the small changes will amount to bigger changes over time. And even for those of us who kind of, you know, peddle in this area, it's a really good reminder both for our client behavior or self.
- [29:13]
B
Alan what you're, you're kind of our residential act spurt on the show.
- [29:17]
C
Oh.
- [29:19]
D
Yikes.
- [29:21]
B
I'm 1% by the end of this podcast. If I keep going with these bond modes, you know, I'm going to be 37 times better like Malmo's. But okay, it's part of the charm. I, I, I, I, I like it.
- [29:33]
A
Alan likes it. You can tell.
- [29:36]
B
So the, the, the talk in this, in this kind of introductory section, the idea of goals versus outcomes and sort of looking at your systems versus goals as well. This read as very act to me. I think they even I can't remember if it was something I just put in my notes or if I, you know, pulled the word right from the book. But I think there's a mention of this idea of like fusing ideas with, you know, with, with the talk of goals and goals being these kind of either or states that many of us kind of live in. And then some people win and some people lose and everyone's sort of like, well, I had good goals. Whereas in reality the people who are, you know, the winners in life had so many systems, maybe they weren't even aware of some of those systems. Whereas, you know, the quote unquote, losers in life probably did not have as many systems. Or there were like, like you mentioned, you know, not everyone is going to read this book is going to be able to just throw together systems as quickly as, you know, the book might describe that you could do if you follow this method. But what did you think were these kind of, these feel very kind of like act adjacent?
- [30:39]
D
I mean, yes, in that it feels very active adjacent, but also especially this first chapter Felt very like foundational for like just behavior analysis. Like that's the thing about effective ACT practice is that you need to understand stimuli mos, environmental arrangement. Because otherwise you're just talking sort of frou frou woo woo. If you're not within, within if you're trying to apply ACT and talking about values. So talking about like incremental change. I think that there's like for instance, he talks about change being noticeable and that's like when it's 1%, it's not noticeable. And I mean I coach people all the time on using like an active based framework about a lot of like salience of one's like automatic verbal behavior. When you're like, if you're frustrated and you say something like oh, I'm, I've got too much to do. Well use that as a moment to be like, no, now's an opportunity for me to ask for help if the first time start the change right there. And also just changing your outlooks by, I mean that's the big thing about like reframing as a practice is that you can't magically fix all of your private verbal behavior that might be contributing to poor outcomes for you or you know, you're not necessarily, you know, in touch with your values, trying to find committed action. Well, small changes over time are what you have to do. You have to commit to making the small changes or the big changes cannot come. So and in that sense, goals and outcomes. Goals are not outcomes. Goals are how we work toward our outcome. So we have to have the right goal to get to the outcome. Because we might have a goal that seems related to the outcome, but it might not be adequately like aligned. The goal may not. We could work toward that goal and not get the outcome. So I do don't love the way he words part of that which is winners and losers have the same goals. If you read that too shallowly, you might, you know, misread that. It's that, you know, within the idea of like the third place finisher and the first place finisher have the same goal, they just have a different learning history and a different reality that they're dealing with. So it makes me think of the women, the second, the silver medalist women's swimmer who lost out to the world record breaker, who was like done with the relay before the others were even like turning back to finish the lap. And it's like, you know what, second place is really first place for that person because they were if they're. But if their goal was to get A gold medal. They failed. But if their goal was to be a really great swimmer, well, they got. The only person in the whole world that beat them at the Olympics was the person who set the world record. So they're a top swimmer. So just little changes like that do matter both on your goals, your processes and recognizing your. Your successes.
- [34:19]
A
Well.
- [34:19]
D
Or failures.
- [34:20]
C
Yeah. I think when we were talking about this too, as a behavior analyst, goals are merely sds, Right. Goals aren't behavior. So goals the SD that sets up the behavior which then produces the outcome. So I 100% agree with you there. I actually this, this chapter made me a little mad.
- [34:39]
B
Oh really?
- [34:40]
C
Yeah. I'm assuming you're on the. The surprising power of atomic habits. When they talk about the problems.
- [34:47]
D
I'm just talking about the. Rob had asked me about the actiness of this chapter and so that was what we were talking about. And I do like the table that he has about. He calls them compounds. But I'm just like, yes, this is exactly like learning history mo setting events. Those all impact behavior very well.
- [35:09]
A
Absolutely.
- [35:10]
D
Someone. Some people need to understand that when they talk about their goals or learners goals because that is key. People often lose sight or they, they just don't. They don't take it all into consideration. Sorry to interrupt. Diana, you go right ahead.
- [35:30]
A
I was gonna say I. When I talk about the A, the B, the C, I draw them as circles on the board, but I draw the A circle really. And I draw the C circle really small because there's so many components that affect behavior and the likelihood of behavior occurring and there's so few things that we actually have control over. In the C category.
- [35:51]
D
Yeah, yeah. And I. And yeah, I think. And he does a really good job of laying out like that you can have multiple MOs in place. That is something that I find, you know, student analysts really struggle to always bring to the table without a lot of coaching that like you need to consider the aos and the eos and you know, there's a lot going on inside even a six year old that we have to account for if we're going to be supportive and effective.
- [36:23]
A
Yeah. And setting events are inside and outside of the skin.
- [36:28]
B
So goals could be your sd. They can help define your reinforcement. But the focus is going to be more in this book all on your systems. Which does get us to the definition of atomic habits which, you know, I think Jackie, you kind of hinted at the metaphor being, you know, the small things that make the make up everything else we do. But I'll Read the quote. It's a. They are a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do, but also the source of incredible power. A component of the system of compound growth, which. I'm not sure where he came up with the term. I mean, if he just came up with the term atomic habits, because he was, you know, thinking about, well, it's got to be small. Any new change should probably start small.
- [37:05]
A
Probably from the atomic repertoire. Don't you think, Jackie?
- [37:11]
C
I do, yeah. I think there is some parallels there. They mean the same thing. And I think if. And if he didn't. Everyone's thinking about these small units that make a larger unit. So I think everyone is pulling from that.
- [37:24]
B
Biology also.
- [37:26]
A
Sounds cool.
- [37:27]
B
Chemistry.
- [37:28]
A
Very dynamic. He seems like a dynamic guy, right? He likes power. Phenomenal cosmic power. So it's all wrapped up there.
- [37:39]
C
Yeah. And when he talked about Skinner, he actually talked about Skinner incorrectly. I can't remember what page he brought. He referenced Skinner, and then the two pages he talked about Skinner were not correct. So I did want to pull that out.
- [37:50]
A
He talked about negative reinforcement. Wrong.
- [37:52]
B
No, he was. I don't think negative reinforcement's in this book at him.
- [37:55]
C
He talked about it somewhere wrong. Like, the history of what he talked about was slightly inconsistent with what actually happened.
- [38:01]
A
Hey. Yeah, he referenced Skinner.
- [38:05]
C
So he said, reference Skinner.
- [38:09]
B
Well, Jackie, if you didn't like chapter one, did you really not like chapter two or did you like chapter two? Because chapter two, I think talking about kind of a, you know, act and, you know, kind of selfish, contexty values discussion, that that's really all this chapter is about, really looking at the idea of identity as a change. And I. I will admit, as much as I'm not sure if this is probably the least, in some ways, least behavior analytics chapter, I actually found this one to be really interesting in the idea that part of making a change is getting in the habit of sort of identifying your values and then describing them as a context of why you are engaging in the habit. You know, the idea. The idea of. Because I've always had this trouble. The habit I kind of kept thinking of when I. When I was reading this book was the idea of. Of exercise. And I've had a good exercise routine.
- [38:59]
A
Is that because it's referenced in the book like 100 times?
- [39:01]
B
Yeah. Well, I mean, I was like, what's a squat form, bro? And, you know, that's all I could think about as I read this book, because it's all I care about, really, is exercise. But it has Been something that I don't like to do, I don't want to do it. And even when I did it like pretty consistently multiple times a week for over a year, I still thought of myself as like, well, I'm a guy who hates exercise and I have to do this stupid thing because it's dumb.
- [39:21]
A
You got really buff though.
- [39:22]
B
Yeah, right. I am in much better shape than I was in my 20s, so that's nice. You are mostly. Thank you.
- [39:29]
A
And you were like throwing your back out a bunch.
- [39:31]
B
Yeah, I don't know. Not throwing me back on anymore. So a lot of that I'll get into. Some of you know who gets credit for is not just me. Oh, I got a pat on the back. Thanks, Diane. The small reinforcers that you're looking for, but really the idea, and I think it's been easier the last year when if I've been sick or gotten off my routine and been like, I don't want to do this anymore, that I have to think of my identity not as like, well, I got to be the jackest dude that ever lived and like be super buff for everyone. But the idea of, you know what, I like being healthy. I like the idea of living to a nice old age because. And, and be able to be mobile and to do all these enjoyable things. And you know, my, my personal trainer had, had said like, that is so much of this. It is not about like, well, if I don't look like Thor, what was the point of this? Because you're probably not going to look like Thor unless that is your full time job. If you're a normal human being with non exercise jobs, you are focusing on your health. And I don't know this, this chapter really resonated with the idea of my identity doesn't have to be out of sync with a habit I'm trying to form. There's a way I can sort of put them all together in terms of a value. I'd like to do the things I want to do physically as long as I can.
- [40:35]
D
Well, Rob, I. This is. I was gonna find a time to point this out, but ACT is not the only like behavior analytic practice or sort of tool that talks about goals and things like that. A lot of this book and this chapter I feel I read or even experienced myself in using like behavioral activation ideas about things like that. Because that's a big part of it. And behavioral activation, like BATD work predates act and so yeah, that you do the values work and you, you do the. You talk about your role and you talk about, you know, he in the Chef, he talks about don't make the goal, read the book, make the goal, become a reader, put yourself in a role, develop a role for yourself in your life. So and to that extent I found it familiar but less common for what people do read. But yeah, that like role based thinking about who you are and the behaviors that you engage in definitely is less commonly talked about but like essential to like setting a good goal.
- [41:52]
A
And you know they talk about like, oh, the human brain makes some thousand number of decisions every day. Right. You guys heard that phrase. But if you are, have these sort of identities set up for yourself, then it's almost like that decision component has been removed there because it's much clearer what the behavior is that you're going to choose. Right. Because that's what fits with your identity. So in that way it's like removing some of those like day to day effortful decisions because you don't have to make the decision in that sense. It reminded me a lot of, you know, being in conservative religion from my own personal background.
- [42:34]
B
Please finish this anecdote. I don't know where it's going.
- [42:37]
A
Well, no, just a lot of decision making is removed because well, this is what you do. There's no choice component there. And that's, you know, it's part of your identity is that you are a member of this type of church and those decisions are all made for you.
- [42:50]
B
And those are the happiest people who are 37 times better every single year.
- [42:53]
D
Didn't say that.
- [42:54]
A
We're talking about identity. Right? Identity based habits.
- [42:57]
D
So and why that could be a reinforcing lifestyle fits with this book because it decreases your cognitive load. It decreases the strain that you feel day to day if you're not having to make all those decisions. If you've automated large parts of your life in ways that make life easier, that's going to be at least for the short term very sustainable.
- [43:21]
A
I think self reinforcing community. Right. That perpetuates that culture. Yeah. Alan always says everything better than, than I could have.
- [43:30]
D
No, no, no, you, you provide the seed. I just add a little, add a little shine on it.
- [43:36]
B
All right, so I think chapter two being one, that for a lot of folks might not expect that level of foundation in a book about habits. And then finally, you know, let's, before we get in to make sure we kind of at least gloss over the different sections. What is James clear Four simple steps or Four laws of Habit Change Number.
- [43:58]
A
Four may surprise you.
- [44:00]
B
I Mean, if you're a behavior analyst, you'll be like, wait a minute, that's not. I usually call them antecedent behavior consequence. And then maybe, you know, motivating operations.
- [44:09]
A
Well, there's four of us here. Can we take turns saying them? Does everybody have them up?
- [44:13]
B
We can do whatever we want with how we say them.
- [44:16]
A
All right, go Rob.
- [44:18]
B
Well, with any sort of new habit, you need to have a cue that triggers your brain to engage in the behavior and predicts the availability of rewards.
- [44:27]
A
All right.
- [44:28]
B
I've never heard that before. That's really.
- [44:30]
D
Wow.
- [44:30]
A
And so what does that map on to for us?
- [44:33]
B
I mean, various antecedent manipulations. Your sds. It's got to be. And he kind of lumps all of this together into one sort of bigger, you know, antecedents, like every antecedent that you have in your environment as well as kind of link, linking the, to kind of the idea of the sd. Like there will be a reward. You should do this.
- [44:53]
A
The cue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then to pair up with that, the next one is cravings. And so for us, we might call that motivating operations. He's saying you want a change to occur. You crave something that's going to happen in the future.
- [45:08]
D
Right.
- [45:09]
A
And so therefore you're going to work toward that goal. So. Q Cravings, who want to go next?
- [45:17]
B
I want crazes.
- [45:18]
C
I'll do the next cravings. The third law is response. The behaviors that you engage in in order to make a habit. So you have to make them easy to start off so the response effort is easier than what you were currently doing.
- [45:36]
A
All right. Q Cravings, response, reward.
- [45:42]
D
Which I think probably a combination of reinforcers, punishers, just the outcomes of that response and how it feeds back into the next set of cues and cravings and set you up for a loot.
- [45:58]
A
Yeah, it sounds a lot like the four term contingency that we all know and love. It does because it is the four.
- [46:04]
B
Term contingency with some sprinklings of behavioral chaining and shaping in there as well to really yummy little tidbits.
- [46:15]
D
Yeah. Which we would need. And really even I've seen weirdly in some obm, a five term contingency where they separate out the consequence like the behavior into the product and the like reinforcer. So like the impact on the environment being slightly separate because the product becomes an sd, could become an SD even if it is the same and things. So I think that there's some, maybe some businessy stuff on that that that comes out in this and probably some of his coaching. So.
- [46:48]
B
And if you are, if you kind of, like we talked about, are interested in how do I make these more complicated, you know, but important behavioral terms more palatable to the widest swath of audience. Well, let's turn these four laws into the following phrases. Make it obvious, make it attractive. Oh, we're going to make it obvious.
- [47:10]
A
Make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying.
- [47:16]
B
And if you do these things, you will improve your behavioral repertoire. But if you don't, well, here's what will happen. If you make it invisible, make it.
- [47:26]
A
Unattractive, make it difficult, or make it.
- [47:32]
D
Unsatisfying, unpalatable, that's it.
- [47:35]
B
Then you won't have new habits. You'll just say, these habits are dumb. I hate them.
- [47:39]
A
So I see that you've written down here Breaking Bad. Is that what Breaking Bad means in the break in the TV show Breaking Bad speaking.
- [47:47]
B
Brad.
- [47:48]
C
Brad. Breaking Bad habits. So if you're trying to break a bad habit, like smoking.
- [47:53]
A
Yeah.
- [47:54]
C
Or binge watching those, that is how you're gonna do it.
- [47:58]
A
No, I know that. Is that what the title of the show, Breaking Bad?
- [48:02]
B
No. Breaking Bad refers to the idea of like. It's. I don't. I don't know if it's originally from pool, but the term of like, if you hit a ball and it starts going the wrong way, that ball is Breaking Bad.
- [48:13]
A
Oh, no. So Walter White got on a bad track.
- [48:16]
D
Right?
- [48:17]
B
Spoilers.
- [48:21]
A
Okay. Sorry. Okay, I'm good.
- [48:23]
B
Now, what happens at the end of Better Call Saul? Do they finally call him? I don't know.
- [48:27]
A
I don't think I finished it.
- [48:28]
B
We did not finish Better Call Saul.
- [48:29]
A
Sorry.
- [48:30]
B
All right, so the rest of the book is going to go into more detail about these four laws. And now that we've gone over what they are, spend a little bit of time on each of them and see if there are some additional pieces we want to add to our, you know, more everyone can understand it. Description. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our full length book club on Atomic Habits. If you can't wait to hear the rest of our conversation where we go in depth into the meat of the book, as well as getting two CEs for listening at no additional charge, head over to patreon.com Aba InsideTrack and sign up at the $10 end up level, the inside tracker level. All right, we'll be back with our normal episodes in our normal schedule. But we're back with another preview of the upcoming book club. The anxious generation. In the spring, I think around April, that'll be coming out. We'll be back with that next season, but until then, keep responding.
- [49:25]
D
All by.
- [49:31]
A
Sam.