Why 92% of Resolutions Fail | Ep 11

Caleb Roth  
All right, we are guest lists back on the Stacking Habits pod the benefit of having three co hosts is that we can talk to ourselves. And by talking about last time with each other, you only have so many jokes. Okay? So it's all we all we can work with. This is going to be the first episode of 2024. So welcome to the new year fellows a little bit early. I wanted to take a chance for us to kind of spit ball ideas. I want to kind of build it around resolutions. I've been a glutton for punishment and had a lot of resolutions. I know, Matthew, you're sort of in the anti resolution camp,

Matthew Osborn  
or like resolutions. I think most of you have said something. Yeah. Okay.

Caleb Roth  
David, where do you fall on the on the continuum,

David Chung  
I'd say I'm like, more on the side of no resolution, but this year is going to be a little different.

Caleb Roth  
Okay. And we just just mentioned before we came on air that you tend to build yours the first week of the year. That's

David Chung  
how I always did. I thought that I didn't realize it was like user a lose, lose that type of deal where you have to come up with resolutions by the first or you. You have to live the rest of your year. Yeah, if

Caleb Roth  
they're not in place by January, what it doesn't count, just

Matthew Osborn  
start over next year. Here's a wash.

Caleb Roth  
What are you doing now? The last 10 days? Because we're recording? December 21? What do you do in the last 10 days of the year? Me

David Chung  
personally,

Caleb Roth  
you don't think about next year yet?

David Chung  
Oh, no, not at all. Really? Yeah.

Caleb Roth  
I love this time. I feel like the planes kind of gliding in for final approach. And it's just like, you're weightless. And we're waiting for the plane to land. Most of my works been done for the year, like I can't really course correct too much. At this point. I

David Chung  
feel like for me, my year starts in August. And that that started ever since I was in school, you know, starting school in August, but then also being in the book industry. Our busiest months start in August. So August all the way to February is when we're really busy back to school season. And so yeah, I guess I I'm always more excited, like end of July. I feel like, you know, I'm preparing for this new phase of the year. For me like December to January. It's kind of nice, because there's a break, but I'm kind of a Scrooge in that way, too. I actually don't like the two week long break. And you know, at the end of the year, I'm just like, Man, can we just get going? Can we move on already? Does that make me a scrooge?

Caleb Roth  
You can do whatever you want. But yeah, that was being kind with it. Matthew went right for the kill.

Matthew Osborn  
Yeah, no, actually, it's funny. I'd like to end of the year for me, because most people check out. And it's like an easy time for me to focus on things I've wanted to get done normally, typically workwise that I'm not distracted by all these other random things, because no one's requesting anything, anything from you, especially from Christmas to New Year. Everyone's like no emails are sent. Nothing's requested. And so you can just really focus on just some random things you've wanted to get done and your business that it's not distracted by everything else. I'm meeting with the guy next week. And I was asking him, I was like, I know it's a Christmas time. But like, if you're up for meeting, I was like, I want to talk about this. And she's like, No, I love that. He's like everyone else is like checked out. He's like, My schedule is open. Because of that. He's like, let's meet. Let's get stuff done. And it's nice because everyone's schedule is open. No, no one's planning anything other than workwise. At least they've got family engagement. So I love this last part of the year, it slows down, you can focus on a few different things and get ready for the new year. Yeah,

Caleb Roth  
you've always done well with those quiet moments. And I used to wake up really early when you lived in Colorado, go climb, you know, do a short hike up the mountain and watch the sunrise. Yeah, thoughts. So you've always tended to be pretty intentional about kind of using some of that downtime.

Matthew Osborn  
Yeah, yeah, right now my schedule is a little more messed up and you start waking up consistently every morning, right now, four days out of the week, I wake up early, the other two or three that don't have anything. I tend to sleep in a little more. But one of my New Year's resolutions is to be more consistent with my morning routine again, and not just want to have something scheduled the morning but keep it consistent every single day of the week. Perfect.

Caleb Roth  
Well, I did a little homework this morning. I woke up early. The nice part of traveling out west is I'm still on East Coast timezone. And so I woke up about 530 ready to go, whether I was you know, fully rested or not. So it's kind of a cheat code is just go west, you'll you'll become a morning person for about two to three days. And then you know, regresses to the mean. I want to talk three things today and just sort of spitball this, I want to talk through some interesting stats on New Year's resolutions. So we'll share a little bit of data. I'm a numbers junkie, me and ChatGPT had some fun this morning. And then I want to have a little bit of a review period. We can talk about this past year 2023 Or maybe some other years and what are some habits that have been good or resolutions that have worked for us. And then I want to kind of look forward into 2024 and see how you're approaching the topic of resolutions. How's that sound?

David Chung  
Sounds great. Good.

Caleb Roth  
All right. Let's do some alarming statistics. Do some cool cut in or lightning playing or something? What percent of resolutions don't look at my notes. Yeah. Do you think fail? The whole year? What percent of people actually stick with the resolution for the entire year?

David Chung  
Is this like self reported?

Matthew Osborn  
Yes, it is. If I

Caleb Roth  
didn't cite my source, but the same number showed up several different places, so they're either all citing the same research or it's, it's actually, if

Matthew Osborn  
it's self reported, I'm guessing it's like 10% of its actual, I'm guessing it's more like 5% or less, bro,

David Chung  
I'm gonna play the good friend here and Gesell you know, a little lower. So the actual number is more alarming. I'm gonna guess I'm gonna guess 60% Fail 16 Full year and a full year.

Caleb Roth  
Alright, Matthew is actually pretty spot on. It's the numbers I showed were about 92% Fail 92%. What's more alarming about that, though, is 80% of resolutions fail by usually mid February. So about six weeks in. So if you make it past the first six weeks, you have a pretty good chance, maybe 50% of those people are going to make it to the end of the year. What's also interesting, I will I will cite this source Strava, the running, biking, working out app whatever track to 800 million activities 2019. They found that most people are likely to give up on a set date. Or they have a specific day that this is the most likely day that people will give up on the resolutions.

David Chung  
I'm guessing it's a weekend. So it's like one date across wherever you like. So

Caleb Roth  
if let's say your resume, it's just a day of the year so it's January 19. So 19 days into the new year, that is the most likely date to quit, we'd have to go look at what day of the week was January 19?

David Chung  
How many days do they say it takes to form a habit? Is

Caleb Roth  
it here's where I wait, okay, you're right, you're right on top of this man, I'm on my right. So most people quit by January 19. That's the sharpest drop off the clenched fist 80% of resolutions fail sometime in February. And if you make it through February, then 92% fail by the end of the year. So why bother setting resolutions one out of 12 people are actually going to follow through self reporting. So to Matthew's point, it could be actually lower than that. 20. So then the question was, how long does it take to form a habit, people are quitting 19 days in if they could have made it through the certain you know, data saying by mid February, they have a much higher likelihood of actually carrying the habit on. So some of the common beliefs at least tried GPT told me this, and I've heard this growing up to is that it takes 21 days to establish a habit. And what's interesting is a lot of people cite this, I actually went and looked for it. It's from a book from 19, written in 1960. So 63 years old at this point by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. And this is the common data site that says people quit habits, or it takes 21 days to establish a habit. What's interesting, I think this is this is BS, Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon. So what he was doing, he was actually saying he would observe that it took patients 21 days to adjust to their new appearance. So that's not a habit, right? If I pay for a nose job, I'm not doing work every day to work on my nose, or do push ups or eat better. All I'm doing is I'm looking in the mirror and it takes 21 days for me to stop going, oh my gosh, who is that guy, and finally get comfortable with who I am. So that research says nothing about habits. So I'm going to call BS on the 21 day thing. Other research, it didn't give me a source for I probably should have queried it said a more accurate range is 18 days to 254 days. Sidenote, real quick back on the 21 days, if that was true, people were quitting on day 19. All they had to do was go two more days, and they would essentially be day 21. And they had a pretty good chance of sticking. So I don't believe that that research is accurate. A more recent study 2009 It was actually published in a journal found it took 66 days to establish a new habit. So about two months. So how does that resonate with each of you?

David Chung  
I always felt like 20 days felt too low too. But I guess a huge part of it. You mentioned that, you know these people who got plastic surgery, and they're looking at themselves. They're not having to do anything in order to get into the habit of I guess we're to the being familiar with how they look. When it comes to doing habits. I guess it depends on the difficulty of the habit or how much you haven't changed the delta. And that's why I feel a lot more comfortable with the range of 60 to 200 some odd days because, again, if you're a smoker and you want to quit smoking, it's going to take longer than 20 days for you to just completely stop is my guess because that's a pretty intense like it's a chemical habit. Whereas if you're doing something simple, like making your bed each morning, I feel like that'd be you know, closer to the 60 days or even 20 days to just get into the habit of doing and are we defining habit by like, how, how long is that habit lasting? afterwards?

Caleb Roth  
I think it's something that becomes a part of your identity.

Matthew Osborn  
Okay, continually is done. Yeah, habitually. It's weird this so it's, it's 19 days. You said most people fall off with it. That's like the biggest decline? Well, it's kind of a maybe we'll talk about this more later on applies to but one of the things I was thinking about that I've set new year's resolutions and stuff in the past is that I think a lot of people, including myself have set like all or nothing type habits where every single day for the first month, men do this for two months. And then it's easy to keep up that momentum the first two weeks getting into three weeks, it's harder. And then I think people miss a day and they throw it all out, because oh, I've screwed up, it's done. It's gone. Throw it out from there. And so I would imagine a lot of people set these all or nothing goals, and then by day 90, and they're like, alright, I missed the day, I've screwed up for the first time, that's about when the luck, the other was the newness of it wears off by that point, they miss a day. And they throw out the entire goal, instead of having a goal from the beginning set with a little bit of flexibility in mind that you can make it up the next day or something like that. Because I found myself doing that too. I set a goal every day for this element to this that Middle East time, time you screw up, you just throw out the whole thing, oh, I messed it up next time, maybe I'll do a better. So I don't know, maybe that's somewhat of what causes it. But it's interesting. It's 90 days. And I

David Chung  
like what you said about baking and flexibility. So the podcasts that we enjoy, listen to My First Million Sam Parr actually talks about how when he was setting the habit of working out working out, he can have a day off, but he can't have more than two days off, or Yeah, have two days off in a row. So if he took one day off, that's fine. But he has to just, you know, continue a streak of working out. And I think that's so important because like, you know, January 19 is about when things are getting back into the swing of things. And you know, you're going back to work and schools back in session, and life hits you at full force. And, you know, all it takes is, you know, friends inviting you out, and it's one late night out and you wake up at 9am The next morning and you're like, I don't feel like working out today, you're ruining your whole year. Because you know, you give up on that day. If you baked in a little bit of flexibility. Maybe it's you know, a little bit of grace and forgiveness and compassion to yourself, you know, need to

Caleb Roth  
have a little more self care. Yeah, there's a phrase and I'm gonna butcher it, but something about the effect of you rise to the level of your motivation. So it's really easy to say I'm the kind of person that works out every day, and then kind of force yourself into doing that for 19, straight days, right? You fall. So you rise to the level of your motivation, like I'm going to be a better person this year. Cool. That's, that's pretty motivating. January 1, is that kind of inciting moment for most people to actually push themselves out of their comfort zone. But then you fall to the level of your systems or the level of your habits. And so that's not become a habit, it's not ingrained in your nature. That's not who you are. I'm not the person that gets up and does a morning hike in journal session every day, until that becomes who you are. And so I think what happens is, yeah, you're not very graceful with yourself, you hold yourself to too high of a standard. And when you fail, you feel guilt and shame, and you just throw it out the window, which is silly, because if you've been working out 18 days in a row, and get to day 19, and you drank too much you slept in, you got a kid crying, whatever your excuses, that's fine, you have 18 amazing days that you've connected together. Why throw that out the window, Tim Ferriss talks about it with his like slow carb diet, his whole diet is built on the premise of one cheat day a week, have you read read this information. So it's, he writes about at length talks about a bunch on his podcast, and I love the program, there's actually something about your metabolic health, that so it's emotional, psychological, but also metabolic. What happens is if you restrict your calories and try and eat, you know, high protein diet, his is going to be high fat, but kind of limit the carbs, what happens is your body slowly becomes accustomed to that new eating pattern. And so what you almost have to do is disrupt it once a week. You can he can eat whatever he wants. So he'll have pizza and ice cream and you name it, he'll eat it, you might have 5000 calories. Wow, you think that would kill the progress that you've been making? Right. And you know, I'm 18 days in, I don't want to go go for a run on day 19. I'm just going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. What it does is it resets your metabolism, your body knows that it has access to nutrition and calories and energy. And it actually you can actually speed up weight loss by doing it. But the psychological impact of that is incredible. Because what that does is on Monday, you say hey, Saturday is my cheat day because that's where I'm going to go hang out my friends, I'll have some alcohol, whatever that may be. On Tuesday, your motivation is declining. And instead of going this diet sucks, and I have to be this new person every day for the rest of my life. You go I got a cheat day coming Saturday and let me just write down I really craving steak and shake. I'm really craving french fries, whatever it might be, write it down. And you know that every Saturday you can, you know, gorge yourself and kind of have that psychological release. So I think building in that flexibility is really key to whatever your habit may be.

Matthew Osborn  
There's one of our habit takeaways for today is baking some flexibility to New Year's resolutions but like David like you said, the podcast is limited to like you can skip one day but you can't skip two days type thing. Can give yourself Have a Get Out of Jail Free card, but they can some flexibility to ever have it. You said,

David Chung  
I think breaking your habits to like uncertain days builds in, it makes your habit more resilient to because no one's going to be perfect where you know, you're going to do your habit every single day. But if you know that you can mess up one day, but still continue and still have another 60 day streak after that, because you've done that before. Again, it's all mental there.

Caleb Roth  
So there's a concept of connecting the chain, so not breaking the chain. Right. And so daily, you get in the habit of that routine. And some of the tips that were offered. Simpler habits are better. So the easier the habit is or the simpler like, hey, I want to drink eight ounces of water a day. That's like, okay, it's very doable. So you just set a glass of water, you tie it to brushing your teeth, or whatever else. And adding something small is pretty easy, but you go I don't want to do small things. As My First Million says no small boy. I want to do big things. So I'm gonna set these big, you know, hairy, audacious goals, B hags. But the reality is those are hard to implement. And they're probably going to take longer than 66 days to implement something that's harder. So simpler is better. I wrote complexity kills. Frequency matters. I think one of the cool things of connecting the chain when we did the books and bourbon podcasts, we went 30 straight weeks, and I don't do we ever miss a week? Don't think we did. Sometimes I missed sometimes you missed but overall podcast continued. Yeah, what's really cool about that is 30 weeks flew by it's more than half a year. Yeah. And all it was was a simple commitment that once a week, we're going to do this podcast, I think on Wednesdays or whatever.

Matthew Osborn  
Yeah, Thursdays 4pm. Eastern, whatever was Eastern my time. Yeah, but same time, same day, every single week to was like consistent there too. Yeah.

Caleb Roth  
And it wasn't crazy. We didn't say we're going to do this every day. We didn't say we're going to do a five hour podcast once a week, we just said we're gonna sit and talk. Sometimes we get guests, sometimes they cancelled. And we talked three of us like we're doing right now. But that was very simple. And once that became a habit that was on my calendar, I didn't schedule anything for those Thursday afternoons. And it's something that I began to look forward to. And before I knew, it's like, wow, we're 20 episodes in we're 30 episodes in. And all of a sudden, we had something meaningful, that was growing. And it was awesome to be a part of that. So I don't think it takes 30 weeks for everything. But I think

David Chung  
frequency does matter to absolutely, yeah. I I was revisiting. Is it Darren Hardy, he wrote compound effect. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he talks about how small incremental, you know, are pretty much just doing the same thing every day, that leads to compounding effects. And, you know, I think about, like brushing my teeth, and how what would be the correct term non trivial is like, super easy, is that trivial, non trivial, non non trivial? Am I even using it correctly. So pretty much, brushing your teeth is super easy, everyday you think about it, it's second nature. But if you don't do that, it could lead to some like catastrophic issues with oral hygiene. And so again, just like, because I brush my teeth two times a day, and I've been doing that for, you know, my whole life, it becomes really easy. And I think if, if you're able to set your habits up in a way, where they're small, you know, small actions every day, those are going to be much more impactful in the long run, than sometimes setting one big, giant goal and just sprinting towards that. Because, again, you have compounding to help you out.

Caleb Roth  
So let's dive into I have an interesting dichotomy, we could probably explore a bit. So based on what you just said, the idea of you can either focus on the habit and say every week for us, we're going to make this podcast right. So we're doing this every it rolls out every Wednesday, whether we record it on Wednesday or not doesn't matter. So we're doing one podcast a week, right now, like we just passed, 1000 listens. So thanks, everybody, that could be 100 people listening 10 times or whatever it is, but thanks, like that's meaningful for us. It's still nothing. We're still not worth anything as a podcast. That's okay. So let's talk about is it more important to set the habits up and say, here's the here are the actions that I'm going to take? Or is it more impactful to say, here's my goal, like we're not going to be happy till we get 100,000 listens. So first off, if you say our goal is to get 100,000 listens, yeah, we will then try to break that down into bite sized tasks, right? Or we can say our only goal is to be the best we can be. And to do this consistently, which way works better for you? There's both and it could be both answer. Yes, I open for debate.

David Chung  
I think both are important, but I think you need to set the goal first. And then define the habit because if you just define the habit, I'm gonna smile every day. You know, that may not lead to the outcome that I want. Right. So I think it's important to outline the goal but then break it down into manageable pieces. Is and see what? Which habit translates to that like bigger goal, if done daily?

Caleb Roth  
Yeah, so I do have intentions matter, you want to know where you're going before you decide how do I even get there? It's

Matthew Osborn  
what how does traction break it down? It's like the 10 year target three year picture one year goal. And then the vision traction

David Chung  
organizer, organizers. Yeah, BTO and you do a five year goal. And then from there, it's a three year pictures where they call it a three year picture. And then one year picture. And that note, it's sort of it's

Matthew Osborn  
like a five year target three year picture, one year goal or some Yeah, different actually. And

David Chung  
then quarterly rocks. Yeah, yeah. Which turned into weekly meetings. Yeah, yeah, though you

Matthew Osborn  
like have an idea for the future is never going to be exact. You don't know what's gonna happen five years from now but least you have a general direction of what target you're aiming at. And then the real actions come from those 60 days, 90 day sprint is really, hey, here's what we need in the next 90 days, here's what I need daily to do. And that's what you're focused on versus just focusing on the main goal or the target, because that can move in the future, but at least you're generally going in the right direction. And then you define your day to day tasks. I like that model.

Caleb Roth  
So can I get a little personal then on the podcast? Yeah. So one of the things I've just been throwing out there is, you know, yeah, we're just doing this thing. It's this cute little podcast. And you know, the goal is not to make money. And I realized, I'm primarily saying that because if I throw out there, hey, our goal is to get massive, and impact a lot of people that if we don't hit that goal, then for me, I'm goal oriented. And that becomes, I'm like the guy on day 19 That says, I didn't hit my goal. This was pointless and worthless. And why do we even bother? So I'm almost just kind of hesitantly throwing it out there. We're not we're not trying to make money. We're trying to get the band back together. We're trying to just meet some really cool people and share habits. And hopefully they stick and that's great. So helped me reframe this, because it sounds like we have to have an actual goal that's out there, like a five year goal. I haven't even thought that far forward. Even think through. If this thing lasts five years, where does it where does it go? You

David Chung  
know, diario CEO, Steve Merlot, yeah, he, you know, he's interviewing, you know, royalty and presidents, and just the most accomplished people out there. And I think that's so incredible. And if we had even half of his success, I, you know, I'd be beside myself. And so So how

Caleb Roth  
do you how would you define that success? Is it number of listens? Is it quality of people that we're interviewing?

David Chung  
I would say it's for you, I guess. Yeah. For me, it's the quality of people that we get to interview and connect with. But I feel that the number of listens directly correlates to that. Yeah.

Caleb Roth  
How about you, Matthew?

Matthew Osborn  
No, I would agree, I was gonna say like, the type of connections we can make, and the people we can talk to. And eventually, one of the things we've talked about multiple times on this podcast, is that we loved having like a community before their last businesses to build something like that this where people are all chasing towards a habit or a goal or keeping each other accountable. It's fun, but the connections we have, but that definitely does correlate to how big the podcast is. Because you're not going to have Elon Musk, come sit down with us for 1000 downloads just for the heck of it, it's just not going to work out that way, you're gonna need the listeners. And also, I think if we're really providing something of value, which we want to do in these episodes, we're going to have listeners, so for not having listeners two years from now, we're obviously not providing enough value in some way, shape or form, we should change how we're doing the show. So I think they have to be tied together, even though it's not great every single time to say we're going to get this many listens. But it does need to be loosely correlated to hey, if we're actually providing value, and we're doing this for a long period of time, we should have continually more and more listeners coming to the show. And so I think they have to be tied. But I do this for the connections and the conversation avails like that

Caleb Roth  
yeah, a phrase that keeps coming to mind is demand is undefeated. And what I mean by that is, if there's actually demand for the content we're putting out, then we will be successful. If there's no demand for it, we can't force someone to listen right time, no matter how much money you have time, we literally have 24 hours in a day, you're sleeping a third of that you're watching TV, whatever, like we can't buy more time. So people are not going to give us their most precious resource unless we're providing value to your point. And so if there is demand for what we're putting out, then naturally will will get better. I will say and then I want to switch back into looking at past habits and resolutions and future ones as well. This has been a fun little tangent for me. I will say we'll talk about this afterwards. I would love to increase the amplitude or the velocity of this to start doing two a week. And the reason for that is the more podcast we do, the better we're gonna get. We're going to craft our skills, we're going to better understand how not to talk over each other, how to get good guests on how to research them how to ask interesting questions, open ended questions. And if we do one a week, that's 50 cracks at it a year will get better a year from now this podcast should be way better than it is today. But if we can commit to doing too, so I'm not going to ask for your buying yet but that's that's my pitch to each of you is I would love to get to this where we're doing two a week. I don't want to do one a day because that's probably too much content for people that consume, but to a week means in a year, we're going to have two years worth at our at our past trajectory.

Matthew Osborn  
Yet there's this new podcast, it's called, I believe it's called the digital social hour or digital marketing social hour. Something along those lines. It's a guy. I've actually been friends with one of those friends on Facebook you've never met, but you've been friends on Facebook for a long time through some mutual connection. I've been friends on Facebook for years now. But I noticed you started a podcast, I think it was like a year ago now. I would see a little blip, come up in my feed every once a while from him. Like I said, I kind of roughly knew his name, and friends and Facebook for a while. But then I started seeing he got some really big guests like he started having Tucker Carlson on there. And he had some other. I forget if everyone thinks about Elon, yeah, but he's had some really, really big guests on the show recently. And I'm like how in the world did a podcast that started a year ago or something like that have this much success, maybe a year and a half ago, I was like maybe he had good connections maybe or something previously that I checked his podcast out. He's posted an episode seven days a week, every single day for an entire year. It's I think it's a little more than a year now. And I was like, it's that volume that he's putting out every single day. He's releasing like an hour hour and a half interview with someone new, that he's been able to jumpstart that process that normally takes podcast five years to get to that point. He's interviewing some major names because of how often he's putting out content granted, we're not going to do seven days a week he has his studio, and maybe we should he has a studio in Vegas, you can have people come to you every single day and stuff like that. But maybe we should you can tell he committed from day one. Like this wasn't something he like, dipped his toes in like he's doing this seven days a week, every single day. Where you I like that when you see a story like that, like, you know, that person committed from day one, it wasn't like, let's see if this works out. He's like, I'm gonna make it work out seven days a week not miss a single day for an entire year, which is just crazy. But it shows that it does work.

Caleb Roth  
Well, it's the it's the manifesting, I don't know where, you know, everybody's listening falls on that scale in terms of what you can create in life. But we just finished watching the last episode of Survivor last night, David's never watched any of it. I'm a bit of a junkie. Thanks, Bill Martlink, for getting me back on the wagon. But the girl that one wrote her parents a letter before she left for the trip and said, I'm going to come back a winner. And she said, It's not to make you proud of me. I know you're already proud of me, I'm not trying to earn your favor. But I already know that I am going to be a winner. And it's like, it sounds bold and brash. And like there's no way you can predict that. And yet there she went and did it. So I think the mentality the last piece I wrote was the motivation matters. Having an incredibly strong y is going to be the difference between Hey, I'd love to have a six pack by the end of 2024. You're like, Well, why? Well, I just I guess I want to look good in photos. And I want to feel good about myself. Okay, well, if that's your only motivation, you're probably not going to get there. But if you have a crystal clear motivation that I am going to do this for these particular reasons, you have a much better chance of doing it. So that guy that did his podcast said, I'm going to commit to this every single day of the week. It's like, well, there's nothing stopping us from doing that. Right. He got seven years worth of podcasts. And what's gonna take us one a week to catch on. There

David Chung  
are three of us. Yeah.

Caleb Roth  
Oh, we can do three a day. Yeah, three days. Already here first. Yeah, so the motivation really matters. And he created his own luck. He said, I'm going to be successful. And he went and did those habits.

Matthew Osborn  
It'd be fun to have on the podcast. If it wasn't podcasting himself every single

Caleb Roth  
day, there's 22 and a half other hours in the day we could I don't know, maybe it's time.

Matthew Osborn  
It's interesting. You brought that up with the letter, though I was thinking about that a little bit the other day, that same concept. There's this jiu-jitsu people that are introduced to this guy named Gordon Ryan, who's one of the best like non gi grapplers. He's kind of well known for in the main events he's done. It seemed like right in the box, put a paper in there, the method of submission, he's gonna get in that round. Like, that's all competence, he can tell them that he's gonna submit the person but how he's going to submit the person armbar, rear naked choke, whatever he puts in that box before the match even happens. And at first, I was like, that's a little arrogant, like you're competing with the world's best and you're thinking you can do that he's won. I think like 57 straight matches. He hasn't lost. He's, he's very good at what he does. Who is this? Gordon Ryan? He's a jui-jitsu guy. Anyways, but I was thinking about that. I was like, maybe that actually helps mentally, because then you're not going to the ring thinking, hey, I hope I get a submission on this guy. You've already established that I'm winning. Now. I'm gonna choose how I'm going to win. And so his mindsets, not, oh, I need to win. I need to win. It's like, hey, I need to get to this position because I want to submit him this exact way. That way, I can open the box at the end and show everyone Hey, I'm so good. I predicted how he's going to finish this

Caleb Roth  
magic the round that he's going to do it into it.

Matthew Osborn  
So jiu-jitsu is not rounds the time normally his events are there's a certain time limit where it's on points, you win or you get a submission or if it's a submission first, so there's no rounds in jiu-jitsu. But I was thinking like, maybe that's some mental trick whether he knows it or not, I'm not going well, I hope I win, but I know I'm winning. Here's how I'm going to win. And then your mindset changes as soon as it starts up, like setting this podcast up, not just I hope it's successful, but it will be successful. Here's how we're going to do it. And here's what we're shooting for type thing I think is really powerful. I excuse

Caleb Roth  
me, my chiropractor. Sorry, my voice is choking up. My chiropractor works with UFC fighters. And we actually talked about the same thing. He works with his fighters and I don't know if it's his mentality or some of the other trainers, but they'll go in and the fighters he works with will actually envision the fight. So they'll kind of mentally, like just picture themselves in the fight with their opponent. And they will actually come up with what rounds, what the time on the clock is, and the method of winning submission and knockout, technical knockout, whatever that may be. And it tends to sometimes, like often follow that script within within a matter of a few seconds, and the exact manner. So there's something about visualizing that, again, whether you believe in manifestation or not, there's something about that self belief and knowing that I am going to do this. And all the fighters are phenomenal to be in the ring to be in the arena, you have to have a really high level of discipline, of nutrition of coaching of everything, these guys are the best and the best and gals as well. And so how do you separate yourself? And I think a lot of it comes down to believing in yourself. And just knowing that you are in having a really strong why I asked him, you know, I've just texted him one day or called him out of the blue was like, Hey, how what separates a world class UFC fighter from another one? And I said, my theory is it's whoever has the strongest why and the strongest alignment. You know, this girl on Survivor Dee sorry, if you hopefully everybody's seen it by this point. But Dee won because she she wanted to win it for family and to retire her parents. She probably arguably had the strongest why of any of the contestants on why she wanted to win that million dollars. And because she had that strong why and visualize the result that actually happened.

Matthew Osborn  
Yeah. And there's people like Joker on in basketball where it seems like he never even wants to be a practice. But somehow he wins the national title.

David Chung  
I've read that that's just like his his show. Yeah, it's a it's a show. Yeah. Yeah. There's no way to watch interviews though. It'd

Matthew Osborn  
be that good and be like, it's just a job I have to do.

David Chung  
I think that's like psychological against his opponent. superpower it could be I think it is to imagine going against him just getting crushed. And him just Yeah, bad day at work.

Matthew Osborn  
I'm often an hour. I'll see you. Yeah. It's so funny. His personnel I love watching his interview just because of that personality gives off like, why am I doing this? It's so funny. But let's

Caleb Roth  
switch gears a little. So Did either of you have resolutions from last year? Do you remember? Did you set something out? I think years two years ago was done two

Matthew Osborn  
years ago is to figure out the perfect day like at the very end of the year, not the beginning the end of the year, I went through my year and sort of figure out hey, what days I feel the best when I went to sleep like what did I do those days and kind of map that out? And then this was 2022. Yeah. So I then I was like, Alright, here's a rough structure. It's not perfectly every single hours planned out. But here's a rough structure of things I did. And things I didn't do. That was an important part of those things I didn't do that made me feel the best about myself when I went to sleep that night. And I tried to like, try and hit as many of those perfect days as possible. It wasn't gonna happen every day, but try and pursue that. And I did really well the first like six months of the year, and then slowly just started getting distracted and other things like normally happens. And by the end of the years, like why didn't I keep doing that? It was, it was simple. It's a simple game plan. And so I know that wouldn't be a bad resolution for you to set this coming years to go back to that because I knew it worked. If I would have stayed on the wagon little bit longer. I baked in flexibility I knew wasn't going to be 365 days of the perfect day. But how many in a week Can I hit? And how many of these objectives Can I hit each day to try and get the perfect day?

David Chung  
So what would you track? How many hours of sleep you're getting? No, no,

Matthew Osborn  
it wasn't even tracking me. I was asleep. It's like, hey, on the days that I read a little bit of a book, I had two hours of like completely concentrated work on one exact thing. I played with my children for a certain number of time. And I didn't do X, Y and Z. I felt the best about myself and I went to sleep because I accomplished something I spend time with my kids. I got a workout in just a few kind of broad things that I would do in a day where when I slept at night, I felt better about myself. As long as I got those few things in in the day and the rest of the day didn't matter. I could do whatever I needed to.

Caleb Roth  
So you reverse engineered. Yeah, what made a good day. What question did you ask every night before your head hit the pillow.

Matthew Osborn  
So this was what I planned on the perfect day, I had a few things in mind what I needed to hit during the day and what things I didn't want to do. So I wasn't planning each day with the next day would be the perfect day. I just knew, hey, I need to work out I need to figure out something for the next day I'm focusing on so I get two hours of kind of focus flow work in for the day. So you predetermine that yeah, I predetermine the beginning of the year, and I start to hit those things. And granted, the work I was working on was two hours of change every single day. I have to figure that out. But it did prompt me at nighttime, like, hey, when I wake up the morning to figure out what I'm gonna spend two hours working on what's the most important thing for me to focus on. And that's where I'd start planning like the next day. And when I did those nightly reviews of, hey, here's the three things I want to do in the morning, not plan out my whole day. But just the three things that significantly help just even saying even if I knew what I had to do the next day writing it out. It does something to your mind where you just commit to it more did

Caleb Roth  
you start from scratch and just say at the end of the day, like I just I did these random mismatch of things, and I got to the end of the day, and you just asked was today a good day? Did you start from there or you already had a vision of what you thought a good day would look like?

Matthew Osborn  
I had a vision I think most of us probably can do this pretty easily to some of vision you know what actions you take that lead to feeling better about yourself and nighttime and also certain habits Some things that you do that at nighttime, you're always like, Why did I do that? Maybe it's drinking every time like, hey, it's gonna be fun going out with friends having a drink. And you've always said like next day, it's just never worth it. And so you figure that out, like, hey, if I don't do this, even though it's fun in the moment, I like it the next day, I'd never am happy I did that. It's like, hey, let's take out that and let's throw it back in, hey, if I get even a 10 minute workout, and I feel better about myself, when I go to sleep that night, it doesn't have to be an hour, I just need to do some type of physical workout. We all have those ideas in our mind and things that we do that make us feel better and things that we do that that don't contribute to our lives. And we map out a few of each of those, then you kind of have a blueprint for what each day should roughly look like. And then you puzzle in the actual things you have to do for that day. So I might go back to that this year. I haven't thought too much normally the last week of the year. I really spent a lot of time thinking about this, but I haven't done that yet. But I might go back to that that habit I did two years ago.

Caleb Roth  
I think there's a course you could sell here Matthew's blueprints for a perfect day.

Matthew Osborn  
Something like that. And it's got

David Chung  
the blueprint he does that's true. Yeah. What is it? You know, Brian Johnson the guy super health hack. Oh, live forever. And yeah, now we have Matthew Osborn's blueprint. Perfect. That was that

Matthew Osborn  
perfect day miracle mornings. I really really pop it up. Yeah, it's like the hell yes. Hollow rod. Yeah.

Caleb Roth  
hour and a half routine every morning.

Matthew Osborn  
I know. And you have people on all sides of the spectrum of that you have like the windows name, popular marketer guy booking the car for you, Alex Hormozi? Oh, yeah. Oh, he's like, No, he's like my morning routine and just start work. I don't have like other people. And like, I need my 90 minutes of all these steps in a row to have a good day. There is this weird stuff. I can't cite it. It came out recently, I think I heard about an Andrew hiraman podcast where they said you're most likely to get in that flow state of work. If you start something within 90 seconds of waking up, like if you like get out of bed and sit down and start writing or doing whatever you need to your mind just isn't a state where you can easily get into something and focus on something continually. And I've found that for myself. But I've accidentally done that, like, hey, I need to wake up early and do this. If I do something right away. Whether it's getting a gym or do something else your mind does get in that flow state way faster than if you do it three hours after you've woken up and you have to slowly work yourself into something.

David Chung  
I'm guessing like opening your phone up and checking your emails first thing in the morning doesn't count,

Matthew Osborn  
probably not a good flow state and it works for Instagram, I open up Instagram first thing in the morning, I get in the flow state.

Caleb Roth  
And our to my day to tick tock Thank you YouTube,

Matthew Osborn  
whatever it is, yeah. I haven't tried that myself. But I'm interested if I were to skip the morning routine, and just immediately go to an hour or two hours of focusing on one thing planet the night before how that would affect. So

David Chung  
it's interesting. A few years ago, I essentially program my quote unquote, perfect morning, and it was during COVID. And so we were all off work. And I planned the perfect morning, which was getting up doing some yoga, drinking, you know, hot water with lemon and honey. And like, those were the most productive days that I had. But it was in a bubble it was in COVID. And what I quickly found was after, you know things got more back to normal, it was so hard to keep those because you go out with friends until 11. And now your next morning is crushed, right so you can't continue. So it goes back to building resilience into these habits that you form. Because it doesn't matter how good the habit is, if it's easy to break, or if it could easily be shattered, then it's not as useful.

Caleb Roth  
I think a big piece of it is is knowing yourself. So just because you read how rods book and say, wow, it's a 60 to 90 minute morning routine with these eight checklist items and gratitude journaling and meditation and some working out and cold plunge. That might be great for how, but I think it's important to understand what works for you. So Alisha and I, my wife and I were talking last night about why people quit going to the gym. So early. We were looking at some of this data and a big piece of it. She goes well people just adopt other people's habits as their own. You say, well, people I should work out, right? I think no one's going to argue with that I should take care of my body, I should move it a little more. Well, I don't like going to a gym and lifting weights. I don't find joy in that. So I think a lot of people adopt that habit going up, I better sign up for a wide membership on January 1, like everybody else, and show up and just mindlessly pump iron, because that's what you're supposed to do. Well don't do that. If that's not for you. If you don't find joy in that you're not going to stick with it. I think motivation joy, happiness is a big component of building things that stick. So I would say tinker. If you are a very regimented person, if you normally have a day that operates inside of a spreadsheet or calendar, try and go the opposite way just for a little bit, move that pendulum to the other side where you don't have structure and just see how you operate you might you might quickly bounce back from it and go that's not for me, and that's fine. But then what you do is as you bounce back, you start to kind of figure out where your true north is. So for me, I want to move my body as well. I don't want to go pump iron but I love the player. frisbee, I love to go cycling with some friends. I like to plan for some fun adventures like hiking Kilimanjaro. And so what that does is it allows me to say what is most likely for me to continue going to do. And when I know myself and know that playing volleyball, and playing sports and hanging out, my friends is it's working out it is. And I'm way more likely to do that and join a volleyball league than I am to go to the gym three days a week. So know yourself know what you're likely to do. And that applies to business that applies to health that applies to finances, if you're not a budget guy, don't develop a really strict budget. You know, find a way that you can manage like the Profit First methodology that we talked through with Jojje. Find a really simple methodology to go about something and you're way more likely to stick with it as a result.

Matthew Osborn  
Yeah. When did you do more episodes, the three of us I could talk like this for hour, two hours, three hours,

David Chung  
we can do seven episodes a week pretty Oh, yeah, we

Matthew Osborn  
could probably easily fill that in. So what are the main takeaways then for this for the listeners, you guys think of things that have worked best in your lives that they could apply this coming year?

Caleb Roth  
Let me let me just continue off that thought, well, while you guys are percolating that, I think the important thing we phrase this as we want this to be a habit menu, right. So not everything you're going to hear on this podcast, like these are habits that work for our guests, some of them will work for you, some may not. So I think it's important to try them on and say, Hey, do you want Am I the kind of guy that wants to go out and sprint, if that what if that gives you zero, like, like, maybe try it just one time tinker with it. But if that gives you zero joy, and you're like us, the last thing I want to do, well don't do that. Understand the bigger principle is I want to be healthy, I want my body to be in good shape, so that I can be with my kids and my grandkids and whatever your future goals are, and adapt those to yourself. So just because you here have a habit doesn't mean you need to be competitive and add that to your life. There's, there's only so many hours in a day, you can't literally do every habit. So I think the main takeaway for me is just take little tidbits of habits that you're going to hear, sprinkle them into your own life and then measure what works have some sort of a reflection period to go at the end of the day. Did I have a perfect day? Or you know, closer to it than yesterday? And if the answer continually is yes, yes, yes, and you're moving in the right direction, then you will naturally have the right habits that will that will help move you toward that goal.

Matthew Osborn  
Yeah, I like that. For me, I keep going back to that bake in strategic flexibility to your goals. And then we're working on that this year, whatever goals I set as have a flexibility in mind for so it's not a make it or lose it type thing, but also, that I'm not giving myself free rein to not do anything. And so I'm going to try and find a balance of that with the goals I set for this coming year as baking in some sort of strategic flexibility. So I can stay on that wagon longer

Caleb Roth  
the cheat day of goals. Yeah, I

David Chung  
like that. I was gonna say this last year, I didn't really have a resolution might, I guess my overall resolution this year, coming into 2023 was really giving myself the space to explore and just not do anything. This is the first year where I took a significant period of time off. And I had a lot of days on the couch where I just watch TV all day. And that was really nice for a couple of months. And then you quickly, the pendulum quickly swings back to the other side where you discover, you know, your baseline and where you need to be every day to feel, you know, content and fulfilled this upcoming year, I'm going to take that a step further. I'm going to say okay, now that I know what my baseline is, how do I strip away everything else, that's just noise, and just simplify everything down to that baseline. So I'm totally fine with waking up and having a slow morning and sitting on the couch. And not really doing much for the day, as long as not filled up with bad habits. As long as I'm not eating a bunch of crap that isn't good for me. And, you know, just spending all my time watching tick tock, we're Instagram, it's okay to have that time to just think and, you know, be alone your thoughts? How do I create an environment around me so that I create the space to do that right and fortifies good habits, the baseline habits and strip away the bad habits. So that's my resolution going into the next year, which is I talked about, like canceling all my subscriptions, I'm canceling my Amex platinum just to just get rid of a lot of the crap in my life. And just focus on you know, I guess the core habits that sustain me and just carrying me forward. That's going to be my resolution this year. It's sort

Caleb Roth  
of just building the rocks. Yeah, sure. Those are in place and stripping away the rest. Yeah, having that free time. And that space to let your mind wander is huge. At least it is for me. I really like that. One thing that stuck with me is how much time do we have? It

Matthew Osborn  
was supposed to be 11. But I said I think you said 45 minutes, roughly we you guys have been recording for 40 Five minutes,

Caleb Roth  
will land the plane? kind of clip some of that out? Yeah, yeah. Where was I? So? Yeah, so I think when one piece that has helped me the last few months, really the mentality that you had Matthew in terms of what makes my perfect day, I've learned to get out of my head a little more and check in with my heart with my body. I've learned to challenge my relationships with alcohol with caffeine. And rather than just use them every day, because that becomes a habit. And it's something that I don't really reflect on or think about or ask if it's serving me. I've started to check in and go, do I need the caffeine? What if I cut it? How do I feel and you start to become aware of, oh, I need to get more energy, which means I need to move my body. So starting to just question your relationship to things has helped me and the other piece, I think Hormoz he said it? I'm sure he got it from somewhere else as well is what would future Caleb wants Caleb today to do? What would future Caleb be proud of? And so when when I'm tempted to walk by and scoop up, you know, 10 cookies and just bring them back and sit on the couch and watch Netflix. I could kind of ask the question. It's almost like what would God want me to do? But it's a it's a slight reframe of that would feature Kayla want me to pound 10 cookies right now? And I just kind of chuckle and it's like, no, maybe one or two. That's fine. And by the way, did you end up throwing out the rest of

David Chung  
your you know, what's so crazy is after that episode, I stopped baking the cookie wasn't even like a conscious decision. Like every time I looked at it, I was just like, I'm not really in the mood for them anymore. That's

Matthew Osborn  
funny. That's funny.

Caleb Roth  
So yeah, so that question has been really impactful, rather than what would David want me to do? Or what would Hal Elrod do? What would Alex Hormozi  do? It's like those are great for them. I'm just asking the question for me would future Caleb want me to do this action that I'm going to do? Or would future Caleb want me to get my butt off the couch and go for a small run? And the answer probably is yes. And in which case I'm going to go future Caleb, I'm doing this for you. Let's go. That that's been a really powerful motivator.

Matthew Osborn  
I like that a lot.

Caleb Roth  
Cool. Well, with that we will we will wind things down. Thanks for listening to our ramble. Hopefully, you picked up some good tips. If you do have some habits that you are planning to implement, like we want to build that community again. So comment if you're watching on YouTube, we do have this on YouTube, if that's news to you, great. I don't think there's any comment functionality on Spotify or Apple podcasts,

Matthew Osborn  
no if you pay for their their hosting with them, you can ask polling questions and things like that, but we don't have that. So all right, well, YouTube comments YouTube comments group sometime soon,

Caleb Roth  
we will get an email list going well, we're going to create some sort of community because that ultimately is what I'm about. I loved the book world. And I love serving entrepreneurs and talking to them. I'm going to learn just as much from you as you are for me. So comment, you can email us info at stacking habits.com And check us out at stacking habits.com And if you've learned something good, if there's demand for this, by all means, like subscribe, do all those things but pass an episode to a friend and we will be eternally grateful. Can I

David Chung  
say one last thing? Absolutely. 2024: the year ot the Stacking Habits podcast.

Caleb Roth  
Let's go! Alright. Thanks, everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai