What's the two minute rule?

Take whatever habit you're trying to focus on and scale it down to something it takes two minutes or less to do. You know, I have this reader. He started going to the gym and he lost over 100 pounds, kept off for more than a decade now. But when he first started to go, he had a rule where he wasn't allowed to stay at the gym for longer than five minutes, right? It sounds like kind of ridiculous. like, oh, clearly this is not going to get the guy the results he wants. What you realize is he was mastering the art of showing up. A habit must be established before it can be improved. You need to standardize before you optimize. And then once we've identified a habit that we want to replace or eliminate, what is the mechanism by which we can do that?

Broadly speaking, I think there are four things that you should do if you want to build a habit.

And I think one of the best things you can do early on, this is if I could actually add one thing

to atomic habits that wasn't in it, it would probably be this.

What is the role that identity plays in terms of habit formation?

Ultimately, I feel like identity may be the most important thing with habits.

Your habits are how you embody a particular identity. So when you make your bed, you embody the identity

of someone who is clean and organized. If you study biology for 20 minutes on Tuesday night,

you embody the identity of someone who is studious. The act of doing it is proof that you are that type of person.

And eventually you start to build up this body of evidence for being that way.

You have every reason in the world to believe it.

So one of the core lessons of atomic habits is that every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

So when you show up at the gym today, you are casting a vote for being the type of person

who doesn't miss workouts.

When you sit down and make one sales call, you're casting a vote for being a salesperson.

When you write one sentence, you're casting a boat for being a writer.

And no, doing one pushup does not transform your body, but it does cast a vote for that identity.

It does provide evidence for being that type of person.

And eventually, as you build up that body of evidence, you start to take pride in being that way.

And I think that's where you get to this really resilient place in terms of building your habits.

When you start to take pride and being that type of person, you will fight to maintain the habit. You know, it becomes the opposite situation. Now instead of trying to force yourself to do it, you're trying to maintain it because it's a part of your identity that you believe in and that you, you know, want to keep. You know, if you take pride in the size of your biceps, you never skip arm day at the gym. Now, if you take pride and how your hair looks, you have this long hair care routine, you do it every day. We wouldn't know. It's like, um, and so, um, really the goal is not to read a book. The goal is to become a reader. You know, the goal is not to run a marathon.

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