Hello, I'm Ted Sides, and this is Capital Allocators.

This show is an open exploration of the people and process behind capital allocation.

Through conversations with leaders in the money game, we learn how these holders of the keys to the kingdom allocate their time and their capital.

You can keep up to date by visiting Capital Allocatorspodcast.com.

My guest on today's show is James Clear, author of last year's New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits, which has

already sold 3 million copies worldwide. James also publishes a weekly email entitled

321 Thursday that works to deliver the most wisdom per word of any newsletter on the web.

You can sign up at jamesclear.com.

Our conversation covers James's entrepreneurial missteps that led to writing, following what

worked to focus on habits, and lessons to build a large audience. We then turn to atomic habits,

covering the definition of a habit, four steps to

creating habits, importance of identity, obstacles to good habit formation, and the practical

application of these principles in James's life. We close with James's New Year's resolutions

for 2021 and his advice for bringing yours to fruition.

Please enjoy my conversation with James Clear.

James, good to see you. Thanks so much for doing this.

Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.

Now, I'm always curious when someone has really

spent so much time about something like habits, what were you like as a kid?

So I guess I had a couple different elements that were a big part of my childhood. So first one was

athletics. My dad played professional baseball. He played in the minor leagues for St. Louis

Cardinals. And then I wanted to be an athlete growing up too and wanted to be like him. So baseball was a big part of it. But I did a bunch of other stuff too, swimming, basketball. I did one season of football. In football, there are kids who are getting hit and kids who are giving hits and I was always getting hit. So that didn't last that long in that one. But yeah, so a lot of

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