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Tim Ferriss: Totally agreed. For people who are looking for a little teaser on
this, I think a very good one is a lecture by Sam Harris called
“Waking Up.” He has a PhD in neuroscience. He’s also been on
the podcast. If you just go to fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled
out, forward slash Vimeo, that will take you straight to a page that
has a sample, a trailer that people can check out. Robert Crumb
was the name of the cartoonist, just as a side note for people who
are interested. He was very fond of women with thick legs.
He was also fond of drawing weird electrical instruments. In any
case, somebody to check out. What is a bad habit that you’re
working to overcome right now?
Naval Ravikant: Very good question. This is something I learned through our Polish
trainer friend, Victor; currently Victor. Habits are everything,
everyone. I think that we are trained in habits from when we were
children, including potty training and when to cry and when not to,
how to smile and when not to, and all these things become habits.
These are all behaviors that we learn and that we then integrate
into ourselves. What ends up happening when we’re older is that
we’re a collection of thousands, maybe tens of thousands of habits
we’re constantly running subconsciously, and they’re internalized.
And then we have a little bit of extra brain power in our neocortex
for solving new problems. So you become your habits.
What really brought this to light for me was our trainer gave me a
routine to do every single day. Before that, I had never worked out
every single day. It’s a light workout; it’s not tough on your body.
But I did this workout every single day and I realized the
incredible, astonishing transformation that it had upon me both
physically and mentally. Because I think to have peace of mind,
you have to have peace of body, first. So that taught me the power
of habits. After that, I started realizing that it’s all about habits.
So at any given time now, within a six month period, I’m either
trying to pick up a good habit or I'm discarding a previously bad
habit. And it takes time. For example, if someone says I want to be
fit, I want to be healthy but right now I'm out of shape and I'm fat;
nothing is going to work for you in three months that’s going to be
sustainable. It’s going to be a ten year journey, at least. And in the
ten year journey, what you’re going to do is every six months or
every three months, depending on how fast you can do it, you’re
going to break bad habits and you’re going to replace them or
you’re going to pick up good habits.
So I think it is all about habits. There is nothing else.