A challenging aspect of early retirement is the loss of identity you may experience when leaving a career you’ve spent a big chunk of your life building.

However, one of the most exciting parts of early retirement is that you have the time, money, and freedom to create a completely new identity!

How do you do it though?

Today, I had the privilege to speak to the writer who has been most helpful to me as I’ve started building my own new identity – James Clear.

In this episode, we discuss habits, deliberate practice, and how to best create a meaningful and purpose-driven life!

Highlights:

• What makes life meaningful and how to live better
• The importance of social connections
• How to deal with the “pain of discipline”
• The physics of productivity and why habits are so powerful
• The importance of having an easy on-ramp to a task
• Why a habit must be established before it can be improved
• How to find a keystone habit that can improve multiple areas of your life
• Why you should optimize for the starting line rather than the finish line
• The downsides of habits
• What is deliberate practice and why it’s important
• How habits can change your identity
• Why rewards are good (but only if they don’t conflict with your new identity)
• What is intermittent fasting and why it’s beneficial