EP50 Is Accountability all it's cracked up to be?

Summary

In this episode, Mike and Troye delve into the complexities of accountability and habit tracking, exploring how these concepts relate to personal growth and behavior change. They discuss the importance of environment, identity, and motivation in facilitating change, while also challenging traditional views on accountability mechanisms. The conversation emphasizes the need for a supportive environment and a clear understanding of what is at stake in order to drive meaningful behavior change.


Takeaways

Accountability can be perceived differently by individuals.
Setting up the right environment is crucial for behavior change.
Identity plays a significant role in how we approach change.
Understanding what is at stake can motivate behavior change.
Habit tracking may not work for everyone; it's about finding the right mechanism.
Motivation can fluctuate; it's important to recognize where you are in the change process.
Behavior change often requires a gradual approach rather than a sudden shift.
The people you surround yourself with influence your behavior and values.
Exploring the reasons behind habits can lead to better understanding and change.
Creating a framework for change involves aligning identity, environment, and motivation.


Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Acknowledgment of Feelings
02:45 Exploring Accountability and Habits
05:15 The Role of Environment in Behavior Change
08:09 Identity and Commitment to Change
11:06 Motivation and Stages of Change
13:36 The Stakes of Behavior Change
16:28 Shifting Perspectives on Status and Behavior
19:29 Practical Strategies for Behavior Change
22:22 Conclusion and Framework for Change

Keywords

accountability, habit tracking, behavior change, motivation, environment, identity, personal development, mindfulness, meditation, self-improvement

Find out more about  working with me or about applying to join the ILN.  mike@smbmastery.com.au

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeadamscott/

https://theintentionalleaders.com/

Transcript

Troye (00:00.684)
You

Mike Scott (00:02.864)
I don't know why Troy's laughing, but we'll start this podcast episode by laughing. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Good to be back. So Troy's back with me and I think, not I think, we've decided that this is going to become our podcast, not my podcast, which is pretty cool. So welcome back Troy. Say one or two words and then we'll get into it, but only one or two, no more than that. There you go.

Troye (00:23.008)
it's good to be back. Thanks very much. I don't know why you're feeling so rushed and anxious. Ready to go?

Mike Scott (00:31.142)
I don't know. Good point. I actually think it's important that we start with just acknowledging where we're at. So Troy and I have just done our first I'll End Grow event. Both of us are introverts. I'm a loud introvert. Troy's a not so loud introvert, but we're both feeling super drained. We've committed to doing this podcast, which is actually interesting because that's what this is all about is accountability today and what that actually means and doesn't mean. Troy, how are you feeling? What's your vibe?

Troye (01:02.222)
Yeah, similar. think these kind of events, I love them when I'm there and you get so much emotional kind of sort of feedback, I think. You're seeing people just doing awesome stuff, saying awesome things, growing in awesome ways. But it's like, I leave and it's so interesting, always happens every time I leave and my mood just goes, and everything gets a little bit flat. It's nothing to solve.

It's just something to recognize.

Mike Scott (01:33.722)
No, it's not to solve, but the reason why I wanted to raise it is because I think a lot of people see the outside. Like you're gonna see LinkedIn posts about this great event and I'll be smiling and Troy will be smiling and everything's great. And it was, but then we get in the car and drive half an hour to the office to do the podcast. And by the time we get here, Troy's miserable because he's hungry and he hasn't eaten and he mopes around and I'm like, why are you so miserable? And he's like, because I'm miserable. And then I've realized I'm miserable too. But like, here we are, right? And I think that's just the reality of all of this. So I just wanted to kind of...

share that. Okay, so the catalyst for this episode is one of, I won't identify, just someone I know and I'm close to, pushed back very hard on accountability. Just said, Mike, I'm loving the aisle then, but I just hate the accountability. I've always hated accountability. You know I've hated accountability. I've never done habit tracking. It's never worked for me. It's just not my vibe, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I said to him,

You should speak to Troy because Troy doesn't like habit tracking and Troy doesn't like accountability and I do, I love this shit, but he doesn't. And it just got me thinking, we should do an episode where we coming at this accountability and habit tracking thing from different sides and just talk about like whether it's a good thing, whether it's a bad thing, whether it's just a thing. Some people are gonna think about this very differently. So, accountability, habits, Troy, kick us off. What are you thinking about when I talk about?

accountability and habits. Why don't you share my thoughts and feelings on this topic?

Troye (03:08.738)
Well, I'm actually coming into this conversation hoping to see if my mind changed, which I think is actually a good way to come into most conversations, especially when you've got strong convictions. Strong convictions loosely held is the saying that a lot of people that you can hear all over the place. So I'm really coming into this conversation hoping to to change my mind because it's not this is not something that I've thought about and decided.

It's actually just something that I've never found it works for me. And it could be because it's just, think differently. So, and I find that like the accountability part of things is just, it doesn't motivate me. Like if I don't do something, if I'm going to have it, I want to do, and I don't do it, and you're holding me accountable. I'll just be like, I had chocolate today again, Mike. And you'll be like, well, you're supposed to not have it. And like, I don't care. So it doesn't drive behavior change for me. And I think

That's the essence of what we're talking about. That's what accountability is for. It's bringing it back because it's a behavior change. I want to meditate every day. I want to stop eating sugar and I want to journal every day and I don't do those things and now I want to do it. so I'm going to ask you to keep me accountable to it. And so it's never worked because I'll just be like, now I didn't do it today. Bad luck. And so I'm just wondering why that is. And maybe is that just

It doesn't fit in with the stuff that I've read about, the observations that people have, because most people that seems to be useful for, but it just has never been useful to me. And I just don't know why.

Mike Scott (04:54.13)
I think I realize and I recognize that there are very different forms of accountability. Some of them are very easy to do, some of them are hard to do. So here's what I mean by this. Quite often, I will meet you for a run or a ride. And if I wasn't meeting you for that run or that ride, I wouldn't run or I wouldn't ride. In other words, I wake up at five in the morning, I'm like, God, I don't feel like this, but I'm meeting Troy. I don't wanna let him down. So I'll go and run or ride. That's accountability.

Okay, I'm accountable to you to go and change the behavior of training more. Where I think it falls down for a lot of people is let's take the journaling, the journaling thing. It would probably be effective if you wanted to journal and you said to somebody, hey, let's meet up every day to journal together, theoretically, right? Your chances of journaling, I think would increase quite significantly. The thing is you're not gonna do that.

You're also not gonna meet up with somebody all day, every day to make sure you don't eat sugar, because that's just completely impractical. You're also probably not gonna meet up with somebody every day to meditate, but if you did, you probably would. So I think there's like, it's not so much about the accountability where people fall down. I think it's the mechanisms of accountability. Because my observation of this stuff, if I take this particular person that I'm talking about, they quite desperately actually do need the behavior change. They do. But the mechanism.

that is currently in front of them, which is a habit tracker on a Google spreadsheet and then a WhatsApp group to track that, that doesn't work for him. But now there's throwing the baby out of the bathwater, which is going, don't like the habit tracker, I don't like the WhatsApp weekly check-in, therefore accountability and habits don't work for me. I don't think that that's a useful thing. What's going through your brain as I say that?

Troye (06:42.733)
I'm intrigued. So what I'm hearing is if you want to, what I'm hearing from what you're saying is accountability is part of setting up the environment. And, and so again, there's been lots of thoughts on behavior change and there's some cool models and a whole bunch of sort of stuff around it. Science, guess, except I hate it when people talk science because it doesn't allow for conversation because data is hold as fact and nobody does anything about it.

But I guess the idea that we've looked at and that's backed on other people's thoughts is like, there's a motivation to change. So I want to make the change. Then you've got to sort of identify with that change and then set up the environment around yourself to sort of to have that, to allow that change to happen, to make the change pretty a lot easier. And so what really I'm hearing you saying,

is that accountability is part of setting up your environment. Because every Saturday at 6.30, we're at the bottom of Chambers Gully. Like you and I are at the bottom of Chambers Gully on our bikes, ready to go. it's, I'm telling you about this, but I'm telling the friends that listening to the podcast. It's so funny because we start at about three strokes, pedal strokes in, I'm like, geez, Mike, I'm so tired. Like I just.

I can't ride, I just don't feel like riding today. Really don't wish I was here. And Mike's like, oh, it's been a long week. I'm so tired as well. I really don't want to be riding today. And yet we are there. We've set up the environment to push us then. so I guess what you're talking about when you talk about accountability, I've always seen it as like a habit tracker. I send it to, this is what the island does. It's like as a habit tracker, we send it to our group. But really it's not about that. It's about setting up.

the environment for these changes to occur. Is that kind of how you looking at things as well?

Mike Scott (08:46.162)
I'm just exploring today. This is not a teaching episode or even like a structure episode, but I can't help myself. So I'm going to get into a structure. like, I really do think that this cascade that you and I had a couple of years ago on the beach talking about this is really relevant. It's like, it actually starts with your identity. And until and unless you have a high commitment to shifting who you are, accountability probably won't serve you because it's in a vacuum.

Troye (08:50.038)
Yeah.

Mike Scott (09:15.662)
So just to give a really clear example about this, it's like, if the person that I need to become is somebody that is fit, healthy, what a what a what what a what a, then I need to set my environment up to remove the friction from the behaviors that I want to adopt or double down on. And I need to change my environment to create friction for the behaviors that I want to stop. And then the habits follow.

And I think if I think of this particular person, it's not like they're not clear nor committed to the person they want to become, which then makes environmental changes very difficult because it's just relying on willpower, which we know is a fine art resource. And therefore the habits and the behaviors don't change. So Tony Robbins speaks a bit about this. He talks about like leverage and it's not really the way I think about leverage, but it's kind of like.

What are the stakes? We're taking it up like a few layers. It's like, well, what are the stakes that are there, that are at stake, that are at risk if you don't adopt the new behavior? And if the stakes are low or undefined, I think the chances of being accountable is very, very low. When the stakes become highly defined and very high, your willingness to be held accountable and therefore your behavior change increases drastically. So the work here is not.

the accountability system. The work begins with who do I want to become or need to become to achieve the things I want to achieve, what's at stake, and then using that as leverage to creating the environmental changes that you want to change. And I think you speak about this in other areas quite a lot, which I love, which is purpose, values, et cetera. They've got to cost you something. They're only gonna be useful if there's a cost, if there's a trade-off to them.

but you're only gonna be willing to make that trade off if there's a lot at stake. So, you know, again, today is an exploration conversation rather than a hey, this is how you do stuff, people conversation.

Mike Scott (11:26.053)
What are you hearing there, Troy?

Troye (11:27.532)
mean...

There's a couple of things here. The one thing is it's so awesome to be talking about this without, it's sort of not in a doctor-patient relationship kind of situation because even though in that setting we try very hard to make it an even conversation, it's often sort of approached as I'm trying to change your behavior. Like you need to stop smoking and I need to try and change your behavior and there's interviews, motivational interviewing around it.

But to not throw the baby out with the bath water, what's actually cool here is going, well, how can I use the same process to help myself change the behavior? And the motivational behavior is about motivation. It's about where are you in the progress to make the change? And I'm not going to forget this, and I apologize to all of the academics, but you will pick it up pretty quickly. It's kind of like,

the person's not interested in changing. So I'm not interested in changing that behavior. I love my chocolate. Don't even talk to me about stopping. Then there's like, I'm interested in changing, but I'm not ready yet. And again, I apologize to academics because I'm not using academic terminology. And that's kind of like, yeah, it'll be a good thing to do, but I'm not going to change. And then it's like, yeah, I want to change, but I'm not going to put any action into play. And then there's the

I'm going to change now and I need to start putting and I'm ready to put the action in and that's going to happen. So it's kind of like the stepwise process from I'm not going to change to I'm ready to change. I'm just going to put things into action. But it's but but actually really, I mean, there's a discussion point of view. Let's make this super practical. So my vision, my goal of myself is to be a mindful, calm, centered person. I want to I want to be that person.

Troye (13:27.35)
Part of that process would be to meditate daily. I've done meditation in the past. It's lasted for a little bit of time and then it falls away. I don't meditate at the moment, but I'd like to. I've got the app on my phone that sends me a reminder every day. I'm in the, it's the pre-contemplation phase, the terminology is pre-contemplation phase, contemplation phase, and then I guess it's action. So I'm in that like, I want to act.

So how do I do this? Like every day I want to do it, but I just don't. mean, what I'm just thinking, like, how would I get to the point that I want to actually make? I'm going to actually do that tomorrow. And maybe it's just I don't want to do it enough. I don't know. What do you think?

Mike Scott (14:10.138)
Okay, let's explore this, right? And with an open mind. I don't know, live coaching, I guess. Not even coaching, actually. This isn't coaching, this is exploration. what's the behavior change? You know, live discussion, I'm not gonna coach you, right? But like live discussion. So, what I've heard you say is that the behavior change you want is to meditate more frequently.

Troye (14:20.105)
Live discussion, live discussion.

Mike Scott (14:31.057)
Why?

Troye (14:33.483)
Because I think it's going to be good for me and help me be more centered in my life.

Mike Scott (14:41.382)
Yeah, what's at stake if you don't start this habit?

Troye (14:48.139)
The honest truth is nothing. I mean, I can make something up, but to me it feels like nothing.

Mike Scott (14:51.378)
Yeah. And like, won't keep going with it. Yeah, but this is the thing, right? And I think this is, you know, very, very, very basic, oversimplified, but I can, I mean, I have pretty strong conviction that that's the reason you're not doing this is because if you're honest with yourself, you're going, nothing's at stake here. So I'm not willing to put the sacrifices in to get this thing, cause it's just not at stake. But now I want to take it a different level, cause I know you very well. And we were having a conversation on the way up to the office just now.

You don't necessarily want to keep training how hard you are, right? But what's at stake if you stop training?

Troye (15:29.215)
Bye.

Troye (15:34.379)
Well, you're probably meaning for the question. So the idea is that Tom, my son, is in triathlon and he told me that he basically has made it quite clear that he loves me training with him, loves me competing sort of as his dad. And so really it's like I'm finding it quite challenging to fit the training in, but I can't stop because it's going to be disappointed.

Mike Scott (16:00.413)
But you see what I'm saying. So like what's at stake, is a lot because you are a very good father. You're very dedicated. You truly, whether you articulate it like this or not, your core value is like pretty much your relationship with your children. And like, therefore there's an enormous amount at stake. So you have this enormous amount of accountability. This is what I'm talking about. It's unsaid and it's unspoken.

Troye (16:21.747)
So how does this work back now to help people? Because if you talk about this person that you were talking about, people that know they have to make changes in their life, it's a little bit more desperate than where I am, but they're not, like, let's make it a sugar thing. Like, say I'm eating tons of sugar, but I'm also overweight, really, like, I'm almost going to be diabetic, but I'm in the same situation as I am now.

And let's not even make it about that sort of patient be trying to change somebody else's mind. Let's make it about ourselves. Like, know I need to make this change because it's going to be better for me, but I just don't know how. And every time I try, I kind of do it, but it falls apart. I think this is the challenging part of things.

Mike Scott (17:03.996)
Yeah, but hang on, this is what I'm challenging. This is what I'm challenging is like in our 30 second pseudo coaching session, you actually identified that you don't know it's gonna be better for you. Because I said, what's at stake with not meditating? And you said I could make up some shit, Mike, but actually nothing, which is another way of saying it's not actually gonna materially benefit me.

Troye (17:25.119)
Yeah.

Mike Scott (17:25.682)
Because if it was, you would actually see that there is a lot at stake, whether it's opportunity cost or what have you, but there isn't. I'll stop using you as an example and I'll try to put it with me as an example. I'm on a, what am I on? I'm on a 47 day streak of meditating every day and I'm really proud of that. But for me, when you ask me what's at stake with not meditating, the answer is a lot because I have a lot of anxiety.

and it really cripples a lot of my day-to-day world. And I notice that when I am very consistently meditating, it is a needle that gets moved on my experience of the world. There's a lot at stake. It's my mental health, it's my relationship with my kids, it's my relationship with my wife, it's my relationship with you as my co-founder. There's a lot at stake. My answer is very quick to be like, that's what's at stake. However,

I'm in an opposite boat to you at the moment. I mentioned to you, I'm not mountain biking much at the moment and I really wanna be riding more, but I'm not. Because if you ask me what's at stake at the moment, not much, not much, right? So what am I saying here? I'm saying that I think the work is not I wanna build the habit. The work is to go, what is the behavior change that I think I need to become? How does that serve my identity? And then to get real about like, what is at stake if I don't do this?

If you're talking about the really overweight person that wants to cut down sugar, generally they won't make that change until they feel that what's at stake is very serious, not academically, but actually feel it. And then you'll often only see the change, although you as a doctor have told me you just don't see that very often, which I accept.

Troye (19:11.467)
So I've just come up with a, I've just, this has triggered a thought that I haven't actually had. It's like, it's a live spark of the Muses hits, Mike, the Muses hits. So, and hopefully, this feeling that's wrapping it up a little bit. So there was one time, there's this series of books.

It's the easy way to quit smoking. It's the easy way to quit caffeine. And there's a whole bunch of these books. I've gone through cycles of trying to get off coffee and loving it and hating it. And I listened to this book and it's going and basically what the whole book does is it takes a myth, a fact about coffee. I need coffee to wake up in the morning because I'm super tired.

And then it's just got this riff on like why that's not true. It's just a habit. It's just this, it's just this, it's this whole riff. And I listened to it as an audio book. And the whole time I'm thinking, okay, well, when's the action going to come? When's the action going to come? When's the action going to come? And I was excited about the 10 steps at the end that we're going to follow to stop coffee. And it says you don't try and start until you listen to the whole book. And this whole book is just goes through like this, this, this, this, this.

You get to the end and frankly the 10 steps are rubbish. But you get to the end and you're like, okay, I'm going to quit coffee now. And it was so much easier than I've ever had it before. And what it's doing is it's talking to your subconscious mind. Our brains are so incredible the way that they work is that there's a whole bunch of processes that happen underneath our conscious level that sort of are working at the same time as our thoughts and our frontal sort of thinking.

And basically it persuaded this list listening to this book persuaded me that coffee was not actually that awesome and it made it so easy to stop so my hypothesis my assertion from that and listening to us is that I Reckon if I'm using the meditation the way you you make The way that you make a change is you get to that contemplation phase which is like let's make it sugar because it's a little let's make a meditation as we talk about us I'm like

Troye (21:32.287)
Yeah, meditation is great. I really want to do it. But I'm kind of like, it's not I don't have the I don't know the willpower. I suspect what if I if I had to journal every single day and just write a paragraph, meditation is awesome about this. This is the benefits of meditation. This is what I gained from it. It's a nice time. It's like, whatever, whatever. If I just the first thing I do is I just journal about meditation and I listen to something good about meditation. And I just I just

actively seeking out the motivation to do it, the reasons to do it, why it's really good, et cetera, et I suspect that over time, and then I start putting a practice in, I say, okay, my plan is to do five minutes in the morning, and there's a whole bunch of things about habits which we'll talk about at another time. Then I put that action into play, where I'm going, I want to meditate.

I reckon I'll start doing it and then putting a reward in at the end will be a good idea as well. So to put that into nutshell is if you want to make a behavior change, let's assume you're at the position where you want to make a change. You decide to make the change. The key would be to journal through the whole process, to listen to things about why it's so good and get and almost sort of build a argument for the behavior change that you want to do.

and just keep building that argument and then track the behavior and then sort of just start putting the behavior change in to play. You don't even have to do it. You could do it as a habit tracker or whatever. I reckon that might be a good way to get to the point of going, yeah, I kind of want to, but I'm just not doing it.

Mike Scott (23:14.802)
It is but I think it's a huge amount of friction and a huge amount of work and I think most people won't do that work I think the shortcut pattern to that is is The cost or what's at stake something is just popped into my brain and this is gonna be I'm not gonna do it justice But I was listening to what's the guy wants to live forever Brian Johnson. Is that his name? Yeah Yeah, so I've completely changed my mind on that dude. I used to think he was weird and gross now. I think he's

Troye (23:25.258)
Ahem.

Troye (23:36.702)
Yeah, somewhere like that, yeah. Bright something.

Mike Scott (23:43.079)
flippin' awesome now that I actually understand how he thinks. He's just actually phenomenal. And his whole thing, and I'm not gonna do it justice and I'm gonna massively oversimplify, but he's trying to change what we consider high status. So he's trying to go from basically working really hard, destroying your body, drinking alcohol that's high status, because it is still, to actually what's high status is...

taking really good care of yourself, living longer, living a good life, et cetera, et cetera, et Hugely oversimplified. But what's not oversimplified is he has shifted what high status equals for him. And I realized that I've actually shifted that in myself as well. I used to think high status was outworking the other guy, drinking a lot, being socially acceptable, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But to me, what high status has become is very high energy people, very focused people.

very connected people, very calm people, very high-performant people. Like high status to me is different now from what it is. And that's driven a lot of my behavior, the most meaningful of which is sleep. I literally build my life around sleep. You know, I got a 94 sleep score last night and that's not uncommon for me anymore. It's it's what I center my behavior around because high status for me is showing up high energy focused.

calm, regulated performance for me. And it's gonna be annoying because actually we don't have time to get into that in great detail. Maybe that's a whole episode, but it was such a cool way of explaining it to me because he was talking about only three things really drive behavior changes in people. One is money, one is power, and the other is status. So unless we're appealing to money, power, or status, we're not gonna change people or ourselves. Now I haven't, the jury's still out for me on that.

but I get what he's saying is like how do we appeal to the more, what's the word I'm looking for here? Like the more, I don't wanna say carnal, but that's the wrong word. Like the more sort of basic, like how do we appeal to the primitive parts of ourselves to drive these 1 % changes? How do we appeal to the primitive part of ourselves to meditate? Or the primitive part of ourselves to sleep? And I think he's, like I like what he's saying, right?

Troye (25:47.497)
Primitive, I guess. Yeah.

Troye (25:58.897)
It's so...

Yeah.

Mike Scott (26:03.986)
It's changing what status means. So for me, I feel like a 93 sleep score is really high status. 10 years ago, I wouldn't have considered that high status. I would have considered working harder high status.

Troye (26:16.763)
It comes back down to the environment thing, isn't it? Because the environment is the people that you hang around. And it's really interesting if you hang around an environment where everyone's wearing suits and Rolex watches and your status is about how much money you have in the bank or whatever. But I'll tell you what, when I go to the run squad in the evening, nobody gives a shit how much money is in your bank account. But if you can run four minutes a K at threshold, you've got a pretty high status. So it depends on who you hang around.

And that's what you're talking about is put the people around you where sleep and being healthy is what makes you, it gives you status. it's not, status doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Mike Scott (26:57.01)
Well, I think there's even one step upstream from that is decide what status is for you. Because if status is for you making more money, you're not going to have the healthy habits. Like it just won't happen because we're, well, power's a myth. Like we know that now, right?

Troye (27:10.823)
Yeah, we'll pass the myth, but I think status is not... You can't have status... If you're sitting on a desert island, there's no status. So I think you can decide what status you want, but it's actually about hanging around the people who value that status. Because status is... Status, unfortunately, no matter what we do, humans will put ourselves in a hierarchy. And so it is about hanging around the right people. And Mike, your sleep score, you're putting it there because you know that sleep is something that I...

value a hell of a lot. We talk about sleep all the time. So to us, when you say you've got a 93 Steve score, I'm like, respect. But in another group, it might not be. Nerd out.

Mike Scott (27:50.109)
We're nerding nerd sleep status. Yeah, well, that's the point, right? Like I expect other like people listening to this to be like, don't care. That was why I said it is because it's not, it should appeal to everyone because sleep is the answer to most questions, right? It's like 42 if you read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But like it, that's why I said that because it would be much easier to say I made a million dollars last year and that's cool because more people will aspire to that status. Okay.

This is getting too long, we've been at this for enough time today. Did you change your mind?

Troye (28:26.473)
Well, to me, the idea, to me, the epiphany, which I is that whole idea of almost subconsciously working at behavior change at all times. was generally was an example. But I think if I think about the changes that I've made in my life, it's been a chip chip chip chip chip chip away. And then all of a sudden it happens. It's taken me I still hate to too many chocolates, but it's taken me two years or more to chip chip chip chip chip at the way it like

it's doing less and less and less and all of a sudden it kind of goes. So I think that you can speed that chipping away by actively doing something about it. And then I think it's the identity environment habits situation that helps with behavior change. And each one of those, you can work on each one of those in particular. But you notice that there's no willpower in here. It's not a, I'm going to sit down and force myself to do this every single day.

I'm still not sort of convinced, I'm still not convinced that I have a tracker and sending accountability stuff is going to be useful for me. I just don't think that's how my brain works. I don't think that creates stakes for me. But from what I'm hearing for you is if that's going to create stakes for you, it's a good way to go.

Mike Scott (29:26.726)
Doesn't work.

Mike Scott (29:45.49)
Yeah, just to clarify, it doesn't create the stakes. This is my point. The stakes have to be created first and then that stuff becomes a mechanism for that. That's kind of the point. Like the habit tracker and the accountability check-in doesn't create the stakes. It's the mechanism through which you begin to live those stakes. Yeah. Interesting discussion. I'm, I feel incomplete because I like to give frameworks, tools, et cetera, but that's not what the, that's not what today was for. This is an exploration. Hopefully this was helpful to everybody.

and we'll see you again soon. Adios. Hold on, not adios. Troy's breaking the rules. What's the framework, Troy?

Troye (30:18.601)
Well, the framework.

Troye (30:23.635)
Nah, I'm always like, hey, editor, let's cut this out and finish again. If we leave it in, then it can show a little bit. I love it when they leave these things as a podcast and I just leave this in. I think the framework is clear, Mike. I think the framework is an identity environment. Like set your environment. If you want to make a change, set your environment up to set the environment up to sort of facilitate that change.

And that's the key here is like, that decide, be super, you need to work on your mind, your identity of exactly who you are. To set up the environment, which is your physical environment, the people that you hang around and what's in your, and what's around you to create that change. Because it'd be easy to meditate if I went to a place where everyone was meditating and that's where the, anyway, so, but I do, we do need to wrap it up. I just wanted to say that there is a framework here.

that I think is really useful.

Mike Scott (31:23.346)
Okay, so a nice clunky ending, but there's a framework. Now I feel complete. All right, guys and girls, see you soon.

Troye (31:30.355)
See you, bye.