Why Our Past New Year's Resolutions Failed (And What Actually Worked)

Why do New Year's resolutions fail for most people? Studies show only 5-8% of people stick to their New Year's goals by the end of the year, and nearly half have quit by the third week of January. In this episode, Liam and Jule dig into the psychology behind failed resolutions, the habits that actually work, and why traditional goal setting often backfires.

We get honest about our own struggles with the all-or-nothing approach to goals, from failed fitness resolutions to the pressure of setting "big, hairy, audacious goals" in corporate environments. 

We share what finally clicked for us after years of trial and error, including lessons from working with coaches, changing how we eat, and rethinking what a "goal" even means.

We also explore how the resistance people have toward AI mirrors the same fear and ego that keeps us stuck in other areas of life. 

Whether you've already abandoned your 2025 resolution or you're rethinking your whole approach to change, this conversation will give you a fresh perspective on building habits that last.

Topics covered:

• Why most New Year's resolutions fail by February
• The all-or-nothing trap in goal setting
• How fear and ego sabotage our goals
• What fitness and nutrition taught us about sustainable change
• The difference between outcome goals and process goals
• Lessons from Atomic Habits applied to real life
• How AI adoption parallels our resistance to personal change
• Simple frameworks for building habits that stick

Resources mentioned:

• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg
• Finch app for self-care

Jule Kim on LinkedIn

Liam Darmody on LinkedIn

Transcript

Liam Darmody
 Welcome to Permission Not Required, where we talk about the things people think, but never say. I'm Liam Darmody, and my co-host Jule Kim is with me as well. We're excited to have you here. Yay.

Jule Kim
 So super excited for our first official episode. I know we have our trailer out there, which was very fun. I thought it would be cool if we talked about the topic of the month right now, which is obviously new year goals, new year resolutions. So I thought it could be interesting to see what your approach to this whole topic is. And I have a feeling it's probably different from how I do this. Probably. So are you a new year goal type of person?

Liam Darmody
 I have always been a new year's goal type of person, and I've always been terrible at following through beyond like January. So this year was actually the first time I didn't create a New Year's resolution, and that's largely because I feel like I'm doing a lot of the things that I should be doing, that I want to be doing to get to my longer term goals, and I've made them part of my day to day. So I'm a little less focused on thinking like pie in the sky big picture goals. I'm more in a frame of mind of these are some of the things I want to accomplish, and I just need to do these things every day to get there. That's where I'm at these days.

Jule Kim
 Well, then maybe we're not so different after all, really? Yeah, because I gave up on new year goals, new year's resolutions a long time ago, and I know I saw some statistics somewhere that said you have a pretty sharp drop off in January and then February, March, April, every month that goes on people with their New Year's goals is this just like what you just described with yourself, where you didn't last much longer beyond January. And we see this all the time in the gyms, right? Everybody signs up. All the gyms everywhere get a huge influx of new members, and then the gyms in January are very crowded. But I read that even by the third week of January, you see maybe half of the people stop attending. And then I think the craziest statistic I saw maybe a couple years back said, by the end of the year, you'll only see around five to 8% of the people still left who have stuck with their goal all the way through. I was like, wow. Well, that makes me feel a lot better.

Liam Darmody
 Yeah, what is that? There's, I think it was maybe Jesse Itzler, who said, you know, if you spend 18 minutes a day doing something for an entire year, or something like that, you're basically in like the top 1% of people who are trying to learn something new. I'm messing up his quote, but his whole point was essentially small actions, compounding daily over time is the way to achieve goals, not setting this like really pie in the sky objective that's hard to accomplish, and then losing steam really fast. And I've always kind of been an all or nothing person to begin with, and so I've done that a number of times. And I think for me, I'm sort of evolving more as I get older, into realizing that the smaller things are what matter the most. And so if I just kind of say, I want to be healthier, so I'm going to go to the gym every day, I'm going to try and eat healthier foods, any opportunity that I get to do that, right? And then those micro decisions are what end up sort of snowballing into an accomplishment of a goal. For me, we set these goals as if, like, once we get to that promised land, we're done, we're somehow magically, like, finished with the goal. But most goals, I think, are ongoing things that we have to keep trying to do over time, and so putting that pressure on ourselves at the beginning of the year, to me, seems a little bit cruel. It'd be better to just do a little bit of daily focus on that stuff.

Jule Kim
 I definitely hear you on the all or nothing piece. I've seen it a ton of times with my clients. I used to do a lot more of that. It did create pressure, a lot of pressure, when I think about why people want to tackle so much. For instance, the person who's maybe a couch potato and they suddenly say, okay, this new year, I'm gonna go to the gym five times a week. And of course, I'm thinking, are you insane? That's probably not gonna last. I'll be shocked if it lasts even beyond the first week. I think part of it is we have really lofty ambitions for ourselves. We're thinking very pie in the sky, like I'm gonna get there, and we want to get to the goal really fast. I think that's the problem with all of us. Like we think we pour in more effort. You know, it's like riding a bicycle, if you pedal faster, you're going to get there faster, and that's just not how it works with most of these goals. So I remember, I don't know, maybe it was like 15 years ago I was cleaning up how I ate. So I'm a chronic junk food eater, where I used to be, and then I decided I was going to eat paleo. Have you ever tried it?

Liam Darmody
 I have. Very effective. For me, that's actually, I think that's actually how I ended up losing a bunch of weight for our wedding in 2014.

Jule Kim
 Yeah, I've seen the same results. Paleo is very effective. So I was still working in corporate back then. I was doing paleo, I lost quite a bit of weight. It was funny, because I don't think I saw the numbers on the scale change all that much, but people at work were commenting, they're like, you look thinner. Are you doing something? I was like, yeah, I'm eating paleo. I'm trying to cut out all of the refined junk food and refined sugars and stuff. And I wasn't super hardcore, for instance, I still had a little rice, but then I was struggling with massive junk food cravings and sugar cravings. I remember my husband, who was back then, my friend, we hadn't started dating yet, and he looked at me, and he was just like, why don't you just take it a little easier. And I said, no, I can't do that. Like, if I don't do all of this the right way, then I'm not really doing it. So I totally ignored what he said, but him even saying that, it stuck with me for a long time, the fact that I still remember that, because I remember noting that he was different from me, like he just saw the world differently, and he approached the world differently. So if we zoom out from that one example, and we just think about goals in general, the person you mentioned, I already forgotten their name. What was his name? The 18 minutes a day person. Oh, Jesse Itzler. Yeah, Jesse. I totally believe in that. I know it works firsthand, because that is how I've managed to finally get myself to working out on a consistent basis. I've seen it many, many times, as well as having read Atomic Habits.

Liam Darmody
 Have you read it? I have. Yes, you could read.

Jule Kim
 So what I like about what you mentioned earlier with deciding you're going to eat a little bit healthier, and you're going to go to the gym, or you're probably, you know, I'm going to move around more and try your best to move directionally, right? It's not so much about hitting the pinnacle in the first week. I like it when I see my clients do this. I also see it not working, and not because just approaching it at like, one or 2% better at a time. That's not the problem. Where I see this usually failing is they don't make it actionable, like they don't define okay, what does eating healthier actually mean? So I'm assuming you've actually made a sort of decision template in your mind for how you make those choices.

Liam Darmody
 Yeah, I basically just eat the same thing every day, which is boring and not fun, and I'm starting to get kind of tired of it. But yeah, for you know, for me, two and a half years ago, after I had been let go from my last employer post acquisition, I was the heaviest I'd ever been. I was pretty unfulfilled, I was pretty uncertain about a lot of things in my life, and I was just really unhealthy, like, I couldn't even walk up the stairs at my house without being winded. And I just thought, you know, something has to give. Something has to change. Here, it's been a long time, you know, coming, and as I mentioned earlier, like, I lost a bunch of weight for my wedding, and then just kind of steadily started creeping up in the, you know, 10 years following, and I said, you know, I need to do something different than just saying I'm going to go on the treadmill in the garage, you know, I need to, like, take an action. And so I started going to a gym every day. And not every day. It was three days a week, and it was really intense. Wasn't quite CrossFit, but very similar programming. And, you know, my neighbors had all gone to this place, and I said, well, I'm gonna go in there and I'm gonna start working out. I'm gonna commit to it three days a week. And, you know, the first two months were just unbearable, like I was, I couldn't move most of the time. I was certainly the most out of shape person in the gym. You know, it's classes of like, 14 people that go through all these exercises for about an hour. And I was really intimidated by it, but I just kept going. I was like, as long as I get in the door, my goal is to get in the door, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. That is my goal. It's not to lose 20 pounds or 100 pounds or whatever. It's like, get in the door and start doing something good for yourself. I did that for two and a half years. I ended up working out five days a week and being in a lot better shape, but the weight wasn't necessarily coming off as quickly as I would have liked. And that's when I started having the conversations around nutrition. And my coach was kind of like, look, like, you're not eating enough food. You're only eating like, 1500 calories a day, and you're burning 700 of those here every day. So your body is holding on to everything. You need to eat more, you need to eat carbs, you need to eat protein, you need to eat. And I'm like, I need to eat carbs? We talking about? That's like, antithetical to everything I've ever heard about losing weight. So true, right? But he's like, yeah, the carbs fuel the actual body's ability to burn the fat, so you have to have some of them in there. He's like, and I'm telling you this because you're doing it the right way. You're building, you're losing weight from the inside out. You're basically building muscle. You're eating the right stuff so that your body will burn the weight. It's going to take longer to do it, but you're doing it the right way. So I was like, all right, well, as long as I know that, I'm going to just do that. And then what I realized was that if I just let myself eat a new meal every meal, there was too much temptation, there was too many variables that could actually hinder my success. So I just found one meal that I really liked, which was ground chicken, eggs, and hash brown potatoes. And so every Sunday, I just make three pounds of ground chicken, about a bag full of hash browns, and about a dozen eggs, and then I split them up into five containers, and those are my breakfasts after the gym pretty much every day. And I know that if I go to the gym, I drink my protein shake in the morning, and I eat that, I've already got 130 grams of protein in, and my goal is basically to eat 200 to 220 grams of protein a day. So what I did was just like, minimize the variables that might distract me from my goal. I simplified and extracted things, and it's not as fun because, you like eating the same thing every day, but at least I know. And for me, hot sauce, food is just a vehicle for hot sauce for me anyway.

Jule Kim
 So I just would agree with you.

Liam Darmody
 Yeah, like, whatever. Like, if it's rice or if it's potatoes, I don't care. I'm just covering it in hot sauce anyways. And so that's what I started doing. And it's been, it's been working pretty well, although I am. I mean, it's been about five months that I've been doing that. Like, I'm kind of getting tired of it, but just keep going.

Jule Kim
 Well, number one, thank you for the new recipe for me to try. Yes, good one. This ground chicken, egg, and hash brown concoction you have created, is this only for you? Your wife doesn't eat this, correct?

Liam Darmody
 She likes to make, like, omelets or other stuff. This is basically my thing.

Jule Kim
 This is where we're a little different, because I cook for me and my husband, so whatever I cook for me, he's just gonna end up eating it. Because I'm not, I'm never gonna cook something only for me. If I'm gonna have to cook, I'm kind of like you, where I'm gonna do like a monster amount of cooking, and then that's kind of what we eat for the next three, four days, sometimes even five. So what's been fun is, when I'm on these really, I wouldn't say restricted, but just very much more mindful eating periods, and I'm trying to stick to the 50% veggies and a quarter protein, a quarter carb proportion of a meal, he'll also end up losing weight, not even doing anything, because he's just eating what I eat most of the time. Now he's a snacker. So am I. That's something that my previous coach told me. He was like, you gotta stop that. But just like you, my coach said the same thing, you got to eat more. You're not eating enough. I remember hitting this wall where I wanted more definition. I was also complaining to him that I felt really weak during the workouts, like it was really hard to get all the way through the workout without feeling like I wanted to just pass out. And he asked me, like, how much are you eating? I'm like, what are you asking me for? You make me use this nutrition tracking app thing that you can literally see. So he had set my protein targets. And for people, if you're listening and you're like, wow, these numbers seem arbitrary. However many grams of protein, you said, like up to 200 something grams. For me, my limit was, or my target goal was around 110, and how these trainers will set your protein targets is based off of your weight. So it'll be some percentage of your weight, and it's almost like one gram to one pound, and that's how much protein you have to eat. So for me, 110, and I was hitting the protein, but he looks and then he's like, you need more calories, like you need to eat more. And it blew my mind, because I thought that doesn't make any sense, like, what, I have to eat more to lose weight, to lose more weight, is that really what you're saying? And he goes, yes. It was one of those moments where you've heard me complain to you about clients not trusting the process. I remember really struggling with this because I was like, this sounds nonsensical to me, like it does not make sense. And then I caught myself, and I was like, you hired this person. You got to trust the process, like eat your own dog food. And I was like, okay, fine, so I start eating more calories. And he was right. I started shredding more, and I was like, this is crazy.

Liam Darmody
 Yeah, I mean, I noticed it. I was in the same boat. I was exercising a ton. I was like, just kind of hitting a wall with weight loss, and I was struggling, you know, by the end of the workouts, I was totally gassed, and then I started to follow the macro plan, and, you know, eat, you know, three, three or four times a day. And it's hard for me because I actually am not really hungry. It's not like I'm hungry, like I'm not overweight because I'm hungry. And I love to snack, and I love to, like, eat chocolate cake, like, I actually don't eat really that badly. It's just an accumulation of time over time, like, I was unhealthy for a very long period of time, and I didn't really pay attention to any of it. And it just takes a long time to lose that sort of decades worth of bad habits. So for me, it's almost harder to eat more, like, you know? And he's like, I don't care, just do it, right? Like, find protein dense foods and just eat, you know, have a, have a chicken breast for snack. I'm like, you, like, strength coaches are weird humans, right? Like, there's a, they're, they're like, super perfect bodies, and they're like, food is just fuel. And I'm like, I am a foodie, like my wife and I live in DC, like, we love restaurants, we love good food, we love like, international cuisine, like, and it's hard for me to just view food as fuel only, but I started to get more into the habit of it. It's a little easier, you know, in my current phase of life, right? I'm not, like, out on the town going to all these fancy restaurants with my wife, like we're in the suburbs with our kids, and I'm eating leftover Dino Nuggets.

Jule Kim
 Like every parent, really. Yeah.

Liam Darmody
 Pretty much. They can actually be. I mean, you put Dino Nuggets with some hot sauce, it works, maybe a side of mac and cheese. But, yeah, I think that that was just the interesting thing. And you know, for me, I think when people set goals, they have this pressure to set these big, hairy, audacious goals, you know, they're like, oh, like, I'm gonna, I remember one year I was like, I'm gonna get 10,000 steps before 10am every day, and then it's like, first of all, I didn't, I underestimated how long it takes to get 10,000 steps. Secondly, like I thought that I was just gonna go from never getting on a treadmill and walking to walking 10,000 steps before, you know, 10 o'clock in the morning. And it's like, it sounded cool, but like, it was not attainable at all for me. I had to be a little bit more micro about it. And I think it's also about simplifying the things that you don't. You know, you know how, like Mark Zuckerberg is, like, known for, for a long time. He was like, I only have 20 gray t-shirts, because he wants to minimize the decision friction in getting dressed in the morning. He's like, I don't want to have to think about it. I just wear the same shirt every day. It's clean, it's the same shirt. And I'm not trying to draw parallels between me and Mark Zuckerberg for a number of reasons. But like, I started to do that. I started to say, like, extract the things from my life that are not conducive to me hitting some of these health goals and try and be more consistent about the good things that will help me get there. And I stopped thinking about them as goals, and I started to think about them kind of like Atomic Habits, like little, tiny decisions that repeat over time compound into bigger impact. And it's been a very new way of thinking for me, and relatively, like in the last two years, I've started to do it a lot more effectively, but for 40 years, that's never been my sort of wiring. So it's been a very interesting shift.

Jule Kim
 Yeah, same here. Same here. Just goes to show that all the coaches are probably facing the same issues in their clients, because, like, everything you're saying that your coach told you, my coach told me too. I think I had a little bit of a weird problem, though, because he's telling me I got to eat more. I was like, bro, I can't eat more unless I snack, because I can't eat so much in one sitting. And he was a little bit like your guys, like, I don't care, like, make it happen. And this is where we started to develop some friction in the relationship, because I felt like he wasn't hearing me, like he wasn't listening whenever I brought up a few things, which I found out later are, like, real things. He did have a habit of being a little bit dismissive. So ultimately we parted ways. But same thing, you know, chicken breast. I had this image of Alex Hormozi. I don't know if you ever saw this video or heard somebody talking about him, where some guy, he literally meets Alex Hormozi for the first time, and Alex is, like, holding a chicken breast, and he's just snacking on the chicken breast. I was like, that's how they do it, though. Like, that's their snack. You know, chicken is very high protein, low fat, like, low calorie. If you got to stock up on protein and feel full, then this is the way to do it. Yep. And I know with, we're talking a lot about working out and eating, I don't want people to think that we're so obsessed with our health and that this episode is all about losing weight. Like, that's not it at all. Like, I think you and I are focused on our health, especially at the stage of life we're in. But there's a real reason why people often compare the achievement or the striving towards any goal or any real change. They often do compare it to trying to go work out or trying to lose weight, because it's all of the same behavioral patterns. And I hear you on what you're saying, like you stop thinking of them as goals. For me, I started thinking of these as this is just who I want to be. This is the life I want to have. This is the body I want to have. I want to do big things. It's going to be a lot harder to do these big things if I'm always feeling not good in my body, because I didn't make those decisions for my health when I was younger, right? Like when we're younger, we have a lot more room for sort of effing around. You can eat a lot of bad food and probably not see the effects for a while. But just like you said, it takes a while to undo all of that, like years or decades of these poor choices or poor habits, that doesn't make us a bad person, right? And it doesn't matter where you're starting from. It only matters like where you're trying to get to now, directionally. And I think that's really important for us to remember. The other thing where you said about the big, hairy, audacious goals, I think that's a real thing. We think of these goals. And just like you said, everything's going to be amazing. We get to the promised land. Most of us, I think, make the mistake of setting the goal on the outcome, instead of setting the goal as to taking a step in the process. 100%. Yeah. So for instance, right, to now take this away from exercising and dieting and all that. I use this app called Finch. It's a self care like cutesy little app. You have a little bird, and you dress it, and you grow it, and then your bird has its own pets, which is really funny. I use it for helping me build these habits. And so my habits are not, you know, get 20,000 impressions a day. The habit is more like post something, post something to Instagram, post something to TikTok, spend five minutes walking, walk around the neighborhood. So they're all very process oriented, like these are steps I have to take, and as long as I take them, then I'm good. So it's just like you, the goal was not to lose X amount of weight. The goal was for you to get to the gym, like, walk through the doors and then just do something good for yourself.

Liam Darmody
 Yes, 100%, and I think that that is totally what I had to learn. Like, I used to struggle with goal setting in corporate because I felt this pressure to, like, put all the goals, you know, I'd be like, pick five thematic, strategic goals and then sub goals within those goals and make sure that they're SMART and all this. And I'm not knocking that as a system, but it was hard for me because I tried to jam so much stuff in there. And, you know, really, when you think about leadership and executives, and you know, what they're most effective at, is not paying too much attention to the tactics. They sort of say, this is the goal, the vision, like, these are the high level goals. And then you sort of bubble your work up accordingly. But I think humans are inherently bad at that. I think we try and, like, take on the world and conquer the world, and set these grandiose plans, instead of just saying, what are three things you're not doing today that will help you accomplish X if you do them every day in the next year, three things, right? Like, to your point, post on Instagram, post on TikTok, post on LinkedIn, whatever it might be. For me, it's make sure I go to the gym every day during the week. That's my goal, right? And if I do that goal every day, then at the end of the year, I've achieved the goal that I didn't really even know how to set, right? I don't know what to say, like, what, I'd like to be 50 pounds lighter a year from now, yes, but I don't want to make that the goal, I just want to get as close to that as I can by taking those little steps every day. And I think that's part of goal setting that gets lost in business. People think you have to have this, like, really grand thing, and it's like, how do we break it down into micro goals?

Jule Kim
 Maybe the memories just come screaming back to me now from corporate, you talking about SMART goals. It's so true. You know, we have leadership in a company. I do think a key part of any leader's role is to have the big vision. Is to have the big strategy. Is not necessarily be so concerned with tactics, but I do think they can be out of touch with reality a lot of the times. Even the big, hairy audacious goal, got the acronym BHAG, is coming back to me now. SMART goals as well. So for people who may not know what a SMART goal is or what that stands for, it's specific, measurable, I think actionable. What's the R again? Repeatable? Okay, repeatable. And then, right, yeah, it's, we're close enough. And sometimes I see the A swapped out. Relevant. Relevant. Relevant. Okay, so specific, measurable, actionable. Sometimes I see A be swapped out for attainable, so it'll either be actionable or attainable, and then R is relevant and T is time bound. I think people as a whole just really suck with goals. Because my observation is that as somebody who's very classic, like model, Asian student, that sort of upbringing, I was great at achieving my goals, but then I think the problem I faced my entire life was, are these even the right goals? Is the issue. So that's why you read my LinkedIn bio and it's like, oh, whack-a-mole with careers. It's like, what career will it be this month? You know? And it's because I'd never been taught to think, well, you know how to achieve goals, and sometimes the goals feel hard for sure, but how do you even know that you're aiming at the right goal or aiming in the right direction for who you are and what is it you want? So I do think that with any of this stuff, whether we use the word goals or not to represent this thing that we're talking about, it traces back to this idea, like, what is it you want? And we're not thinking enough about that, especially if you're in the corporate world, you know, you don't really get to have the what is it you want as much, because it's kind of dictated to you by your leaders or your manager, and often it's about making more revenue for the company or achieving some other goal, whether it's positioning in the market.

Liam Darmody
 Yeah, for sure, that makes total sense to me. Why do you think that is? Which part? Like that people generally just struggle with making goals that are realistic and attainable, even though, like, there's a framework for it, right? Everybody says, like, here's the SMART framework, go do it, but people still struggle with it. Curious to know why you think that is.

Jule Kim
 I think from my coaching experience with most people I work with, it's never that they don't know how to take these steps. They know how to work through the SMART framework, like you've probably already been doing this for most of your life without even realizing it. But whenever I see them refuse to move towards this thing that they say they want, it's usually because they don't really want it, or there's some other gigantic fear getting in the way, and they're not being honest about that.

Liam Darmody
 Yeah, I think fear is a big part of it. By throwing out a goal, you're basically challenging yourself to hit the goal, and if you don't hit the goal, you feel like a failure. And so it's almost like this self-fulfilling prophecy where you're like, well, I just won't set the goal then, and then I don't have to worry about not hitting the goal. I think, like, that has been something that I struggled with often. You know, I will set these big goals, and then, you know, just worry that I'm not, I'm not going to hit them. And so I'm, like, hesitant to commit to the goal fully. You know, there's just, there's a lot of different things that I can procrastinate on because I worry that if I take it on, I won't do it well enough. And, you know, that's a limiting belief, and I'm trying to overcome it. And logically, rationally, I'm like, I know that that doesn't make sense. Like, you need to do the action to get to the goal. Of course, you're not going to hit the goal if you don't take the action. And you're not going to take the action if you don't set the goal. So why wouldn't you set the goal? But people are afraid of failure and people are afraid of letting themselves down. I think so. It's interesting. You know? It's like, I actually, I was at a panel a few weeks ago, and one of the people stood up and he had a presentation up there, and on the presentation, it basically said, like, the reason that your organization is not adopting artificial intelligence is because they're afraid that it's going to replace them. It's hard to get somebody to embrace a technology that they think is going to result in them somehow failing in some capacity, or, you know, losing their lifeline, or whatever. And that's kind of how I think goals can be. Sometimes people view goals as this thing that is really hard, and it's going to be too challenging and potentially make a risk of you failing. So why do it?

Jule Kim
 There's a lot in what you just said. So I totally relate to the not setting a big goal because you're afraid you can't hit it. And the thing that's really underlying this entire piece here is it's not just you're afraid you're not going to hit it. That's the surface, like the tip of the iceberg, but the part that's lurking under there is the more of the letting yourself down, right? And what it ultimately comes back to is you make that mean something about you, like you are somehow worth less as a person. You are a bad person, or you are a not accomplished person in some way, right? And that's the part that I think we're really struggling and resisting against, because we're conflating those things. If I take these actions and then I don't hit the goal, that means I'm a shitty person in some way. And yep, that identity level piece is really hard to get around if you refuse to even acknowledge that that exists. Now, there are some other pieces. So the AI thing, I feel like I just keep having the same conversation that you just mentioned. You know, as an example, you're right. People with their needs. Whenever the need is threatened, they will resist it with all their might. They will fight it. They will pretend it doesn't exist. And in this case, the company and the people not adopting AI is, you're right, absolutely. They fear that they're going to be replaced. They're going to be out of a job and therefore have no income. I hear this argument all the time, and I'm like, but what do you think happened when we had the horse and carriage replaced with a car? People had the same problem. And look at where we are today. So I'm not saying that the change is going to be pleasant, but you will find other ways to get your need met. Those jobs, they shifted into other markets. It's not like we had people on the assembly line making car parts and stuff before the car came along. So I think there's probably something, some sort of revolution in the job market that will also happen that we just can't see right now. So there is a lot of fear, and I get that, but you got to at least try to rein in that fear, or acknowledge that fear and see where it's going. Like we've already had multiple companies out in the market, these examples, where they have tried to fire all of their customer support, and then what happened? They lost, like, millions, if not billions, of dollars, and then they had to hire those people back. Companies have already gone through this, and they're going to keep cycling through this, and they're going to figure out where is the right balance, AI and human oversight. You're going to have a lot more AI driven jobs. People with jobs like, their whole function will be how to implement AI and make the company or the business run more efficiently. You didn't have jobs like this two years ago.

Liam Darmody
 Yeah, totally. It's funny that you referenced the automotive horse and buggy thing. Like, I actually use the analogy of farmers. When farmers saw that tractors were being invented, there were probably some farmers that were like, what is this tractor going to do? Is it going to, like, destroy my livelihood, etc.? And maybe they were slow to adopt a tractor in the beginning, because it was different than the way that they knew how to farm, and they were worried that it would potentially make them obsolete. But then the flip side is this thing could actually help you buy a bigger farm, and farm more, more efficiently, more effectively, faster. Like maybe you should double down on this, because it would actually help build your business 10 times bigger than you ever thought it could be by toiling the earth with your hands. Right? That's kind of the moment that I think we're in right now with artificial intelligence. And I think there are a lot of people who are very much just sort of not sure how deep to go with it. And then the other thing I have to mention is that I saw two things online this week that were very interesting as it relates to the AI stuff. The first was, you know, like, remember switchboard operators? Like, there used to be switchboard operators, and now, you know, we just talk on the phone through AirPods. Like, there's an evolution that happens. Like, those jobs maybe don't exist anymore, but there's new jobs that get created when innovation and technology happens. The other thing I saw online that was kind of funny, but also maybe, like, a too soon kind of moment, somebody said, AI is like Ozempic for companies. And I thought that was brilliant, but, like, you know, a little bit nerve wracking, right? Like, every company is, you know, that leadership and executives and organizations are saying, how do we cut OpEx by leveraging AI more effectively? And then you've got, like, the operators in the company, the employees who are like, well, I don't want to get cut, so I'm not going to embrace the AI, like they're going in circles with different objectives. But I thought that analogy was pretty funny, especially considering we're talking about goals, weight loss and AI in one podcast conversation.

Jule Kim
 Oh, my God, that really is the perfect example, you know, right? Because I think probably most people, well, I don't know. I shouldn't throw around huge generalities like that, but I bet you there's a lot of people who don't even know what Ozempic is. Is famous as a weight loss drug, but just like so many of these drugs that came on the market with this other, totally different intended use, which now I can't even remember, because it's been overtaken by the weight loss, you know, reputation. And it's very similar to the whole AI thing. It's like, you have this thing, right? Ozempic came on the market for this other purpose, and now it's being used in this entire other use. I think doctors may not even totally approve of it as a weight loss use, and it's very much like the AI thing. It's like, AI used correctly can be so beneficial, but the companies, I do think, are using it a lot, like Ozempic, as a shortcut in ways that it was never intended to be used, and have completely unrealistic and even dangerous expectations. So that really is the perfect comparison.

Liam Darmody
 Yeah, these GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, and there's a couple of other ones. They were type two diabetes drugs first, and then they started to show the weight loss effect.

Jule Kim
 So if we draw the parallels here, I think AI being used for increasing your workflow and taking away the stupid, tedious things that nobody wants to do, you know, shave off time for something that used to take you two months, and now you could do it in an hour. Like that's the kind of thing we're talking about. And yet, companies and a lot of executives are treating it like Ozempic, like to cut what they perceive to be the fat, like the human workforce. And I just don't think that that's really the future we want to live in.

Liam Darmody
 Yeah, it ties back to the goal conversation that we're having too, I think. And like, the reason that so many people don't use AI really effectively is because they don't really understand how to, I think, configure it in a way that gives them what they want out of it. And, you know, like, this is one of the reasons that I think that being an operations person in, like, my career has helped me, because I've gotten very used to thinking about what's the desired outcome. How do you back into that? And, like, how can you measure twice, cut once, if possible, right? And so pause, take the time to think about what is it that I'm really trying to accomplish here, and what information do I need to provide as an input so that this really powerful technology can help me accomplish that more efficiently every time I need to do that going forward. But you do have to sit back and sort of think about that. And you know, if you do that, you can program AI to do all sorts of stuff that's really wild, and you can optimize your efficiency, and you can get rid of all the mundane tasks that you hate doing anyways. And so that is really sort of the thing that I think is same with goal setting too, right?

Jule Kim
 Yeah, I think the phrase you just brought up, measure twice and cut once, that says it all. Where people go wrong with a lot of goals, and especially AI, is they're trying to get rid of the whole shebang, like there's no measuring twice. They just want to cut. And if that is your mentality, it's not going to matter what area of life you're talking about, if you're talking about work or something personal, no matter what goal you set, it has to make sense, and there has to be some level of oversight in checking in with yourself so that you can see if the steps you're taking, does this make sense? Does this actually move you closer to the direction you're trying to go? And does this even make sense for who you are? There has to be some level of thinking involved in this. And for any of this to work, you do have to know what you want, and sometimes we don't know what we want, and that's okay, but then that means we have to default into being willing to take the risk and feel the uncertainty and do the exploration. What is not okay is to just say, from a very uneducated standpoint, oh, this whole thing sucks, right? AI sucks. Gyms suck. Exercise classes suck. Personal trainers suck. Book clubs suck. There are people out there who are literally saying this about everything that you can possibly think of. That's a very uneducated opinion to me. You know, I have so many people who will make those kind of comments, and the first thing I'll ask them is, well, have you tried it? They're like, no. But, you know, people like that.

Liam Darmody
 I know. I mean, I have some friends who are pretty high up at some pretty big companies, and they've never used ChatGPT. And I'm like, how is that possible? How is that possible? How do you live through this era that we're in right now, without enough curiosity to even just go in there and give it a whirl and see what it's about. And I think, I think there's a lot of people who cling to the reality of the past and they don't want to let go of that, until they have no choice but to do that. And honestly, that's relatable for me, because that's how I was with weight. I got to age 40, and I was like, I can no longer ignore this problem. I need to fix this. I think that there are the really early adopters who are like, yeah, I'm just gonna embrace it and go with it and see where it takes me. And then there's people who are resistant, and they say, I don't really want to embrace that until I absolutely have to. The problem with this tool like AI is that, you know, if you're not going to embrace it until you have to, you're going to be way behind the people who embraced it from the beginning, and that's going to be a difficult challenge. I think also, like, ego comes into it. People don't want to offload their perceived knowledge or their perceived skill or ability. If I let AI write an email for me, that somehow makes me less effective as an email writer. So like, I'm just not going to outsource it to something else. But meanwhile, like, I have chat projects that are configured to write me very specific emails in very specific scenarios based on transcripts from conversations that I'm having, and that saves me tons of time and removes tons of friction, and all it is is just me basically saying, tell my ego to shut up. It's not a sign of weakness that you can't write an email as effectively as this tool can. This is a computer, and it's processing things effectively. You've told it what you want the output to be. Give it to me, right? And I think that, in a way, weird way, ties back to goal setting. We're a little bit afraid of admitting that we're weak in an area, and so we don't want to really think about how we need to improve, or how we need to grow sometimes, and I think that's also why it's common for people who set goals to just stop pursuing them, because they realize it's harder than they initially thought it would be. And so like, yeah, whatever, I'm just gonna stay myself until I can't remain in that situation any longer. And then you're reacting and you're not being proactive, and that is never a good place to be, in my opinion.

Jule Kim
 Very true. Yeah, very true. The ego piece, it gets me, because as I was listening to you, I was thinking, how is this any different from having friends who are smarter than you or better than you at certain things? You and I right now, we could probably name five people off the top of our heads who are better at writing emails, or who are stronger and have bigger muscles, faster runners, or can read a book faster than we can. You know, there's any number of people in your life right now who are way better at doing many things than you are. So how is AI any different? To me, that's just a distraction. It's a smoke screen for your ego. You know, it's the same thing, whether it's through other people or through AI or some other tool, but this whole thing that you mentioned about people not sticking with goals, and this thing with wanting to improve and not fully embracing that because of ego. I see this happening, and it is, from what you're saying, like, I can't do this as well as I want to. Therefore it means I'm weak, or I'm not very good at this, or I'm not smart, something. And you cannot combat self improvement or any goal setting from a place of inadequacy like that. It has to be from this energy of the world is your playground, and there are skills you can level up and acquire, but it can't be from this place of I'm lacking and I'm missing so many things, and there's something wrong with me. Like that's really what's at the heart of what makes people quit anything that they set their sights on.

Liam Darmody
 Totally. That makes total sense to me.

Jule Kim
 All right. Liam, I know we're coming up on time. You probably need to get out of here. It is the weekend. So if somebody has actually made it through the entire episode, what do you think is the one thing you want our listeners to take away?

Liam Darmody
 I think the one thing that I would want our listeners to take away from this conversation is that setting goals doesn't have to be this big, intimidating thing that is life changing, that if you start small, and you set a goal for every day, and you just commit to doing that thing every day for 365 days, then you will find it easier to achieve a goal than if you set this big goal and then, like, you know, you're not thinking about it every single day. And I think that is something that it took me decades to learn how to do, and I'm just now starting to feel comfortable doing it. So I, it's not just, I'm not, you know, somebody that's perfect at this. I'm just learning it as I go. And I have found a lot more success with the smaller goal setting that is repetitive every day, versus the big goal setting without really backing it up with those daily intentions.

Jule Kim
 Oh, maybe our two things really play nicely together then, because my one thing is, I always ask myself, if there's something that I want to be different in my life, what is the first and easiest thing I can do towards it? So it's almost like, what's the bare minimum, simplest version of this process, right? Not the goal. I don't want to be outcome oriented, where it's a very binary thing. If I hit the number, then I met the goal, and if I don't hit the number, then I failed. No, it's more like, what is the one small action I can take that moves me closer to that, and yes, I do have to remain accountable to myself. Did I take that action today? No, I did not. Well. What happened? I do try to stick to the advice that I think James Clear gives in Atomic Habits. You can miss once, but you don't want to miss twice, because twice is now the beginning of a new habit. So for me, it is all about the habits. I do recommend people, if you have not read Atomic Habits, it's one of my favorite reads. I try to read it every year in January sometime. I also hear Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg is also a great read, and the two books together are in a very similar approach to habits and goals. So with that, I think we're set for this episode. Thank you so much.

Liam Darmody
 Awesome as always. I love, I love our sessions together. It's great. Yeah, me too. All right, see you next time. See ya.