Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg
by Parker · 77 things on Twos
- There is a painful gap between what people want and what they actually do
- It isn’t your fault
- In order to design successful habits and change your behaviors, you should do three things:
- Stop judging yourself
- Take your aspirations and break them down into tiny behaviors
- Embrace mistakes as discoveries and use them to move forward
- You change by feeling good—not by feeling bad
- Once you remove any hint of judgement, your behavior becomes a science experiment
- There are only three things we can do that will create lasting change:
- Have an empiphany
- Change our environment
- Change our habits in tiny ways
- The essence of tiny habits: take a behavior you want, make it tiny, find where it fits naturally in your life, and nurture its growth
- If you want to create long-term change, it’s best to start small
- The pressure of never having enough time leads us to a scarcity mindset where we believe that there will never be enough time, so we say no to changes because we feel like we don’t have the hours to cultivate a new positive habit
- With the Tiny Habits method, you focus on a small action than you can do in less than 30 seconds
- You quickly wire in the new habit and then they will grow naturally
- Feeling successful is the single most important skill in behavior change
- Start each morning by saying “It’s going to be a great day”
- The anatomy of tiny habits
- Anchor moment
- An existing routine or event that happens which reminds you to do the new tiny behavior
- New tiny behavior
- A simple version of the new habit you want done right after the anchor moment
- Instant celebration
- Something you do to create positive emotions such as saying “I did a good job”
- After I… I will… to wire the habit into my brain, I will immediately…
- B = MAP. Behavior happens when motivation, ability, and prompt converge at the same moment
- Removing the prompt is your best first move to stop a behavior from happening
- Three steps for troubleshooting a behavior:
- Check to see if there’s a prompt to do the behavior
- See if the person has the ability to do the behavior
- See if the person is motivated to do the behavior
- Steps in behavior design
- Clarify the aspiration
- Explore behavior options
- Match with specific behaviors
- A golden behavior has three criteria:
- The behavior is effective in realizing your aspiration
- You want to do the behavior
- You can do the behavior
- Start tiny
- Find a good prompt
- Celebrate success
- Troubleshoot, iterate, and expand
- How can I make this behavior easier to do?
- The three approaches to making a behavior easier to do
- Increase your skills
- Get tools and resources
- Make the behavior tiny
- No behavior happens without a prompt
- Businesses that help customers create habits will have a huge advantage over those that don’t
- Help people do what they already want to do
- Help people feel successful
- Context skill is the skill of redesigning your environment to make your habits easier to do
- How can I make these new habits easier to do?
- Focus on what surrounds your habit instead of scaling back the habit to make it easier
- What is making this new habit hard to do?
- Question tradition. Who says you have to keep your vitamins in the kitchen or floss in the bathroom? Maybe your vitamins need to be next to your computer, Or maybe flossing works best when you keep floss next to your TV remote. You're a Habit Ninja, not a conformist. Find what works for you.
- All humans have a strong rooted drive to act in a way that is consistent with their identity
- Behavior change is not a solitary pursuit. Each behavior that we design, each change that we make, is another drop in the pond that ripples out. We shape our families, communities, and societies through our actions
- Help people feel successful
- Help people do what they already want to do
- Change leads to change
- Start people on the path to change from the place they want to begin. As they build confidence and skills, they will open up to other types of changes
- Design process
- Clarify your aspirations
- Explore behavior options
- What do you want to happen? If we had magical powers, who would do what?
- Imagine we could get anyone to do anything? What’s the ideal action we would get them to take?
- Match with specific behaviors
- Match with behaviors that will have an impact, are easy to do, and are motivating
- Start tiny
- Find a good prompt
- Celebrate successes
- Troubleshoot, iterate, and expand
- Strengthen others in all iteractions