Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything

by B.J. Fogg

Use emotional flags to help you find your edge. Frustration, pain, and especially avoidance are signs that something is going on with your habit—that you’ve probably increased the difficulty too much, too fast. On the flipside, if you ...

None of us lives in a habit vacuum. Our environment, which includes people, influences our habitual behaviors more than we recognize or care to admit. Because our habits are the product of our environment to a large degree, getting good at Context Skills is vital for creating change and making it stick.

There are two questions that will guide you to change your environment and reduce the friction between the world around you and your good habits. The first is How can I make this new habit easier to do?

redesigning your environment: When you design new habits, invest time in redesigning your environment so they’re easier to do. As you begin doing your new habit, make the environmental adjustments as you go along, redesigning as needed to make your habit easier 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. Invest in the gear you need.

Finish the sentence “I’m the kind of person who” with the identity—or identities—you’d like to embrace.

Go to events that gather people, products, and services related to your emerging identity.

Learn the lingo. Know who the experts are. Watch movies related to the area of change you’re interested in.

Wearing T-shirts is a common way to declare your identity.

Update your social media page. Put a new profile picture up that conveys your emerging identity. (And see how people respond.) Revise your online bio. Post stuff related to your new identity.

Teach others or be a role model to galvanize your new identity. A social role is powerful.

A helpful way to think about habits is to put them into three categories. I’m talking about all habits here—good and bad. Uphill Habits are those that require ongoing attention to maintain but are easy to stop—getting out of bed when your alarm goes off, going to the gym, or meditating daily. Downhill Habits are easy to maintain but difficult to stop—hitting snooze, swearing, watching YouTube. Freefall Habits are those habits like substance abuse that can be extremely difficult to stop unless you have a safety net of professional help.

B=MAP is the foundation for designing new habits and saying good-bye to habits that are holding you back. In previous chapters, we focused on how to make things easier. Now we’ll talk about how to make them harder (decreasing ability). Instead of building in effective prompts, you’ll look for ways to remove them. Instead of trying to ramp up your motivation, you’ll consider ways to reduce it for an unwanted habit.

The word “break” sets the wrong expectation for how you get rid of a bad habit. This word implies that if you input a lot of force in one moment, the habit will be gone. However, that rarely works, because you usually cannot get rid of an unwanted habit by applying force one time.

Instead of “break,” I suggest a different word and a different analogy. Picture a tangled rope that’s full of knots. That’s how you should think about unwanted habits like stressing out, too much screen time, and procrastinating. You cannot untangle those knots all at once. Yanking on the rope will probably make things worse in the long run. You have to untangle the rope step by step instead. And you don’t focus on the hardest part first. Why? Because the toughest tangle is deep inside the knot. You have to approach it systematically and find the easiest knot to untangle.

It’s time to set the record straight and acknowledge that bad habits are not fundamentally different from good habits when it comes to basic components. Behavior is behavior; it’s always a result of motivation, ability, and a prompt coming together at the same moment.

You create new positive habits first. Then you focus on stopping specific behaviors related to the old habit. If stopping doesn’t work, move on to phase three, which is all about swapping in a new habit to replace the old one.

So I’m saying this: When you see a bunch of specific habits to untangle, don’t stop there. And don’t get overwhelmed. Keep going. Pick one tangle and design it out of your life. But which specific habits should you tackle first? The answer is so important, I’ll say it three times in different ways: Pick the easiest one. Pick the one you are most sure you can do. Pick the one that feels like no big deal.

Focus on the Prompt to Stop a Habit

Redesign Ability in Order to Stop a Habit

Adjust Motivation in Order to Stop a Habit

OPTION A: REDUCE MOTIVATION TO STOP A HABIT

OPTION B: ADD A DEMOTIVATOR TO STOP A HABIT

The next step in the masterplan is to scale back your ambitions, and you can do that in the following ways. Set a shorter time period for stopping habit (stop smoking for three days instead of forever) Do an unwanted habit for a shorter duration (watch TV for thirty minutes instead of four hours) Do fewer instances of the unwanted habit (checking social media once a day rather than ten times) Do the unwanted habit with less intensity (pace your drinking rather than downing shots)

Steps in Behavior Design

The feedback that has the most emotional power has two characteristics: It relates to a domain you care about, and it’s in an area where you feel uncertain. I created a graphic to show this overlapping space that I call the Power Zone. Feedback Power Zone Any feedback you give someone in the Power Zone will be amplified because they care about the subject and are uncertain. That means you can inspire huge Shine or cast serious shade. Suppose you see a new mom trying to calm her baby. She wants to be a “good” mom, and because she is new to this, she is uncertain. If you say, That’s a good technique! That’s what my sister used to do with her babies and she’s the best mom I know, she will beam with Shine.

If someone is stressed out, if they are pressed for time, if they feel overwhelmed, they cannot make big changes. And they aren’t likely to even try.

Behavior Design Models Methods How to think clearly about behavior How to design for behavior Fogg Behavior Model B = MAP Motivation–PAC Person Motivation Wave Motivation Vectors Ability—PAC Person Ability Chain Prompts—PAC Person Tiny Habits (Methods specific to Tiny Habits) Starter Step Scale Back Anchoring (Existing Routine ⃗ New Habit) Recipe Format: After I_____, I will _____ Recipe Maker Tool Pearl Habits Rehearsal: Anchor ⃗ Habit ⃗ Celebration Celebrating to feel Shine Other Models in Behavior Design Swarm of Behaviors Spectrum of Automaticity The Skills of Change The Behavior Change Masterplan Power Zone Model Other Methods (Also used with Tiny Habits) Troubleshooting a behavior: P⃗A⃗M Swarm of Behaviors Worksheet Magic Wanding Focus Mapping (Behavior Matching) Discovery & Breakthrough Questions Design Flow: Easier to do Maxims #1: Help people do what they already want to do. #2: Help people feel successful.

The Anatomy of Tiny Habits The Anatomy of Tiny Habits® 1. ANCHOR MOMENT An existing routine (like brushing your teeth) or an event that happens (like a phone ringing). The Anchor Moment reminds you to do the new Tiny Behavior. 2. NEW TINY BEHA VIOR A simple version of the new habit you want, such as flossing one tooth or doing two push-ups. You do the Tiny Behavior immediately after the Anchor Moment. 3. INSTANT CELEBRATION Something you do to create positive emotions, such as saying, “I did a good job!” You celebrate immediately after doing the new Tiny Behavior. Anchor Behavior Celebration