#581： The Tiny Habits That Change Everything
Episode Stats
Summary
Dr. BJ Fogg is the founder and director of Stanford s Behavior Design Lab, as well as the author of the new book, Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. In this episode, Dr. Fogg walks us through the three components that drive our behavior, including the simple yet overlooked relationship between motivation and ability. He then explains how to build habits that feel easier and require lower levels of motivation by picking behaviors that are good matches for you and breaking them down into smaller parts. We also talk about the need to tie your habits to turnkey prompts, the importance of celebrating your successes no matter how small, and the way tiny habits can lead to bigger changes. We end our conversation with why you should think about the process of getting rid of your bad habits as untangling them rather than breaking them.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. We're a month
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into the new year now. How are you doing on your resolutions? Have you already fallen off the
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wagon? Maybe the goal you set for yourself was just too big to successfully tackle. You need
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to think smaller, tiny even. That's the argument my guest makes. His name is Dr. BJ Fogg. He's the
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founder and director of Stanford's Behavior Design Lab, as well as the author of the new book,
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Tiny Habits, The Small Changes That Change Everything. Today on the show, BJ walks us
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through the three components that drive our behavior, including the simple yet overlooked
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relationship between motivation and ability. He then explains how to build habits that feel easier
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and require lower levels of motivation by picking behaviors that are good matches for you and
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breaking them down into smaller parts. We also talk about the need to tie your habits to turnkey
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prompts, the importance of celebrating your successes no matter how small, and the way tiny
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habits can lead to bigger changes. We end our conversation with why you should think about
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the process of getting rid of your bad habits as untangling them rather than breaking them.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash tinyhabits.
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Hey, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
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So I'm really excited to have you on because I've been following your work through other people,
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students you've had on your classes that you teach about behavior design. And I was so excited to
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see you have a book putting this all together in one place. So you've spent your career researching,
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developing what you call behavior design. How did you get involved with that?
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Well, if you rewind about 25 years, I was really interested in the overlap between technology
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and persuasion or influence, which hadn't happened yet. But I, in some ways, just sense that
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computers would be designed to influence our attitudes and our behaviors. And I wanted to
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study this. And so that's what I did. My doctorate work ran a series of laboratory experiments to show
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this could indeed happen and then predicted it will, and then set out some warnings and some guidelines
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for this. And I called that persuasive technology. About 10 years ago, my lab's work at Stanford shifted
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away from persuasive technology. We just really weren't interested in that anymore. We thought
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we'd really done what we needed to do there. And then it became what we now call behavior design,
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which is different than persuasive technology. It still has to do with human behavior change,
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but it doesn't have to do anything with technology directly. So the interest is a long-held interest.
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And I think it actually goes back to my Mormon roots. I was raised Mormon in California. And probably most
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people listening understand that that culture, that religion is a lot about behavior change. There's a lot of
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restrictions, a lot of things you can't do. And when people become Mormon, they have to make a lot of
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behavior change. So at least the way I see it in retrospect, I grew up very, very young, talking about
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behavior change and doing behavior change things and helping other people change their behavior.
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Well, in your work with persuasion technology, this has been used by, I mean, this shaped a lot of the
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apps we use today, Instagram, Uber, like the companies develop these apps, they used insights that came out
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of your research. Yeah. I think the biggest takeaway from my work is simplicity. So simplicity is the
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thing that I saw early on that made technologies that engaged people. I mean, everything that people,
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I mean, unless you're forced to use it like an office suite that was complicated. Yeah. You were
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forced to use that complicated thing, but everything that people were choosing for themselves and using
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the overriding pattern was simplicity. So that's really what I taught and advocated at Stanford and
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elsewhere. And it's one of my maxims today that you'll find in tiny habits is simplicity changes
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behavior. And so, as you said, you shifted focus more towards behavior design. It's not just tied
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to technology. It's about designing behavior, making new habits, untangling habits you don't like.
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We'll talk about why you call it untangling, not breaking habits. And in this model of behavior
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design, so first off, the behavior design, you have a model that explains human behavior and methods
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that you can use to change behavior. So let's talk about this model first. It's because I think
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that'll help people understand why we do what we do. And part of that model, you mentioned simplicity,
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but let's walk us through the fog model of behavior. Yeah. So there's various models in behavior
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design. The cornerstone is just this one called the fog behavior model. And it goes like this behavior
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happens when three things come together at the same moment. Motivation to do the behavior,
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ability to do the behavior, and a prompt. And that model describes any type of behavior. And it can
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also be used to understand how to stop a behavior. You remove motivation or you remove ability. In
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other words, you make it harder or you remove the prompt. And I write it out as B equals, so B is
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behavior, equals M-A-P, motivation, ability, prompt. It's a model, not an equation, but I still write it
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out with equal sign. And so walk us through like a behavior that can highlight this connection of
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motivation, ability, and prompt. Oh, wow. There are so many. So let's say that your son's sitting
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around playing video games and you fix dinner for him and your son is motivated to eat and is capable
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to eat. But until you prompt your son, say, hey, time for dinner, he's not going to come to the dinner
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table. So in that case, there's motivation because he's hungry. There's ability because he's just
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sitting around. He's not busy and doesn't cost anything for dinner. So he has ability. And in
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that case, the thing that he's lacking to do the behavior, come to dinner, it's the prompt.
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And as you look at any behavior that you do, you will always have some level of motivation.
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There'll be some level of ability and there will always be a prompt. And so you can look at any
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behavior you do, whether it's opening a certain email or answering your phone or texting your mom
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or eating an apple for lunch. All of those behaviors can be understood in terms of those
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components, behavior, motivation, ability, prompt. But it also helps you design for behaviors. And
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that's what the tiny habits method is all about. You're hacking those components to make the process
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method of habit formation really, really easy to do and really reliable.
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Yeah. Your behavioral model was really eye-opening. And one of the things that I
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got out of it that really hit me hard was this connection of a motivation ability, right? If
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something is really hard to do, well, that means you're going to need more motivation to do it. But
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if something's easy to do, you don't need as much motivation to do it.
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Yeah. And I am so happy that in my book, Tiny Habits, I unpacked that. For the first time,
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I really dive into the behavior model and I talk about the components and I show that
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relationship between motivation and ability. And you summarized it well. And there's a graphic.
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So yes, there's a written version of the model, but there's also a graphic. And there's a curved
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line on the graphic that shows that relationship. And it's embarrassing to say that it took me like
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eight years to figure out the right word for that relationship, but I'll share it here. It's kind
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of geeky. It's a compensatory relationship. They can compensate for each other like teammates.
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So if motivation is low or weak, then ability has to be high. It has to be really, really easy. In
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other words, if you're not super motivated to do something, the only way that you'll do it,
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if it's really, really easy to do. On the flip side, if a behavior is hard to do, the only thing that
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puts you above the action line, the only thing gets action is if your motivation is high.
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So their understanding that motivation ability, I used to call, I used to talk about it as trade-offs.
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It's not really a trade-off. They compensate for each other. And that actually was that insight that
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led to developing the tiny habits method. As I looked at my own graphic, the two-dimensional
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version, I saw on the lower right-hand corner, a space where if the motivation's low, you could
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still do the behavior if it's easy enough, if you make it radically easy. So boom, there's some
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motivation. It's not zero. And you make it really easy. That means the only thing you're lacking is a
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prompt. And there was a moment when I figured out how to hack the prompt, and then they all came
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together. And that then became the tiny habits method. So it got derived from looking at my own
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graphic going, that's a really interesting space right there. The opposite is people picking
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something hard to do. And if you pick something hard, like I'm going to work out for two hours every
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day, or I'm going to do CrossFit from now on, or I'm going to save $1,000 a month, that means your
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motivation has to be high and stay high. You have to sustain motivation. That's really unrealistic.
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We don't have that much control over our levels of motivation. And that means by setting yourself
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up for these hard behaviors, these hard changes, you somehow have to magically find a way to keep
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your motivation high. And that doesn't work very well. So Tiny Habits acknowledges that and says,
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no, no, scale it back, make it really easy. So you don't have to mess around with motivation and you
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don't have to rely on willpower. Well, let's unpack this idea of motivation, because I think you're
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right. When people decide they want to change a behavior or start a habit, they think I got to
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do something really hard and then I got to motivate myself. And motivation is kind of an interesting
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part of psychology and behavioral science, because you see different definitions of what
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motivation is. And there's like a different definition of like for the layperson. I think
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a layperson thinks, well, motivation is like, you know, reading quotes and telling myself
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mantras. And like, how do you define motivation in your behavioral model?
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Well, it's a driving force. It's something that energizes you to do a specific behavior. I don't
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think of motivation as something that is generalized to everything in your life. Your motivation shifts
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context by context in some ways, minute by minute. And so say I'm in a context where I'm a researcher at
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Stanford, that means I'm more motivated to do things that aren't in line with that identity.
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But if I'm at a family reunion with my family in Idaho, I have different motivations at that time.
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What had not been studied academically, and this is a huge surprise to me, I'd already mapped out and
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understood that motivation shifts over time. And along with some of the boot campers I work with,
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we named that fluctuation, we called it motivation wave. So that phrase, and I really like that phrase,
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basically, I like it because waves don't always stay high, they come and go, they're big ones,
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they're small ones, they shift. But the academic work on this had not existed until, oh, there's some
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early sense of it in 1999, and then more work in 2007. In other words, from an academic perspective,
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really recently, I mean, that may not sound recent to people listening, but work goes back decades and
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decades. So it's just, in some ways, very surprising that there was no acknowledgement
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or research around shifts in motivation until relatively recently. And the fact is, we've all
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experienced that in our life, people get really motivated in early January, and the motivation
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drops off, we get motivated for something else around February 14, we get motivated for something
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else around April 15, which in the US is taxes. And so we have different motivations that shift over
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time. One of the key, what shall I say challenges, is that when people sit down, and you said this well,
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and said, hey, I'm going to change, I'm going to do these big things. At that moment, when they're
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making those decisions and making the plan, yes, their motivation is high. And in that moment,
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they can do hard things. What we seem to be terrible, as human beings, is projecting our future
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levels of motivation. Even though we've seen that, oh, you know, two weeks from now, I may not be so
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motivated. We seem to make the same mistake over and over and over. And we just assume that we'll be
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able to sustain high levels of motivation, which doesn't work. And that's what tiny habits is. Well,
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in some ways in the book, I attacked is too strong a word. I dismantle that. I'm just like, hey,
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people be realistic about what happens with human motivation. And there's no magic way to keep it
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sustained. And there's a much better way to create habits that doesn't require you to rely
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on high levels of motivation. And the other problem you talk about with motivation is that
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people get motivated towards abstract ideas, right? It's like, lose weight. It's like, well,
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okay, but are you motivated to do the things to lose weight? You have to look at behaviors that will
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allow you to achieve that goal. And you're right on. You know, there is, what doesn't work
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is trying to motivate yourself toward an abstraction like lose weight. You know, that is an abstract
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thing because you can't in this moment lose weight. You can drop down and do 20 or 30 or maybe 50 pushups
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in this moment. So that's a behavior. But lose weight is not a behavior. It's an outcome. It's a result of
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doing other behaviors. So one of the methods I developed over the years was a way to take that
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outcome or the aspiration, that vague abstract thing, and then break it down into specific behaviors
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that you can then design for. And that is, that's a couple methods put together that I explain in tiny
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habits that can be really liberating and insightful. Somebody might have motivation to reduce their
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stress. In fact, probably everybody listening to this, I mean, stress is a massive issue right now
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in our world and in some ways just getting worse. And so you might just motivating yourself to reduce
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stress, as you can tell, isn't the best answer. But then some people might guess at the solution and
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I'm against guessing and there's a systematic way to do it, but the guess might be,
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oh, I'll meditate for 30 minutes a day. That's how I reduce my stress. Well, that might be a good
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match for people or it might not. For some people, it's a terrific match. For many people, it's a very
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challenging habit to wire in, especially meditating 30 minutes. So instead of having people go the wrong
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direction and just focus on these abstract things, and instead of having people just guessing,
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I love systems. I'm just for, even since I was a kid, let's systematize it. And that's what behavior
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design is. It's a system step-by-step so you don't have to guess. And by following the steps, you can
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derive what is the best new habit for you that will help you reduce stress or lose weight or be more
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productive or whatever you want. And that means that you can move forward with confidence that you
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are figuring out the right behavior. I call that the golden behavior or a set of behaviors, golden
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behaviors. And then you can put the, you can make those a reality in your life much more readily than
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I guess, like meditating for 30 minutes. So I thought it was interesting there. You said that you're
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looking for matches and behavior. So you're trying to find something that you would already want to do.
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That's one of your principles throughout this, like help people do what they already want to do.
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Yeah. Yeah. And it comes down to three criteria. So if you're looking for a habit or behavior change
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to help you reach whatever aspiration, the best matches, the golden behaviors have these three
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characteristics. Number one, it's a behavior that you want to do. So if you want to be more active,
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don't pick an exercise that you hate or a behavior, find something you want to do. In my life, when I'm
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in Maui, it's surfing. I am just crazy passionate about that. So not everybody has it available to
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them, but dancing or group activities. Number two, make sure it's a behavior you can do. So again,
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surfing is not available to people who don't live by waves and dancing may not be available to people who
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don't have any kind of dance resource, but if they want to dance to other people. And then the third
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criteria, and this is important, it needs to be a behavior that will have impact, that will actually
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take you toward your aspiration or outcome. A negative example of this or a bad example,
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and some people are going to hate me for this, is people are set up to believe that taking 10,000
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steps a day will lead to weight loss. I challenge that notion. I don't think 10,000 steps a day is
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very effective at weight loss. It's great at other things, and it's great to do, but weight loss is
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primarily a function of nutrition. And then after that, in my amateur opinion, I would say strength
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training. But people have believed the media or the advertising around 10,000 steps, and they may match
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themselves with that. And as they do it, they're not seeing the weight loss. So what it's lacking
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there is that third criteria of it being impactful, of it being effective. And I've done this too. I
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mean, on my journey to lose weight and keep it off, I somehow thought that popcorn was a healthy snack.
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It turns out it was an awful snack, but that's what I thought. I thought that nonfat yogurt was a great
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snack. It turns out it's exactly wrong for me. And so matching yourself carefully matters. So again,
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it's behaviors you want to do, you can do, and that will be effective. That will have impact.
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So instead of relying on motivation, instead of pumping yourself up, the idea is match yourself
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with behaviors you want to do. And that sort of connects to ability too, because you want to
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find behaviors that are easy to do. Like you want to make it easy for yourself, not harder.
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Right. Or if you already have, I mean, we'll go back to surfing. My motivation for that is pretty
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darn high. And so that means it can be a little harder to do. So that means, you know, I don't
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have to just walk out to the waves. I drive about 12 minutes and get my board off my little Honda
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element and get in. However, here in California at my home gym, I can't surf. I have an aerosol bike in
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my home gym here in the garage. Those are terrible. Yeah. I don't love it, but it's okay. And so what
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I, you know, so that is 15 feet away from me. Okay. I'm exaggerating. It's 20 feet away from me.
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And so it's so easy to just go get on the aerosol because I know there's going to be days when my
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motivation is not that high. So I've designed my contacts. So it's just so easy. And then I further
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trick myself on the days that I'm feeling too tired to go work out. I make it even easier. I
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just say to myself, PJ, just do four minutes on the aerosol and you don't even have to go hard
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four minutes and you're done. You don't even have to dress out, just wear whatever you're wearing.
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And what I've found in my life and other people have found this too, is it about three and a half
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minutes? Yeah. I'm not motivated. I'm like, okay, I'm getting this done. I'm getting it over. I'm not
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going hard like at CrossFit, but about three and a half minutes, my something changes in me and I
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want to keep going. So even though I know when I say I'm just going to do four minutes, yeah,
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odds are I'm going to keep going. Sometimes I stop, but it's, you know, how do you make it so easy
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that low motivation won't tank you? You'll still do it. Or in this case, with tricking myself on the
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aerosol, you'll still get started, you know, scale it back. What's four minutes? You know, I could do that.
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And as a result, I get the workout here in California.
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We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. So with ability, you're, you're, you're kind of jiggering with things like
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time, like reduce the amount of time to make it easier or just put the stuff closer to you.
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So it's easier. Like, or like you're talking about, you're talking about food, like, you know,
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weight loss is driven by what you eat. Well, just make it easy to eat good foods or make it harder
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to eat bad foods. Bad foods. Yeah, exactly. And there's a model, not the fog behavior model,
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but a different model. And basically has these components. Something can be difficult if it
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requires time and you don't have time. So the way to make it easier is to shorten the timeframe,
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like four minutes rather than 30 or 60. I can be difficult if it requires money and you don't have
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money. On the flip side of getting people to drink less soda, when they put a tax on soda,
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it decreases consumption. And the way they did that is by making it harder to do, more expensive.
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Third is how much physical effort something requires. So for me, knowing here in California,
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there's going to be moments where I'm not so motivated to work out. Guess what? The gym's 20 feet
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away. So I've reduced the physical effort. And then the last one I'll talk about is mental effort.
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How much you have to think about stuff. And if something, let's say you want to stop using
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social media, you can tweak your ability by making your password really difficult and not allowing
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your app to save the password. So that doesn't mean you can't launch social media. It just makes
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it harder to do. You have to think harder and it takes more time. And those things together would,
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if I ran an experiment on that, it would reliably show that people are less likely to use social media
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if they have really hard passwords that their system didn't store. So there's a systematic way,
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even that, that, that ability component, then there's a system underneath that, that allows you
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to hone in on what to tweak in order to get yourself to do the behavior or get yourself to stop doing a
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behavior. So we talked about motivation. There's high motivation or it's easy to do. You're more likely
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to do, but there has to be a prompt. And you said you figured out something with, you know,
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you're, you know, 20 years of doing this, that you kind of hacked the prompt. So what are,
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what are some insights that you've figured out about prompts, make them more effective to get
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us to do the things we want to do? Yeah. So there is another model for this,
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and I love models and systems and I'll be brief. There are three sources of prompts.
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One source is, I call it person prompt. It just comes from you. You just happen to remember
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or something happens internally like, Oh, I'm hungry or I have a headache. Those are prompts.
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You know, they just come from you. Those are not reliable for the kinds of most kinds of habits
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people want to form. Like I'm just going to remember to go to work out or I'm going to just
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remember to do my weekly expense report. So bad idea, but they do happen. Next, you have prompts
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that I call context prompts. We're surrounded by these. Context prompts are things in your environment,
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whether it's a post-it note, an alarm, a notification on your app, somebody else reminding you,
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there's tons of these. And then the third type, and this is the hack. This is what tiny habits
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leverages. It has to do with your existing routine. And I call it an action prompt.
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So a routine you already do can serve as your prompt for a new habit. So brushing, which pretty much
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everybody does, can be your reminder or your prompt to floss. Sitting down in your car and turning it on
00:23:52.200
can be your prompt to turn on your audio book so you can listen on the way to work.
00:23:59.040
Now, notice you're not just relying on yourself to remember. You're not like having post-it notes
00:24:03.520
everywhere. What you're doing is designing your routine and you're finding something you already do
00:24:10.940
that can serve as your prompt for a new habit. Well, tell us about your pee push-up prompt.
00:24:19.340
Oh my. Yes. So an odd example, but it totally works for me anyway, is after I pee, I do two push-ups.
00:24:28.280
At least in tiny habits, that's the recipe. After I pee, I will do two push-ups. Well, today I did
00:24:33.920
25 and 12 and 20. So I've peed three times already. I guess that means a lot of water and coffee,
00:24:39.820
but you can do more than two, but the tiny habit is very small. For me, because I work mostly from
00:24:47.340
home, that works really well. It's really after I flush the toilet, I do two push-ups and I can do
00:24:54.640
as many as I want. But if I'm rushed or tired or sick, I do two and I chalk it up as a victory.
00:25:01.860
Then, of course, I wash my hands and I go about my day. So that seems probably odd to a lot of people,
00:25:08.120
but it allows me to, well, it's not even noon and I've done 50 push-ups. It allows me to get some
00:25:14.600
strength training in throughout the day, at least when I'm working at home. And it allows me to
00:25:20.000
almost seamlessly put a new habit into my routine. So it doesn't feel like something that's just bolted
00:25:28.740
on. If you find the right place for new habits, they just feel like that's what I always do.
00:25:34.320
I always, you know, after I go to the bathroom, I do push-ups. Now, if I'm in a public space,
00:25:39.240
I'll do squats. In hotels, I don't really like getting down on the floor. So I'll just do like
00:25:44.540
push-ups against the sink. But it just has become really wired in to do that. So I know that example
00:25:53.780
is really quirky, but some things make total sense. Like after you brush, you will floss one tooth.
00:25:58.920
You know, that makes total sense that you'd floss after you brush.
00:26:01.360
Well, I just like that example. Cause it's like, it takes something that people do every day,
00:26:04.840
multiple times a day, and you built a habit into it. And I think it's, it's very illustrative of
00:26:09.220
that. Well, and do you know what? I'm sure many people listening to this know this push-ups are
00:26:15.580
such a good gateway to other kinds of exercises. Even if you only can do a couple wall push-ups or
00:26:22.140
knee push-ups, there's something about it. And I've heard from lots of people on this that makes you,
00:26:28.160
I think there's probably, I think this is my opinion, not my research. I think there's something
00:26:33.440
physiological that happens. And then you do see gains quickly. You do see your arms get stronger
00:26:40.420
and your chest gets stronger. There's something pretty great about push-ups. So for people that
00:26:45.660
can do them safely, if you don't have that habit, figure out where push-ups fit in your life
00:26:51.120
and lower the bar to two or just wall push-ups and you can do more when you want to, but you don't
00:26:58.280
have to do more. Just focus on consistency of the habit, not size of the habit. So we talked about
00:27:04.660
the model and throughout this model, you can start using the tiny habits method. And we've been
00:27:09.420
talking about this throughout the thing. Like you look for a prompt, right? When I, when I brush my
00:27:14.620
teeth, I will do X and it can be floss. But the tiny habits thing is like, you don't have to floss all
00:27:20.180
your teeth. You'd start really, really tiny, just one tooth. I know. And that sounds crazy to people,
00:27:26.720
but that's, you know, as we talked about my model, by making it so easy and tiny, then you're not
00:27:32.960
subject or you're not affected by fluctuations in your motivation. So that's the hack is you make it so
00:27:39.060
tiny that this thing about us as human beings, the fluctuating motivation won't get in your way.
00:27:45.140
And also, and this surprises people maybe even more, as you progress, you will naturally do
00:27:54.060
more push-ups. You will naturally floss all your teeth. But what you don't do is raise the bar on
00:28:00.460
yourself. Okay. That's the old, not very effective way of thinking. It's like, oh, two push-ups. Then I
00:28:06.140
have to do five. Then I have to do 10. Then I have to do 20. And you raise the bar. What you're doing
00:28:11.260
there is you're setting yourself up to fail. The bar always stays low, but you can do more when you
00:28:17.920
want to. And then, and this is, this is part of the mindset of tiny habits. Any extra you do, like
00:28:23.960
I did 25 out of the gate this morning. I only had to do two, but it's like, good for me. Awesome.
00:28:29.820
I did 25. I got extra credit. You know, look at me. There is this thing that happens when you keep
00:28:35.600
the bar low, that when you go above it, that feeling of I'm the kind of person who overachieves
00:28:43.320
then affects you in other parts of your day. It shifts your identity.
00:28:49.340
And it also, I mean, as you do the start, you know, starting small, like your ability increases,
00:28:54.060
right? So if you, when you first start out, you're not going to be able to do 50 push-ups,
00:28:58.180
but as you do two push-ups every day, you're going to get stronger, which will allow you,
00:29:02.200
it'll make it easier to do more push-ups. Exactly. So as exactly, and as it gets easier
00:29:08.200
to do with the same level of motivation, you can do more push-ups because now they're easier to do.
00:29:15.580
That's, that's right on. It's a little bit of a technical point and it might be a little subtle,
00:29:20.900
but that's, yeah, that's how it works. And so for most behaviors, not all, but for most behaviors,
00:29:25.700
the more you do it, the easier it gets to do. And push-ups is a great example because you get better
00:29:30.880
form, you know exactly where to do them in your home and you get stronger.
00:29:36.120
And what I love about the tiny habits method, it's basically a recipe, right? You're just like,
00:29:39.900
after I do this, when I do this, I will do this one really small thing and that's it. And like in
00:29:46.320
the back of the book, I love it. You have like, just like this giant list of tiny habits recipes you
00:29:51.180
can do if you want to be more productive, stay organized, business travel. It's like after I walk in
00:29:56.020
the door, I will hang my keys on the door, the key hanger, which you're supposed to do, but like
00:30:01.540
make it, make that connection to that anchor of walking through your door.
00:30:04.920
Yeah. So glad you brought that up. So yeah, in tiny habits, I have an appendix that has 300 recipes
00:30:11.020
for tiny habits and there's topics like tiny habits for busy moms, tiny habits for dads who work from
00:30:18.020
home, tiny habits for travel and so on. There's 20 each. And those weren't random guesses. I did some work
00:30:23.640
to figure out what most important topics, including topics like tiny habits for caregivers,
00:30:31.480
which can be crushing emotionally and physically. And I wanted to do a thousand and I had a thousand
00:30:40.280
ready to go. And my publisher was like, oh, BJ, this is like 60 pages. There's no way we're putting
00:30:46.580
60 pages of recipes in the back of the book. We'll give you 300. And I was like, okay, I'll take it.
00:30:53.680
That's book number two, the thousand recipes. So the other insight that I got from this that I've
00:30:59.640
been incorporating with myself and my kids and from tiny habits is not only, okay, you make it easy,
00:31:05.520
the thing you want to do, the habit easy, but also connect it to something you already do. But the one
00:31:10.960
thing that I've been doing and teaching my kids is this idea of celebrating what you do. Why is that
00:31:16.220
so important that you celebrate that you flossed one tooth or that you did two pushups? Because I think
00:31:21.120
people hear that like, I'm going to feel kind of silly celebrating myself. So what's going on there?
00:31:26.800
Let me give the psychological explanation. I would love to hear how you guys are celebrating.
00:31:31.300
So celebration is anything that you can do that will fire off a positive emotion, especially the
00:31:38.280
feeling of success. So for me, a go-to celebration is to do a fist pump and go, awesome. And, or raise
00:31:46.220
my hands over my head. Like after I do, you know, pushups, I go way to go BJ, you know,
00:31:51.080
kind of the self chair and it helps me feel successful. Now, what works for me may not work
00:31:56.320
for you. It's really, there's, there's a wide variety of approaches. So in tiny habits, I list
00:32:02.740
a hundred different ways to celebrate. And I also give some exercises, really simple ones where you
00:32:08.040
can figure out what is the natural celebration for you. The reason it matters is this, the emotion
00:32:14.200
you feel as you do the habit is what, as you do the new behavior is what wires it into your brain
00:32:22.180
as a habit. In other words, it's emotions that create habits. So if your brain does pushups and
00:32:29.800
it knows, wow, I'm going to feel awesome. After I do these pushups, it's going to remind you,
00:32:34.340
and it's going to want to do pushups in the future. There's actually a physical restructuring
00:32:38.480
of your brain that happens because of the emotion. And this goes in contrast to what
00:32:43.520
probably everybody has heard about repetition. It takes 21 days and 66 days and repetition creates
00:32:50.440
habits. And that's not true. If you look at the research carefully, it correlates with habit formation,
00:32:57.080
but there's no evidence in that research that shows that repetition causes the habit to form.
00:33:02.520
And what causes it is the emotion that you feel. So if you're really good at, let's say you want to
00:33:08.760
drink more water. So really good at pouring the glass of water. I've got a glass of water here in
00:33:13.280
front of me. And as you're doing that, you put it down on your work desk. So that's my habit.
00:33:18.360
Put it, you know, fill a glass of water, put it down. If I can cause myself to feel positive,
00:33:23.660
to feel successful, what I'm doing is making my brain take note of that and wiring that into my brain.
00:33:30.340
So the more effective you are at celebration, the faster you can create habits.
00:33:35.500
Yeah. The one that I, so my son, he's nine, he does the fist pump in the air.
00:33:39.180
He's like, yeah, good. Mine is silly, but it works for me. I sort of like,
00:33:44.600
like make the noise for the beginning, like the intro guitar riff of Back in Black by ACDC.
00:33:51.120
You know, I have some songs too. I have, I have the tiger. I have, hey, now you're a rock star,
00:34:03.060
whatever that is. I don't know what the words are.
00:34:07.240
Yeah. Smash mouth. Those work for me. Sound effects sometimes. And so I use different celebrations for
00:34:12.940
different things. If I'm in public, I'm not singing a song or I'm not going do, do, do, do. You know,
00:34:17.540
that's, if I'm in public, then it's just more of a quiet, like you nailed this beach. Good for you.
00:34:25.900
Now your nine-year-old son, I am so glad you're teaching him. If I could, and I won't ever do
00:34:32.520
this work because I don't work with kids and don't do research on kids. It gets a lot more
00:34:36.540
complicated, but I'm hoping somebody will do an intervention where they teach kids fifth grade,
00:34:42.520
you know, nine and 10 years old, how to celebrate in order to wire in habits. And that age before
00:34:50.640
they get all like skeptical and all teenager, like where they have that skill and they learn to apply
00:34:57.040
it. I would just be, wow. I would just love. And I know some parents have done that with their kids
00:35:02.800
like you, but there's not a systematic program for that yet. So delighted to hear that you've shared that
00:35:08.980
with your son and he has a celebration that works. Do you ever find that you celebrate together
00:35:13.240
that he sees you or you see him and you both go, yeah, good for you.
00:35:17.100
Yeah. We started to do that. So like, I see him doing, I'm like, Hey, all right, you did it.
00:35:20.500
That's awesome. We're having fun with it. You know, at first he's kind of, he's a little self,
00:35:23.480
like he's kind of getting that age where he's becoming self-conscious. He's kind of at first
00:35:27.480
like, ah, this is kind of, I'm like, no, that's fine. Go do it. And he does it. So we've got it.
00:35:30.600
Do you know what to show him? Just go online, find videos of athletes.
00:35:36.260
Yeah. That's where he got it from. He goes, I'm doing the Tiger. I'm doing the Tiger Woods
00:35:39.380
fist bump. He says, that's what we go. Find athletes he admires and just show videos of them
00:35:43.680
excelling. And they almost always will celebrate. I mean, just watch what happens when Caleb Dressel,
00:35:53.040
the swimmer, you know, nails it in the 50 free and watch what Serena Williams does when she nails a
00:35:59.740
key serve. And if you, and I, I found that's a helpful way for guys who are skeptical or
00:36:06.400
kids that think they're too cool. It's like, look at what these athletes do.
00:36:09.960
That's how they wired in these high performance habits.
00:36:12.980
And so we've talked to the tiny method, the tiny habits method. People are probably thinking,
00:36:16.320
oh, well, how's this going to lead to bigger changes? And as you said, as you do this stuff
00:36:20.120
more and more, you're working on consistency, your ability increases. And so you'll be able to
00:36:25.380
start adding more and you don't have to like force it though, but it's just going to come like
00:36:29.160
today. I'm going to do 10 pushups instead of two. Yeah. Yeah. So you naturally will do more.
00:36:35.140
So the habit that was designed as tiny, you naturally will do more. So it grows, but also
00:36:42.680
you people naturally do other habits that are related. So there's this ripple effect. And I've
00:36:49.740
seen this in my data since the beginning, I started teaching tiny habits in 2011, you know,
00:36:55.160
five-day program online, helping people and measuring it week after week after week, because
00:36:59.660
I'm that kind of person. Of course, I want to measure stuff. And what I found from the beginning
00:37:05.400
is there are these ripple effects. People make other changes in their life naturally. So for example,
00:37:12.520
let's say somebody wires in the habit of taking three calming breaths. Like after I sit down for my
00:37:19.240
morning lunch break, say they're at work, after they sit down, I'll take three calming breaths and
00:37:26.080
just keep, try to keep my mind free and clear. Once they feel successful doing that habit, what they
00:37:32.680
will find is they start taking those three calming breaths at other parts of their life, even without
00:37:38.840
designing an explicit habit for it. So they, it generalizes. So in my own life, the way that's worked
00:37:46.740
is even, even when I'm sleeping and there's all these things going through my head, like, Oh my
00:37:50.920
gosh, I got this at that. And what's going on here? My students, my class, just, there's this reaction.
00:37:56.160
Once you start thinking and knowing that three calming breaths can shift your level of anxiety,
00:38:03.300
I guess, or your increase your calm, you will naturally start applying that elsewhere in your
00:38:09.180
life. So there is this ripple effect that happens to almost everybody.
00:38:12.840
Right. So you're talking about creating new habits, but you also talk about, well, people would say
00:38:17.380
breaking habits, but you don't actually like that. You say untangle bad habits. So why, why untangle
00:38:23.120
bad habits instead of using breaking bad habits?
00:38:25.980
Yeah. When it comes to stopping behaviors, one phrase that we, people often use that takes us in
00:38:32.520
the wrong direction is breaking a bad habit. I think that's a bad word to use, or maybe not the optimal
00:38:38.940
word, because it implies that it happens in a moment. If you just apply enough force in one
00:38:45.740
moment, it's broken, you're done. You're not smoking anymore. You're not drinking. You're not gambling,
00:38:50.860
whatever. And that's not how these habits work. And so instead I outline how you should think about
00:38:57.980
it or can think about it as untangling a bad habit. And that sets up a much better expectation
00:39:06.920
in three ways. Number one, it's not just one behavior. It's a whole bunch of different snarls,
00:39:13.420
whether that's smoking or drinking or snacking or what have you. Let's take snacking. If you think,
00:39:19.620
wow, I really got to stop the habit of bad snacking. There's probably a variety of times during the day
00:39:24.840
when you snack. And so think of each one of those as a tangle on this big knot. And what you do is you
00:39:31.360
find the easiest tangle and you get rid of that one first. You don't start with the hardest one.
00:39:36.220
You start with the easiest one, then you go to the next easiest and so on. And the other reason I
00:39:42.000
really like untangling is that it sets up, when you see a big tangle, even if it's just with your
00:39:49.460
phone headset, it's all tangled up. You look at it and you have no idea how to solve it instantly.
00:39:54.840
But you know if you just untangle one thing and then you know you can get it done.
00:40:00.580
And I think for a lot of these bad habits, that's how people feel. They look at something
00:40:05.360
that they're overwhelmed. How do I stop this smoking habit or this snacking habit or snapping at my kids?
00:40:13.880
And it might just seem like, I don't know how to get this undone. But just like untangling a cord,
00:40:19.760
it's a process. And if you just start with the first thing and then do the next thing,
00:40:24.840
Yeah. So that involves, it's sort of using this behavioral model again. Going back,
00:40:27.980
you said, okay, my habit is, or the thing I want to do is stop spending so much time on social media.
00:40:32.800
Well, that's sort of abstract. There's a lot of behaviors associated with that. So you
00:40:36.560
sort of do like a sort of a brainstorm. What are all the behaviors that I do that cause me to
00:40:41.720
surf on social media all the time? And then you go for the easy one. Stop the easy one first.
00:40:46.760
And then you use this stuff of like, okay, I can make it harder. So making it harder,
00:40:52.220
if I make it harder to do, I'm less likely to do it or increase my motivation. And then also find a
00:40:57.580
prompt there and find out what the prompt is, maybe eliminate that prompt. And I imagine as
00:41:01.300
people start doing, working with this model and the method, it's a skill that they get better at.
00:41:10.040
Yeah. And I think the best, and this is not in the book, the best analogy is maybe driving.
00:41:18.480
Before you learn how to drive, it's like, oh my gosh, how do I do that? It feels so complicated.
00:41:23.620
I'm scared to do it. But now once you've learned how, and you've done it, it's just like easy. You
00:41:31.060
don't even think about it. Behavior change seems complicated, overwhelming. People are afraid of it,
00:41:36.140
but you can learn the skills of change to the point where it's like, no big deal. Like if you want to
00:41:42.720
create a new habit, you do it. If you want to design a habit out of your life, you do it.
00:41:46.740
And you don't make a big deal of it. Just like you don't make a big deal of driving,
00:41:56.340
Boom. It can, you know, I mean, if you can, and I like that not only because it's true,
00:42:02.840
that's how a big part of the method back in 2010, when I was goofing around myself,
00:42:08.860
that was a big deal. Next, your dentist will love you or your hygienist will love you,
00:42:12.480
but it's the same process. You know, the way that you wire in the habit of flossing one tooth
00:42:18.800
is the same way you do all the other habits. So if you're not flossing, start there and learn
00:42:24.160
how the method works, skill up. And then as your skill increases, you can tackle harder and harder
00:42:29.300
things. Well, BJ, where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:42:33.640
Yeah. Well, tinyhabits.com about the book and you can buy it at Costco. You can buy it at your
00:42:39.320
independent bookseller, which would be awesome. You can buy it online. And then more generally
00:42:46.720
Fantastic. Well, BJ Fogg, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:42:50.620
My guest today was Dr. BJ Fogg. He is the author of the book, Tiny Habits. It's available
00:42:54.620
on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his
00:42:58.120
website, bjfogg.com. That's Fogg with two Gs. Also check out our show notes at
00:43:02.520
aom.is slash tinyhabits, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper
00:43:07.180
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
00:43:17.900
artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of
00:43:21.140
articles we've written over the years. A lot of them are about habits, so check that out.
00:43:24.040
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00:43:38.900
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00:43:42.480
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00:43:46.060
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00:43:49.180
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00:43:52.960
Remind you not only to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.