The Art of Manliness - The Tiny Habits That Change Everything

00:00:00.000 Hey, it's Brett. We're taking a break for new episodes to celebrate the holidays. In the

00:00:03.080 meantime, we're rebroadcasting episode number 581, The Tiny Habits That Change Everything

00:00:07.160 with BJ Fogg. I know a lot of you are setting goals this year that involve habits. This is a

00:00:11.020 great episode to listen to, lots of research-backed advice. We'll see you next time with a brand new

00:00:15.120 episode of the AOM Podcast. Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of

00:00:26.820 Manliness Podcast. We're a month into the new year now. How are you doing on your resolutions?

00:00:31.440 Have you already fallen off the wagon? Maybe the goal you set for yourself was just too big to

00:00:35.320 successfully tackle. You need to think smaller, tiny even. That's the argument my guest makes.

00:00:39.800 His name is Dr. BJ Fogg, and he's the founder and director of Stanford Behavior Design Lab,

00:00:44.060 as well as the author of the new book, Tiny Habits, The Small Changes That Change Everything.

00:00:48.220 Today on the show, BJ walks us through the three components that drive our behavior,

00:00:51.600 including the simple yet overlooked relationship between motivation and ability. He then explains

00:00:55.700 how to build habits that feel easier and require lower levels of motivation by picking behaviors

00:01:00.000 that are good matches for you and breaking them down into smaller parts. We also talk about the

00:01:03.880 need to tie your habits to turnkey prompts, the importance of celebrating your successes,

00:01:07.500 no matter how small, and the way tiny habits can lead to bigger changes. We end our conversation

00:01:11.960 with why you should think about the process of getting rid of your bad habits as untangling them

00:01:15.920 rather than breaking them. After the show's over, check out our show notes at

00:01:18.960 aom.is slash tinyhabits. All right, BJ Fogg, welcome to the show.

00:01:31.560 Hey, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

00:01:33.900 So I'm really excited to have you on because I've been following your work through other people,

00:01:38.600 students you've had on your classes that you teach about behavior design. And I was so excited to see

00:01:43.840 you have a book putting this all together in one place. So you've spent your career researching

00:01:48.900 developing what you call behavior design. How did you get involved with that?

00:01:53.880 Well, if you rewind about 25 years, I was really interested in the overlap between technology

00:02:00.280 and persuasion or influence, which hadn't happened yet. But I, in some ways, just sense that computers

00:02:08.020 would be designed to influence our attitudes and our behaviors. And I wanted to study this.

00:02:13.580 And so that's what I did my doctorate work, ran a series of laboratory experiments to show this

00:02:20.220 could indeed happen, and then predicted it will, and then set out some warnings and some guidelines

00:02:27.900 for this. And I called that persuasive technology. About 10 years ago, my lab's work at Stanford shifted

00:02:34.520 away from persuasive technology. We just really weren't interested in that anymore.

00:02:38.960 We thought we'd really done what we needed to do there. And then it became what we now call

00:02:44.140 behavior design, which is different than persuasive technology. It still has to do with human behavior

00:02:48.760 change, but it doesn't have to do anything with technology directly. So the interest is a long-held

00:02:54.980 interest. And I think it actually goes back to my Mormon roots. I was raised Mormon in California,

00:03:02.880 California. And probably most people listening understand that that culture, that religion

00:03:07.940 is a lot about behavior change. There's a lot of restrictions, a lot of things you can't do.

00:03:14.080 And when people become Mormon, they have to make a lot of behavior change. So at least the way I see

00:03:18.960 it in retrospect, I grew up very, very young talking about behavior change and doing behavior change

00:03:25.020 things and helping other people change their behavior.

00:03:27.180 Well, in your work with persuasion technology, this has been used by, I mean, this shaped a lot

00:03:32.700 of the apps we use today, Instagram, Uber, like the companies develop these apps, they used insights

00:03:38.680 that came out of your research.

00:03:40.440 Yeah. I think the biggest takeaway from my work is simplicity. So simplicity is the thing that I

00:03:47.060 saw early on that made technologies that engaged people. I mean, everything that people,

00:03:55.240 I mean, unless you're forced to use it like an office suite that was complicated. Yeah. You were

00:03:59.880 forced to use that complicated thing, but everything that people were choosing for themselves and using

00:04:04.700 the overriding pattern was simplicity. So that's really what I taught and advocated at Stanford and

00:04:11.260 elsewhere. And it's one of my maxims today that you'll find in tiny habits is simplicity changes

00:04:16.500 behavior.

00:04:17.440 And so, as you said, you shifted focus more towards behavior design. It's not just tied to technology.

00:04:22.140 It's about designing behavior, making new habits, untangling habits you don't like. We'll talk

00:04:27.920 about why you don't, why you call it untangling, not breaking habits. And in this, this model of

00:04:33.400 behavior design. So first off the behavior design, you have a model that explains human behavior and

00:04:37.600 methods that you can use to change behavior. So let's talk about this model first. It's because

00:04:42.720 I think that'll help people understand why we do what we do. And part of that model, you mentioned

00:04:47.140 simplicity, but let's walk us through the fog model of behavior.

00:04:51.680 Yeah. So there's various models in behavior design. The cornerstone is just this one called

00:04:55.780 the fog behavior model. And it goes like this behavior happens when three things come together

00:05:02.120 at the same moment, motivation to do the behavior, ability to do behavior and a prompt. And that model

00:05:10.620 describes any type of behavior. And it can also be used to understand how to stop a behavior.

00:05:14.920 You remove motivation or you remove ability. In other words, you make it harder or you remove

00:05:20.300 the prompt. And I write it out as B equals, so B is behavior, equals M-A-P, motivation, ability,

00:05:29.520 prompt. It's a model, not an equation, but I still write it out with equal sign.

00:05:35.740 And so walk us through like a behavior that can highlight this connection of motivation,

00:05:40.140 ability and prompt. Oh, wow. There are so many. So let's say that your son's sitting

00:05:45.740 around playing video games and you fix dinner for him and your son is motivated to eat and

00:05:53.440 is capable to eat. But until you prompt your son, say, Hey, time for dinner. He's not going

00:05:59.700 to come to the dinner table. So in that case, there's motivation because he's hungry. There's

00:06:04.020 ability because he's just sitting around. He's not busy and doesn't cost anything for dinner.

00:06:08.500 So he has ability. And in that case, the thing that he's lacking to do the behavior,

00:06:12.660 come to dinner, it's the prompt. And as you look at any behavior that you do,

00:06:18.060 you will always have some level of motivation. There'll be some level of ability and there will

00:06:23.880 always be a prompt. And so you can look at any behavior you do, whether it's opening a certain

00:06:28.560 email or answering your phone or texting your mom or eating an apple for lunch.

00:06:34.880 All of those behaviors can be understood in terms of those components, behavior,

00:06:40.240 motivation, ability, prompt, but it also helps you design for behaviors. And that's what the tiny

00:06:46.800 habits method is all about. You're hacking those components to make the process and method of habit

00:06:53.900 formation really, really easy to do and really reliable.

00:06:57.800 Yeah. Your behavioral model was really eye-opening. And one of the things that I

00:07:02.220 got out of it that really hit me hard was this connection of like a motivation ability,

00:07:06.160 right? If something is really hard to do, well, it means you're going to need more motivation

00:07:10.500 to do it. But if something's easy to do, you don't need as much motivation to do it.

00:07:15.780 Yeah. And I am so happy that in my book, Tiny Habits, I unpacked that for the first time.

00:07:21.520 I really dive into the behavior model and I talk about the components and I show that

00:07:26.120 relationship between motivation and ability. And you summarized it well. And there's a graphic.

00:07:34.300 So yes, there's a written version of the model, but there's also a graphic and there's a curved

00:07:38.280 line on the graphic that shows that relationship. And it's embarrassing to say that it took me like

00:07:44.780 eight years to figure out the right word for that relationship, but I'll share it here. It's kind of

00:07:49.100 geeky. It's a compensatory relationship. They can compensate for each other, like teammates.

00:07:55.380 So if motivation is low or weak, then ability has to be high. It has to be really, really easy. In

00:08:01.860 other words, if you're not super motivated to do something, the only way that you'll do it if it's

00:08:07.000 really, really easy to do. On the flip side, if a behavior is hard to do, the only thing that puts

00:08:14.700 you above the action line, the only thing gets action is if your motivation is high. So they're

00:08:20.980 understanding that motivation and ability. I used to talk about it as trade-offs. It's not really a

00:08:26.340 trade-off. They compensate for each other. And that actually was that insight that led to developing the

00:08:33.360 tiny habits method. As I looked at my own graphic, the two-dimensional version, I saw on the lower

00:08:40.020 right-hand corner, a space where if the motivation's low, you could still do the behavior if it's easy

00:08:49.220 enough, if you make it radically easy. So boom, there's some motivation. It's not zero. And you make

00:08:54.840 it really easy. That means the only thing you're lacking is a prompt. And there was a moment when I

00:09:01.000 figured out how to hack the prompt, and then they all came together. And that then became the tiny

00:09:05.300 habits method. So it got derived from looking at my own graphic going, that's a really interesting

00:09:11.060 space right there. The opposite is people picking something hard to do. And if you pick something

00:09:16.800 hard, like I'm going to work out for two hours every day, or I'm going to do CrossFit from now on,

00:09:21.100 or I'm going to save $1,000 a month, that means your motivation has to be high and stay high. You have

00:09:29.680 to sustain motivation. That's really unrealistic. We don't have that much control over our level.

00:09:35.300 of motivation. And that means by setting yourself up for these hard behaviors, these hard changes,

00:09:41.660 you somehow have to magically find a way to keep your motivation high. And that doesn't work very

00:09:47.060 well. So Tiny Habits acknowledges that and says, no, no, scale it back, make it really easy.

00:09:52.280 So you don't have to mess around with motivation, and you don't have to rely on willpower.

00:09:56.480 Well, let's unpack this idea of motivation, because I think you're right. When people decide they want to

00:10:00.200 change a behavior, start a habit, they think, I got to do something really hard, and then I got to

00:10:04.340 motivate myself. And motivation is kind of an interesting part of psychology and behavioral

00:10:09.960 science, because you see different definitions of what motivation is. And there's a different

00:10:13.720 definition for the layperson. I think a layperson thinks, well, motivation is like reading quotes

00:10:18.440 and telling myself mantras. So how do you define motivation in your behavioral model?

00:10:23.700 Well, it's a driving force. It's something that energizes you to do a specific behavior. I don't

00:10:29.640 think of motivation as something that is generalized to everything in your life. Your motivation shifts

00:10:35.580 context by context in some ways, minute by minute. And so say I'm in a context where I'm a researcher

00:10:45.580 at Stanford, that means I'm more motivated to do things that aren't in line with that identity.

00:10:50.180 But if I'm at a family reunion with my family in Idaho, I have different motivations at that time.

00:10:58.520 What had not been studied academically, and this is a huge surprise to me, I'd already mapped out and

00:11:06.680 understood that motivation shifts over time. And along with some of the boot campers I work with,

00:11:12.220 we named that fluctuation, we called it motivation wave. So that phrase, and I really like that phrase,

00:11:18.900 basically, I like it because waves don't always stay high. They come and go, they're big ones,

00:11:24.440 they're small ones, they shift. But the academic work on this had not existed until, oh, there's some

00:11:32.260 early sense of it in 1999, and then more work in 2007. In other words, from an academic perspective,

00:11:39.940 really recently, I mean, that may not sound recent to people listening, but work goes back decades and

00:11:46.220 decades. So it's just, in some ways, very surprising that there was no acknowledgement

00:11:51.740 or research around shifts in motivation until relatively recently. And the fact is, we've all

00:11:59.600 experienced that in our life, people get really motivated in early January, and the motivation

00:12:03.760 drops off, we get motivated for something else around February 14, we get motivated for something

00:12:08.680 else around April 15, which in the US is taxes. And so we have different motivations that shift over time.

00:12:14.900 One of the key, what shall I say, challenges is that when people sit down, and you said this well,

00:12:22.160 and said, hey, I'm going to change, I'm going to do these big things. At that moment, when they're

00:12:27.320 making those decisions and making the plan, yes, their motivation is high. And in that moment,

00:12:34.000 they can do hard things. What we seem to be terrible as human beings is projecting our future levels of

00:12:43.520 motivation. Even though we've seen that, oh, you know, two weeks from now, I may not be so motivated,

00:12:48.260 we seem to make the same mistake over and over and over. And we just assume that we'll be able to

00:12:53.060 sustain high levels of motivation, which doesn't work. And that's what tiny habits is. Well, in some

00:13:01.640 ways in the book, I attacked is too strong a word. I dismantle that. I'm just like, hey, people be

00:13:08.380 realistic about what happens with human motivation. And there's no magic way to keep it sustained.

00:13:14.120 And there's a much better way to create habits that doesn't require you to rely on high levels

00:13:19.140 of motivation. And the other problem you talk about with motivation is that people get motivated

00:13:24.080 towards abstract ideas, right? It's like, lose weight. It's like, well, okay, but are you motivated

00:13:30.480 to do the things to lose weight? You have to look at behaviors that will allow you to achieve that goal.

00:13:35.800 Yeah. And you're right on. You know, there is, what doesn't work is trying to motivate yourself

00:13:42.720 toward an abstraction like lose weight. You know, that is an abstract thing because you can't in this

00:13:48.320 moment lose weight. You can drop down and do 20 or 30 or maybe 50 pushups in this moment. So that's a

00:13:53.800 behavior, but lose weight is not a behavior. It's an outcome. It's a result of doing other behaviors.

00:13:59.660 So one of the methods I developed over the years was a way to take that outcome or the aspiration,

00:14:08.540 that vague abstract thing, and then break it down into specific behaviors that you can then design

00:14:15.880 for. And that's a couple methods put together that I explain in Tiny Habits that can be really

00:14:24.800 liberating and insightful. Somebody might have motivation to reduce their stress. In fact,

00:14:30.920 probably everybody listening to this. I mean, stress is a massive issue right now in our world

00:14:35.360 and in some ways just getting worse. And so you might just motivating yourself to reduce stress,

00:14:41.060 as you can tell, isn't the best answer. But then some people might guess at the solution and I'm

00:14:47.600 against guessing and there's a systematic way to do it, but the guess might be, oh, I'll meditate for 30

00:14:52.680 minutes a day. That's how I reduce my stress. Well, that might be a good match for people or it might

00:14:58.520 not. For some people, it's a terrific match. For many people, it's a very challenging habit to wire in,

00:15:04.360 especially meditating 30 minutes. So instead of having people go the wrong direction and just focus on

00:15:11.500 these abstract things, and instead of having people just guessing, I love systems. Even since I was a

00:15:21.720 kid, let's systematize it. And that's what behavior design is. It's a system step-by-step so you don't

00:15:26.880 have to guess. And by following the steps, you can derive what is the best new habit for you that

00:15:34.780 will help you reduce stress or lose weight or be more productive or whatever you want. And that means

00:15:42.520 that you can move forward with confidence that you are figuring out the right behavior.

00:15:48.040 I call that the golden behavior or a set of behaviors, golden behaviors. And then you can put

00:15:54.680 the, you can make those a reality in your life much more readily than I guess, like meditating for 30

00:16:01.100 minutes. So I thought it was interesting there. You said that you're looking for matches and behavior.

00:16:04.980 So you're trying to find something that you would already want to do. That's one of your principles

00:16:09.240 throughout this, like help people do what they already want to do. Yeah. Yeah. And it comes down to

00:16:14.740 three criteria. So if you're looking for a habit or behavior change to help you reach whatever

00:16:22.460 aspiration, the best matches, the golden behaviors have these three characteristics. Number one,

00:16:30.020 it's a behavior that you want to do. So if you want to be more active, don't pick an exercise that you

00:16:37.520 hate or a behavior you hate. Find something you want to do. In my life, when I'm in Maui, it's surfing.

00:16:42.460 I am just crazy passionate about that. So not everybody has it available to them, but dancing

00:16:47.840 or group activities. Number two, make sure it's a behavior you can do. So again, surfing is not

00:16:55.380 available to people who don't live by waves and dancing may not be available to people who don't

00:17:00.860 have any kind of dance resource, but if they want to dance with other people. And then the third

00:17:06.920 criterion, this is important, it needs to be a behavior that will have impact, that will actually

00:17:12.600 take you toward your aspiration or outcome. A negative example of this or a bad example,

00:17:19.080 and some people are going to hate me for this, is people are set up to believe that taking 10,000

00:17:25.080 steps a day will lead to weight loss. I challenge that notion. I don't think 10,000 steps a day is very

00:17:32.740 effective at weight loss. It's great at other things and it's great to do, but weight loss is

00:17:37.840 primarily a function of nutrition. And then after that, in my amateur opinion, I would say strength

00:17:43.680 training. But people have believed the media or the advertising around 10,000 steps and they may

00:17:52.320 match themselves with that. And as they do it, they're not seeing the weight loss. So what it's

00:17:56.000 lacking, there's that third criteria of it being impactful, of it being effective. And I've done

00:18:02.580 this too. I mean, on my journey to lose weight and keep it off, I somehow thought that popcorn was a

00:18:09.820 healthy snack. It turns out it was an awful snack, but that's what I thought. I thought that nonfat

00:18:15.340 yogurt was a great snack. It turns out it's exactly wrong for me. And so matching yourself carefully

00:18:22.300 matters. So again, it's behaviors you want to do, you can do, and that will be effective. That will

00:18:27.420 have impact. So instead of relying on motivation, instead of pumping yourself up, the idea is match

00:18:32.280 yourself with behaviors you want to do. And that sort of connects to ability too, because you want

00:18:36.760 to find behaviors that are easy to do. Like you want to make it easy for yourself, not harder.

00:18:42.620 Right. Or if you already have, I mean, we'll go back to surfing. My motivation for that is pretty

00:18:48.240 darn high. And so that means it can be a little harder to do. So that means, you know, I don't

00:18:54.740 have to just walk out to the waves. I drive about 12 minutes and get my board off my little Honda

00:18:59.740 element and get in. However, here in California at my home gym, I can't surf. I have an aerosol bike in

00:19:09.660 my home gym here in the garage. Those are terrible. Yeah. I don't love it, but it's okay. And so

00:19:15.880 what I, you know, so that is 15 feet away from me. Okay. I'm exaggerating. It's 20 feet away from me.

00:19:23.080 And so it's so easy to just go get on the aerosol because I know there's going to be days when my

00:19:28.000 motivation is not that high. So I've designed my contacts. So it's just so easy. And then I further

00:19:34.320 trick myself on the days that I'm feeling too tired to go work out. I make it even easier. I just

00:19:42.020 say to myself, PJ, just do four minutes on the aerosol and you don't even have to go hard four

00:19:47.080 minutes and you're done. You don't even have to dress out, just wear whatever you're wearing.

00:19:51.720 And what I've found in my life and other people have found this too, is it about three and a half

00:19:58.460 minutes. Yeah. I'm not motivated. I'm like, okay, I'm getting this done. I'm getting, you know,

00:20:01.960 I'm not going hard like a CrossFit, but about three and a half minutes, my something changes in me

00:20:08.520 and I want to keep going. So even though I know when I say I'm just going to do four minutes,

00:20:14.420 yeah, odds are I'm going to keep going. Sometimes I stop, but it's, you know, how do you make it so

00:20:20.360 easy that low motivation won't tank you? You'll still do it. Or in this case, with tricking myself

00:20:26.820 on the aerosol, you'll still get started, you know, scale it back. What's four minutes? You know,

00:20:31.040 I can do that. And as a result, I get the workout here in California.

00:20:35.960 We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

00:20:38.000 And now back to the show. So with ability, you're, you're, you're kind of jiggering with

00:20:43.580 things like time, like reduce the amount of time to make it easier or just put the stuff closer to

00:20:48.160 you. So it's easier. Like, or like you're talking about, you're about food, like, you know, weight

00:20:51.340 loss is driven by what you eat. Well, just make it easy to eat good foods or make it harder to eat

00:20:56.960 bad foods. Bad foods. Yeah, exactly. And there's a model, not the fog behavior model, but a different

00:21:02.640 model and basically has these components. Something can be difficult if it requires time and you don't

00:21:09.400 have time. So the way to make it easier is to shorten the timeframe, like four minutes rather

00:21:14.060 than 30 or 60. I can be difficult if it requires money and you don't have money on the flip side of

00:21:21.660 getting people to drink less soda. When they put a tax on soda, it decreases consumption. And the way

00:21:27.640 they did that is by making it harder to do more expensive. Third is how much physical effort

00:21:33.560 something requires. So for me, knowing here in California, there's going to be moments where I'm

00:21:38.440 not so motivated to work out. Guess what? The gym's 20 feet away. So I've reduced the physical effort.

00:21:44.760 And then the last one I'll talk about is mental effort, how much you have to think about stuff.

00:21:49.900 And if something, let's say you want to stop using social media, you can tweak your ability by making

00:21:56.520 your password really difficult and not allowing your app to save the password. So that doesn't

00:22:02.260 mean you can't launch social media. It just makes it harder to do. You have to think harder and it

00:22:06.520 takes more time. And those things together would, if I ran an experiment on that, it would reliably show

00:22:13.240 that people are less likely to use social media if they have really hard passwords that their system

00:22:19.560 didn't store. So there's a systematic way, even that, that, that ability component, then there's a

00:22:25.800 system underneath that, that allows you to hone in on what to tweak in order to get yourself to do the

00:22:32.740 behavior or get yourself to stop doing a behavior. So we talked about motivation. There's high motivation

00:22:38.480 or it's easy to do or more likely to do, but there has to be a prompt. And you said you figured out

00:22:43.620 something with your, you know, 20 years of doing this, that you kind of hacked the prompt. So what

00:22:48.440 are, what are some insights that you've figured out about prompts, make them more effective to get us

00:22:52.740 to do the things we want to do? Yeah. So there is another model for this, and I love models and

00:22:58.940 systems and I'll be brief. There are three sources of prompts. One source is, I call it person prompt.

00:23:05.860 It just comes from you. You just happen to remember or something happens internally like, oh, I'm hungry

00:23:11.020 or I have a headache. Those are prompts. You know, they just come from you. Those are not reliable

00:23:16.240 for the kinds of, most kinds of habits people want to form. Like, I'm just going to remember to go to

00:23:20.460 work out or I'm going to just remember to do my weekly expense report. So bad idea, but they do

00:23:25.520 happen. Next, you have prompts that I call context prompts. We're surrounded by these. Context prompts

00:23:32.720 are things in your environment, whether it's a post-it note, an alarm, a notification on your app,

00:23:37.540 somebody else reminding you. There's tons of these. And then the third type, and this is the hack.

00:23:43.080 This is what tiny habits leverages. It has to do with your existing routine. And I call it an action

00:23:51.760 prompt. So a routine you already do can serve as your prompt for a new habit. So brushing, which pretty

00:24:00.440 much everybody does, can be your reminder or your prompt to floss. Sitting down in your car and turning

00:24:08.560 it on can be your prompt to turn on your audio book so you can listen on the way to work. Now, notice

00:24:16.560 you're not just relying on yourself to remember. You're not like having post-it notes everywhere.

00:24:20.980 What you're doing is designing your routine and you're finding something you already do

00:24:27.940 that can serve as your prompt for a new habit. Well, tell us about your pee push-up prompt.

00:24:36.380 Oh my. Yes. So an odd example, but it totally works for me anyway, is after I pee, I do two push-ups.

00:24:45.320 At least in tiny habits, that's the recipe. After I pee, I will do two push-ups. Well, today I did

00:24:50.940 25 and 12 and 20. So I've peed three times already. I guess that means a lot of water and coffee,

00:24:56.860 but you can do more than two, but the tiny habit is very small. For me, because I work mostly from

00:25:04.360 home, that works really well. It's really after I flush the toilet, I do two push-ups and I can do

00:25:11.680 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.

00:25:18.140 Then I, of course, I wash my hands and I go about my day. So that seems probably odd to a lot of

00:25:24.860 people, but it allows me to, well, it's not even noon and I've done 50 push-ups. It allows me to get

00:25:31.380 some strength training in throughout the day, at least when I'm working at home. And it allows me

00:25:36.760 to almost seamlessly put a new habit into my routine. So it doesn't feel like something that's

00:25:45.160 just bolted on. If you find the right place for new habits, they just feel like that's what I

00:25:50.820 always do. I always, you know, after I go to the bathroom, I do push-ups. Now, if I'm in a public

00:25:55.700 space, I'll do squats. In hotels, I don't really like getting down on the floor. So I'll just do like

00:26:01.560 push-ups against the sink, but it just has become really wired in to do that. So it's, I know that

00:26:10.320 example is really quirky, but some things make total sense. Like after you brush, you will floss

00:26:15.220 one tooth. You know, that makes total sense that you'd floss after you brush.

00:26:18.560 Well, I just like that example. Cause it's like, it takes something that people do every day,

00:26:21.860 multiple times a day, and you built a habit into it. And I think it's, it's very illustrative of that.

00:26:26.440 Well, and do you know what? I'm sure many people listening to this know this. Push-ups are such a

00:26:33.440 good gateway to other kinds of exercises. Even if you only can do a couple wall push-ups or knee push-ups,

00:26:40.320 there's something about it. And I've heard from lots of people on this that makes you,

00:26:45.660 I think there's probably, I think this is my opinion, not my research. I think there's something

00:26:50.500 physiological that happens. And then you do see gains quickly. You do see your arms get stronger

00:26:57.460 and your chest gets stronger. There's something pretty great about push-ups. So for people that

00:27:02.680 can do them safely, if you don't have that habit, figure out where push-ups fit in your life

00:27:08.160 and lower the bar to two, or just wall push-ups. And you can do more when you want to, but you

00:27:15.160 don't have to do more. Just focus on consistency of the habit, not size of the habit.

00:27:21.240 So we talked about the model and throughout this model, you can start using the tiny

00:27:24.580 habits method. And we've been talking about this throughout the thing. Like you look for a prompt,

00:27:29.120 right? When I, when I brush my teeth, I will do X and it can be floss. But the tiny habits thing is

00:27:35.420 like, you don't have to floss all your teeth. You'd start really, really tiny, just one tooth.

00:27:41.580 I know. And that sounds crazy to people, but that's, you know, as we talked about my model,

00:27:46.720 by making it so easy and tiny, then you're not subject or you're not affected by fluctuations in

00:27:53.360 your motivation. So that's the hack is you make it so tiny that this thing about us as human beings,

00:27:58.980 the fluctuating motivation won't get in your way. And also, and this surprises people, maybe even

00:28:06.280 more, as you progress, you will naturally do more push-ups. You will naturally floss all your teeth.

00:28:13.740 But what you don't do is raise the bar on yourself. Okay. That's the old, not very effective way of

00:28:21.520 thinking. It's like, oh, two push-ups. Then I have to do five. Then I have to do 10. Then I have to do 20.

00:28:25.760 And you raise the bar. What you're doing there is you're setting yourself up to fail.

00:28:30.880 The bar always stays low, but you can do more when you want to. And then, and this is part of

00:28:37.800 the mindset of tiny habits. Any extra you do, like I did 25 out of the gate this morning.

00:28:43.680 I only had to do two, but it's like, good for me. Awesome. I did 25. I got extra credit. You know,

00:28:49.080 look at me. There is this thing that happens when you keep the bar low,

00:28:53.320 that when you go above it, that feeling of I'm the kind of person who overachieves then affects you

00:29:01.940 in other parts of your day. It shifts your identity. And it also, I mean, as you do the start,

00:29:08.200 you know, starting small, like your ability increases, right? So if you, when you first start

00:29:13.280 out, you're not going to be able to do 50 push-ups, but as you do two push-ups every day,

00:29:17.080 you're going to get stronger, which will allow you, it'll make it easier to do more push-ups.

00:29:21.440 Exactly. So as exactly, and as it gets easier to do with the same level of motivation,

00:29:27.840 you can do more push-ups because now they're easier to do. That's, that's right on. It's a

00:29:34.860 little bit of a technical point and it might be a little subtle, but that's, yeah, that's how it

00:29:39.080 works. And so for most behaviors, not all, but for most behaviors, the more you do it,

00:29:43.800 the easier it gets to do. And push-ups is a great example because you get better form.

00:29:48.500 You know exactly where to do them in your home and you get stronger.

00:29:53.160 And what I love about the tiny habits method, it's basically a recipe, right? You're just like,

00:29:56.920 after I do this, when I do this, I will do this one really small thing and that's it. And like in

00:30:03.340 the back of the book, I love it. You have like, just like this giant list of tiny habits recipes

00:30:08.000 you can do if you want to be more productive, stay organized, business travels. Like after I walk in

00:30:13.040 the door, I will hang my keys on the door, the key hanger, which you're supposed to do, but like

00:30:18.560 make it, make that connection to that anchor of walking through your door.

00:30:21.940 Yeah. So glad you brought that up. So yeah, in tiny habits, I have an appendix that has 300

00:30:27.440 recipes for tiny habits and there's topics like tiny habits for busy moms, tiny habits for dads who work

00:30:34.880 from home, tiny habits for travel and so on. There's 20 each. And those weren't random guesses. I did

00:30:40.120 some work to figure out what most important topics, including topics like tiny habits for caregivers,

00:30:47.880 which can be crushing emotionally and physically. And I wanted to do a thousand and I had a thousand

00:30:57.300 ready to go. And my publisher was like, oh, BJ, this is like 60 pages. There's no way we're putting 60

00:31:03.980 pages of recipes in the back of the book. We'll give you 300. And I was like, okay, I'll take it.

00:31:10.680 That's book number two, the thousand recipes. So the other insight that I got from this that I've

00:31:16.680 been incorporating with myself and my kids and from tiny habits is not only, okay, you make it easy,

00:31:22.900 the thing you want to do, the habit easy, but also connect it to something you already do. But the one

00:31:27.980 thing that I've been doing and teaching my kids is this idea of celebrating what you do. Why is that

00:31:33.260 so important that you celebrate that you flossed one tooth or that you did two pushups? Because I think

00:31:38.160 people hear that like, I'm going to feel kind of silly celebrating myself. So what's going on there?

00:31:43.840 Let me give the psychological explanation. I would love to hear how you guys are celebrating.

00:31:48.340 So celebration is anything that you can do that will fire off a positive emotion,

00:31:54.580 especially the feeling of success. So for me, a go-to celebration is to do a fist pump and go,

00:32:00.720 awesome. And, or raise my hands over my head. Like after I do, you know, pushups, I go way to go,

00:32:07.400 BJ, you know, kind of the self chair and it helps me feel successful. Now, what works for me may not

00:32:13.080 work for you. It's really, there's, there's a wide variety of approaches. So in tiny habits,

00:32:19.240 I list a hundred different ways to celebrate. And I also give some exercises, really simple ones,

00:32:24.800 where you can figure out what is the natural celebration for you. The reason it matters is

00:32:29.560 this, the emotion you feel as you do the habit is what, as you do the new behavior is what wires it

00:32:38.460 into your brain as a habit. In other words, it's emotions that create habits. So if your brain does

00:32:45.900 pushups and it knows, wow, I'm going to feel awesome after I do these pushups, it's going to remind you,

00:32:51.380 and it's going to want to do pushups in the future. There's actually a physical restructuring

00:32:55.520 of your brain that happens because of the emotion. And this goes in contrast to what

00:33:00.560 probably everybody has heard about repetition. It takes 21 days and 66 days and repetition creates

00:33:07.460 habits. And that's not true. If you look at the research carefully, it correlates with habit formation,

00:33:14.100 but there's no evidence in that research that shows that repetition causes the habit to form.

00:33:19.560 And what causes it is the emotion that you feel. So if you're really good at, let's say you want to

00:33:25.800 drink more water. So really good at pouring the glass of water. I've got a glass of water here in

00:33:30.300 front of me. And as you're doing that, you put it down on your work desk. So that's my habit.

00:33:35.380 Put it, you know, fill a glass of water, put it down. If I can cause myself to feel positive,

00:33:40.580 to feel successful, what I'm doing is making my brain take note of that and wiring that into my brain.

00:33:47.380 So the more effective you are at celebration, the faster you can create habits.

00:33:52.540 Yeah. The one that I, so my son, he's nine, he does the fist pump in the air. He's like,

00:33:56.560 yeah, good. Mine is silly, but it works for me. I, I sort of like, like make the noise for the

00:34:02.960 beginning, like the intro guitar riff of Back in Black by ACDC.

00:34:06.760 Love it. Do you want to give us a demo?

00:34:08.140 You know, I have some songs too. I have, I have the tiger. I have, hey, now you're a rock star,

00:34:20.100 whatever that is. I don't know what the words are.

00:34:22.240 Smash mouth.

00:34:22.620 Following up the music.

00:34:23.720 Yeah.

00:34:24.260 Yeah. Smash mouth. Those work for me. And sound effects sometimes. And so I use different celebrations

00:34:29.440 for different things. If I'm in public, I'm not singing a song or I'm not going do, do, do, do.

00:34:33.980 You know, that's, if I'm in public, then it's just more of a quiet, like you nailed this beach.

00:34:39.140 Good for you.

00:34:39.840 I'll just imagine in my head, ACDC.

00:34:42.920 Now your nine-year-old son, I am so glad you're teaching him. If I could, and I won't ever do this

00:34:49.740 work because I don't work with kids and don't do research on kids. It's a lot more complicated,

00:34:54.020 but I'm hoping somebody will do an intervention where they teach kids fifth grade, you know,

00:35:00.040 nine and 10 years old, how to celebrate in order to wire in habits. And that age before they get all

00:35:08.420 like skeptical and all teenager, like where they have that skill and they learn to apply it. I would

00:35:14.800 just be, wow. I would just love. And I know some parents have done that with their kids like you,

00:35:20.260 but there's not a systematic program for that yet. So delighted to hear that you've shared that with

00:35:26.200 your son and he has a celebration that works. Do you ever find that you celebrate together that he

00:35:30.880 sees you or you see him and you both go, yeah, good for you.

00:35:34.320 Yeah. We started to do that. So like, I see him doing, I'm like, Hey, all right, you did it.

00:35:37.540 It's awesome. We're having fun with it. You know, at first he's kind of, he's a little self,

00:35:40.500 like he's kind of getting that age where he's becoming self-conscious a bit. He's kind of at

00:35:44.360 first like, ah, this is kind of, I'm like, no, that's fine. Go do it. And he does it. So we've got

00:35:47.480 to show him, just go online, find videos of athletes.

00:35:52.940 Yeah. That's where he got it from. He guys, I'm doing the tiger. I'm doing the tiger woods

00:35:56.420 fist bump. Here we go. Find athletes. He admires and just show videos of them

00:36:00.700 excelling and they almost always will celebrate. I mean, just watch what happens when Caleb Dressel,

00:36:10.080 the swimmer, you know, nails it in the 50 free and watch what Serena Williams does when she nails a

00:36:16.760 key serve. And if you, and I, I found that's a helpful way for guys who are skeptical,

00:36:22.800 or kids that think they're too cool. It's like, look at what these athletes do.

00:36:26.960 That's how they wired in these high performance habits.

00:36:30.000 And so we've talked to the tiny method, the tiny habits method. People are probably thinking,

00:36:33.340 oh, well, how's this going to lead to bigger changes? And as you said, as you do this stuff

00:36:37.160 more and more, you're working on consistency, your ability increases. And so you'll be able to

00:36:42.400 start adding more and you don't have to like force it though, but it's just going to come like

00:36:46.200 today I'm going to do 10 pushups instead of two.

00:36:48.780 Yeah. Yeah. So you naturally will do more. So the habit that was designed as tiny,

00:36:55.440 you naturally will do more. So it grows, but also you people naturally do other habits that

00:37:04.080 are related. So there's this ripple effect. And I've seen this in my data since the beginning,

00:37:08.360 I started teaching tiny habits in 2011, you know, five day program online, helping people

00:37:14.560 and measuring it week after week after week. Cause I'm that kind of person. Of course I want to

00:37:18.840 measure stuff. And what I found from the beginning is there are these ripple effects. People make

00:37:25.400 other changes in their life naturally. So for example, let's say somebody wires in the habit

00:37:31.740 of taking three calming breaths. Like after I sit down for my morning lunch break, say they're at work,

00:37:39.200 after they sit down, I'll take three calming breaths and just keep, try to keep my mind free and clear.

00:37:46.340 Once they feel successful doing that habit, what they will find is they start taking those three

00:37:52.320 calming breaths at other parts of their life, even without designing an explicit habit for it.

00:37:58.860 So they, it generalizes. So in my own life, the way that's worked is even, even when I'm sleeping

00:38:05.600 and there's all these things going through my head, like, Oh my gosh, I got this at that. And what's going

00:38:09.520 on here? My students, my class, just, there's this reaction. Once you start thinking and knowing that

00:38:16.420 three calming breaths can shift your level of anxiety, I guess, or your increase your calm, you will

00:38:24.500 naturally start applying that elsewhere in your life. So there is this ripple effect that happens

00:38:28.720 to almost everybody. So you're talking about creating new habits, but you also talk about,

00:38:33.820 well, people would say breaking habits, but you don't actually like that. You say untangle

00:38:37.260 bad habits. So why, why untangle bad habits instead of using breaking bad habits?

00:38:43.020 Yeah. When it comes to stopping behaviors, one phrase that we, people often use that takes us in the

00:38:49.660 wrong direction is breaking a bad habit. I think that's a bad word to use, or maybe not the optimal

00:38:55.960 word because it implies that it happens in a moment. If you just apply enough force in one moment,

00:39:03.420 it's broken. You're done. You're not smoking anymore. You're not drinking. You're not gambling,

00:39:07.900 whatever. And that's not how these habits work. And so instead I outline how you should think about it

00:39:15.180 or can think about it as untangling a bad habit. And that sets up a much better expectation

00:39:23.960 in three ways. Number one, it's not just one behavior. It's a whole bunch of different snarls,

00:39:30.460 whether that's smoking or drinking or snacking or what have you. Let's take snacking. If you think,

00:39:36.660 wow, I really got to stop the habit of bad snacking. There's probably a variety of times during the day

00:39:41.880 when you snack. And so think of each one of those as a tangle on this big knot.

00:39:45.760 And what you do is you find the easiest tangle and you get rid of that one first. You don't start

00:39:52.520 with the hardest one. You start with the easiest one. Then you go to the next easiest and so on.

00:39:58.060 And the other reason I really like untangling is that it sets up, when you see a big tangle,

00:40:05.240 even if it's just with your phone headset, it's all tangled up. You look at it and you have no idea

00:40:10.140 how to solve it instantly. But you know if you just untangle one thing and then you know you can

00:40:15.820 get it done. And I think for a lot of these bad habits, that's how people feel. They look at

00:40:22.020 something that they're overwhelmed. How do I stop this smoking habit or this snacking habit or snapping

00:40:29.760 at my kids? And it might just seem like, I don't know how to get this undone. But just like untangling a

00:40:35.860 cord, it's a process. And if you just start with the first thing and then do the next thing,

00:40:40.720 you can do it.

00:40:42.120 Yeah. So that involves, it's sort of using this behavioral model again. Going back, you said,

00:40:45.280 okay, my habit is, or the thing I want to do is stop spending so much time on social media.

00:40:49.960 Well, that's sort of abstract. There's a lot of behaviors associated with that. So you

00:40:53.600 sort of do like a sort of a brainstorm. What are all the behaviors that I do that cause me to

00:40:58.780 surf on social media all the time? And then you go for the easy one. Stop the easy one first.

00:41:03.780 And then you use this stuff of like, okay, I can make it harder. So, you know, making it harder,

00:41:09.240 if I make it harder to do, I'm less likely to do it or increase my motivation. And then also find a

00:41:14.620 prompt there and like find out what the prompt is, maybe eliminate that prompt. And I imagine as

00:41:18.320 people start doing, working with this model and the method, like it's a skill that they get better

00:41:23.840 at. Like it actually gets easier to do behavior change. Yeah. And I think the best, and this is not in

00:41:30.420 the book, the best analogy is maybe driving. Before you learn how to drive, it's like, oh my gosh,

00:41:38.240 how do I do that? It feels so complicated. I'm scared to do it. But now once you've learned how

00:41:45.240 and you've done it, it's just like easy. You don't even think about it. Behavior change seems

00:41:50.680 complicated, overwhelming. People are afraid of it, but you can learn the skills of change to the point

00:41:56.520 where it's like, no big deal. Like if you want to create a new habit, you do it. If you want to

00:42:01.540 design a habit out of your life, you do it. And you don't make a big deal of it. Just like you don't

00:42:06.560 make a big deal of driving, you know, to the airport. It all starts with a single floss tooth.

00:42:13.380 Ben, it can, you know, I mean, if you can, and I like that not only because it's true,

00:42:20.500 that's how a big part of the method back in 2010, when I was goofing around myself,

00:42:25.900 that was a big deal. Next, your dentist will love you or your hygienist will love you.

00:42:29.800 But it's the same process. You know, the way that you wire in the habit of flossing one tooth

00:42:35.840 is the same way you do all the other habits. So if you're not flossing, start there and learn

00:42:41.180 how the method works, skill up. And then as your skill increases, you can tackle harder and harder

00:42:46.320 things. Well, BJ, where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:42:50.620 Yeah, well, tinyhabits.com about the book and you can buy it at Costco. You can buy

00:42:55.860 it at your independent bookseller, which would be awesome. You can buy it online.

00:43:00.240 And then more generally about me, bjfog.com.

00:43:03.960 Fantastic. Well, BJ Fog, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:43:06.220 Thank you so much.

00:43:07.680 My guest today was Dr. BJ Fog. He is the author of the book,

00:43:10.500 Tiny Habits. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out

00:43:13.960 more information about his work at his website, bjfog.com. That's Fog with two Gs. Also check

00:43:18.960 out our show notes at aom.is slash tinyhabits, where you can find links to resources,

00:43:22.780 where you can delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the

00:43:33.200 AOM Podcast. Check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives,

00:43:37.500 as well as thousands of articles we've written over the years. A lot of them are about habits,

00:43:40.380 so check that out. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast,

00:43:43.340 you can do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to Stitcher Premium, sign up, use code manliness.

00:43:47.500 When you sign up to get a free month trial, once you're signed up, download the Stitcher app

00:43:50.700 on Android or iOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast. And if

00:43:54.600 you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple

00:43:57.660 Podcast or Stitcher, whatever podcast platform you use. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that

00:44:01.880 already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think

00:44:05.820 would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time,

00:44:09.180 this is Brett McKay. Remind you not only listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:44:20.700 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

The Tiny Habits That Change Everything

Episode Stats

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript