Review of Tiny Habits: Small Changes that Change Everything
Author: BJ Fogg, PhD
Pages: 306
Publication date: 2020
Three Take-Aways / Actions:
Set me up for success but setting tiny habits that are extremely low
Celebrate immediately after each success
Remind me that my bad habits are not character flaws, just bad behaviors that need to be adjusted.
Rating 4.5 / 5
BJ Fogg, a Stanford University Ph.D., used his extensive research to develop a methodology to creating lasting, sustained change. His Tiny Habits method espouses the approach of setting tiny, small behaviors that, through repetition, and celebrations can grow to more significant and more impactful change. He gives the example of building a flossing habit by celebrating flossing one tooth a day.
His Tiny Habits recipe is:
After I ….. I will ……. To wire the Habit, I will immediately celebrate by ….
BJ’s approach and mindset are to never personalize your habits but rather be open to adjusting your approach to get what you want out of the Habit and behavior.
He shies away from using willpower. Using the action/celebration chain and not willpower will drive change. He argues that willpower takes too much effort and adds unnecessary friction to the process.
To BJ, Motivation and Ability are the critical factors in determining the success of the behavior becoming repeated. You need to increase motivation and or ability to get the action outside the Action Line. Motivation and ability are complimentary. The amount you have of one affects the amount you need of the other.
Another critical facet BJ offers is the no behavior happens without a prompt. And the most essential prompts are action prompts. Prompts are imperative and vital in developing positive behaviors and habits and stopping unwanted ones.
BJ is all about striving for improvement and consistency and not perfection. Don’t get into a burst or bust situation. Consistent execution of your prompt, habit/behavior, and celebration will reinforce and grow your habits.
The action prompt needs to be precise as possible to help reduce the inherent friction. You want to reduce the need to think about what the prompt COULD be. You want to make it almost automatic. Positive emotions (built through celebrations) make the behavior even intuitive.
BJ also notes that hope and fear push against each other, and the net is your motivation. Works towards increasing your hope and reducing your fears.
In the end, habit creation is about mindset. Here are four successful keys to a great mindset:
Be open, flexible, and curious about the possibilities.
Lower your expectations for success
Celebrate every success
Change your process, don’t personalize your actions / bad habits.
You can’t force change on others.
When working with others, you need to help others do what they already want to do; you are influencing others, not trying to force change.
This is a great book and worth your time. In the end, after making tiny Habits, you should be able to ask yourself, “I now see me as the kind of person who…..”
Celebrate Small to Go Big
I celebrate small to go big. Here is how I do it.
Tiny habits. I have been going through BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits book. I’ll have a review published shortly. Using Fogg’s techniques in the book, I have made significant, consistent improvements in critical areas.
“I change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad”
That is BJ Fogg’s maxim on change, and it is working for me. I’m not relying on willpower or “grit” daily to complete my habit items. Instead, I have the bar set low and celebrate right away.
To develop actions into habits for critical areas, I set a small, easily achievable daily target. Don’t laugh, but I mean small; Reading – 1 page.
Content Creation 5 min. Yes, I set the success bar that low.
I read one page and then immediately celebrate. What happens?
I get a dose of dopamine; I get another dose when I check it off in Streaks (the Habit tracking app I use). Same thing with content creation. Using the timing app MultiTimer (here is my review) to count down for 5 min. When the timer goes off, I give a little clap and celebrate. What tends to happen is I just sit back down and continue writing. Long past 5 min.
What makes this successful is that after I celebrate, psychologically, the pressure is off on keeping my streaks alive and achieving my daily goals. And what is interesting is what happens next. I read continuously throughout the day.
A physical book, my phone’s Kindle app when I have a second, even before tennis starts on my Kindle. I end up reading probably 30 minutes a day. All stress-free and in my minds’ eye, “extra reading.” I feel great; I don’t have the stress of coming to the end of the day and needing to read 10 pages or something. I have cleared all I need to do in the morning and feel great. Really works for me.
Same works for exercise.
I started my strength habit by doing 1 exercise. Yes, I go down and do a curl or even a few wrist exercises and check it off. What has that turned into? Anywhere from 25 – 60 min of strength 4 days a week. But I am sure to check off the Streaks app.
So, I would look to set yourself up for success low, build that habit, feel good about what you are doing and go from there.
What techniques do you use for setting habits? Share with all of us in the comments below.
Add Value with Tracking
What you track needs to add value. No matter what you track, be it habits, workouts, investment performance, or as Olof Hoverfält does, every piece of clothing he wears for the last 3+ years. Don’t track to track; make sure you use the tracking information to add value to your life. Today ask yourself “Why am I tracking this?