BJ Fogg: The Secret to Making New Habits Stick #108
This episode features Professor BJ Fogg, a world-leading expert in behavior change, discussing how to create and stick to new habits. He explains that emotions, not repetition, wire in habits, and emphasizes making changes tiny and easy to foster success and positive identity shifts.
Deep Dive Analysis
19 Topic Outline
Introduction to BJ Fogg and Behavior Design Principles
Behavior Design's Universal Application and Instagram's Origin
Understanding Why Information Doesn't Lead to Action
The Critical Role of Feeling Successful in Habit Formation
Case Study: Transforming a Patient's Exercise Habit
Ripple Effects of Tiny Habits and Identity Shift
Critique of Traditional Behavior Change Programs
Common Aspirations for Habit Change
Challenges and Reframing Meditation as a Habit
The Garden Analogy for Flexible Habit Cultivation
Three Steps to Create Any New Habit
The 'Extra Credit' Mindset for Habit Expansion
Understanding the Motivation Wave
Behavior Change as a Learnable Skill
Troubleshooting and Untangling Bad Habits
Debunking Habit Formation Duration Myths
Prediction: The Rise of Post-Digital Behavior
Life Lessons from Learning Musical Instruments
Three Simple Tips for Daily Life
7 Key Concepts
Behavior Design
Behavior design is a framework comprising models and methods for thinking clearly about human behavior and designing for change. It originated from research at Stanford University in 2010, aiming to understand and positively influence human actions.
Feeling of Success
The feeling of success is the primary mechanism that 'wires in' a new habit, making the behavior more automatic and increasing the likelihood of future repetition. This emotional response, rather than mere repetition, signals to the brain that the behavior is valuable.
Success Momentum
Success momentum describes the increase in confidence, or self-efficacy, that individuals gain from successfully performing behaviors. This heightened confidence helps them navigate roadblocks and challenges more effectively, fostering a belief in their ability to change.
Motivation Wave
The motivation wave illustrates that motivation naturally fluctuates, rising and falling over time, rather than remaining constant. This concept highlights that relying solely on high motivation for behavior change is unreliable, necessitating strategies that account for periods of low motivation.
Untangling Bad Habits
Instead of trying to 'break' bad habits through forceful, one-time efforts, 'untangling' them involves a systematic process of addressing the easiest components first. This approach, likened to untangling Christmas lights, sets a more realistic expectation for gradual and effective change.
Behavior Change as a Skill
Behavior change is not an inherent trait but a learnable set of skills, similar to mastering a musical instrument. These skills include knowing how to scale behaviors down, identify natural prompts, celebrate successes, and troubleshoot when behaviors don't occur.
Feather Principle
The Feather Principle refers to the pursuit of the simplest thing that yields the biggest impact. In behavior design, this means constantly striving for elegant solutions that are both simple to implement and powerful in their effect on behavior.
7 Questions Answered
People may not know the specific actions to take, or they might be discouraged by past failures, self-criticism, and difficult life circumstances. Additionally, many traditional behavior change programs are poorly designed and set people up to fail.
Meditation is often challenging to habituate because people typically don't feel successful when they start; instead, they become acutely aware of their busy minds, which can lead to feelings of inadequacy rather than calm or achievement.
The idea that it takes a specific number of days (like 21 or 66) is based on outdated paradigms. Habit formation is driven by emotional experiences, not just repetition, and some habits can form almost instantly if they provide an immediate positive feeling.
People commonly seek help with habits related to fitness, energy levels, and productivity, as well as helping their children develop positive habits. Staying focused is also a growing concern in the digital age.
This analogy suggests that habits need to be nurtured and can be transplanted or evolved. If a habit isn't flourishing in one area of life or at a particular time, it's okay to redesign it, move on, or try it again later, rather than blaming oneself for failure.
The language and analogies we use can be either helpful or unhelpful in shaping our mindset towards behavior change. For example, 'untangling' a bad habit sets a more realistic expectation for a gradual process than 'breaking' it, which implies a single, forceful action.
Learning a musical instrument teaches valuable skills applicable to behavior change, such as accepting mistakes as part of the process, understanding that perfection isn't the goal, and the importance of consistent, correct practice to improve.
33 Actionable Insights
1. Feeling of Success Wires Habits
When trying to form a new habit, ensure you feel successful after performing the behavior, as emotions, not mere repetition, are what truly wire habits into your brain.
2. Scale Down to Tiny
To create new habits, scale the desired behavior down to be super tiny and easy to accomplish, ensuring a feeling of success to reinforce the action.
3. Three Steps to New Habits
To create a new habit, first scale the desired behavior down to be super tiny, then find a natural trigger in your existing routine, and finally, celebrate or help yourself feel good immediately after performing the tiny behavior.
4. Don’t Blame Past Failures
If past attempts at behavior change have failed, understand that it’s likely due to poorly designed programs or methods, not a personal lack of motivation or willpower, which can reduce self-blame and encourage new attempts.
5. Prioritize Ease in Change
When attempting any behavior change, fundamentally prioritize making the desired action as easy as possible to perform, as this is a critical factor for consistent success.
6. Understand Motivation Waves
Recognize that motivation naturally fluctuates like a wave, so don’t rely on high motivation for long-term consistency, and plan for periods when motivation will be low.
7. Behavior Change is a Skill
Approach behavior change as a set of learnable skills, rather than an innate ability, which empowers you to actively practice and improve your capacity for change over time.
8. Systematic Habit Troubleshooting
If a desired behavior isn’t happening, systematically troubleshoot by first checking for a prompt, then assessing if it’s too difficult (ability) and making it easier, and only then considering if it’s a motivation issue, in which case you might choose a different habit.
9. Untangle Bad Habits
Instead of trying to ‘break’ bad habits with sheer force, view them as tangled cords that need to be ‘untangled’ gradually, which sets a more realistic expectation for the process.
10. Don’t Raise Bar Prematurely
When forming a new habit, resist the urge to automatically increase the difficulty or quantity of the behavior; keep the bar low to ensure consistent success and avoid setting yourself up for failure.
11. Embrace Playfulness in Habits
Approach behavior change with a playful, experimental mindset, exploring different approaches and redesigning as needed, rather than striving for perfection, to find what truly fits and makes the process enjoyable.
12. Build Success Momentum
Consistently engage in behaviors that allow you to feel successful to build ‘success momentum,’ which increases confidence and self-efficacy, enabling you to overcome future challenges more effectively.
13. Focus on One Small Change
Instead of attempting many large changes simultaneously, concentrate on helping yourself or others feel successful with one very small behavior, as this can lead to significant ripple effects and broader positive changes.
14. Identify Personal Leverage Points
When guiding behavior change, identify what the individual is passionate about and what they can easily do, then start there to maximize the likelihood of success and positive emotional reinforcement.
15. Evolve Habits Like Garden
View your habits as a garden; be flexible, evolve them over time, and don’t be afraid to remove or replace habits that no longer serve you or fit your current life circumstances.
16. Consider Habit Timing & Fit
Before starting a new habit, consider where it naturally fits into your life and if it’s the right time of year or life stage for it to flourish; if it doesn’t take root, don’t blame yourself, but reconsider its placement or timing.
17. Redesign or Abandon Habits
If a habit isn’t working, redesign it to make it easier or a better fit; if it still doesn’t stick, don’t force it, but move on to other habits that might be more suitable for your current situation.
18. Learn When Motivation is High
Leverage periods of high motivation to learn the mechanics of a new behavior, so that when motivation inevitably wanes, the behavior is already familiar and requires less effort to initiate.
19. Minimize Steps for Behavior
To increase the likelihood of performing a new behavior, reduce the number of steps required to initiate it, as more steps create more opportunities to procrastinate or give up.
20. Foster Autonomy in Habits
Allow individuals to feel in control of their habit formation process, letting them choose when and how much to do, rather than dictating actions, to increase long-term adherence and personal investment.
21. Positive Emotions Automate Behavior
Actively seek or create a net gain in positive emotions immediately after performing a desired behavior, as this emotional reward is what makes the behavior automatic and habitual.
22. Ensure All Three Factors
To initiate any behavior or habit, ensure that all three essential factors are present: sufficient motivation, the ability to perform the action, and a clear prompt to trigger it.
23. Remove Factors to Stop
To stop an unwanted behavior, strategically remove one or more of its core components: reduce motivation, make it harder to do (remove ability), or eliminate the prompt that triggers it.
24. Untangle Easiest Bad Habits First
To untangle a bad habit, identify the easiest or least ingrained instance of the behavior and address that first, then progressively move to the next easiest, rather than tackling the most difficult one initially.
25. Small Untangling, Big Changes
Focus on untangling a few of the easier instances of a bad habit, as this often leads to the remaining, more difficult instances diminishing in impact or disappearing on their own.
26. Reconsider Traditional Goals
If traditional methods like setting ambitious goals and daily tracking lead to feelings of failure, set them aside, as you might be able to change your behavior more effectively without them.
27. Develop Self-Pacing Skill
Cultivate the skill of knowing when to push yourself to do more than the minimum and when to simply do the minimum (and celebrate it), especially on busy or low-motivation days, to maintain consistency.
28. View Extra Effort as Credit
If you feel motivated to do more than your tiny habit, do it, but consider it ’extra credit’ rather than a new minimum, ensuring that your baseline remains easy to achieve on days when motivation is low.
29. Offset Pain with Celebration
If you push yourself to the point of pain during a behavior, compensate by celebrating ’extra hard’ immediately afterward, as this strong positive emotion can help prevent the negative experience from undermining the habit.
30. Normalize Waning Motivation
When your motivation wanes, avoid self-blame by recognizing that this is a normal part of the ‘motivation wave,’ which can help you persist rather than giving up.
31. Start Day with Affirmation
Immediately upon waking and standing up, say ‘It’s going to be a great day’ to yourself, even if you don’t fully believe it, to start your day with a positive mindset.
32. Practice Empathy When Frustrated
Use moments of frustration with others as a prompt to remind yourself that ’everybody’s doing the best they can’ and ’nobody tries to screw up,’ fostering empathy and patience.
33. Appreciate Body in Shower
When you turn on the shower, use the waiting time for the water to warm up as a prompt to think of one new positive thing about your body each time, fostering appreciation for your physical self.
7 Key Quotes
The feeling of success is what wires in the habit. It's not repetition. Emotions create habits.
BJ Fogg
If you've tried to change your behavior in the past and you didn't succeed, it is very likely not your fault.
BJ Fogg
You don't have to have people change 40 things at once or do this huge thing. You just have to help them feel successful on something really, really small.
BJ Fogg
If you raise the bar on yourself, you're headed in the wrong direction.
BJ Fogg
You don't break a bad habit, you untangle it.
BJ Fogg
A movement to be post digital will emerge in 2020. We will start to realize that being chained to your mobile phone is a low status behavior, similar to smoking.
BJ Fogg
It's not about having the biggest, most complicated ideas. It's about making them actionable.
Patrick Soupies (quoted by BJ Fogg)
6 Protocols
Creating a New Habit (Tiny Habits Method)
BJ Fogg- Take the desired behavior and scale it down to be super tiny (e.g., two push-ups, floss one tooth).
- Find where the tiny behavior fits naturally in your routine, identifying what it comes after (e.g., 'After I brush, I will floss one tooth').
- When you perform the new behavior, help yourself feel good about it using a technique like 'celebration' to rewire your brain with a positive emotion.
Untangling Bad Habits
BJ Fogg- Identify the bad habit you want to change.
- Instead of trying to 'break' it with force, think of it like untangling Christmas lights.
- Start with the easiest aspect or instance of the bad habit to untangle, rather than the hardest or most ingrained one.
- Address the next easiest one, and so on, understanding it's a gradual process.
Troubleshooting Behavior Change
BJ Fogg- If a desired behavior isn't happening, first check for a 'prompt' (a reminder to do it). If missing, set one up.
- If prompted but still not doing it, next check 'ability' (is it too hard?). If so, make it easier.
- If prompted and it's super easy, and still not doing it, then it's a 'motivation' problem. For a self-created habit, consider if you truly want this habit and potentially pick something else.
The Maui Habit (Morning Routine)
BJ Fogg- As soon as your feet hit the floor in the morning (or as soon as you're standing up).
- Say, 'It's going to be a great day.' (Even if you don't believe it, say it anyway).
Empathy Prompt (Dealing with Frustration)
BJ Fogg- When you feel frustrated with someone (e.g., a driver, someone in line, spouse, child).
- Let that frustration be your prompt to think, 'Everybody's doing the best they can. Nobody tries to screw up.'
Body Appreciation (Shower Routine)
BJ Fogg- As soon as you turn on the shower (while waiting for it to get warm).
- Think of one positive thing about your body. (Aim to find a new positive thing each time).