Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(22)

(Update: I have since stopped putting Millie in her crate at night. Imagining what it was like to be locked up in a crate made me feel guilty. And I don’t like feeling that way, so I ended this habit. And that was the right thing to do: You should feel free to revise whenever a new habit ends up being not what you wanted.)

If you’re like most people, when you’re done sorting your Focus Map, you’ll look at the Golden Behaviors and feel optimistic and energized. What you want to do and what you can do will converge into what you most likely will do, and that’s the most fertile ground for growing habits.

In the Tiny Habits method, I teach people to think about their new habits as small seeds. If you plant a good seed in the right spot, it will grow without coaxing. Starting with behaviors that you can and want to do makes for a good seed. Choosing behaviors that set you up for success increases your confidence and mastery as you go, thus increasing your natural motivation to do bigger and bigger behaviors. But it all starts small and honest and specific.

We should be dreamy about aspirations but not about the behaviors that will get us there. Behaviors are grounded. Concrete. They are the handholds and footholds that get you up the rock face. Your path to the top is your own, and you choose your behaviors according to the particular rock you are climbing.

Matching yourself with the right behaviors is the most critical step in the Behavior Design process and an important place to return to when troubleshooting.





Steps in Behavior Design




Step 1: Clarify the Aspiration



Step 2: Explore Behavior Options



Step 3: Match with Specific Behaviors





To review: Clarify your aspiration or outcome, generate a big set of behavior options, and match yourself with specific Golden Behaviors. That’s how you put Behavior Design into practice in your own life. And it’s also how you match yourself with the best habits for doing Tiny Habits.

You can use Behavior Design at work to design a wellness program, recruit the best talent, and create habits for productivity. These methods I’m sharing are the most practical, powerful, and reliable way to succeed on your professional projects. The concepts can be applied broadly: Tiny Habits for Better Meetings, Tiny Habits for Working Moms, Tiny Habits for Effective Teamwork, and many more.



The next step in the process of Behavior Design is to make things as simple as possible. The kind of simplicity I’m talking about may surprise you. Everyone has heard of taking baby steps, but I realized years ago that no one was taking this approach quite far enough in the world of behavior change. So I did. And that created breakthroughs. In the next chapter, I’ll help you see what tiny really means and how to make your Golden Behaviors a reality by starting intentionally, purposefully, and radically small.





Tiny Exercises to Practice Behavior Design


In the first exercise, I’m going to define the aspiration for you: Get better sleep. In the second exercise, you’ll come up with your own aspiration.





EXERCISE #1: A SHORTCUT FOR BEHAVIOR MATCHING


Step 1: Draw a cloud on a piece of paper.



Step 2: Write the aspiration “Get better sleep” inside the cloud.



Step 3: Come up with ten or more behaviors that would lead you to your aspiration of getting better sleep. Write each behavior outside the cloud with arrows pointing toward the cloud. You’ve now created your Swarm of Behaviors.



Step 4: Put a star by four or five behaviors that you believe would be highly effective in reaching your aspiration.



Step 5: Circle any effective behavior that you can easily get yourself to do. Be realistic.



Step 6: Find the behaviors that have both a star and a circle. Those are your Golden Behaviors.



Step 7: Design a way to make your Golden Behaviors a reality in your life. Do your best with this step. I haven’t yet explained how to systematically design a solution, so use your intuition for now.





EXERCISE #2: FOCUS MAPPING TO FIND GOLDEN BEHAVIORS


Pick your own aspiration this time and use Focus Mapping (not stars and circles) to match yourself with the Golden Behaviors.



Step 1: Draw a cloud on a piece of paper.



Step 2: Write your aspiration inside the cloud. (If you can’t think of anything, write “Reduce my stress.”)



Step 3: Come up with ten or more behaviors that would lead you to your aspiration. Write each behavior outside the cloud with arrows pointing toward the cloud.



Step 4: Write each of the ten behaviors on a card or a small piece of paper. This is the first step in using Focus Mapping.



Step 5: Sort the behavior cards up and down along the impact dimension. Don’t think about feasibility. Focus on the impact that the behaviors could have. (For guidance, refer to the Focus Mapping graphic a few pages back.)



Step 6: Slide the behavior cards side to side along the feasibility dimension. Be realistic. Can you really get yourself to do these behaviors?



Step 7: Look in the upper right-hand corner. Those are your -Golden Behaviors. (If nothing is in this corner, go back to Step 3.)



Step 8: Design a way to make your Golden Behaviors a reality in your life using your intuition for now. I’ll share a systematic way to do this in a later chapter.