Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(25)

Sarika and the founders of Instagram were able to overcome a fundamental change myth and find success because they capitalized on the most reliable way to drive behavior—fiddling with the ability dial and making things easy. While I’m primarily focusing on habits in this book, making things easy to do will help you with almost any behavior. I’ll talk specifically about how to solve for those one-time actions you’ve been putting off and also give you more tools to help you design the life you want. You’ll be able to use these new skills to tackle big long-term goals. With Behavior Design, you have enormous potential. Whether the change you’re aiming for is big or small, tiny is where we start.





Steps in Behavior Design




Step 1: Clarify the Aspiration



Step 2: Explore Behavior Options



Step 3: Match with Specific Behaviors



Step 4: Start Tiny





Using Ability to Create Habits


The reason we want to make a behavior easy to do—which often means starting tiny—is so the unpredictability of the Motivation Monkey doesn’t mess up our future success. In order to do a behavior, motivation and ability have to exist in sufficient amounts to put you above the Action Line in the Behavior Model. We’ve already established that motivation is unreliable. Luckily, ability is not. By looking at where our ability lands on the Behavior Model, we get a good idea of what behaviors are more or less likely to become habit. Let’s say you want to do twenty push-ups every day. Here’s what that behavior looks like mapped on the Behavior Model.





At most times of the day, your motivation to do twenty push-ups is probably on the low end, which pushes you to the bottom half of the vertical axis. On the horizontal axis, this behavior is located almost all the way to the left because this is hard for you. Both of these inputs place the behavior well beneath the Action Line. This tells us that doing twenty push-ups at a time is unlikely to become a habit for most people. Because your ability is so low, you’ll only do this behavior on days when you’re riding the Motivation Wave. (And that’s not very often.)

But here’s what it would look like if your new habit was to do two push-ups against a wall.





When we look at the vertical motivation axis, we see that it’s similar to the twenty-push-ups version. But there’s an important difference: Two push-ups against a wall has moved you all the way to the right on the horizontal axis. Notice that if you make a behavior easy to do your motivation can still be low but you will be above the Action Line. This is one of the hacks in the Tiny Habits method: Make the behavior so tiny that you don’t need much motivation. Doing two push-ups against a wall is easy to accomplish so you’re much more likely to keep it as a habit.

When you are designing a new habit, you are really designing for consistency. And for that result, you’ll find that simplicity is the key. Or as I like to teach my students: Simplicity changes behavior.

If you want to do a habit consistently, you’ve got to adjust the most reliable thing in the B=MAP model—ability. That’s where we have the most power to stack the deck in our favor. If a behavior is hard, make it easier to do. You’ll see that over time your motivation will vary, but your ability will improve the more you do your new habit. And that increase in ability helps your habit grow.

Here’s a model showing how it would look if you consistently did two push-ups against a wall for a couple of weeks.





Fogg Behavior Model





Every day you do the behavior, you build a bit more muscle strength, flexibility, and skill. This makes the behavior easier and easier to do, moving the behavior farther and farther to the right on the horizontal axis. (And if you feel successful, your motivation will also increase. More on that in the next chapter.)

When you set motivation aside and design your habits by manipulating ability, you might be surprised at how quickly your habits take hold and grow. I learned this early on when I was experimenting with creating my own Tiny Habits before I was even calling them that. I had already figured out the Behavior Model, and I knew that the ability component of B=MAP was critical to making a behavior happen consistently over time. But I had used this only in my research at Stanford and when I was helping professionals to design new products and services. I hadn’t shifted to the arena of personal change.

Until one day.

I was in the dentist’s chair being gently chastised (again) for not flossing my teeth.

Embarrassing, right? There I was, a behavior scientist, and I couldn’t get myself to floss daily. Some days I was motivated (like the day after a dentist visit), but other times I didn’t care so much. The Motivation Monkey was winning.

But I was pretty sure I could make flossing a daily habit if I focused on the ability component of my Behavior Model.

As the hygienist went to get the dentist for a final check, I asked myself: How can I make flossing easier to do?

I came up with an answer though I didn’t dare tell my hygienist. She would have been horrified.

I decided to floss just one tooth.

Seriously.

After I brushed my teeth in the morning, I would floss one tooth.





My Recipe—Tiny Habits Method


After I . . .