Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(30)
Let’s say you want a habit of doing twenty push-ups every day. Here are the steps to make that behavior easier to do, with questions to guide you.
ANALYSIS PHASE
Ask the Discovery Question: What makes doing twenty push-ups hard to do?
The Ability Chain will give you your answer. In this case, it will most likely be physical effort. That is the link you are solving for.
DESIGN PHASE
Ask the Breakthrough Question:How can I make push-ups easier to do?
Knowing that physical effort is the weakest link, ask yourself which of the ways to make a behavior easier to do will work for you. For the design phase, we turn to the three parts of the PAC model.
Will improving my push-up skills make it easier to do?
Not the full solution, but probably a good idea if you have the motivation.
Will getting the right tools or resources help me to make it easier?
Not really. There are videos that can guide you in the right way to do push-ups, but they don’t make this exercise any easier. And a trainer can’t actually do the push-ups for you.
Can I make twenty push-ups tinier so the new habit is easier to do?
Yes. Doing twenty push-ups requires a lot of physical effort so the best option is to make this habit tinier. There are a few ways to do this. Cutting it down to one push-up, doing a few push-ups on your knees, or doing push-ups against a wall.
No matter what new habit you want to create, these questions and three approaches will guide you through the process of designing your new habit to be easier to do. And these questions will become second nature with practice.
Make a Behavior Easier to Do—Design Flow
* * *
Are you feeling motivated enough to learn a new skill?
Yes? Great—do it. And now go to the next question.
No? Next question.
Are you feeling motivated enough to find a tool or resource?
Yes? Excellent, make it happen. And now go to the next question.
No? Next question.
Can you scale back the behavior to make it tiny?
Yes? Fantastic. You’re done. You can start practicing your new habit.
No? Next question.
Can you find a Starter Step for your behavior?
Yes? Great. Make the Starter Step your initial habit, then do more later when you feel like it.
No? Uh-oh. If you said no to all of these questions, you might need to go back and match yourself with a different behavior from your Swarm of Behaviors.
Keep the Habit Alive
Making your behavior easy to do not only helps it take root so it can grow big, but it also helps you hang on to it as a habit when the going gets tough. Think of it this way: You can keep many tiny plants alive by giving them a few drops of water a day. It’s the same with habits. There are still days when my motivation is unusually low for flossing. On those days, I floss only one tooth. The key is that I never feel bad about it because I’ve done my habit—I know one tooth is enough to keep the habit alive. Most days I do all of them, so I’m not about to sweat a day or two here and there. Stuff happens. People get sick, take vacations, and have emergencies. We’re not aiming for perfection here, only consistency. Keeping the habit alive means keeping it rooted in your routine no matter how tiny it is.
The Winning Pattern: Simplicity Changes Behavior
When it comes to habit formation, simplicity wins. And not just in our personal lives.
I’ve seen a clear pattern in the digital products that millions of people use every day: Everything big started small.
Look at Google, Instagram, Amazon, and Slack. When they first launched, each company started with something small and focused. Because they were simple to use, these products became firmly rooted in people’s lives. The companies added more features only when these products became solid habits. (Most products that launch with lots of features and complexity spiral down in flames.)
I’m urging you to apply this pattern of success to your own life: If you want a habit to grow big, you need to start small and simple. Once the habit wires in, you can grow it naturally.
Before Sarika and Molly put their Tiny Habits into motion, both women felt overwhelmed. They were experiencing dread, a lack of confidence, and a mysterious feeling of resistance. Going tiny changed all that. They got started easily, and they quickly enjoyed feeling successful. With each success, their fears diminished. The change process started feeling less like work and more like fun.
You can apply the Tiny Habits approach to everything, not just habits. So many frustrating family dynamics and workplace dramas erupt because of the misplaced belief that manipulation motivation is the key to changing behavior. But now you know that simplicity is what reliably changes behavior.
A note on one-time behaviors
Starter steps can also work magic on things that don’t need to be habitual. Not long ago I had to call the oral surgeon to schedule a follow-up appointment (not fun), so I was procrastinating even though this doesn’t sound like a hard behavior to execute. But it’s a good example of those things that we feel silly for putting off but avoid nonetheless. The important thing to remember about procrastination is that the perception of difficulty can be just as important as the actual difficulty. In addition, every day you don’t do the task, it grows in your head, which makes the task seem more and more difficult. Before I sank too deeply into the hole, I came up with a Starter Step: Write the doctor’s number on a Post-it and put it on my phone. I told myself that writing down the number was all I had to do, so I did it.