Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(33)
Some days Amy didn’t do her most important task, but most days she did. A surge of pride and accomplishment motivated her to create a flurry of to-do items, and with her Golden Behavior rooted firmly in place as a habit, Amy became more productive than she could have imagined. Somewhere along the line, her fear started to fade. At one point she said out loud to herself: “Wow, I’m really doing it. I can do this.”
And she continued on the path.
What had started with one Post-it turned into a productivity avalanche. Amy realized that she had a huge passion and desire to grow her business from a one-woman shop to a multiperson strategy and content-creation agency. Once she found the right prompt, it broke her logjam, and all that pent-up ambition came rushing out as she finished writing projects and completed proposals for new ones. When a large healthcare company asked her to send a proposal in for a million-dollar project, Amy didn’t hesitate. It would mean hiring people to help her get everything done, but after months of success, her self-doubt was gone. Amy told me later that what had won the project was the self-confidence she projected in her pitch meeting.
Half a year later, Amy was divorced. She had also quadrupled her income. Most important, she had gained custody of her kids and was sleeping peacefully through the night.
One simple new habit can lead to more habits that ripple out well beyond the initial one. In Amy’s case, her success hinged on designing the right prompt. Whether you are designing a habit from scratch or troubleshooting a habit that won’t stick, you’ve got to figure out what will prompt you to do it every time, and Behavior Design provides a system to find the answer that is right for you.
Don’t leave prompts to chance!
The good news is that you already have lots of experience designing prompts even if you don’t realize it. You’ve made a checklist. You’ve asked someone to remind you. You’ve set up a calendar notification in your work e-mail. In each case, you are adding a prompt to influence your behavior.
But all too often the prompts people think will work are poorly designed. If you’re the person who hits the snooze button six times before getting up, you know what I’m talking about. (On some phone alarms, the snooze button is bigger and easier to hit than the off button. Oddly enough, it seems we’ve been set up to hit snooze by design.)
When designing prompts for ourselves, it doesn’t work to put one more Post-it on a computer screen already filled with other Post-its. And writing a reminder on your hand might not look very professional when you’re in a business meeting. In any case, there is more to the story about which prompts work and which ones don’t. Otherwise we would all be Habit Ninjas.
Designing prompts is a skill you can learn and practice.
A Systematic Approach to Prompts
Let’s look at what kinds of prompts are available to us and how they work. Once we figure this out, we can stop leaving prompts to chance or other people and start planting our new habit in fertile soil.
For insight into prompts, we can again turn to the PAC Person model. There are three types of prompts in our lives: Person Prompts, Context Prompts, and Action Prompts.
Let’s start with the Person Prompt.
This prompt type relies on something inside of you to do a behavior. Basic bodily urges are the most natural Person Prompts we have. Our bodies remind us to do necessary things like eat and sleep. That pressure in your bladder? Yep, that’s a prompt. Grumbling stomach—prompt. Thanks to evolution, these prompts are pretty reliable in getting us to take action.
However, if your survival is not dependent on your behavior, then the Person Prompt isn’t a good solution because our memories are notoriously faulty. Sure, there are a few times when you’ve magically remembered your mom’s birthday, but there are probably more times you forgot if you were relying on the Person Prompt.
A few years ago, I met some new neighbors, Bob and Wanda. She was a retired executive at Intel, and he had worked as an engineer. I was glad when they invited Denny and me to dinner. I responded with an enthusiastic yes and promised to be there at six p.m. sharp with a salad.
Two weeks later, my phone rang at 6:42 p.m. I was deeply immersed in work that had a deadline, and I didn’t recognize the incoming phone number. I let the call go to voice mail, but I was curious so I listened to the message immediately. As soon as I heard Wanda’s voice, I was flooded with regret. “Hey, BJ. The pasta is getting cold and sticky. I made it from scratch so it won’t keep. We were expecting you at six p.m. Are you coming? Or I guess we’ll plan something else. Bye.”
Yep. I blew it.
I called Wanda and apologized profusely. I was mortified. This was a terrible way to say, “Welcome to the neighborhood!”
Not my finest moment, but a great example of why you should be wary of Person Prompts in general and avoid them completely when you are designing behavior. This goes for one-time actions like showing up at a dinner party, but it’s even more true for behaviors that you’re trying to turn into habits. Relying on yourself to remember to do a new behavior every day is unlikely to lead to meaningful change. Ditto for trying to help someone else cultivate a habit. Let’s say you want your daughter to do her homework every night instead of spending an hour on her phone. Asking her to remember to do that isn’t the best strategy because Person Prompts are not reliable.
Onward to the Context Prompt!