Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(35)

You and I may never have full control over how companies prompt us or how business colleagues and other well-intentioned humans send things our way. Context Prompts are here to stay. But when it comes to designing prompts for ourselves and others, there is a better option than Context Prompts.

The third type of prompts—and my favorite—are what I call Action Prompts.





An Action Prompt is a behavior you already do that can remind you to do a new habit you want to cultivate. This is a special type of prompt. The Action Prompt is one way you hack your behavior with the Tiny Habits method.

For example, your existing habit of brushing your teeth can serve as your prompt to floss, a new habit. Starting the coffee maker can be your prompt to do a new stretching habit using the kitchen counter.

You already have a lot of reliable routines, and each of them can serve as an Action Prompt for a new habit. You put your feet on the floor in the morning. You boil water for tea or turn on the coffee maker. You flush the toilet. You drop your kid off at school. You hang your coat up when you walk through the door at the end of the day. You put your head on a pillow every night.

These actions are already embedded in your life so seamlessly and naturally that you don’t have to think about them. And because of that, they make fantastic prompts. It’s an elegant design solution because it’s so natural. You already have an entire ecosystem of routines humming along nicely—you just have to tap into it.

Action Prompts are so much more useful than Person Prompts and Context Prompts that I’ve given them a pet name: Anchors. When talking about Tiny Habits, I use the term Anchor to describe something in your life that is already stable and solid. The concept is pretty simple. If there is a habit you want, find the right Anchor within your current routine to serve as your prompt, your reminder. I selected the term “anchor” because you are attaching your new habit to something solid and reliable.

Using Anchors to remind me to do a new habit came to me like a bolt of lightning after taking a shower many years ago. (Sure, I’ve heard of people having breakthroughs in the shower, but I’m the only person I know who had mine after. Which you’ll soon see is perfectly fitting.) After showering one evening and thinking about nothing in particular, I stepped out, dried off, wrapped a towel around myself, and walked into the bedroom. As I was opening my underwear drawer, the insight hit me. The key is “after.”

I suppose my brain was noticing this pattern: After a shower, I always dry off. After I dry off, I always walk into the bedroom. After I walk to the bedroom, I always open my underwear drawer. And so—aha!—to create a new habit, you need to find what behavior it should come after. For example, if I want to always floss my teeth after I brush, then brushing my teeth is a great prompt for my new habit of flossing.

With my underwear drawer still open, I realized I’d found my answer: behavior sequencing. You simply need to figure out what comes after what. Eureka!

I now see this like creating computer code. If you get the algorithm correct—this behavior then this behavior then this behavior and then bam—you have a reliable outcome.





Behaviors happen in sequences, one leading to another.





A reliable habit. You just have to “code” things correctly by putting them in the right order.





You design the sequence f or a new habit.





When I opened the underwear drawer, I recognized that there were plenty of things I already do every day. If I could insert my new behaviors into my existing habits, they would fit into my life without much effort. And this scales beautifully—you can keep folding in new habits as long as you anchor them to existing ones. This method avoids the pitfalls of the Person Prompt and the Context Prompt because you’re not relying on yourself or anyone else to remind you. You’re not overwhelmed by prompts. Your day-to-day life is the prompt instead. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

I immediately tried it. I took one of the most basic and reliable behaviors humans have—going to the bathroom—and used that as the prompt for a new push-up habit. I decided that after I flushed the toilet I would do two push-ups. This might sound weird, but I worked mostly from home at the time so it was no big deal. It wasn’t long before this habit was rock solid. It was like snapping puzzle pieces together. Doing push-ups after I peed soon became something that I did a few times every day. I got stronger pretty quickly, too, which helped me to scale up and do more push-ups. Seven years later, I still do this habit. Some days I end up doing fifty push-ups or more (depending on how much water I drink!), but when I’m at home, I always do at least two after I pee. That’s my Tiny Habit Recipe: After I pee, I will do two push-ups.





My Recipe—Tiny Habits Method


After I . . .

I will . . .

To wire the habit into my brain, I will immediately:



pee,





do two push-ups.





Anchor Moment

Tiny Behavior





An existing routine in your life that will remind you to do the Tiny Behavior (your new habit).

The new habit you want but you scale it back to be super tiny—and super easy.





Using Anchors is a great approach to designing prompts because anyone can do it. There’s no need for fancy watches or whizzy apps to prompt new habits. You can do it yourself more effectively, and you will discover how transformative a simple design hack can be. The power of after is not magic, it’s closer to chemistry. Combine the right behaviors with the right chronology, and, poof, a new habit is created.