Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(56)
You might ask: In the early days, how did Sukumar know when to plank for more than five seconds?
Good question. We’ll dive into that more deeply soon, but for now, the short answer is: He did more when he wanted to do more.
The second way that habits scale is through multiplication. This typically happens when the habit you’ve cultivated is one piece of a larger ecosystem of behaviors. If your overall aspiration is to make each day more productive, you might opt for a classic—the Maui Habit. After you wake up and put your feet on the floor in the morning, you say, “It’s going to be a great day.” Since this habit is so time specific, it doesn’t grow. However, it does multiply, and you can expect ripple effects.
Like a plant, a habit c an multiply.
The Maui Habit creates a positive feeling that inspires many people to add other good habits to their morning—like making the bed. As you do the Maui Habit, you can experiment with other habits, like doing the dishes before you leave in the morning or thinking of one thing you’re grateful for as you brush your teeth.
I champion the Maui Habit because this simple action helps you to tackle other challenges in the morning. When you succeed with those, you create an upward trajectory for your day that can uplift your attitude and boost your performance at work and beyond.
As people report the positive ripple effects of the Maui Habit, what seems clear is that the Maui Habit doesn’t grow so much as it multiplies in the same way a flower’s seeds are picked up by the wind and beautiful things get planted in other places. The Maui Habit, and other tiny changes like it, can be easy to create, and they accumulate naturally until your day has transformed (and you don’t struggle getting out of bed).
Beginning your habit design process with a clear aspiration will lead you naturally to your own specialized mix of Growth Habits and Multiplication Habits. If one of your big aspirations is to run a marathon, you’ll likely design at least one habit that has to do with walking or -running—that is a Growth Habit. You’ll eventually go farther and faster. At the same time, you will probably create some Multiplication Habits like drinking more water and adding fresh vegetables to your meals. Those habits can multiply naturally and lead to other nutrition-related habits. All of this will move you toward your aspiration of running a marathon.
The Dynamics of Growth
When I first started using the Tiny Habits method, I saw my habits grow and the entire landscape of my life change. But it wasn’t until I started to share this with other people in 2011 that I realized the scaling effect of Tiny Habits was universal. As I looked closer, talked to more people, and gathered data, I saw distinct growth patterns arise. You’ll see them, too.
You’ve heard this before, and my research confirms that it’s true: Success leads to success. But here’s something that may surprise you. The size of the success doesn’t seem to matter very much. When you feel successful at something, even if it’s tiny, your confidence grows quickly, and your motivation increases to do that habit again and perform related behaviors. I call this success momentum. Surprisingly enough, this gets created by the frequency of your successes, not by the size. So with Tiny Habits you are shooting for a bunch of tiny successes done quickly. Not a big one that takes a long time. The data from my Tiny Habits research show a surprising number of people who tackled big behaviors as a result of succeeding at tiny things. This finding puzzled me at first. But when I asked qualitative questions, I believe I unearthed the dynamic process that creates ripple effects and catalyzes the “big leap” breakthroughs.
We can turn to the Behavior Model to see what’s going on here.
We have conflicting motivations for many behaviors in our lives. Part of us wants to do the behavior and part of us doesn’t—we want to get up early, but we also want to stay in bed and get more sleep.
To explain this dynamic more vividly, I want to talk about dancing.
Suppose you are at a company holiday party, and a great band is playing music you love. Only a few people are dancing, but part of you wants to dance. A sense of hope motivates you to dance: I’ll have fun and feel good—and maybe be seen as a cool person. This is the anticipation of good outcomes. However, part of you is fearful. Fear is the anticipation of bad outcomes. You may be thinking, If I go out and dance, I may look stupid and lose credibility with my colleagues. The boss might see how clumsy I am and think twice about promoting me.
Hope and fear are vectors that push against each other, and the sum of those two vectors is your overall motivation level.
If you can remove the vector of fear, then hope will predominate, and your overall motivation level will be higher, which may move you above the Action Line—and you do the behavior.
There are a few ways to weaken or remove the demotivator of fear. One common approach to dampen anxiety in social situations is by drinking alcohol. In this case, the normal fear you have will probably be reduced—or removed—and the hope of having fun and looking cool will emerge and put dancing in public above the Action Line.
By the way, this is not a wise approach for a company party.
There are other ways to tackle fear of dancing. You can turn down the lights on the dance floor. You can start a group dance with simple steps that will make everyone look good. You can encourage lots of other people to dance first. At one conference I organized for wellness professionals, I handed out sunglasses to get people dancing. It worked (and it was healthier and more appropriate than alcohol). All of those approaches decrease the fear of dancing in public and allow the overall motivation level to rise.