Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(69)

Focus on the Prompt to Stop a Habit


Sometimes all you need to do is tackle the prompt and you’re done, and there are three ways to do this: remove the prompt, avoid the prompt, or ignore the prompt.





Remove the prompt


Removing the prompt is the simplest option for stopping an unwanted habit. And the best way to remove a prompt is to redesign your en--vironment.

Let’s say that you want to stop checking social media while you are at work. You can turn off your phone, put it on airplane mode, or turn off notifications for the social media app. Any of these will remove contextual prompts. And that might resolve the habit right there.

A Tiny Habit Recipe for this would be After I sit down at work, I will turn off notifications for my social media app.





My Recipe—Tiny Habits Method


After I . . .

I will . . .

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



sit down at work,



turn off notifications for social media.





Anchor Moment

Tiny Behavior

Celebration



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.

Something you do to create a positive feeling inside of yourself (the feeling is called Shine).





You could also remove the social media app from your phone. This is a one-time behavior, which is usually more effective than a daily action because it’s done only once and there’s no need to wire in a habit.

When you’re designing to undo prompt, you can either use the Tiny Habits method to remove the prompt on a regular basis, or you can do a one-time behavior that removes the prompt forever. When it comes to using social media, the Tiny Habits approach might be better because using social media on your train ride home from work can sometimes be relaxing, so deleting the app entirely might not be the best path.





Avoid the prompt


If you can’t remove the prompt for your bad habit, then try avoiding the prompt. If you want to end your habit of grabbing a sugary pastry with your morning coffee, stop going to the coffee shop and make coffee at home, where there’s no built-in temptation.

Ways to avoid prompts include:

Don’t go places where you will be prompted



Don’t be with people who will prompt you



Don’t let people put prompts in your surroundings



Avoid media that prompts you





You’ll remember how one of my Tiny Habit Recipes helps me avoid eating too much bread at a restaurant. When the server approaches, I say, “No bread, please.” In that way, I take control of my context, and I can avoid the prompt of a bread basket on my table.

However, you might not be able to avoid all situations where you are prompted. What if you work at a coffee shop that sells pastries or the person prompting you is your boss and you can’t avoid her?





Ignore the prompt


Your final option is ignoring the prompt, but this relies on willpower, which can be problematic because you have to exert extra effort to ignore a prompt for a habit above the Action Line (i.e., when you have sufficient motivation and ability).

But you’ve done this before. Despite being prompted to indulge, you have resisted and pushed back. But you can say no to the prompt only so many times before your willpower weakens. You can say no to a drink at a party one or two times. But if people constantly offer you a drink (and you want one), you might eventually cave in. This is because with each “ask” that you resist, you’re relying on willpower.

This is especially true when you are anxious. You forgot your healthy breakfast at home one morning, and you’re not going to make it through your meetings without something to eat so you grab that blueberry muffin at the coffee shop. Or you have a moment of anxiety and your urge to escape on social media soars.

Ignoring a prompt is probably not the best solution in the long term. However, if you find yourself particularly strong-willed and up to the task, make sure you celebrate your achievement when you successfully ignore the prompt and forgo the unwanted habit.



There you have it. You can deal with prompts in three ways: removing them, avoiding them, or ignoring them.

If any one of these works for you, that’s great. You’ve found the simplest solution to redesign a specific habit out of your life.

After you successfully resolve a specific habit, return to your Swarm of Behaviors and select another specific habit to unwind. If you’ve stopped your habit of buying breakfast at the gas station, you can tackle eating free candy in the office’s reception area.

But what if you can’t remove, avoid, or ignore the prompt?

Well, that happens.

When you can’t design a prompt out of your life, move on to the next component in the Behavior Model.





Redesign Ability in Order to Stop a Habit


The next step in the Behavior Change Masterplan is to focus on making the habit harder to do.

In chapter 3, I explained the five factors in my Ability Chain model: time, money, physical effort, mental effort, and routine. We used this chain to help us make a new habit easier to do, but now we’re going to weaken or break the chain to make your habit harder to do. Let’s consider each of these five links and how you can redesign them.