Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(7)
A behavior happens when the three elements of MAP—Motivation, Ability, and Prompt—come together at the same moment. Motivation is your desire to do the behavior. Ability is your capacity to do the behavior. And Prompt is your cue to do the behavior.
I’ll give you an example.
In 2010, when I was at the gym (rocking out to Janet Jackson on the elliptical strider), I performed a strange behavior for people with pulse rates of more than 120 beats per minute: I donated to the Red Cross. I did it in response to a text message inviting me to do so.
Here’s what my one-time behavior looks like when you break it down.
Behavior: Donating via text to the Red Cross after the massive earthquake in Haiti.
Motivation (M): I wanted to help the victims of a devastating disaster.
Ability (A): It was easy to reply to a text message.
Prompt (P): I was prompted by a text message from the Red Cross.
In this case, the three elements (M, A, and P) converged, so I did the behavior; I made a donation. But if one of the three elements hadn’t been sufficient, there’s a good chance that I wouldn’t have.
My motivation for this action was high. The earthquake effects were well publicized and genuinely heart-wrenching. But what about ability? What if the Red Cross had called me and asked for a credit card number instead? I was striding on the elliptical machine, with my wallet in the car, so that would have made it very hard for me to do the behavior. What about the prompt? What if the fundraisers didn’t use the phone at all? What if they sent me something in the mail and I threw it away without reading it, thinking it was junk mail? Then I wouldn’t see the request. No prompt, no behavior. Luckily, the Red Cross did me a favor. I already wanted to donate, and they made it easy. Whether the organizers knew it or not, they designed M, A, and P perfectly for the behavior they were trying to encourage. And it’s not just me. The texting campaign was very successful, raising more than $3 million in the first twenty-four hours and more than $21 million by the end of the week. Well done, Red Cross!
Behavior Design
Models
How to think clearly about behavior
Methods
How to design for behavior
Fogg Behavior Model
B = MAP
Tiny Habits
B=MAP APPLIES TO ALL HUMAN BEHAVIOR
When I first teach people my Behavior Model, they are sometimes a little dubious when I tell them this is a universal model. They wonder how one model with just four letters could possibly account for every kind of behavior in every culture. After all, there are “good” behaviors and “bad” behaviors—are they really equivalent? Many people have a hard time understanding how their online shopping diversion has anything to do with their workout regimen. People think that there must be something fundamentally more complex about the fitness regimen because it’s a challenge. On the flip side, if a change is easy, like hanging your coat in the closet instead of on the banister, there must be something fundamentally different about that action.
There isn’t.
Behaviors are like bicycles. They can look different, but the core mechanisms are the same. Wheels. Brakes. Pedals.
That being said, just because the building blocks of behavior are the same doesn’t mean that those behaviors feel the same, look the same, or act the same. Adding to the disconnect, the emotions people have about pleasurable behaviors differ drastically from the ones they have about behaviors they deem challenging. Sometimes it feels more like the difference between a unicycle and a road bike. At first, some people can’t see how the two categories of behavior are even related. This concept is important for anyone trying to change any behavior.
Every month or so, I hold Behavior Design Boot Camp—a two-day workshop where I help businesspeople learn to create effective solutions for wellness, financial security, environmental sustainability, and so on.
My boot campers almost always take what they learn and translate it to their personal lives. That’s why I often kick off boot camp with an exercise that uses a personal example. I ask people to tell me about one positive habit they created without much effort and a “bad” habit they feel terrible about and want to stop. Boot campers come up with great stories about their habits, but at one of my events, a woman named Katie nailed how different two behaviors can seem.
Katie was a talented executive overseeing dozens of employees and a $10 million budget, and her “good” habit was tied to her productivity. Katie had a rock-solid habit of tidying her desk each day before leaving work. After she shuts down her computer for the day, she neatly stacks her papers and sorts the stickies on her whiteboard into To Do, Done, and In Progress columns. After her desk looks good, Katie pushes her chair in and leaves the office. When she walks in the next morning and looks at her desk, Katie always feels a little punch of energy. She’s reminded that she’s ready to start the day and that she’s all set up to make sure it’s a good one. When I asked if acquiring this habit was a conscious choice or not, she said no—she had just started doing it one day.
Katie hadn’t thought much about her desk-tidying habit. It even took a while for her to identify this as a positive habit. But when I asked about a habit she didn’t want, she practically leaped out of her chair.
“Scrolling in bed! I hate it, but I can’t stop doing it. Sometimes I lie in bed looking at Facebook for so long that I miss my workout,” she added.