Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(76)
Mike racked his brain, and it made him crazy that he couldn’t find a solution. He was a capable guy, after all. No matter how much he might be failing at home, Mike was thriving at work. He was a successful strategist who had helped grow his small nutrition company into an industry leader. He specialized in solving big challenges in innovative ways, and he was always looking to improve, and Mike eventually found his way to my Behavior Design Boot Camp.
Mike was one of those people who “gets it” immediately. He was one of those systems thinkers who are fast at plugging in new knowledge to solve old challenges. I assumed Mike’s eagerness to learn the intricacies of Behavior Design was about increasing his professional excellence. But I found out later that the excited energy I’d felt from him was the realization that he could finally help Chris. The Behavior Model made total sense to Mike—many behaviors of Chris’s were suddenly explicable, and he saw exactly why his own interventions hadn’t been working. Mike realized that he needed to shift his focus from motivation to ability. Motivation, especially in a teenager, is not dependable. He also saw that giving his son a memorable, immediate prompt would be far more effective than the abstract nagging he’d been using.
Excited to try out what he’d learned and mindful of the importance of starting tiny, Mike decided to tackle the coffee maker problem first. This was a seemingly small domestic battle, but one that was a daily source of aggravation. Mike had bought a nice coffee maker for himself. He had done a lot of research and took pride in owning it, so he liked to keep it clean and in good working order—which meant that after each use the fancy filter needed to be rinsed so it wouldn’t gum up the works. Chris never remembered to do this. Mike laughs about it now, but it was one of those things that drove him nuts. He’d come downstairs to make his second cup and discover that Chris had left his steaming grounds in the machine. After taking care of what his grown-up son wouldn’t, Mike would pass Chris’s room on the way to his office and make a snappish comment to the effect of How many times do I have to ask you to clean the filter? or If you can’t treat my stuff with respect, you can’t use it.
Chris would give him an eye roll or a snarky reply, an interaction that started the day off on the wrong foot and thrust them into a corrosive cycle of frustration and resentment.
But equipped with important Behavior Design tools, Mike broke this problem down. His aspiration was clear—he wanted Chris to respect his stuff. In this case, the specific behavior was taking care of the coffee maker. So Mike asked the Breakthrough Question: How can I make this easier to do? When he thought about it, what he wanted Chris to do was a three-step process. Take the coffee filter out, clean it, then put it back. Asking Chris to do all of this at once clearly wasn’t working, so Mike decided to make the task easier by breaking it down and asking his son to do only the first specific step.
“Hey, Chris, next time you use the coffee maker, could you take the filter out and put it on the counter?”
Chris gave him a funny look. “Sure.”
The next morning Mike came downstairs for his caffeine injection and grinned. The coffee filter was on the counter. Tipped on its side and spilling some grounds, but it was there. Mike felt a surge of pride. As he walked upstairs with his coffee, he remembered my maxim: Help people feel successful.
“Hey, Chris, thanks for putting the filter on the counter. That means a lot to me.”
Chris flashed him the dad-you-are-so-weird look he’d perfected in eighth grade. “No big deal.”
The filter was on the counter again the next day. This blew Mike’s mind—he hadn’t even reminded Chris to do it. Mike said a quick thank-you to Chris before resuming work. Chris continued to do this small task, and Mike started to believe that his approach was working—that it wasn’t a fluke. After a couple of weeks, Mike asked Chris to rinse the filter before putting it on the counter, and Chris agreed to do this because taking the filter out had turned out to be a breeze and it had made his father oddly happy.
A week later there was no filter on the counter, and Mike’s heart sank—Chris’s not following through was familiar territory. But he reminded himself that his son was still learning this habit, and he resolved not to nag Chris. But when Mike removed the filter, it was clean. Chris had removed it, cleaned it, and replaced it without being asked.
Mike let out a quiet Woo-hoo!
He felt like he had gotten an unexpected promotion or a great birthday present, which might seem totally out of proportion to the small task that his grown-up son had completed, but as Mike told me later, it wasn’t about the coffee filter—it was about hope. This was the first time in years that Mike felt hopeful about his relationship with Chris. The tenor of their mornings had totally changed. Instead of exchanging harsh words with his son before work, Mike got to feel proud. He got to build his kid up instead of nagging him or fighting. He finally felt like a good dad—someone who could help a person he loves be happier and learn how to live with others in harmony.
What started with a coffee filter soon extended to all sorts of behaviors that were contentious. Mike and Carla saw that Chris’s anger and frustration were expressions of his being overwhelmed. When they asked him to do big things like clean his room or pay his bills on time, Chris didn’t know where to start, and he was ashamed and resentful, and felt incapable. But when they broke down specific things into tiny behaviors and asked questions such as “Could you put your used towel in the hamper?” or “Could you put your dinner dish in the sink?” Chris got a toehold on the larger task. By feeling successful at those smaller tasks, he gained the confidence to do more. Mike and Carla were with him the whole way, gently celebrating his wins. Not only did this make Chris feel good, it made them feel good. No one wants to nag their kids or feel disappointed; we want to celebrate them. This is surprisingly easy to achieve when you keep the behavior tiny and set someone up to feel successful.