Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(77)
I recently talked to Mike about his business, but he was more excited to talk about the changes at home. Chris is still living there, but he has two part-time jobs and is saving up for a deposit on an apartment. Their relationship is the best it’s been since Chris was little. The tension balloon has popped, and they all feel more connected. Chris shows up at meals, and he laughs more and confides in them. His little brother can no longer use Chris as an excuse not to do his own chores, so the level of nagging overall is diminished. Chris feels better understood, and his parents feel more capable of helping him navigate life. On some days, Mike looks around and can’t believe that they’ve achieved a harmony that had once seemed so far out of reach.
And then there is this: Mike received a birthday gift from Chris for the first time in years (a couple of days late, but who’s counting). He unwrapped three vinyl records to add to his soul collection: Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, and James Brown. Mike gathered his son in a bear hug, thanking him and trying to choke back tears.
Chris smiled. “No big deal, Dad.”
Designing for Group Change
We all know that social dynamics are powerful drivers of behavior. The effects are all around us: how we act watching a football game, how we talk about politics, how we treat one another online or in person. Since humans have pretty much always lived in communities, social influences have always been with us. But with social media magnifying and multiplying those influences, our lives have become increasingly connected. That’s why it’s more important than ever to think deeply about how those social forces are shaping our individual and collective behavior, and ultimately impacting all life on planet Earth.
What you’ve learned in this book gives you the power to defend yourself against undermining influences and design new habits that lead to a more harmonious, healthy, and meaningful life for everyone around you.
You now can figure out what is shaping the habits you don’t want, including those created by social pressure. Maybe your family can’t eat together without everyone looking at their phones. Maybe your workplace is so competitive that no one takes a vacation day. Maybe your book club is more of a wine club. The habits and norms that exist in any group can feel even more entrenched than individual habits. But it’s important to remember that we can change together.
Now that you know how behavior works, you can identify what’s underpinning those habits you want or don’t want. And you have three main approaches when it comes to changing group behavior. You can design a change in your own behavior to distance yourself from a group’s negative influences. You can work together with others to design a change in your collective behavior. Or you can design a change for others that will benefit them—just as Mike did with Chris. The last two approaches are what this chapter is about, and we’ll talk more about what each means and how we can tweak the process to suit the situation.
By using Tiny Habits and Behavior Design, you can be a force for good in the lives of others. It takes only one skilled and caring individual (you!) to transform a group, but I would suggest that you not start by trying to change your entire country even though with Behavior Design you could transform culture. Build your change skills and begin closer to home instead—a work team or your family. I’ve long advocated that we view the household—not the individual—as the unit of change. So as behavior designers, we should design products and services to help everyone in a household change together.
Before Mike helped Chris gain traction in his daily habits, he did a good job of changing his own behavior. Mike modified what he asked Chris to do and how he asked him to do it, changing his tone and posture from one of frustration and preordained defeat to one of empowerment and support. The success he found had an outsize effect not only on Chris’s behavior but also on his own. We live and work with others, and every change has a general effect on everyone for better or worse. We are always changing together whether we design for it or not.
But I don’t think you should leave changes to chance. Design for your future deliberately and efficiently so things change for the better in every part of your life.
When you set out to change your family, work team, or community group, you ideally should get total cooperation and support. But that’s not likely to happen. When I first started studying changing together as a year-long project in my Stanford research lab, I naively assumed that everyone had a household like mine. Whenever my partner or I wanted to change something, such as how we eat or use technology, we would support each other. When I was a child, my mom dramatically changed our eating habits to help my younger sister with her learning disabilities. We hated giving up Wonder Bread (no fiber) and Tang (full of sugar), but we did it as a family.
As I shared these personal examples with researchers in my Stanford lab, they were quick to come up with their own examples that made the opposite point. I heard about one parent who replied to his son’s desire to meditate with “You’re going through another phase. Let me know when this one is over.” I heard from another lab member that her spouse had told her, “Hey, honey. Can we hold off on your little plan until after the kids are back in school?” From these stories, I saw that members of households can undermine you as well as support your aspirations.
If you are having trouble effecting change in your household, the principles of Behavior Design can help. One way to break through is to apply my Maxim #1: Help people do what they already want to do. What does your spouse already want to achieve? What aspirations does your work team have right now? (If you don’t know, ask them!) Then help them achieve those aspirations.