Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(81)
My Recipe—Tiny Habits Method
After I . . .
I will . . .
To wire the habit into my brain, I will immediately:
return from my lunch break,
get out my checklist on roadblocks and write a quick e-mail.
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).
As you know, there are other ways to prompt a behavior. You could have the new intern walk around and remind people to send you the e-mail. But that’s not a great solution for the long term. Maybe you send a daily e-mail reminder? Yes, that could work, but it’s not as elegant as using an existing routine as a prompt.
The Ninja
The Ninja’s approach to this step is the same as the Ringleader’s. If that doesn’t work, you could get less elegant, and ask, “What do you think would be a good reminder for this?”
I’m a fan of finding what works and then scaling that approach. Let’s go back to the roadblock e-mail habit. After the task has been made easy to do, see what happens. After you discover who is succeeding on this task, ask them what prompts them to do the behavior. They will have a prompt (even if they don’t recognize it). When you find a successful pattern, suggest that everyone use the same prompt.
Let’s suppose that you walk around and talk with ten of your teammates who are trying to send you the roadblock e-mail. Five are succeeding. You learn that four of the five are setting the checklist card on their keyboards before they leave for lunch. The checklist then reminds them to write the e-mail when they return from lunch. So the recipe then becomes something like this: After I pick up my wallet to go to lunch, I will put my roadblock checklist on my keyboard. You share this technique with everyone. You’ve found what works and scaled it to the rest of your team.
6. CELEBRATE SUCCESS TO WIRE IN THE HABIT
This step applies only if you want to create a habit in your group. If your solution is a one-time behavior or decision, you can skip this step.
The Ringleader
One of my hopes for this book is to change how leaders interact with their teams, how parents interact with their children, and how doctors interact with their patients. When you understand one of my key points—that people change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad—you can put that into practice in your own life, but you can also use this to help people around you change whether they are employees, kids, spouses, or patients.
Feedback from authority figures is powerful, and approval from authority figures can open the door to transformation. If you can give feedback at the right moment to help people feel successful, you can create a habit of the good behavior. But that’s not all. As I shared in chapter 5, the effects of feeling successful ripple out. There is no more powerful praise than what comes from someone we admire and trust. And for some people, that person is you.
I see three approaches to using the power of Shine to create group habits and ultimately change culture when you are the Ringleader.
First, teach your group how emotions create habits. Explain that you’ve found a new way to wire in a habit by firing off positive emotions on demand by celebrating and feeling Shine. Use one of the exercises at the end of chapter 5 to help your group members find their own authentic celebrations and encourage them to develop and apply this skill.
Second, you can be the source of Shine for your group. This happens naturally for parents helping babies walk, and it’s natural for good teachers. You’ll also find examples of this in everyday life even when you don’t expect it. At a spot on Maui where people learn to surf, the spectators (mostly friends and parents) will cheer for the newbies when they catch their first waves.
Most of us can up our game in this area. We can be more prolific and immediate with positive feedback. If we wait until someone reaches a big milestone, we have missed many opportunities to help people feel Shine.
The third approach is one I’ve seen emerge naturally in families who have learned the Tiny Habits method: An individual’s good habits are celebrated by others in the group. Young kids pick up on this quickly. As mom does two push-ups against the kitchen counter, her daughter claps, and says, “Good job, Mommy!”
The Ninja
As a Ninja, you can be the instigator of Shine in other people much like the Ringleader. However, you go about things in stealthier ways. When someone does a good behavior, you can help wire in the habit by saying, “Wow. That’s great. How did tidying up your desk make you feel?” With this question, you help your colleague access Shine more readily the next time they tidy their desk. You can also redefine the meaning of success by helping people recognize that they are succeeding with the process even if the outcome hasn’t been reached. Every time someone selects water instead of soda, that’s a success even if they don’t see the bathroom scale change. When someone practices meditation, they don’t need to calm their mind to be successful. Simply sitting quietly is a success, and they can feel good about that.