You make these small changes in it changes how you think about yourself? It changes your self-talk it changes your relationship with emotions. So you're more inclined to embrace positive emotions and not let the negative emotions get you down some ways. I'm getting chills because that is such to me that is just I'm still fascinated with how that
works.
Hello and welcome. I'm Shane parish and you're listening to the knowledge project to podcast dedicated to mastering the best of what other people have already figured out this podcast in our website FS dot blog help. You better understand yourself and the World Around You by exploring the methods ideas and mental models from some of
Most incredible people in the world. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a premium version that brings you even more you'll get ad free versions of the show Early Access to episodes transcripts and so much more if you want to learn more now head on over to FSD blog / podcast or check the show notes for a link today. I'm talking with BJ Fogg who founded the behavior Design Lab at Stanford University in addition to his research. He also created the tiny habits Academy this episode is you guessed it all about habit how we make them
them how we break them how emotions and story impact them and what motivates us. It's time to listen and learn.
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DJ. I'm so happy to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. How did you get interested in
habits? Oh, well probably goes back to my childhood. I grew up in a culture that was all
about changing your behavior optimizing your life and habits
to do and habits not to do. I was raised Mormon in California and within that religion, you know, you can't smoke you can't drink and you're supposed to study the scriptures in praying so and so
so I think I grew up with a lot of attention around habits. And then later fast forward to being an adult just really interested in helping people be happier and healthier and I think that also got wired into me whether it was that Mormon background or whether it's just born with that desire and in studying human behavior and things came together. It's like man, you know what this thing about habits and creating habits can be way easier than
People expect and let's really dive in and do a bunch of practical research and testing and Bam and help people
you live on Hawaii right part of the time in Maui. Yes. What does it mean to be happy and healthy?
Hmm, of course, it's different for different people. But for me nature is a big piece of that for me, and I didn't realize this I didn't realize the pattern how important
The nature is for me to be healthy and happy and it's different for different people. But yes, I taught a class to class is the only class I ever repeated at Stanford. I was teaching the class was on Behavior designed to help people connect to nature, but I didn't recognize how important that pattern was in my life. I'd moved out of Silicon Valley in about 2001 because I just felt like it was
The humanizing me and so even though I still had teaching and research Stanford. We kind of escaped about two hours North where I where we moved to live next to a river and the whole reason we moved out was to be by the river and get out of what I felt like in Silicon Valley was just greed and exploitation and just not real relationships. If you couldn't help somebody financially just seemed like they weren't interested in so that and the one day I was
Sitting in our home and it's in Healdsburg, California, and I looked around the living room at every single piece of every painting every anything in the room had to do with nature. I'd plant I had rocks. I had feathers the carpet because the leaves and I looked around and said, okay BJ, this is Claire you're kind of obsessed with nature. So for me, that's really important and here in Maui. I sort of every morning I get in the ocean every day.
That's really important for me to start my day. And also to end my day getting in the the water just for me. I'm just found that really really helps for me. It's really nature is the foundation of being happy and healthy and frankly my spiritualities. That's what it is for me. I'm sure it's that's not true for
everybody. It's really interesting to me too. I would like to hear more on the differences between sort of being on the island environment and sort of being on
campus.
Very different on the good news side of things is with my lab my research lab at Stanford. We meet once a week year round and we have long done that through video conferencing. It was on Hangouts and then we shift it to zoom a few years ago. So that doesn't change anything at all doesn't matter where I am the lab and how we interact with that and slack stays the same one thing it has in common as I feel very at home when I'm on staff.
Edwards Campus and I feel very at home when I'm here in Maui or close to Nature and then there's other places where I just don't feel at home. Like say I go to Chicago and I keynote at an event I go to a hotel and yeah, I'm there, but and events nice, but I don't feel at home. I don't and I really can't wait to leave and get back to I guess a place. That's just a little more more me and more comforting more energizing I guess.
It has to do with both of those things. I
think it's a really good way to put it. I want to dive into Behavior change a little bit. We tend to think that if we give people the right information, it'll cause Behavior change, but I don't think that's true. Can you walk me through? I
know we've all thought that we've all hoped that for a long time and it is important and in tiny habits I point this out and I pointed it out for a while that information alone does not reliably lead to sustained Behavior change.
JH now information can be part of the puzzle. But that alone doesn't seem to do the trick for most people. So seeing statistics seeing data won't necessarily change somebody's behavior in the long-term and back in the day when the Quantified Self movement was more visible and busier and more exciting. That was one of the things I mean, I really really like the people involved and I really like to see technology be created to help people be healthier.
The more productive and happier and so on.
But I couldn't get super enthusiastic about the overall idea of Quantified Self because I knew that just giving somebody data about their sleep or about how many calories or about whatever wasn't going to add up to be a thing that would create lasting change in most people's lives now. I imagine there are a few unusual people that all they need is data and everything else clicks together. Yeah now there is one quality.
Cajun chain for this that where it does help information and let me drill down on wearing. It doesn't work. If it's information about why you should do something in a domain. We already understand pretty well like nutrition or sleep or stress reduction more information about why you should reduce your stress seems not to lead to Lasting change. So that's not a good equation and then just statistics and things like that without any and here's the key information about how to
Two bam, that's good. Okay, so when we talk about information that can be lots of things but if it's information about here's the behavior to do and here's how you do it. Then that is a great approach, but that's a specific kind of information. So specifying the behavior and making it easier for people to do now notice in those two things at maps to my behavior model, which is good like this Behavior happens when
Three things come together at the same moment motivation ability and prompt. So if you give information that specifies the behavior, that's the B and the behavior model and then gives people more ability than you've had. I think the most important things and changing Behavior be specific and make it really easy to do. So when I teach my boot camps and that's for industry innovators who are creating products and services to change behavior and how they're
Financial stability or stress I do teach them to explain to their colleagues information alone does not change behavior and if people have like, oh we're going to do this information campaign or we're going to educate people to push back on that and say no no. No, the information alone is not reliable and in tanjung Behavior long term, however, if there's already budget for some sort of campaign or learning or whatever then take that budget and use it to help.
People get really specific about their behaviors and explain how to so rather than try to motivate people through some information campaign match them with the best behaviors and then make those really easy to do and then you're on your
way. When I was talking with Daniel comment on the podcast. He said there was two ways to sort of like make behaviors easier in a way. You have a carrot and a stick kind of approach where you sort of add force or you remove Force.
In your experience. Is there a better approach?
Yeah, I have a different model for that. I mean I totally get that and I like that but I have a different model of how to think about how to make something easier to do and in my model and I call it the pack person model. There are three approaches number one is you train the person so that person gets more capable. You skill them up now that doesn't always work because a lot of people don't want to be scaled up. They don't want to be
trained but you consider that option first if we're trying to help people say cook more vegetables are eat more vegetables for dinner. Well train them skill them up teach them how to acquire them how to cook them and so on. So that's one option is you change the person you make them more capable. And in that way the behavior becomes easier to do number 2 and the next thing to consider and there's a sequence and all of my work. It's all a system every there's a sequence.
How you think and solve these problems number two has to do with redesigning the environment or the context to make it easier to do and so you put tools or resources into somebody's context now notice. This is different than Skilling somebody up. You're not changing the person you're changing their environment or if you're designing for your own behavior your change your own environment. So you get the gear you need to wash the vegetables the gear you need to chop things up.
Zup, and so on tools and resources would also include checklists recipes how to videos anything that you'd put in your environment that would make it easier to including another person who walks you through the steps that's bucket number two is can we redesign the environment of the context to make the behavior easier to do California? One of my garages is converted to a gym like a crossfit gym.
Well, I changed my environment to make working out easier to do and people can think of lots of examples of this the third and there's only three buckets here is you take the behavior and you scale it back. So you take whatever action that is such as though I want to work out an hour a day and you scale it back to well. Maybe I'm just going to work out for four minutes. So you're actually changing the action to make it tinier. So those are the three buckets. You can change the person to make it easier to do.
Dubai scaling them up. You can change the environment by giving people tools and resources or yourself tools and resources and in the third approach of you need this you take it and you just scale the behavior back to be super tiny rather than paying all your bills. You just pay want rather than flossing all your teeth. You just floss one tooth rather than eating five servings of healthy vegetables for dinner. You just prepare won't want or maybe even eat
And by it, I mean in tiny habits you shrink it is tiny as you can go and still keep the behavior meaningful.
It's really interesting. I want to dive into environment a little bit more and normally when I hear examples of environmental change its it's sort of very physical and visual in the sense of I put a gym in my garage or I put my running shoes next to my door or what does it mean in the context of a knowledge worker? Like how do we set up an environment to make better?
Asians to think about our
to you are asking me such a good hard question. I love those. I'm a person who creates models and Frameworks and so on and the one concept that I've not been able to nail is to do a theory or framework or model of environment context or environment. I'm using those it synonyms. It's hard but you're right. There's the physical aspects of it, but then there's like these digital environments. You know, what's on your screen?
And what's open and what's easily accessible and then environment and context can also be how you perceive the exact same landscape around you so say I'm here in Maui and I'm like, oh I could walk some places. I don't know where I'm walking and then I see a map of trails nearby and I look at the trails and I'm like just that Insight that there are trails around me then changes. I believe changes my
text or my environment because now I'm perceiving what's around me differently. So it's not that the actual landscape has changed but my perception of the landscape has changed and right now if we want to talk about coronavirus issues people are perceiving people around them differently. So it's not like your neighbors have changed. It's not like that doorknob or the elevator button has changed but now we have a different perception about. Oh my gosh. What is that doorknob?
I mean, what does that tell her Vader button mean in terms of contagion? So I do think and this is why the question is such a good hard one. That's one way we can change the environment is change. Our perception of it
is that an information like will information alone change the maybe see this is
this is why it's a hard question. Maybe yes, you know, this is a model, you know, as I was trying to map it out. So I've mapped out what is ability what is motivation?
What is behavior all of those things and when he gets to context it's such a hard thing to feel like you like. I solve the puzzle elegantly for it. So that is you know, a kind of project that's in the back of my mind. And if there is a solve maybe I'll stumble across it someday or some maybe somebody's already solved it and that would be awesome. There could be a map that's given to me of the hiking trails near where I live in South Maui and
Just looking at that map will make up. Oh, I'm thinking differently now about my environment. Oh, I now know how to go hiking more easily. So it didn't actually maybe motivate me to hike but it would help me do what I already want to do. And that's a really important concept and it helped me by seeing possibilities by seeing how to go hiking.
I like that a lot talk to me a little bit of motivation what is motivation like if we break that down?
Mmm, well I there's different Frameworks and definitions of motivation. And when I talk about motivation it pretty much maps to how everyday people at least in the western culture. I live in talk about it. It's a drive to do something or and aspiration in the moment in my work looking at habits and behavior change. Yes motivation is one of the three components of any Behavior motivation ability and prompt and if there's no motivation you will not
Do the behavior by definition and we have everyday experiences that showed that if there's maybe you don't want to do even if it's super easy. You won't do it even when prompted the way I break motivation down. I've two models for this one is an analytical model and one's a design model and let me parse out the difference there when you see a model of any type, especially when it comes to social science.
Or psychology. Some models can be used for analysis a lens through which you look at something and understand it better and some models can be used for design the pack person model that I talked about abilities, like skill of the person change the environment or scale the behavior back that is a model that can be used for design because you can walk through those steps and then design Solutions. Then there are other models including ones. I've created that are only good for analysis. So I've mapped out.
The different ways behaviors can change think of that as like the periodic table of elements, but for behaviors and my first publication on the side 35 different Behavior types, I've simplified it since then to 15 people can find this at Behavior grid dot-org. There's 15 ways behaviors can change and that's nice. You know, it's like, oh here's where habit is in this grid. There's one of the 15 here's we're stopping habit lives. Here's where one time behavior is a new behavior is there's
15 ways now, that's a nice framework, but you can't use it for a design very well. It's an analytical tool. So when it comes to motivation them I got one that's more about analysis and then the pack person that's more about design the analytical framework I have for motivation as I say there are three core motivators.
One is Pleasure and Pain. So it's what you're sensing in the moment. And that's a core motivator for everybody Pleasure and Pain two things. The next it has to do with anticipation. It's hope and fear and it's the idea that if I do X Y will happen and if Y is a good thing like oh if I take vitamin C, I won't get sick. That's hope whereas fears. Oh if I touch this elevator button.
And get a virus I'll get sick and that's fear. So that's two sides of the same coin. And then the third core motivator is a social one which has to do with wanting to belong are the fear of being rejected and that I think is a good analytical framework, but it's not that useful for design. If you wanted to map out, you know, what motivates human beings while pleasure pain hope and fear and social acceptance and social rejection. That's something quite
Hence event, but from a design perspective, like if you had to find a way, let's say you wanted people to drink more filtered water for example, and if you wanted to get people to do that you would say well, you know, people have to have some motivation to do this to drink this kind of water. So what are our options number one in the pack person model you align it with what the person already wants to do. So with an ongoing aspiration, it might be they want to be healthier at my
They want to avoid contaminants. It might be that they want to stop drinking soda any of those you could align with bam now drink this filtered water. It will help you be healthier and so on so you look at what do people already want to do. That's one option. The next one is 2 and in the next one. I don't love it has to do with the action you attach some sort of benefit or punishment to the action. Some people call this carrot or stick. But yes, you can do that. I don't think it's the best.
Best way to design for motivation, but it's out there. It's an option. So that's bucket number 2 bucket number 3 again has to do with the context or the environment. And in that case the motivation comes from what's going on around you. So if you're in the midst of a global pandemic, well, there's lots of motivation to do certain behaviors. If you are going to a nightclub what happens in the nightclub motivates you to do other things so it's really that
Is a function of what our context what surrounds us including our perception of what surrounds us and that kind of motivation tends to be fleeting because we move from Context to context environment to environment and in one context we might be motivated to do X and in a different one we might be motivated to do why or things will change over time, you know things that are happening in the news. Oh my gosh. We're really concerned about stocks are really concerned about.
Coronavirus and fast forward a year from now those probably won't be top of the news and people would be less motivated around those things. So that third type of motivation is a contextual one and it has to do with a concept that I call the motivation wave. So things will happen around us that will increase our motivation to do stuff. But the reason that I along with colleagues, thank you David Sobel for naming this for me call it a
Is it will go up but then it's going to come down and if you need people to do hard things, you've got a prompt them when there's a motivation wave not after the way of has subsided. So if you need people to buy candy canes well, ask them to buy candy canes in early December come December 26th going to be a lot less motivated by candy canes. Do you want people to buy your tax preparation software? There's a season for that. So the way it goes up and it goes down.
And that's how I think about contextual motivation. It's something that we as individuals don't have a lot of control over but it happens and understanding how to help people do hard behaviors. One of the ways to do that is to prompt them during a motivation wave. Then people will do hard behaviors and they'll do them reliably as long as the motivation wave stays high five other ways of thinking about motivation, but those are took one is analytical and one is more of a design framework.
I'd love to hear with the other ways. You have a thing about
motivation. Well, one of the ways is which I so I'm so excited about this and have been for a decade. So my motivation about this hasn't subsided is how motivation interacts with ability. And so again, my behavior model is behavior happens, when these three things come together. It's a moment motivation ability and prompt and motivation and ability those two components have a relationship and if you
You look at the graphical version of my behavior model. There's a curved line and that curved line shows the relationship and essentially and it took me sane. I'm embarrassed to admit eight years to find the right word to describe the relationship. But here's the word. It's a compensatory relationship so they can compensate for each other. So if motivation is low for any given Behavior, then the ability must be high in other words, it has to be
Easy to do otherwise you won't do it if motivation is low and it's hard you don't do it. But if you can take that other teammate ability and make it really strong make it really easy to do then you do it reliably that Insight is what the tiny habits method is based on now, let's change the situation. Let's say your motivations really high. Well, that means you can do easy or hard things. So there is this relationship where they were
Work sort of hand in hand and that is really exciting because it's quite hard for anybody to design a way to increase your motivation and sustain it. Keep it at super high levels over time that's very hard to do. So because that's a reality instead. You can say well if motivations hi I can get myself to do hard things or I can get other people to do hard things, but when it drops lower we need to scale that back and not have other.
Myself too hard things than just do really tiny things. So you are adjusting the difficulty of the behavior according to the level of motivation in that moment.
That's fascinating. Yeah. I
mean conceptual I love in this was like, I'm so excited and what's the word for this and it's years. It's compensatory. They work like teammates. But you see this all around you go into I'll just talk about Stanford fundraising. I've helped them some if somebody's really really motivated.
Elevated excited about Stanford. You don't ask him for a $10 donation. You asking him for a hard Behavior, you know, if they've done a start-up and I had a good exit you asked him for millions of dollars, right because they're super motivated. But if they're not super motivated you don't ask them for thousands of dollars you asking for ten or a hundred that of course Works in different kinds of sales parents use this all the time and so on. So if you can understand the level of motivation in that moment then
And you can adjust how difficult to behaviors and in some ways. What you want to do is get yourself or other people to do the hardest Behavior you can do in that moment given your level of motivation. How
do we understand for ourselves or others where we are on this motivation
with that is a hard. Thank you for that hard
question. That's hard. That's hard. That's like the
well, I'll tell you what alphabet goo.
Ghal came from that they solved it in one way and that is the whole backbone of Google was exactly figuring that out and the way it works for Google in the what they figured out early Larry and Sergey is wow. Somebody goes in and types in how do I save more money into a search engine? What guess what that's what they're motivated to do in that moment and we're going to queue up things for them. So we're going to deliver to them what people already want to do. So that's one of the things I talked about a lot.
Call it a maxim Maxim. Number one is help people do what they already want to do notice how Google did that with search and then they sold ads on that search. Okay, so they were able to say hey, you got a solution to help people save money. We can find people who want to save money. We're in a matchup. We're going to charge you to get in front of those people. So in some ways the ability to sense what that
that person wanted in the moment not sense because they typed it into a search box gave Google the ability to sell ads against that and then deliver whether it's sponsored products or more organic solutions that weren't paid for right to those people. Now that's in the case of search they came in swept in the kind of have a monopoly on that. But in other domains, like if you're in sales and face-to-face good sales people know how to sense. How motivated is this person?
I think that's what good teachers do I think good coaches have a way of doing that. What's the level of motivation of this basketball player or maybe even your coaching and debate or what have you so we do that intuitively what's not solved yet is some Universal way of saying how motivated is my mom right now to eat broccoli. You know, how do I know that? How do I sense that? There are some proximal ways of doing it but no overall level now when it comes to
Sells how motivated am I to do X sometimes we just have a feeling other times. You could just say. Well you can determine the level of Motivation by understanding how much work you're willing to do in other words the effort how hard the behavior is you can then map that back to level of motivation. I'll give a true example from my life passwords passwords passwords passwords. Okay. Finally finally finally thanks to my former student roommates 80 reading the latest.
A
version of this book.
I was like, okay PJ you're going to do a password manager. That's pretty hard. But I had so much built-up frustration around passwords and stuff and using different devices and all this kind of thing. And I don't use the same password. You know, I have the I actually have an algorithm for creating passwords, but the algorithm is kind of broken down. And so I thought I'm going to do this. Well that's hard. I had lots of motivation. So the fact that I was in putting the
To do a password manager help me see. Yeah, you're really motivated to get on top of this password problem. So in some ways by seeing how hard people are working at something that's an indicator of their level of motivation.
I like that a lot. Is there a relationship between sort of
motivation and your
sense of self or your self-talk your identity and maybe emotions?
Yes, and it's probably it's complicated and I'm not sure anybody has totally figured it out because those are big categories.
Us but certainly there's a relationship. Let me start here in different contexts. We have different things that motivate Us in some ways you can think of that is wearing different hats or having different identities in different contexts. So in some context, I'm an uncle Mike had a family reunions some context. I'm a teacher like at Stanford and other contacts. I'm a you know, okay Surfer not a good one. Not a terrible one.
So in each of those contacts, I'm a different person and what motivates me is different and each one and I'm behaving differently in each one based on that role that I'm playing that said, I do think there is a general though. Some people would argue with me a general and I'll call it self efficacy, even though Albert bandura who pioneered the concept in some may argue with me. I do think that people have a generalizable sense of
Of yeah, I can do this. Whatever the context is whether I'm at a family reunions or at Stanford or out and the waves bam. Here's a huge wave. I'm going to do this or here's a huge teaching challenge. I'm going to do this our wow, my family reunions really going south. I got to step up and do something big I'm going to do this. So I do think that sense of being able to take action and get good results can generalize across domains, even though self-efficacy is mostly been conceptualized as
Specific your efficacy around cooking vegetables will not translate to doing taxes but I do think with and this is how I've seen it in tiny habits and coaching people in tiny habits when people see that they can change behavior and reach a success. Yes that helps wire in the habit and it helps them sustain the change over time. The feeling of success is what wires inhabit.
And it keeps people going but that feeling of success seems to generalize and help people unlock and other areas where they were fearful before so the fear diminishes so the Hope can emerge so think of Hope and fear as vectors pushing on each other and if you can diminish the fear then the Hope can emerge which is a motivator and allow you to harder things. So and this is what I've seen in my tiny habits research since 2011, and I didn't understand what was going on until about
Thousand thirteen so week after week teaching tiny habits measuring it week after week every Sunday. I would look at the data. I was busy on Sunday Monday. So I'd see what happened last week and what's going on and about 20% of the people week after week would report that within the five-day program. They would step up and do a hard behavior and I was like, wow, I mean in the other parts of the data, I would see that the behavior change would generalize most people start doing other behaviors and
naturally even within the five-day period but there is this, you know this and it was a range from say 12% 24% was at the range and eighteen twenty percent on average probably and it was like what's going on here and what I finally understood it took a while to figure this out is that when people feel successful even on Tiny things it changes how they see themselves in other words.
You can get an identity shift from even very tiny changes you feel successful around and once I saw that I was like that's amazing. I mean so you don't have to go to some big boot camp. You don't have to be indoctrinated. You don't have to get a new degree to feel like you have a new identity and competency. You can just floss one tooth and allow yourself to feel successful and recognize you you're changing and that has
this shift in how people see themselves. And so I started asking a new question then about in the tiny habits program and people would fill in the blank after doing tiny habits for five days. I now see I'm the kind of person who and they would fill in the blank and I started this in about 2013 and it was so interesting to see what would come back now 90% plus we're positive once in a while people say I now see I'm the kind of person that can't even do tiny things but far enough,
Way most people say I now see I'm the kind of person who can change. I'm the kind of person who can follow through. I'm the kind of person who can set a plan and stick to it and that was my favorite thing. So whenever I would look at the, you know, the results after every week, I would go in and look at what percent of people made a big change because I love to see that number because it still fascinates me. Oh my gosh. All you did was to push ups and floss one tooth and fill a glass of water and now you've made this huge change in your
Life and then the other one is just to see the comments of how people have described how their identity had shifted and it happened quickly and because of the just these tiny successes.
It's really interesting to me to think about it. Like how you can go from flossing a tooth to sort of like leaving your job or starting a business, but the way that it changes perhaps how you see yourself or builds your confidence or changes your self-talk becomes really interesting. Yes.
Damn. Thank you for yes. Yes. Yeah and that to me.
Is I don't want to say magic number Behavior scientist, but that is like oh my gosh, that's like the loophole that's like the portal you don't have to do these massive things to get this shift in identity and shift in self-talk. You can do it through these pretty simple and straightforward way. So that is indeed the subtitle of my book tiny habits. It's the small changes that change everything. That's what the subtitles about you make these small changes in it.
Changes how you think about yourself? It changes your self-talk it changes your relationship with emotions. So you're more inclined to embrace positive emotions and not let the negative emotions get you down some ways. I'm getting chills because that is such to me that is just I'm still fascinated with how that works and and people will in four years they wrote me emails because you know, the tiny habits five-day program was done through email and personal coaching through email. They're like BJ. Am I crazy?
You know, I'm now doing this and this and I stepped up into this and I just feel like I can do anything and am I going insane as I know that's actually a really good sign you're seeing yourself in a new way. You're seeing that you can succeed you you're seeing that you've developed skills of change and you're applying those effectively in good for you. You're not going crazy. You are
blossoming talk to me about how we reduce fear. It's hard one. I
asked such good hard questions. I'm not sure. I'm the
the world's expert on this. I mean the way I think about fear is that we have a cause-and-effect relationship in our head if x then y, it's like a causal and our brain is really good at these cause and effect relationships and that's what we're absorbing. I'm thinking even as babies and so on I don't study babies, but you know, we're saying if this then that if this then this bad thing happens, that's fear. I think I'll kind of push it out there Shannon you pull it back if you want.
One of the things so back in the day. I was a Humanities major and a writer and I was a terrible writer at the beginning but I worked really hard at it and got good and then started writing professionally and would write on professional projects or contest to work my way through college and then I worked as a ghost writer and editor and I was really big into narrative and story I'd love personal essay. So I drive a lot of personal essay which narrative plays a big part and part of looking at story or narrative.
For whatever, you want to call it and understanding the power of it was about setting up what you're doing. I think I think the whole reason stories exist, whether they're in folk tales or songs or Parables or little sayings is to perpetuate a sense of cause and effect. If you're honest people will like you if you lie, you'll be kicked out of the community. If you follow the rules, you will succeed and a well told
And story essentially is setting up if you do X, this is what happens. Why here's the result so stories. Well told stories can establish. Hope like if you save for retirement, you will be comfortable and you won't be in the Poorhouse or you won't have to live in your daughter's home when you grow up, you know, so us a story about that like, okay now I have hope that will motivate me to say or stories can establish fear if you don't do X or if you do X, here's the
Bad thing that will happen and it's my personal belief. I haven't studied this maybe somebody has that our brains when we hear as a narrative or story that encapsulates a cause and effect relationship. We have a really hard time pushing back and say no that's not true. So a well-told story in some ways is the only persuasion tactic for which we don't have good defenses for
and I'll push it one more thing out there and you can pull back if you want and that's why I think there is a commandment about not bearing false witness not telling false stories because whoever set up those Commandments knew somehow that if you tell the community of fault story that's going to stick in their brains and they're going to have either a false. Hope or a false fear and it's very hard to scrub that out. So this is something you do not do you do not tell false Stories
the
Of narrative is like so fascinating to me right where if you want to change what you see you change the narrative you change the story you tell yourself, but at some points it makes sense to delude ourselves and to be overconfident, right? If you're trying to start a business, you have to tell yourself a story that you're the exception.
Yeah, and you read all these Publications and you follow bloggers who are telling you that story so you can maintain your hope and squash down the fear. Yes stories are entertaining, but I think we've
Solves for our brains to that's how we learn how the world works, you know, cause and effect relationships and stories are a technology for transmitting cause and effect relationships within communities and through the generations. That's how I see
it. I think that's a good way to sum it up. We've talked a lot about individual level Behavior change. How do we change the behaviors of groups or tribes?
Yeah. That's a great question.
There was a year at Stanford where the whole year of research we called it change together and what we wanted to look at what our how do we change groups? And we mapped out different patterns, of course another framework and other model for this and it's harder to explain this because it's like a two by three thing and anyway, but just I'll get to some of the conclusions from the research is that there are different patterns.
Since that work for changing groups or changing together one distinction that we drew out of the research is we called one type of group like if you want to change your behavior, you can join a destination group or a journey group a destination group is a community that is already doing what you aspire to do. So, let's say you aspire to work out a let's pick something easier you aspire to study a lot you're in college. So guess what move into the
the honors dorm where people are already studying and then it makes it easier for you to change and study because you've joined this group that is they're already doing that. So that's one way another way is called the Journey Group where you join up with other novices who also want to make this change and together you make this journey in you all study more or whatever you're choosing. So you got these two patterns going on then on top of that you have the issue of
Leadership we would call this person the guru. I mean, I know a lot of people don't like the word but in a lot of group change efforts, you do have a leader or a guru or somebody who's saying here's what we're doing dead to not do that today that Guru can be situated within a destination group or join a group and people can in some systems. So we took a whole bunch of different change systems like Weight Watchers and Toastmasters and and map them down like what's going on here in terms of the group dynamics and
in terms of leadership, and then there is one more component is what happens to the members of these groups and one of the common patterns was
You then work up and then become a teacher or even a guru you begin maybe as a novice. You're not really doing it very well. But then you take on a role where you then you're
teaching other in either group the destination or the Journey Group. That's common between the
yeah. Okay. Yeah, so you have these variables that kind of mix and match and then we went out and grabbed programs in the world that we felt like we were effective and map them out and there were these systematic patterns of how you change together. It's
Like are the three patterns. There's more like carrot 12. It's not 200. There's like 12 and those seem to be the factors of it's the community already doing the behavior or you are you journeying together. What's the role of leadership? And then what's the status or the role of the member as they become more competent when you
were saying that I was thinking well, what is the role of my friends then it might Behavior or my destination or my journey people that I hang out with the most my co-workers my friends. What role do they play?
A a massive
massive good or bad. So yes a lot. I mean most people don't like to admit this but our behavior is so influenced by our environment more than we think and part of that environment is the people around us your friends if you want to eat in a certain way and they eat in a totally different way that's hard. If you're hanging out with them during an eating context if your friends are really into what's he studying.
Doing homework bam, you're going to probably study and do more homework. But we do have identities different identities in different friend groups and knowing how to move among them to optimize our self-serve achieve. Our aspirations is a skill for some people in this is hard. You may need to turn the volume down on some friendships are even end them if those friendships are not taking you in the direction you want to go that's just the reality in other cases.
This is talk about households as friends that say you can hopefully have household where you say. Hey everybody. I'm not drinking coffee for the next little while and I need your support on this and your friends will support you rather than sabotage you now hopefully people in your household will support you and you want to make a good change and not sabotage you but there is unfortunately situations where you do get Sabotage by friends or members of your household.
Even if they don't mean to they might say, oh you're going through another phase or didn't you know X y&z, you shouldn't do that. And that was part of what we looked at in the change together project. We don't have a perfect answer for this. You're part of a community or a part of a social group that you really can't get yourself out of but it's taking you in the wrong direction in terms of change or it's or it's pigeonholing you and not allowing you to change. That's a hard problem. I'm not sure there's a simple
Apple answer to that is
what's the complicated answer? What are your hypotheses here?
You leave the community. You you join a different Community you create I mean, I mean if in the ideal world you go. Oh, I'm going to align myself affiliate myself with people who either a destination group who's going to support me in this change our journey group people that are on this journey with me as well. You know, if you're in a job and you can't quit the job.
Fear in the family and you're not going to separate yourself from the family that solution I just said is may not be that practical.
What are the other parts of the environment that we probably don't think about that have a massive influence on our Behavior. Wow. I wish I had the framework.
I was at the model of environment cause then I could just go here are the five things
off the top of my head.
I'm going to think so, we've talked a little bit about the perception of what's around us. And so I'm not going to go there and
And certainly our social environment bam not going to go there. I'm going to go with our built environment and I'm going to have some details I think lighting matters so much if you look around the places where I live I have liked hacked the lighting like right now. I have a huge window open in front of me and I have full sun coming in right into my face. And then in the evening the light changes, you know, I have like they turn to be like
Amber and then at night. I only have like these red lights all over the house. So I really think lighting plays a big role and there's a research on this. I'm not an expert on the studies, but the lighting is a huge deal. I think sound is a huge issue and managing our sound environment is harder than the lighting environment. I think that's a big deal creating an environment in this is different than light and sound but it's a big part of my life and it has been for a long time as how do I
Change my environment to make the good behaviors of really easy to do and I'm constantly designing and redesigning and optimizing and it can be as simple as this in our California home and here in the are my way home. I have a drawer with my vitamins and supplements in it. So I know some people think vitamins are a bad idea. Well, there's certain vitamins and supplements. I think are good for me. So let's add that issue aside, but there are certain things. I want to take every day. So I have a drawer with the vitamins in it.
Exactly the ones I want to be taking when and in some cases, I I take the cap off the vitamin bottle. So it's really easy to get out or in some cases. I have a little dish that I put the vitamins in other words rather than the cupboard. I have to Fumble through and rather than on the counter and making a mess over the years. I've learned just put it in a drawer make the drawer dedicated to exactly your daily vitamins and then don't even require yourself to take the cap off the bottle just make it so easy to do.
Now right now my vitamin drawer here in my always a little bit of a mess because I run out of some and trying some new things. And so one thing I will do probably this afternoon while I'm on phone calls is I'll go in and tidy up that drawer and it's not just to Tiding exercise. I'm simplifying that behavior. I'm redesigning that environment. I'm upgrading it. So that behavior becomes a lot easier to do and when it is easier to do that means I don't have to
Motivation so what I'm doing is I'm designing for the reality that motivation goes up and down and we don't have a lot of control over that so the way you get around that as you just make behaviors really really really easy to do that you want to do and that's the way I look at it. It's an ongoing you need to refresh refresh of what's in your fridge. Like we're in jar fridge in a way. We call it super fridge everything in there you can eat but it takes some care and feeding once a week. You got to stock the fridge.
Well, there's your closet whether it's what's on your phone home screen. Yes, there's a lighting and there's sound but then there's just designing things around you to optimize your behavior. And that's I've long been obsessed with that. It sounds like almost like
a conscious approach to your environment and it almost sounded like you have a ritual like a ritual around it.
Well I do and for some of these things I don't need to rearrange the fridge every day.
Or I have a car that I use just for the beach and surfing it's a Honda Element its greatest little beach car and it gets to be a mess, you know, because there's like this here and sand and stuff, you know just happens. So once a week I have these once a week routines these rituals The Habit is to pull out a card that has a list of here's what I'm going to do every weekend. It's clean the fridge clean the bathroom tidy my
My car so on the Habit is to pull that card out with these little stickers on it. And then I just at some point during the weekend. I just do the tasks like the car. I got the car tidy things up throw things away that need to be thrown away the dot and then in my own practice of this what I've learned is if I set the bar too high like the car has to be sparkling clean. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to my brain will sabotage me. I'll find reasons not to do it. So in the tiny habits way, all I have to do is
Heidi one thing in the car and the tiny habits way when I go to the fridge every week to clean it. I only have to do one thing like, oh, here's some pesto that I'm pretty much done with. Okay. Let's recycle the pesto container. Well, guess what if I thought I had to clean the fridge again. It's like not going to do it. But if it's like only have to do one thing and then once you start so I go here's this here's this here's a next thing, you know in most cases. You've done a pretty good job on the bathroom or the
The fridge or the vitamin drawer the car. So yeah, there's these approaches to managing my environment that I've systematized that's all in the service of optimizing my habits which in turn is what I do so I can have more positive impact in the world because that's what it boils down to for me. It's like I need to be as effective as I can and helping people be happier and healthier so all of these things even Tiding the gar.
cleaning super Fred's is toward that end so I then can be super effective at helping people
I can't let it go without asking why you call it the super fridge
you know my partner and I started doing this a while ago and he feels a lot of ownership over it because he maintains the kitchen mostly it might have been his word I'll give this answer I guess super fridge is a good name because once
we started rearranging our fridge environment to support us in the nutrition habits we wanted and to make the bad nutrition habits impossible so in the fridge there's nothing in there that I have to resist or have use willpower to not eat it's like all on the game plan any time as much as I want and once we did that and lived with that for a few months we'll probably the Insight came after a couple of weeks it's like oh my gosh the job of the fridge isn't to keep
Is called know the job of the fridge is to help us eat on our game plan and that totally changes a reframing how
you use it. Yeah. It's like that's not a
cold. It's not a cooling device. It's a help as eat healthy device and then that way it gave us I feel super powers. So that's why I feel like super fridge is a it's like a almost like a companion. It's almost in my mind. It's I've all personified. It's like this is your job in this home is too.
Puss eat healthier go super
fit. I love that. I'm totally gonna steal that my kids are gonna you're gonna love this. How do we how do we make a bad habit harder to do or how do we change a bad habit? Like I was thinking about asking you about biting our nails, but you know, I've completely stop biting my nails as a result of this pandemic going on right now good for you but in general like, how do we go about stopping habit? I mean habits are sort of neutral right there. Neither good nor bad. How do
Stuff I have it that we feel is bad for
us. Yeah, the the valence of that word is shifted over the last 10 years even 10 years ago when I was training the Weight Watchers innovators at their headquarters, they were unwilling to use the word habit in their program because they felt it was mostly a negative word.
So that was a snapshot in time. I remember
about 10 years ago fast forward to today. It can go both ways today, but there was a time when it was considered mostly negative. And yes, you're right habits our
it's the way they form good habits what we call good habits and bad ABS, they'll form in the same way our brain the way that brain gets rewired. It's not like he are the good habits and bad habits. It's just think behaviors become automatic and then it's ourselves or the culture that labels them good or bad creating habits is pretty straightforward and easy, and that's what the tiny habits method is all about for creating habits stopping unwanted behaviors or what people call Breaking Bad Habits.
can be much much harder and it's not the same thing and they're as different as growing this little tree let's say palm tree was coconut to pulling it out of the earth their different processes and unfortunately there's a lot of information out there that tells people how to break habits that is not effective enough it's limited and in response to that I've created a three phase I called
after plan for Behavior change that's exactly for very very wired in habits that people want to get rid of some habits are really easy to stop from so we're not talking about those you know like stop the habit of going to the gym stop the habit of paying your bills those are easy to stop but it's these kind of habits it's not as simple as many people have said and that really upsets me you know some people have trivialised how hard some of these habits are to stop and the problem with that is that when people
read that and then they can't stop drinking or smoking or playing games on the Internet or gambling then they blame themselves and they beat themselves up and they think I'm flawed I'm Terrell I'm awful and so people who mislead others about how to get rid of unwanted behaviors are actually damaging lots of people and that makes me grumpy so in response to that I said no here is the system there's a three phases to it I'll just go through pretty quickly Shane and these aren't for like oh I'm going to
to stop the habit of you know leaving the pen out on the counter we're talking more ingrained habits that are more complicated first of all think of it as entangling but phase one is you practice creating good habits so you said the bad habit assigned say I'm just going to create a bunch of good habits and in the process of creating good habits your identity will shift and that may push out some of the unwanted habits you'll develop the skills of behavior change Behavior changes a skill and you will use those
Skills later and then you'll also develop more motivation. Why because your fear of change will be reduced. So that's why I'm Phase 1 you focus on creating good habits Phase 2, then you look at the Habit you want to stop and you untangle it
for each one of these phases. There's a flow chart in the back of my book tiny habits. So I mean, of
course I think of everything in terms of systems and flows and it's a comprehensive system and in Phase 2 you identify which part of the
angle you want to undo and you see if you can remove the prompt and if that doesn't work, then you see if you can make it harder to do in other words manipulate ability. If you can't do that, then you see if you can change the level of motivation. So you're using the components of the behavior model systematically prompt ability motivation and that order step-by-step if what one works you're done and you can go to another tangle and the Habit if it doesn't work you go to the next step. So it's a system.
If you find you cannot just simply Stop The Habit then you go to phase 3 phase 3, which is about swapping it. Okay. So many people say You must swap it that's not true in this comprehensive system. That is the last phase. So instead of coming home from work and getting on I'll say YouTube one of my friends has a YouTube addiction. What will I do instead? So then that person would look for a swap which is at this at
once you're stopping habit and then creating a new one and there's a systematic way for doing it. It builds on prompts ability motivation just like all the rest of the behavior design system. And so you what you look for is something to swap in that will be more motivating or easier to do or both than the existing habit you want to untangle. So that's a high level summary focus on creating new habits then see if you can stop the habit and then if neither of those work go to phase 3
And then you focus on swapping but you don't have to guess there's a system for that that I've mapped out and it's comes back to the order of what you do and how you pick which behaviors and everything up in Behavior. I've been comes back to prompt ability and motivation. Those are the components you have to fiddle with to either create a behavior or get rid of one one of the
parts about your book. I love the most is the appendices where you had all these beautiful diagrams almost
Like flow charts that we're super easy to understand
and go through. Thank you. I'm I'm smiling big and kind of a laughing because thank you for that. Those got pushed back to the appendix not by me, but my editors if it were just me. I mean the book is written as you see in a way that has these true stories that show how people have used this and you know, tiny habits and behavior designed to transform their lives and
You know, here's how you do it. So like but the flowchart were deemed way too complicated for most people and very off-putting. So, I don't know people are going to open the book and see a flowchart and put it back
down as it's interesting.
I know it's kind of sad but you have to
meet people where they are and I mean believe. Yeah, there's people like me who are like, oh he thinks in systems. This is so exciting.
I know right? This is Greg. Yes people like us but not everybody does.
Is it and in fact one of the people I was working with on the book? She did doesn't think in any graphics just turn her off and it's like no no the graphic. Look at this a graphic showing more than what we can actually say in words and she just wasn't her thing. So it was so good to have her input because I mean she was a very she is a very very smart person but it helped me realize it's like, oh not everybody wants a graphic or a flowchart or if this then that if this then that and then
That's my bias towards stuff but not hers. And so I want to be able to reach people like her. So the compromise was to push that and other things that were a little more technical back to the appendices. And I'm so happy. They're there at least
I forgot to ask you to kick-off the interviewer to ask you. What is a
habit I have it is something that we do quite automatically without thinking very much
and is it get formed by repetition then? Yeah.
Yeah,
there has been a lot of stuff out the world that says repetition creates habits, but that's actually not how it works. If you look at the study that people cite most when they're making that claim. It's a 2009 2010 study. It was you will see that that study showed that habit strength correlates with repetition. It wasn't even designed to show.
Causal relationship. So yes habit strength correlates with repetition. But repetition is not what creates The Habit that would be like saying I'm going to do a study of fit people and oh guess what hanging out in the gym leads to Being Fit? Okay ready go hang out in the gym because my study shows that the fittest people are the people that spend the most time in the gym. So go hang out the gym. So you go to the gym or I go to the gym or somebody goes to the gym the
hang out at the snack bar and watching TV and whatever like I'm not getting fat what's going on? That's how this research is being misapplied. And so to set the record straight As you saw in the book. I have a chapter called emotions create habits. So it's emotions that cause our brain to rewire they go. Oh my gosh that helped me feel successful or that was instrumental. So the problem and I knew that
Would be controversial and that would upset people because some people have established their whole careers around the idea that repetition is what creates habits. Yes. I talk about them for like a paragraph in my book and I move on to what really works because the book is in my work in general is not about pointing out. Here's everything that's wrong. My work is here's how to do it. Right? Here's how to think about it in the right way. Here's how to do it the right way, but I will say here the the problem this isn't in the book, but the problem with people believing that repetition creates habits.
Number one. It's not accurate. Number two, then they see the changing behavior is something they must endure or suffer. Like oh if I just didn't go to the gym for 21 days, even though I hate it. I have the habit or 66 days or a hundred and eight days or whatever they've heard. So then they see change and suffering or endurance and then they may procrastinate doing stuff and then when it doesn't wire in after 21 or six, they blame themselves, so all those are bad things. So instead if people
And that emotions create habits. Oh and by the way, it's positive emotions that help you change best. That means you feel good through changing and you don't have to procrastinated and You by helping yourself feel successful. Not only do you wear in the habit, but then you have all these other positive effects some of which we've talked about earlier. So I think it's a really important shift for people and even though I know there's even more criticism coming.
Aiming toward me around this. I have to put it out there. I have to put out the truth as I see it as my research support is emotions create habits, and that also means you don't have to it's not 21 days or sixty six days in my data. I've seen for years that the vast majority of people report that a habit has become automatic or very automatic within 5 days. And that's a function of their emotion as they do that new Behavior. So if they do the new behavior and feel a
I'm intense positive emotion as they do it immediately after then that will help that behavior become more automatic and then tiny habits. We don't leave the an emotion to chance. There's a Technique we call Celebration where you hack your basically hacking your emotion your calling up a positive Emotion by doing a fist pump thinking about a great song. I thinking of holding your dog anything that helps you feel a positive emotion, and that's a way to hack the bring up.
positive emotion or to hack your brain and help to have a wire in quickly
I like that a lot that's I think that's a great place to end this conversation BJ this it's been long overdue that we've had this I really appreciate you taking the time I
so appreciate you inviting machine and thank you for the great work you do and thank you for helping me
share this hey one more thing before we say goodbye the knowledge project is produced by the team at Farnam Street
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