Tiny Habits

Key Concepts

The Anatomy of Tiny Habits 

1. ANCHOR MOMENT: “An existing routine (like brushing your teeth) or an event that happens (like a phone ringing). The Anchor Moment reminds you to do the new Tiny Behavior.” (p. 12)

2. NEW TINY BEHAVIOR: “A simple version of the new habit you want, such as flossing one tooth or doing two push-ups. You do the Tiny Behavior immediately after the Anchor Moment.” (p. 12)

3. INSTANT CELEBRATION: “Something you do to create positive emotions, such as saying, “I did a good job!” You celebrate immediately after doing the new Tiny Behavior.” (p. 12)

Fogg Behavior Model

“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.” (p. 20)

(p. 23)

“1. The more motivated you are to do a behavior, the more likely you are to do the behavior” (p. 25)

“2. The harder a behavior is to do, the less likely you are to do it” (p. 26)

“Here’s a related insight that might begin to transform your life (it transformed mine): The easier a behavior is to do, the more likely the behavior will become habit. This applies to habits we consider “good” and “bad.” It doesn’t matter. Behavior is behavior. It all works the same way.” (p. 26)

“3. Motivation and ability work together like teammates” (p. 27)

“4. No behavior happens without a prompt” (p. 28)

Three Steps for Troubleshooting a Behavior 

“You don’t start with motivation when you troubleshoot. You follow these steps instead. Try each step in order. If you don’t get results, move to the next step. 

• Check to see if there’s a prompt to do the behavior. 

• See if the person has the ability to do the behavior. 

• See if the person is motivated to do the behavior.” (p. 33)

Motivation Is Unreliable

“Here’s the unfortunate thing—most people believe motivation is the true engine of behavior change. Words like “rewards” and “incentives” get thrown around with such regularity that most people think you can create whatever habits you want if you find the right carrot to dangle in front of yourself. This kind of thinking is understandable, but it also happens to be wrong.” (p. 42)

“In my own work, I focus on three sources of motivation: yourself (what you already want), a benefit or punishment you would receive by doing the action (the carrot and stick), and your context (e.g., all your friends are doing it).” (p. 43)

“Even more problematic is the fact that we’re blind to at least some of our motivation much of the time. We may not fully understand where the desire to eat a certain food is coming from. Do I really love the salty taste of popcorn, or does my daily popcorn habit stem from nostalgia for the days when my family and I used to eat it during movie night? Changing, invisible, competing, and conflicting motivations make this element of behavior hard to pin down and control.” (p. 45)

Golden Behaviors

“A Golden Behavior has three criteria. 

• “The behavior is effective in realizing your aspiration (impact)

• “You want to do the behavior (motivation)

• “You can do the behavior (ability)” (p. 58)

Focus Mapping 

“In the first round of Focus Mapping, Mark thinks about only the impact of the behavior—how much it helps him to reduce his stress—and he doesn’t consider the feasibility or practicality of each behavior in this round. For each behavior card, he asks himself: How effective is this behavior in helping me to reduce my stress?” (p. 60)

“In this [second] round you focus on feasibility and practicality. You become the real you, not the fantasy version. In round two you don’t move cards up or down; you slide them side to side along the feasibility dimension.” (p. 60)

“You can’t get yourself to do what you don’t want to do. At least not reliably. You might do the behavior once or twice, but it’s unlikely to become a habit. When we match ourselves with behaviors that we already want to do, not what we think we should do, there is no need to fuss with motivational tricks or techniques later. We take the Motivation Monkey out of commission.” (p. 61)

(p. 65)

Using Ability to Create Habits

“The reason we want to make a behavior easy to do—which often means starting tiny—is so the unpredictability of the Motivation Monkey doesn’t mess up our future success.” (p. 76)

“When you are designing a new habit, you are really designing for consistency. And for that result, you’ll find that simplicity is the key. Or as I like to teach my students: Simplicity changes behavior.” (p. 77)

“If you want to do a habit consistently, you’ve got to adjust the most reliable thing in the B=MAP model—ability. That’s where we have the most power to stack the deck in our favor. If a behavior is hard, make it easier to do. You’ll see that over time your motivation will vary, but your ability will improve the more you do your new habit. And that increase in ability helps your habit grow.” (p. 77)

Ability Factors

“Do you have enough time to do the behavior? 

“Do you have enough money to do the behavior?

“Are you physically capable of doing the behavior?

“Does the behavior require a lot of creative or mental energy?

“Does the behavior fit into your current routine or does it require you to make adjustments?” (p. 80)

The Three Approaches to Making a Behavior Easier to Do 

1. INCREASE YOUR SKILLS (p. 83)

2. GET TOOLS AND RESOURCES (p. 84)

3. MAKE THE BEHAVIOR TINY (p. 86)

Prompts

“Designing a good prompt is a key part of Fogg Maxim #1: Help yourself do what you already want to do.” (p. 98)

Context Prompts: 

“This prompt is anything in your environment that cues you to take action: sticky notes, app notifications, your phone ringing, a colleague reminding you to join a meeting.” (p. 103)

“This kind of prompt is best suited for a one-time behavior (like making a doctor’s appointment), yet it’s not a great way to create a habit.” (p. 104)

“When you set up too many Context Prompts, they can actually have the opposite effect—you become desensitized and fail to heed the prompt. You end up not hearing notification dings and not seeing sticky notes.” (p. 105)

Action Prompts:

“An Action Prompt is a behavior you already do that can remind you to do a new habit you want to cultivate. This is a special type of prompt. The Action Prompt is one way you hack your behavior with the Tiny Habits method.” (p. 106)

“A fuzzy Anchor (‘after dinner’ or ‘whenever I feel stress’) doesn’t work. Make them precise. One good way to think about Anchors is to call them Anchor Moments, which implies a precise moment in time.” (p. 112)

Power Move: Start with Anchors 

“You can create successful recipes in Tiny Habits by starting with an Anchor. It’s basically a flip of what we’ve been doing. Instead of starting with a habit you want to create and finding a place for it, you begin with the routines you already have and find new habits to plug in.” (p. 116)

Positive Experiences Reinforce Habits

“When you celebrate effectively, you tap into the reward circuitry of your brain. By feeling good at the right moment, you cause your brain to recognize and encode the sequence of behaviors you just performed. In other words, you can hack your brain to create a habit by celebrating and self-reinforcing.” (p. 134)

“Another important thing to remember is that celebration is habit fertilizer. Each individual celebration strengthens the roots of a specific habit, but the accumulation of celebrations over time is what fertilizes the entire habit garden. By cultivating feelings of success and confidence, we make the soil more inviting and nourishing for all the other habit seeds we want to plant.” (p. 140)

Behavior Crafting

“Focus on what interests you. Some people enjoy cultivating lots of little easy habits. Other people like to tackle habits that are a bit more challenging. What seems most interesting and exciting to you? That’s what you should do. If you’re feeling lost, here’s the default: Start with three super easy habits—that’s what most Habiteers begin with—and add three new habits each month.” (p. 175)

“Embrace variety. The more variety you begin with, the faster you’ll learn this and other Skills of Change. Select some new habits that begin as Starter Steps—putting on your walking shoes. Select other habits that are scaled-back versions—flossing just one tooth. It’s also good to mix up the general theme—an exercise habit, a food-related habit, a productivity habit. Variety helps you learn more quickly what works best for you.” (p. 175)

“Stay flexible. If you want to create a list of the habits you want to eventually do, don’t get too rigid with your list.” (p. 175)

Quotables

“The disconnect between want and do has been blamed on a lot of things—but people blame it on themselves for the most part. They internalize the cultural message of “It’s your fault! You should exercise more, but you aren’t doing it. Shame on you!” I am here to say: It isn’t your fault. And creating positive change isn’t as hard as you think.” (p. 1)

“We are not the problem. Our approach to change is. It’s a design flaw—not a personal flaw.” (p. 2)

“Before I go on, let me set the record straight: information alone does not reliably change behavior. This is a common mistake people make, even well-meaning professionals. The assumption is this: If we give people the right information, it will change their attitudes, which in turn will change their behaviors. I call this the ‘Information-Action Fallacy.’” (p. 4)

“In the Tiny Habits method, I teach people to think about their new habits as small seeds. If you plant a good seed in the right spot, it will grow without coaxing. Starting with behaviors that you can and want to do makes for a good seed. Choosing behaviors that set you up for success increases your confidence and mastery as you go, thus increasing your natural motivation to do bigger and bigger behaviors. But it all starts small and honest and specific.” (p. 66)

“While small might not be sexy, it is successful and sustainable. When it comes to most life changes that people want to make, big bold moves actually don’t work as well as small stealthy ones. Applying go big or go home to everything you do is a recipe for self-criticism and disappointment.” (p. 73)

“How long does it take for habits to grow to their full expression? There is no universal answer. Any advice you hear about a habit taking twenty-one or sixty days to fully form is not entirely accurate. There is no magic number of days. Why? Because the formation time of a habit depends on three things. 

• “The person doing the habit 

• “The habit itself (the action) 

• “The context (p. 166)

“Identity shifts are change boosters because they help us cultivate constellations of behavior—not just one or two habits here and there. This is important because most aspirations require more than one type of habit change. It’s a set of new habits that will get you where you want to be—especially in the areas of fitness, sleep, and stress.” (p. 188)

“Instead of ‘break,’ I suggest a different word and a different analogy. Picture a tangled rope that’s full of knots. That’s how you should think about unwanted habits like stressing out, too much screen time, and procrastinating. You cannot untangle those knots all at once. Yanking on the rope will probably make things worse in the long run. You have to untangle the rope step by step instead. And you don’t focus on the hardest part first. Why? Because the toughest tangle is deep inside the knot. You have to approach it systematically and find the easiest knot to untangle.” (p. 201)