Tiny Habits - Chapter 3 Flashcards
What does BJ like to tell his students changes behavior?
Simplicity changes behavior.
This is one of the hacks in the Tiny Habits method: Make the behavior so tiny that you don’t need much motivation. Doing two push-ups against a wall is easy to accomplish so you’re much more likely to keep it as a habit. 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.
If you want to do a habit consistently, you’ve got to do what?
If you want to do a habit consistently, you’ve got to adjust the most reliable thing in the Behavior Model (B=MAP) - and that’s 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.
What’s the second critical question we should ask about any behavior or habit we want to cultivate, after the Discovery Question?
The second critical question we should ask is The Breakthrough Question: “How can I make this behavior easier to do?
It turns out that there are only three answers. Use the PAC Person metaphor as a reminder.
1. Person - increase your skills
2. Ability - make the behavior tiny
3. Context - get tools and resources.
All three approaches manipulate the Ability element of B=MAP to move you above the Action Line and increase the likelihood that you will actually do a behavior. Regardless of what your aspiration is, increasing your skills, getting tools and resources, and making the behavior tiny are what makes things easier to do.
To understand what makes something hard to do, what question should you always start with?
Start with The Discovery Question: “What is making this behavior hard to do?”
This question focuses us on which factor is likely to cause us the most trouble. And “hard to do” doesn’t just mean very hard. It means any amount of hard to do that would keep you from doing the behavior!
Your answer will involve at least one of five factors, called the Ability Factors:
1. Do you have enough time to do the behavior?
2. Do you have enough money to do the behavior?
3. Are you physically capable of doing the behavior?
4. Does the behavior require a lot of creative or mental energy?
5. Does the behavior fit into your current routine or does it require you to make adjustments?
Your Ability Chain is only as strong as its weakest Ability Factor link.
TIME - MONEY - PHYSICAL EFFORT - MENTAL EFFORT - ROUTINE
How do you do an Easy-to-Do Analysis?
- Ask The Discovery Question (always first); What’s making this bahavior hard to do? In other words, what’s the weakest link in the Ability Chain?
- Ask The Breakthrough Question; How can I make this behavior easier to do?
What’s the first way to make a behavior tiny?
Create a Starter Step
The Starter Step is is exactly what it sounds like: one small move toward the desired behavior. If you want to make a habit out of walking three miles every day, your Starter Step might be putting your walking shoes on. That Starter Step becomes your Tiny Behavior and the only action you need to do at the start of your new habit. The objective here is to begin with a crucial step in the process of doing the desired behavior. Tell yourself: I don’t have to walk. I just have to make sure I put on my shoes each day.
What’s an important part of the Tiny Habits mindset regarding when to raise the bar when you’ve been doing your really tiny behavior?
An important part of the Tiny Habits mindset is to not raise the bar prematurely. Don’t rush to make the behavior bigger. It’s always okay to not walk after putting on your shoes if that’s all you want to do for the day. By keeping the bar low, you keep the habit alive. You’ll ensure that you’re always capable of doing the behavior no matter how your motivation fluctuates.
What’s the second way to make a behavior tiny?
Scaling Back
This means taking the behavior you want and shrinking it. As a result, your Tiny Habit will be a much smaller version of your desired behavior. Consider BJ’s flossing habit: He wanted to floss all his teeth but began with just one. He scaled it back. If your desired behavior is to walk a mile every day, you can scale back by walking to the mailbox. Nothing more. As with the Starter Step, the scaled-back version is your Tiny Habit — it’s your baseline behavior, the only thing you have to do every day to cultivate the walking habit that will eventually grow to full size.
When making a behavior easier to do, where do you start, skills, tools, or tiny?
There is no single right answer, and even though you don’t have to do all three options to make something easier to do, using all three is a great way to set yourself up for success by making sure your behavior is as simple as it can be.
To decide where to start, look at your motivation level. Acquiring skills and tools are often one-time actions best done when your motivation is high. When our motivation is high, we can do more difficult things; but when it’s on the low side, we need to compensate by making the behavior tiny. Gauging our motivation for completing each behavior helps us determine our next step on the road to making it a habit.
What are the two steps to make that behavior easier to do?
ANALYSIS PHASE
Ask the Discovery Question: What’s making this bahavior hard to do? The Ability Chain will give you your answer.
DESIGN PHASE
Ask the Breakthrough Question: How can I make this behavior easier to do? For the design phase, turn to the three parts of the PAC model.
- Will improving my skills make it easier to do?
- Will getting the right tools or resources help me to make it easier?
- Can I make the new behavior tinier so it’s is easier to do?
What are the four questions of Design Flow?
Design Flow
1. Are you feeling motivated enough to learn a new skill? Yes? Great—do it. And now go to the next question. No? Next question.
2. Are you feeling motivated enough to find a tool or resource? Yes? Excellent, make it happen. And now go to the next question. No? Next question.
3. Can you scale back the behavior to make it tiny? Yes? Fantastic. You’re done. You can start practicing your new habit. No? Next question.
4. Can you find a Starter Step for your behavior? Yes? Great. Make the Starter Step your initial habit, then do more later when you feel like it. No? Uh-oh. If you said no to all of these questions, you might need to go back and match yourself with a different behavior from your Swarm of Behaviors.
What’s it mean to keep a habit alive?
Keeping a habit alive means keeping a part of your routine no matter how tiny you have to make it.
What’s the pattern of success people often struggle with but absolutely necessary if you want a habit to grow big?
If you want a habit to grow big, you need to start small and simple. Once the habit wires in, you can then grow it naturally.
What is one of the biggest misplaced beliefs that cause frustrating family dynamics and workplace dramas?
That manipulating motivation is the key to changing behavior, but Habiteers know that simplicity is what reliably changes behavior.
How can Starter Steps work magic on behaviors that don’t need to be habitual.
By doing a small Starter Step, such as calling to schedule an appointment with the dentist, we alleviate the stress that will continue to grow the longer you put it off. Our perception of a behavior’s difficulty is often bigger than it’s actual difficulty, which we realize when we do finally it and then wonder why we put it off in the first place.
For this example, a Starter Step would be to write the doctor’s number on a Post-it and put it on your phone. Knowing that writing down the number is all you have to do makes it easy. By lower the bar you hack your brain. Writing down the phone number isn’t difficult so you’re likely to do it. And once you write it down, you may find that it’s easy to keep going and pick up the phone and dial the number. Completing tiny behaviors gives us a boost of confidence, and this increases our motivation to do the entire behavior.
