Love Your Work

BJ Fogg (@bjfogg) is a behavioral scientist at Stanford University. He specializes in "Behavior Design," which aims to influence people for the better through insights about human behavior. In this podcast episode, BJ breaks down how to build good habits.

Why do we fail to build good habits?

Most resolutions to build good habits fail for two reasons:

1. We think too vaguely. We think things like "I want to eat healthier" or "I want to lose weight." If you want to make something a reality you have to break it down into actions. Specificity makes behavior easier to change.
2. Our motivation changes. You might start off trying to build good habits and feel very motivated, but your motivation will wane. You may have felt very motivated by something – such as the New Year – but that will pass. Or, life gets in the way, and that causes your priorities to change.

What are some of the hardest good habits to build?

What is a good habit? Well, that's up to you. But some of the most common good habits that people want to build are writing, and meditation. Yet they're the hardest.

It's up to you what you consider to be a good habit. If you need help deciding on one popular habit: Should you make your bed? I've got you covered with that episode.

Since I wrote a book about building writing habits with the aim of writing a book, I'll use that as an example to apply BJ's concepts in this post.

The "swarm of bees" approach to build good habits

We fail to build good habits because we think to vaguely. For example, we might say we want to write a book. You can't just sit down and write a book, especially if you're a beginning writer. An even more vague goal you might hear from people is that they want to "eat healthy."

Neither of these are habits. These are outcomes. They are the results of taking actions, but they aren't actions themselves. So, it becomes mentally impossible to use them to "build good habits," if you aren't intentional about it.

Fogg uses a concept, in his tiny habits training program, he calls the "swarm of bees."

You start with your vague outcome. Fogg calls it an "aspiration." Write it down on a piece of paper. Then, write down a bunch of behaviors you could do that would help lead to that aspiration. It looks like this slide from Fogg's TEDx talk.

[caption id="attachment_4474" align="aligncenter" width="750"] The "swarm of bees" is an outcome surrounded by behaviors that could lead to that outcome.[/caption]

In this slide, the aspiration is "health outcomes," which could be something like losing weight. Let's think of the swarm of bees as something like writing a book.

• Outcome: Write a book
• Behaviors
  • Sit at computer.
  • Put fingers on keyboard.
  • Type.
  • Read about how to write a book.
  • Read about how to publish a book.
  • Do market research.
  • and so on...

Not all behaviors are habits: Three categories of behaviors

As you come up with behaviors to match your aspiration, you'll find each behavior falls into one of three categories:

1. One-time behaviors: Things you do just once, such as buy a book or schedule an appointment.
2. Behaviors over a period of time: Things you do over a period of time, such as mow the lawn regularly over the summer.
3. Habits: Things you do habitually with no time restriction. Brushing your teeth, meditating, or writing.

Pick behaviors that are a good match for you, to build good habits

Now you have an outcome you want to reach, and you have a list of behaviors that will bring you closer to that outcome. Next, you need to pick a behavior that you can build into a good habit.

But you don't want to pick just any behavior. If you want to build good habits, the behavior has to be a good match.

Fogg recommends choosing a behavior with the following three characteristics:

1. The behavior has an impact: A good behavior will take you toward your aspiration. Since you already did the swarm of bees exercise, this will be a given.
2. The behavior is something you can do: The good match for you is a behavior that you're capable of doing. If you're a beginning writer trying to write a book, trying to build a habit of writing 5,000 words a day might be too much.
3. The behavior is something you want to do: If you don't want to do the behavior, you can't build it into a good habit.

How many days does it take to build a good habit? It depends!

Despite what you might hear about how long it takes to build a good habit, there is no set number of times or days. (Commonly you hear the myth of "21 days" to build a good habit.)

It really depends upon the habit you're building. Some habits are instant: The moment you touched a smart phone, using it became a habit. When Fogg got a new rocking chair, sitting in it instantly became a habit, because it was so much better than his other chair. Other habits can take more time to take root.

Good habits are like the roots of a plant

More accurately, both good habits and bad habits are like the roots of a plant. Any plant needs to take root in order to survive. You want to pull the weeds (the bad habits) before their roots get too strong, and you want to nurture the good plants (the good habits) so they can take root and thrive for a long time.

If you have a good habit going, but your life gets disrupted, you should take extra care to help that habit take root in your new circumstances. Think of it how you would think of moving a plant from one pot to another – it would need extra care.

Good habits change your personal identity

When you've built a good habit, meaning it's firmly rooted, it changes your personal identity. You start to tell yourself, "I'm the kind of person who...."

Now that I've personally established a habit of writing, I'm more confident in my identity as a writer. "I'm the kind of person who writes." I write every morning during my pre-established writing habit, but now I can write anytime.

Good habits have a "ripple effect." They lead to more good habits.

Fogg has helped thousands of people build good habits through his tiny habits program. He collects data on the effects building good habits on these people.

Fogg has found that, within five days after starting to build one good habit, eighty percent of people start building other habits. They apparently say to themselves, "I'm the kind of person who builds good habits."

Consistency matters more than scale in building good habits

When you're trying to build good habits, consistency matters more than scale. For example, if you have a habit of writing 100 words a day, and you're able to do it every day, that's better than if you try to build a habit of writing 1,000 words a day, but you're only able to do it occasionally.

Why? Because if you keep writing 100 words a day, the habit has a chance to take root. It goes from being a behavior you do for a short period of time, to being a habit that you stick with.

You really know something is a habit if it is easier to do the habit than it is to not do the habit. Think about habits like brushing your teeth or bathing. You don't feel right if you don't do them. They're strongly-rooted habits. It's a part of your identity. "[You're] the kind of person who brushes their teeth."

Back to the writing habit: If you try to write 1,000 words a day, it's hard to remain consistent early on. It's easy to make excuses such as that you're too busy. You can't be consistent, so the habit can't take root.

Tiny habits are the seeds of good habits

Consistency is more important than scale. A small behavior done consistently has a better chance of taking root and changing your identity than a large behavior done inconsistently. This is why Fogg recommends tiny habits. Tiny habits are the seeds of good habits.

I've been talking in this post about how much better it would be to build a 100-word writing habit than to try to build a 1,000-word writing habit. Those 100 words would be the seed that takes root. Your identity changes. You're the kind of person who writes every day. The next thing you know, you're writing much more.

Feel good about your habit, don't feel bad about your habit

For a habit to take root, you have to be consistent with it. You'll have a better chance of being consistent with your habit if you feel good about that habit.

So find ways to feel good about your habit, and avoid ways that make you feel bad about your habit. Here's a few ways to keep you feeling good about your habit, and avoid feeling bad about your habit.

Keep your good habit a tiny habit

If you want to feel good about your habit, it helps to succeed at your habit. Fogg strongly recommends that you keep your habit tiny forever. It's counterintuitive. After all, if you want to write a book, how are you going to do it by writing just 100 words a day?

The key is to allow yourself to do your habit beyond your target. So, if you have a habit of writing 100 words a day, go ahead and write 250 words, or 1,000 words. But keep your target at 100.

I will say that I make a contradictory recommendation in my post, how to write a book. There's value as a writer to getting really good at writing pieces of a certain length. There's also value in building the habit of publishing. It would be incredibly complicated to study these factors, along with the factor of word count, to make a scientific recommendation on what works best.

So, Fogg still staunchly stands by keeping your habit tiny. He's a scientist, and that's what he knows works.

Congratulate yourself for performing your good habit

Every time you do your habit, celebrate in some way. You could have a reward for yourself, but you can also merely tell yourself that you did a good job. This will keep you feeling good about your habit, and prevent you from feeling bad about your habit.

In the writing example, let's say you have a tough day of writing. But, you wrote 100 words. Don't feel bad. Instead, congratulate yourself for performing your good habit for the day. Again, if you go past 100 words, that's great, but really congratulate yourself for merely writing 100 words.

Lower your standards to feel good about your habit

Ambitious people tend to have high standards. Not only do they want to write 1,000 words a day, they expect those words to be great.

This just adds another opportunity to feel like you've failed at your habit. Worse yet, you may keep yourself from starting your habit in the first place.

This is why, in my book The Heart to Start, I say you should give yourself "permission to suck." If you're writing badly every day, you have a much better chance of becoming good at writing if you instead decide not to write at all, just because you don't think you're a good writer.

You'd find yourself in a Catch-22 situation: You can't get good at writing because you won't practice it. You won't practice writing because you don't feel that you're good at it.

Don't count habit "streaks"

Fogg recommends against counting "streaks," for your habits. Habit streaks create another opportunity for you to feel bad about your habit, which can lead to you not performing the behavior, which can prevent the habit from taking root.

Imagine, for example, that you have a good habit of writing 100 words a day, and you've counted a streak of twenty days. Then, you miss your habit for some reason – maybe you were sick or you had house guests.

Now, not only do you feel bad about missing your streak, you also have the sensation of starting your streak all over again. It's as if you're committing to 10,000 words, rather than 100. It would then be easy to abandon your good habit altogether.

In summary...

• Find behaviors that fit your aspiration.
• From those behaviors, find a good habit match.
• Build tiny habits.
• Feel good about your habits. Don't feel bad about your habits.

Buy The Heart to Start on Amazon You have something to offer the world. Break through fear, self-doubt, and distractions to finally make it real. Buy The Heart to Start.

Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com.

Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected].

Show Notes: https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/build-good-habits/

Many of you have checked out my new book The Heart to Start. I got tired of hearing the advice "just get started," and I wanted to break it down for people. It shows you how to bust through all of the mental distortions and distractions that stand in the way of you getting started.

Today, I'm going to share another sample chapter. This is from Chapter 10 of The Heart to Start, and I'm going to tell you about when I got stuck trying to start writing my first book, Design for Hackers. Our friend Noah Kagan, who you've heard on this show, ended up showing me how I was standing in my own way.

You can buy The Heart to Start on Amazon. There's now a paperback version, so if you picked it up on Kindle and want a physical copy, now you can do that. Also, I really truly appreciate all of the reviews that have been pouring in on Amazon.

If you've read The Heart to Start, please click on a star rating on Amazon. It would be a HUGE help.

Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com.

Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected].

Sponsors:

http://brandfolder.com/loveyourwork

Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/linear-work-distortion-podcast/

David W. Galenson is an economics professor at The University of Chicago. He's also a visiting professor at other schools, such as MIT. David is an unusual economist in that he studies the economics of art.

Have you ever noticed how some young geniuses have rapid success? Have you wondered when your work will finally get noticed?

It turns out, there are two totally different approaches to making your art, and the approach that you take can drastically affect when you'll find success.

I recently picked up David's book, Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity, and I found it so fascinating, I had to have him on the show.

David's theory is that there are two totally different approaches to making one's art: You might be a conceptual innovator, in that you take a concept and run with it. Or, you might be an experimental innovator – you might be tweaking for a lifetime, trying to figure something out.

You may have heard about Galenson's work on Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, Revisionist History. There's an episode that uses Galenson's theory to explain why Leonard Cohen's song, Hallelujah took so long to become popular.

In this talk, you'll learn:

• What makes someone a conceptual innovator? What about an experimental innovator?
• Who are some well known innovators in each category? You'll hear about Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Bob Dylan, Picasso, Alfred Hitchcock, and many more.
• Can you change your innovation style? Or are you just better off embracing your style?

Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com.

Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected].

Sponsors:

http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://readwise.io/heart http://brandfolder.com/loveyourwork

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/david-galenson/

Today, I'm very happy to announce that I have a new book out. Have you ever heard the advice "just get started?" Have you ever been left wondering "yeah, but how?"

This was me when I was first starting on my own. I knew that the best way to make progress toward my dreams was to just get started. But that seemed easier said than done. It seemed each time I tried to start, I'd run into a fear, or a self-doubt, or I'd find a way to procrastinate.

My new book is called "The Heart to Start: Win the Inner War & Let Your Art Shine". It's available right now on Amazon at kadavy.net/heart. Please, please go get this book. It's the result of a lifetime of learning, and many months of work. It's short and to the point, and I really think it will help you reach your potential.

Thank you to all of the early readers of the book. Many people provided feedback and edits, and I could not have made the book what it is without you.

After you check out the book, I'd deeply appreciate an Amazon review. Especially those of you who have already read it. I've probably already asked you for a review, but I want to remind you – please, please write a review on Amazon.

When you have a book on Amazon, reviews are everything. You've gotta have reviews, because they help boost the book in Amazon's discovery engine. So when someone is looking at a related book, they see The Heart to Start. So please buy the book, and please leave an honest review. Again, you can find it at kadavy.net/heart.

And I'll have a sample chapter for you on today's show.

Mockup credit

Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com.

Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected].

Sponsors

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Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/heart-to-start-mockup/

Libryia Jones (@wanderwomanic) has made it easier for people to have the experience of living in different places. Last year, she organized a trip for her and and more than thirty others to spend a year on the road. They lived in places like Prague, Cape Town, and my personal favorite, Medellin.

If you've been listening to this show for awhile, you know that I'm a big advocate of travel. More accurately I'm a big advocate of mini-lives – living on a different place for a month or more at a time. It's a great way to grow and it just makes life interesting.

But travel isn't always easy. You have to find a place to live and work, and it can be more fun if you have others to share the experience with.

Libryia's company, Wanderist is organizing another trip. In fact, there are two opportunities to come through Medellin, so hopefully some listeners will check it out.

In this conversation, we'll talk about:

• How did Libryia turn rejection into opportunity? She wasn't able to travel in other programs, so she made her own program.
• How does Libryia travel, even as a single mother? She has a refreshing point-of-view about seeing parenthood as a source of inspiration, rather than as a limitation.
• When you travel, you want to be safe. How does Libryia think about traveling to places that others might see as dangerous?

Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com.

Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected].

Sponsors

http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork http://readwise.io/loveyourwork http://brandfolder.com/loveyourwork

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/libryia-jones/

The past several years, I've been really fascinated with optimizing creative output. It all started when I wrote my first book, Design for Hackers. I had been creative on command working as a professional designer, but when it came time to write a book, it was harder than ever.

Since then, I've noticed that if I arrange my life and work according to mental states, I can be sure that I do my most important creative work during my peak creative time. I can then arrange the rest of my life and work to serve that peak creative output.

Join Love Your Work Elite

Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com.

Feedback? Questions? Comments?

I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected].

Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/seven-mental-states-podcast/

One of the key things that I did early on in my career as an independent creator was set up passive revenue streams.

If it wasn't for this passive revenue, I never would have been able to free up the time to explore, so I never would have come up with my first book, Design for Hackers, and I probably never would have found the time to make this show.

I looked at the passive revenue as a way to explore other things. I didn't make it a part of my personal brand, so to speak. In fact, one of my passive revenue streams was an online dating blog that I wrote under a pseudonym.

Our guest today, Pat Flynn (@patflynn), has a different approach. He's all about the passive revenue. He's been setting up passive revenue streams since 2008. He started with a training e-book for an architecture exam, and he's got a security guard training website, courses for marketing a food truck business, podcast playing software for podcast websites, so many more things, including his latest book, Will it Fly, a Wall Street Journal best-seller, which shares what he's learned about knowing whether a new business endeavor is worth following.

Pat has been sharing his income reports every month since he started. These days he's earning close to a quarter of a million dollars a month, with all of the businesses I mentioned, and more, including his extremely popular podcast, Smart Passive Income.

In this conversation, we'll talk about:

• How did Pat start making money by sharing what he was learning? You can learn a lot about why you don't have to be a so-called expert to help people.
• Pat went from the well-established profession of architecture, to making money online. What leaps did he have to make to transition from a profession that was so important to his identity?
• How does Pat think about transparency? What gave him the idea to start sharing his income reports online?

Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com.

Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected].

Sponsors:

http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/pat-flynn-podcast-interview/

For this very special 100th episode of Love Your Work: How do you find your calling? I've been trying to get to the bottom of this over the past two years, and I think it boils down to a three-step formula that I'll present in this special episode.

Discover

To find your calling, you need to discover what it is you want to pursue. Usually, it seems, you don't just wake up one day and know what it is you want to do. It can come from different sources.

• Don't let your dreams hold you back. Let them evolve. (Listen to Peter Bragiel's episode)
• Don't let the expectations of others drown out your inner voice. (Listen to Jason Fried's episode)
• Turn your weaknesses into a superpower. (Listen to Maneesh Sethi's episode)

Decide

If you're going to find your calling, you need to decide to pursue it. The chance of success needs to be more compelling than the alternatives.

• Bounce back from rock-bottom. (Listen to Elise Bauer's episode)
• Put the risk in perspective. (Listen to Laura Roeder's episode)
• Make measured changes. (Listen to Jeff Goins's episode)

Do

Once you've discovered your calling, and you've decided you're going to pursue it, you have to actually do it. But how do you break through all of the fear and distractions to make it happen.

• Make the most of your best mental energy. (Listen to Dan Ariely's episode)
• Scale back your goals. (Listen to Seth Godin's episode)
• Have a clear picture of success. (Listen to Tucker Max's episode)
• Just do it. That's how you get things done. (Listen to Jame Altucher's episode)

Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com.

Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected].

Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/find-your-calling/

Ross King is author of the book The Pope's Ceiling. It tells the story of just how Michelangelo managed to paint 12,000 square feet of ceiling with little or no experience as a painter.

I think there's a dangerous belief in creative work. And that is the belief that certain artists are simply gifted, and that that alone explains their greatness.

It's easy to look up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and conclude that Michelangelo lived up to his reputation as the "divine one." That he wasn't human. That he was actually a god of sorts. Today, we'll talk about the process that Michelangelo actually took to complete this seemingly impossible masterpiece.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

• How did Michelangelo curate his reputation as a "divine" painter. He really wanted people to believe that, and he shaped that perception.
• Michelangelo started painting the ceiling with little or no painting experience. He knew he would have failures along the way. How did he turn his failures into success in the project?
• Even though Michelangelo didn't have experience as a painter, he had built up a bag of tricks to draw from. Learn how he used his other experiences to make his first attempt at painting a success.

Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, bonus masterclasses, office hours with me, and a discount on the Love Your Work T-shirt. Sign up at lywelite.com.

Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected].

Sponsors

http://skillshare.com/loveyourwork

http://storyblocks.com/loveyourwork

Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/michelangelo-creative-process/

About two years ago, I was on a retreat in Mexico with some friends. We were each exploring what we wanted to do in our lives and careers. It took all week for me to admit it to myself: I wanted to double down on being a creator. I wanted to have conversations on this podcast, read books, and write books.

I wanted to make my creative output the top priority in my life. So, I moved off to Colombia to set up everything so that I could be fully-focused.

I had spent a lot of time in Medellín before, during a few "mini lives" I had done here. I always found that I got more work done here, and that it was better work, too.

So, as I was doubling down on being a creator, Medellín was the clear choice.

In this article, I'll share with you how I picked the city where I could have the best creative output. Whether you feel like moving to another country or not, it will give you things to think about in optimizing your own creative output.

Join Love Your Work Elite Support the show, get early access to episodes, as well as bonus masterclasses and office hours with me. Sign up at lywelite.com.

Feedback? Questions? Comments? I love to hear anything and everything from you. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Tweet at me @kadavy, or email me [email protected].

Sponsors

http://storyblocks.com/loveyourwork

Show Notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/creative-city-podcast/