Behavior change is hard. Studies show that up to 45% of our behavior comes from habits. So, what if we could learn how to build habits and design the new behaviors we want? In this podcast episode, our guest is BJ Fogg, Ph.D., the founder of Stanford’s Behavior Design Lab, and the world’s leading expert in habit formation. His new book Tiny Habits: Small Changes That Change Everything is based on over two decades of groundbreaking research and lays out a simple – yet powerful – behavior change model and a broader master system. His Tiny Habits® Method helps you create a three-step recipe designed to break big aspirations into specific micro behaviors; anchor them to a reliable prompt, and wire them in through a celebration with positive emotion.

People use Tiny Habits for a wide range of situations and challenges. It’s up to you on how you choose to use it and design the recipes that are right for you. However, the book includes over 300 sample Tiny Habit Recipes across 15 common life situations and challenges to spur your thinking.

These include recipes to build habits for:

active older adults

caregivers

better sleep

reducing stress

cultivating brain health

strengthening close relationships

stopping habits that are getting in your way

 

We talk with BJ Fogg about his new habit book and:

What Behavior Design is all about – and how he become interested in it

How the Fogg Behavior Model works

Why leaning on motivation and willpower aren’t reliable paths to behavior change

How to build habits – and what emotion has to do with it

Why the Tiny Habits Method is a valuable skillset

Why some habits are Golden Behaviors and how to identify them and create them

Why the Tiny Habits Method is transformational

Why you’ll want to try The Super Fridge habit (among others in the Tiny Habits book)

How he is personally using Tiny Habits today in his life

His advice for people who want to create new behaviors this year

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Bio

BJ Fogg, Ph.D., is the founder and director of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford. In addition to his research, he teaches Boot Camps in Behavior Design for industry innovators and also leads the Tiny Habits Academy helping people around the world. One of Fortune’s “10 New Gurus You Should Know.”

Each year Dr. Fogg creates a new course to teach at Stanford, with topics ranging from mobile persuasion to health habits. His students have gone on to create successful products, including Instagram, that millions of people use every day. Today, Dr. Fogg is primarily interested in how human behavior works and how to help people acquire habits that lead to health and happiness. He has personally coached over 42,000 people in his behavior change method called “Tiny Habits.”

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Wise Quotes 

On Behavior Design

“It came together for me in 2007 and this model – it’s really easy to understand, and it applies to all types of behaviors and all habits. Basically, it’s three elements. There’s motivation to do the behavior, the ability to the behavior, and a prompt. And so, with any behavior, we’ll have Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt. And this is what we discovered in research at Stanford and in industry. And if you make a small tweak to any one of those elements, you can change behavior. So, for example, if you want to stop a habit, if you can remove the motivation, boom, it will stop. If you can’t do that, can you remove the ability to make it harder to do? You can stop it – or can you remove the prompt? You can also use the model for one-time behaviors for creating habits and so on. So, it’s really pretty straightforward,