A short video by Brian Johnson connecting BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits and Alex Korb's The Upward Spiral. The central claim: the fastest way to stop a bad habit is to identify and remove its prompt/trigger (also called cue), making avoidance easier than resistance. The piece encourages a nonjudgmental, experimental stance toward habit change.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. Right after reading BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits, I read a fantastic book called the Upward Spiral by Alex Korb. It's all about using neuroscience to reverse the course of depression one small change at a time. It was another one of the books frequently recommended by our optimized community. It was awesome. We one more time. Thanks for all the recommendations. Keep them coming. I've got a link in this +1. If you have a book you want me to feature today, I want to connect one of the big ideas from the Upward Spiral to Tiny Habits. If you haven't noticed, I love seeing all the parallel wisdom in all the books we cover. I like to imagine a spider making a beautiful web with each overlapping thread supporting the one before. So first, let's remind ourselves of the three primary variables in BJ Fogg's behavior map. He tells us one more time. 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 is your cue to do the behavior. Now know this, I quote again, you can disrupt a behavior you don't want by removing the prompt. This isn't always easy, but removing the prompt is your best first move to stop a behavior from happening. He also tells us, I quote again, prompts are the invisible drivers of our lives. And he says, no behavior happens without a prompt. Thank you, Professor Funk. Now, what does Professor Korb have to say? Well, first know that he calls a prompt a trigger. We can also follow James Clear and Charles Duhigg and call it a cue if we want to. And he tells us, I quote, figure out your triggers. It is much easier to avoid temptation than to resist it if you know what triggers a particular habit. Sometimes you can get rid of that habit simply by removing the trigger from your life. End quote. That's today's plus one. What bad habit do you want to get rid of? Pick one. No big deal. No shame. Remember, we all have our own kryptonites. All caps approach it like a curious scientist. As BJ Fogg says, I quote again, once you remove any hint of judgment, your behavior becomes a science experiment. A sense of exploration and discovery is a prerequisite to success, not just an added bonus. So, got that bad habit in mind? Perfect. Now what's the trigger for that bad habit? Let's figure it out and let's remove it today.
