Tiny Habits to Change Your Life with Dr. BJ Fogg & Jim Kwik

Okay. We have our next guest joining us right now. And let me tell you about this gentleman. His name is Dr. BJ Fogg. He runs the lab there at Stanford University, and he is the New York Times bestselling author of one of my favorite books, which is Tiny Habits. And he was kind enough to endorse our framework, Limitless Model. And he is the man when, whenever it comes to talking about habits, Your name is— you are the person. So I think everybody here who's, who's joining us right now, they either have something that they want to stop or they want to start.

Yeah.

And, and so when we're talking about becoming limitless, I believe that the treasure we seek is often hidden in our, in our habits, the things that we're doing repetitively. And so what would you recommend for somebody who's watching this right now or listening to this right now? What is, what is their formula for, for habit design?

Yeah, well, so I have a model called the behavior model, and tiny habits is derivative of that. I looked at my own model and I was like, oh my gosh. Now, yes, I wrote a book on it. So, but I'll summarize it very, very briefly. There's more to the story. So you take any habit that you want and you make it super, super tiny, really easy to do. So rather than meditate for 30 minutes, you scale it back and you start— you say, okay, just 3 breaths. Rather than 20 push-ups, 2, and so on. So you go really tiny. And the reason you do that is if the behavior is super small and easy, you don't need much motivation to do the behavior. And what my model showed is motivation goes up and down over time. We don't have tons of control over that. So if you pick a habit, a new habit that's hard, when your motivation sags, you won't do it. And so the hack in Tiny Habits is like, make it so easy that it doesn't require much motivation. That's number one. Number 2, you need something to remind you to do the habit. And so my breakthrough— I gave a TED Talk on this— but my breakthrough came where I realized you can use an existing routine to be the prompt for your new habit. So brushing Your teeth becomes the prompt for flossing. Sitting down on the patio in the evening may become your prompt to open up a book and start reading. So that's the second hack. You don't use alarms and Post-it notes and things like that. You, you find where it naturally fits in your routine, what it comes after. The third hack is how to wire the habit in quickly. And in Tiny Habits, I talked about that. I call it celebration.

And so—

Yeah, as you do a new habit or immediately after, you cause yourself to feel a positive emotion. I explain how to do this in the book. I won't go into details here. But by doing that, you're hacking your brain to wire the habit in quickly. It's not true that habits take 66 days or 21 days or 108 days. That's not true at all. And when you look carefully at the research, it does not say that repetition causes habit formation. Instead, it's the emotion that you feel when you do the new behavior. That's what wires it in. So in Tiny Habits, we don't leave the emotion to chance. You hack it. And, and there's a whole bunch of different ways to do the celebration, but you're designing the habit into your life and you're designing it or rooting it into your brain through this technique called celebration. And with that, habits can form very, very quickly.

Now, I've interviewed you multiple times for our podcast. So a lot of people, some people here are actually posting they've heard you on our show, Kwik Brain. For those of you who haven't listened to our show, you could search Jim Kwik in your podcast app. This is amazing. People are posting this formula, B equals MAP. B equals MAP. What is that?

Jim, I'll say this to your audience, but I don't want to say this too publicly because people get like Cranky. This is like the E=mc², but for behavior. This is the fundamental model for behavior. It's not technically an equation, it's a model. And for any behavior, including habits— habits are a type of behavior— behavior happens when 3 things come together at the same moment. There's motivation. I'm going to redo the M. Motivation to do the behavior, ability to do behavior, and there's a prompt. And when those 3 things come together, the behavior happens. Whether— and if you want to get rid of a behavior, you have 3 options. You can get rid of or reduce motivation, you can make it harder to do, or you can remove the prompt. So any behavior type that you're looking for, whether it's one-time behavior, whether it's a habit, whether it's stopping behaviors, always comes back to motivation, ability, and prompt. And with that clarity, I was able to create the Tiny Habits method. And also any behavior type— you think of this as a little Lego, a perfect Lego, and then you can take it and combine it and use it in many ways to create whatever you want. So this is like the one Lego that's perfect, and then you can combine it and create things.

People are saying mind blown, this is amazing. So what would be an example of Let's take an existing habit that people could relate to. What can you fill in some content? B equals MAP. What would—

Yeah. Well, let me go a little bit further because the Tiny Habits method is derived from this, but it's not exactly that. So if you pick— if you make something really, really easy to do, your motivation can be high or low. All you need is a prompt. Ah, okay, so I'm going to try this with habits. I'm going to make the habits not hard, because if they're hard and my motivation sags, I want it as easy as I possibly can. And all I need is a prompt. And then I had this breakthrough that I'm just— oh, you can use your existing routine to prompt you. So there you have it. The prompt is your existing routine. The motivation, you don't rely on high levels. pick habits you already want and understand your motivation will go up and down, but you look really hard at ability and you make sure it's really easy to do. So you're not susceptible to the swings in motivation. So it was really looking at my own model and looking at this area and it's like, there we go. And it worked so well on me for— I did it for like a year and I was like, this is just Like magic. This is so easy. Then I started teaching it in 2011.

That's amazing, because when I think about Instagram, it's very habitual. People pick it up so many times they open it up.

Perfect example. So this tells you what kind of habits to choose. Instagram, at the beginning, the only thing you really could do is take a picture and put a filter on it. And the filter was very important. As people put filters on it, you would see your picture become a creation, like a work of art, like it would help you feel successful. So recognize the emotional impact the filters had. The filters helped make Instagram wire in as a habit. So yes, it was really, really easy, but that wasn't the whole story. So when it comes to picking your habits, make them really easy. But like I said, the 3rd hack is to help yourself feel successful. Instagram did that so well through these filters. As you go through filters, you had an emotional feeling of success, and that made you not only want to use Instagram again but wired it in as a habit. And so as you then looked at, well, what are my options for taking and sharing photos, you stopped considering your other options because Instagram gave you That feeling. So when you're designing for habits, you're really designing for emotions.

Okay, and then that celebration is important, and you could celebrate in different ways, right? Because we know all learning is state dependent, so that emotional— with dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, these endorphins. Can you, can you use an example of something that you wanted to change in your life, maybe something you were struggling with? And we can maybe—

is this sensitive?

Like, maybe you deconstruct this a little bit.

Yeah, I'll use an example that, that's not in the book. So every morning here in Maui, I surf and then I come home and I just work my butt off. And I bring a water bottle out. And when I'm driving home, I drink water and hydrate. And then the water bottle wasn't making it back into the fridge. So I was like, okay, you've got to create a habit of filling up the water bottle and putting it back in the fridge so it's ready to go the next morning. But I knew that was too hard. That would take like a minute, which is really too hard. It would require some motivation. So instead, the habit is just come home and put the water bottle on this little wood table that I have. So I made it so easy. And then later in the day, the water bottle sitting there would remind me to fill it up when I had more time. Now I wired it in as a habit. When I would put it down on the table the first few times, I'd say Awesome, BJ. I would— so for me, that works. I go, way to go, or awesome. That makes me feel successful and it wires in the habit. So now without fail, I come home from surfing, put the water bottle on the little table. And once the habit wires in, you don't have to celebrate it anymore. The celebration is what you do until the habit wires in. And so what you're doing is you're hacking your brain. You're hacking a habit into your brain through celebration.

That's astonishing. And then the opposite, if you want to stop doing something, you notice like, like some people wanted to stop smoking or something else. And how would you look at this?

Yeah, so I— it's more complicated. Creating a habit and stopping a habit are different processes. And the Tiny Habits method is all about creating habits. And it turns out it's pretty It's easy. It's straightforward. You can create habits very quickly and easily. Some habits are really easy to stop, and some are really hard, and there's a whole bunch in between. So for the hard kind of habits to stop, I have a— well, quite a system in the back of this book, 3 pages of flowcharts. But I'll just summarize it this way. All habits form in the same way, good habits and bad habits. They start small. They find where it fits naturally in your life and they get reinforced. You know, there's some— even bad habits form that way. So let's say you play video games in the middle of the night and you start feeling happier. Well, guess what? That's every time you do that and you feel relief or you feel distraction as playing a video game in the middle of the night starts wiring in. So all habits form in the same way. The way that you untangle— and I call it untangling, not breaking bad habits— Is more nuanced. In fact, more complex. There are ways to do it, but there's not one method. There's one method for creating them. There's a multitude of methods for untangling.

There's a different method for planting a tree than it is like tearing it out of the ground.

Exactly that, right? Yes. It will always come down to motivation, ability, and prompt. Again, think of it like Legos. The way that you take apart this big Lego structure depends on what it is, but it will always— promptability, motivation are always the components that you're, you're fiddling with.

Let's say right now the goal for— we want to make Limitless the most read and finished book of the year. That's my goal. So what would you recommend to somebody watching this right now? And they just have the book, but for some reason they just They haven't even opened it up yet.

Love it, love it. Now, is it reading or the audiobook or either one?

Let's take reading the book.

Good. I was hoping you'd say that. Okay, you know, and I almost put this as an example in my book, but it was a little too self-referential, but it's perfect for you. So here's what— so first of all, get the book and then take the reading behavior. One chapter is too big. Instead, scale it way, way back. You might think one paragraph, that's okay. You could even go back to one sentence, and you might even go back to my habit is just going to be opening the book. Right, as simple as possible. But you might want to pick a sentence or a paragraph. So you take the behavior, make it super tiny. Don't think you're going to read 5 pages. It's not tiny enough. You've got to make it so easy. That even when you're sick or busy or in a rush, you'll still do it. Will you still read the one sentence or one paragraph? So you got to make it that tiny. Then you won't have to rely on motivation. You're in this zone. Next, find where it fits naturally in your life. Where does it come after to read Limitless? What does it come after? Maybe it comes after you start the coffee maker. Maybe it's after you sit down with lunch. Maybe it's after you go to your afternoon break. So what you have to do is design it into your life. And look, look at my fingers. You have to decide what— where does it come after? And this is a design process. It's not about willpower. Okay, so if you're tapping into willpower, if you think you lack motivation, you're headed down the wrong path. It's a design challenge, not a willpower challenge. So you find where it fits naturally. In my life, there was a time one summer where I wanted to do a bunch of reading, and I always sat down on the deck with my partner and looked over the river in the evenings. So that was the moment after I sit down with my partner. And for me, Jim, it was just open the book. It wasn't read anything. It was just open. And what I did, and I drew this up as you were talking, I made a bookmark that had a happy smiley face on it like that.

Okay.

So when I opened the book, just looking at that smiley face made me feel successful and happy. Okay, that's a little bit of a hack. But what you could do is open the book. And as you're opening the book, think, wow, this is helping me achieve my life's purpose, because it is. What Jim's teaching you is. So if you can connect the habit of opening the book To how it's helped and actively think about how it's helping you achieve your life purpose. That's a form of celebration that's going to help you feel successful, and that's going to help the habit form really quickly. You change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad.

Now that's—

That's a thread that runs through my entire book because too often people think that change is hard and they have to beat themselves up, and that's not the best way to change. So yeah, there are details about tiny habits and the behavior model. But I think the powerful message to get out there is you change best by feeling good. And there are ways to transform your life by feeling good. And if you're feeling bad, that's a signal to find a better way to do it. And that's really what my work's about. And I think your work is about is helping people upgrade and transform in these positive ways. And it's not about guilt or shame or self-trash talk. There's ways, there's better ways to do it. So forget about a lot of the traditional stuff you thought about behavior change and understand that you change best by feeling good.

You change best by feeling good. I think that that's amazing. Remember, when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. So share this with your fans, your friends, your family, your followers online. Highly recommend people get the book Tiny Habits by Dr. BJ Fogg. And they can also follow you on social media. On Instagram and Twitter and all those fun places.

Thank you so much. And everybody, I'm so glad you're here with Jim. He's amazing. You know that, or you wouldn't be here. And huge congrats. And I'm just cheering you on. I'm watching the— it's so important that people get the book, but there's something so exciting about seeing how it's doing incredible. A lot of people are connecting with the book, and I'm just cheering you on. Yeah, appreciate it.

Thank you, BJ.

Aloha.

Brian, it's your brain coach. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. 3 things to do. Number 1, make sure you share this because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well. Number 2, make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a thing because if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and you find out when We put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing, if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone number, 310-299-9362. Did you remember that number? 310-299-9362. Shoot me a text and we'll stay in touch. Ask me your burning question. And I wish your days be full lots of life, lots of love, lots of laughter, and always lots of learning. I'll see you in our next video.