BJ Fogg - How To Build Tiny Habits That Stick

Creating habits is a process. The more you practice it in the right way, the better you get, so the faster you can acquire them. Like, I'm really good at creating habits, but you are discovering, one, do I really want this habit? Two, where does it fit naturally in my life? And three, how do I feel successful about this new habit?

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fe. Ricky. Ricky.

Hey, welcome back. We are back.

We are back.

This episode is epic. Is epic.

As far as I know.

Yeah, as far as we know.

Because it hasn't happened yet, right?

We're about to hear it. I actually know. You might not know, but I know. And the listener or watcher, whoever you are, strap in. You're gonna love this one.

Yeah. You're gonna learn how to change behaviors, change your daily habits, and have fun through the process.

It's not a struggle fest. No. That's the beauty of all this.

No. This epis is going to make changing habits and your daily behaviors feel really, really, really easy.

We have Mr. Habit himself, tiny habits, that is. We have Mr. BJ Fogg here on the podcast with us and he runs the behavior design lab at Stanford and he's had folks like one of the co founders of Instagram actually go through his training, one of his classes. So he actually has invested over what, 20 years of researching, teaching insights about human behavior. He's trained Fortune 500 companies with a focus on health, productivity, financial well being. He's actually had a big, basically a lot of predictions about how technology is going to use persuasion and all this. He's taken a lot of the principles from Robert Cialdini in his book Influence, which we're having Robert on the show as well, which is really cool. So you'll hear a little story about that inside of here. But it's really fascinating how people weren't listening to him back in the day. Yeah, well, things have changed. That was about 10 years ago. So BJ has been ahead of the times this whole thing. So he's talking about all that stuff. He's condensed all of his work over the last 20 years into tiny habits. And that's his book, which you definitely gotta go. It's called Tiny the Small Changes that Change Everything.

Yeah, no, it's a pretty game changer of a book that I highly recommend everybody check out. He also has a free, like online course that you can go through over@tinyhabits.com join so make sure you go through that Free course, first or no catch.

No upsells, none of that stuff. They wanted to be super clear.

And if you haven't gotten the book yet, after going through that course, you'll probably want the book.

So it's like a five day program. Basically. It's your quick start. The book is much thicker and more in depth, but it's also very simple to read and very practical. So get both. Maybe start with tinyhabits.com join. Yes. And go, go meet him there. And follow what BJ does like on Twitter, on all these other platforms, anywhere BJ's talking or he's always studying and experimenting with new things. So we're planning on having him back actually for round two because he's doing some new interesting things around happiness and how that kind of shows up with habits. Yeah.

And we'll get into that in the episode as well. I want to give a shout out to Stefan Spencer. Thanks so much for the connection to bj. You rock. We love you, dude. Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

And Flow Notes.

Flow Notes. So Action guides we call them as well, we don't have a great title, but, you know, we took the Cliff Notes. Those are in air quotes for you of this episode. So within two weeks they are totally free. If you go to flowchart group.com plug in your email address. It also gives you access to our Facebook community. We go to flowchart group.com and you will get those action guides.

Yes. And we do have a sponsor for this episode and we're going to talk about that sponsor right now. Boom. Yo. So you've heard us talk a lot about Ahrefs in past episodes and to this day, it's still our favorite number one SEO tool. We still use it ourselves. We love it. But now they're sponsoring this podcast again because they've got a free version for you.

There's a new very, very spokesperson. Yeah, you listening about it?

It's a free Ahrefs. It's awesome.

It is rad. This is the first we've heard about it, is them coming back to present it to y'. All. But they have something called Webmaster Tools. So if you go to a hrefs.com awt, that's ahrefs.com awt. What this is is a full blown tool that's going to monitor your SEO health. The backlinks, all the organic ranks and all that stuff. There's a whole bunch of different little things that it does, but no cost. This is totally free, no credit card required. Ahrefs Just knows that. I mean, Ahrefs is a total professional, like, SEO tool for the budget. You know, not everyone can afford it, so that's why they were listening to y'. All. So over@ahrefs.com awt you can actually go get signed up and check this thing out for free.

Yeah. So go improve your website's SEO performance.

For free at ahrefs.com awt Showtime. BJ.

Here we are. Yay.

We all have this dramatic countdown. We were waiting awkwardly looking at each other.

It's awesome to have you on the show here, and thank you for your time. It's fun. Super big honor, man. And you're always doing amazing things. I mean, can't even keep track of all the studies you've been involved in and obviously tiny habits. Your book that came out somewhat recently, amazing read and very practical and something that seems like the foundation that everyone should have in terms of habits and behavioral change for themselves or at least understanding themselves a little bit more.

Well, thank you for inviting me to be on your show. And I think we're going to have fun here, and I think we're going to.

It's the game plan.

Maybe we even go to the edge a little bit here and be a little bit crazy, and maybe I'll say some things I regret, see what happens. Well, that's our goal.

Right?

Right. Let's make news.

Yeah.

Well, we're super excited about this. We've spent the last 48 hours or so going down the BJ Fogg rabbit hole, watching Ted Talks, listening to podcasts.

Going back over our book notes, all of that stuff. So we've got a lot of areas we want to cover with you, but I think where we want to start is we're really interested in how you got into behavior. What fascinated you about behavior? Was there some sort of catalyst that made you go down that rabbit hole?

Yeah, I think so. I think it was my upbringing being raised Mormon. So I was raised Mormon in Fresno, California, and a big part of that culture, at least how I understood it, was about regulating your behavior and optimizing your behavior. And so I think if you really were to trace it back, it would be that. And my dad, being the dutiful Mormon father, would sit us down. So I'm third of seven kids, and he would have these annual interviews with us, like, what are your goals for this year and how can I support you? And very, like, awesome. At the time, it was like, oh, dad, do we have to do this again? But you look back and you're like, good for my dad. And I didn't love it, but it certainly was just part of the culture I grew up in, was optimizing your life. And you do that through behavior change and habits and so on.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that's. It's such a great conditioning you had at the time. It's definitely not common, I don't think. You know, I did not grow up in a household like that, but just the constant improvement or that. That, you know, you have a North Star or vision of yourself that maybe you. You kind of see in the future, and your dad was helping you kind of create some. Maybe some stepping stones into the future and who that person is, you know, you could become that person.

Yeah. Well, I got to give credit to my mom, too. She's a musician. She sang in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and she cajoled, Persuaded, bribed me into practicing the piano every day. And I know that may not seem very related, but I think the discipline, especially when you're young, of practicing a musical instrument every day and failing and failing and drilling and getting better, that maps so very well to how you create habits in the real world. You're not going to be perfect playing this song. You're not going to be perfect at habits. So there's something that I'm recognizing more and more 40 years later.

That being essentially forester bribed into practicing a musical instrument every day is really great training ground for lots of things, including behavior change when you're an adult.

Yeah. Well, I knew you're a fan of the recorder now, right. Instead of, oh, my gosh, don't give me.

Do not. My book agent said, bj, you cannot play the recorder anymore in your press. Like, I was in England playing the recorder, like, on their version of npr. He's like, so stop doing that.

You're piercing eardrums. Well, you're probably the best recorder player out there. I know that was the instrument of choice for, like, elementary school kids, but, hey, it's great, man. Well, you mentioned. Because there was another podcast. I'm happy you brought up the instrument thing, that guitar. I think you referenced guitar. Was there a. Cause we're both guitar players. You have one. Yeah, I love it. And we got to bring them into our studio. I don't know why we have them, but ever since you said that, you know, I've been thinking about that and playing. Just pick it up for 10 minutes and, you know, it turns into, you know, 10, 15 anymore. But. Yeah, what's your. I guess what's why guitar or any instruments, like, specifically.

Oh, my gosh, this is. I'll be brief. There's so much music is this amazing thing. You guys know this. Everybody listening knows this. There's something about music that's just amazing. And in fact, my lab just. My Stanford lab just did a little piece of research, and it was reported on last week in our weekly lab meeting. And music was the number one way that at least the people in our research, they were using that to regulate their emotions. I mean, that's not a huge surprise. So music is big. I feel like creating or playing an instrument is just taking it to another level.

So there's a creative aspect. There's the. With guitar, it's the vibration being right here. With recorder. And I play. I play a still drum. There's other things I play, but there's the vibrations and it just being right there and you being connected with it and moving that forward. There's just something really hard to describe about that. How great that is, man.

You stole like. It was like you had a weird camera in my living room or something last night. Because I legit was I was feeling the vibrations in a different way, and I was almost hugging the guitar. I mean, it was. It was. It's cool. I mean, it's a special guitar for me, but still, it had that connection, like you said. And I mean, how cool is that? Because we can. Yeah, I feel like that leads to flow and patterns, and there's a lot to music in that sense.

Yes. And very therapeutic. One thing I didn't recognize. So then, you know, I kind of move between the different instruments that I play. And yes, I still play keyboard. I have another keyboard arriving today, actually. But what I realized in writing the book Tiny Habits, and I didn't realize this, I was probably a year into writing it. Whenever I reached a tough passage, I like, oh, my gosh. I would go out and play the recorder in the living room, much to my partner's dismay. But it was the breathing and it was getting away from the writing that then refreshed and encouraged and energized me to go back and tackle it again. And wasn't obvious that was happening, but about a year in. And when I look back, it's like, that's exactly what I'm doing. I am refreshing by this woodwind instrument. And so I think that's moved me to. So now I play a bass recorder, which is a large instrument, takes a lot of air, and that even emphasizes the breathing and the attention to detail more because it shows every single flaw that you're doing, but that. That breath work. And I think that's why I moved away from guitar.

Some and I'm focusing on recorder right now.

Yeah, we're very big fans of breathwork, but we won't go down that rabbit hole now because that's a whole nother. One of the things you. Well, actually, you said steel drum. Are you doing the hand pans? I'm just kind of curious.

Yes. I've got a rap drum. I don't know if you know the rap drum. I've got the. The one in D. The D major.

Okay.

And the D major. It's like almost impossible to sound bad. Anything you do is going to sound good. And so. I got that one.

I love it.

Yeah, so by D major.

Yeah, exactly. That's the hack there. Well, you mentioned, you know, like, it's an emotional thing, you know, a guitar and all this stuff, this connection. And that's what you. I think that's a big piece of your book and all of your work is that emotions are helping create the habits. It's not the motivation, necessarily, or the willpower. You know, strength of mind. And so I thought that was. That was a cool distinction that you just kind of brought up in passing here.

Yeah, let me. So as a kid playing the piano and I had to do it really early in the morning, I was not getting the emote. I was not being reinforced through my emotions. It was quite the opposite. It was frustration. I didn't like it. I didn't like the pieces I was playing and so on. Had I been started on guitar and had I been playing popular pieces, I might have created the habit and my mom wouldn't have had to bribe me or threaten me and so on. Fast forward to today. When I play an instrument, I definitely get a lift in my positive emotion. It might be anxiety or frustration that dissolves. So it's a net gain in positive emotion, which is what reinforces or wires in the habit. There's a big difference between me as a child trying to play classical pieces on the piano versus me today playing whatever I want on whatever instrument I want, and the emotional experience I have doing that. So playing music has just become a huge part of my life. And in fact, I'm a little obsessed with it. And this has gone on for years. This is not a phase. This has gone on for years. And it's like, man, if I could just play instruments all day long, I would probably do that.

Right now, you're talking to the Choir. You're preaching to the choir here.

Yeah, you mentioned bribery. Do you think bribery is a good motivator for a new habit?

Not for a habit, but for achieving an outcome. So there's a difference between a habit and then achieving an outcome. And my mom very smartly said, here's the Mormon hymn book. When you can play any hymn in this hymn book, I opened any page and you can play it. I will give you $100. Okay, so that's bribery. That's an incentive. It wasn't about a habit. It was about achieving an outcome that she could open to any page. And at that time, 100 bucks was a lot of money for a kid. And so that's why I say she bribed me. I mean, there's just so many things. But that was very motivating for me to get to the point where I could play anything in the book.

Gotcha. So let's get into the meat. Cause you've got this kind of formula that you teach people. And I know motivation is one of the elements of the formula. So can we just go ahead and break that down real quick in your words and then maybe we can dig into that some more?

Yes, and I'll give you even an extra credit answer here if there's something I could add to my book, Tiny Habits. And I tried to add it to the paperback, but they wouldn't let me. It's a graphic with a big circle that says behavior. So there's the set of behaviors. Inside of that would be a smaller circle that says habits. So habits are a type of behavior. The big category is behavior. Habit is a type. A one time action is a different type. So all behaviors, whether it's a habit, a one time action, or different kinds of. There's a variety of behaviors. I mapped out 15 ways behaviors can change. They all come down to these three components. Motivation to do the behavior, the ability to do the behavior, and a prompt. And all behaviors, whether there's habits or one time actions or stopping behaviors, are characterized by those three things. Motivation, ability, prompt. And that's for all people, all behaviors, all ages, all cultures. It's a universal model that I call the FOG behavior model. And that has been the foundation of my work since 2007. And that is what inspired and led to the Tiny habits method, was looking at my own model and understanding that in a new way.

So breaking down this formula, when you say motivation, does motivation mean that you have a desire to achieve something? Or does motivation mean like this, this external motivation of like you know, sticky notes on the wall of like, you know, go do your push ups today.

Yes, it can be all of those. So I've broken down motivation into three core motivators. But most people, just the way that we understand motivation in everyday life is accurate. Yeah. And motivation can come from different sources, for sure.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

Well, that's what I find so fascinating is, you know, behavior is the B in this whole equation. You know, behavior equals motivation, ability, and prompts. And yeah, it's interesting because I know in the book you go deep into each one of these, you know, just for prompts, you know, just alone. There's so many different. What there's, I think three core prompt types out, right?

And yeah, I am. I love systems and I love making sense of abstract stuff like giving it. And I call those models. So you take something and you create a way of understanding it, whether it's a taxonomy or, or a flowchart or something like that.

As it turns out, motivation, ability, and prompt, all three of those can be understood in terms of this model that I call pack Person. You have person, action, context. For example, motivation can come from the person, him or herself. Motivation can come from the context, oh, I'm really afraid of COVID or oh my gosh, I'm at a football game and everybody's cheering around me. And motivation can also be connected to the action, like carrot and stick. So that is one way of break. And you can do the same with prompt and ability. So it turns out that those components, the person, the action, and the context, are all important to account for whether you're looking at motivation or ability or prompt. So that model spans across the behavior model.

Okay, okay, okay.

Sorry we geeked out a little bit here. But the point is.

It'S all a system. Behavior is a system. Behavior changes a system. The way you create habits is a system. You don't have to guess. And that, to me is.

Super, super exciting. And developing the system was like, so fun. I mean, it's like pieces of the puzzle coming together and it's like that fits. Boom. I know there's a piece missing here. It will come to me someday. Boom, there it is. And that just.

I mean, it's like solving a huge puzzle and putting it all together.

Well, that's what it felt like reading the book and understanding some of these models and then going back and really thinking how they apply into my life, into our lives as a business and, you know, in society, you kind of start to notice some of the patterns. And I guess that's what you've done is you've laid out really nice frameworks for us to see patterns and then how to kind of hack them, I guess. Or adjust ourselves, our behaviors, and create a new behavior that is.

Yeah, there's a. I think this quote is like attributed to Scott Adams, but actually hearing it out loud, it almost sounds fairly derivative of your work. So it could go back to you. But he has a philosophy of don't set goals. Instead, create systems that make getting to where you want inevitable. Just the systems work, they keep on happening. So therefore motivation is taken out of the equation. That's not the quote, but that's the essence of the quote. So I'm curious if maybe you can speak into that. Is that sort of how you feel about goal setting or what's your opinion on it?

I would agree with that statement for sure.

But.

There is a system and process for achieving any aspiration, any outcome. And rather than use the word goal, I use aspiration or outcome, depending on the type of goal that it is. And I'll just give an example. Where does motivation fit in? Ideally, you find, let's say that you want to.

Get more fit. Ideally, you find an exercise you already want to do. There are dozens and dozens of ways to get more fit. And this is part of the system and part of what I described. And so you don't just assume you have to run for an hour a day. Ideally, you find a new behavior or habit that you want to do where the motivation's already built in. For me in my life, when I'm living in Maui, which is half the time, it's surfing. I don't have to motivate myself to go surfing. When I'm here in California right now. I love rowing on hydro. It is so fun and awesome and I love it. And so that's the best approach. The best system is to find whether it's weight loss or sleeping better or being more productive is matching yourself with behaviors that will take you to that outcome, but behaviors you already want to do. So you can then check the box on motivation, say, bam, I already want to do this. Then it's the ability thing. How do I make this easier to do and make it easier to do? And then all you're left with is prompt. And you say, okay, what's going to prompt me to do this? And in the tiny habits way, you use an existing routine, something you already want to do, something you already do to be your prompt, like brushing is the prompt for flossing, for example.

Yeah, it's kind of stacking them up that way.

Yeah.

And this is something that maybe other people have already heard. I know you have a TED Talk and this is in there. But the Maui Habit. And that's the number one thing I know I've been doing it ever since I learned about it from you.

Yeah.

Thank you. And started to do some squats after peeing as well. I know that's something you do. Push ups, I believe. So it's the Maui Habit. That's just an interesting way to kind of celebrate life. You woke up and now what's next? And it's almost like you could stack from that. Can you explain that process in the morning?

Yeah. The habit that I named the Maui Habit was really quite an accident how it came across. But now thousands of people do it. It's the only habit that I prescribe in my book Tiny Habits because everything else in that book is about creating any habit that you want. So the Maui Habit goes like this as soon as you get up in the morning. So it's after my feet touch the floor in the morning. I will say it's going to be a great day. Bam. Seven words, simple. And it's I, you know, I'm a. I'm a scientist. I'm a behavior scientist and I'm skeptical about things and so I know people listen. Oh, that sounds like a lot of woo. Woo. But man, try it, you know, try it in your life. And it has just an unexpectedly big impact in life if you just say it's going to be a great day. Yeah.

What are some science bombs, I guess that we can give us Lehman's that would maybe help someone that is still skeptical or like I'm not feeling anything after doing this. Like, are there a couple things that are rooted in science that you founded out?

Well, you know, we almost. When I say we, I mean my agent and my agent's team almost called.

My book. Something else that had to do with like your life is this science lab. Okay. So we're going to call it the Change lab.

Science is what it is. It's observation. It's careful observation. That's what science is. You know, it's not like it got has to be an academic publication or that somebody with a credential does it. It's essentially careful observation and finding the patterns in those observations and then quantifying it. Possibly if you can. I would just encourage everybody to make your own life this change lab and do science on yourself and just observe. Just observe what happens when you say it's going to be a great day. Careful observation and then do it over a few days at least and then observe what's changed and what was different. I just.

I'm a pretty big believer that just reading academic scientific work doesn't change anybody's behavior. You've got to put it into practice. So that's why I'm going to this practical path and become an observer, a careful observer of your own life. And in that way, basically it becomes your own like little research lab. Do science on yourself.

Isn't it the best thing too? Especially when you start to understand some of these little tips and tricks that someone else has perfected and in your case, many others, you've passed it on. It is fun because you can look at yourself as like, I can kind of tweak myself, optimize in all these different ways that I feel deficient in potentially.

What's hard about just doing it on yourself? It's, it's an N of one which is small. But then you don't have a control group.

True.

It's like versus what. And so you have to reflect and say, okay, what is different this morning compared to a typical morning? The thousands and thousands of mornings I've had. So you have to be able to do that kind of thing. So yes, it's not like a true experiment where you manipulate variables and have at least two conditions, but you can tune in. Do you know what, you guys? I did this with food years ago when I was after I developed the tiny habits method and I was working on my weight issues and man, I never thought.

I started tuning in to how the food felt when I ate it, which I would never. I thought that was like woo, woo and how could you possibly feel that? And so on. But if you are careful and start tuning in, you will. At least I did anyway. I can't say everybody will. I started noticing differences of how the foods felt at that moment and shortly after eating them, which dialed in which foods were on my game plan and which foods were not. Once I did that, the weight loss thing was easy and it didn't take discipline because I knew which foods I could eat as much as I wanted and I knew which foods I needed to avoid.

And so I guess, I guess I'm just saying something that I thought would be like.

No, you can't really feel what you know, you eat a peanut or a handful of peanuts and what effect does it have on you? And guess what? For me, it does not have a good effect. Sugar does not have a good Effect. And then fermented foods. Sauerkraut, kimchi, Amazing effects. So guess what? No. Peanuts.

Sugar. And I do a whole bunch of fermented foods. Not because I read it somewhere, but because I just learned to observe my reaction to those foods. And I just dialed it in.

Yeah, no, I think a good way to start for everyone is eat a bunch of ice cream. You know, see the sugar intake, like, okay, now you'll start feeling your body, if you don't feel it already, and then maybe go back from there, you know, if you're.

Yeah, you know, I do not. I do not have a system or method for tuning in, because I only did it on me with tiny habits. I coached over 40,000 people personally. I mean, I stopped counting at 40,000, so. So I have seen the patterns. You said the word patterns earlier. I'd seen by 10,000 people. I gave a talk at an academic conference called Society for Behavioral Medicine, and the title of my talk was what I learned coaching 10,000 people in habits. After 10,000 people, which took me about a year and a half.

I don't think I saw any new patterns after that. So the remaining tens of thousands I did.

There's only so many patterns that happen, but once you see them, then you see them again and again and just really becomes undeniable about what works and what doesn't work for creating habits. And that's to say I don't have tons of tons of. You know, how do you tune into your body's reaction?

Food?

I don't know how to tell somebody to do that, but I do know how to tell people how to create habits.

Yeah, I want to kind of define tiny habits a little bit. So something fairly universal is people want to get in the habit of working out every day. Right. Obviously, working out every day is not a tiny habit. So how would you break that up into a. How would you define a tiny habit? And then how would you kind of break up getting in the habit of working out every day into tiny habits?

Yeah, well, tiny habits is a method for bringing new habits into your life. And you take any habit you want, and you make it really small. Tiny. You make it so small that even on your worst days, you can do it for a workout. For a lot of people who wanted to walk, they found that the tiny. The thing was just to put on their walking shoes. That was the habit. And if they ended up walking, that was extra credit. That was a bonus. They didn't have to, but they just had to put on those shoes. So you Take any habit you want. You make it so easy and straightforward and then you find where does it fit naturally in my life. So you design it into your routine. Just like, oh, I have some flowers. A friend came over and I met his wife and he trained with me and she's doing stuff and coaching and they brought me over flowers and it's like, okay, where am I going to put these flowers? I'm designing it into my environment. That's what you're doing with new habits. It's like, where am I going to put this new habit? Design it into what you already do.

So you find what it comes after and then you wire it in through emotion. So there's three hacks. You hack the behavior, you make it super tiny. You hack what reminds you, you use an existing routine to remind you, and you hack what forms the habit, which is emotions. And you do that through a technique that I call celebration.

And I love this celebration concept. It's kind of like the Maui habit. In the morning, you know, you're celebrating a new day in yourself. But I love the idea of when you do, I guess, a behavior that you're proud of, celebrate it. I'm awesome, I'm freaking great. And plants it right in that subconscious. It seems like, well said.

And I'll give an example of that. I don't have a habit of wiping the kitchen island. I just not designed that in as a habit. We live between Maui and here and when you change locations, your habits change. But yesterday from this coffee cup, or not this one, but a coffee cup, there was some little coffee like marks on the counter. So I got out the washcloth and I wiped it off. And as I was doing it, I was like, good for you, bj. And I looked at how much cleaner it looked after that and what that does is it makes that behavior more likely in the future. So by self reinforcing. So I both did a little self talk. Not out loud but like, oh good, good for me. And I took a moment to see the impact, to see that I was successful in making that look better. That's going to make that habit of wiping the counter stronger. And we can do that. So with tiny habits, you are deliberate and you design it. But to your point, you can celebrate any behavior that you want to make more frequent or more likely to happen. And the stronger your feeling of success, the faster that behavior becomes a habit.

So it's. Yeah. Even if it's the smallest thing, you know, taking out the trash, whatever it might be, it's yeah. Yes, I did that today. I did it on time without rushing for the truck that's coming down the street.

Yeah, but, but, but you know what? It could even be something that y. Could be even more abstract. But let's say your husband or wife does something that annoys you, but you don't react. And you. And in the moment of not reacting, you could be saying, oh, my gosh, I'm doing it. Good for me. I am. I'm sticking to my game plan of, you know, just.

Oh, yeah, just.

Just tell yourself, help yourself feel successful, and that will help that behavior become more predominant in your life.

Yeah.

Do you have any advice or tips for sort of not derailing your tiny habits? So, for example, let's say every day I go to the bathroom, I brush my teeth, I put on my shoes, and I go for a run. And then I do that for a couple months straight. And then I go to Cancun for a week and just lounge around on the beach in Cancun, and that habitat falls off. Do you have any tips for stopping the derailment? When the environment or your daily actions.

Change, embrace the fact that you're on vacation and your habits are gonna change. Yeah, I mean, your habits are very driven by your context. And so I talked about the person, the action, the context. That also applies to habits. It's you doing the exercise in the context, which is your home context. When you go to Cancun, it's a different context. So that means it's a different habit. And so the fact that it doesn't happen. Just be really compassionate with yourself. So I guess my answer is one way to deal with derailment or not achieving what you'd hoped is to just give yourself a ton of compassion and just say, hey, I didn't do it today. Well, I didn't do it on a vacation. That's fine. I'm doing other things. So you get back home and it doesn't happen. It's like, hey, I'm transitioning back. That's okay. I'll do it tomorrow. So just really getting rid of this black and white thinking. See your habits, your set of habits as this thing that will evolve. The fact of the matter is, right now I'm not doing push ups after I pee. I am doing squats. I'm doing a very deep squat because I'm trying to, like, just be able to, like, sit on my haunches alone, and that's cool. And then I'll go back to push ups at some point. And so I think having this flexibility with your habits and evolving them in a way that suits your life, that's the best way to go. Because our desires change, our environment changes, the seasons turn over. And so look at habits as something that will change over time. And don't resist it. Go with what you want. You know, I really want the flexibility of doing deep squats. And I'll. I'll say, why more than I want the additional. I mean, I've done thousands and thousands of push ups.

I'm sure at this point, one.

One reason I want that is because when I'm in Maui, I love being alone by myself. So I'll find a coast, you know, part of the coastline and to look into the tide pools and stuff, you got to squat down. And if I can go and like just squat down for minutes and hopefully half hour, an hour in the future without pain, I'm going to love that. So I've shifted it up so I can achieve that outcome that's more important to me right now than the kind of strength I would get from push ups.

I like that. And you said something, I think it was towards the beginning of your book that it's typically an approach that is wrong. It's like a design flaw in establishing a new habit that, you know, it's not a personal flaw. You said it's not a personal. I mean, because I could see how, you know, if you're on vacation, not doing your workout routine that you feel like you should continue when you're on a vacation, living it up. It's like I could see self sabotage or criticism starting to creep in, and then that could probably lead to derailment later on.

Well, there's that whole like Jerry Seinfeld thing where he was like, don't break the chain. Put the thing on the calendar. And I've always had that in my head of like, I don't want to break the chain.

You know, he's wrong.

Yeah. You know, Seinfeld was not very helpful in that episode. With people creating habits, you don't have to be per. Nobody's perfect. Just like me learning to play the piano. If the measure was, here's your new piece. You got to be perfect playing that piece. Nobody is. Nobody's perfect. Speaking a new language. A baby's not perfect in walking. Creating habits is a process. The more you practice it in the right way, the better you get. So the faster you can acquire them. Like, I'm really good at creating habits, but you are discovering one, do I really want this habit? Two, where does it fit naturally in my life. And three, how do I feel successful about this new habit? And so the idea that you've got to, you know, there's a streak and you have to keep the streak going, that's not true. The idea that you only can change one habit at a time, that's not true. The idea that it's repetition that creates the habit, that's not true. There's a whole bunch of myths that are unhelpful. And I guess I'll end my little speech with this. Feeling bad does not help you change in a lasting, positive way. And so a big, big theme of my work in the book and even my research now at Stanford, more and more is you change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad. And positive emotions are how you create the habits and how you create lasting change and how you transform your life in bigger ways. So that's why I didn't know if I'll call it the most important research project, maybe it is in my lab it's about how do people upregulate positive emotions? And so now we have over 200 techniques for that. I think it's the biggest list every ever. And we are going to start teaching it as part of our research, teaching it, see people, how they apply it and so on. So 10 years ago I would have never thought I would be talking a lot about emotions, but now they're just, they're central to habits and they're central to our happiness and emotions is a very messy landscape academically and we don't have to get into that mess to recognize the importance of positive emotions for our own well being and flourishing, but also for the people around us. In fact, that's one of the things in the new class that I'm teaching at Stanford, which is tiny habits for humor and happiness. Tiny habits for humor and happiness. One of the things in the course description is that I want the students to become the source of positivity for people around them. Now more than ever. People need that in the course I'm teaching. Yes, I want the students to be happier and want them to bring more humor into their lives. But for them to be that source of positivity and give other people hope, that's like the most important thing I think I can be doing with those students during the time I have with them.

Well, there is so two things. I saw your Twitter and when you announced this class, I think it was yesterday at the time of this recording, it immediately made me jealous that I'm not a Stanford student. And. And I saw a couple other people asking, hey, is there a way that we can. You know, So I just. I just. I just pray that this thing works out and you publish it as another book or a cool video or something where the rest of the world can experience a little bit. You know, I don't know if that's.

Yeah, it will come out in some form. What I'm hoping. I mean, the first time I always teach a new class at Stanford. I've only. There's only one class in 20 years that I've repeated. I always come up with a new topic, but this is one that I hope to repeat and I hope to scale, not just within Stanford students, but at other universities and.

Even outside of academic communities. But the first time you do something, you got to make it simpler. So I can't have guests and I can't have industry visitors. I've just got to make sure I do a pretty good job on this class and hopefully a great job. Yeah, but when you add uncertainty, like people outside of Stanford and a lot more people, it makes it harder. So for this time, I gotta just. Stanford students and just figure it out and then revise it, improve it, and scale it.

Yeah, there's something that. And then I think you have something, but there's a. I was listening to one of these podcasts with you, and you didn't say this specifically. I kind of wrote down, is this BJ's mission? You kind of. Kind of said it a little bit here. But what I wrote down through this is, you know, through changing habits, people are going to diminish their fear. And it seems like you have, you know, that's when, without the fear, there's more opportunities. Fear shuts you down and you have more empathy. And it sounds like kind of like what you just said. That's what you want to put out into the world.

Yes, that's right. I'll just flip what you said over a little bit. It's the same thing. Fear and hope are opposites. Fear is the anticipation of something bad happening. Hope is the anticipation of something good happening. So, yes, diminishing fear, but another way to say it is my life's work, in some ways, in many ways, is about giving people hope. Not false hope, but hope that by giving them experiences where they see they can change, they can create habits, they can improve their life, they can feel more positive emotions. So it's not like a pep talk or a motivational speech. It's, I teach people how. How do you achieve what you set out to achieve and how do you feel happier and more positive every day. And that, you know, if I were to add one more H, that title, Tiny Habits for Humor and happiness, hope would be the other H. But then it made it too long. But that is definitely. That is definitely what I'm about for sure.

Yeah.

I was curious if we can get like a little sneak peek of what might be taught in the Humor, Happiness and Hope course that you're doing. Like what? What sort of habits are we talking about here that you're going to try to instill in others?

Yeah, well, we're focusing on three books. One is my book, Tiny Habits, which is the how how do you the how to create habits. Then for humor, we are focusing on a book called Humor Seriously, written by two of my Stanford colleagues, a lovely book, a super funny read. And then the students will read that book and we'll have the authors do a guest visit to class and they'll then extract from the book, like what habits? So they'll take the what from the Humor Seriously book and then create habits using the how from Tiny Habits. And then the third book that we're focusing on is a new one that isn't out at this very moment, but boom, here it is, the Gap in the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. And this will become the foundation for talking about happiness. So there's so many ways to look at happiness, but this brand new book and the concepts here about focusing on the gain that you've made and not the gap that remains, I think is so important for Stanford students right now. And so we'll take the concepts in this book and put them into the Tiny Habits method. And so in this class, like pretty much all the classes I teach at Stanford, I haven't solved every little thing. It's a discovery with the students. So I'm inviting the students to join me on this journey that nobody's ever had before that characterize all my classes, like, oh, nobody's done this before. And together we're going to figure it out and we're going to create and understand things in ways that have never happened before, which a lot of Stanford students love that kind of thing. I know I do. And so it's those three books plus some other readings, but it's really those things.

That we're going to put into practice. And so by December, I will have very specific answers for you, like, what are the best tiny habits for humor? What are the best tiny habits for happiness? Based on the gap in the game. But I'M not trying to solve that because I want to bring in the Stanford students and make them carry the burden with me. I'll reframe that, Give them the opportunity to discover stuff and not just be like spoon fed in a lecture or something. Learn how to discover. Most of my classes are that learn how to discover new stuff. Yeah.

So out of the 10,000 habits you've helped people build into their daily lives, are there any habits that come to mind that you've worked with people on that really.

Created a noticeable improvement in quality of life for people?

There's a lot. I mean, the push up one, I didn't count, but probably dozens of people that have emailed me said, oh, I started with two push ups and now here's all these great things that have happened to me. Boom, boom, boom. Physical things, confidence, their career changed. I mean, what surprises people? And we see this week after week. So there's a five day program in Tiny Habits that runs Monday through Friday every week we measure the results every weekend. And every Tuesday we have a meeting about the previous week. And so we see all the results and people are like, oh my gosh. Even though I was just focusing on tiny things, I can see just within a few days how big these things are. So.

Habits that relate to quality sleep. And let me give you one of mine. I mean, sleep really, really matters. So one of mine is after I feel like I want to get up in the middle of the night because I get restless at 2 or 3, I lay back down on my bed for 15 seconds and if I still want to get up, I do. But most of the time I lay down and I'm like, oh.

I don't want to get up. This feels really good. So there's dozens of habits around sleep, but that's one that I do to overcome whatever that drive is or the reason that I feel like I need to get up in terms of eating, finding a snack, a go to snack that's on your game plan, and getting really good at accessing that snack instead of looking at other temptations. For me, that's cauliflower, it's broccoli, it's certain nuts that are absolutely on my game plan.

And then in terms of relationships, I mean, we could go on with these categories, but relationships really, really matter. And in the listening arena, a habit that is such a great one to have is when somebody says something, whether it's at the dinner table or a party or even a stranger, rather than you jumping in and adding your piece. So the tiny Habit recipe goes like this. After somebody shares something about their life with me, I will say, that's interesting. Tell me more. Bam. You can strengthen close relationships, you can turn strangers into friends just by saying that's interesting. Tell me more in a sincere way. You gotta be sincere and then really listen.

That's good stuff. That kind of relates to this thing that this might seem a little off topic or it's going back in time for you, but like in two days we're interviewing Robert Cialdini and I know he was a big. Is he over there too?

I got his new book over here.

Yeah, they just sent it to us and fabulous. It's huge. It's 220 extra pages. On the back of it is what I heard.

Tell us about how he or his influence book played a big role. Because the whole. I think it's so damn fascinating that you and technology, you know, I think it's 10 plus years ago, you were predicting behavioral change in people through our devices, you know, technology. And it was using his principles.

In 1993, as a doctoral student at Stanford, I took the principles from his book and I designed true experiments to see if computers could flatter you and have impact if you would give favors back to computers. Reciprocity, whether computers could be teammates. So the principles in his book, and at the time he had six, now he has seven in this new book. And the new book's amazing.

But back then there were these six principles and I essentially took those human, human influence dynamics and ran experiments to see if computers could use reciprocity, could use praise, could use team dynamics to change people's attitudes and behaviors. And the answer was yes. These principles were so powerful that even though you knew you're interacting with the computer, you would still be influenced by them. Which then led me to go, oh my gosh, this is great and this is terrible.

And so 1998 I did the first publication saying, hey everybody, we have a real problem here. Machines are going to be designed to influence our attitudes and behaviors. Machines that can operate autonomously.

We can use this power for good, but there's going to be bad uses of this. So that was me trying to get people to pay attention in 1998. Nobody really cared at that point, unfortunately.

Oh man, that's. It's so wild to think back because of how prevalent it is now. And every single platform taking these persuasion principles, probably a lot of your work as well, these studies you've done with groups and patterns and habits. It's crazy. But man, I'm sure, they're listening now or hopefully they are.

Well, the main.

Principle of influence that I've advocated is simplicity. Simplicity. That's really been my theme for even before the behavior model, I recognized everything in the tech world that was working was drop dead simple. So that's what I preach to my students was simplicity.

Got it, man. Yeah, I'll bring that up to Robert Cialdini in a couple of days.

And one more principal.

You guys. Good for you for bringing him onto your show. This is very important. I hope everybody tunes into that show.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, both of you, I mean it's this whole week we've kind of been like pinching ourselves a little bit because you guys are rooted in so much studies in science and all the experiments you've done and it's just fascinating. So I mean you've obviously left breadcrumbs and more all around the globe in many ways. So thank you. Yeah.

Well, I mean, so Tiny Habits is the book. Everybody should read the book. Everybody should pick it up and read it. Maybe just start with one page a day. Just after you brush your teeth, go read one page. But everybody needs to pick up Tiny Habits and read that book. Is there anywhere else you would want people to go or check out after listening to this episode?

There's a free five day program in Tiny Habits and you have a real human coach that I've helped train in that. And it's free and there's no hidden motive. This is the, the program that I developed in 2010, launched in 2011. James Claire took the program 2013 that got him interested in habits. So do the five day program@tinyhabits.com and there's a bunch of free resources stuff that's out there. But just know that changing your life by creating new habits is easier than you think if you do it in a certain way and you don't have to spend hours and hours. I mean the free five day program is probably 35 minutes total during the week and it teaches you a whole bunch of skills of change that you can then leverage for the rest of your life. The book is about, if you're listening to it, it's an 11 hour. So that's much longer than a 35 minute five day program.

But yeah, I would point people there and if they want to know more about my work in general, bjfog.com is, is the launching point for Tiny Habits and my Stanford work and other stuff.

Awesome. Well, bj, it's been a pleasure. Like we said already thank you very much, man. As my voice is going in now. And thank you very much for all the work to come too, because I know you have some cool stuff and I can't wait to hear about the happy class.

What comes out of those studies you guys do. That's going to be fun.

Well, thank you. Maybe we do a follow up in December or once the class wraps and then I can give you the speed specific details of what we discovered and the impact I'll be measuring, of course, the impact on the students because I love measuring everything. Well, that's an exaggerate. I love measuring things. I don't measure everything. I love measuring things. So after the course is over, I'd be happy to share what we discovered and what the results were.

That'd be amazing. Bj, thank you. I'll do it, man.

Thanks, you guys.

Great one. All right. All right, man. Oh, man. That was fun.

That was good.

That was seriously fun.

That was an episode that we've been working on making happen for a while and we were super pumped about it and we weren't lying. I mean, the last 48 hours have been like BJ fog immersion.

Totally. I mean, and it's, it's, you know, we had a chat with BJ slightly after and, and you know, made a little, made a little video, kind of a little endorsement thing. So that was really cool. BJ and you know, he's like, seemed like they're really into this topic too. I'm like, it's true. We were, we were like so deep into this even before deep diving into BJ and all the latest and greatest and tiny habits, which definitely pick up that book. It's pretty obvious where you can find it everywhere. New York Times bestseller. So it's a book that you definitely want to get.

Pretty much all of the other, I won't name names, but pretty much all of the other habit books that have come out over the last several years are all sort of based off of his work. Most of it is his work that other people just built on and taught and tried to pass off as their own. Won't name any names, but he's the godfather of this stuff.

Definitely the Godfather. Yes. So definitely. Yeah. Go check out the free course. You know, go, go there. What was that? BJ. It's tinyhabits.com.

Yeah. So tinyhabits.com is where you can get the course. BJ Fogg is a little bit more about him.

So both of those sites Fog with two GS. Just to clarify. Double G, double G on the F.

O G, G. Yeah. Similar to Snoop Dogg. Right. But it's Fogg.

I like that. I'm sure he gets that.

I just, I think what. So we've been immersed in this kind of thing and you know, and not only just habits, but more behavioral change and understanding who we are and understanding what patterns don't we like so much or behaviors. And you know, for a long time, I know, like, we've talked about where we've struggled with certain patterns and you know that we talked about this. But like, definitely have been some self sabotage in the past.

Yeah.

Criticisms. And it's like, well, but it doesn't have to be so hard.

I think for me, like, I know me personally, I don't give myself grace when stuff falls apart. Right. Like, that was a personal question for me. Right. I was in a very, very good workout routine for months and months and months and months. And then I took a trip to Cancun and.

Oh, so that was legit. I didn't know the example was per.

No, the example was right out of my own life. So I went to Cancun and I actually. The interesting thing is I actually maintained the workout routine through Cancun, but when I came home, I didn't keep up with it. Interesting. Like, I was so sort of in my head when going to Cancun that this is gonna fall apart, this routine's gonna fall apart, that I actually stuck with it every day while I was there. And then I came home and I was so exhausted from all the travel. Like, I think I told you the story. We got in from Cancun at like 2 in the morning because of, you know, the border was all backed up and just we had issues. And so the next day I was just like so exhausted that I just. I can't even. Right. Like, that's what the kids say these days. Right. I can't even.

And then you couldn't even further days after that.

Yeah. And then after that I just kind never picked back up with the habit again. Right. So that was where that question came from was like a personal thing that pops up for me. It's like I can get into a good habit and I go on a vacation and then I sort of fall out of it. And then I start to like beat myself up when I get home. Of like, man, why can't I get back into it when I got home? Well, I missed the last three days. What's another day? And then the next thing you know, it's been months, you know.

Yeah. Man, it's, it's crazy when you start to think that, because when you look at yourself, you're like, wait, hold on. I was not helping myself in that scenario.

It was the beating myself up mentally that caused me to not do it. Me going, ah, you suck. You skipped a day. You already broke the chain, right, Seinfeld? So I already broke the chain. That concept of breaking the chain, like, I can see why he says it doesn't work. It's not great, because if you break the chain, that sort of pressure that you put on yourself of breaking the chain just kind of makes you, at least in my scenario, it made me kind of go, well, the chain's already broken, so what's the big deal if the broken link goes a little bit longer, right? And then that broken link just goes longer and longer. So I do think that that don't break the chain concept can be detrimental to your progress with building behaviors.

It puts pressure on you. Maybe you needed pressure. Maybe it's on a thing that wasn't life or death. I mean, yeah, maybe there's certain things in your life where you really should not break the chain, but keep brushing your teeth, people picking up your kids from school, things like that, you know, but you're right, you know, it's. There's a. I think that that was a kind of an aha moment. Even though I feel like when you kind of step back, you're like, duh, like, you probably should feel good when you want to improve some part of your life, some aspect. But. But I think, I don't know if it's a natural behavior that a lot of us are, or maybe it's conditioning from the past or it's just like, oh, you're so hard on yourself or that you're, you know, you're so goal oriented.

Well, also, the habit wasn't tiny enough.

That's right.

Like, the habit for me was an entire 45 minute workout routine, right? And so when you come back and you try to keep going back with that habit, it, you know, it feels big. It feels monumental after a while. Where had my habit been? Like, when I get back, I'm just going to try to get into my garage and just do one, one barbell press, right? Like, and that. That's the habit. Just go for one. And then what inevitably happens is once I'm in the garage and I start working out, I don't really want to stop. I'm going to. I'm gonna do more.

Yeah, no, it's true. It's like get that momentum built up. And I know that's what BJ talks about in tiny habits a lot.

Extra credit.

Yeah, yeah. The extra credit's gonna probably always happen for the most part, if you're feeling alright.

Yeah, well, I've talked about the one push up thing too, and I never realized it until now, but that's BJ Fogg's work. I originally heard about it cause Tim Ferriss was interviewing Matt Mullenweg and he followed this process which he probably learned from BJ Fogg.

So there's been a lot of mashup at this point.

Yeah, but he had this thing of I just try to shoot for one push up every day. And I never only do one pushup, but I try to shoot for one pushup every day. And I did that for a little while. Fell out of it after a while, but.

And then celebrating, I think that's the other piece of it is like celebrating all these micro wins in your behaviors. If it's a behavior that you haven't you're not normally doing but you really want to do, you do that one pushup, you're like, heck yeah, I'm freaking awesome. I did that. Or maybe a little internal thing. So you're not going to make people around you a little bit like, who's this guy? But those little wins, I mean, can come in every little action you do. Like we celebrate it right after finishing this podcast. We give ourselves. We do that almost every single time. After we stop, we give ourselves a high five.

Sometimes it's not after we hit stop, sometimes it's before we hit stop.

Yeah, I mean it's really cool. And we bring that into our environment. It's up to us to create really solid energy here. And that 100%. I mean, BJ talked about, he didn't say the ripple effect, but essentially it seemed like that's what he, that's his mission, you know, is the hope. But it's spreading that, that ripple effect. So it passes on to others. I mean, I feel like we generate our own fun. That's why we have stickers around here that says this is going to be fun. Yeah, that's a mental reminder. The high fives after we freaking do the thing that we wanted to do. Even if it wasn't a great interview, this one was amazing. At least we think so. And, and then from there I feel like it ripples out into the people watching and listening to it. Us too.

Totally agree.

So yeah, bj, thank you. You're a rock star. We Were planning for round two. That is the plan. Ideally in maybe later in the year, we'll, we'll circle back on the happiness front.

Yeah, I would love, love, love to talk about, like what he learned researching happiness and habits in that combo.

I'll be a Stanford student. Dan.

I know. I also love everything that Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy put out. So that other book that he, he mentioned, I got it up.

Yeah, I know it's not live yet, I don't think at least the time of this recording, but it's on the wish list.

The gap in the game.

Let's see. Is it coming? I guess. You? I don't know. Oh, it's pre order. Yep, it's pre order. So October 19th it looks like.

Yeah, yeah. Cool.

There you go.

But for now, start with tiny habits.

Start with tiny habits. Get that@tinyhabits.com go through the free course, the five day thing actually we should do that. Or I want to do that challenge and check out like YouTube. There's some good stuff on TED talks. You know, BJ's a lot of content out there. Yeah.

Very prolific online. You could find a lot.

Definitely. Yeah. So get the action guide to this episode. We're always taking notes and if you made it this far, you probably have a lot of ideas. Well, they're probably in the notes as well. If you wrote down some.

Cool.

Well, we got it all covered. Go to flowchartgroup.com and as I cough, sorry, plug in your email address. Within two weeks of this episode going live, you'll get those action guides for.

For free and get to join our.

Facebook group, flowchartgroup.com yes.

And then also we are supported by EZ webinar.

Ya dang, right we are. They're long buddies of ours. Yeah.

Easy Webinar is a great platform for recording all of your webinars and doing live webinars and doing live streams and creating the registration pages for those live streams and webinars and they do it all.

And the reporting's cool, all the dashboards, all that fun stuff that happens, you.

Know, we're not gonna do it justice as well as going to easywebinar.com hustle is gonna do you justice. And if you go to easywebinar.com hustle they're giving you a discount for being a Hustle and Flowchart listener. So make sure you go to that URL and they're gonna hook you up.

Easywebinar.com hustle easywebinar.com hustle you know, you know us, we have everything we package up. And the way we do our podcast business and all the fun networking and deal structures, affiliate marketing, all that stuff is in our core training program. It's more of like a. It's a. It's a business and a. I don't like to say we don't have a good term for this thing. It's just everything we do is in pod hacker. Pretty much.

If you're a podcaster and you take it seriously, you need to be a pod hacker.

So go check out podhacker.com, go give it a little peek, and just know there's actually a lot more than what you see on the page. We should probably update the page because we've had some really cool guest experts around all these folks that have been helping us grow the show, have us think differently with the brand and what we're doing here. So if you want to learn, go to Pod Hacker.

Yep. And this should be the last call to Action HustleandFlowchart TV. Go watch us on YouTube if you're listening in on the podcast, if you're on Spotify, itunes, that's awesome. We love you. But we're also making video versions, and we're really, really trying to dial in our YouTube channel over at Hustle and Flowchart TV that'll just redirect you to YouTube. So go there and subscribe on YouTube if you haven't already. That could. If you really, really, really want to show some support, that is one of the best ways you can help us out right now, because that is our. One of our big goals of 2021 is to grow that YouTube channel. So hustle and flowchart TV help the.

Flow bros out, huh? Help us flow bros. We'll help you out, too. So thank you very much. Love you. Peace. And until next time, thanks everybody for.

Listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice, simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to, and give us your email address, and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening Go get it.

We love you.