A proven method to make a habit stick

BJ Fogg, a behavior scientist at Stanford University and author of Tiny Habits, says you’ve got to start small if you want your habit to stick. He shares his research including the important role of positive emotion in habit formation and why you can work on several habits at once. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit https://www.instagram.com/nprlifekit/?hl=en Sign up for our newsletter here. https://www.npr.org/newsletter/life-kit Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Support the show and listen to it sponsor-free by signing up for Life Kit+ at plus.npr.org/lifekit http://plus.npr.org/lifekit See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from Schwab. At Schwab, you can get everything from self-directed investing to full-service wealth management, all in one place. No matter your investing goal, life stage, amount to invest, or know-how, you can invest your way with Schwab.

• 0:16Marielle Segarra?

  Hey, it's Marielle. Before we start the show, let's play a little game. What helps you live longer, improves symptoms of depression and anxiety, cuts your risk of chronic illnesses, bolsters your immune system, strengthens your bones, and reduces chronic pain? Strength training. And that's not even a full list of all the benefits. To help you get started building muscle, we created a newsletter series. No experience necessary to get going. Sign up at npr.org/stronger or find the link in the episode description. This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Marielle Segarra.

• 0:57Marielle Segarra?

  Hey, it's Marielle. I want you to think about your typical day. From the moment you wake up, what actions do you take that are basically automatic? Probably turn off your alarm. And if you're like me, start scrolling on your phone before your eyes are fully open. Don't worry, I'm trying to change that. Then you brush your teeth, drink some water, maybe. You have a collection of habits, good and bad. And that's just the first few minutes of the day. The good news is, even though habits are automatic, we can change them. Start new ones, for instance. BJ Fogg is a behavior scientist at Stanford University, and he is starting the habit of dancing in the dark every morning when he wakes up.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  After I put my feet on the floor in the morning, I say, "It's gonna be a great day." And then I go out and I drink a big glass of water. And then, once I have that big glass of water, that's what prompts me to turn on the music and do this dancing that I do.

• 1:58Marielle Segarra?

  BJ founded Stanford's Behavior Design Lab, and he studies habit formation. He came up with a research-backed approach to starting new habits called the Tiny Habits Method. One aspect of it is that you set the bar really low.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  And you do the easiest version of the habit every day, no matter what. You know, turn on some music, dance for 20 or 30 seconds, say, great, I did it, move on. But if you want to do more, you do more. And I can't think of a single time when I've stopped dancing after 20 or 30 seconds.

• 2:31Marielle Segarra?

  On this episode of Life Kit, how to start a habit. I talked to BJ about what works and how to do this, step by step. We also talk about breaking habits, which he says is different and likely requires a different approach, though we don't know everything there is to know about it yet. He does have some ideas, though. Just a thought here. If you made a big New Year's resolution, like eat healthier, or get fit, or make more friends, and you're not sure where to start with that, breaking it down into tiny habits could really help.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Odoo. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. Start managing your business with one unified system. Odoo is the all-in-one business management software. Try for free today at odoo.com/NPRpodcasts.

• 3:28Speaker 00

  This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/podcast. This message comes from Bayer. Science is about asking questions, testing, trying again. It's not easy, but it's relentless. It evolves. And that's why science delivers. Learn more at sciencedelivers.com.

• 4:00Marielle Segarra?

  Let's have a definition to start. How do you define a habit?

• 4:06Speaker 02

  A habit is something you do quite automatically, without really thinking or deliberating. And the habit can be daily, the habit could be weekly, that habit could be once a year. So frequency, in my view, doesn't define habit. It's how automatically you do it. How much you do it without deciding, without choosing, without thinking.

• 4:30Marielle Segarra?

  How can you decide that you want to start a particular habit?

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, the best place to start is staying tuned to, what do I want in my life? Do I want more productivity? Do I want to sleep better? Do I want to have more flexibility or mobility? And then designing habits for the things you actually want, not the things you feel like you should do.

• 4:53Marielle Segarra?

  Well, tell me about the Tiny Habits Method. Can you break it down for me?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Tiny Habits Method is based on a model that I came up with in 2007. I call it the behavior model. And a habit is a type of behavior. A behavior happens when three things come together at the same moment. There's motivation to do the behavior. There's ability to do the behavior. And then there's a prompt. There's something that reminds or cues the behavior. And when those three things come together, the behavior happens. And so as I was looking at my model, what I saw was if a behavior is really, really easy to do, then I don't have to have high levels of motivation. But if a behavior is hard to do, yes, I have to have high levels of motivation. So what I saw was I pick a habit that's really easy to do,

• 5:41Speaker 02

  like floss one tooth. Then my motivation can be high or low, and I'll still do it because it's so easy. And notice flossing, it's not floss all your teeth, it's floss one tooth. That's the, that's the very low bar. And when you want to do more, you can. But if you only floss one tooth and move on, you count it as a success. The next part of the method is to design it into your schedule, into your existing routine. And what you're looking for is what does it come after naturally? So you're not using Post-its or alarms or just sheer memory to do the new habit. You're using an existing routine you already have. And I call that anchoring.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Where for flossing, what would be the existing routine to remind you to floss? Well, it's brushing. So then you have this. Phrase that in Tiny Habits, we call a recipe. After I brush, I will floss one tooth. And if it comes to something like doing squats, it could be after I start the coffee maker, I will do two squats. So that's step two. Step three in the Tiny Habits method is to self-reinforce. And I've called that celebration. And not everybody likes that word. But the idea is you allow yourself or you cause yourself to feel successful when you do the new habit.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Because it's that emotion, it's that feeling of success that causes the habit to become more automatic. So if I'm flossing one tooth, I can look in the mirror and smile and go, way to go BJ, right? There's many, many ways to help yourself feel successful. But it's not repetition that creates habits. It's emotion. And the stronger you can feel a positive emotion as you do the habit, the faster the habit wires into your life.

• 7:40Marielle Segarra?

  Do you keep celebrating forever?

• 7:43Speaker 02

  What a great question. Self-reinforcement is something you do to help the behavior become automatic. And then, once it's wired in, then you don't have to self-reinforce.

• 7:58Marielle Segarra?

  Takeaway one. A habit is something you do automatically without really thinking about it, like brushing your teeth. According to BJ's research, if a task is easy, people tend to have higher motivation to do it. So he says, if you want to start a habit, keep the bar low. Say at a minimum, I want to floss one tooth today or do one push-up or walk one block. You can do more, but you don't have to. He also recommends that you design the habit into your existing schedule and pair it with something else that can prompt you. Like after I brush my teeth, I will floss one tooth. After I make coffee, I will do two calf raises. And then, celebrate your win.

• 8:39Marielle Segarra?

  And you said that it's not repetition that creates a habit, but emotion. Does that mean just positive emotion? Like, what other sort of emotions trigger habits?

• 8:51Speaker 02

  The way I see it is positive emotions, yes, especially the feeling of success. But also the alleviation of, if you go from feeling negative to less negative, that can also wear in habits. So let's say you are feeling really anxious and then you do something and you feel less anxious right away. Whatever you did is going to start becoming a habit. And for some people, that might be smoking or going on social media. And that's why those things wear in as habits, because they go from a negative state to something that is less negative or maybe even positive. So the way I see it in general, it is a net gain in positive emotions.

• 9:35Marielle Segarra?

  That actually brings me to my next question, which is, we reached out to you asking what it takes to break a bad habit. But you said that that's, that's hard to answer. Why is that?

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Creating habits and undoing habits are different processes. I don't claim that much expertise around bad habits. It's a much more complicated landscape. So there's three factors. This kind of person doing this kind of action in this kind of context. So somebody who smokes occasionally after a party with friends is different than somebody who smokes every morning on their way to work. Yes, the behavior sounds similar, smoking, but it's a different context. And one of those habits is going to be much easier to resolve than the other one. Now, we know that a behavior happens when motivation, ability, and prompt come together at the same time.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  And if you get rid of any one of those three things, the behavior will stop. If you can get rid of motivation, then you won't do the behavior, the habit. If you can get rid of ability, or make it super hard to do or impossible, then the habit stops. If you can remove the prompt, it stops. And yes, it can be done. There are ways to untangle unwanted behaviors.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  But I just don't want to trivialize how hard that might be in some cases. And in other cases, it might be easier than people think.

• 11:08Marielle Segarra?

  I remember I used to really love eating apricots, dried apricots. But then I bit into one and there was like a little larva in there. And I was like, oh my God. And then like it happened again. And then I learned that this is a thing, that there are often larva in apricots and in the dried ones. And that habit changed real fast. I didn't have to try. I don't eat them anymore. Like, that's it. I don't want to bite into a larva, even if it's dead. And so I got the ick about apricots.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:44Marielle Segarra?

  Sometimes this happens unintentionally, but I think if it's something that you're like, a habit that you're fine to lose, or that's not good for you anyway, like, I'm sort of like, roll with it. You know?

• 11:56Speaker 02

  What a great example. Now, disgust is a very fundamental and powerful emotion in humans. And so that's what that example's tapping into. The way I think about it from a behavior model perspective, there's motivation that's pushing you up over the threshold to eat apricots. And then there might be demotivators that say, eh, I really probably shouldn't eat this apricot. Once you bit in and were disgusted, that force pushing it down became much, much stronger. So you've got motivation that's, for any habit or behavior, you have motivation that's pushing you up, something that you hope to achieve through eating the apricot or doing other things.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  And then, especially for habits that people want to stop, you do have demotivators. Like, oh, I really shouldn't be doing this. I'd be healthier if I didn't do this and so on. But there's no magical way to make that vector pushing down stronger. The other lever you have to pull is ability. Can I make this habit harder to do? In my work, I have a model for what makes something easier or hard. And it comes down to five components. How much time it takes, how much money it takes, how much thinking it takes, how much physical effort, and does it map into your routine? So you have five, I guess, subcategories of ability. That if you could make something radically take a lot more time to do,

• 13:22Speaker 02

  or take a lot more money to do, or you have to use a lot more cognitive effort and so on, that's a way to have some chance of reducing the frequency of the behavior, stopping it entirely.

• 13:35Marielle Segarra?

  Takeaway two: breaking a habit is different than starting one. And BJ says that he hasn't come across a validated, research-backed method for breaking them. But he says it could help to find an expert who specializes in your particular bad habit, and in working with people like you in situations like yours. They can help you understand what motivates you to do this thing, and what complications might come up as you try to break the habit. BJ also made some general suggestions based on his years of research. We know that behaviors start when we have motivation, ability, and a prompt. So if you want to break or untangle a habit, you could try to get rid of at least one of these. We'll have more on the last one, how to remove a prompt, after the break.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  This message comes from Odoo. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. Start managing your business with one unified system. Odoo is the all-in-one business management software. Try for free today at odoo.com/NPRpodcasts.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book, How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, historians, authors, athletes, and more about how to make better decisions to help avoid costly mistakes. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/podcast, or wherever you listen.

• 15:16Marielle Segarra?

  One other question I wanted to ask, because you had the three parts. The motivation, which is what we've been talking about a lot. And then there was the ability. And then there's the prompt. Can you say more about the prompt? What is that?

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, the prompt is anything that reminds you or says, do this behavior now. And the prompts can come from inside you, where you just get an urge. Like, I'm hungry, or I'm feeling anxious, or, oh, yeah, I need to call my mom. The prompt can come from outside you. Somebody sends you a text message, or a reminder pops up. Or the prompt can be part of your existing routine. And that's the innovation in Tiny Habits, is to use a behavior you already do and have that be a prompt for a new habit that you want. We associate starting the coffee maker with doing squats.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  You are designing it into your existing routine. You're seeing, where does this habit of dancing fit naturally in my life? Where does this habit of having a protein drink fit naturally in my life? What does it come after?

• 16:29Marielle Segarra?

  So what would removing a prompt look like?

• 16:32Speaker 02

  In my own life, one thing I do is I turn off tons of notifications. So I turn off the digital prompts. And another thing, there was a time when I would drive home from Stanford, and I would go by a gas station, and that's where I would stop and buy salty snacks, because I was done with work, and I was on my way home, and I would go by the gas station. So I would take a different path on my way home. So I wasn't prompted by that gas station.

• 17:02Marielle Segarra?

  I see. So it's like, you still have the ability to do it, but it's not in your face.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:11Marielle Segarra?

  Takeaway three. Prompts are like little reminders in your environment or in your body. They cue you to do something. So if you want to untangle a habit, you could hide the prompt. Don't keep candy out in a bowl on the counter. Mute or unfollow your ex on social media. Change your ringtone. Move your bed. The change you make is going to depend on what the habit is and what prompts it.

• 17:35Marielle Segarra?

  Okay, so going back to this idea of starting a habit, how many habits do you think you can be trying to start at a time?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Well, certainly more than one. That's one of the false things that people hear over and over, that only do one habit at a time. I have people work on three habits at a time. And that surprises people. But if they're tiny enough, and if you actually want to do those habits, you don't have to limit yourself to one at a time. If you do it in this way where you make it really tight. First of all, you want to do the habit. You make it really easy. You set the bar low and you design it into your existing routine.

• 18:16Marielle Segarra?

  And are these habits related?

• 18:19Speaker 02

  They can be. I think it would be helpful if you had a domain, like you want more flexibility, more mobility. So within that domain, you created multiple habits within that domain. I do think that would work better than three different domains.

• 18:39Marielle Segarra?

  So like similar to how people have a New Year's resolution, you know, I want to eat healthier this year, or be more flexible, or get stronger. And I was just talking to Gretchen Rubin about this, how that is too broad in a lot of ways, and you want to be more specific. But it sounds like you could come up with a collection of tiny habits around one of those.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  Yes. New Year's resolution is usually the starting point. Usually the resolution is not a specific behavior. It's your aspiration. It's the thing that's motivating you. So you still have some work to do. And I don't mean work in a bad sense. You have exploration to do. You have discovery to do. What specific behaviors will help me achieve this New Year's resolution? And one thing people can do is just start making a list. If I could wave a magic wand and get myself to do any habit that would lead to better nutrition, what would it be? And be as specific as you can. Imagine you're watching yourself in a movie doing the behavior.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  And say, oh, BJ opens the fridge and takes out a carrot stick. Great. BJ makes his own salad dressing with olive oil for lunch. Great. And I call that the movie test. If you can't see it happening in a movie like Eat Healthier, then it's not specific enough. But you can see getting a carrot stick out of the fridge. You can see using olive oil and making salad dressing.

• 20:13Marielle Segarra?

  No question. Do I have to eat the carrot stick? Or do I just get out of the fridge?

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Well, that comes back to help yourself do what you already want to do. And if you don't like carrot sticks, dig something else.

• 20:26Marielle Segarra?

  Takeaway four, you can start multiple habits at a time. It might help if they're all getting you toward the same larger goal, like living healthier or making more friends. If you find yourself with a vague New Year's resolution, you can sharpen it by breaking it down into smaller habits. So when does a tiny habit turn into a midsize habit? Like, when do you go from the flossing one tooth to two or three?

• 20:53Speaker 02

  You can do all your teeth on the first day. You can dance for 30 minutes the first morning. Let's take pushups as an example. It's not like you limit yourself to one pushup and the next week you do two and the next week you do three. In fact, I think that would be a very bad approach. What you have is a pushup behavior designed into your schedule, and you do the minimum. Maybe you say it's one. And maybe it's a counter pushup against the bathroom counter. And if you want to do more, you do more. And if you don't, you stop there and you count it as a success. What happens over time is you get more capable of doing those pushups. So you can do more with the same effort that you had at the very beginning. And if you feel successful, like if you're feeling stronger

• 21:37Speaker 02

  and if you're seeing that, then that increases your motivation. And with higher motivation, you can do more. And there's a third factor at play. And I started studying this in about 2014, is there's an identity shift that happens. When you do a behavior within a domain like healthy snacking and you feel successful, your identity starts shifting to, I'm the kind of person who eats healthy snacks. Or if you do, you know, pushups, your identity can shift, I'm the kind of person who does strength training. And then that has a more global effect. And it doesn't take a lot of time.

• 22:17Marielle Segarra?

  Well, BJ, thank you so much for this.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  You're welcome.

• 22:21Marielle Segarra?

  OK, it's time for a recap. Takeaway one: A habit is something you do automatically without really thinking about it. According to BJ's research, if you want to start a habit, keep the bar low, design it into your existing schedule, and pair it with something else that can prompt you. Takeaway two: Breaking a habit is different than starting one, and there's no one perfect method that works universally. But we know that behaviors start when we have motivation, ability, and a prompt. So if you want to break or untangle a habit, try getting rid of at least one of these. Takeaway three: If you're trying to do less of something, hide the prompt. Delete the social media app. Put your phone out of your bedroom. Don't even think about bringing those chips in your house.

• 23:04Marielle Segarra?

  What you do is going to depend on what the habit is and what prompts it. Takeaway four: You can start multiple habits at a time, though it might help if they're all getting you toward the same larger goal. By the way, BJ has seen people really take to their habits in as little as five days. And when they do, those people tend to feel a positive identity shift, like, I'm someone who finds time to exercise, or I'm someone who's taking care of my body. Before we go, what's your New Year's resolution this year? Maybe move more? Maybe get a little stronger? We have a special newsletter series to help you start your own strength training routine. You can sign up at npr.org/stronger.

• 23:47Marielle Segarra?

  This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylvie Douglas. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Garib. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Claire Marie Schneider, Margaret Serino, and Mika Ellison. Engineering support comes from Stacy Abbott. I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.