B. J. Fogg

The essence of Tiny Habits is this: Take a behavior you want, make it tiny, find where it fits naturally in your life, and nurture its growth. If you want to create long-term change, it’s best to start small.

If there’s one concept from my book I hope you embrace, it’s this: People change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad.

You can disrupt a behavior you don’t want by removing the prompt. This isn’t always easy, but removing the prompt is your best first move to stop a behavior from happening.

Here’s a related insight that might begin to transform your life (it transformed mine): The easier a behavior is to do, the more likely the behavior will become a habit. This applies to habits we consider ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ It doesn’t matter. Behavior is behavior. It all works the same way.

We are not the problem. Our approach to change is. It’s a design flaw—not a personal flaw.

In Behavior Design we match ourselves with new habits we can do even when we are at our most hurried, unmotivated, and beautifully imperfect. If you can imagine doing the behavior on your hardest day of the week, it’s probably a good match.

If our attempts to create this habit don’t work, we will troubleshoot, starting with the prompt. And we won’t blame ourselves for lack of motivation or willpower. What we are doing is all about design—and redesign. If we need to tap into willpower, we are doing it wrong. If we revise the prompt and make the behavior as simple as possible, and we still don’t succeed, we’ll back up and pick a different behavior—one that we actually want to do.

Once you remove any hint of judgment, your behavior becomes a science experiment. A sense of exploration and discovery is a prerequisite to success, not just an added bonus.

You can now filter out all that noise and confusion about habits and human behavior. Because you know how behavior works, you what to pay attention to and embrace, and what to ignore and discard. If an e-mail from a friend comes through about a new exercise or diet program, a quick scan will tell you all you need to know. Will it help you do what you already want to do? Will it help you feel successful? The answers to those questions are freeing because if the change program doesn’t satisfy these two requirements, it’s not worth your time.

A behavior happens when the three elements of MAP—Motivation, Ability, and Prompt—come together at the same moment. Motivation is your desire to do the behavior. Ability is your capacity to do the behavior. And prompt is your cue to do the behavior.