The key ideas

Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything

BJ Fogg, 2019

Floss one tooth. Two push-ups after each trip to the bathroom. A quick “nice job” to yourself. Stanford behavior scientist BJ Fogg argues that habits fail more often because of how a behavior is designed than because of weak character, and he shows how to rebuild a habit from three parts.

Who it is for

For anyone who has started a new habit “on Monday” many times and wants to understand how to make a behavior stick without fighting themselves.

Emotions create habits. Not repetition. Not frequency. Emotions.

What this book is about

Picture an adult who knows they should floss and still doesn’t. Not lazy, not weak. For a while, that person was the author of this book.

BJ Fogg has studied human behavior at Stanford for many years, and he founded the Behavior Design Lab there. His main claim sounds almost provocative: when a habit doesn’t form, the problem is more often in how the behavior is designed than in your character. You can take a behavior apart like a machine and put it back together.

Ahead of you: one formula, flossing one tooth, two push-ups after a trip to the bathroom and a strange piece of advice to cheer out loud. One important caveat: this is the author’s method, which grew out of his lab and years of work with people, not a set of proven laws.

Idea 1. A formula that takes away the blame

Why do you run on Monday but stop by Wednesday? The usual answer is “not enough willpower.” Fogg asks a different question: which part was missing?

In his model, a behavior happens when three things meet at one moment: motivation, ability and a prompt. He writes it as B=MAP. If even one is missing, the behavior won’t happen. If the action is hard, you need very high motivation. If it’s easy, a little will do.

That gives the order Fogg recommends when something doesn’t work. First, check whether there was a prompt. Next, ask whether it was too hard. Only at the end, look at motivation.

A Livria example: you never get to your book in the evening. Maybe it isn’t laziness: the book is in another room, and your phone is within reach.

In Fogg’s model, a failure is a signal about which part of the behavior needs redesigning. This view moves the question from “what’s wrong with me” to “what’s wrong with the design.”

Read in Livria

About the author

BJ Fogg is an American behavior scientist at Stanford University, where he founded the Behavior Design Lab. He created the Tiny Habits method and the B=MAP model of behavior.

All books by this author: BJ Fogg

Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything Quiz

Terms from the book

  • Anchor
  • B=MAP: The formula at the heart of Fogg’s model: a behavior happens when motivation, ability and a prompt come together at the same moment. It is the author’s model, not a law of nature.
  • Motivation wave: The author’s image for how motivation rises and falls, which makes it hard to rely on for everyday behavior.
  • Recipe: A new habit written in the form “After I…, I will…”, where the first part is the anchor and the second is the tiny action.
  • Celebration: A small action right after the new habit that gives you a pleasant feeling of success. In the author’s model, it helps the behavior take hold.
  • Shine: Fogg’s word for the feeling of success that a celebration creates. It is the author’s term, not a scientific concept.

All terms

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