Tiny Habits

“Tiny Habits” by BJ Fogg. This Book was referred to by the author of Atomic Habits .

The Elements of Behavior

I change best by feeling good.

Fogg’s Behaviour model: Behaviour = Motivation Ability Prompt

Action Line with Ability and Motivation on X and Y axis. Prompt must appear above action line, for a behaviour to happen.

when Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt come together at the same moment, that’s when a behavior will occur. If any of the three elements is missing, the behavior won’t happen.

Formation time of a habit depends on three things(PAC) The person doing the habit The habit itself (the action) The context

Maui Habit. After you wake up and put your feet on the floor in the morning, you say, “It’s going to be a great day.”

After I… I will… I will immediately celebrate to feel Shine.

Motivation—Focus on Matching

Create a Swarm of Behaviors, then Focus Map the results to find a Golden Behavior.

  • Impact: the behavior is effective
  • Motivation: you want to do the behavior
  • Ability: You can do the behavior

Ability—Easy Does It

Ability Chain model: time, money, physical effort, mental effort, and routine

Prompts—The Power of After

Emotions Create Habits

Celebration blitz - Go to the messiest room in your house (or the worst corner of your office), set a timer for three minutes, and tidy up.

Celebrate and tell yourself “You made your life better.”

Hope and fear are vectors that push against each other, and the sum of those two vectors is your overall motivation level.

SuperFridge - best weight-loss solution

Habit Ninja—a person who understands how to change.

Growing Your Habits from Tiny to Transformative

SKILL SET #1—BEHAVIOR CRAFTING

Behavior Crafting skills relate to selecting and adjusting the habits you want in your life.

  • Identify a lot of behavior options (chapter 2)
  • Match yourself with behaviors that will lead to your aspiration (chapter 2)
  • Make the behavior easier to do (chapter 3)

Knowing how many new habits to do at once and when to add more - 3 per month

General guidelines:

  • Focus on what interests you.
  • Embrace variety.
  • Stay flexible.

SKILL SET #2—SELF-INSIGHT

Understanding your preferences, strengths, and aspirations.

Clarify your aspirations or desired outcomes

Understand what motivates you —i.e., know the difference between what you really want and what you think you should do

The skill of knowing which new habits will have meaning to you What is the tiniest habit I could create that would have the most meaning?

SKILL SET #3—PROCESS

The skill of knowing when to push yourself beyond tiny and ramp up the difficulty of the habit

Use emotional flags to help you find your comfort edge. Scale back if needed.

Steps in Behavior Design

Step 1: Clarify the Aspiration Step 2: Explore Behavior Options Step 3: Match with Specific Behaviors Step 4: Start Tiny Step 5: Find a Good Prompt Step 6: Celebrate Successes Step 7: Troubleshoot, Iterate, & Expand

SKILL SET #4—CONTEXT

Context pertains to what surrounds us. The skill of redesigning your environment to make your habits easier to do.

By layering your habit with environment redesign, you will reduce friction and set your habit free to go above the Action Line.

Eg. SuperFridge

SKILL SET #5—MINDSET

Your approach and attitude to change as well as your perception and interpretation of the world around you.

Being able to lower your expectations (Tiny) Feeling good about your successes—no matter how small—by celebrating

The skill of embracing a new identity “I’m the kind of person who…”

Don’t just read a book, Practice the Skills of Change.

Untangling Bad Habits: A Systematic Solution

  • Uphill Habits are those that require ongoing attention to maintain but are easy to stop—getting out of bed when your alarm goes off, going to the gym, or meditating daily.
  • Downhill Habits are easy to maintain but difficult to stop—hitting snooze, swearing, watching YouTube.
  • Freefall Habits are those habits like substance abuse that can be extremely difficult to stop unless you have a safety net of professional help.

The Behavior Change Masterplan has three phases

  • Create new positive habits first.
  • Stopping specific behaviors related to the old habit.
  • Swapping in a new habit to replace the old one.

PHASE #2-Stopping specific behaviors

  • Deal with prompts in three ways: removing them, avoiding them, or ignoring them.
  • Redesign Ability in Order to Stop a Habit: Inverse of Ability chain Model
  • Adjust Motivation in Order to Stop a Habit: Reduce motivation is the most difficult among the three, as adjusting motivation levels for Downhill Habits can be difficult and almost impossible for Freefall Habits.
    • Reducing motivators - grayscale in gadgets
    • Creating demotivators - easy to do - ineffective - makes us feel bad

Instead of stopping totally, scale back the change.

PHASE #3—DESIGN FOR SWAPPING A BEHAVIOR

  • Get specific to swap a habit - identify a new golden behavior
  • Remapping prompts to swap a habit
  • Adjusting both ability and motivation to swap a habit

How We Change Together

Steps in Behavior Design Select:

  • Clarify the Aspiration
  • Explore behavior options
  • Match with Golden behaviors

Design:

  • Start Tiny
  • Find a good prompt

Implement:

  • Celebrate successes
  • Troubleshoot, Iterate and Expand

Refer http://focusmap.info↗ for guidance on running a group Focus Mapping sessions.

Feedback Power Zone (Loc384) The feedback that has the most emotional power has two characteristics: It relates to a domain you care about, and it’s in an area where you feel uncertain.

Strengthen others in all my interactions.

  • Dolphins - both motivated and have the ability
  • Turtles - motivated, but lack ability
  • Crabs - have the ability, but they don’t want to do it
  • Clams - have neither the ability nor motivation

Focus only on Dolphins and Turtles.

The Small Changes That Change Everything

Tools

  • Swarm of Behaviors worksheet

Book References:

Books

© Prabu Anand K 2020-2026