Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #108 BJ Fogg: The Secret to Making New Habits Stick

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

How can we create new habits – and stick to them? Is it really a case of will power, motivation, then repetition? Or could there be a simpler approach? This week, I talk to world leading expert in behaviour change, Professor BJ Fogg, who has spent 20 years researching and teaching insights about human behaviour. BJ and I discuss why, if you haven’t been successful when trying to change in the past, IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT. Poorly designed behaviour-change programmes, from diets to fitness regimes to alcohol-reduction plans, set people up to fail. Motivation wanes, bars are set too high, you are not made to feel successful. We delve into why it doesn’t take a certain amount of hours or days to establish a new habit. In fact, repetition has nothing to do with it. Instead, evidence shows that it is all about emotion and feeling successful. When you do something and feel successful, that behaviour becomes more automatic. In this conversation, we discuss exactly how you can do this by scaling it down and making a small change that’s super easy to succeed at. Facilitating healthy, positive change is at the core of everything I do. So it was amazing to hear from BJ that the methods that have come out of his decades of research very closely match those that I’ve seen to work in practise with my patients and have written about in my new book, ‘Feel Better in 5’. Listen in to find out how they can help you, too! Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/108 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The feeling of success is what wires in the habit. It's not repetition. Emotions create habits. So you don't have to have people change 40 things at once or do this huge thing. You just have to help them feel successful on something really, really small. But then you look at the traditional products

and programs for behavior change, and they don't set you up that way. They have you set a very ambitious goal. They have you track it daily so you can see evidence that you're failing. And then they put you on guilt trips by putting you in groups or having a leaderboard and who's winning and who's not winning. All those things are not ways to set people up to feel successful. It's just the opposite. And a lot of my work is like saying, hey, set those things aside. If they don't work for you, you don't have to set an explicit goal. You don't have to track your behavior. You can change your behavior, perhaps better, without doing those things. Hi, my name is Rangan Chatterjee.

Welcome to episode 108 of Feel Better, Live More. to episode 108 of Feel Better, Live More. Hello to you all. I hope you're well wherever you are in the world and whatever you are currently doing. In today's conversation, I've decided to shift the way slightly from the current pandemic and I'm releasing a conversation that I recorded over six months ago when I was in California. Now, the conversation today is about a topic that I am hugely passionate about, and that is habits. How can we create new habits and stick to them? Is it really a case of willpower, motivation, then repetition? Or could there be a much simpler approach? Now, although this conversation was recorded before the pandemic, I actually think the content in it is going to help you live your life better right now.

Because frankly, learning how to create new habits is a fundamental life skill that pretty much all of us can benefit from. You see, habits help us become healthier, more productive, and better at learning new skills. So on this week's show, I talk to the world's leading experts in behavior change, Professor BJ Fogg. Now BJ directs research at the Stanford University Behavior Design Lab and has spent 20 years researching and teaching insights about human behavior. He's also written the fantastic new book, Tiny Habits. And I don't think there is anyone on the planet right now who has the expertise or wealth of knowledge about

habits that this man has. And he is someone who over the past six months or so, I'm proud to call a dear, dear friend. In today's podcast, BJ and I discuss why if you haven't been successful when trying to change in the past, it's not your fault. Poorly designed behavior change programs from diets to fitness regimes to alcohol reduction plans set people up to fail. Motivation wanes, bars are set too high, and ultimately you are not made to feel successful. We delve into why it doesn't take a certain amount of hours or days to establish a new habit. In fact, repetition has nothing to do with it. Instead, evidence shows that it is all about emotion and feeling successful. When you do something and feel successful, that behavior becomes more

automatic. In this conversation, we discuss exactly how you can do this by scaling it down and making a small change that's super easy to succeed at. Facilitating healthy positive change is at the core of everything I do as a doctor. So it was amazing to hear from BJ that the methods that have come out of his decades of research very closely match those that I've seen myself work in almost 20 years of clinical practice and that I have written about in my last book, Feel Better in 5. I really think you're going to enjoy this conversation with the godfather of human behavior. Now, before we get started, I do need to give a quick shout out to some of the sponsors of today's show who are essential in order for me to put out weekly episodes like this one. Athletic Greens

continue their support of my podcast. Now, Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've come across and contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, and digestive enzymes. I know many of you are using Athletic Greens as part of your daily routine. You're getting up, you're having your glass of water with Athletic Greens in that's helping you feel as though you are doing something proactive for your health right from the get-go. Now, I do prefer that people get all of their nutrition from food, but I do recognize that for some of us, this is not always possible. So, if you're looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com

forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. livemore.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. So BJ, welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Rangan. Well, look, I'm in one of the most beautiful towns I think I've visited in America before, in Healdsburg. It's absolutely gorgeous. And I'm here studying with you at the moment yeah um well and thank you for coming uh

so you know i teach my stuff for two days and i think i call a boot camp and that's all about how to think about behavior change and design for it and i love love love teaching in the setting yeah i can see why um so i'm just halfway in so far i've done one day the boot camp we're just recording this 7 a.m early in the morning before the second day. It is early. But I've been wanting to talk to you for a long time, BJ. I've been super fascinated by your work. And, you know, you are arguably the world's leading experts in behavior design. So what is behavior design? Yeah, well, behavior design is a set of models about how to think clearly about human behavior and a set of methods. Methods are ways of designing. So together, those models and methods is what I call behavior design. The phrase behavior design came out of my lab's work at

Stanford in 2010. We realized that for a couple of years, we hadn't really been studying persuasive technology, which is what the lab began at in about 1999. And we're like, no, we hadn't really been studying persuasive technology, which is what the lab began at in about 1999. And we're like, no, we're really studying just more about human behavior. And so we put our heads together and thought, what do we call this new thing? And we called it behavior design. And so now the lab's name is the Behavior Design Lab. And that's at Stanford. I run that year round and we do projects year round and it's really fun and flexible and it's a research lab and that means training students in research and doing the best job we can. What's striking for me is that the principles you talk about, you know, I'm a doctor so I'm

interested in health. I'm interested in how can I help my patients make better choices. interested in how can I help my patients make better choices. But the principles you are talking about seems to be universal to all human behavior. And so not only is there merit there for people, you know, in the health world, but also in the science world, the engineering world, the IT world, the tech world. And I think that's reflected in, you know, this diverse group of people you have here at the moment studying with you. Is it true that one of your students set up Instagram? Yes. Yeah. So Mike Krieger took my class in 2006 at Stanford. And one of the projects there, so this is pre iPhone, this is before the iPhone shipped. And there wasn't really the concept of apps. But a lot of my work is about looking ahead and saying, what's coming, and what are the good

things we can do with technology? And so I anticipated these things we call mobile phones, we'd be able to take photos and share the photos. And so in the class, there was a design challenge, students broke into teams of three, and the brief brief was find some positive way to use this capacity that's coming the ability to take photos and share them and mike krieger and his two teammates came up with a concept called send the sunshine which was all about taking a picture of a sunset or you know your pet or something happy and then sharing it with somebody who needed an uplift in their day. So fast forward a few years, Mikey, and then another co founder, Kevin started Instagram, which is very much along those lines. Wow. So so the idea in many ways was seeded in one of your classes. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So how does that, you know, in many ways you could say that your work has,

I don't know how many users Instagram has around the world. I'm guessing it's probably around 1 billion or maybe getting close. It's a lot. It's a lot. A few. Yeah. And I guess in many ways you could, you can make a strong case that your work is impacting a significant amount of the world's population. Yes. Yes, that's true. I, at the beginning, I was really, really proud of Instagram. Not like I had really much to do with it, but I just felt like it was this really simple,

straightforward way of connecting people. And in fact, at one of the things, my family Thanksgiving, I have a big family, we tend to like to get together. I had people go around the table and say, what are you grateful for? And this is probably like three years into Instagram. And about half the people said, Instagram, Thanksgiving, what are you grateful for? And I was like, you know, that's kind of

an interesting moment. It's like, okay, awesome. It's helping them feel connected and so on. Today, the way things are going, I'm a little bit less, I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. But certainly at the beginning, I thought it was a great way to connect people and it was fun and not exploiting people and it was super great. Yeah, it's amazing to hear you say that because it sounds like you were ahead of the curve a little bit in predicting what was going to happen. You're talking about the pre-iphone era so you know if any of us can even remember that pre-iphone era i certainly can i'm sure there's a generation who probably can't and is not even has not even grown up in that era but it's interesting that you were thinking about it as a positive um

you know a positive way to affect people that That was the idea. That was the project you set the people in that class. And you're right. It has certainly evolved, spiraled, maybe to a point where actually the founders never imagined it, I'm guessing. Well, they left Facebook. So that says something about what they, you know, when they saw what was happening, they left Facebook and decided to pursue something else. And I think that was a real signal. Wow. Yeah, that is incredible. I mean, we'll come back to this a bit later, I think, because there's a few things I want to touch on about that and about technology, which you're clearly an expert in. But let's dive back into human behavior. So as a doctor, I think the bulk of what i now see in my practice uh maybe 80 of what i see is in

some way driven by our collective modern lifestyles and there's a problem out there and that we can give out information continuously we can you know do public health messaging about what people should be doing. But it's interesting to me that information is not necessarily leading to action. So why is it that people know what they should be doing, but don't actually do it? Well, I have two answers for you. I'll be brief. On one hand, if we wanted to get into it, sometimes I'm not sure people know exactly what they should be doing. I think they know the abstract thing, like, oh, I should eat better. I should be more active. But the specifics, like what exactly can I do to be more active in my day?

Or what exactly should I be preparing for my family? Those are the specifics. So that's one answer. The other answer is, you know, people, well, you know this as well as anybody, life can be really hard for some people. And life can be hard. I tend to be a big optimist. I think you're an optimist. But we both see situations where, man, life is tough. And people get discouraged, they get defeated, they've tried to change their behavior before, it hasn't worked, and so on. And then the environment, the food environment, the sedentary jobs we have, and so on, it just all adds up. And a big part of my work, so there's a research part

of me at Stanford, and then just kind of on a whim, an accident, I started this habit formation method that I call Tiny Habits, and started teaching hundreds of people a week, an accident, I started this habit formation method that I call tiny habits and started teaching hundreds of people a week, tiny habits, coaching them personally. This is back to 2011. And about four months into that, I probably coached 2000 people in tiny habits and really getting a strong sense of what everyday people do in a way that an academic research wouldn't. I mean, you do as a doctor, but the way the academic thing is set up and the way you do research, you're not really interacting with hundreds or thousands of people personally. And so that was a new thing for me. And about four months in, I got an email from a woman who said, oh my gosh, BJ, thank you so much. Because in tiny habits,

I teach people how to feel good about their successes and not beat themselves up. And she wrote me an email that said, you have helped me see I've endured a lifetime of self-trash talk. And that just set me back. I just looked at that and I read it and I read it. And I was like, well, I mean, this was something as a researcher, as an experimental psychologist, I hadn't studied and I really didn't know. But it was by interacting with like hundreds and thousands of people and then this particular person saying, wow, I've had a lifetime of self-talk trash. That made me just, it woke me up in some ways. And it helped me understand where people are really at. And people have hard

lives and they've tried, you know, the bill collector's calling them, their kids are mad at them. It goes on and on. And it gave me even more compassion for everyday people and gave me, it was that moment, her saying that, that took tiny habits from this quirky thing I was doing on the side to, oh my gosh, this really needs to be a global intervention. If this can help people feel more positive and stop the self-trash talk, I need to get this out there. So all that is to say, yeah, people may have a sense of what they need to do. And even if they know specifically what to do, so many people are discouraged and feel like I'm not ready. I've tried before and so on. And that's a big part of what my work is about.

It's like, yeah, you can do it. You can do this. And it's not as hard as people have led you to believe. Yeah, I resonate with so much of what you're saying, because as you say, when we were talking about this yesterday, we come from very different backgrounds in the sense that you have been a researcher and are a researcher and i'm a sort of in the trenches clinician so a lot of the tools and techniques that i have found that work with people in real life um are very consistent now that i study your model and particularly yesterday

going through this in detail i'm thinking wow that's why that works that's why this works and it's really nice for me to see that I guess what I've intuitively figured out in practice with people has this research backing yeah and it's it's really fun for me that because I'm very proud to be a clinician and uh you know research very much interests me but I've got to as a you know as a doctor i've always been more interested in what works with my patients yeah um and obviously when it can marry up with the research that's fantastic you know you mentioned you got this email that this lady had been uh trash talking to herself for many years yeah Yeah. A lifetime, she said. Yeah. And I think this is worth exploring because it's something I see with patients and it's, they can have this narrative in their head that they can't do these things that, you know,

every time I've tried before it failed. I'm not the sort of person who can stick to these habits. I'm not the sort of person who can stick to these habits. Oh, it works for them. It doesn't work for me. And one of your sort of key maxims is to make people feel good about themselves. I want to, you know, on one level, it's quite obvious why that's important. But on another level, I don't think it is quite as obvious. That's important. But on another level, I don't think it is quite as obvious.

Why do you think feeling good is important when trying to create new behaviors? Yeah. I'll try to be brief. And you can ask questions to drill down further. Go as long as you want. This is probably my next book. But anyway. So the maxim is help people feel successful. And that maxim applies to people creating products and services like Instagram.

One reason it really took off is because people used it. They took a picture, they put a filter, and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm an artist. Look at my picture. It's so awesome. So they immediately felt successful. The feeling of success is what wires in the habit. It's not repetition. It is a feeling of emotions create habits.

And specifically in tiny habits, what we focus on is the feeling of success. So when you do something and feel successful, that behavior becomes much more automatic. You're more likely to do it in the future. So if people can do a behavior like two push-ups or eat broccoli or any little thing and feel successful, then that behavior will become more automatic. And there's ways to hack that and help yourself create habits very quickly, very, very quickly, if you know how to fire off a positive emotion. The other thing that the feeling of success does is it motivates you to do it again in the future.

That's different than wiring in a habit into your brain. So that's, you know, effect number two is increases your motivation. And the third effect, and there's more, but I'll stop here. I call it success momentum. As people do behaviors and feel successful, their confidence, you could call it self-efficacy, increases. And that means when they hit roadblocks or little bumps in the road, they can get through them. That's why I like calling it success momentum, they can get through it. And with that increased confidence, with that success momentum,

then they can tackle other challenges in their life more effectively. So that and other reasons are why, you know, that maxim, you know, I only have three maxims and that's number two. And it's just, if you're designing products and services, bam, that's a key for you. If you're creating new habits in your life, that's a key. Help yourself feel successful. If you're coaching other people, helping other people like you do, that's another, you know, that's the same thing. Help them feel successful. Now, it's only four words, help people feel successful. But the way you do that can be challenging. And it's not obvious to everyday people of how, you know, the fact that they just set out their vitamins or took a sip of water, how they can feel successful about that.

But people can learn to bring up that emotion and wire in these positive habits really quickly yeah it's incredible really and it it very much marries up with what i've seen um you mentioned that's what your next book is about this is the time well tiny habits yeah tiny habits is out the end of this year yeah i don't know when this podcast ships but uh let's say January 1st, 2020, Tiny Habits is available. I think your work is incredible and I think it will help people understand how to create a new behavior, but also help them understand maybe where they, you know, I don't like using the word where they went wrong before, but where maybe in the past where they haven't succeeded, it might help them see, hey, I get it.

Yeah. Or how people have handed them products and programs, or they've seen them on TV and the internet, and those products and programs were wrongheaded. They were poorly designed. And that's a big part of what I hope people understand is if you've tried to change your behavior in the past and you didn't succeed, it is very likely not your fault. You are not the one that is lacking motivation or willpower. The program needed to be better and accurate. And there are so many programs out there that set people up to fail. And now I'm an optimistic guy. A lot of people think I'm a lot like Mr. Rogers, but I get grumpy about this. When somebody, some company or some institution

creates a behavior change program and it sets people up to fail, that's bad. That's where I get really, that's where I get my grumpiest is when I see that. Yeah, absolutely. I'm an optimist like you. I think this is one of the reasons why we're getting on so well in the last couple of days. I always think people can make those changes if we can communicate things in the right way. You say that it's not your fault. My net support comes at the same time as yours, Feel Better in 5. And actually, I think you're going to really like it because I think the program I've set out for people, actually, a lot of it comes from my clinical research and my clinical experience. But also, I was trying to search through the research

to try and figure out, well, why does this stuff work? And, you know, your work has heavily influenced that part of the book in terms of explaining why it works. And I think you'll like the program. So, we'll maybe talk about that a bit later. But let's go into specifics. So, you'll like the program. So we'll maybe talk about that a bit later, but let's go into specifics. So emotions create habits. Okay. I love that. Now, this is a story I shared with you yesterday, but I think it's worth exploring as to why this has worked so well. I've got my own view on it, but I'd love to hear your expertise on this. So a few years ago, I was in my practice, a patient came in to see me and I had a whole variety of different problems. There's quite a few things going on. And I was coming across all the research on strength training at that time. And we had a long chat about it. And we felt that strength training would be a really good thing for him to do. It would help his physique, it would help his energy levels, it would help his mood. And he was, he was like, yeah, okay, doc, I get it. You've convinced me. And he said, what do you want me to do? Would you like me to do 40 minutes, three times a week

in the gym? I said, Hey, yeah, that would be amazing if you can do that. And he said, right, okay, I'm going to do it. Okay. So he goes out the door, really, really motivated, really inspired that, hey, I'm going to go and do this. Four weeks later, he came in to see me at the follow-up. And I said, hey, how are you getting on? He said, Doc, you know what? I've actually not been to the gym yet. Work's been busy. The gym's quite far away from where I live.

It's pretty expensive. I've just not got around to it. And he looked demoralized and he felt a little bit sheepish that he was telling me this he probably didn't even want to come to the appointment yeah exactly but all credit to him he did and it was interesting because that moment really changed things for me because i thought i didn't think for one minute why is he not doing what i've asked him to do because a lot of doctors say that don't they say oh you know we tell patients what to do,

but they don't do it. I've never really had that view. I felt in that moment, what's going on there? I felt that I'm clearly not giving him information that he feels is relevant for him in the context of his own life. And I thought, right, I'm going to fix this. So I took my jacket off and I said to him, right, I'm going to teach you a workout right now.

I love it. That you don't need to join a gym. You don't need to buy any equipment and you don't even need to get changed to do. So what happens? He goes away and I say to him, I want you to do this five minute workout in your kitchen twice a week just twice a week awesome he's like just twice a week doc what just 10 minutes i said yeah that's all i want you to do and then i'll be happy nice so he goes away goes yeah i can do that doc he goes away comes back for his follow-up and i said how are you getting on he says doc i love this workouts right i now do it for 10 minutes every day in my kitchen before I have my evening meal. So this is a chap who we had agreed before the strength training would be good for.

The conventional way of doing that wasn't working for him. When I asked him to only do 10 minutes in his house a week, he comes back to me a few weeks later, he's doing 70 minutes that's great strength training every week and i wonder if you could sort of explore that and expand on why is that so successful wow okay well let me start with uh you know his ambition to do this huge workout so when often when people decide that they're going to change their behavior they're in a high state of motivation so if he's sitting down with you in the clinical setting, he's feeling motivated in that moment. And then he truly believes he can do these hard workouts.

What he doesn't and what we as human beings don't account for very well is what's going to happen to our motivation in the future. And the motivation goes up and down over time. And so, you know, three days later, his motivation sags. He's not able to do the hard workout. What you did so brilliantly is then you matched him with a really simple exercise routine that didn't require much time or money or physical effort, and you set the bar really low. And so if something's really easy to do, it doesn't require high levels of motivation. Motivation can be high or relatively low. He can still do it. And you were just right on to say, just do it two times a week.

So that was the bar. Now what he did was he exceeded that. And you set him up to succeed, not fail. You set him up that the bar was low enough he could do it. So he felt successful. Then he did even more. So now he's feeling like a superstar. felt successful. Then he did even more. So now he's feeling like a superstar. He's like the A plus student. He's the student in the front row

of the class that knows all the answers. And so that then helps him wire in the habit and it helps him increase his motivation, which means he can do more and harder things. And I imagine as he was doing more than five minutes twice a week, every time he did it, he's like, oh my gosh, when I go back to the doctor, I get to tell him this and so on. And then that becomes part of his life and very importantly, part of his identity. He starts thinking, I'm the kind of person that does strength training. And more generally, I'm the kind of person who can change. I'm the kind of person who can change. Yeah.

What you said there about identity really strikes a chord with me really, really deeply. You know, behavior change in so many ways is about identity change, I've realized. And, you know, by doing that and succeeding, he actually then, there was what i call a ripple effect happened after that it's it led to more and more healthy behaviors off the back of that one thing that he could do and i think it's because of what you say emotion is key he's feeling good about himself so he he's not the sort of person who fails anymore he's the sort of person who succeeds right you know yeah so i mean in my research I see this week after week in tiny habits, week after week, about 75% of the people who do tiny habits report doing other behaviors besides the three new habits that they designed at the beginning. And this is within one week.

So, they start doing other behaviors. About 18% of people do a big change within those five days. Not one that was planned, not that one that was part of the tiny habits program or what they thought they would do. But change leads to change and success leads to success. And this dynamic of you do something and feel successful, your identity shifts, and then that naturally ripples out and affects other behaviors in your life. And I didn't, in the first, I would say, three years of doing Tiny Habits, I saw the data and I was like, wow, this is really interesting. These ripple effects are there, I get it. But what about these big leap changes that people

are making, this 18%? And I didn't totally understand that until I started asking some other questions in the research. And I did see clearly that as people do something and feel successful, it shifts their identity in these positive ways. And then they naturally start doing other related healthy behaviors. And that's just like, to me, it's just like, wow. Okay. So you don't have to have people change 40 things at once or do this huge thing. You just have to help them feel successful on something really, really small. And that works. And then that has these big effects if you do it right. And you did. I find that when I teach doctors or teach health coaches, which is something I'm doing a lot more of these days is this is a key thing i always say find you know find your leverage point find

the thing that they're passionate about find the thing that actually they can do and start there because it also it all marries up with what your research is saying which is you know and actually on many levels it's it kind of makes common sense right if we feel good about ourselves we're going to start doing more things yeah well yes it makes common sense but then you look at the traditional products and programs for behavior change and they don't set you up that way they have you set a very ambitious goal they have you track it daily so you can see evidence that you're failing. And then they put you on guilt trips by putting you in groups or having a leaderboard and who's winning and who's not winning. All those things are not ways to set people up to feel successful.

It's just the opposite. um you go wow is it's you know can it it's frustrating that somehow the products and programs decades ago set people up to fail in these ways and some of those things like goal setting and tracking and keep yourself motivated have become institutionalized and a lot of my work is like saying hey set those things aside if they don't work for you you don't have to set an explicit goal you don't have to track an explicit goal. You don't have to track your behavior. You can change your behavior perhaps better without doing those things. Yeah. That's incredible. And again, you were very careful to say, if that's not working for you, don't do it. And of course, there may be people listening to this who say, actually goal setting does work for me or tracking it does work for me. Yeah, exactly. Keep going with that um you've been running this tiny habits

program now for you know many years you've been teaching as you said thousands and thousands of people so i guess you will have developed insights maybe in maybe in a similar way to me as a clinician but also in a different way people who are coming here probably are quite engaged to okay bj is the world's leading expert in this field he's going to help me start to change some of my own behaviors right so coming here with a high level of motivation i'm guessing yeah with all these groups that you've taken through your program what are the common things that people are looking for help with? What are the common habits that people are saying, I want to do this, but I can't? Because I bet you they must be similar to what the listeners of this podcast

are also trying to do in their own lives. Okay, well, let me be clear about this. There's kind of two different buckets here. One is the Tiny Habits program that's free online. It's five days and you, and we interact through email. And that's the program that I've been running since 2011 and has that I measure week by week and have all this data around. And so that, and now I have trained coaches because I can't, you know, I can't coach everybody personally. I mean,

this is personal coaching where I read the emails and I respond and so on. And so that's one. The second one is what you're here for now is my boot camp in behavior design, which is professionals here that are creating products and services to help people change behavior. But like you said, people come here, even though they come here for professional reasons, they're still thinking, how do I help my kid do their homework? How do I get my family to be healthier? So the topics are, and you probably see this all the time, people do care about being fit and looking fit to others. So there's fitness, whether you

call it weight loss or whatever. And part of that is driven by they want to look good to other people. At the end of the day, we're all kind of vain, and we do care about what others think about us. I mean, frankly, we do. Another piece of that has to do with energy. And you've talked about this a lot. I need better energy. People need to want to be more productive. I don't think that's the number one thing in their mind. But it's there more and more these days. It's like, how do I stay focused, the ability to focus? In fact, some research I did on it was about 60 different aspirations in that particular research. People staying focused was the number one item, well above weight loss, surprisingly. And I think

this is a moving target, right? As social media and other things evolve, people's concerns shift. And certainly parents are thinking about how do i help my child succeed how do i help my child create positive habits that will help them be happier and healthier and more successful and it just seems like parents are of course pretty obsessed with that yeah incredible these are universal themes aren't they that pretty much all of us wants in our lives um are there specific personal habits that people keep coming back with? Like, you know, I would like to meditate every day. Although you've got interesting views on meditation, haven't you?

Yes, I do. You think it's a hard thing to get? It's a very difficult habit to form. Yes, people do want to meditate. You know, there's a lot of talk about mindfulness and a lot of emphasis on meditation. And I think meditation is a great thing. Don't get me wrong. But it is a hard habit to form. And it's hard to form because as people start meditating, they do not feel successful. They sit there and they recognize how busy their

mind is. And that's not a feeling of success. So not only does it take time, and not only do people not have perhaps enough training in meditation, those are barriers, but if you do something and you don't feel successful, that thing is very unlikely to become a habit in your life. Now, there's ways to reframe meditation so people are not so concerned that there's like a thousand monkeys in their head chattering, that they look at something else for success. But I think most people

think, okay, I'm going to calm my mind. It's not calming. It's not calming. I'm terrible at this. Oh, I'm just awful at this. And for that reason, that's what I would hone in on and identify as the problem with making meditation a habit is it's not helping people feel successful at least in ways that people seem to typically do it yeah i think for me when it's shifted with meditation is when i stopped beating myself up for having a busy mind yeah so my sort of particularly in the in the past my sort of a type personality it was like you know i want to be able to do something and master it and do it really really well and i was like i can't do this meditation thing and i can't clear my mind and it was almost becoming a stress yeah that i couldn't do it but i've i as i studied it more and i talked to more

and more teachers i understood that actually it's not about clearing your mind it's about being detached and observing so now when i do it it's about looking at my mind and some days yeah i hit a zen like state and i feel great other days i go through my to-do list and i go oh you know you've got a busy mind today and it's so for me i've had to reframe it and that's really helped but i think that the take-home for me for people listening to this might be maybe if you've tried meditation and you can't get into it maybe it's not the right habit for you at this particular moment in time maybe work on some other ones that are quick wins and easy wins that make you feel good right yeah absolutely one powerful way to think about habits in your life

is to think about them as plants and so imagine you have this garden uh and each plant in the garden is a habit now you can can just not design the garden and let weeds grow. Bad habits. Just whatever happens, happens. Or you can design the garden and decide what you want here and there and so on. And as you know, when you garden, sometimes a plant just isn't in the right spot. It's not going to flourish there. It's the wrong time of year. And that's the garden metaphor in habits or the garden analogy in habits is a really, really good way to think about it. It's like, where does this new habit fit naturally in my life?

And if for some reason it just doesn't take root, and the root is like the automaticity, how firmly does it become part of your life? That's not your fault. It's like maybe it's the wrong spot in your life. Maybe it's the wrong time of year. Maybe, you know, three months from now, there'll be a perfect time to bring meditation into your life. So if it's not working, redesign it. And if you just can't redesign it and nail it, that's fine. Move on and work on other things. You know what? You just made me think of something i've not thought

about in a long time and that's with quite a lot of my patients i when they want to make a certain change um whether it's a lot of the time it's getting more active and sometimes it's you know in the uk let's say it's in january and it's dark and it's cold and you know i often say to them hey look should we work on something else at the moment and you know or in february i say hey why why don't we wait for that one until march or april because it's going to be spring yeah it's going to get brighter and i think you're going to actually want to do that more i think it's going to be easier for you to do it then let's figure let's work on something else now and i guess that really i like it because it marries

up with your with your garden, your plant analogy, is there is a different time for different things. And I guess the more we can tune into that, the more likely there is success. Exactly, right on. And if people think of that analogy, you know, in your garden, you don't plant something and want to, you know, expect it to be there for years and years and years. You want to evolve it. And that's just like our set of habits. Just because you started a habit and if you get tired of it, it doesn't do you much good. You can remove it and put something else in its place. And so people tend to have this very rigid thinking about habits like, oh yeah, I'm going to set a goal. I'm going to walk every day for 60 minutes. And I must stick to that because at one moment in time, I set that down as what I was going to do.

That's not the right way to think about it. It's sort of like, here's this thing I can design. I'll try something here. And if it works, I'll keep going. And if it doesn't, I'll shift and try something else and spot and so on. And so there's kind of a playfulness that really helps when it comes to behavior change. Like you're exploring, you're goofing around, you're designing, you're redesigning. You know you're not going to be perfect. You're not even trying to be perfect. You're exploring to find what fits really well. What's the perfect garden for you in that moment?

Knowing that plants will die and move on. You'll replace them. You'll evolve it. Your taste will change. Your capability will change. the seasons will change and you just keep evolving it in ways that make you happy and healthy and that are fun really well let's dive into creating new habits because clearly it's something we're all working on at various times in our life no matter what state of health or well-being we have there's generally always something we're trying to introduce

with varying degrees of success. So, you know, to be blunt, how do you create a new habit? Yeah, it's easier than people think. There's basically three steps. You take whatever behavior you want and you scale it down so it's super tiny. So you did this well for your patient.

Rather than having him think 40 minutes, you scaled it back to five minutes. In tiny habits method, you go even more extreme. It's like, look, it's just like two push-ups or two squats. Super, super simple. So you scale it back to be really tiny. And then you find where it fits naturally in your routine. What does it come after?

So for example, if you want to floss your teeth, you don't floss all your teeth. You floss just one. You scale it way back. I know that sounds ridiculous, but there's a difference between you want to floss your teeth, you don't floss all your teeth, you floss just one. You scale it way back. I know that sounds ridiculous, but there's a difference between one tooth and all your teeth. And then you find what it comes after. Well, it naturally comes after brushing. So then it's called the recipe in Tiny Habits. The recipe is after I brush, I will floss one tooth.

Or it could be things like after I feed the dog, I'll get out my journal and start writing, you know, and not write a page, you just get out the journal and open it. So you find where this, you scale it back, it's like you're starting a little seed. So let's go back to the garden analogy. You don't start out a huge plant and try to transplant it. You start it out really small. You find where it fits naturally in your routine. And then when you do that new behavior, you help yourself feel good about it. In Tiny Habits, we have a technique called celebration, which allows you to feel a positive emotion in the moment, which then rewires your brain. So your brain goes, wow, I just felt really good. What just happened? Oh, I did this

and this and I flossed that tooth and I felt really happy. I'm going to, wow, I'm going to do that again in the future. So, it's the feeling, it's that emotion that signals to your brain, wow, something just happened. I need to pay attention and I need to do that again in the future. Now, once you see, I mean, this is going against the tradition in a huge way because people have said for decades it's repetition that creates habit it's a repetition it's not repetition correlates with habit formation but it doesn't create the habits it's emotions that create the habit and i love that there's just so much to there's so much to expand on in there um is this the method you used i think is it press-ups you use this to do on yourself yeah yeah yeah so in the u.s we call push-ups um yeah yeah so man i have created of course you know goofing around

with this created hundreds of habits and you know one of mine uh is you know after i pee i do two push-ups so when i'm at home i don't do it at Stanford. I don't do it in public restrooms. But let me use that to call it a pattern that you do naturally. And people should really understand as you floss one tooth or as you do the five-minute kitchen workout or as you do two pushups and you're succeeding, you can do more if you want, but you don't have to. So one of the key mindsets in tiny habits is you don't raise the bar on yourself. You don't go, oh, this week I do two, that means next week I have to do five, then I have to do 10, then I do 15. If you raise the bar on yourself, you're headed in the wrong direction. Now you can do 15 or 20, but you should count those as extra credit, just like your patient did more than five. Now you can do 15 or 20, but you should count those as extra credit,

just like your patient did more than five. And you rightly didn't say, okay, now go to 15 or 20, whatever, because then you'd be setting them up to fail and feel unsuccessful. So all he has to do is five. Anything beyond that is extra credit, and he can feel I'm a superstar. And that's counterintuitive. It's not the tradition of how people are taught to change. But what I found in my research and just working with thousands of people in tiny habits is you set the bar really low and you keep it low. Just taking a quick break in the conversation to give a shout out to the sponsors of today's show. Is there something interfering with your happiness

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great therapeutic matches, so they make it easy and free to change counsellors if needed. BetterHelp wants you to start living a happier life today. You can visit their website and read their testimonials that are posted daily. Visit betterhelp.com forward slash live more. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P. And join the over 700,000 people taking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. There is a special offer of 10% off your first month for listeners of this podcast at betterhelp.com forward slash live more. Yeah, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I find it so fascinating that the research you have done is marrying up with what I found.

And I've got patients who actually for meditation, yes, I agree. It can be a very hard habit to create. So I've got many patients who I've made a deal with before they've said, oh, meditation is not for me. I've tried it before, doctor. I can't do it. I'm like, okay, what do you think you can do? Like, is that, you know, what's an amount of meditation you think you can do every day? Can you do 10 minutes? Yeah, probably. So can you do five? Yeah, maybe.

I said, okay. And I remember one patient in particular, we made a deal that she would do one minute a day. I said, okay, we're going to do one minute a day. I said, okay, so you're going to do one minute a day. Fine. When are you going to do it? And we tried to figure out and i said hey look you you put your kettle on yeah every morning to make a cup of tea so why not

when the kettle goes on perfect at that moment you do one minute meditation and she's like what difference is that gonna make shall i do i said that's all i want you to do that will have incredibly powerful benefits and so she said okay one minute that's pretty easy so she said, okay, one minute, that's pretty easy. So she goes and does it. And what I found is that those one minutes make you feel good, right? So that one minute becomes two minutes. Two minutes becomes five minutes. A few weeks, months later, that five minutes become 10 minutes. But when I would start by saying, look, I think about 15 minutes of meditation a day is great. They go away.

Yeah, for the first three days, whilst their motivation is high, they do the 15 minutes. Then what happens one day, they get up a bit late. They've got to get the kids ready. You know, I don't have time for it today. I'll miss it out. And then they feel, you know, it's not for me. I can't create that habit. You know, I tried it for three days. I'll go and tell the doctor, you know, I tried it, but i couldn't actually do it and i found that when you set the bar really low people meet it they feel good and that leads to the bar naturally going higher because they want to make it higher yes not because i told them to make it higher and then they feel like i'm not i'm not just doing what the doctor told me i'm exceeding it right so you're totally setting them and. And they've got agency. They've got control over their life, right?

Who wants to do something really because they've been told by another human being to do it? Long-term, I just don't get, I don't feel that people want autonomy in their lives and they want to feel that they're in control. So yeah, I love that. And I mean, are you still doing the pushups now? Oh yeah, oh yeah.

So okay, when did you start doing this oh man probably seven years ago seven years ago so you started off doing one push-up two push-ups every time you have a pee yeah in your home yes and and millie right here my dog is seeing me do thousands and thousands and thousands of push-ups and and so what difference have you felt have Have you seen your physique change? You know, if there, yes, absolutely. So, I mean, and other people have done this too. It's somehow for some people, pushups seems to be the gateway change or exercise that opens them up to doing other things. So, uh, there'll be times if I'm really busy or stressed or not feeling well, I just do two and I go good for me. I got it done, right? There's other times I'll do 12 or 20 or even 30. I'll push it up to 30. And I can even surprisingly do 50 if I have

to. I couldn't, I haven't, so I'm 50 something, 56. I haven't been able to do 50 pushups since college. And now I can't. It's hard and it's not what I do every morning, but if I want to get there, I can. So it's certainly helped me get stronger. But there's something also about pushups that I think about 45 seconds later, a minute later, there's something, you probably know what this is, there is this shift and it gives you some mojo. Yeah. I think this really ties into what you were saying a little bit before, which is this whole idea that it's got to make you feel good right so if if there's some sort of positive feeling with it then it sort of wires in the likelihood to do it again um and i often talk to my patients about this for bad habits i say look you know um when you feel low and you're feeling a bit down a bit stressed and you go for

that chocolate bar or that bag of sweets what you'd call a bag of candy, you feel good. So then that is wiring in some sort of pattern so that next time you feel low, oh, I know, if I buy a chocolate bar, I'm going to feel better. So let's use that process to help create good habits instead of to hardwire those bad habits exactly yeah you know the the way the brain was good habits and bad habits are what we say as you know as a culture like eating chocolate cake at three in the morning is not a great thing to do and eating a whole bag of chips while watching football is not us well our brain doesn't distinguish between good and bad all habits form in the same way, good habits and bad habits. And it's this dynamic.

You do a behavior and you have a net gain in positive emotions. If I want to be geeky about it, you do a behavior and you feel successful, feel good. That behavior becomes more automatic. And that's what a habit is, is something you do quite automatically without thinking very much. So what is the difference then between a habit and a routine good question um both words are ambiguous and fuzzy neither word is a great technical word um we're kind of stuck with those words um neither word is precise and accurate um part of my work will be to further refine those words to their specific.

Um, I think most people can use the word habit and routine interchangeably and it works, but we need a better technical vocabulary, um, than what we have. Habit is, can often people use the word habit to mean something that's just high level and aspirational, like, oh, I want to be more productive. I want to make productivity habit. Well, that's just a level and aspirational, like, oh, I want to be more productive. I want to make productivity a habit. Well, that's just an abstract generalization. If somebody says, I want to look at my to-do list every morning, then that's a specific habit. So I don't know if this is very interesting to your listeners, but even the language of behavior change is a little messed up. Whereas the word habit means lots of things. People talk

about breaking bad habits, and that's not how it works. You don't just put in force and break it and you're done. So I talk about in Tiny Habits, my book, I talk about untangling bad habits rather than breaking. So, you know, breaking sets up the wrong expectation. So there's a lot of things that have been the tradition in behavior change programs or how we talk about behavior change that really set us up either to fail or think about it in the wrong way and it's uh important to help people see it in the right way and it's fun too because once people see it they're like yeah of course you don't break a bad habit you know by putting

in a lot of force in one moment, you untangle it. And that's sets up the right expectation. You know, I love that. And it's something I've been reflecting on a lot over the past few years is this whole idea that the language we use matters. Not, you know, you could expand this out beyond habits, you know, relationships, the way we talk to ourselves, all of of these things the language we use i think it's on a on a very deep sort of primal level it's it really influences our actions and

how we feel about ourselves and i think you can tell a lot about someone by the language they use yeah yeah well so i have a degree degree English, a master's degree in English, which is really linguistics and sociolinguistics. And the power of language is the thing that really got me thinking about, well, one of these days computers will use rhetoric, essentially, to influence our attitudes and behaviors. And that's what led me to create this uh research program around how might this happen and so on um but yeah language and and even analogy so let's go back to the plant analogy if people can look at their set of habits as plants and and let's take the example of turning on the kettle let's go back to that when i hear that what i'm understanding from it is she has a limited period

of time to meditate i don't know how long a kettle takes because i don't do the kettle but what is it a couple minutes yeah a minute two minutes maybe depending on how much water's in so let's say she creates a meditation habit there and it wires in she feels good she feels successful she's ready to do more she can then transplant that habit to another part of her life. It's almost like the kettle on the stove is the greenhouse. It's the incubator for the habit. And once she dials it in and feels successful on that small behavior, it's ready for something bigger and she can move it out and transplant it to a space where she can go to 15 or 20 minutes. So the language we use, the analogies, the metaphors can all be helpful or unhelpful. And I really like sharing the helpful ways of talking

about behavior change and thinking about behavior change. And that's a big part of behavior design. A model is a way of thinking. And an analogy or a turn of phrase, like untangle a bad habit, is a way of thinking. So even that simple phrase is a type of model because it shifts how you think about things. How do you untangle these bad habits then? You know, everybody can just think about, you have like an extension cord or Christmas lights that are all tangled up. How do you untangle it? Well, you don't just yank on it.

And you don't go for the hardest snarl in the middle. You start with the easiest one on the outside and you undo it. And then you go to the next easiest one and so on. So it's the same process. The analogy I think really helps people understand. Like let's say you're trying to stop smoking. And you smoke, say, 14 times a day or whatever it is. You don't go to the hardest, most ingrained smoking action of the day. You go to the one that's the easiest to untangle. It's like, okay, so I smoke on when I drive home from work. Okay, that's the easiest one to untangle

and start. Let me just stop that one for now. Boom, got that done. Let me go to the next easiest one and so on. And what often happens is if you get enough of the tangles undone, the rest of them will just fall away or they won't matter very much. Just like with a tangled set of Christmas lights. So it's a more helpful way of thinking about it because people understand it's a process. You don't tackle the hardest thing first you go for the easiest things and you learn little by little how to do it better and better yeah a big theme coming through um what you're describing and and your work is to make it easy yeah absolutely right and it's i think that's such a powerful message for people listening to this podcast is you want to change something, make it easy. And you were teaching us yesterday about this very powerful relationship between motivation and ability to do something.

Motivation and ease and how that motivation does come in waves. So you can't really rely on motivation long term right because i think most public health messaging you know kind of relies on that relies on sort of we're going to give you information we're going to tell you how bad this is how important it is to do this and we're hoping by giving you that information it's going to motivate you to consistently make these choices yet we know that it's frankly not working because all this information we're giving people is not leading to a change in action so i wonder if you could just expand on you know this motivation wave and how important it is to understand that

and be aware that our motivation and i guess our willpower will run out yeah you know what's interesting about the academic work on motivation, as far as I can tell, and I've looked really hard at it, the research about how motivation works, and the fact that it shifts up and down over time, that was not studied or published until 2007. And it came out in two separate fields that year. Before that time, I can find no academic work that talks about motivation shifting day by day, hour by hour, even moment by moment. So, it's not been part of the academic tradition. But you know, I know, everyone knows motivation shifts over time. It's really high at the beginning of the year. It's higher on Sundays

for some things. It's higher on Mondays for other things. Motivation shifts around. And so, somehow that just hadn't become part of the academic work, the understanding that motivation shifts. Now, one of the boot camps a number of years ago, I was explaining this concept. I didn't have a word for it yet, but it's like, yeah, motivation will go up and it will peak. And it's at those moments when it's high, we can get ourselves to do hard things or other people that are hard things, but it's going to come down because that's how it works. And I said, let's name this. And one of the guys at the bootcamp, and he's a doctor, Dr. David Sobel, a friend of mine, an MD was there, a GP. He's like, let's call it motivation wave. And I was like, thank you, David. It's perfect. Cause it's wave and i was like thank you david it's perfect because it's like wave goes up but you know it's coming back down some waves are bigger than others

some are little ripples it's and so that's what that's what it's called in behavior design is the motivation wave and i guess that really feeds into um this whole idea of helping people feel successful because if you know that your motivation will go down and that's the natural course of motivation then maybe hopefully people will stop beating themselves up when their motivation does wane because they think oh i can't do it you know i'm just not motivated enough i don't have the willpower to do this and actually maybe again the language has been used in an unhelpful way because actually that is normal for most patients to come and go.

So in the new program I've got out in Feel Better in 5, where every single health intervention takes five minutes maximum. That's great, awesome. And you wanna do more, you can do more, but you get the credit if you've done your five minutes. And I say, look, when your motivation's high, when you bought the book, right? Use it to learn one of these. I mean, there's many things in the book,

but one of them are workouts. Use your motivation to learn how to do this particular workout, right? So you learn it when your motivation's high, but then after a few days of doing it, you will know it. You won't need to refer to the book. You won't need to look at the video. And so when your motivation's low, you're not going to have to, you know, you're not going to have to always come back and go, oh God, how do I do that? Because as soon as we add those steps, the more steps we add, the easier it is to say no to do the new behavior. And that's why I'm asking them to do, do the same workout every day at the same time. Yeah. There's another 10 workouts in the book, choose one and stick to it because then you're using what your research and science shows you're using, you know, all of these, um,

factors that you described willpower, motivation, ease, um, you know, all the science behind how you create a new habit. i think it's all in there it's all sort of it's all built into the design of that program yeah i you know i'm excited to hear how it goes for your readers uh these five minute workouts i think it's right on it's setting people up to succeed they choose the ones that they want to do uh and hopefully they keep the bar low they don't say oh i did five now i do 10. Yeah, you can do 10 or 15. You can knock it out of the park the days you're feeling motivated. So from my research, I draw general principles out of it. And one of them is that behavior change is a skill. It's a set of skills, just like playing the piano or the guitar.

So you can say, oh, I have the skill of playing the piano. Well, it's fingering, it's phrasing, it is rhythm, and so on. People should look at behavior change in the same way. It's a set of skills. I map it into five categories. And one of those skills is knowing when to push yourself further, like do more than the two push-ups or more than five minutes, and knowing when not to, right? Because if you're just not into it, you're busy, you're sick, just do the minimum,

congratulate yourself and move on. But other times you'll want to push it. And this is how habits that begin tiny can expand. Push-ups is pretty easy to understand. So you do more push-ups to a point where it just barely starts hurting, but not to the point where you hate it. And so you learn how do you go to the edge. And by going to the edge, you expand your capacity and you expand your understanding of, oh, I'm going to push myself on push-ups. Oh, I'm going to go this far. Awesome. But not so far that it really hurts. Now, if you do push yourself into pain, then if you celebrate extra hard, if you go, yeah, my muscles are burning, but good for me. Look how many I did. And look what I, then you, I, then that seems to offset the pain that would have caused the roots of the habit to shrivel.

So all this is to say that behavior change is a set of skills. Some people, there's about 26 of them. Some people are better at others than the individual skills, but one of them is knowing how to feel good about doing something really, really small. That's a mindset skill. One of them is knowing when to push yourself and when not to. I think this is incredibly empowering, BJ BJ because I don't think we've looked at behavior change or habit formation as a skill before. I think people feel they've either got

that ability or they don't. And actually on many levels, it is arguably the most important skill to learn because our behaviors impact yes our health but our professional life our personal life our well-being our relationships it all comes on the back of human behavior ultimately everything is a downstream consequence of our behaviors. And so, if it is a trainable skill, why are we not being taught how to do it? Well, I don't know the answer to that. But in my work, in Tiny Habits and other things coming out, I'm mapping out those skills and helping people understand what the skills are and then learning to make them part of their life. And you're so right. Why isn't this taught to every 10-year-old? Here are the skills of change. And we're going to teach you, we're going to work on these three this quarter. And next quarter,

we're going to work on these three. And you're going to learn, just like you learn math or writing or language, we're going to learn the skills of change. I would love to see that. Yeah. Well, I think your pioneering work means that actually this is likely to happen because I think what was striking for me when studying your research, but also at day one of boot camp yesterday, and I'm looking forward to day two today, a lot of it is it's common sense it's not common sense it's in the sense that you know who said that phrase the thing about common sense is not that common

and it's not necessarily common sense but it's it makes sense when you hear it you think yeah yeah i get that but nobody's really mapped it in the way that you have so what i think you're doing for me is providing a structure and a framework to start looking at this and then it can be taught then it can be scaled thank you um and i also think you are incredibly modest about the the impacts of your work because yes we mentioned instagram at the start i know people from all kinds of tech giants have trained with you and use these skills uh for the you know for their own products you know i know james clear came on did uh tiny habits with you years ago yeah years ago and he's written a book atomic habits on

you know again on how you create these habits and so i think you know to give you your geo i think you are leading this field and i think um you know i think you've inspired a lot of people to actually go on do some great things in the world. But I think that would be a lovely thing in the future if these skills did get taught to children. I mean, I'm certainly going to be thinking on my flight home, how can I teach my nine-year-old boy and my six-year-old girl some of these themes, you know, that will help them? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and not just kids, but doctors too. You know, what if, what if physicians were trained in skills of change? And so they could, now what happens, just like learning the piano or guitar or whatever,

if you have a good coach or guide, that person can take on some of the skills for you. Like when you're learning to play the piano, choosing the right songs to practice is a skill. And at the beginning, a teacher does that for you. Same when you're learning to play the piano. Choosing the right songs to practice is a skill. And at the beginning, a teacher does that for you. Same thing with habits. You know, picking the right habits for you is a skill. And at the beginning, you may want a doctor or coach to help you connect with the right habits. Over time, you'll want to learn how to pick your own, like what's the right habit for me. Another skill is how to troubleshoot a behavior that's not happening so if you intended to um let's say text your mom every morning and it's not happening there's a systematic way to troubleshoot that and that's a skill and you first what you don't do is beat yourself up and say oh i lack motivation i'm flaky you start with looking at what i call a

prompt did you have anything to remind you to text your mom? And if not, then set up some prompt that reminds you. If you are being reminded to do it, and you still aren't doing, then you still don't go to motivation, you look at ability, it's like, oh, is this too hard? And you make it easier to do. And then if you're being prompted, and it's super easy, at point then you know it's a motivation problem and the best thing to do there for a habit you're creating for yourself is oh i really don't want this habit okay pick something else yeah yeah so you just you match yourself with something else now why somebody wouldn't want to text their mom i don't know maybe that wasn't the best example but the point is there is a systematic way to troubleshoot

and that is a skill and it's pretty easy to learn that skill is is this skill something you teach in your book tiny yes yes it's in tiny habits yes yeah so people who feel inspired by this and go right i want to learn that skill they can buy the book and they can actually learn how to do this not only for their health but probably for all kinds of different things in their life i'm guessing but it and it includes like your children uh people at work and so let's say you want uh and one of your colleagues at work to do a behavior whether it's a habit or a one-time behavior and they're not doing it often people just get upset which is a motivational. That's the wrong place to start. You first go, wow, did that person have a prompt? If not, make sure there

was something that prompted them or reminded them. They still don't do it. It's like, oh, maybe it's too hard to do. So yeah, you apply it to yourself. But once you know the skills of change, you can help other people more effectively. Now you've been just brilliant and I think intuitively gifted at helping people change. And now you're seeing there's a system behind it. And that's a delight for me to see you connect what you've learned through your practice and you just being gifted in that way to say, wow, this is why this works. This is why this works. Here's what the structure and system looks like. And you, like a gifted singer or a gifted chef, have been able to be successful even without like, here's the system and go from the system. My work is really about

putting it out there and saying, this is the system and this is how we apply it in positive ways and this is how we help people be happier and healthier so um for me it's a delight to create the models and i do think a lot of the models and methods are like riddles once you see the answer it's obvious but until then it's a it's it's a puzzle hey it's a, we both talk about simplicity, don't we? In terms of how important that is in anything. And I felt, and I was chatting to some of my colleagues yesterday after the course finished and saying, there's such a deceptive simplicity in how you teach, but there is so much complexity behind it, but ultimately the way you deliver it is simple.

And I think simplicity is absolutely critical to get ideas across. It is something I, you know, I know you work on it, something certainly with patience, but also when writing these books, I've been really, I've sort of been racking my head and saying, how do you make this simpler? How do you make this simpler? But I think when you really know something, you can make it that simple. I don't think it, you know, you can make it that simple i don't think it you know as i call it deceptive simplicity well the the people i admire so you know influences uh

mozart calder picasso charles schultz all of those people took stuff and made really simple melodies or really simple line art or in in the case of Charles Schultz, cartoons that are deceptively simple. They're very sophisticated psychologically. So, I look at people who have, and I actually have a word for it. I call it the feather principle. It's the simplest thing with the biggest impact. And I admire that in music, in art, and in my own work, I'm constantly pushing for that. What's the simplest thing that will have the biggest impact? And when I create a model, if the model's complicated, it's like, it's not done yet. It's not done yet. It's a work in progress until there's an elegance that comes

out of the model. And once, bam, I hit where it's elegant, meaning both simple and powerful, then it's done. If it's complicated, it means it's a work in progress and I haven't solved the riddle yet. And I see that over and over in the work that I do. It reminds me a bit of, I talk about this four pillar approach a lot, these four core areas of our health that I think have the most impacts on how we feel, but also we've got a high degree of control over food, movement, sleep, sleep and realization it was the subject of my very first book and um after it came out a lot of people said oh you missed this fifth pillar or the sixth pillar and what's really interesting is that if you've seen the kind of notes i'd made when creating the book is they were all there yeah and it was just a it was trying to

marry up effectiveness with simplicity and so a lot of people said oh you missed the pillar on connection i'm thinking well actually no i absorbed that into the relaxation pillar with a few of the interventions but i purposely kept it at four because i felt once i go to five six seven it starts to become too complex to actually be practical in real life and it's there is something about simplicity i think but it's the same when creating a new habit right yeah yeah well let me let me give uh it was probably about 2001 i'm at stanford i'm at my research lab and this guy walks up to me i didn't know very well i knew who he was because he's kind of famous patrick soupies

he walks up to me and it's he, it's not about having the biggest, most complicated ideas. It's about making them actionable. Just out of the blue, Rangan, he walks up to me and says, it's about making your stuff actionable. It's like, okay, first of all, I don't even think he knows my work and why is he telling me this, but it stuck with me. At the same time, my work, I was looking at what's happening with technology and what would take off. And I clearly saw the pattern in the late 90s that the only things that really took off were drop dead simple. So, I was this huge fan of simplicity, even before I had my behavior model. And then Patrick Souffies comes up and tells me this. And I was like, okay,

is my work actionable? Oh, not so much. And that really, so I got obsessed with simplicity. I mean, it was natural anyway. I mean, I'm kind of that kind of guy. And then that understanding of simplicity then opened the door to creating the behavior model. So I knew that the factor, I now call it ability, but it's simplicity or ease or capacity. That's one of three factors that comprise a behavior. And so with that as a stake in the ground, then I can say, well, there has to be motivation. Bam, that's the next factor. And then third, it was like prompt. There has to be something that says do this now. And there's only three things. So every behavior is comprised of

those three things. And if you want to start a behavior or habit, you have to make sure all three things are present. Some motivation, you have to be able to do it and there has to be a prompt. If you want to stop a behavior, you remove motivation or you make it harder to do. You remove ability or you take away the prompt. It's the same set of, it's the same components for any behavior, whether you're starting it or stopping it, whether's a habit whether it's a one-time so once you see it that way that's kind of the wow is it really that simple and the answer is yeah it is it always comes back to those three things yeah incredible and you're right you can literally apply that to every behavior as i've been seeing yesterday and and through through your teachings yesterday i'll be thinking yeah you can pretty much apply to

everything it really does marry up um look bj i'm sort of conscious of your time and there is so much more I want to talk about, but I know bootcamp is starting relatively soon. So let's just quickly knock off a few things if we can. Research out there, some suggest it takes 21 days to create a new habit. Some says says 66 days i'm not convinced what is your view no that's that's they're looking at old paradigms of change they're looking at the idea that repetition it's not repetition it's emotions there are some things and i'm going to push on this harder to help make it clear there are some things that are instant habits let's say i buy a new car and i really like that car How long does it take to drive that new car as my habit rather than the old car?

No time, right? Immediately. How long does it take a teenager to carry her mobile phone around? You give your teenage daughter a mobile phone. How long does that habit take? No, it doesn't. So it's not repetition. It's the emotional experience that people have as they do the behavior.

And so, yeah, that whole thing about 21 days, 66 days, that's just, not repetition. It's the emotional experience that people have as they do the behavior. And so, yeah, that whole thing about 21 days, six, six days, that's just, um, it's people that haven't looked at it from the right perspective that are pushing that forward. Another question, your pinned tweets at the moment, if I just pull it up, which I really, really like, let's see if I can get it up. Uh up because i can't remember it at the top of my heads um i really liked this and um oh where's it gone now here we go a company asked on my 2020 prediction here it is please don't be offended a movement to be post digital will emerge in 2020 we will start to realize that being chained to your mobile phone is a low status behavior similar to smoking yeah you have

proven your track record in the past at predicting what is going to happen in technology why did you make that tweet i'm really hoping right so because i agree yeah yeah i'm really hoping so post digital probably isn't the right word but a backlash against always having your mobile phone out, always taking a selfie, being at dinner, pulling out your phone, that more and more I'm predicting will become something that people are like, no, that's bad etiquette. That's not what you do. And even, you know, I spend half my time in Maui and I go to the beach a lot and it just drives me crazy when people are one of the most beautiful places on earth and there they are on their, I don't know what they're doing on their mobile phone.

And it's like, look out, you see whales, you see turtles. And so the idea that doing this, people will more and more understand that this is not like being cool to do this. This is a low status behavior. And I hope with that new framing and understanding that people will then not be so compelled to do it. And then when they do do it, they will kind of go like, oh, I need to step out and check my phone,

just like people do that around smoking. And so I do think that will happen. I think we can help accelerate that. No, I love that. Yeah, I love that. I agree with it. And I think that is coming. Final question then is, we are in your house behind us and for those of you watching it on youtube i know most people listen to it there's a there's ukuleles there's guitars there's piano there's this this gorgeous what's that device called again it's called a vast drum i mean just absolutely yeah absolutely incredible um we probably don't have time to really unpack this, but you were saying at the start that learning a musical instrument is super important. Yeah.

Why is that? Well, for me, you know, life can be really hard. It's hard for everybody. Even if you see somebody and think they have their act together, they still have hard things. And so, for me, what totally helps me is being in nature and playing musical instruments. I know that. I was sort of forced to play piano growing up because my mom's super musical, and I did it to be a dutiful son. But I think that training was really helpful for me in lots of ways, because you're a musician, you know this, that you're not going to be perfect.

You have a new song. You're going to make tons of mistakes. And that's helpful in behavior change. You're not going to be perfect. You have a new song. You're not going to be, you're going to make tons of mistakes and that's helpful in behavior change. You're not going to be perfect. You're going to make mistakes and that's okay. And it's part of the process. You're going to get better if you practice in the right way and so on. So I think the skills and the insights that you get from learning to play an instrument or learning to do anything, you can then apply those same skills or ways of thinking toward behavior change. Once you recognize that behavior change is a skill. Yes, exactly.

Yeah. Well, look, BJ, I really want to thank you again for the incredible work you have done. You are changing the lives of many, many people around the globe. Many people will have been influenced by your work and frankly will not be aware that they've been influenced by your work. I think people should go out and buy your book tiny habits i think it's an incredible insight into how you create a new behavior and it's going to help a lot of people this podcast is called feel better live more it's again deceptively simple in the sense that when you feel better in yourself you get more out of life. I always like to leave my listeners with some top actionable tips,

simple things that they can think about applying into their own life immediately. You have a wealth of experience, a wealth of knowledge. Do you have a few simple tips that you can share? You probably already mentioned them, but just to inspire them to take action. Yeah, let me give three. And top of mind. One, start every day that as soon as your feet hit the floor in the morning, as soon as you're standing up, say, it's going to be a great day.

And I know that sounds hokey, like a California woo-woo hippie affirmation thing, but try it. And what that habit does is it starts your day in the best possible way. In my book, there's only one habit. I tell people how to create any habit they want, but there's only one habit I prescribe. It's that one. I call it the Maui habit. And you say, it's going to be a great day. And if you don't believe it's going to be a great day, still, I mean, there's days where I'm like, oh, this is going to be so hard. I say, it's going to be a great day somehow. But I say it. One, do that. Number two, when you're frustrated with somebody, whether it's somebody that's driving or somebody checking online or your spouse or your child,

let that be your prompt to think everybody's doing the best they can. Nobody tries to screw up. And I find that in my life that is so helpful to have empathy and patience with people. It's like nobody tries to screw up. They're doing the best they can given what's going on with them. So I find that helpful. Really tactical and very specific. One habit, it's similar to the tea kettle one you recommended, is as soon as you turn on the shower, you recommended is as soon as you turn on the shower, have that be your reminder to think of one positive thing about your body. So I shower at night, most people maybe, whether night or morning doesn't matter, but as soon as you turn it on, you got to wait for a few seconds for it to get warm, unless you're in cold showers. I don't love cold showers. While you're waiting,

use the, I call it a meanwhile habit. Use that time to think of one positive thing about your body, whether it's, oh, I have a cut, it healed, or my skin is flexible, or I really like, you know, whatever it is, you know, my fingernails. Well, think, find one new thing every time. It's easy to do. And what I think the bigger effect is, you know, I haven't studied this directly, but I would wager the bigger effect then is you then start appreciating this marvelous thing that is your body. And you start appreciating in new ways. And every day you're looking at it from a different angle. So, those would be three things. I love them, BJ. They're brilliant tips. I'm

totally on board with them. They're simple. They're easy. I'd really encourage people to choose at least one of them and go, I'm going to commit to doing that. BJ, there's so much I wanted to talk to you about, which we don't have time for today. Maybe when you are in London in a few months, coming to promote your book, maybe we can get together again and maybe continue this, or maybe even do a live event together. Let's see if we can hook something up. But thank you for all the work you're doing. Thank you for making time. And thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you. That concludes today's episode of the podcast. What did you think? Did you learn some new things?

I really hope you managed to figure out where you might have gone wrong in the past and potentially what you can do differently to set yourself up for success in the future. If you did find this episode interesting, I would highly recommend you check out episode 92 of this podcast, which is called How to Make Lifestyle Changes That Last. It's basically where A.N. Panja interviewed me about my experience of helping my patients

create habits that stick in the long term. Now, as always, please do share your views on this conversation with BJ and I on social media. The best place to find BJ is on Twitter and Instagram. And if you want to learn more about him, please do check out the show notes page for this week's episode, which is drchastity.com forward slash 108. which is drchastity.com forward slash 108. You'll find links there to BJ's brilliant book, Tiny Habits, his social media,

his free online program and his website. So guys, I'm gonna give a big shout out to BJ's book, Tiny Habits. It is well worth a read. It's gonna help you in so many different aspects of your life. I was lucky enough to study with BJ last October and I've already come back and taught my kids the rules of behavior change since I did his course. I think it's such an important skill for all of us to learn that's going to help us, yes in the

short term, but also for the rest of our life. As well as BJ's book, my latest book, Feel Better in 5, is full of practical tips that will help you improve your physical, mental and emotional health. And as you heard BJ and I discuss, there is so much synergy between our two books and our respective approaches. I know many of you already have both of them and have fed back to us that they both work super well in harmony together and that they are really great companions do of course remember that with bookstores closed and with amazon having slightly longer delivery times if you want to get hold of either of these books quickly they are both available on audiobook which means you can download them immediately if you know somebody who you think would benefit from the information in my conversation with BJ but they don't listen to audio podcasts please do point them in the direction of my

YouTube channel. The whole conversation between BJ and I was recorded on video in his home so there's quite an interesting backdrop where we were actually recording this conversation so do go and check it out and of course if you did today's show, please do take 20 to 30 seconds to jump onto your podcast app and give the show a review. It really does help with visibility. It really helps me get this information out to many more people. Of course, please, as always, do continue to tell your friends and family about the show. A big thank you to Vedanta Chastity for producing this week's episode and Richard Hughes for audio engineering.

That is it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back in a few days time with my latest conversation. Remember, you are the architect of your own health, making lifestyle changes always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.