The One You Feed - BJ Fogg- Habits

Episode Date: September 2, 2015

This week we talk to BJ Fogg about changing our behavior Dr. BJ Fogg directs the Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford University. A psychologist and innovator, he devotes half of his time to industry projects. His work empowers people to think clearly about the psychology of persuasion — and then to convert those insights into real-world outcomes. BJ is the creator of the Fogg Behavioral Model, a new model of human behavior change, which guides research and design. Drawing on these principles, his students created Facebook Apps that motivated over 16 million user installations in 10 weeks. He is the author of Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do, a book that explains how computers can motivate and influence people.  BJ is also the co-editor of Mobile Persuasion, as well as Texting 4 Health. Fortune Magazine selected BJ Fogg as one of the  “10 New Gurus You Should Know”. Our Sponsor this Week is Spirituality and Health Magazine. Click here for your free trial issue and special offer.  In This Interview BJ and I Discuss... The One You Feed parable The wolf you pay attention to is the one you feed The two main limits in life: time and attention The Fogg Behavioral Model- Motivation, Ability and Triggers How behavior change is about more than motivation Designing effective behavior change Managing the Ability part of the behavioral model Designing behavior to fit into our every day routines  For  more show notes and BJ Fogg links visit our websiteSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You can change your behavior. It's a skill and you get there by practice, but you've got to practice in the right way. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dr. B.J. Fogg, director of the Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford University.

A psychologist and innovator, his work empowers people to think clearly about the psychology of persuasion and then to convert those insights into real-world outcomes. B.J. is the creator of the Fogg Behavioral Model, a new model of human behavior change. He is the author of Persuasive Technology, Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do,

and co-editor of Mobile Persuasion and Texting for Health. Fortune Magazine selected BJ Fogg as one of the 10 new gurus you should know. And here's the interview with Dr. BJ Fogg. Hi, BJ. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Really excited to get you on because behavior change is one of my favorite subjects, and you are one of the best-known researchers and practitioners in that area. So I'm really excited to go into a little bit more detail with the listeners on what's known as the Fog Behavior Model. But before we jump into that, we'll start like we always do with the parable.

There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Wow, that's really provocative.

I actually hadn't heard that parable before, so I love it. So my reaction is that I think the one you feed is the one you pay attention to. That would be my gut reaction. It's, you know, the thing we really have limited in our lives is time and attention. And that just is, you know, so, you know, and it goes along, I guess, in some ways with a meditation practice, the ability to focus on what you want to move forward and ignore the distractions. That's my response. And in fact, so in my meditation practice, and I'm not great at meditation, but one of the practical uses of it is to be able to stay focused on work projects or people or, you know, you're going out to dinner and you stay at the dinner and you stay focused with what's going there rather than

being distracted. And I do think that there's a direct connection. Excellent. Well, let's dive into one of the things you're known for, which is the fog behavioral model. And at a basic level, it's really saying that in order for a person to achieve a certain behavior change, to perform a certain behavior, they've got to be a combination of three things. They've got to be sufficiently motivated. They have to have the ability to actually do the behavior. And then finally, they need some sort of trigger to tell them

to perform the behavior at that point. If those three things aren't kind of happening at the same moment, the behavior won't happen. And one of the things that's great about that is a lot of people I talk to and a lot of people I work with, and I'm sure you run into this all the time, have this idea that whether we're able to change a behavior or not depends on our level of willpower or, in a lot of cases, even our own personal character. And, um, it looks like you're showing that that's not the case. Well, you know, behavior is more than just motivation, you know? And so you did a great summary of my behavior model and it's one of the elements, but it's not the whole, uh, it's not the whole equation. And so sometimes you can design for motivation,

but motivation is very slippery. It goes up and down. We have computing motivations. Whereas when you look at the other two factors in my model, ability and trigger, when you design to make something easier, it tends to be a more robust design change or a better investment. Because if you make something easy to do, it doesn't usually suddenly become hard to do. And then certainly you've got to design for triggers.

So usually when people kind of historically and traditionally, when people talk about, you know, behavior, behavior change, they really focused on motivation, even the phrase motivate behavior change. And I think my work is in kind of sharp relief to that. But yeah, motivation is a piece of it. But how about facilitate behavior change or trigger behaviors you want? And I think those are the things you design for first and foremost, and that's where you really focus. And then, you know, in my approach, the way I train people and, you know, innovators and also all the people I'm coaching in Tiny Habits,

it's you pick behaviors you actually want to do. And that's where the motivation piece comes in. You don't pick stuff you don't want to do and then you have to like forge yourself to do stuff. That's not a long-term success strategy. Right. So let's dive into some of those pieces in a little bit more detail.

I think motivation, you know, you've got some great writings on what the different types of motivators are all there are, and we can go into that, but let's maybe later, but let's talk right now about what ability is. What do you mean by having the ability to do an action? And can you give me some of the types of things that we might be missing or some examples of that? Yeah, well, you know, you can think of it as a continuum of easy to do and hard to do. And in the visual version of my behavior model,

so if people are listening to this, they can go to behaviormodel.org and see the visual. And the horizontal dimension is easy to do to hard to do. That's what I mean by ability. And there are three ways to think about making something easier to do. So if there's something you want to do, like, say, work out every day, there are ways to make that easier to do. One is to get trained, like increase your skill. So, you know, lessons or some sort of training could make it easier to do. Another

approach is to create a tool or resource to make it easier to do. In my own life, I set up a little kind of CrossFit gym in my garage, which makes it a lot easier to do because it's right there. I'm there in five seconds. And then the third way is to actually scale the behavior back in some way. So rather than expecting yourself to work out for 60 minutes, work out for five, things like that. So those are the three ways to think about and walk through. Now, if you're designing for other people, it's really hard to get people to want to take courses or be trained. So that's not planning. Usually it's giving them a tool or a resource that will make the behavior easier to do.

That's usually the one that when you're designing for yourself or other people, that's the one that I would focus on most. that I would focus on most. And so ability in this case, you actually, I think, break ability into six different potential areas to look at for that. Yeah. You know, time, money, physical effort, brain cycles, which is like how hard you have to think about it. Right. Social deviance, which is, what do you mean by social deviance?

Well, it's part of the simplicity factors. It means if doing the behavior makes you feel funny or odd, like you're being deviant, it's no longer simple. So, for example, let's say I'm in my garage doing the CrossFit stuff and I take off my shirt and I think, oh, maybe my neighbors will walk by and see me and maybe, you know, think that, oh, he's working out without a shirt like Rocky Balboa. Then it's like, ah, that's made that behavior harder. Now that particular, it's funny you would pick that one out of the list. So there's six simplicity factors.

And I've tentatively scratched that one off the list because it also has a motivational quality. It does have aspects of ability, but it has aspects of motivation. So that's the one, if you were to come to my bootcamp and work with me next week, for example, I have a handout. Look, I removed this one. And let's really talk about the five, the five others. And the one that, you know, you didn't get to in the list yet, I call non-routine. And what I mean by that is if the behavior causes you to break a routine that you already have, it's no longer simple. So if you want somebody to join a conference call for three minutes, but it intrudes on another meeting they have. It's no longer simple, even though it's a three-minute conference call. So you've got to look at how behavior fits into your real everyday life, and you've got to design it so it matches your routines rather than

conflicting with your routines. Right. And I wish listeners, and you can, as you said, if you go out to any of your many websites, can see what this behavioral model looks like right now. But this isn't saying that people can't do anything that's hard. It's just that the harder it is to do, the more motivation you're going to have to have to do it. So those things have to move in tandem together. So if it's really easy to do, you don't need a lot of motivation. But if you're making a big change, you need a lot more motivation. One of the things that you talk about that I preach all the time, you call them baby steps.

I talk about just breaking things down into the smallest possible things. Start really, really small, abandon the all or nothing mindset. And you did a video about why baby steps can be so helpful. Can you give us the short version of why doing a very small version of a behavior? So say, for example, we want to get to the point where we, you know, look really muscular, but we start out by doing 15 push-ups. You know, muscular, but we start out by doing 15 push-ups. Why is that a good strategy? Well, like you said, if the behavior is hard to do, you have to have high levels of motivation to do it. And motivation is very slippery, and there's going to be a time when the motivation slips and you won't do the behavior. Whereas if it's easy to do, motivation can be high or low.

and you won't do the behavior. Whereas if it's easy to do, motivation can be high or low. And so you're going to be able to do the behavior reliably. You know, take that baby step. And as you take it, as you succeed on baby steps, and there's really two things going on here.

One is the small behavior. We'll call that a baby step. That's one of the factors. The other one is as you feel successful. And that's important in the whole baby steps approach. So as you do it as you feel successful. That's important in the whole baby steps approach. So as you do it and you feel successful, two things happen. Number one, the behavior gets easier to do the next time. So let's say you do five push-ups one day,

the next day, the five push-ups can be a little bit easier to do. Whereas if you took the big leap approach and did 25 or 50, the next day it's going to be harder to do because you're sore. So that's one thing. Usually as you do the heat serum, it will get easier to do in the future for a variety of reasons. And then number two, as you feel successful at it, you get more encouraged. Your hope goes up, your fear goes down. In other words, your motivation naturally rises. So you've got both things going on. And that's, you know, even though Baby Steps is kind of a cutesy little name and people, because of the movie,

What About Bob? And, you know, the whole term baby, I think they can discount the power of Baby Steps, but it's really kind of amazing to see the power of it. So as people take small steps and feel successful, things get easier to do and their motivation naturally goes up, which means over time they can do harder and harder things. So it ramps you up to be able to do the harder thing without, without, you know, the risk of, wow, I did 54 shots and now tomorrow I'm super sore. And so I'm either going to really hurt myself or I'm

going to be painful or I'm just going to not do it. So that's the big leap approach, which I do not advocate. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the biggest causes in, you know, in my limited experience of, you know, failed behavior change in my own life and in people around me is trying to start out with too much. And I think the other thing for some reason is even when you don't call it baby steps, people seem to rebel against this idea because they think it seems silly. Like that's not going to do any good. Like walking for five minutes, that isn't going to make any big difference to my health. But I recently read something of yours, which I thought was really is something that that I've noticed, but I certainly have never said it as well as you did, which is, what's the importance

of you talk about the importance of doing a habit even if it's a very small amount of it so you were describing a month in which you got really busy and so you were unable to exercise as often or as much but you talk about why it was so critical that you even did a little bit of it so why is that in the tiny habits method is like teach people the method. And as we train coaches to use the method, one of the analogies we use is, you know, a habit is like a little plant. And what you're doing with that, you know, as you create the habit is you want the plant to take root. You want it to, you know, to firmly be in the ground and then you can grow it bigger. Now, once you have a habit, the key is to keep it alive. You just don't want it to die. And as long as you keep it alive, you still have the

habit. And so in May, I had a crazy, crazy schedule of teaching, finishing up some stuff at Stanford, doing a bunch of stuff in industry and my normal full size exercise habit. I just couldn't get that done with all the travel and all the responsibilities, but I did do really tiny versions of it. In other words, I kept that little plant alive. I kept the roots connected in the soil because then when my circumstances changed, when I had time again, I was back to normal stuff. And, you know, the habit reemerged, the full habit. So I didn't feel bad or guilty about not doing the full course of exercise I normally like to do. Instead, I congratulated myself, like good for you. Even though your schedule is crazy, you kept the habit alive.

You kept this. And I really do think of this little plant. And I just can't shrivel up and die. I just keep us alive because that means it'll come back. Yeah. And you've, you retain some of that momentum and motivation. You know, when it, I always have noticed when you, when I ended a dead stop on something, you know, once I'm not, have no momentum, it is so hard to get

started. Whereas to your point, as long as I've got a little bit of it going, it's easier to grow it. But boy, that that starting from nowhere is is a hard point, which is why like tiny habits or baby steps is so important is because it's, you know, it's sort of the walk before you run thing. Almost sometimes. You know, it's sort of the walk before you run thing. Sometimes literally. And I think it also has an impact on identity or how you think about yourself. If you completely stop exercising, you'll think, oh, I'm the kind of person who doesn't exercise.

If you do three to five minutes of exercise in the hotel room before you go, you know, teach at a big company, then still in your mind, it's like, oh, I'm the kind of person that exercises, you know, even when I'm really busy. Right. And so even though it was a small, uh, act or small behavior, I think it affects how you see yourself and that affects a bunch of other things in your life. So you tend to behave in ways that are consistent with your identity. Yep. And so you really do want to do behaviors that create and reinforce the identity that will then lead you to the outcomes that you want. Yep. Yep. And I think that that's such a key point is that I often, you know, talk with people who say, well, I'm the kind of person who always starts something and then doesn't finish it. Or I'm the kind of, you know, I'm the one that started exercising 50 different times and every time I stop. And I really, I think that idea of not tying too tightly to that I'm that type of person because so much of this which your model makes clear is about do we have the right strategies in place are we approaching it right it's not

a character issue it's a motivation ability and trigger issue And now back to the interview with BJ Fogg. So let's talk about triggers. So what do you mean by triggers and what are some, you know, examples of good triggers that you've seen versus maybe bad ones? Or less effective ones would be the word I would use, right? Yeah. Yeah. In my model, a trigger is... I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really?

That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The prompt to reminder.

It's the prompt, it's the reminder. It's the thing that says, do this behavior now. And the problem a lot of people have is they don't, they're not clear about what their trigger is. And again, the trigger is not the motivator, but it's the cue to then go to the gym and start working out, or it's the cue to, you know, put an apple in your backpack or what have you. And so getting specific about what's going to prompt or remind me to do this

behavior and you design for it. So unlike traditional approaches in behavior, behavior change, where it's dependent, where people think about it as motivation and willpower, I think of behavior change as a design issue. In other words, design the trigger. Design to make the behavior easier to do. It's a lot more like decorating a room or rearranging your office than, well, it's a lot like that because you're trying stuff out, you're designing it, you're seeing if all the pieces fit. If they don't, you just redesign it. I have lots of ways to trigger myself. I'll run through a few quickly. Putting things on your calendar. I'm very calendar driven. Like even our chat today, you know, so it's on the calendar.

I'm a pretty big fan of to-do lists as a trigger. If it gets on my to-do list, I'll probably either get it done or I'll schedule it to be done. I am not a fan of post-it notes for certain habits anyway, because I think that doesn't scale. If you're working, you know, eventually you've got many, many habits and you're relying on post-it notes everywhere. I just don't think that's a good approach. Instead, in the tiny habits method, I have people identify a routine they already do to be, I call it an anchor, to be the prompt. You anchor it to something you already do. So perhaps as soon as I, well, in my own life, as soon as I empty my spam

folder, that's my trigger to meditate. And it took me a long time to figure out where meditation fit in my day and what was going to be the trigger. But after a bunch of trial and error, that's the time. So as soon as that last email goes out, my spam folder, it's clear, it's empty. That's the thing that reminds me to meditate. Now, I mean, other people can be triggers. And not just people, animals. And so let me tell you something I did. I was training some people at Stanford Healthcare last week. And in the training, we all were like talking about changing our behavior.

And I said, okay, great. I'm going to play with my dog every morning. I'll throw the ball. She loves the ball. And so I'd take her out the door and I pulled out her little ball and we played. Next day, I did it again. And on day three, even if I didn't remember to get the ball, she was looking up. Yeah. So she learned it within two days. And then she became my trigger to get the ball if I happen to forget. So, you know, the dog looking up and

jumping toward the ball on the patio shelf is a trigger. It's like, oh yeah, we're going to play ball this morning. Well, that turned out to be a little bit of a monster. I'm going off side now because now anytime I walk outside with her, she expects me to play ball with her. You know, my intention was just in the morning. So I have to kind of undo that habit a little bit in her and I'm not sure I'm going to do that. That's so funny. I've got a little dog who is the exact same way. I think all she thinks about is that ball. And anytime I walk in the kitchen where the ball is, you know, she is right there looking, you know, like she just, her trigger seems to be constant. So let's talk about,

you say that successful triggers have three characteristics. So, you know, first is we notice the trigger. I mean, one of the challenges I have, right, is if I put something up as like a reminder to come up on my computer, I have an awful lot of those. So sometimes I just don't notice them anymore. Second is that you say you associate it with a specific behavior. And then finally, and I think this is another great one, is that the trigger happens when we are both motivated and able to perform the behavior. Sometimes I get a trigger, I get a reminder to do something in a moment that I can't do it. Yeah, and that's not helpful. That's just frustrating. So if people are looking or have looked at the behavior model with the curved line on it,

if you get triggered when you're below the line, and I call it the action line, that means either it was too hard to do or you didn't have motivations to it or a combination. In either case, when you're triggered and you can't do the behavior you don't want to, that does not lead to a good outcome. So you really don't want the trigger going off when you can't do it or at a moment that you're not motivated to do it. Because you're going to be more likely to ignore it, right, the next time? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll ignore it or it'll either frustrate you or annoy you. Yeah, and you'll ignore it or it'll either frustrate you or annoy you.

And in some cases, I was wearing a watch from a certain company and I was driving along on the highway and the watch tapped me and said, stand up now. So it's triggering me to stand bit, well, it's funny, but let's imagine it happened over and over. It'd be annoying, but it also hurts the credibility of the system, I think. So if you create some sort of product or service that triggers people at the wrong time, then I just think that's not good for the brand. It's not good for the product and so on. So the timing of the trigger matters a lot. You described having a pretty crazy schedule, right? Triggers work for me pretty well in routine, right? When in routine, it's pretty straightforward. When everything is chaotic, how do you work to redesign your triggers or are certain things habitual enough at that point that

you remember to do them or how do you deal with that? Well, if we're talking about habits, that point that you remember to do them or how do you deal with that? Well, if we're talking about habits, there's a class of habits I call super habits. And super habits are the things you do all the time, regardless of the context, brushing our teeth, going to bed, eating breakfast and stuff like that. And so those habits endure even if I'm, you know, in Seattle or Boston or, you know, hiking. Then there's another, most habits are not super habits. They're very dependent on our context. So if we, you know, so say it's Monday and usually we're at work, but we're taking, it's

a holiday. Well, the context is different. Your typical Monday habits probably aren't going to happen. But just, that's not a failure of willpower or motivation or not even behavior design. It's just how things work. And so I'm a big fan of creating like Monday through Friday work habits, weekend habits. You may differentiate between Saturday and Sunday. And then also travel habits. So when you're on the road, a different set of habits. So you'll have your super habits,

but then you'll have other habits you do when you travel. And don't expect your Monday through Friday work habits to automatically translate to travel because the context is different. So you actually design a different set of habits with different triggers. So that's, I think, a more helpful way to think about it. Knowing that you're outside your normal environment. And there's certain things that I will do when I'm at a hotel that I don't do when I'm at home. And there's things I do at Stanford that I don't do when I'm working from home. And so just realizing the context is also a big part of what triggers us to do things.

And so don't get down on yourself if you, you know, you go on vacation and you don't do your typical exercise. Well, that's normal until you design a habit for that contact, that's normal. It's not a personal failing. One of the things that you talk about with creating habits, you talk about how important celebration is. What do you mean by that and why is it so critical? Yeah, celebration is something that you do. It's a skill. It's an act that you do. It's a skill.

It's an act that you do to fire off a positive emotion, to make you feel a positive emotion immediately. That's what I mean by celebration. It's almost like a self-cheer or a way to spark happiness or something positive inside of you instantly. And the reason that matters, and so this is part of the tiny habits technique, the reason it matters is your positive emotions help make the behavior become more automatic. So if I, well, let's take my little dog, Millie.

So I take the ball out on the patio. First morning, I throw it and she is so happy. She runs, gets the ball, brings it back. Well, that positive emotion starts wiring into her the anticipation to do the ball the next morning. In other words, emotions create habits. And so the celebration skill, it's a hack. You're like, how do you hack your behavior?

Well, you learn to fire off a positive emotion. So then when the opportunity comes to do that behavior again, you'll remember to do it and you'll want to do it. So I'll just give you, you know, if somebody is not flossing and they want to make flossing a habit, well, after they floss, whether it's all their teeth, or I'm a fan of just flossing one tooth, you then celebrate. You say, good for me, or you do a fist pump, or you do something goofy in the mirror to make yourself feel happy at that moment. Because that's how you get your brain to want to do that behavior again. So I call it celebration. It's not a perfect word. It's about the best.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend.

Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, really.

No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's what I can come up with for that. It's all about, it's a hack. You're hacking your emotions in order to hack your behavior. I know there's probably a long list, but just a couple of the big hitters off the list of bad approaches to changing our behavior. I know there's probably a long list, but just a couple of the big hitters off

the list of bad approaches to changing our behavior. Oh, wow. Well, one key thing is to distinguish between outcomes and behaviors. And you need to translate. So the outcome might be lose 10% of my body weight or, you know, be able to do 50 pull-ups or finish, you know, a big report or something like those are all outcomes. You need to translate that into specific behaviors. What are the behaviors that I do to reach that outcome? So that's step one. And often overlooked. You can design for the behaviors. and often overlooked. You can design for the behaviors. You can't design directly for the outcomes. Number two is probably being unrealistic about your motivation level and how it will sag. So when you are thinking about, oh, I want to lose weight, or I want to study harder, or I want to write more, I want to practice more. In that moment that you're thinking that through or in a course or what have you,

your motivation is high, at least higher than usual. And at that moment, you feel like you really can do these behaviors because your motivation is high. And what people don't account for is tomorrow or a week from now or, you now or 30 days from now, my motivation is going to tag. And I'm not going to be all amped up about this. So you've got to design an approach that accounts for the reality of motivation being very slippery. And then I think there's others. I'll just end with this one. And then I think there's others, but I'll just end with this one.

Just if you're looking at long-term change, there's different kinds of behavior. Some are one-time and some are episodic. But if you're looking at long-term change, if you're looking at some kind of outcome, like being more productive or being healthier or reducing stress, those outcomes can be challenging. And so as you work on different behaviors to achieve them, I think it's so important to just keep going. So if you fall off the wagon or if you mess up, or you don't do what you intended, don't make a big deal of it.

Just take the next step, you know, just, just, just don't give up. And, you know, don't, don't, don't take it out on yourself. Don't get down on yourself. Just say, Hey, you just pick it up the next day and keep going. One of my favorites that would go on a list like that is, is ambiguity, like not really knowing exactly what the behavior you're going to take is. Like, I'm going to go to the gym and work out is, you know, I've given myself that before and you get there and you, or it's just harder to even get there because I don't know what I'm going to do, what machines, how long, so many decisions to make that it's easy to not do it. Yeah. There's an interesting, I haven't named this and I don't know if anybody has named it,

but the idea is this, as you get very specific about the behavior, often the behavior will just happen on its own without you designing the trigger or making it either. Just getting clear in your mind what the behavior is can lead to actually doing it. Not in all cases, but it's surprising how that dynamic works. And so, yeah, that clarity about what exactly is the behavior that I'm going to be doing can have a powerful effect. Excellent. Well, BJ, thanks so much for taking the time. I think I could probably continue to have this conversation for hours. But I know you're busy and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us. We will have links in the show notes to some of your various different websites, to the tiny habits, to the

behavior model, et cetera. So thanks again. Great. Thanks for talking. Great questions. And you know, just keep up the good work. It's really important that people understand how behavior works and that they move forward because you can change your behavior. It's a skill and you get there by practice, but you've got to practice in the right way. And I applaud you for shining a spotlight on the better ways to do it. Excellent. Well, thanks so much. Goodbye.

All right. Bye. you can learn more about bj fog and this podcast at one you feed.net slash fog that's f-o-g-g