I’ve recently read BJ Fogg’s seminal book Tiny Habits and completed his free 5 day habit change course and the groundbreaking book by James Clear Atomic Habits. Both are behavioural change experts covering how change can be made in small incremental steps. Small habits can lead to big changes.
Change isn’t all about motivation and willpower
These ideas offer alternative perspectives to habit change through motivation and willpower. The idea being that motivation only remains high when we want to do something and it appeals. Therefore motivation and willpower alone won’t be enough if you want to develop a new habit for the long term.
Fogg’s and Clear’s philosophies centre around the idea that in order for habit change to become second nature, and succeed in the long term, it needs to be easy and achievable. It may not seem like it at first but building in new small habits can make a big difference.
“Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. Whether it’s losing weight, building a business, writing a book… we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about. Meanwhile, improving by 1 per cent isn’t particularly notable – sometimes it isn’t even noticeable – but it can be far more meaningful in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding”.
James Clear, Atomic Habits
The philosophies are really interesting and I think we can all learn a lot from these ideas so I’m sharing some of the most interesting findings here as I think they can relate well to fitness, exercise, eating habits and weight loss.
Why is habit change so hard?
This is a complex question and one which I am sure many of us wish we knew the answer to. Why is it so easy to eat a diet of junk food and why is it so hard to stick to an exercise regime? There are a multitude of reasons:
- Our brains are programmed to follow the same processes and routines we’ve always followed. Our familiar routines and habits create well trodden neural pathways in the brain so it’s hard to develop new pathways. Change is perceived by the brain as a form of threat.
- We are therefore inclined to err on the side of caution and follow the most familiar path as this is the safest option.
- We need to be in the right place for change to be enacted. As Daniel Pink says, we need to be intrinsically motivated to change – i.e. to enact change for ourselves rather than anyone else or an external reason.
- We might not be ready to enact change. For example, we might be thinking about change but not ready to actually make the step (see the Transtheoretical Model of Change model).
- Change can feel overwhelming and we can easily get caught up in “all or nothing” type of thinking. For example, the overly ambitious January diet and exercise regime which just doesn’t last.
- We often have conflicting priorities meaning enacting change is harder. For example, busy parents may struggle to stick to a diet when they are tired, run down and worn out and their child is demanding attention.
- We don’t always appreciate that change isn’t always linear. Often we see progress and then regress. This is especially true for weight loss. Failure and adapting to change is a big part of successful behaviour change. See Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail for more on this.
- We might underestimate external factors or how our environment affects behaviour change
- We are convinced that behaviour change is all about willpower. It has to be more than this as willpower will not last. As behaviour change expert Michelle Segar says “using self-control or willpower in one situation can deplete it in another”.
Clear’s explanation of how we approach behaviour change
Clear says that we are trying to change habits in the wrong way. He argues that rather than trying to achieve the “what” we should reframe our objectives to achieve “who” we want to become, so habit change becomes more about identity than achieving a specific goal. We want to deeply engrain a behaviour and idea as part of our identity so we become intrinsically motivated to enact that behaviour. A lot of this can be do with our internal dialogue.
For example, instead of setting a goal to run a 5K your goal is to become a runner. Of course you can move towards running 5K as part of this but the more you repeat to yourself your assertion that you want to be a runner the more it will become ingrained in your identity. So “the process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself”. Clear says “the ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity”. You will then be more motivated to continue the habits connected with it. So a key question to ask is “am i becoming the type of person i want to become?”
How do habits work?
Clear talks about Charles Duhigg’s four step model for habits: cue, craving, response and reward. In the simplest terms:
- Cue: is a trigger which causes your brain to want to initiate a behaviour
- Craving: is what motivates us to enact a habit – “every craving is linked to a desire to change your internal state”
- Response: is the action performed to enact the habit which an individual must be able to perform
- Reward: the result from any habit
Clear says:
“The cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and ultimately, becomes associated with the cue”.
James Clear, Atomic Habits
This creates a feedback loop which allows the creation of habits. For example, you see a chocolate bar on your coffee table (that’s the cue): you want to satisfy your urge to eat it and taste the chocolate (that’s the craving); you reach for the bar and eat it (that’s the response); you have then have satisfied the urge to eat the chocolate and this action then becomes connected to you seeing a chocolate bar on your coffee table (the reward).
The four laws of behaviour change
The rest of Atomic Habits outlines Clear’s framework and four simple rules for creating and sustaining good habits:
- Make it obvious (cue)
- Make it attractive (craving)
- Make it easy (response)
- Make it satisfying (reward)
And for breaking bad habits:
- Make it invisible (cue)
- Make it unattractive (craving)
- Make it difficult (response)
- Make it unsatisfying (reward)
So for the example above, if you are trying to lose weight, you want to make the chocolate bar invisible by placing it away from your line of vision. Make it seem unattractive: buy an alternative such as a low fat cereal bar that you won’t find as appealing. Make it difficult: place it away from temptation – in a cupboard high up in your kitchen inside a biscuit tin which is difficult to open. If it’s difficult enough to eat it will remove the reward aspect and become unsatisfying.
Top 8 tips on how to enact behaviour change through small habits:
So here are some key takeaways from these two books which resonated with me and which I think everyone can try to implement in their lives. I’ve related my examples to exercise and diet for the purposes of this blog post, but these habits can be related to anything:
- Start small. BJ Fogg talks about tiny habits being something you do at least once a day, taking less than 30 seconds and requiring little effort. He says the reason we want to start small is because difficult behaviours need a high level of motivation and this does not work. When a behavior is really small it doesn’t require huge amounts of motivation so is therefore easy to complete. He compares them to plants:
- You start off with a tiny seed
- Find a good spot to nourish and grow the seed
- The seed becomes fully rooted, established and starts to grow
Follow this recipe and your new habit will start to thrive.
James Clear talks about the two minute rule. I.e. new habits should not take longer than 2 mins to complete. He calls this a “gateway habit” which can lead to longer more sustained behaviour change as you add to the habit as it becomes established.
Say you want to start a yoga practice: starting with 2 minutes a day is going to be a lot more achievable, enjoyable and realistic than starting out with 30 minutes a day. If you did this persistently and it worked for you then there’s a good chance that in 6 months you would be doing 20 minutes a day.
- Focus on who you wish to become. Try to reframe goals into something which shapes your identity. I want to be a person who enjoys being active and thrives on fitness for example. Visualise this new identity so you can imagine yourself as you wish to be in the future.
- BJ Fogg talks specifically about associating new habits with existing habits – he calls this an “action prompt” and Clear calls this “habit stacking”.
For example, everyone brushes their teeth twice a day. If you can attach a new habit to an existing fixed habit you are well on your way to changing your behaviour. This should follow the formula of After I… I will…
So for example, after I brush my teeth, I will do 5 squats.
BJ Fogg talks about how every time he went to the toilet (in his own home!) he would do 2 press ups. This was 10 years ago and he now does at least 50 press ups a day. I’ve taken on board this idea and I now do 2 tricep dips, on the side of the bath, after I’ve been to the toilet (again at home – doing exercises in public bathrooms especially in the Covid era is probably not recommended!).
This is a brilliant way to easily fit exercise into your day without really even thinking about it. I must be easily doing, at least, 20 tricep dips a day now and I can feel the benefits in my arms. Some days I do 5 or even 10 in one go. What can you do to attach a new habit to an existing one?
- Make it easy and convenient: BJ Fogg and James Clear emphasise how important it is to ensure your new habits are easy to do. As part of the four laws of behaviour change ask yourself: 1. How can I make it obvious? 2. How can I make it attractive? 3. How can I make it easy? 4. How can I make it satisfying?
For example, if you want to go running 3 mornings a week: leave your running kit out near your bed so you see it as soon as you wake up on those mornings and it’s easy to put it straight on. Decide on a route you enjoy in a place which makes you happy to make it attractive. You could make it easy by going somewhere really near your house. Make it satisfying by meeting a friend so you can run together or promise yourself your favourite coffee when you have finished.
If you are going to anchor a new habit to an existing habit make sure it fits with what you are trying to do. I.e. if you are going to do press ups every time you boil your kettle make sure you have enough space in your kitchen and your kitchen floor space is suitable.
- Congratulate yourself for completing your habit. Part of BJ Fogg’s philosophy is to assign a positive emotion to a new habit. So that we become programmed to recognise that that action felt good and therefore want to do it again. This then helps the brain to rewire. He says that in order for the brain to rewire successfully we must acknowledge the feel good emotion whilst doing the behaviour or immediately after.
In order to elicit a positive emotion associated with a new habit it’s important to celebrate the action so say to yourself “well done me” or “good for me” once you’ve completed your new habit.
- Focus on your overall system rather than a specific goal. Clear talks about how little habits are all part of an overall system and “atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results”. He means looking at the overall process behind an overall goal. He emphasises the importance of implementing a system of “continuous improvements” to achieve a particular outcome. By continually tweaking and making small changes to the processes behind your habits you will be on your way to behaviour change for life.
- Make a concrete plan for your new habit. James Clear says “people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through”. He advises you fill out this sentence:
I will [BEHAVIOUR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]. So for example: I will go swimming, at 7pm at my local pool
- Make your environment work for you. James Clear advises that we should start to think about the environments around us in a different way. If our environment is primed for use it will be easier to enact the habits we want to ingrain. For example, if you want to cook a healthy breakfast then leave out the ingredients and utensils needed the night before so you are primed to see them as soon as you enter the kitchen. If you don’t want to eat chocolate, biscuits or crisps then don’t buy them or if that’s not an option leave them in a place which is difficult to access.
How can you implement small habits to change your life?
Think about all of the ingrained habits you have in the day: getting up, getting out of bed, brushing your teeth, having a shower, going to the loo, putting the kettle on etc. How many opportunities are there to attach new habits to these existing ones?
How many times have you said to yourself you will start eating more healthy, exercising consistently, meditating, doing breathing exercises? Can you implement any of the techniques above to bring these new habits into your life?
