Tiny Habits By BJ Fogg – Book Highlights & Summary

Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg is a NY Times Bestseller. It is a book on behavior change and habit formation. As part of my habit formation journey, I have been reading books on building effective habits. 

Tiny habits is my second book after Atomic Habits. Unlike other Non-fiction books, Tiny Habits put me straight to work with hands-on exercises after each chapter. In this post, I will cover highlights from the book. There was so much power content in the book that I had a hard time summarizing it in just a few pages.

The Basics – Fogg Behavior Model

According to BJ Fogg, 3 key things need to come together for a behavior to happen. Motivation, Ability & Prompt. Motivation is the desire to do the behavior. The ability is the capacity to do the behavior. The prompt is the cue to do the behavior. 

All 3 play an integral part in behaviors. When we are motivated we tackle even the hardest of tasks. The author lists an example of a mother fighting off a bear to protect her child. Even though it’s hard to do, she is highly motivated to save her child and act on it. 

On the other hand, when motivation is low, and it’s a hard task, we don’t act on it. Like being asked to read the book aloud vs being asked to just show the cover of the book. 

For any behavior to stick, it needs to be easy to do. Prompts play a key part in getting us to do the behavior. If you have no prompt, it wouldn’t happen. 

Tiny Habits explains how we can design behaviors by adjusting these 3 core elements. It is full of tips and real-life examples to help craft the behavior you desire. 

B (Behavior) = MAP (Motivation, Ability & Prompt) at the same moment

Steps In Behavior Design

BJ Fogg describes 7 steps you can use to implement new behavior. 

The 7 steps are broken down into 3 stages: Selection, Design, and Implementation. 

The Selection Stage

According to Fogg, aspirations only come true when you implement the right behaviors. 

Step 1 – Clarify The Aspiration

The first step in behavior design is to think about what it is that you want. What are you trying to achieve? What is the outcome you are hoping for? (E.g: Reduce my stress, Run a marathon, etc). 

Step 2 – Explore Behavior Options

This process is about exploring all the behaviors that can get to achieve your aspiration. The author uses the Swarm of Behaviors technique to get us to explore the options that relate to an aspiration. 

This is where you write down your aspiration and write all the behaviors that lead you to this aspiration. Examples of behaviors for reducing stress could be: Going to bed early for a good night’s sleep, going for a nature walk, etc. 

Step 3 – Match With Specific Behaviors

BJ Fogg teaches us the Focus mapping technique where you match yourself with behaviors that are easy to do. We map all the behaviors from Step 2 to see where they fall under two areas. If they are low vs high impact and easy vs hard to do on the axis. The ones that fall under high impact and are easy to do are our golden behaviors. 

In behavior design, we match ourselves with new habits we can do even when we are at our most hurried, unmotivated, and beautifully imperfect.

~ BJ Fogg

The Design Stage

Step 4 – Start Tiny

As implied in the title of the book, the key to lasting habits is to start tiny. To make it so easy so we don’t have to rely on being motivated. The book provides many techniques to make a behavior tiny and easy to do. One technique I want to call out that has worked me is scaling back. 

          E.g: Journaling one line day when your long-term goal is to journal 3 pages someday. 

If you want a habit to grow big, you need to start small and simple. Once the habit wires in, you can grow it naturally. 

~ BJ Fogg

Step 5 – Find A Good Prompt

Tiny habits states that unless we design a prompt for our behaviors they don’t happen. The easiest way to design this is when we can attach our new habits to something we are accustomed to doing daily. 

E.g: After I brush my teeth, I will sit on the meditation cushion. 

The book is filled with many prompts based on our daily routine that we can pick from. 

Implementation Stage

Step 6 – Celebrate Success

According to Fogg, ‘Emotions create habits. Not repetition. Not frequency. Not fairy dust. Emotions’. For a habit to root quickly into the brain he wants us to celebrate immediately after we complete our new habit. The book is filled with a variety of ways we can celebrate. A method for each type of personality (E.g: Clapping, Doing a little dance, fist in the air, etc).

The feeling of success is a powerful catalyst for change. Your confidence grows when you celebrate not only because you are now a habit-creating machine but also because you are getting better and better and better at being nice to yourself.

~ BJ Fogg

Step 7 – Troubleshoot, Iterate and Expand

According to the author, we need to continuously revisit our habits to see if they are working well and make adjustments where needed. 

Conclusion

Tiny Habits was unlike any other non-fiction book for me. I had a notepad next to me the whole time I was reading it. I was learning and applying the same time I was reading the book. It is filled with easy-to-follow graphs and illustrations that I couldn’t list here without obtaining permission. 

BJ Bogg has educated thousands of people on the Tiny Habits Method of behavior change. His courses help one become a habit coach through certification. 

In the coming posts, I will share how I am applying the tiny habits method for my aspirations. I highly recommend the audio version along with the book. The author talks about his struggles with his voice. He talks about how being able to narrate the book was a personal victory for him.

Tiny Habits is an easy read and a must-have on your shelves. It is something that equips you with all the tools to design successful systems for your dreams.