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There's more - a technique from here, an insight from there...

The key trick is to start really small to remove the hurdle of getting going and establishing the habit, and returning to small in moments of low motivation or other impediment (eg 1 pushup will keep the momentum. 0 pushups won't)

Imo, the Fogg Behavior Model is not overthought. It can be explained in 2 minutes and yield immediately applicable insights ("Oh, I need a trigger"), I recommend reading Tiny Habits for more nuance on this.

Also, Tiny Habits is another book which also discusses the same space.

Tiny Habits is great. It is deep while being approachable. BJ Fogg is not only a serious researcher, but also a superb teacher.

Tiny Habits is a book to buy, to read, and to apply to your life (both personal and professional).

If you are serious about improvement, it is essential.

If you are genuinely clear as to your values and what gives you meaning then mostly it would be a case of building new habits. I’ve found B.J. Fogg’s Tiny Habits to be really effective for that.

One other thing worth mentioning is that you might be beating yourself up for not being productive in your spare time, which is particularly self defeating since the feeling of guilt will lead to more of the avoidance behavior. If you are tired after a full days work maybe start by planning more meaningful ways to relax, like watching a good movie, taking a bath or reading a book.

Finally make sure you are actually pursuing happiness in the right place. Laurie Santos’s podcast on happiness is well worth a listen (and is conveniently also a relaxing thing to listen to in your spare time :-)

It's a repository for my book notes (business, self-improvement, economics and other topics). I also post short pieces about things I'm learning. Fridays I post a weekly roundup of interesting articles and podcasts I listened to.

Most popular post are my notes on BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits:
https://mentalpivot.com/book-notes-tiny-habits-by-bj-fogg/

Started the blog last year in an effort to develop the habit more than anything. Trying to get better every week just out of sheer repetition and practice.

As I see it, James forked Tiny Habits to make it more marketable and has had great success selling books and courses under the Atomic Habits brand.

BJ opted to provide his Tiny Habits materials and 5 day course for free as it generated more data points to support his research.

Having now read both books, I certainly appreciate the plain spoken / matter of fact style of Tiny Habits compared to Atomic Habits which felt more hyped.

Its basically a sound idea, but its an oversimplification. I am not sure what his "behaviour model" is but I assume it evolved from his previous work.

If this is true, like if you use your phone as an alarm clock, you’re screwing yourself.

BJ Fogg’s book Tiny Habits walks through this exact example, and spoiler: it’s hopeless unless you physically separate from your phone. The only levers you have to manipulate your behavior are prompt, ability, and motivation.

Your phone prompts you reliably, it’s easy to stay in bed and easy to look at social because your notifications are right there, just move one finger, and you’re motivated at a visceral level to look at social because of that dopamine hit.

The only solution he provides is removing the prompt. Get an old style alarm clock and put your phone in the other room at night.

Easily the Tiny Habits habit formation regime created by Stanford researcher BJ Fogg. A lot of the addictive design patterns you see in apps like Snapchat, Instagram, etc. are built off his research. Quite nefarious use of psychology for advertising/“engagement”, but the plus side is you can use the same strategies to build habits you want to build.

Step 1: Consider the habit you want to build, e.g. “I want to meditate 10 minutes every day”

Step 2: Make it the absolute smallest possible version of itself; so small that it requires zero motivation/willpower, e.g. “I want to close my eyes and take 3 deep breaths every day”

Step 3: Place this habit immediately following an existing habit, e.g. “After I brush my teeth in the morning, I will close my eyes and take 3 deep breaths”

Step 4: Do this activity, and after each time you do it, reward yourself with a small celebration. It sounds ridiculous but I literally just say “Victory!” and force a smile on my face. The small rush of good-feeling-chemicals will keep you coming back.

I’ve used this method to pick up daily meditation, journaling, and flossing (acquired simultaneously!) after years of struggling to pick up any one of them. The first two habits have been monumental in my ability to learn, take on stress, and improve virtually every one of my relationships.

A shameless plug for BJ because he’s a great guy: his book, Tiny Habits, happened to be released today (what a coincidence!). I haven’t read it but if this is remotely interesting to you, I’m sure it’ll be extremely useful and engaging. It’s on Amazon, you can find it!

Sidenotes:

* Don’t worry about the habit scale down, it will naturally grow over time into its fuller form. I spent a month of the year just flossing 1 tooth each night (ridiculous, I know!), then 5 months just flossing 1 row (better!)

* Part of the trick is finding a good habit to put your new habit after. You probably already have a lot more habits than you know, since the whole point of a habit is to be automatic.

I recently finished "Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything" by BJ Fogg [1], which talks about this in generality. The essence is that behaviors are a product of motivation, ability, and prompts. By keeping things tiny, we avoid the need of very high motivation, the need for very high ability, and devise easy triggers/prompts to get work done. It has been quite fun to identify tiny habits in my daily routine, I've collected quite a few and narrowed down on what works and what doesn't.

This is then applicable to software engineering, product development etc. One of Instagram's co-founder was apparently enrolled in the author's class, and therefore pops up as an example a few times through the book.

I've always ridiculed self-help books. This book does have a self-help flavor, but always concludes with precise actionable advice. By developing a general framework and a mental model around habits (think abstraction in usual software engineering terms), it does feel more controllable. Highly recommended!

[1]: https://www.librarything.com/work/23220746/book/198725553

Behaviour-wise, following the prompt, I've replaced checking Reddit with checking Hacker News (similar enough to work, without getting too engaged with the content). I've also replaced Twitter with curated Tweetdeck streams, and Facebook for the news feed with newspaper apps (a free one like AP could work, though I pay for newspaper subscriptions).

Cognitive-wise, in terms of thoughts, I also recognize that social media is designed to hijack your attention and maximize engagement, so I've chosen to frame it as a negative (versus a neutral) habit for my own personal goals.

In short, replacing the habits with similar ones with better consequences, and understanding why I'm doing this has helped.

I highly recommend everyone buys his new Tiny Habits book and gives the program a try.