Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything

“In order to design successful habits and change your behaviors, you should do three things. Stop judging yourself. Take your aspirations and break them down into tiny behaviors. Embrace mistakes as discoveries and use them to move forward.”

“Celebrating small wins gives them something to repattern our life around.”

“information alone does not reliably change behavior. This is a common mistake people make, even well-meaning professionals. The assumption is this: If we give people the right information, it will change their attitudes, which in turn will change their behaviors. I call this the “Information-Action Fallacy.”

“We live in an aspiration-driven culture that is rooted in instant gratification. We find it difficult to enact or even accept incremental progress.”

“You can disrupt a behavior you don’t want by removing the prompt. This isn’t always easy, but removing the prompt is your best first move to stop a behavior from happening.”

“Step 1: Write this phrase on a small piece of paper: I change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad.”

“there are only three things we can do that will create lasting change: Have an epiphany, change our environment, or change our habits in tiny ways.”

“So many frustrating family dynamics and workplace dramas erupt because of the misplaced belief that manipulation motivation is the key to changing behavior. But now you know that simplicity is what reliably changes behavior.”

“Once you remove any hint of judgment, changing your habits becomes an uplifting journey of self-discovery.”

“This pressure leads to a scarcity mindset—we believe that there will never be enough time, so we say no to changes because we feel like we don’t have the hours to cultivate new positive habits.”

“After you put your feet on the floor in the morning, immediately say this phrase, “It’s going to be a great day.” As you say these seven words, try to feel optimistic and positive.”

“Let’s say that you have committed to running every day for two weeks, and at the end of those two weeks, you “reward” yourself with a massage. I would say, “Good for you!” because we all could benefit from more massages. But I would also say that your massage wasn’t a reward. It was an incentive. The definition of a reward in behavior science is an experience directly tied to a behavior that makes that behavior more likely to happen again. The timing of the reward matters. Scientists learned decades ago that rewards need to happen either during the behavior or milli-seconds afterward. Dopamine is released and processed by the brain very quickly. That means you’ve got to cue up those good feelings fast to form a habit. Incentives like a sales bonus or a monthly massage can motivate you, but they don’t rewire your brain. Incentives are way too far in the future to give you that all-important shot of dopamine that encodes the new habit. Doing three squats in the morning and rewarding yourself with a movie that evening won’t work. The squats and the good feelings you get from the movie are too far apart for dopamine to build a bridge between the two. The neurochemical reaction that you are trying to hack is not only time dependent, it’s also highly individualized. What causes one person to feel good may not work for everyone. Your boss may love the smell of coffee. When she enters a coffee shop and inhales, she feels good. And her immediate feeling builds her habit of visiting the coffee shop. But your coworker might not like the way coffee smells. His brain won’t react in the same way. A real reward — something that will actually create a habit — is a much narrower target to hit than most people think. I”

“People get sick, take vacations, and have emergencies. We’re not aiming for perfection here, only consistency. Keeping the habit alive means keeping it rooted in your routine no matter how tiny it is.”

“A behavior is something you can do right now or at another specific point in time.”

“When you are designing a new habit, you are really designing for consistency. And for that result, you’ll find that simplicity is the key. Or as I like to teach my students: Simplicity changes behavior.”

“The Starter Step is a kind of mental jujitsu—it has a surprising impact for such a small move because the momentum it creates often propels you to the next steps with less friction. The key is not to raise the bar. Doing the Starter Step is success. Every time you do it, you are keeping that habit alive”

“Aspirations are abstract desires, like wanting your kids to succeed in school. Outcomes are more measurable, like getting straight As second semester. Both of these are great places to start the process of Behavior Design. But aspirations and outcomes are not behaviors. Here’s an easy way to differentiate behaviors from aspirations and outcomes: A behavior is something you can do right now or at another specific point in time.”

“People use the word “goal” when they are talking about aspirations or outcomes. If someone says “goal,” you can’t be sure what they are talking about since the word is ambiguous.”

“The quality of our life on planet earth depends on the choices we make every day. Choices about how we spend our time, how we live our lives, and most important, how we treat ourselves and others. I am sad to see how people seem to be more bitter, divided, and overwhelmed than ever these days. We are as a global community, increasingly disconnected from ourselves and other people. The first step toward fixing what ills us, is to embrace feeling better. Habits are a means to this end. They teach us the skills of change and they propel us towards our dreams, and they add more shine to the world.  By embracing feelings of success and adding more goodness to you day-to-day life, you are making the world brighter not only for yourself, but also for others. You are vanquishing shame and guilt and you are freeing yourself and others who have endured a lifetime of self trash talk. The most profound transformations I've shared with you in this book are not about discreet habits being formed, they are about essential shifts in experience, from suffering to less suffering, from fear to hope, from being overwhelmed to feeling empowered.”

“A Golden Behavior has three criteria. The behavior is effective in realizing your aspiration (impact) You want to do the behavior (motivation) You can do the behavior (ability)”

“How long does it take for habits to grow to their full expression? There is no universal answer. Any advice you hear about a habit taking twenty-one or sixty days to fully form is not entirely accurate. There is no magic number of days.”

“Make the behavior so tiny that you don’t need much motivation.”

“In contrast, you can’t achieve an aspiration or outcome at any given moment. You cannot suddenly get better sleep. You cannot lose twelve pounds at dinner tonight. You can only achieve aspirations and outcomes over time if you execute the right specific behaviors.”

“The easier a behavior is to do, the more likely the behavior will become habit.”

“As I accumulated dozens of new habits—mostly tiny ones—they combined to create a transformation. Sustaining all this did not feel hard. Pursuing change in this way felt natural and oddly fun.”