YouSaid · the spoken record

BJ Fogg

lines on the record: 77
first: 2020-06-23
most recent: 2020-06-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Song thinking of holding your dog, anything that helps you feel a positive emotion. And that's a way to hack, to bring up a positive emotion in order to hack your brain and help the habit wire in quickly.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even though I know there's even more criticism coming toward me around this, I have to put it out there. I have to put out the truth as I see it, as my research supports is emotions create habits. And that also means you don't have to, it's not 21 days or 66 days. In my data, I've seen for years that the vast majority of people report that a habit has become automatic or very automatic within five days. And that's a function of their emotion as they do that new behavior. So if they do the new behavior and feel an intense positive emotion as they do it or immediately after, then that will help that behavior become more automatic. And in tiny habits, we don't leave that emotion to chance. There's a technique we call celebration, where you hack, you're basically hacking your emotion, you're calling up a positive emotion by doing a fist pump, thinking about great.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Number two, then they see the changing behavior as something they must endure or suffer. Like, oh, if I just didn't go to the gym for 21 days even though I hate it, I'll have the habit or 66 days or 108 days or whatever they've heard. So then they see change as suffering or endurance. And then they may procrastinate doing stuff. And then when it doesn't wire in after 21 or 6, then they blame themselves. So all those are bad things. So instead, if people understand that emotions create habits, oh, and by the way, it's positive emotions that help you change best. That means you feel good through changing. And you don't have to procrastinate it. And you, by helping yourself feel successful, not only do you are in the habit, but then you have all these other positive effects, some of which we've talked about earlier. So I think it's a really important shift for people.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go to the gym, or I go to the gym, or somebody goes to the gym, they hang out at the snack bar and watching TV and whatever. They're like, I'm not getting fit. What's going on? That's how this research is being misapplied. And so to set the record straight, as you saw in the book, I have a chapter called Emotions Create Habits. So it's emotions that cause our brain to rewire. They go, oh my gosh, that helped me feel successful or that was instrumental. So the problem, and I knew that would be controversial and that would upset people because some people have established their whole careers around the idea that repetition is what creates habits. Yes, I talk about that for like a paragraph in my book and I move on to what really works. Because the book is in my work in general is not about pointing out here's everything that's wrong. My work is here's how to do it right. Here's how to think about it in the right way. Here's how to do it in the right way. But I will say here the problem, this isn't in the book, but the problem with people believing that repetition creates habits. Number one, it's not accurate.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. There has been a lot of stuff out in the world that says repetition creates habits. But that's actually not how it works. If you look at the study that people cite most when they're making that claim, it's a 2009-2010 study. You will see that that study showed that habit strength correlates with repetition. It wasn't even designed to show causal relationship. So yes, habit strength correlates with repetition, but repetition is not what creates the habit. That would be like saying, I'm going to do a study of fit people. And oh, guess what? Hanging out in the gym leads to being fit. Okay, everybody, go hang out in the gym because my study shows that the fit is people are the people that spend the most time in the gym. So go hang out in the gym.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She doesn't think in any graphics, just turn her off. And it's like, no, no, no, the graphic, look at this. The graphics showing more than what we can actually see in words. And she just wasn't her thing. So it was so good to have her input because, I mean, she was a very, very smart person. What it helped me realize is like, oh, not everybody wants a graphic or a flowchart. if this then that if this then that And that's my bias towards stuff, but not hers. And so I want to be able to reach people like her. So the compromise was to push that and other things that were a little more technical back to the appendices. And I'm so happy they're there at least.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know, right? This is great. Yes, people like us, but not everybody does that. And in fact, one of the people I was working with on the book.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you. I'm smiling big and kind of laughing because thank you for that. Those got pushed back to the appendix, not by me, but by my editors. If I were just me, I mean, the book is written, as you see, in a way that has these true stories that show how people have used this in tiny habits and behavior design to transform their lives. And then, you know, here's how you do it. flowcharts were deemed way too complicated for most people and very off-putting. So I go no, people are going to open the book and see a flowchart and put it back down.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your stopping habit and then creating a new one. And there's a systematic way for doing it. It builds on promptsability, motivation, just like all the rest of the behavior design system. And so what you look for is something to swap in. That will be more motivating or easier to do or both than the existing habits you want to untangle. So that's a high level summary. Focus on creating new habits. Then see if you can stop the habit and then neither of those work go to phase three and then you focus on swapping, but you don't have to guess. There's a system for that that I mapped out and it comes back to the order of what you do and how you pick which behaviors and everything in behavior. Everything comes back to prompt ability and motivation. Those are the components you have to fiddle with to either create a behavior or get rid of one.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Comprehensive system. And in phase two, you identify which part of the tangle you want to undo and you see if you can remove the prompt. And if that doesn't work, then you see if you can make it harder to do. In other words, manipulatability. And if you can't do that, then you see if you can change the level of motivation. So you're using the components of the behavior model systematically, prompt, ability, motivation, and that order step by step if one works, you're done. And you can go to another tangle in the habit. If it doesn't work, you go to the next step. So it's a system. If you find you cannot just simply stop the habit, then you go to phase three, phase three, which is about swapping it. Okay, so many people say you must swap it. That's not true. In this comprehensive system, that is the last phase. So instead of coming home from work and getting on, I'll say YouTube, one of my friends has a YouTube addiction, what will I do instead? So then that person would look for a swap, which is at one.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of leaving the pen out on the counter. We're talking more ingrained habits that are more complicated. First of all, think of it as untangling. But phase one is you practice creating good habits. So you said the bad habit aside and say, I'm just going to create a bunch of good habits. And in the process of creating good habits, your identity will shift and that may push out some of the unwanted habits. You'll develop the skills of behavior change. Behavior change is a skill and you'll use those skills later. And then you'll also develop more motivation. Why? Because your fear of change will be reduced. So that's why in phase one you focus on creating good habits. Phase two, then you look at the habits you want to stop and you untangle it. For each one of these phases, there's a flowchart in the back of my book, Tiny Habits. So, I mean, of course, I think of everything in terms of systems and flows. And it's a...”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wired in habits that people want to get rid of. Some habits are really easy to stop for, so we're not talking about those. Stop the habit of going to the gym, stop the habit of paying your bills. Those are easy to stop. But it's these kind of habits, it's not as simple as many people have said, and that really upsets me. You know, some people have trivialized how hard some of these habits are to stop. And the problem with that is that when people read that and then they can't stop drinking or smoking or playing games on the internet or gambling, then they blame themselves and they beat themselves up and they think, oh, I'm flawed. I'm terrible. I'm awful. And so people who mislead others about how to get rid of unwanted behaviors are actually damaging lots of people. And that makes me grumpy. So in response to that, I said, no, here's the system. There's a three phases to it. I'll just go through pretty quickly, Shane. And these aren't for like, oh, I'm going to stop the half.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Creating habits is pretty straightforward and easy, and that's what the tiny habits method is all about. It's for creating habits, stopping unwanted behaviors or what people call breaking bad habits. It can be much, much harder. And it's not the same thing. They're as different as growing this little tree, let's say a palm tree with coconuts, to pulling it out of the earth. There are different processes. And unfortunately, there's a lot of information out there that tells people how to break habits that is not effective enough. It's limited. And in response to that, I've created a three-phase call master plan for behavior change that's exactly for very, very...”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the valence of that word has shifted over the last 10 years. Even 10 years ago, when I was training the Weight Watchers, innovators at their headquarters, they were unwilling to use the word habit in their program because they felt it was mostly a negative word. So that was a snapshot in time I remember about 10 years ago. Fast forward to today, it can go both ways today. But there was a time when it was considered mostly negative. And yes, you're right. Habits are habits. The way they form good habits, what we call good habits and bad habits, they all form in the same way. Our brain, the way that brain gets rewired, it's not like, here are the good habits and bad habits. Behaviors become automatic. And then it's ourselves or the culture that labels them good or bad.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How you see it? Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's not a colding device. It's a help us eat healthy device. And in that way, it gave us, I feel superpowers. So that's why I feel like super fridge is a, it's like almost like a companion. It's almost, in my mind, I've personified it. It's like, this is your job in this home is to help us eat healthier. Go super for it.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, my partner and I started doing this a while ago, and he feels a lot of ownership over it because he maintains the kitchen mostly. It might have been his word, I'll give this answer, I guess. Super fridge is a good name because once we started rearranging our fridge environment to support us in the nutrition habits we wanted and to make the bad nutrition habits impossible. So in the fridge, there's nothing in there that I have to resist or use willpower to not eat. It's like all on the game plan anytime, as much as I want. And once we did that and lived with that for a few months, well, probably the insight came after a couple of weeks. It's like, oh my gosh, the job of the fridge isn't to keep things cold. No, the job of the fridge is to help us eat on our game plan. And that totally changes.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wit in turn. Is what I do so I can have more positive impact in the world because that's what it boils down to for me is like I need to be as effective as I can in helping people be happier and healthier. So all of these things, even Is toward that end. So I then can be super effective at helping people.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Learned is if I set the bar too high, like the car has to be sparkling clean, I'm not going to do it. My brain will sabotage me. I'll find reasons not to do it. So in the tiny habits way, all I have to do is tidy one thing in the car. In the tiny habits way when I go to the fridge every week to clean it, I only have to do one thing. Like, oh, here's some pesto that I'm pretty much done with. Okay, let's recycle the pesto container. Well, guess what? If I thought I had to clean the whole fridge, again, it's like not going to do it. But if it's like, I only have to do one thing and then once you start, it's like, oh, here's this. Here's this. Here's this. And next thing you know, in most cases, you've done a pretty good job on the bathroom or the fridge or the vitamin drawer or the car. So yeah, there's these approaches to managing my environment that I've systematized. And that's all in the service of optimizing my habits.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I do. And for some of these things, I don't need to rearrange the fridge every day or I have a car that I use just for the beach and surfing. It's a Honda element. It's great. It's a little beach car. And it gets to be a mess, you know, because there's like this here on sand and stuff, you know, it just happens. So once a week, I have these once a week routines, these rituals. The habit is to pull out a card that has a list of, here's what I'm going to do every weekend. It's clean the fridge, clean the bathroom, tidy my car, so on. The habit is to pull that card out with these little stickers on it. And then I just at some point during the weekkend, I just do the task, like the car, I go to the car, tidy things up, throw things away that need to be thrown away. And then in my own practice of this, what I've...”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We call it super fridge. Everything in there you can eat, but it takes some care and feeding once a week. You got to stock the fridge, whether it's your closet, whether it's what's on your phone home screen. Yes, there's lighting and there's sound, but then there's just designing things around you to optimize your behavior. And that's, I've long been obsessed with that.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“New things. And so one thing I will do probably this afternoon while I'm on phone calls is I'll go in and tidy up that drawer. And it's not just to tidying exercise. I'm simplifying that behavior. I'm redesigning that environment, I'm upgrading it so that behavior becomes a lot easier to do. And when it is easier to do, that means I don't have to have much motivation. So what I'm doing is I'm designing for the reality that motivation goes up and down and we don't have a lot of control over that. So the way you get around that is you just make behaviors really, really, really easy to do that you want to do. And at least the way I look at it, it's an ongoing. You need to do refresh. Refresh of what's in your fridge. Like we arrange our fridge in a way.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In our California home and here in our Maui home. I have a drawer with my vitamins and supplements in it. So I know some people think vitamins are a bad idea. Well, there's certain vitamins and supplements I think are good for me. So set that issue aside. But there are certain things I want to take every day. So I have a drawer with the vitamins in it exactly the ones I want to be taking. And in some cases, I take the cap off the vitamin bottle. So it's really easy to get out. Or in some cases, I have a little dish that I put the vitamins in. In other words, rather than the cupboard that I have to fumble through and rather than on the counter of making a mess, over the years I've learned, just put it in a drawer, make the drawer dedicated to exactly your daily vitamins, and then don't even require yourself to take the cap off the bottle. Just make it so easy to do. Now right now my vitamin drawer here in Maui is a little bit of a mess because I run out of some and I'm trying some.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On this. I'm not an expert on the studies, but I think the lighting is a huge deal. I think sound is a huge issue. And managing our sound environment is harder than the lighting environment. I think that's a big deal. Creating an environment, and this is different than light and sound, but it's a big part of my life, and it has been for a long time, is how do I rearrange my environment to make the good behaviors really easy to do? And I'm constantly designing and redesigning and optimizing. And it can be as simple as this.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wish I had the framework. I wish I had the model of environment because then I could just go here are the five things off the top of my head. I'm going to think, so we've talked a little bit about the perception of what's around us. And so I'm not going to go there. And certainly our social environment. Boom, not going to go there. I'm going to go with our built environment and I'm going to go with some details. I think lighting matters so much. If you look around the places where I live, I have like hacked the lighting. Like right now, I have a huge window open in front of me and I have full sun coming in right into my face. And then in the evening, the light changes. You know, I have like, they turn to be like amber. And then at night, I only have like these red night lights all over the house. So I really think lighting plays a big role. And there's a reason.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You leave the community. You join a different community. You create, I mean, I mean, in the ideal world, you go, oh, I'm going to align myself, affiliate myself with people who either a destination group who's going to support me in this change or a journey group, people that are on this journey with me as well. Know if you're in a job and you can't quit the job, if you're in a family and you're not going to separate yourself from the family, that solution I just said may not be that practical.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Friends, let's say you can hopefully have a household where you say, hey, everybody, I'm not drinking coffee for the next little while. And I need your support on this. And your friends will support you rather than sabotage you. Now, hopefully people in your household will support you when you want to make a good change and not sabotage you, but there is unfortunately situations where you do get sabotaged by friends or members of your household, even if they don't mean to. They might just say, oh, you're going through another phase or, oh, didn't you know X, Y, and Z, you shouldn't do that? And that was part of what we looked at in the Change Together project. We don't have a perfect answer for this. Part of a social group that you really can't get yourself out of, but it's taking you in the wrong direction in terms of change, or it's pigeonholing you and not allowing you to change.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Massive, massive good or bad. So yes, a lot. I mean. Most people don't like to admit this, but our behavior is so influenced by our environment more than we think. And part of that environment is the people around us. Your friends, if you want to eat in a certain way and they eat in a totally different way, that's hard. If you're hanging out with them during an eating context, if your friends are really into, let's say, studying and doing homework, bam, you're going to probably study and do more homework. But we do have identities, different identities in different friend groups and knowing how to move among them to optimize ourselves or achieve our aspirations is a skill. For some people, and this is hard, you may need to turn the volume down on some friendships or even end them if those friendships are not taking you in the direction you want to go. That's just the reality. In other cases, let's just talk about households as”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And so you have these variables that kind of mix and match. And then we went out and grabbed programs in the world that we felt like were effective and mapped them out. And there were these systematic patterns of how you change together. It's not like here are the three patterns. It's more like here are 12. It's not 200. There's like 12. And those seem to be the factors of is the community already doing the behavior. Are you journeying together? What's the role of leadership? And then what's the status or the role of the member as they become more competent?”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going on here in terms of the group dynamics, in terms of leadership. And then there was one more component is what happens to the members of these groups? And one of the common patterns was. You then work up and then become a teacher or even a guru. You begin maybe as a novice, you're not really doing it very well, but then you take on a role where then you're teaching others.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and then it makes it easier for you to change and study because you've joined this group that they're already doing that. So that's one way. Another way is called the journey group, where you join up with other novices who also want to make this change and together you make this journey in you all study more or whatever you're choosing. So you've got these two patterns going on. Then on top of that, you have the issue of leadership. We would call this person the guru. I mean, I know a lot of people don't like the word, but in a lot of group change efforts, you do have a leader or a guru or somebody who is saying, here's what we're doing, da, da, da, da, da da da, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da guru can be situated within a destination group or a journey group and people can in some systems so we took a whole bunch of different change systems like weight watchers and toastmasters and mapped them down like”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, a great question. There was a year at Stanford where the whole year of research, we called it change together. And what we wanted to look at how do we change groups? And we mapped out different patterns, of course, another framework, another model for this. And it's harder to explain this because it's like a two by three thing. Anyway, but just I'll get to some of the conclusions from the research is that there are different patterns that work for changing groups or changing together. distinction that we drew out of the research is we called one type of group like if you want to change your behavior you can join a destination group or a journey group a destination group is a community that is already doing what you aspire to do so let's say you aspire to work out oh let's make something easier you you aspire to study a lot you're in college so guess what move into the honor storm where people are already studying”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and you read all these publications and you follow bloggers who are telling you that story so you can maintain your hope and squash down the fear. Yes, stories are entertaining, but I think we've evolved for brains to, I mean, that's how we learn how the world works. You know, cause and effect relationships and stories are a technology for transmitting cause and effect relationships within communities and through the generations. That's how I see it.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That encapsulates a cause and effect relationship, we have a really hard time pushing back and saying, no, that's not true. So a well-told story in some ways is the only persuasion tactic for which we don't have good defenses for. And I'll push one more thing out there and you can pull it back if you want. And that's why I think there is a commandment about not bearing false witness, not telling false stories, because whoever set up those commandments knew somehow that if you tell the community a false story, that's going to stick in their brains. And they're going to have either a false hope or a false fear. And it's very hard to scrub that out. So this is something you do not do. You do not tell false stories.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is to perpetuate a sense of cause and effect. If you're honest, people will like you. If you lie, you'll be kicked out of the community. If you follow the rules, you will succeed. And a well-told story essentially is setting up if you do X, this is what happens. Y. Here's the result. So stories, well-told stories can establish hope. Like if you save for retirement, you will be comfortable and you won't be in the poor house or you won't have to live in your daughter's home when you grow up. So a story about that. Like, okay, now I have hope and that will motivate me to save. Or stories can establish fear. If you don't do X or if you do X, here's the bad thing that will happen. And it's my personal belief. I haven't studied this. Maybe somebody has, that our brains, when we hear a narrative or a story,”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the things, so back in the day, I was a humanities major and a writer, and I was a terrible writer at the beginning, but I worked really hard at it and got good and then started writing professionally and would write on professional projects or contests to work my way through college. And then I worked as a ghostwriter and an editor. And I was really big into narrative and story. I'd love personal essay. So I'd write a lot of personal essay, which narrative plays a big part. And part of looking at story or narrative or whatever you want to call it and understanding the power of it was about setting up what you're doing, I think. I think the whole reason stories exist, whether they're in folktales or songs or parables or little sayings.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a hard one. You ask such good, hard questions. I'm not sure I'm the world's expert on this. I mean, the way I think about fear is we have a cause and effect relationship in our head if X, then Y. It's like a causal in our brain. Is it really good at these cause and effect relationships? And that's what we're absorbing, I'm thinking, even as babies and so on. I don't study babies, but we're saying if this, then that. If this, then this bad thing happens, that's fear. I think I'll kind of push it out there, Shannon. You pull it back if you want.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And for years, they wrote me emails because, you know, the tiny habits five-day program was done through email and personal coaching through email. They're like, BJ, am I crazy? I'm now doing this and this. And I stepped up into this and I just feel like I can do anything. And am I going insane? It's like, no, that's actually a really good sign. You're seeing yourself in a new way. You're seeing that you can succeed. You're seeing that you've developed skills of change and you're applying those effectively and good for you. You're not going crazy. You are blossoming.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. Boom. Thank you for, yes, yes. Yeah. And that to me is, I don't want to say magic because I'm a behavior scientist, but that is like, oh my gosh, that's like the loophole. That's like the portal. You don't have to do these massive things to get this shift in identity and shift in self-talk. You can do it through these pretty simple and straightforward ways. That is indeed the subtitle of my book, Tiny Habits. It's the small changes that change everything. That's what the subtitle is about. You make these small changes and it changes how you think about yourself. It changes your self-talk. It changes your relationship with emotions. So you're more inclined to embrace positive emotions and not let the negative emotions get you down. In some ways, I'm getting chills because that is such, to me, that is just, I'm still fascinated with how that works. And people will.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things. But far and away, most people say, I now see I'm the kind of person who can change. I'm the kind of person who can follow through. I'm the kind of person who can set a plan and stick to it. And that was my favorite thing. So whenever I would look at the, you know, the results after every week, I would go and look at what percent of people made a big change because I love to see that number because it's still fascinates me. Oh my gosh, all you did was, you know, two push-ups and flus one tooth and fill a glass of water. And now you've made this huge change in your life. And then the other one is just to see the comments of how people have described how their identity had shifted. And it happened quickly and because of just these tiny successes.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even very tiny changes you feel successful around. And once I saw that, I was like, that's amazing. I mean, so you don't have to go to some big boot camp. You don't have to be indoctrinated. You don't have to get a new degree to feel like you have a new identity and competency. You can just floss one tooth and allow yourself to feel successful and recognize you're changing. And that has this shift in how people see themselves. And so I started asking a new question then about in the Tiny Habits program and people would fill in the blank after doing tiny habits for five days. I now see I'm the kind of person who and they would fill in the blank. And so I started this in about 2013. And it was so interesting to see what would come back. Now 90% plus were positive. Once in a while, people say, I now see I'm the kind of person that can't even do tiny.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Monday, so I'd see what happened last week and what's going on. And about 20% of the people, week after week, would report that within the five-day program, they would step up and do a hard behavior. And I was like, wow, I mean, in the other parts of the data, I would see that the behavior change would generalize. Most people start doing other behaviors naturally, even within the five-day period. But there was this, and it was a range from say 12% to 204% was the range and 18%, 20% on average, probably. And it was like, what's going on here? And what I finally understood and took a while to figure this out is that when people feel successful, even on tiny things, it changes how they see themselves. In other words, you can get an identity shift from”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When people see that they can change behavior and reach a success, yes, that helps wire in the habit and it helps them sustain the change over time. The feeling of success is what wires in the habit. And it keeps people going. But that feeling of success seems to generalize and help people unlock in other areas where they were fearful before so the fear diminishes so the hope can emerge. So think of hope and fear as vectors pushing on each other. And if you can diminish the fear, then the hope can emerge, which is a motivator and allow you to do harder things. And this is what I've seen in my tiny habits research since 2011. And I didn't understand what was going on until about 2013. So a week after week, teaching tiny habits, measuring it, week after week. Every Sunday I would look at the data. If I was busy on Sunday,”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I can do this, you know, whatever the context is, whether I'm at a family or reunion or at Stanford or out in the waves, boom, here's a huge wave I'm going to do this or here's a huge teaching challenge I'm going to do this or wow my family reunion is really going south. I got to step and do something big. I'm going to do this. So I do think that sense of being able to take action and get good results can generalize across domains, even though self-efficacy has mostly been conceptualized as domain specific. Your efficacy around cooking vegetables will not translate to doing taxes. But I do think with, and this is how I've seen it in tiny habits and coaching people in tiny habits.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and it's complicated. And I'm not sure anybody has totally figured it out because those are big categories. But certainly if there's a relationship. Let me start here. In different contexts, we have different things that motivate us. In some ways, you can think of that as wearing different hats or having different identities in different contexts. So in some contexts, I'm an uncle, like at a family reunion. In some contexts, I'm a teacher, like at Stanford. In other contexts, I'm okay surfer, not a good one, not a terrible one. And so in each of those contexts, I'm a different person. What motivates me is different in each one. And I'm behaving differently. And each one based on that role that I'm playing. That said, I do think there is a general, though some people would argue with me, a general, and I'll call it self-efficacy, even though Albert Bandura, who pioneered the concept and so I may argue with me, I do think that people have a generalizable sense of”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's pretty hard. But I had so much built up frustration around passwords and stuff and using different devices and all this kind of thing. And I don't use the same password. I actually have an algorithm for creating passwords, but the algorithm is kind of broken down. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to do this. Well, that's hard. I had lots of motivation. So the fact that I was inputting the work to do a password manager helped me see, yeah, you're really motivated to get on top of this password problem. So in some ways by seeing how hard people are working at something, that's an indicator of their level of motivation.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is some universal way of saying how motivated is my mom right now to eat broccoli? How do I know that? How do I sense that? There are some proximal ways of doing it, but no overall level. Now, when it comes to ourselves, how motivated am I to do X? Sometimes we just have a feeling. Other times you could just say, well, you can determine the level of motivation by understanding how much work you're willing to do. In other words, the effort how hard the behavior is. You can then map that back to level of motivation. I'll give a true example from my life. Passwords, passwords, passwords, passwords. Okay, finally, finally, finally. Thanks to my former student Ramit Seti reading the latest version of his book. It's like, okay, PJ, you're going to do a password manager.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anywhere in a matchup, we're going to charge you to get in front of those people. So, in some ways, the ability to sense what that person wanted in the moment, sense because they typed it into a search box, gave Google the ability to sell ads against that and then deliver, whether it's sponsored products or more organic solutions that weren't paid for right to those people. Now that's in the case of search. They came in, swept in. kind of have a monopoly on that but in other domains like if you're in sales and face-to-face good salespeople know how to sense how motivated is this person i think that's what good teachers do i think good coaches have a way of doing that what's the level of motivation of this basketball player or maybe even your coaching and debate or what have you so we do that intuitively what's not solved yet”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is a hard. Thank you for that hard question. That's hard. That's hard. That's like the, well, I'll tell you what, alphabet, Google came from that. They solved it in one way. And that is the whole backbone of Google was exactly figuring that out. And the way it works for Google and what they figured out early, Larry and Sergei is, wow, if somebody goes in and types in, how do I save more money into a search engine, well, guess what? That's what they're motivated to do in that moment. And we're going to queue up things for them. So we're going to deliver to them what people already want to do. So that's one of the things I talk about a lot, and I call it a maxim. Maxim number one is help people do what they already want to do. Notice how Google did that with search. And then they sold ads on that search. Okay, so they were able to say, hey, you got a solution to help people save money. We can find people who want to save money.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, conceptually, I love it. This was like, I'm so excited. What's the word for this? And it took me eight years. It's compensatory. They work like teammates. But you see this all around. You go into, I'll just talk about Stanford fundraising. I've helped them some. If somebody's really, really motivated and excited about Stanford, you don't ask them for a $10 donation. You ask them for a hard behavior, you know, if they'd done a startup and had good exit, you ask them for millions of dollars, right? Because they're super motivated. But if they're not super motivated, you don't ask them for thousands of dollars. You ask them for 10 or 100. That, of course, works in different kinds of sales. Parents use this all the time and so on. So if you can understand the level of motivation in that moment, then you can adjust how difficult behavior is. And in some ways, what you want to do is get yourself or other people.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there is this relationship where they work sort of hand in hand. And that is really exciting because it's quite hard for anybody to design a way to increase your motivation and sustain it, keep it at super high levels over time. That's very hard to do. So because that's a reality, instead you can say, well, if motivation's high, I can get myself to do hard things or I can get other people to do hard things, but when it drops lower, we need to scale that back and not have other people or myself do hard things than just do really tiny things. So you are adjusting the difficulty of the behavior according to the level of motivation in that moment.”
2020-06-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #86 BJ Fogg: The Science of Lasting Change · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT