Behavior Design

I am a huge huge fan of Atomic Habits by James Clear.  He revolutionized my life in tiny steps and habit change.  I’ve listened to his book 4 times!  BJ Fogg is actually someone James Clear studied when writing Atomic Habits.  BJ Fogg is a Stanford University Professor and he specializes and teaches all about behavior change.  The exercise we are doing today comes from his book Tiny Habits – Small Changes That Change Everything.

During this lesson we are focusing on desires or aspirations vs outcomes or goals…

and here is why.  A goal or outcome is the big result you want.  If you focus on that solely, how are you going to get there?  You may know what you want but not how to obtain it.  They systems in your life, or the processes you go through every day or your daily rituals are habits that will lead you to that outcome or goal.  As James Clear says, winners and losers both have goals.  The winners know where to focus their attention, and it’s not on the goal.  It’s on the every day tasks that get you to it. 

The first step is to get clear on your desire. 

Let’s say weight loss is your desire.  Is it really?

Do you really want to lose weight, or do you want to feel better? Or do you want your blood work to improve, or perhaps change your appearance.  Maybe you want to start running, but you feel like you are carrying too much weight.

I started off thinking my ‘goal’ was to write in my planner daily, but really I wanted to be intentional with my time each day.  I want to focus on my ‘highest and best’ things as James Clear says. So, get clear about your desire - or what you want. 

Step two is to explore your behaviour options.

No decisions right now.

No commitments. 

We are going to come up with a bunch of specific behaviors that can help you achieve your desire.  (This is an excellent way to think your way around an obstacle you’ve come up against as well. Sometimes when you make a decision, every single thing in the world that could stop you pops up in your mind or in real life. This step is a way to think bigger, or to think around those obstacles!)

BJ Fogg’s tool is called the Swarm of Behaviors. 

Draw a cloud on a piece of paper right in the middle. Write your desire inside the cloud. Then write down different behaviors all around the cloud. Get wild and crazy - anything goes! Do not limit yourself no matter how impractical or impossible any solution might be.

Let’s say you want to ‘reduce your stress’. If you could wave a magic wand and get yourself to do ANY behavior that would reduce your stress, what would it be?

After you come up with your first answer, tell yourself, “Great.  What else.”  Don’t stop and explore the how or anything in depth.  Pretend you can do any behavior to help yourself achieve this desire.  BJ Fogg calls this ‘magic wanding’.

• Ask yourself what behaviors would I do one time to achieve this desire. 

• What new habits would I create?

• What habits would I stop?

When I did this lesson the first time, my desire was to be more intentional with my time. My brainstorming ranged from meditating more daily to hiring a nanny.  From getting an office space (magical dream) to no more multitasking, I wrote down every single idea I came up with and asked - what else??  Once you’ve exhausted your magic powers of creativity, look over your wishes/ideas and try to make each behavior noted or idea written down more more specific. 

For example I wrote down ‘get more focused during work time’ and I made that more specific by saying no multi-tasking, complete one task at a time and move on after.

Step 3 is about matching things up.

is to match yourself with specific behaviors that support your desire.  You’ve got a wide range of options thanks to your creative thinking, and now we shift gears and get practical. 

3 things to look for as you get practical:

• The behavior is effective in realizing your desire (it has an impact on you)

• You WANT to do the behavior (your’re motivated)

• You can do the behavior (you have the ability and means to make it happen)

Sort your behaviors into categories.  A handful of do-able behaviors that meet the above criteria will float to the top of your list naturally.  These are ‘golden behaviors’ and they can be a one time action, a habit you create, or a habit you let go of.

For me defining my schedule was big- and a one time action.  Cancelling a cable bill to save money each month is another example of a one time action.    You’d think I already had that done but I needed to do more than write down my day to day. I needed to define when I’d do what. 

As you go through your swarm of behaviors think about the impact it will have.  How effective will it be in helping you with your desire? 

Go through the swarm of behaviors again and ask your self how practical the behavior or solution is, and how feasible? 

Is it possible?

Can you get yourself to do it?

The way you phrase this  question is important.  It brings together both motivation and ability.  It’s this simple for many of the behaviors you have listed.  Sometimes you have to ask, do I want to do this behavior?  It is difficult to do what you don’t want to do, at least not reliably.  So incorporate behaviors to implement around your desire that you want to do and you can do pretty easily. 

Remember, NO JUDGEMENT! 

If you are judging what you want or your abilities, you end up creating an outcome you are not going for.  For example if you desire a beautiful, expensive handbag – no judgement.  You can’t say in the next breath, “I’d never buy that. I could feed my family for a week for what that costs…” Don’t judge your desire- whatever it may be. You are speaking against your desire when you do this and it mixes everything up for your brain and the universe!

Do not judge your behavior either! Imagine yourself doing the behavior - whatever that is. Do you feel dread or do you feel excited about doing it? During this exercise, letting your feelings guide you is very smart! There is a lot of room between these two feelings, but the important distinction here is between WANT or SHOULD.  A key to lasting change and achieving the outcome of your desire is  matching yourself with behaviors that you want to do. 

And that’s it! You are three simple steps and a brainstorming exercise away from creating a new behavior or two that serves your desires! It sounds so simple and it is! When put into practice the results are surprising.

Reference: BJ Fogg, Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything