If you’re motivated to adopt micro habits but you aren’t sure how to create your own, use Fogg’s new Tiny Habits tool. “The mindset that ‘I have to have one nailed before I go on,’ that’s the old-fashioned way of thinking about habits, when it was ‘Do one habit at a time.’” “Design it into your life, and those habits can wire in quickly and easily,” says Fogg. Select three tiny habits that you’re motivated to adopt, tie each one to an existing daily behavior, and congratulate yourself every time that you follow through until it becomes established. It’s possible to adopt three different small habits simultaneously. If you can’t decide on what micro habits to focus on, that’s okay because you don’t have to choose. “Research shows that habit change is more successful when it is motivated by internal reasons, such as wanting to feel healthy and energetic, than by external reasons, such as looking good at your high school reunion,” Wallin says. Or you might have different goals in mind.īefore you decide what small habits to adopt, think about what you hope to accomplish. If you’re hoping to bolster your mental health, you might want to look at your phone less often or find ways to be more grateful. Your fitness-related goals may include walking more or adding strength training. If you want to improve your nutrition, for example, you might decide to eat more vegetables or take smaller portions. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to adopting micro habits, because everyone’s goals are different. For example, once it’s second-nature for you to do two pushups after you get out of bed in the morning, you can increase the number of pushups as you see fit. Once the new micro habit becomes an established part of your routine, you can expand the behavior to help you achieve bigger goals. When you tack a new micro habit onto established behaviors like these, you’ll be more likely to make it a part of your everyday routine. But without fail, you wake up every single day. You may not always remember to floss or lift weights. Or it could represent a small portion of the habit that you want to incorporate into your life, like drinking a sip of water or doing two pushups.įogg’s research has shown that people are more likely to adopt small, healthy habits when they anchor the new habits to existing daily behaviors. It could be an introductory step to a positive habit that you want to adopt, like putting a water bottle on your desk if you want to drink more, or putting on your workout clothing if you want to exercise more. How small? A micro habit should take seconds to achieve. To be effective, the habit also needs to be tiny enough. “Think about these rules in the same way that you think about other non-negotiable tasks, such as getting up for work.” “Don’t entertain thoughts about whether you feel like it or not,” says Pauline Wallin, PhD, a Pennsylvania-based licensed psychologist and expert on New Year’s resolutions. (Every time you brush your teeth in the morning, for example, you have to do the new behavior afterward.) In order to succeed, you need to be motivated to work consistently to adopt the change. It’s much easier to do that once the habit is established, which allows people to adopt habits that can eventually have a large impact, even though they start out small. Once you establish the micro habit, and you automatically practice gratitude at a set time every day, then you can work to expand the habit beyond one grateful thought. It isn’t an effective micro habit if you say, “I’m going to be more grateful this year” or even if you say, “I’m going to think of one thing that I’m grateful for every day.” But it can be a micro habit if you say, “I’m going to think of one thing that I’m grateful for every day when I get out of bed… or right after I eat breakfast… or when I brush my teeth for bed.” The key is that these small habits are anchored to specific existing daily behaviors. Micro habits are helpful because they allow you to incorporate a new behavior into your routine without putting forth much effort. You may want to adopt micro habits because they’re easier to incorporate into your life than a full-fledged habit. “Given the restrictions of COVID, we’re kind of tapped out emotionally, and when you are distracted, nervous, or upset, the only kinds of changes that are realistic are tiny ones.” “It is now harder to do big things than ever before,” says BJ Fogg, PhD, director of Stanford University’s Behavior Design Lab and author of Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. Especially during the pandemic, you may be more likely to make healthy habits stick by attempting small changes, rather than dramatic transformation. In Januaries past, you may have made elaborate New Year’s resolutions-the kind which require more time, effort, and willpower than you’re able to muster right now.
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