Book Summaries

Book: Tiny Habits

Author: BJ Fogg

This book came recommended by Harvard’s nascent Academic Coaching program through the Academic Resource Center. The book was interesting, but the material inside was barely sufficient to fill a short blog post, let alone an entire book. My takeaways are the following:

• People have goals and ambitions they want to accomplish
• Building habits can help make movement towards those goals less effortful
• Fogg’s recommended approach (which he calls “Tiny Habits”) consists of forming small habits and expanding those habits towards the desired habit
• Two key components are experimentation and celebration. Think of new habits to try or variations of old habits that you have or had, and congratulate yourself profusely for succeeding. This creates a positive reinforcement.

For anyone interested in the details,

• Fogg breaks habits into three components and recommends playing with each component to form new habits or break old habits
  1. Motivation
  2. Ability
  3. Prompt
• Ability is my favorite. Moving my phone charger to the other side of the room has halved the probability that I stay up late, wasting time scrolling on Youtube or Reddit
• One strategy Fogg recommends is “Anchor, Tiny Habit, Celebration,” which specifically means
  • Anchor: Find a prompt that will cause you to remember your new habit
  • Tiny Habit: Do the smallest thing possible towards your new habit
  • Celebration: Reward yourself with a fist pump, smile, jump, laugh, etc.
• Fogg’s overall recommended process is the following:
  1. Clarify aspirations
  2. Explore behavioral options that could accomplish the aspirations
  3. Match aspirations with specific behaviors
  4. Start with the tiniest version of the behavior
  5. Find a good prompt
  6. Celebrate success
  7. Troubleshoot, iterate and expand