EMILY KWONG, HOST:
Picture your typical morning. You wake up, maybe scroll through your phone, feel kind of bad about that, get up and brush your teeth. All this is a collection of habits. Some are healthy habits, some are not. But good news, building new habits is possible. Life Kit host Marielle Segarra tells us how.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
MARIELLE SEGARRA: BJ Fogg is a behavior scientist at Stanford University, and he is starting the habit of dancing in the dark every morning when he wakes up.
BJ FOGG: After I put my feet on the floor in the morning, I say, it's going to be a great day, and then I go out and I drink a big glass of water. And then once I have that big glass of water, that's what prompts me to turn on the music and do this dancing.
SEGARRA: Fogg studies habit formation, and he actually came up with a research-backed approach to starting new habits called the Tiny Habits method. He says a habit is a behavior you do automatically without really thinking or deliberating. And it happens when three things come together.
FOGG: There's a motivation to do the behavior. There's ability to do the behavior, and then there's a prompt. There's something that reminds or cues the behavior.
SEGARRA: First, let's tackle motivation. According to BJ's research, if a task is easy, people tend to have higher motivation to do it. So he says if you want to start a habit, keep the bar low, like, really low, even if it feels goofy. You want to start flossing, so you say, at a minimum, I'm going to floss one tooth every day. Or you want to dance every morning, so you dance for 20 seconds. And then...
FOGG: Say great, I did it. Move on. But if you want to do more, you do more. And I can't think of a single time when I've stopped dancing after 20 or 30 seconds.
SEGARRA: Fogg also recommends that you design this new behavior into your existing schedule and pair it with something else that can prompt you.
FOGG: And what you're looking for is, what does it come after naturally? So you're not using Post-its or alarms or just sheer memory to do the new habit. You're using an existing routine you already have.
SEGARRA: Like, after I brush my teeth, I'm going to floss one tooth. After I make coffee, I'm going to do two calf raises. And then you want to celebrate your win. I know it might feel silly celebrating flossing one tooth, but the research shows that emotions, including positive ones, can trigger new habits.
FOGG: The idea is you allow yourself or you cause yourself to feel successful when you do the new habit 'cause it's that emotion, it's that feeling of success that causes the habit to become more automatic. So if I'm flossing one tooth, I can look in the mirror and smile and go, way to go, BJ, right?
SEGARRA: He says it's actually not repetition that creates habits.
FOGG: It's emotion. And the stronger you can feel a positive emotion as you do the habit, the faster the habit wires into your life.
SEGARRA: Now, you don't have to celebrate it forever, just until the habit is cemented. By the way, Fogg says you can start more than one habit at a time. It might help, though, if they're all getting you toward the same larger goal, like living healthier or making more friends. On that note, if you find yourself with a vague, big-picture goal, you can always sharpen it by breaking it down into smaller habits. For NPR News, I'm Marielle Segarra.
(SOUNDBITE OF PAUL GRANT'S "MAY 4TH")
KWONG: For more tips from Life Kit, go to npr.org/lifekit.
(SOUNDBITE OF PAUL GRANT'S "MAY 4TH") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
