How Tiny Habits can help you achieve big things
“Emotions create habits, the stronger you feel a positive emotion from the tiny habit, the more you’ll do it again and add to it” Mike Coulter
I have never been much good at sticking to a good habit – running, yoga, cooking healthy meals, drinking enough water; will definitely start it all tomorrow.
So the Tiny Habits Workshop appealed to me as I move myself into a more progressive mindset. Being a freelancer and working from home requires much more discipline than when I was in my full time job in an office. All I had to think about was getting up, getting out of the door on time and into the office. From there I could then apply energy to work, if IT didn’t work, call IT, if a room was needed, use the booking system.
Now I have to think of best time to get things done, in which order, find my own solutions when things go off track, and create space to do valuable thinking. It’s often a day can pass and it feels like no progress has been made. And yet it also feels like I’ve been busy all day. It can all get quite overwhelming!
So when I saw an advert ‘How to use Tiny Habits to make big progress’ I had to investigate.
Could the Tiny Habits Workshop help me get focused and manage overwhelm?
So off to the workshop we go…
The Tiny Habits Workshop is on a Saturday morning, the sun is out, I’m wandering the streets of Bristol trying to find coffee at 8.30am. Bristol clearly likes a lie in. It’s all very quiet, and the cafes all very closed. Down a cobbled street a group of people are gathering around an open door – must be the other attendees. The Forge is a converted space, with a view across the city roof tops, and where creative people come to do creative things. The walls are bare brick but the space feels full of ideas. My mind wanders to dreams of converting our barns back in Cumbria. One Day.
We take our enamel tin cups of coffee to our seats.
Create new habits through small steps
The workshop is based on the work of B J Fogg a professor at Stanford University. His approach states there are only three options that will change behaviour in the long term:
Option A. Have an epiphany
Option B. Change your environment (what surrounds you)
Option C. Take baby steps
Mike Coulter is our Tiny Habits coach for the morning. Mike has an impressive portfolio, including registering www.DigitalAgency.com in 1997. He has worked on the Do Lectures, is the author of Do Side Projects, a book full of inspiring start up stories, and now runs Habitualise. I follow him on Instagram, so already ‘ know’ him.
Mike sets the pace, he shares his passion for the method and he is honest about the approach. He has me hooked in the first 5 minutes with the statement
“Hundreds of minutes more are used reading about meditation than actually doing it”.
I think about my pile of books next to my bed… even more hundreds of minutes used buying books about meditation, never mind reading or doing!!
The first principle is clear; this is about creating new habits through small steps, not about addressing old bad habits. Old bad habits can be worked on but only by replacing them with new ones.
“You can achieve amazing things, but you have to be singled minded, and single focused. You have you want the change.”
As he speaks I start to think, “but I don’t know what I want”, and its that feeling again, feeling of getting stuck in mud. As if he has read my mind, Mike continues “If there are lots of things you want to change, and it feels overwhelming, think about ‘what’s the thing that is speaking to you the loudest’. Tune into your thoughts and really listen. Spend some time thinking; with the first question ‘What am I doing for me right now’?” . He has the room nodding, and I’m clearly not alone in the feeling of being lost in where to start. We take some time to think about, and list, the things we want to change.
Keep things so tiny they are laughable
Mike explains “Changing the way you live and behave wont happen overnight (if ever), you need to break things down to tiny enough things you’ll easily achieve, so tiny they are laughable”. He goes on to tell us a story about how he created time to do meditation by just putting his chair outside every morning. That was all he did for a while, just put his chair outside. Then one day he sat on it. And then one day he sat a bit longer. And now he meditates every day.
Putting a chair outside every day sounds odd, maybe even ridiculous. But I guess what he is describing is no different to how people describe their route to addiction, a small thing that slowly became everyday. When the mind plants a seed to an idea, it also suggests the route to growing into a full on tree.
“Plant a good seed in the right place and it will grow without further coaxing”. BJ Fogg
So you want to do 50 push ups a day. Start with one.
How to create a Tiny Habit recipe
Pick behaviours YOU want, not things you should do, or someone else wants
Find a habit you already ready do and use it as a trigger (anchor the moment)
Do the small habit straight after the trigger
Build in ‘feel good’ immediately after the behaviour (shout ‘awesome’… go on, us Brits are great at that kind of thing!)
Shout ‘Awesome’
Mike made us all think about how we celebrate. Probably not great that most of us said ‘ glass of wine’. He made us think about it some more. He talked about the power of reward and how recognising achievement, no matter how small, creates an impression in the mind that will trigger it to feel the good the next time it happens.
In sport psychology footballers, tennis players, athletes, swimmers etc are encouraged to celebrate as part of their training. Peter Crouch wasn’t just doing the Robot, he was anchoring the memory of scoring the goal to a happy celebration, so that the brain is reminded to do it again. Ok, probably not a great example. Goal celebrations at the World Cup are part of the pattern to train the brain to want to do it again. Celebrating makes us want something more, that ‘lets do it again’ feeling, but it also can make us fear failure more, as if we now have more to loose. Tiny habits helps that fear of failure feel less of a risk, so we keep progressing forward.
“Our negative bias, which keeps us safe and minimises risk, unfortunately keeps us stuck. To change something in your life you have to start somewhere. Tiny habits puts you over the line towards change, all you have to do is keep looking forward, don’t take a step back, do small achievable steps and you’ll start to create the shift”.
We have three types of habits
Bad Habits (they don’t contribute to our goal, but we spend time doing them)
Neutrals Habits (we just do them because we have to)
Positive / Contributing Habits (we do them and they make positive contribution to moving forward)
The idea is to replace the bad habits with positive habits, by attaching tiny habits to things we already do (neutral habits). Like turning on the kettle in the morning, do something straight after it to start making a change… like put out your yoga mat.
“Emotions create habits, the stronger you feel a positive emotion from the tiny habit, the more you’ll do it again and add to it” Mike Coulter
Sharing your goal celebration, and the change you want to make helps you. You don’t always get support from obvious places like friends and family, sometimes outside help is the extra support you need. There is a Facebook Group for everything these days. There are network groups and social events to meet like mined people. The Meet Up app is a great place to start looking for events local to you. The website Stickk creates an online community to help you stick to goals.
Touch it once, small steps that help you nail the big things
Each day we are probably already doing hundreds of tiny habits that are creating a result -it might not be the result we want, but they are creating something. Every time I eat that digestive biscuit, its helping me become a dress size bigger – not a goal I want but I’m on course to achieve.
In my full time office job I used to do the ‘touch it once email system’. If I opened it I responded to it and moved on. If I didn’t respond to it that day, it wouldn’t get a response. These days I’m more in the camp of ‘open it once email system’. Open the email, move on, forget to return to it, spend the last 15 minutes of each day closing down lots of open emails. Obviously not great. New habit required.
Mike gave the example of how he applied this to making porridge. He applies ‘ touch it once’ to the pan, make porridge, clean out pan, dry pan, put away pan (all without taking and off the pan). Result tidy kitchen, happy wife. I thought about how happy this would make my ‘kitchens’ must be spotless at all times’ husband (he does most of the cleaning up after me).
Do not give your bad habit authority
This thought has stayed with me, how much my bad habits dominate my life. And how I’ve tried to change by just stopping them. Which never works.
Mike says “Replace bad habits, don’t try to change them”. For example being on the phone at bedtime, a small step towards change would be to put the phone just out of reach but still in the room, move the charger out the bedroom, moving towards leaving it down stairs, moving towards not even thinking about the phone after 8pm – you have no idea where the phone is.
Play around with what works for you
The key is not to go back. If the exercise app isn’t working for you, don’t stop exercising, try something else. If it all feels too simple well, it’s not, but it is.
“Suspend judgement while you play with the idea. Once it works the first time, you’ll want to keep playing”.
Mike’s final word “Let’s smash that 21 / 66 / 90 myth. It doesn’t take 21 days for you to change a habit. It takes as long as you want, it’s all in your control, you have to make it easy for you to achieve and trust yourself you’ll do it”.
It goes back to keeping things achievable and in your sight and they’ll come to you. You don’t have to (and shouldn’t according to B J Fogg) rely on motivation or will power to make changes.
So my first tiny habit starts tomorrow. When I turn on the kettle tomorrow morning, I will put out my yoga mat. Here starts my journey to healthier mornings. One Tiny Step for me… One Tiny Step for… well still me for now.
Blog first written: May 2017
Mike Coulter can be found at www.habitulise.com