Reading up on some work of BJ Fogg from Stanford University. He has this really interesting behavioral model that helps explain what I have discovered this last few years about forming habits and successfully changing my behavior. You can look at a diagram of his model here.
The best way that I can explain this concept is that we all will perform a behavior given the right trigger, or event. For example, when I wake up in the morning, I brush my teeth. It is just what I do. We all have these behaviors, and they are learned over time. Certain triggers cause us to perform certain behaviors. However, that is not always true. You cannot just decide that every time you here a chime go off that you will do 50 pushups, for example. You may decide you would like to do that. However, just wanted to do it is not enough.
You need to have three things. The Motivation, the Ability and then a Trigger will cause you to perform the action. So lets say, you are super motivated to do pushups because you want to change your physique. You want to improve your health and you think this will get you there. You will start out with a lot of motivation, so then you set you watch to go off every 3 hours with a chime. You do 50 pushups. For a while it goes well, because you are super motivated but then it gets hard. As the difficulty increases, your chances of failing when that trigger comes increases.
On top of that, your motivation decreases over time. Which means that the likelihood of failure also increases. So what do you do? Well the answer is to focus on these three areas. When all three are working together, then you change your behavior.
- Find the motivation to change the behavior.
- Think of a trigger, something that will remind you to do the behavior
- Reduce the difficulty to a point where you can do it easy enough to reduce the chance of failure.
So in my example, if I set my watch to go off every 3 hours and decided to just do 5 pushups instead of 50, now I have a trigger, I have the motivation, and the difficulty is in line of my ability. Now I will be able to succeed in the behavior change. This formula is absolutely true, at least in my experience.
I have definitely learned that motivation is never enough. I have also learned that starting with an easier to do portion is the best recipe for success. Finally, establishing what trigger or prompt that will cause you to do the desired behavior is critical. If you are trying to make a change in your behavior, you should consider establishing a solid trigger for conditioning your action at the intersection between Motivation and Ability.
Guy Reams (632)
