Self-Development Book Club - Tiny Habits

tracymartorana4
Jul 27
6 min read

Book number seven in my goal to read or reread a self-development book every month in 2025 is Tiny Habit by BJ Fogg. I love books about habit change because any self-development goal comes down to our ability to change our habits. Whether you want to eat healthier, learn a new skill, declutter your house, or nurture some of your closest relationships, your habits will make or break your success.

Watch Me Talk About It

Background

If you know me, you know that I am a big fan of tiny habits. While we may occasionally achieve success by making big, grandiose changes, it's rare. Most positive change needs to be simple, fast, and small to be successful. We get a tiny win, and that motivates us to do more.

This is true for eating healthy - I often advise people to start by adding just one additional serving of veggies into their day. Once that's easy, make another healthy change and then another.

This is true for decluttering your home - break it down into short 5-10 minute sessions or very small areas. As you get a couple of areas decluttered, you are inspired to do more.

This is true for physical fitness or learning another language. Doing a little bit every day will get you much further than spending one marathon session working out or studying.

Making small adjustments to our daily habits can add up to incredible self-growth.

Tiny Habits Book Summary

The subtitle of this book is The Small Changes That Change Everything. Love it!

This book reads like a textbook in the BEST way. Meaning that there are a ton of illustrations and charts to help describe the information...not just a bunch of words. If you are a visual person, you will enjoy this immensely.

Rather than go chapter by chapter through this book, I'm going to share with you a few highlights and then encourage you to grab your own copy. Because honestly, what I really want to do is simply rewrite the whole book here so that you can read it all.

The Anatomy of Tiny Habits (ABC)

A is for Anchor. This is the moment, event, or action that reminds you to do the new tiny Behavior.
B is for Behavior. This is the tiny behavior you are starting. It will occur immediately after the Anchor.
C is for Celebrate. Immediately Celebrate the fact that you did the Behavior. This can be almost anything - smile to yourself, pat yourself on the back, say "Good job, me!", or even indulge in a small treat. These are all possible celebrations.

One of the examples Fogg gives in the book is that you aren't good about flossing your teeth every day and you want to improve. Brushing your teeth is the Anchor. Flossing at least one tooth is the tiny Behavior. Giving yourself a big smile in the mirror (or even a high five) is your Celebration.

Now you can extrapolate that out to any behaviour you want to begin. Say you want to make your bed every day. The Anchor is getting out of bed. The Behavior is making the bed. Then you do a Celebration dance on your way to the shower.

The Fogg Behavior Model

This is the key to understanding why some habits are easy to change and why some are hard. Once you understand that, you can use that information to create lasting changes in your life.

B=MAP is the model, and it translates to Behavior happens when Motivation, Ability and Prompt converge at the same time.

A hand drawing of a graph depicting the Fogg Behavior Model showing motivation one axis and Ability on the other — The Fogg Behavior Model, drawn by me

Look at the graph for a minute. Notice that anything above the action line means we will do the behavior when prompted, and anything below the line means we will not do it, even when prompted. This graph shows us that even if our motivation is incredibly high, if it's so hard that it's impossible, we can't/won't do it. And conversely, if it's super easy, but we have absolutely zero desire to do it, it also won't happen. When we have enough motivation and ability, along with a prompt to remind us. That's the sweet spot!

We are going to assume that there is already some amount of motivation if you are looking to create a new habit. But we need more than just motivation. The first and most important thing we need is a prompt. A prompt is essentially an anchor. It is something that reminds us to do something (think of a ringing phone reminding you to answer an incoming call). It could be an already existing activity, or it could be an alarm. This will differ depending on the behavior. Once we have a prompt, we need to make it as easy as possible to do the behavior.

Let's look at an example. You find yourself motivated to start a morning walking routine. Your prompt - let your alarm clock be your prompt. You wake up and you walk. Now, how do you make it easy? Consider sleeping in whatever clothes you wear to walk. There are all kinds of studies showing that anytime you can reduce the friction...make it as easy as it could possibly be...the more successful you will be at the 'doing'. Conversely, if you want to stop a habit, making it more difficult to do might be enough to deter you from doing it.

If you have been trying to create a new habit but it's not going well, use The Fogg Behavior Model to troubleshoot. Let's use the same example. You want to create a new habit of walking every morning for 30 minutes.

Start with the PROMPT - is it sufficient in reminding you to do the behavior? No? If you use your phone for an alarm, maybe name the alarm "Go Walk!" for an extra reminder. If the alarm isn't the problem...
Look at ABILITY. Make it super easy. You are already sleeping in your workout clothes. Maybe put your sneakers next to your bed. In addition to the prep work, start super small. Don't commit to walking 30 minutes in the beginning. Make the behavior so small you can't not do it! Make the initial behavior walking for 5 minutes. Still struggling?
Only after you have addressed Prompt and Ability, look at MOTIVATION. What can you do to motivate yourself more? Maybe you invite a friend to join you on the morning walk, maybe you find a great audiobook and set a rule that you can only listen to it while walking? Maybe you hate the treadmill, so you decide to walk outside, or maybe it's the opposite. Increase motivation by increasing enjoyment.

Focus Mapping

Let's say your new habit/behavior/desire is a little less specific. For example, maybe you simply want to get more sleep. Where do you start? What behaviors will actually help you? This is where the focus mapping tool can be helpful.

There are a ton of things that might help you sleep better, but where should you start? Start with making a list of things you could do. Then think about whether these things are easy or hard for you to do and then think about which ones would have the most impact. In this example, lets say you listed off these 5 possible things that could help you sleep:

eat earlier so you're ready for bed earlier
install blackout blinds
turn on the white noise machine you already own
use lavender linen spray on your pillows
use a sleep mask

As you evaluate these, you decide 2,3, and 5 would likely have the highest impact because it's typically your environment that wakes you up (noise and light). While you've heard 1 and 4 work for some people, you aren't sure they would have much impact on you.

You decide 2 would be costly and therefore difficult, but 3 and 5 would be relatively easy. If you look at the pictures below, you can see that 3 and 5 are easy and high impact, so that's where you should start.

All of this and I'm only at the beginning of chapter 3. I'm going to leave you here. I think that's already a lot of information. These are great tools to create behavior change and to troubleshoot issues you are having while trying to create change. Pick up the book for more!!!

Buy the Books

I have 2 favorite habit change books and this is one of them! Pick up your copy so you can read it over, mark it up and become engrossed in the science of habit change!