If you find yourself struggling to keep your New Year's Resolutions three weeks in, maybe my latest book summary could help!

Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg describes how behaviour change works and how to implement the Tiny Habits method in your life. Basically, it’s about making habits easier (by making them “tiny”), finding a place for them in your life (an anchor) and celebrating your successes.

The key takeaways are below and, as usual, you can find the full summary on my website.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

This summary of Tiny Habits is divided into three parts. The first part of the summary describes the theory behind how behaviour and behaviour change works:

• Behaviour is a function of Motivation and Ability, combined with a Prompt. This is the Fogg Behaviour Model, which is expressed as:

B = MAP

• Motivation is fickle and unreliable.
• Luckily, Motivation and Ability compensate for each other. When something is easy to do (high ability), you need less motivation to do it. So successful behaviour design usually relies on increasing ability, such as by making the habit “tiny”, or changing your environment.
• Prompts are what trigger our behaviours. There are three types of prompts: person, action, and context. Fogg favours action prompts or “anchors”, where you do the new behaviour after an action you already do consistently.
• Immediate rewards are important as they make behaviours into habits. People succeed when they feel good. Celebration is one way to provide an instant, easy reward.

The second part of the summary is about the Tiny Habits method itself and how to implement it. Here there are broadly three stages:

• First, work out which behaviours you will make into habits. This involves clarifying your aspiration, brainstorming behaviours, and then mapping those behaviours onto your aspiration. This exercise helps you find the best behaviours to make into habits.
• Second, make those behaviours into habits with the ABC formula: find a good anchor, make the behaviour easier, and practise celebrations.
• Lastly, rehearse your habits, and let them naturally multiply and grow. If you need to troubleshoot, look at the prompt, ability, or celebration first. Look at motivation last.

The last part of the summary covers the bonus stuff, like untangling bad habits and changing with others. I also outline a few examples of habits and links to further resources. Although these are still important, they don’t form the “core” of the book.

Read the full detailed summary on ToSummarise.com.