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Coming up next on Passion Strike.
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It s like, well, now that you know how to create habits, the big question and a harder question is to what end?
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What kind of habits do I want to form?
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What do I want to achieve with that?
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Now, I as an academic researcher, I can t tell people like you must do this or that or whatever.
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I have my opinions and I have things I work on.
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But what I offer is a method for reliably creating habits quickly and easily
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without relying on willpower very much.
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But then the question is, to what end?
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Welcome to Passion Struck.
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Hi, I m your host, Jon R. Miles.
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And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world s most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.
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Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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If you re new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.
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We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
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Now, let s go out there and become passion struck.
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Hello friends and welcome back to Ashtonstroke.
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Consistently ranked by Apple as one of the top five most popular health podcasts and the number one alternative health podcast in the world.
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And thank you to all of you who come back to the show every week to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world.
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I m excited to announce that my new book, Passion Struck, is now available for pre-order and you can find it at Amazon or at passionstruck.com forward slash passionstruckbook.
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And if you order it there, I have curated over $300 in free gifts that you will receive.
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If you re new to the show, thank you so much for being here.
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Or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member.
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And we love it when you do that.
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We now have episode starter packs, which are collections of our favorite episodes that we organize into playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show.
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Either go to Spotify or PassionStruck.com slash starter packs to get started.
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And in case you missed it, earlier this week, I had the privilege of sitting down with Maria Menounos, a multifaceted American television presenter, podcast host, and accomplished author.
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You may recognize Maria from her captivating stints as the host of Extra on E!
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News, or from her role as a TV correspondent for Today and Access Hollywood.
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Notably, she also co-hosted the unforgettable Miss Universe 2023 pageant.
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In this profoundly intimate episode, Maria takes us on a deeply personal journey through the pinnacle moments of her illustrious career in the entertainment industry.
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Yet, what truly sets this conversation apart is Maria s candid reflection on the challenging chapters of her life where she bravely confronted a brain tumor and battled pancreatic cancer head-on.
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Her story is an awe-inspiring testament to resilience, offering invaluable insights into how she navigated these trying times with grace, courage, and unwavering determination.
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And if you liked that episode or today s, we would so appreciate you giving a five-star rating review.
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They go such a long way in strengthening the PassionStruck community where we can bring people hope, meaning, and connection.
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And I know we and our guests love to see and hear from you.
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Today, we are incredibly fortunate to have with us a true visionary in the world of behavior science and personal development, Dr. B.J.
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Fogg.
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B.J.
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 s journey is a fascinating one.
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Starting from his early days immersed in the works of Aristotle,
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leading him on a groundbreaking intersection of persuasion, technology, and behavior design.
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We ll explore how this philosophical underpinning has shaped his approach to influencing human behavior in profoundly positive ways.
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In today s episode, we draw parallels between BJ s path and mine, both of us transitioning from the tech sector to the realm of health and wellness.
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We dive into BJ s pioneering work in persuasive technology.
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We discuss his unique approach to teaching, likening his courses to a startup, which paves the way for new learning and behavior change methods.
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We ll delve into how this strategy embodies the principles of his tiny habits model and what it means for innovative education.
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We re also going to get a closer look at BJ s New York Times best-selling book, Tiny Habits, a culmination of his extensive experience in research and behavior change.
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BJ will break down the core components of the FOG behavior model and how it s progressed since its inception.
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But we won t stop there.
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Our conversation will take a deep dive into applying BJ s model for a range of life-changing scenarios from mental health and overcoming past trauma to breaking free from toxic attainment culture.
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We ll discuss how BJ s work with Stanford School of Medicine is revolutionizing the approach to treating depression in older adults moving away from medication towards habit creation.
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In light of recent global challenges, BJ s insights on managing big emotions are more relevant than ever.
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We ll learn about his lab s compilation of over 200 techniques for regulating positive emotions and how these can be personalized to individual needs.
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This episode promises to be a journey through the transformative power of behavior change.
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with BJ sharing personal transformative stories and how his model aids in healing and resilience.
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Join us as we uncover the keys to unlocking our inner potential for deep personal transformation and learn how to maintain these profound changes over the long term.
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This isn t just an interview, it s a gateway to redefining success and authenticity in our lives.
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Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide in your journey to creating an intentional life.
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Now, let that journey begin.
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I am absolutely so honored today to have Dr. B.J.
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Fogg on PassionStruck, someone that this community has wanted for so long.
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This is B.J.
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Fogg.
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I am so happy to be with you, John.
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Thank you for inviting me.
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BJ, I d like to start the interviews out just in case the audience doesn t know a lot of things about you, which in your case is probably not going to be as relevant.
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But I understand early in your career, you had a major fascination with Aristotle.
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How did that inspire you to envision the intersection of persuasion and technology?
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And how has that philosophical foundation now influenced your approach to the behavior design?
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Yeah, rewind, rewind, rewind.
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I was an English major, a pre-med English major.
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And I got a little unhappy with critical theory and analysis, just reading books and trying to say smart things about what s in the books.
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So I drifted toward linguistics and then rhetoric.
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And so within the world of rhetoric, you have Plato, Aristotle, the Sophists.
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And I got really into Aristotle because he systematized everything.
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And I was fascinated where he could take almost any topic and break it down to here are the components and here s how to think about it clearly.
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I was in France, immersing myself in the French language, but reading
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these simple books about Aristotle, not the complicated ones.
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And I d already read some, but it was there in France in a whole different environment where I was like, and this would be, oh, early 90s, maybe 1991.
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And I just thought, oh my gosh, what he s talking about, the means of persuasion.
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So the book I was really looking at was called Rhetoric by Aristotle.
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So what are the available means of persuasion in any situation?
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And I thought, well, of course computers are going to do this someday.
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And I d kind of toyed with that a little bit, but I hadn t really had that breakthrough
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insight, and then I thought, oh my gosh, this is what I want to do my doctorate on.
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I want to go study how technology can be designed to help us change our habits for the better, can influence our attitudes and behaviors for the better.
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Fast forward a few years, that s what I ended up doing at Stanford as a doctoral student,
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as no longer an English major and no longer a rhetorician, but a social scientist, an experimental psychologist doing true scientific experiments in laboratories.
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And that s what I did for four years at Stanford, a series of experiments to show the potential of technology to change our thoughts and our behaviors, which at the time
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people thought that was crazy.
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They were like, that s never going to happen.
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And I was like, yeah, it is going to happen.
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Now it seems really obvious, but I had a lot of naysayers back then because computers were not being used for that kind of thing at all when I was doing the research.
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And that allowed me to not only see the potential, but
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see the scary underbelly of that.
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And so fast forward in my lab s work a few years later, we did a lot of work on the ethics of what we called persuasive technology and trying to warn people that this is coming and this can be really good, but this can be really bad.
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And nobody really cared at that time about the dark sides that were coming, but we definitely anticipated and tried to shine a spotlight.
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on the power of this and how it might be used for bad purposes, including, and I read about this in my 2002 book, for governments would use it to sway elections, salespeople would use it to find exactly what persuades you and manipulate you and so on.
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And unfortunately, almost all of those things came true.
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Yes, it is one of the biggest dilemmas.
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Now we re looking at it with AI.
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People don t think about the implications of what technology can do in the hands of bad actors.
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You and I have a really fascinating parallel career path.
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We both began in the tech sector and have eventually transitioned into behavior change, obviously you more than me, but also into health and wellness.
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And as I explained earlier, my background involves senior executive roles at corporations
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like Dell Lowe s and Catalina Marketing.
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And in all of these, we were doing many of the things that you just described.
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We were really examining how do you use big data to decode consumer behavior and also internally in a company, how do you help influence employee engagement?
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How did that background that you had lay the groundwork for a lot of the work now that you re doing in behavior science?
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I got really focused on behavior.
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So rather than worrying about attitudes and opinions, there was this moment, I was doing this project for LinkedIn when it was a tiny startup and it had a ton of competitors.
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And in doing that project, which I included, what attitudes do you want around LinkedIn and opinions and behaviors?
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the insight came, oh no, you design for the behaviors.
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You figure out what behaviors you want and you don t change behavior by first changing attitudes and opinions.
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But that s the assumption in a lot of academic work and a lot of interventions is you just need to raise awareness or change people s opinions and their behavior will follow.
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And then what came to me in doing that project was
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just thinking, what are the behaviors that you want?
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And then design for those behaviors.
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That then led to the Fog Behavior Model and a set of methods and other things.
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John, in some ways, it was kind of doing the heretical that
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thing of saying decades of academic work on you must change attitudes in order to change behaviors and rejecting all of that and saying, no, it s just about figuring out what are the best behaviors and then designing for those.
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That shifted my thinking and my work at Stanford and also my work in industry dramatically.
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And I just became super obsessed about what is behavior?
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How does it work?
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And what are the components or the levers you can shift to change behavior?
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Well, I find all that fascinating and I m going to come back to your behavior model in a second.
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But before I get into that, I did find another part of your background very interesting.
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My first cousin graduated from Stanford and you had one of the classes he wanted to attend.
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And because of its popularity, he could never get in.
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Oh, sorry.
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But I understand during the first day of your courses, you liken the experience to a startup, emphasizing the dynamic nature of a class.
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Can you share a little bit more about this approach of embracing uncertainty and adaptability?
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Yeah, I feel so fortunate that that s okay to do at Stanford.
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And I don t know others who did it that way.
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I ve probably taught 20 different classes at Stanford over the course of 20 some odd years.
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So every year I come up with a new class.
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They all have to do with behavior change and helping people be happier and healthier in some form.
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I think I d be bored teaching the same class over and over.
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So I come up with a topic that interests me and a topic that I think hasn t been well explored.
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Back in the day when video was not used for persuasion, we had persuasive video class.
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A few years back, we had a class about climate action and how to design systematically for helping in that domain.
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And so because the topic was new,
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And because I m not necessarily an expert on video or climate action or connecting to nature or other things like that, I just wanted to be upfront with the students.
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First of all, I ve never taught this class before and nobody s taught this class before.
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And I have a plan, but that plan is going to change.
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I guarantee it s like a startup.
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It s going to change and there s going to be twists and turns and I m going to make mistakes.
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I guarantee I ll make just like in a startup.
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And then john I would say, if this scares you that we re going into territory that s been unexplored and I will make mistakes and twists and turns, then you should drop the class you this is not the class for you.
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But it turns out that at Stanford.
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that just makes, I would say 80% of the students that much more eager.
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Like, oh my gosh, this is exactly why I came to Stanford.
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Some of them would tell me, it s like, please don t cut me from the class.
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This is why I came to Stanford for these kinds of classes.
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And it took so much pressure off me because in week three, it s okay, guess what?
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We got to change the syllabus.
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I felt like I d warned everybody.
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And then typically what would happen in courses is we would, starting about week three or four, we d adjust week by week and readjust and readjust to match what we re learning, match what the students wanted to do and match where I thought we would break new ground.
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So very much like a startup, you adjust or pivot if you want to use that language.
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Since you brought it up, I d love to talk a little bit more about the work that you re doing around screen distraction.
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I had a great interview several months ago with Gloria Mark, who you might know, who has a great book, Attention Span, and it was just shocking to me that we are now at a point where the majority of people are shifting their attention every 45 seconds.
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I couldn t believe it when she gave me that statistic.
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What are some of the things you re investigating?
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Let s rewind to 2006.
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The class I taught then ended up having the co-founder of Instagram, Mike Krieger, and Tristan Harris, who now leads the Center for Humane Technologies and shows up on TV and Congress.
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They were actually on the same project in the class.
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that I believe opened the door to do Instagram years later.
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It was that year in 2006 where they were having, the FTC was having a hearing.
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They called it tech aid or something like that.
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And you can still find this online.
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And so I had my students, I said, what do you think the problems are here?
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And I had a formal testimony there, but I couldn t go to DC, so I did it in video, which I m glad about now, because now I have a video of me doing it.
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There were some things we surfaced, and this is a little bit different than your question, but one of the things we surfaced was this issue, and I called it persuasion profiling.
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I said,
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Technology companies will this hadn t happened yet.
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They will test and see what persuades and influences us and they will store that and they will buy and sell that record a lot like a credit report record is bought and sold that certainly happened persuasion profiling.
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I talked about video games that had cause and effect relationships built in.
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And I don t want to get into that, but I thought that could be used to train people to go to war and do very dangerous things because you re playing this video game.
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And if I do this and this happens, problematic, right?
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Because people are experiencing, I do this and this happens and our brains are wired to glom onto the cause and effect relationships.
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And I felt like that was going to happen more and more in video games.
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There s not a great example of that, but I m sure it s happened.
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But then there is another area that I said there will be a time we cannot believe our eyes, where we ll see videos of things that are created by technology.
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And we ll have to remind ourselves this is not true.
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So this was 2006.
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So now about 15 years later, that started being called deep fakes.
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And those are, I still think we re not very well prepared for those kinds of deep fakes.
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So those are some of the issues through that class and through that government hearing that I wanted to put on the table.
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But again, back then I got no follow-up calls.
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I got no follow-up emails.
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It was just like, nobody cared.
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And it was hard to say, people, this is coming.
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This is coming, whether we like it or not.
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But people were concerned about other issues.
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Fast forward, Screen Time, it was Tristan Harris from that class that I helped champion.
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And he had to really break through TED Talk and really put him on the map.
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And I think Tristan Harris is doing amazing work with Screen Time and now more with AI.
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So he s much more expert than I am on that space.
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that it was, I think, 2018, I decided to do a class at Stanford all about screen time and helping people manage their screen time.
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We created a really wonderful tool.
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We brought together an online tool that people can find at screentime.stanford.edu.
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And it s this genie that asks you about your screen usage to then suggest how to minimize that.
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And on the back end, we have over 200 different ways of reducing screen time through the genie.
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It helps match you with the best ways for you.
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Hopefully it s helping people.
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However, one of the realizations from that class, and then we brought it into my lab and did research on it.
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People know screen time s an issue and a challenge and a problem.
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but it s mostly an issue for other people and not themselves.
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We saw that over and over, not in the research, but just in the response.
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We have this tool.
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People would like to reduce their screen time, but they re generally think it s more a problem for my kids or for other people and not myself.
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And so that s really hard because as you know, in my work, the only thing that works in the longterm is to help people do what they already want to do.
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And if somebody doesn t already want to do something, even though there s a tool or a resource, they re not going to do it long-term or reliably.
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They might do it a little bit.
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And I think all of us are in this.
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Yeah, I use screen a lot.
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Yeah, I should do less.
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It s so useful.
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It s so entertaining, whatever.
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It s a tough problem.
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It just really is a hard problem.
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I ll stop there for now.
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It really is a tough problem.
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And I just wanted to give an anecdotal example of how this technology is
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working in ways people might not even understand.
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I was in charge of technology at Catalina, and if people aren t familiar with Catalina marketing, in our heyday, we had a three-year history of 75% of the shopping visits that all Americans, Great Britons,
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Wow.
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People who lived in France, Germany, Italy, and Japan did.
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And we formed this joint venture with Nielsen Catalina Ventures.
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This was 2011, 2012, and this is where things got really scary.
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We used geolocation and we combined Nielsen s data with our data, and we were able to map when a person was in their home, when they were watching a television program, and we were able to, through that geolocation, know what program that they were using,
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know what their buying preferences were and were able to send them an offer on their phone while they were watching that program.
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And that was, you know, 12, 13 years ago.
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So imagine if you re a company like Facebook, Instagram, or Amazon, Google, the capabilities that some of these companies have.
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It s just amazing.
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Wow.
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I think 20 or 30 years ago, I think people would have been very alarmed by that.
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And even the privacy issues around, you re carrying this mobile phone, that means those companies that own the operating system and maybe the carriers know where you are all the time.
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And people, again, didn t get that concerned about it.
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I had a student of mine who was from China, and he actually returned to China and led huge companies there.
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And he visited me recently.
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And I got the real scoop on what s going on there.
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And one of the things was, oh yeah, we re observed everywhere we are, everywhere we are observed.
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And we just assume that everything we do on our phone is being recorded.
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And he seemed surprisingly okay with that, which was stunning.
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And his thinking on it was, well, it s really safe society.
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If something gets stolen within a minute or two,
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the authorities can go watch the video, do facial recognition, find that person, and they can find exactly where that person is in the second kind of thing.
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That may be coming our way to our culture as well, because the pattern is these kind of alarming ideas of what technology might do.
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It seems like we trade off some of our rights and our privacy for these benefits, and eventually we kind of just get used to it.
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This is really not a very happy topic, but it is a pattern that I ve seen and I ve really tried to shine a spotlight on some of the challenges.
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But what I ve learned is if policymakers or funders or even activists are not worried about that problem in the moment,
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shining a spotlight on it doesn t work.
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There s got to be a wave and a kind of a movement and a crest that s breaking.
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It s hard.
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And I ll just be frank, John, I ve been blamed for some of these things when it s like the opposite.
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No, I m the guy that raised the alarm.
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It s like blaming somebody about climate change who was warning about it and saying, no, you re the guy.
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No, I was the one that s raised the alarm on it.
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But people contact me now and that s not my expertise anymore.
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We moved away from
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my lab from persuasive technology and looking at technology in general around 2010.
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After this LinkedIn project and really letting it marinate and doing some development, it was like, man, there s a big opportunity here to really just understand human behavior and how behavior works.
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So we
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In fact, changed the name of my Stanford lab from the persuasive technology lab to the behavior design lab.
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And it s not the same thing, despite what some people say.
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It s a whole different approach.
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I feel like we d done what we needed to there.
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Showing the potential, showing the pitfalls, writing about the ethics, running events on the ethics of it.
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And then having a wonderful student like Tristan Harris emerge, who is doing a much better job than I ever could do.
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He s so talented and articulate.
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So in the lab, in my teaching, we moved on to just looking at human behavior and especially habits and how those work without looking at behavior change through the lens of technology.
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I m going to just conclude this topic by saying that I think history repeats itself.
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And I think we should really look at people like Oppenheimer and Einstein and Tesla and others and their warnings that went ignored and the repercussions when they weren t adhered to on this topic.
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And yes, you re right.
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He is absolutely doing some phenomenal work around this topic.
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PJ, for a listener who might need a relearning of the Fog Behavior Model, I was hoping that you might be able to take us through it and just give us the core components, because this is going to serve the basis for the rest of the interview.
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Yep.
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So there s one sentence, and then I ll layer in more.
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And the one sentence is, behavior happens when three things come together at the same moment.
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motivation to do the behavior, ability to do the behavior, and a prompt.
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So that s the model.
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Behavior is these three things coming together at the same moment.
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It s like fire happens when you have fuel and air and a spark.
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And if you re missing any of those components, fire doesn t happen.
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If you re missing motivation or ability or prompt, the behavior won t happen.
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And that model, although you can describe it, at least the 101 version of it in about one sentence, applies to all behavior types of all ages and all cultures.
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It s a universal model for behavior.
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Now with that, you can do a whole bunch of things, but that s the cornerstone model of understanding how to analyze behavior or understanding how to design for behavior.
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Okay, and I had a side question off of this.
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And before we got on, I mentioned the work of Katie Milkman and Angela Duckworth.
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Angela has done a ton of work on how the combination of passion and perseverance can lead to success.
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And my question to you is this.
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I know she has done a lot of work studying West Point cadets, where she perfected a lot of this design that she has.
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I happen to go to the Naval Academy, so I ve got some first-hand perspective on this.
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And when I think back to that time, yes,
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grit, passion and perseverance was extremely important in me getting through not only Plebe summer, but the entire program.
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But to me, there was a really missing ingredient and that is how intentionality plays into it because you could have all the grit in the world that you want, but if you re not intentional about aligning it to your aspirations, your behavior,
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your core values, that grid is going to go in the wrong direction.
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What is your thought on that and how it impacts our behaviors?
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I think that s a really important insight and it relates in a lot of ways to a method I developed in 2010 called the tiny habits method, which is a really effective way of creating habits.
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But once you know that, it s well, where do I want to go with this?
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Once you have grit, where do you want to apply that?
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It s a resource or a capability.
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You can go in any which direction.
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So you have to decide where do you want that to be applied.
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Similarly with the tiny habits method.
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Well, now that you know how to create habits, the big question and a harder question.
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is to what end?
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What kind of habits do I want to form?
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What do I want to achieve with that?
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Now, I as an academic researcher, I can t tell people you must do this or that or whatever.
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I have my opinions and I have things I work on, but what I offer is a method for reliably creating habits quickly and easily
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without relying on willpower very much.
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But then the question is, to what end?
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And that s not something I have the perfect answer.
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I certainly wouldn t prescribe to people listening that you must do this and this.
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It s, you know, figure out what you want to achieve in your life.
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What are your aspirations?
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And then use grit, use the tiny habits method, use various tools to get there, but you gotta know where you re going.
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Yeah.
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Okay, I want to spend the rest of our discussion today speaking about some major things that many people in our community are dealing with.
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So these topics cover mental health, overcoming past trauma, toxic achievement culture, and how to make profound transformations in life, all influenced by your model.
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And I wanted to start with mental health.
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Great.
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And in this topic, you have collaborative work that you re doing with Stanford School of Medicine, and you ve developed a new method to reduce depression in older adults by fostering new habits through the Tiny Habits Method.
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And this is a really important project because you re really doing this without having to use traditional medication-based treatments.
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Can you share more about the core principles of this approach and how it may change things for primary care physicians in the future?
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Yeah, it s really exciting.
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A faculty member at the medical school named Nancy Morica Douglas brought me into it, and it s really her vision.
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And she d been working with a woman named Dolores Gallagher,
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who is one of the leaders in behavioral activation.
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So what Nancy saw is we could take Dolores  work in behavioral activation and my work in tiny habits and merge them together in the service of perhaps helping older adults struggling with mild to moderate depression.
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So I contributed my piece and helped create the training program for the moderators, but Nancy really deserves the credit for having the vision and moving this forward.
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And it s called the PEP Project, P-E-P.
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And so people can find it there.
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We started doing the research early days of the pandemic.
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So we can t meet with people.
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So we re going to have people come on to Zoom.
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And it s like older adults on Zoom.
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And there s so much prejudice against older adults.
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You re like, that s not going to work.
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It s like, yeah, I think it will work.
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And it did.
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So Nancy, mostly Nancy, led small groups of older adults, taught them the tiny habits method, which brought in aspects of behavioral activation.
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and had them create new habits and also help them celebrate.
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In other words, taught them how to feel the positive emotion.
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And that just had remarkable effects.
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Now, Nancy is a clinician.
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So she has patients and she s dealt for decades with depressed patients and prescribing medication.
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And after the first round of this, her insight was like, oh my gosh, jaw drop.
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This is at least as effective as what I ve seen in prescribing medication.
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So we did other rounds of it.
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There s just a few interesting things there, but what s the secret sauce?
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I think it is one,
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having the participants identify activities that they would enjoy.
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So that are from the behavioral activation.
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And often it was like, what did you used to do that you don t do anymore?
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Watercolor, play the piano, listen to Rachmaninoff.
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Okay, great.
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Now we re gonna use the tiny habits method to help bring those things back into your life.
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And when you succeed doing that, tell yourself you did a good job.
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And in tiny habits, we call it celebration, which I didn t think the older adults would get that well, especially in kind of high-level training, but they did.
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This is gonna sound crazy to people, but one example that Nancy Gilman is like, and these were her patients in this case, started hugging herself.
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Good for me, I did a good job.
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And there s other ways to say, good for me, I succeeded.
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Those pieces came together and we got really, I think,
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interesting results.
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Now it s still early days.
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So if people go look up the PEP project, Nancy is inviting others to use the protocol and run research and to see how this works for them in different settings.
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But the key I think was one, having people connect
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do activities that were uplifting and enjoyable.
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And in this case with older adults, it was often things they did in the past.
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And then two, have this really simple way, the tiny habits method, to make those a daily routine on a regular basis.
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And third piece, allow yourself to feel successful in doing it.
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Okay.
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I think that s some great advice.
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And I wanted to take this from older adults to anyone who might be experiencing depression, because this is something I ve battled with myself.
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I went through a period of time where I faced tremendous burnout that led to severe depression.
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I remember when I was at my low point, I didn t have any emotions.
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I didn t feel like doing anything.
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and sometimes making that initial choice to make a change was the most difficult thing to do.
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So if someone s battling things like depression or anxiety, how could they use
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the tiny habits to break through.
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John, I don t want to pretend like I have the answer on this.
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Okay.
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Cause I m not a clinician and clinical depression can be a really hard topic, but I do know a lot about getting yourself to take the first step.
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So we ll talk about that.
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In fact, maybe we ll put in a little bit of broader context.
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I don t want to make it sound like I m prescribing things or I have the answer for people with depression.
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Cause I m very careful about
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not trying to be an expert in areas I m not.
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I ll just give a technique.
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So let s say there s something that you need to do or even want to do, and you find yourself not doing it.
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I have, and it s a tiny habits approach.
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I find myself resisting.
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I was doing, I was writing a letter of recommendation for one of my students for a doctoral program.
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Writing a letter for Steven, I will just take the next step.
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And I ll say to myself, out loud even, BJ, just take the next step.
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So I ll do that.
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And that helps because I ll just take the next step and I can stop.
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And in this case with the letter, the next step was just to get out a pen and paper and break it down.
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What do I need to do to get this done?
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And what happened in that case was, and I actually used this actual pad here.
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I just finished the letter this morning earlier.
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Once you list what the tasks are, it s like, oh, that s not as overwhelming as I thought.
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In another context, let s say exercise or walking.
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We ve seen this with hundreds and hundreds of people in tiny habits.
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The first step is just put on your walking shoes.
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Even if you don t go walking, that s okay.
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Just take this starter step, put on your walking shoes, call that a success.
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If you happen to go out the door and walk, terrific, good for you, but just give yourself credit for taking the next step.
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So that s,
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one technique that I ve used to get myself to do stuff when, whatever reason, I wasn t taking action.
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Related to that, it s very similar, is I m holding up a timer.
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And I could have done this for the letter recommendation, but I didn t.
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But other times I ll say, okay, set the timer for three minutes or seven minutes.
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I m just gonna work on this.
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And when this goes off, I m done.
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I can just stop.
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And I usually do this for more unpleasant tasks, like, oh, I gotta mop the kitchen or something like that.
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And it s like, as soon as it goes off, I m done.
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What happens is like, yeah, I can do that for three minutes or seven minutes, but so often once you get started, it s like a timer goes off and you re like, oh, I ll just keep going.
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Getting started, taking that first step is often the hardest part.
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So either just telling yourself to take the first step and
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using grit or willpower or discipline to do it, or scaling it back and saying, I m just going to work on it three minutes.
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And you kind of trick yourself into it.
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I think very similar in terms of the psychology, that s just getting yourself to take action.
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And you may have to tap into a little bit of discipline and willpower to just take that next action.
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But the trick I think is telling yourself, if I only want to put on my shoes and not do any more, that s okay.
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If this timer goes off and I stop working on the kitchen, that s okay.
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And be true to that.
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Timer goes off, the kitchen s not done, you re like, went off, I m done.
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Be true to that.
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You took that step.
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Most of the time when you do take that first step, you ll keep going.
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But I think if your brain knows that the first step is gonna force you to take subsequent steps, you re gonna figure that out.
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So just figure out what the first step is, take it, and then decide if you wanna take further steps after that.
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Yeah, I think that s some great advice.
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I love nature.
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And so being in nature to me is such a relieving aspect of my life.
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For me, the key was just getting out the door and starting to go for a walk and tuning out from listening to the radio and things like that or my device and really paying attention to the sounds that I was hearing.
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and really getting into a mindful state where I could really focus on showing myself some self-love so I could get over those things.
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But you re right, it does take making that initial move and then building upon it every single day.
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And then eventually you find yourself in a completely different place.
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And can I second that?
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I said earlier that, who am I to prescribe to people what they should be doing?
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But if I had to pick one and just one, it would be nature.
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Find a way to connect with nature.
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And that s my class on behavior design for connecting people with nature.
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It s the only class I ve repeated at Stanford because I just feel it s so important.
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So that is...
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I agree with you.
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That s a game changer.
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And it s going to be different for different people, depending on where you live and so on, but find ways where you can connect to nature.
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There s just, that s so powerful.
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I know you re a big surfer and et cetera.
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So you and I both share that love of being out there doing it.
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I wanted to switch topics.
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I m still on this mental health area, but I ve been lucky enough to have many conversations with thought leaders like Dan Pink, Chris Carr, Susan Cain, Liz Foslian, who have shed light on managing big emotions, whether it s regret or grief, etc.
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In light of the heightened anxiety and stress that people are experiencing now due to political turmoil, the different conflicts that we have, your lab s work is actually doing some very interesting things on positive emotion regulation.
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And you ve compiled an impressive array of over 200 techniques for this purpose.
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Can you explain some of this to the audience and how what you re doing might have broader impact
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The premise of the work, well even more the foundation, the work in my lab has always been about how do we help people be happier and healthier.
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People are really anxious, people are discouraged, people are
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feeling sad.
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And the premise of the research is there are actions you can do to elevate your emotional state or to take that anxiety and reduce it.
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So it s a net gain of positive emotion.
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I believe that s absolutely true.
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And if that weren t true, we wouldn t have done the project.
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And what we tried to do is come up with what are the simplest things you can do with the biggest impact.
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And that might be something like one, for example, let s go to your texting, scroll back.
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I m going to scroll back seven swipes or 13 swipes.
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And I m going to look at who shows up that I haven t texted for a while and send them a quick little hello, or just even send them a mysterious emoji.
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So this might be somebody from three months ago or six months ago or further.
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Super simple.
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What seems to happen is when you interact with that person,
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And hopefully it s friends that are texting, not like companies.
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That social connection elevates your mood.
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Listening to music, of course, is one of those things that can elevate your mood and so on.
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Coming up with ways to do that was important in the project.
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Now, fast forward, what we found in that project was that the social relationships just kept emerging and emerging.
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So that project morphed into one that s like, how do we help people build strong personal relationships?
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Setting aside, do watercoloring and walk out into nature and listen to your favorite song from high school, people could understand.
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And we have this visualization we call buddy mapping.
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And I think if you go to buddymap.org, you ll find some of that right now.
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We haven t released too much on it.
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There s a way to visualize your relationships that in and of itself, in a 30-minute session, has positive effects.
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And then
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How do you strengthen your relationships?
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We ve come up with a set of ways to do that.
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And these aren t like rocket science, but what we re trying to do is get really good at systematizing.
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How do you strengthen relationships?
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And that seems to me, in addition to connecting to nature, just some of the most important things you can do.
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And some of the things are really simple.
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Say you re at a party.
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And one of the very specific things is when somebody shares something with you, you just say, that s interesting.
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Tell me more.
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That s all you have to say.
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That s interesting.
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Tell me more.
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Five words.
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Guess what?
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the person s going to enjoy talking to you, their relationship s going to strengthen, they re going to think more highly of you, you re going to learn about that other person.
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And again, looking for, and this is a theme in all my work, what s the simplest thing with the biggest impact?
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And those things are discoverable and those things are important to share.
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We re not quite ready to share the body mapping projects and the results from that.
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But I think what I am very comfortable sharing is
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that man, write a list.
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So you won t be doing the full buddy mapping visualization, but make a list of who s closest to you and then be deliberate about connecting with those people and strengthening those relationships.
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I think that s some great advice.
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Is there anything from that project that we might be able to put in the show notes that could help a listener?
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Yeah, I ll explain what the body mapping looks like.
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So it s three concentric circles, and you put yourself in the middle.
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You can write me or put a smiley face, and if you do it on a slide, you can put your picture.
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Then you have one ring around you, and we call that level one or inner circle, and you put your closest friends and colleagues in.
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You should not have more than six.
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Okay, this is not my work, but it s other people s works.
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You can t have more than six very close relationships.
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Draw another ring that s level two or middle circle.
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Those are friends, but not like your closest friends.
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And then level three, outer circle are like acquaintances, but if you just start
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placing people into those circles, it causes you to think about how strong is this relationship?
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Maybe she s drifted from me, maybe this person s gotten closer.
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So then you have a visual of your relationships and just that visual alone seems to make people feel quite supported.
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Oh my gosh, I have a lot more people around me than I thought.
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I have people I can call and
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And John, when I m in a tough spot, I pull up my buddy map and it s on a Google slide and I look at it and just looking at it makes me feel less lonely and less overwhelmed.
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And then next step is you can say, oh, this person s in level two.
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my middle circle.
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I really want them in level one.
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How do I do that?
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What actions can I do?
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What behaviors can I do to bring this person closer to me?
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And then, and this was huge for the students, I couldn t believe, how do you keep people distant from you?
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Last fall, this was one of the projects in the course.
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And when I got to the point of like, how do you keep people out in your outer circle?
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Oh my gosh, the students just went crazy.
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And I didn t
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really remember how important that is, but apparently it is important to keep people at a distance.
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So through the buddy mapping system, you can visualize your relationships.
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You can understand who s closer and farther.
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And then the next step to that is there are these actions you can take, behaviors.
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Some of them are habits.
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Some of them are one-time actions that will help you have stronger relationships with the people you want and distance relationships with the people that you want to have less impact on your life.
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I love this because this whole week I ve been on a whole bunch of television programs who are wanting to talk to me about how do you handle toxic situations in the holidays.
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And this is a great way to map that system of people you need to support you, but also people that you could identify by mapping them out who might be the toxic people that you need to think about before you go to these different events.
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So different way to think about it, but I m going to use that model myself.
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Great.
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BJ, I now wanted to shift a little bit into trauma, but I wanted to look at this through post-traumatic growth because I think that s where the model could really apply.
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I wanted to look at motivation and ability in healing.
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And going back to your model, it s really a behavior is influenced by motivation, ability, and a prompt.
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How do motivation and ability interact in the context of recovering from adversity or recovering from trauma?
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And then what prompts could you use then to start taking steps?
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Well, let me answer the first question partially and you can follow on.
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So in the Fog Behavior Model, motivation and ability are compensatory factors.
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In other words, they can be traded off.
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And in the visual version, which you can t see in audio, there is a line, a curved line that I call the action line.
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Basically what that line shows is that the harder a behavior is, the more motivation you need to do the behavior.
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And if your motivation drops for that hard behavior, you will no longer do it.
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So the harder the behavior, the more motivation you need.
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In contrast, the easier
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a behavior, the less dependent it is on motivation.
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That relationship between motivation and ability had never been unpacked before, but we see it all the time in our lives, and you see it all around you.
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And so one of the things I talk about is simplicity changes behavior.
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Why?
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Because when it s really easy to do, your swings in motivation, what I call the motivation wave, our motivation goes up and down for different things all the time.
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That s normal, it s human nature, and actually it s a good thing.
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that we have shifts in motivation.
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But if you ve set yourself up to do something really hard, run for an hour a day.
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and your motivation drops or your motivation goes to another area, like I need to clean the kitchen floor, then you won t run for the hour.
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But if it s as simple as putting on your shoes, then the motivation swings will not derail that.
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And that s really what led me to develop tiny habits method.
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Now, in terms of, when I think of any challenging problem, whether it s trauma or depression or,
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discouragement or anything abstract like that.
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The way I think about it is boil it down to behaviors.
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What behaviors can I do that would help me in this domain?
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Now, I m not a clinician, I m not a subject matter expert, so this is where I m going to pause because I don t want to suggest behaviors.
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The way I actually think about it, and we teach this, is I m holding up a little magic wand right now.
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If you could wave a magic wand and get yourself to do any behavior that would lead to
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let s say less impacted trauma in your life, what would you get yourself to do?
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If you magically get, so you write down what those behaviors are.
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It s those behaviors that you can make easier to do.
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It s those behaviors you can say, how do I prompt that behavior?
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So the key here is to take whatever abstract thing you re shooting for.
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It could be something positive.
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It could be something that s very distressing like trauma.
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And then you figure out what are the behaviors that will help me
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move forward, then you can design for the behaviors using the Fog Behavior Model.
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Maybe I ll give an example from my own personal life and we can talk through it.
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As I was going through cognitive processing therapy,
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We were analyzing different stuck points that were impacting my ability to get past the trauma that I had experienced.
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And one of the core ones that kept coming up was trust issues.
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And I think that this is something a lot of people could experience.
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So how, if you were having issues with trusting others, could you develop behaviors to move yourself to more trusting situations?
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I ll contextualize it.
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So let s say I have a cousin that I feel like betrayed me and I no longer trust that cousin.
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I probably wouldn t try to tackle all of trust.
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I would say, I d find a specific person and I ll just name this person Kevin.
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I don t have a cousin named Kevin.
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And I say, okay, I don t trust Kevin.
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This is why, but I really do want to trust him again.
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If I could wave a magic wand and get myself to do any behavior that would lead to me having more trust in Kevin, what would I get myself to do?
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I would text him.
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Oh, I would call him.
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Oh, I d invite him over for the weekend.
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Oh, I d have him go to therapy with me once a week for a year and talk about this problem.
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Just list, not just one or two, but a lot.
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But you re not going to do all those.
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This is a process I call behavior design.
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So I teach industry professionals how to use behavior design for products and services, but you can also use it in your own life.
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And so let s say you have 20 different behaviors.
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All of which would help you reestablish your trust in Kevin.
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Then you go back to the list and you say, which ones are going to be the most effective?
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And you put a star by those.
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Now there s other better ways to do this, but it s wouldn t come across me just explaining.
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There s a visual sorting system.
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So the way that I think can come across is go back and identify the ones that will have impact.
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Doing a therapy once a week with me for a year will have impact.
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Chatting with me on the phone for an hour will have impact, etc.
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Don t start the ones that won t have a lot of impact.
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Then you go back and you circle the ones you can actually get yourself to do, that you can get to have happen.
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So now you get to the realistic part.
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Well, Kevin s not going to go to therapy with me for an hour a week for a year, so you don t circle that one.
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But yeah, I think I could have him talk to me on the phone.
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And yeah, I think I could get myself to text him.
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So what you re looking for in that bigger list of behavior possibilities are ones that will have impact and you can get yourself to do or you can get happen.
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And those I call golden behaviors.
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And those are the ones that you put into practice.
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That s great.
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Thank you for sharing that.
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Another area along similar lines, people are feeling adversity or trauma because they re exposed to toxic achievement culture, which is becoming a more common thing right now, especially with our younger generations, where people are
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feeling that they constantly have to achieve and they tie success to the external pressures that they feel are hitting them to get into the best school that they can get into or have to excel to feel like they re worthy of love.
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And part of this to me really gets down to authenticity.
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And how could using tiny habits challenge the conventional wisdom on achieving authenticity, especially in environments that reward superficial success?
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Yeah, it s a really hard problem and a really good question.
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I think we ve all experienced this in some form, of course.
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I look at every problem in terms of if you can match yourself with the right behavior or set of behaviors, you re on your way.
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But what is the right behavior or the right set of behaviors?
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Now, let me back up a little bit and define behavior.
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Behavior is the broad categories.
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I m drawing a big circle with my hands.
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Inside of that circle, you have a subset of behaviors we do automatically.
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We call those habits.
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So habit is a type of behavior you do automatically.
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But then there s a subset that I call one-time actions.
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There are things you do one time, like calling your cousin Kevin one time for an hour.
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That s a one-time action.
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That s not a habit.
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And then there are behaviors you do for a limited period of time, two weeks, 40 days, etc.
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And those are different types.
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All of those are behaviors.
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The key is to figure out which behaviors, whether they re habits, one-time actions, or what I call span behaviors, limited time, are the best behaviors for me to not feel so bad about not getting an A in class, etc.
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And I m going to go back to the behavior design process.
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So I can t tell you, John, what the exact habits or behaviors are there.
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I can make some guesses.
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But I think it s more powerful for people to understand there is a system where you re not guessing, you re systematically deriving.
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So first of all, get really clear.
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Let s say you re working with your teenager who s really sad that she got a C in chemistry.
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I like scaling the problem back and say, okay, if I could wave a magic wand, maybe you do it with her.
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And you could do any behavior that would help yourself feel okay with getting a C in chemistry, or however you want to phrase it.
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What would you have yourself do?
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And you probably have to help her come up with ideas.
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And then you go back to the list and say, which ones do you think would help you the most?
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Star, star, star.
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Which ones do you think you could actually get yourself to do?
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Circle, circles.
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And in this case, you might also say, wow, if we could wave a magic wand and get your grandpa to do anything that would help you feel
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Okay, with getting a C and not an A+, what would you have your grandpa do?
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Same thing.
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And what you re looking for, again, are those behaviors, one, that will have impact, whether it s by her or her grandpa or her teacher, and you can get people to do.
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Those are the ones you design for.
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Now, notice in that system, it s building off the behavior model.
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Which behaviors can you get yourself to do?
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Those are going to be the behaviors you have the ability to do and you have the motivation to do.
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If you re lacking either one of those, you can t get yourself to do it.
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So that phrase, what can you get yourself to do?
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What can we get your grandpa to do?
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It s carefully designed.
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It s a way of asking ourselves, do I have the ability and motivation to do this?
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And if you don t let it go, go down your list and look at other options.
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The last thing I wanted to cover with you was the topic of making profound transformations in life.
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And I have this concept that oftentimes we are visionary arsonist.
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We have these deep aspirations that we want to achieve, and we arson the very things that would lead to successful outcomes.
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What is your advice on some initial steps that people can take to break these destructive habits that they fall into?
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I am going to give a very specific habit.
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I m going against what I said earlier, but I feel safe suggesting this, and then I ll give a more general answer.
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The one habit that I feel very safe in suggesting to everybody is first thing in the morning when your feet touch the floor, say, it s going to be a great day, or I m going to make it a great day.
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That, I call the Maui habit, and there s reasons I call it the Maui habit in part, because I first talked about it at TEDxMaui years ago.
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It s helped so many people.
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And even if you feel like it s not going to be a great day, like there s times when it s like, oh my gosh, this is going to be a really hard day.
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I say, it s going to be a great day somehow.
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Some people do it when they first see themselves in the mirror and so on, but it s early on in your day.
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And most people, as soon as your feet touch the floor, you say, it s going to be a great day.
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you can change that up.
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Some people like, I m going to make it a great day.
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That just seems to have profound effects on what happens next and what happens next and what happens next.
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So I m feeling very comfortable prescribing that to everybody.
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Well, I m glad you brought that up because I don t do it as soon as my feet hit the ground, but within about five minutes of waking up, I m out the door on a walk with my dog.
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And the first thing
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I do when I m on the walk is I look up at the stars and the moon because I do this at 5 a.m.
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in the morning and I say today is a glorious day and I will live it with excellence.
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Then I say a couple other manifestations and I ve been doing this for years and I have to tell you it makes however you start your day completely different in the mindset that you re taking towards it.
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So I think
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I love that example.
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And there are skeptics of this, but the skeptics, when they try it, they re like, Oh my gosh, I can t believe how powerful this is.
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When you set that trajectory upward, let s say you re walking along and then you see some trash on the ground.
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If you re like sad and unhappy, you might just walk by and be mad.
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But if you re feeling more optimistic, like, Oh, I m just going to pick up this trash and throw it away.
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So you deal better with, and then the next thing that comes your way, rather than going downward,
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you are more likely to take a more positive action.
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So what you re doing is setting an upward trajectory for your day.
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So rather than spiraling downward, it can continue to lift.
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That s how I think the mechanism works.
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Let me give another answer to your previous question.
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Hey everybody, behavior change is not as hard as you think, or not as hard as you ve been led to believe if you do it in the right way.
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And there are ways to do it that are,
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pretty straightforward and pretty easy and even fun.
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I m going to give you not the details of the tiny habits method or behavior design because you can find that elsewhere, but let me give you two overriding principles for transformative changes in your life or doing anything big or small.
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Number one, help yourself do what you already want to do.
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So if you don t already want to go run the stairs in the stadium, don t pick that.
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Pick something else you want to do.
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Walking in Starlight with your dog sounds like a great thing.
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So number one, help yourself do what you already want to do.
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And that means figuring out what you already want to do, but it also means saying no or deprioritizing things you don t already want to do.
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Life s too short to make yourself do stuff you don t want to do.
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And those things never become true habits.
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Next, and there s only two, I call these maxims.
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The next one is help yourself feel successful.
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Four words, so important.
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For some people, it s really easy.
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For some people, it s really hard.
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Most people are in the middle.
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And so when you just put on your shoes, say, good for me.
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And what you re doing is you re opening up your evaluation of yourself.
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You re being nice to yourself.
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You are acknowledging your successes.
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You re feeling positive emotions.
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And the more you practice that,
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the better you get.
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And those are the two keys.
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Help yourself do what you already want to do and help yourself feel successful.
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And with those two things, those are the keys to engagement, lasting change.
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Any product or service that you use on it has done those things.
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Any habit that s become part of your life has done those things.
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So now you know what the keys are.
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And it s not that complicated.
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So shoot for those two things.
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And the second one means don t beat yourself up.
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Be nice to yourself.
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If you do something that you did not on your game plan, let it go.
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And maybe you say, hey, I learned something good for me.
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Yeah, I didn t stick to my game plan, but oh well.
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let it go, learn something, and you find that you don t let that negativity or that judgment or beating yourself up bring you down.
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And with time, you will find you can let that go really readily, and you get really tuned into all the things you can tell yourself, good for me, I did a good job.
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And that just will be transformative.
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So a key takeaway that I have BJ across our entire conversation is that I think oftentimes we try to overcomplicate behavior change.
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And what I ve heard you talk about again and again is simplicity, make it simple.
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And all these formulas that you re sharing are really simplistic ways to think about it.
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I think our biggest reason we tend to become visionary arsonists is we way over complicate the process instead of really hitting the nuts and bolts in a simplistic way.
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I m happy, but I m also humbled that I, for whatever reason, the behavior model, the pieces came together for me that led to a tiny habits method.
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It led to me coaching over 40,000 people individually over the course of eight years.
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That all along the way has given me a strong sense of responsibility that I need to share and I need to convey what has come to me.
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And so that is really important in my work.
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And John, that s why when you invited me to join you,
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Yes, because this is a way that I feel like I can help achieve what I have a responsibility to do, a life s mission to do.
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And so thank you so much for inviting me, having me on your show, asking me such great questions.
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It s what I need to be doing and you re helping me do a better job of it.
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Well, thank you so much for being here, BJ.
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It was such an honor to actually have you.
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I ve wanted to have you on the show for a couple of years now.
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I am going to end by asking you this.
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I m sure the audience is wondering,
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If they wanted to use your Tiny Habits methods, I know you have various programs.
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The least expensive one is actually buying a copy of the book, but on your website you have three or four more opportunities that people can participate.
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Can you share what some of those are?
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Yeah, I ll start with actually the least expensive.
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It s the free five-day program in Tiny Habits that I ve offered for since 2011.
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So if you go to tinyhabits.com, you can enroll in that program.
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And at this point, you re not working with me, you re working with one of the coaches I ve trained.
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And it s free, no strings attached.
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And we love offering that.
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So that s free.
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A really great investment during the week is probably 35, 40 minutes to learn a lot about habits.
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And next up is the book, Tiny Habits.
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And I would encourage people to buy the US paperback version, which is my favorite version.
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I won t go into why, but that s the one I would get.
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And then leveling up from there, it s a big step.
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There are people we train to be tiny habits coaches.
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So we thoroughly train and certify people to then use tiny habits in their coaching practice.
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more on the industry side, outside of tiny habits.
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If you want to create products and services that help people, often it s really big companies, sometimes it s startups, but in this case, it s not about habits and changing your behavior.
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It s like, how do you design a product or service that really works?
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That is now in the world of behavior design.
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And I call that behavior design boot camp.
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And that s where you learn to moderate design sessions where you are using the magic wand and you re doing the more sophisticated version of some of the steps I went through pretty quickly and that is super powerful set of methods.
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to help move forward your business projects.
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That s the most in-depth training that we offer.
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But man, you can start with the free tiny habits thing, or if you re interested just more in the behavior design, just go to behaviormodel.org.
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There s a bunch of resources there to help you understand the Fog Behavior Model and to apply it.
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Okay.
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Well, if you can get your team to send me any resources that you want in the show notes, I ll definitely include them.
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Thank you so much for coming in all the way from Hawaii to talk to me today.
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It was such an honor, as I mentioned before, and thank you for all the work that you ve done that is helping tens of thousands of people, if not more.
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Thank you so much for inviting me.
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Wow.
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That was such an honor to have BJ Fogg on this podcast.
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And I know our listeners have wanted him to come on for such a long time.
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So I was so glad that we could make this happen.
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Links to all things BJ will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.
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Please use our website links to purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show.
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All proceeds go to supporting the show.
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Videos are on YouTube at both Jon R. Miles and our Clips channel at Passionstruck Clips.
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Advertise your deals and discount codes in one convenient place at PassionStruck.com slash deals.
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You can sign up for my personal development newsletter, Live Intentionally at PassionStruck.com.
6
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You can sign up for my work-related newsletter, Work Intentionally on LinkedIn, or you can find me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles.
6
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You re about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast interview that I did with MT Connolly.
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who s an elder justice expert and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient whose work has had a profound impact on shaping policy, research, and practice in the realm of aging and elder care.
6
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In her latest book, The Measure of Our Age, Navigating Safety, Money, and Meaning Later in Life, MT delves into the complexities of aging and the challenges that come with living longer lives, something that we explore throughout that episode.
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We had this victory of longevity that from an evolutionary perspective happened in a nanosecond.
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Through the accompanying issues that go with that longevity have been both less of a priority and are coming into focus more slowly.
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I mean, that said, it s not a mystery that we re living longer lives.
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We ve known that for a long time and we haven t addressed the workforce issues, the
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caregiver support issues, the financial issues that accompany them.
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One of the big questions that I struggled with was, why haven t we approached those questions better?
6
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Because we don t just want time, we want to be able to live that time well.
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And we re really undermining our own quality of life.
6
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Remember that we rise by lifting others, so share the show with those that you love and care about.
6
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And if you found today s episode useful, then definitely share it with those that you love and care in your life.
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In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen.
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Until next time, go out there and become Passion Strike.