Original link: https://sund.site/posts/2022/fogg-behavior-model/
My struggle with insomnia
I often suffer from insomnia. I have also tried various methods: taking a hot bath before going to bed, turning off the mobile phone regularly, running every day… I found that these methods have worked more or less, but in the end, it is not difficult to stick to it, or the effect is getting worse and worse. I recently read a book, The Fogg Model of Behavior, which made me re-examine my struggle with insomnia over the past few years, and to understand the habit from another perspective, how it is activated with enthusiasm, and how it is used after setbacks. was abandoned. I think “Fogg’s Model of Behavior” is a book that talks about the essence of the problem. Its reasoning is very concise, and it can even be summed up in a formula. But it is very instructive, and according to the method in the book, I have greatly improved the quality of sleep in the past month. I hope that after reading this article, you are also interested in reading this book.
In the following, for the convenience of understanding, I divide the content of the book into two parts: theory and practice.
Theoretical part: Human behavior can be designed
In a world dominated by business, one thing is obvious: human behavior can be engineered. How to make customers stay in front of advertisements to improve sales performance; how game companies guide players to indulge in games; how Douyin kills people’s spare time with short videos… These kinds of business behaviors have been carefully designed. Can these irresistible behavioral designs, in turn, allow us to develop good habits? The answer is yes.
Professor Fogg gave a formula, which represents the three elements of behavior (Behavior): motivation ( Motivation ), ability (A bility ), prompting ( Prompt ).
B = MAP
The stronger the motivation M, the more likely the behavior will occur; the stronger the person’s ability to achieve the behavior A, the more likely the behavior will occur . That is, behavior is produced by the combined effect of motivation and ability. In addition, behavior that satisfies the first two conditions does not necessarily occur, it needs a trigger switch, namely prompt P.
This graph shows a curve, and when the (motivation-ability) coordinate falls above the curve, if a cue is given to the behavior, the behavior will happen immediately.
For example, when a mother’s child is attacked by a bear, the mother will go to save the child. At this time, the child being attacked is a reminder that although the mother is weak, her motivation to protect the child is extremely strong, so that the mother’s coordinates in the above picture fall above the curve. In this way, the behavior of saving children comes naturally.
There are three criteria for golden behavior:
- This behavior can make your wish come true (influence)
- you want to do this behavior (motivation)
- you can do it (ability)
It can also explain the creation and extinction of habits. When a person realizes that he is fat (hint) and he decides to start losing weight, his motivation is very strong, at this time although his ability (to lose weight) is weak, his behavior to lose weight happens because of strong motivation. But over time, motivation waned, allowing his coordinates to slip below the curve. At this point the weight loss behavior may end. This is how most people go from picking up a habit to dropping it. Here comes another important theory.
Human motivation is unstable, and it is very difficult to subjectively change motivation .
You can’t solve problems directly from motivation. – Fogg
Because of the uncertainty of the human state of mind, Fogg suggests that it is best to follow cue-ability-motivation priorities to create (or break) habits.
The first is to trigger behavior through conditions such as time, space, and mood. Fogg calls it the anchor. Anchors must be explicit, unambiguous final actions . When this anchor point appears, it automatically prompts you to complete what you want to do.
The second is to lower the ability threshold. Such as learning skills, purchasing tools, reducing the scale of problems, etc., so that capabilities meet the conditions of behavioral triggers . The way to reduce the size of the problem is what we usually call micro habits . If you want to exercise every day, you should start with a push-up every day and increase the amount of exercise little by little. This behavior must be easy to do even if it is cloudy and rainy, you are in a bad mood, and you are tired from work.
In addition, repetition will also reduce the difficulty of the behavior. The author encourages everyone to use high-frequency small successes to form habits.
The last and hardest part is getting the motivation right, the motivation has to come from your real will, you can’t get it from the internet or from successful people . A motive that matches our behavior must actually benefit us.
Practical part: Mapping, redesigning our everyday
Now that the theory is over, it’s finally time to put it into practice.
The first step is to identify behaviors around habits
In the middle of a whiteboard or sheet of paper, write down the habit you want to develop. In my own case, I like to maintain a regular workout routine.
Then brainstorming. Using divergent thinking, write down all the factors that influence this habit. What Fogg described in the original book is to find out the behavior that affects the habit, but it is difficult to write the behavior directly, so I list all the factors first, and then deduce the behavior bit by bit.
For example, one of the factors that affects the frequency of my fitness is that it is cold and easy to catch a cold. I started from this point to analyze the reason: on the one hand, the gym has many people, which leads to a long wait for changing clothes and using equipment. On the other hand, the clothes do not keep warm enough. So in the end I get two behaviors that affect fitness:
- Go to the gym at a time when there are relatively few people
- Buy sportswear that is light but warm (this is a one-time task)
In the same way, fatigue at work is also an influencing factor, and I got two behaviors:
- Split different training styles into different days of the week to avoid over-exercising
- Use the days when working from home to get off work and go to the gym
Please combine your own characteristics to find all the influencing factors and map them to multiple behaviors. Note that some behaviors depend on developing other habits . For example, getting enough sleep the day before exercising depends on good sleep habits. The author suggests that you can start with the three smallest habits at the beginning, and it is easy to form positive feedback. In the process of training this method, I found that usually bad habits are produced by the chain of other bad habits, so starting from the smallest habit, it will gradually produce the Matthew effect.
The second step is to establish the [Influence-Easy] coordinate axis
Put all the behaviors you just split out in the coordinate axis of the following figure. Behaviors that are easier to do (stronger ability to execute) and more impactful to you (stronger motivation) are closer to the upper right corner.
Often one-time actions are easiest to perform (like buying sportswear); those that require multiple steps (like recording your fitness status with your phone) are harder to perform.
In the end, I picked three actions that had the greatest impact on me and were the easiest to perform: shopping for fitness equipment, splitting different workouts into different times, and going to the gym while working from home.
In the same way, I also developed strategies for developing sleep habits.
After more than a month of practice, I have gradually become better. After insisting on it for a while, I also bought a mobile app for recording fitness to track the training effect (although I did not hope to keep a long-term record, but it gave me a very good positive incentive).
summary
- The Fogg Model of Behavior points out the formula for human behavior, that is, behavior = motivation · ability · cue.
- Starting from the three elements, develop the smallest micro-habits, so as to quickly get positive incentives, which can help us quickly build good habits.
- When developing a habit-building plan, start by breaking down the habit into specific, executable behaviors. Then choose the easiest and most impactful execution according to the priority of the behavior.
- Certain behaviors depend on other habits, and dismantle them step by step. At the same time, develop three tiny habits and gradually change the state of life.
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