Whether you want to shake the compulsion to pour wine as soon as the sun goes down, get better at tackling work issues head on, start meditating every morning, or simply remember to floss more, the best way to turn good intentions into habits is to stop trying so hard.

That’s the crux of the Tiny Habits program, created by author and world-leading behavioural scientist Brian Jeffery (BJ) Fogg PhD. For Fogg, who runs the Behaviour Design Lab at Stanford University and was described by Fortune magazine as the ‘new guru you should know’, his best-selling book Tiny Habits is the culmination of 20 years of research, coaching and experience; an evolution of the ground-breaking, science-based Fogg Behaviour Method (FBM) that shook his field up in 2009.

In a nutshell, FBM stresses three critical elements are needed for real habit change: motivation (influenced by things like pleasure, pain, hope, fear, even social acceptance), ability (impacted by things like time, budget, physical effort, and lack of routine), and prompts (otherwise known as triggers). Without all three working in blissful harmony, habit change doesn’t stand a hope. Cover all bases equally, and you’ve got the foundation for big-impact change, no matter how small the action or goal.

“My early research on persuasive technology informed the design of products that millions love and use – like Instagram, which my student [at Stanford] co-founded,” says the surf-obsessed 58-year-old American, who is based between his homes in California and Maui, Hawaii. “I took everything I knew about simple behaviour change and summarised it in Tiny Habits to help others.” We spoke to Fogg right after his morning surf to ask him about his habit-swap principles, hot tips, and why we should care about changing ourselves at all.

Words: Rachel Sharp

Your book Tiny Habits in 300 pages long, but can you tell us in a nutshell what the method is and how it can help us make meaningful chances in our lives?

The Tiny Habits method is the simplest, fastest way to bring new habits into your life and it happens through three hacks. Hack one, you [simply] take any habit that you want [to adopt] and you scale it back so it's super tiny. For example, if you want to meditate for a half an hour a day, you scale it back, so it's maybe just three calming breaths. Hack two, you find where it fits naturally in your existing routine, so it's like, ‘after I feed the dog, I'll take three calming breaths’. Then the third hack is how you wire the habit in so it becomes automatic very quickly. That is a hack we call celebration, where you help yourself feel successful because it's that emotion that wires in the habit.

You talk about how simplicity lies at the heart of behavioural change. Can you tell us more about that concept and why you think we make our lives so complicated?

I love this question. We hear so often hear about people wanting to motivate behavior change but that takes you in the wrong direction. You can more reliably change your behavior by making something easier. Motivation goes up and down over time and we don't have a whole lot of control over it, but if we make something easy, then it doesn't require much motivation to do it. If you look at real products in the world we use every day, like a microwave, or a floor Swiffer, or even Instagram instead of printing actual photos – products and services that have engaged us and become habits – they're drop-dead simple.

The way you define the word habit is quite different to other experts. Can you explain why?

Habit is a messy word. When you look at Steven Covey's book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he uses the word habit like a principle or a general practice. When I talk about a habit, I mean a specific behavior, like getting up the first time my alarm goes off or eating half an avocado every morning for breakfast. A habit, the way I think about it, is a very specific behaviour you do quite automatically without thinking too hard about it. The more automatic it is, the stronger the habit. There's a best-selling book about habits right now, not mine, that propagates [the concept that repetition forms habits]. That’s basically saying, ‘this habit is drudgery but I have to endure 66 days of it so it will hardwire in’. First issue, the attitude toward the habit is negative. Second, people are likely to procrastinate because we procrastinate unpleasant things. And third, even if they do get through the 66 days, the habit is not automatically wired in.

You've said to forget everything you've heard about behaviour change. Why is that?

I'm being a little provocative there, but it is good advice because most of what our culture has told us about changing our behavior is not helpful. It sets us up to try big changes, then blame ourselves when we don’t succeed. Some of it, like the idea that repetition creates habits, sets you in the wrong direction. Many of them just set you up to fail and feel bad and blame yourself, and that doesn't help you change in the long term. I’m not summarising the past with Tiny Habits; I’m giving people an entirely new way to think about behaviour. It's a breakthrough, and it is the right answer about how behavior works.

A lot of people have difficulty giving up caffeine in the morning or giving up a glass of wine in the evening. How are habits different from addiction?

That’s a good question, but a hard one, because both of those terms are ambiguous. It’s like asking how love differs from infatuation. The way I see it is addiction is a type of habit, but it's one that is damaging you, but you're having a really hard time stopping it. Whether that's drinking, or playing video games, or gambling online. There are other people that are smarter at defining addiction than I am, but certainly addiction is a type of habit. It's done quite automatically, but then it has these other characteristics of you want to get rid of it, it's hard, and it's having some negative effect on your life, so it's a type of habit.

How would you help, for example, someone wanting to create new habitual morning routine? Perhaps one where they stopped looking at their phone first thing and instead had an hour of screen-free time?

I’ve found through my research that new morning habits are easier to create than any other time of day. In this instance, I’d use the Tiny Habits method and figure out the simplest behaviour they can adopt to open the possibility of screen-free time. Let me give an example that I'm doing right now in my own life because I think it will help. I had lots of things piling up that I wanted to read but wasn’t getting through, so I stacked them up next to a nice comfy chair and told myself that every day I’d read just one sentence. First thing every morning, right after I pick up my coffee, I sit down in the chair, and read one sentence. I can stop there if I want – good for me, I’ve done the habit, way to go. But guess what happens most mornings? I read more than a sentence. Maybe I finish one long email that I printed out and I'm done, or maybe I keep going. That's part of the hack of Tiny Habits – you just make it so tiny [it’s easy].

You’ve mentioned in the past you always start your day at 4AM. What are some of the other tiny habits you’ve integrated into your own lifestyle to be your best self?

Well, let me start with this: if I could shift my schedule and go to bed at 10pm and get up at 7am I would, but it just turns out that's what works in my household. Getting enough sleep is [critical]. I make it priority. The same with nutrition. Eating is very much a household habit and we’ve totally changed how we eat in ours: low carb, it's lots of vegetables, sometimes fish and high-quality fats like nuts and avocado oil. Each one of those is its own habit – I’d say we have 50 healthy eating habits all up – and it took us years to introduce them all. We figured out little by little what worked for us. Then, there’s exercise. Here in Maui, I surf every morning. I love it. If you can find an exercise you love, then bam, it’s easy to make it a habit.

So many of us put ourselves in a box and say, ‘I’m not an early morning person’ or ‘I’ll never be a runner’. Can our identity shift through habit change?

Let me use myself as an example. I was at a conference in Marin County, which is north of San Francisco. I'm usually in charge of every conference, but not this one. That morning, the organiser Jerry sees me and says, ‘BJ, I’m running late! Here are some flowers. Here's the vase. Will you arrange them for me? I’ve got to get started’. I didn’t know how to arrange flowers and thought to myself, ‘Maybe because he knows I'm gay, he thinks I know how to arrange flowers, but I don't!’ Still, I was happy to try, and I did it, and put them next to the lectern. Later, Jerry told [the crowd], ‘BJ Fogg arranged flowers. They're so beautiful. Please give BJ a round of applause’. Everyone clapped, and of course I was beaming. Then guess what happened? I went home and bought flower vases. I planted a flower garden. I took one of my bathrooms and converted it to a flower arrangement studio for about a year. I was like, ‘Yeah, I'm the kind of person who can arrange flowers’ from that one experience of success. I didn't have to win a floral decoration contest. It was just this little conference where people clapped for me. That is all it takes to change self-identity.

It really goes back to positive self-talk and believing in yourself. What are some steps to start this positive self-talk? Can you explain the technique of celebration that you talk about in your book?

If you told me 10 years ago, I'd be talking about emotions and affirmations, I'd say, ‘Nope, I'm a scientist, I’ll never do that’.  Well, it turns out it really, really matters. There's only one habit in the whole book that I prescribe. Every other thing is about creating any habit you want, and I give 300 examples at the back of the book, but I don't say you have to anything except this one thing. I call it the Maui Habit – as soon as you put your feet on the floor in the morning, you say: it’s going to be a great day. Just setting that intention, those seven words, worked for me years and years ago, so I started sharing it. Then I gave a TED talk which millions of people have seen. How could seven words possibly change your morning, change your day, and change your life? But it works and it's powerful. The other thing I talk about is a technique called celebration to help yourself feel successful, no matter how small the habit. If you’ve flossed after you brush your teeth – a new habit you want to form – you might look in the mirror and go, ‘Way to go BJ!’ or just smile at yourself or give a thumbs up – anything that helps you feel successful. I know some people have a hard time with this but watch what the best athletes in the world do. Immediately after a great serve or putt or great race, they celebrate. They do that naturally, but when it comes to changing tiny habits, don't just leave it to chance. Use that technique to tell your brain you did a good job, and you should do it again. That hardwires it in so it becomes automatic.