 Well, we'd love to just jump right in first to understanding behavior design and what really struck you to research this area. Well, behavior design is a phrase that my Stanford lab came up with in 2010. There was nothing called behavior design back then, at least not a system for designing behavior change. But we were innovating new models and methods around human behavior. And we're like, what should we call this? And we looked at like 12 different terms, and we settled on behavior design. And we changed the name of my research lab to the behavior design lab. And as we see it, behavior design is a set of models, a new set of models like the fog behavior model, and a set of methods. And they work together, it's a system that works together to understand and analyze behavior and to design for behaviors that you want, including habits. And what led you to get interested in behavior design in the first place? How did you end up on this path of changing your life? I think I've always been interested in it as far as I can tell. I grew up in a household and a culture that was all about self-improvement and optimization very much in a religious tradition that emphasizes that a lot. And so it just felt very, it wasn't really new for me, but there was this moment that led to tiny habits. So tiny habits is a method within behavior design, and it builds off the models of behavior design. But I was about, what would I have been, about 45. So this was 2009, 2010, where I felt like I was slipping and I just was really concerned about my sleep quality wasn't good, I was gaining weight, I was stressed out, I wasn't feeling that I was really hitting on all cylinders and I was worried that if I didn't get on top of it, it'd just be this slippery slope that I wouldn't recover. Now, everybody, that turns out not to be true. You can be 45, 35, you can be 85, and there's still things you can change. But that was my sense and it wasn't quite a panic. It was more of, DJ, you better get serious about optimizing your life now and your habits. So I started hacking my own behavior and my own habits, which then led to me a year later, about a year later, probably more like 10 months, where I'd mastered this way of creating habits and it was crazy easy to do and it was unconventional, but it totally worked. And then I started in 2011 teaching it in a free five day program that continues today and 60, 70,000 people have been through that program. You were just saying there about getting to that age and feeling that things were slipping away and where could you optimize things to maximize your happiness and probably I would guess productivity in the same as well. For myself, I just turned 47. And it was in my 20s and moving into my 30s, I started to look at how I was spending my time and was I getting an ROI for the things that I was was putting that attention towards and that had begun my quest in self development and then, okay, how do I start building those habits that will allow me to maximize my happiness and productivity? And I love that you said that because for so many people and listeners, we still haven't gotten over this myth or idea, even though the science has presented itself, that you can make these changes and technology, the way it is right now, has given us more time than ever to devote to our happiness and our productivity and learning. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the saying, you know, can't teach an old dog new tricks is not true. You absolutely can change your habits. You can optimize what you're doing. You can reinvent yourself. You can do all of those things. But that, you know, I had that concern. You know, before I, before I started hacking my own habits and as I, before I created the tiny habits method, I believed all the myths of habit formation. I believe that it was repetition that creates habits. It's not, I believe you had to write down a goal in order to achieve it. You don't have to do that. I would have believed that things like tracking, daily tracking was vital. It's not, it's optional. And in some cases it's damaging. And so it was just me exploring in the way that I explore. I tend to be kind of independent. And as a behavior scientist, I guess kind of skeptical of what the literature says, because once you're part of the system of creating it, you see that, oh my gosh, you've got to be skeptical. Even peer reviewed academic science, I'm saying in quotes, may or may not actually work in the real world. So through that, and then developing the tiny habits method and teaching it to thousands and thousands of people, I have a very clear strong point of view, not just point of view, tons of data that supports. There is a really simple way to create habits and you can do it at any age. And even these tiny changes can lead to transformation. You just opened a can of worms with all of those different myths that you said are not true. So where do we start? Any one of those you want to start with? Well, I think when many people think of habits, they think of the big things and they recognize their bad habits first. And they don't often think about their positive habits and the way that habits sort of string together. Now, thinking about tiny habits, I want to unpack that concept because many people are like, oh, you know, I want to get healthy in the new year and oh, I want to stop smoking and I want to eat right and make these massive changes. And what your research shows and your own work is that it's actually tiny changes that can lead to those big habits. And we don't need to be so hard on ourselves with setting these crazy goals. So what do you mean by tiny habits and how can we start implementing them in our daily life? So tiny habits is what I named or branded an approach where you take any habits you want and you make it super, super small. You make it so easy to do. So rather than read a chapter in a book, you read a paragraph or even a sentence. So you lower the bar rather than doing 20 push-ups. You lower the bar to two push-ups or two counter push-ups in the bathroom. You make it so easy. And then next, you find where does this behavior, this thing I want to become a habit fit into my life? Where does reading a paragraph fit into my life? Well, maybe it comes after you start the coffee maker. So you create a recipe. It's kind of a format or formula, but I decided to call a recipe that goes like this. After I start the coffee maker, I will read one paragraph in this book. And so you make it super tiny and then you design it into your existing routine. And then you reinforce it through a positive emotion, through what we call celebration. So those are three hacks. You make it super tiny. You use your existing routine to remind you. So starting the coffee maker reminds you to read a book. That's a hack. You're not using post-its. You're not using alarms. You're not leaving it a chance. And then you're hacking the speed of habit formation by purposely causing a positive emotion inside yourself to reinforce that behavior and turn it into a habit quickly. Now, many of us have been in the opposite boat where we've set a big goal for ourselves in changing a habit, fallen off the wagon. It looked at our tracker, saw we missed dates, and then facing that setback stopped putting in that effort and energy. It becomes almost too difficult for us to cross that threshold. What is it about designing it into your existing routines and habits that makes it so sticky and allows us to create these new habits? Yeah, there's two points I want to make. And I'll be brief and you can follow up on either one if you want. Number one, if you make it so easy to do, then when your motivation sags or when you are just directed or upset or sick, you can still do it. You want to be consistent with your habit. And so you make it so easy you can be consistent. Now, you always can do more than read a paragraph or do two push-ups, but you're not required to. So you set the bar low and you don't raise the bar, you keep it low. And this goes totally against how I was raised. It goes totally against what probably most people, how we think about, you know, continual improvement, where you get better and better. Yes, you probably will get better and better, but you don't raise the standard. You set the bar low and you keep it low so you can be super consistent doing it. Even on day one. If you want to read a whole chapter after you start the coffee maker, knock yourself out. Read the whole chapter, but don't raise the bar on yourself. So that goes really very much against conventional wisdom. And so by making it so easy, then your drops in your fluctuations of motivation will not derail it. If a behavior is hard to do, the habit's hard to do. I'm using those as synonyms right now. Then you have to have high levels of motivation. And that's not how we are as human beings. We don't always have high levels of motivation to do exercise or reading or cleaning the house or have you. So in tiny habits, you know, over the course of discovering how to do this, I face the reality of human nature is we don't have complete control of our motivation and by design our motivation will shift. I think that is built into us as human beings and it's actually a good thing. So that's one. And then the next idea is that's really important is that emotions create habits. So the positive emotion that you feel as you do the new behavior like reading a paragraph or doing push-ups, that rewires your brain and causes that behavior to become more automatic and an automatic behavior is a habit. And you don't leave that to chance in tiny habits. You have, there's a technique we call celebration. It's a way that you fire off a positive emotion to self-reinforce. So you deliberately self-reinforce to create the habit quickly. And that's, and both of those things, setting the bar low and keeping it low and then bam, self-reinforce through emotions. Those things are going to strike people as strange and odd. But as people read the book and as people, more and more people do this and share this, I'm hoping it just becomes, that becomes the new tradition is that's how you create habits. And obviously, when we talk about have information, everyone wants to know how long, like how long do I have to be doing these two push-ups a day for, for it to become something that's a habit in my life. What does the research show in terms of length of time with the repetition? The research shows one thing. The bloggers and the headline writers say a different thing, but they cite the research. So I'm going to give everybody the citation right now that gets referenced most. And you can look it up for yourself. And I'll tell you how it's being misinterpreted. Look up Lolly, L-A-L-L-Y 2009 and have it. You will find the research. This is what, you know, hugely bestselling book refers to, not mine, a different one. This is what a lot of bloggers refer to when they say 66 days to create a habit. Previously it was 21 days and 31 days and so on. None of that is true. It's not repetition that creates the habit. So when you go and look at Lolly's research, what Lolly was doing along with colleagues is they were doing a correlational study. And they were mapping it to a study from the 1940s, and I won't go into detail there, but they, the study was not designed to show causality. And they use nonlinear regression as their way to analyze the data, which is a method to show correlation, not causation. So there's no evidence. The paper does not say the research, the science in that paper, and I can find no other research that supports the, you know, this misleading claim that repetition creates habits. It correlates with habit strength, but it doesn't create it. And so Lolly shows that it correlates, but that doesn't mean you have to repeat it 66 days if you do the tiny habits method. And if you're good at hacking your emotion, the habit can wire in really quickly. In my five day program, the vast majority of people report that one of their habits became automatic or very automatic within five days. I've seen this since 2011. So within five days, now if you're really good, there are habits you can, you know, want it done. So an example is here in our Linai and Maui, I got a new chair and I sat in the new chair and I was like, oh my gosh, I love this chair. I feel so successful relaxing in the chair. I guess how long it took to create the habit of sitting in the new chair? Bam, it was done. One and done. There was, so the problem with believing that repetition creates habits, not only is it not true and not accurate. You know, check it out for yourself at Lolly 2009, is that then people, and you had this idea kind of in your voice when you asked the question, it's like, ah, how long do I have to endure this in order? So people are viewing behavior change is something you have to endure or it's persevere or it's negative. And that's awful to perpetuate that myth. You change best by feeling good. And this is a theme that I talk about throughout my book, every chapter, I think I talk about who changed best by feeling good, not by feeling bad. It means habit formation can be fun. It can be interesting. It's a kind of a delightful journey if you do it in the right way. It's not suffering. It doesn't require willpower. It doesn't require you, you know. And so that's a problem. And that's why in the book, I dress up a little bit, but here, you're hearing the emotion in my voice here. It's a bad thing to mislead people about habits because you're setting them back. They're procrastinating trying to change. And then if they just think it's about repetition, they're doing the wrong thing to create the habit. You're hurting people. So that's why I'm giving you the actual citation, everybody. So we can all help stop this myth and put people on the right track, including yourself and people around you to create habits quickly and easily. Well, that's a huge sigh of relief on my end. And mentioning earlier the habit trackers that everyone has become addicted to and interested in of checking their daily habits and tracking it. And you said it's counterintuitive, but that could actually be demotivating and not helpful in building habits. Why is that? Yeah. Here's the key. So from the 20 plus years of research I've done at Stanford and also the work and industry. I live in both worlds doing practical things and academic things. And then more recently, the 10 to 12 years where I'm focused on human behavior and habits, there are two just very, very important principles for a habit to form or to create engagement or to create lasting change. I'm using those as synonyms roughly. Number one is you need to help yourself do what you already want to do. If you're designing a product for other people, then it's help those people do what they already want to do. So it's not about persuading people to do stuff they don't want to do. The only thing that works in the long term is helping people do what they already want to do. Number two is help yourself feel successful. If you're designing for others, it's help people help your customers feel successful. So when it comes to something like streaks or habit tracking or accountability partners, if they help you do what you already want to do, and if it helps you feel successful, then that's good for you. But for some people, tracking on a calendar, every day where I read a chapter, it might, all those gaps, all those Xs or frowny faces for the days you missed, is that helping you feel successful for most people it's not. So in that case, that kind of tracking is a mistake because it's not helping you feel successful. So the overriding principles are the keys, the techniques and some of those myths. Sometimes they help you feel successful. Some people feel successful and sometimes they don't. So it's not those techniques. It's those overriding principles that I call maxims, maxim one, maxim two. That's what you need to do in order to create lasting change in yourself or engagement in your customers or anything that looks like long-term change always maps to those two things. And emotions are so important. Whereas if we're doing something that we want to do, we have all the motivation in the world. And then if we're putting the Xs on the calendar, now we didn't add joy and excitement, we've added guilt and we've done it to ourselves. And I love that you were talking about a frowny face on the counter. Can only imagine looking at that thing and getting upset. And then of course you're going to look at that smiley face and you're going to beat yourself up on a habit that you were motivated to try to put together in the first place. And now you're beating yourself up over it. Yeah. So you can see how these traditional sort of traditional approaches, these pieces, maybe sometimes work, but it's really not, those are not the keys to change. Yeah. And now there are a lot of parents in the audience listening who are trying not only to change their own habits, but in still good habits in children. And I'm seeing a lot of these same, these myths, you know, when it comes to parenting, rear their ugly head here. So how can parents create an environment that celebrates and creates behavioral change that they want in their kids without creating the guilt and the shame and everything else we've been discussing. Wow. I get to announce right here right now something new. It hasn't been announced in a podcast forum before. Um, we have just created a private network. It's on mighty networks, not Facebook. So it's private. You don't get exploited. Tiny habits for kids. Now, this isn't for kids to join its parents and teachers and professionals that work with kids. And we're bringing people together to share and collaborate on how we can use the tiny habits method to help kids be happier and healthier and more prepared to be adults in the real world. So let me give some brief. So that community will be just the massive experts on it. But let me give some brief advice. Let me give an example to start with. One of my friends in South Africa read the book and she called me from South Africa. She wanted to talk to me in real life and she's like, I'm so excited. I got to tell you this huge success I had for a year. She has two boys, two young boys for years. You know, they just leave their clothes on the floor and she's been nagging them, picking her clothes, picking her clothes and they're not doing it. Think how many times they picked up their clothes. Did they pick it up 66 times? Yes. Did they become a habit? No. Okay. So they've done it hundreds of times. And when reading my book and understanding the only thing that works in the long term is helping people do what they already want to do. She's like, well, what do my boys already want to do? And she realized they like to throw things. And so she's like, oh, okay. And she got this idea where she got this laundry basket and she put a basketball backboard just over it. And when her boys say, hey, whenever there's something on the floor, see if you can throw it into the basket. And from then on, she told me the clothes were always in the basket, never on the floor. And so what she did was she took, you know, this thing that she wanted them to do and made it into something that they wanted to do. And that for her was a huge breakthrough and an indicator that if she could create an environment where they want to do that thing, then she can go, now it doesn't always work out that simply. Okay. In behavior design, what you want to do, of course, is find behaviors or habits that people already want to do. There are times when we need ourselves or others to do things you don't want to do. And I call it a queen bee behavior versus an eager bee behavior. Eager bee is like, I want to do it. Queen bee is things like, you know, prick your finger, draw blood, measure your blood glucose level. And I was like, who wants to do that? So there are these situations and parents, you have a lot of these situations, you can't always just put a basketball scanner up or, you know, get kids to do homework out. But think about it. How do you align it? And there's a story in the book from Amy, that's her real name, where she aligned her child with some learning challenges and she wasn't doing her homework. She was able to find that thing that her child already wanted to do. And she helped her child understand that homework was the way she would achieve that. So I expect a lot more discussion and sharing of techniques like this in the attorney house for kids community, including what if something's truly a queen bee and my kid does not want to do it at all? How do you get that to happen? Yeah. Okay, so that's an edge case. And hopefully in most cases, you can help your child do what he or she already wants to do. And really, really important help them feel successful. That's what's going to wire in the habit. And how are some simple ways as parents so we can help them feel successful? Because I think that celebration and the positive emotion part of the hammering is so important. But many of the parenting mechanisms that I've experienced growing up that I've seen in others is less than celebratory. Well, let me give two quick examples. Yes, in Tiny Ham, in the back of the book, I give 100 ways to celebrate a habit. Okay, so there's a bunch of ways. But let me give the first of all parents, when your child took her or his first steps, what did you do at that moment? I would wager everyone listening. Okay, guess what you were doing? You were helping your child feel a positive emotion to help wire in the habit of what which led to walking. Okay, so I think in some ways, we're hardwired, it's natural for us to do that. When your child first had mom or dad or just think about that, right? You were smiling, you were cooing, you were reinforcing, continue to do that, of course. And then it can be more deliberate. This was way before the Tiny Habits method I was just 40 years ago, if not more. But my friend told me this story, and then it connected. What I want people to do is see the patterns here. What leads to ongoing change, what leads to habits is emotions, and parents can help provide it. So my friend was a really talented trumpet player in junior high, president of California. And when we went to high school, he wanted to play the saxophone in the jazz band, which is a totally different instrument, totally different. So he decided to practice six hours a day, which is super ambitious. And he told me this years later that his mom would sit in the other room at the end of every exercise or song she would go all summer long, which kept him practicing and kept him going. When he arrived at high school as this new sophomore that nobody's heard of, he auditioned for the jazz band and got first chair. And the seniors were pretty pissed off. Because like, who is this kid? He used to play the trumpet. Now he's the, so recognize the pattern here that if, and the other, yes, parents can help reinforce, celebrate. But kids are actually really good at this. And I expect in our Tiny Habits for Kids community, we will develop more and more expertise and best practices of how do you teach kids to say good for me or where to go or feel positive about any behavior like homework. So that becomes more automatic. So it becomes a habit. So just, I would just say think through your history, think through cases like, you know, the mom doing this, think through what's actually worked and changing your kid's behavior without you constantly reminding the clothes on the floor. And you're going to see these patterns. It aligns with what they already want to do in some way. And they felt successful, whether that feeling comes from themselves, the actual habit they're doing, or that comes from you. And all of us, I mean, our accountability groups are largely for this reason. It is the support and the encouragement and the celebrations. And for our live programs, we had improv groups. And one of the things for every exercise, everyone's clapping because you're going out of your way to express yourself. And that's very difficult, especially as an adult, when you're role playing or doing some of these silly exercises in order to learn about communication and just how you're going to express yourself. And so though that applause, that celebration goes a long way in allowing everyone to feel good. So I mean, we even use it in those classes. But every time that I have participated in those classes myself with our clients, I always have a like, I wish I had applause for everything that I did all day long. If I did that, we will laugh. Hey, look at you. You had eight glasses of water today. I'd be amazing. Yeah, what a great point. And I'm going to get to maybe a controversial thing, but I'm going to say accountability group is the wrong name. Accountability feels like somebody's following up and nagging me if I don't do it. It's more like a celebration group. So yes, social people around us can really help us change our behavior. And, you know, accountability partners and groups is, you know, we often call it that. But there's, yes, it can provide motivation when it sags, but it also can make things easier to do, tips and tricks. It also reminds us. So those three points are the points of my behavior model, motivation, ability and prompt. And then for habits, they can reinforce us. And even if they're not there in the moment, knowing, so let me just pick a kind of a weird example. I play musical instruments every day, even before I go surfing. I go surfing way before the sun, but then I'm playing musical instruments early, early in the morning. Let's imagine that that were a new habit for me. And I had a group of people, a celebration group or accountability group on that. So let's say I get up one morning and I'm super tired. I'm like, no, no, I'm going to play, you know, my, my flute or my piano or whatever. And I was like, oh my gosh, and then I get to tell my group about it later and I'm going to feel so good. So the anticipation of being applauded or recognized can in the moment help make the habit happen and help reinforce the habit. So I do think there's an anticipatory effect of knowing my group's going to say good for me or applaud or my parents are going to be so happy that I did this or, you know, my girlfriend or boyfriend or what have you. So social can serve a lot of functions and helping us change. And one of the most important is giving it that emotional reem the emotion that will reinforce the behavior. And the opposite doesn't work very well. Gil, Shane, nagging, it can get compliance. Compliance is you get people to do the behavior, but it does not get the habit to form. And there's a difference between compliance and habit formation. Why is positive emotion such a big component of this habit formation? What's going on in our neuroscience that creates that? Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. I did so much literally, you know, if you piled up everything I read on this 18 inches, I mean, I already knew it worked because I was, I hacked it in 2010. It's like, oh my gosh, when I say victory, or way to go, BJ or do a fist pump, the habit wires and fast. So I knew the technique work, but I was like, why does this work? So read tons of stuff on it and then called my academic friends who are experts in emotions, like, hey, here's what I'm seeing, here's what I read and it's straightforward. It's simply reinforcement. So when you do a behavior and you have a positive emotion, your brain takes note, it's called the reward prediction area, your brain goes, whoa, you opened the book to and you felt awesome. Wow, I'm going to make a note of that. And in less dramatic terms, it's the release of dopamine. So the dopamine release signals, whoa, make note of this. And then apparently actual structure of the neurons changes to make that pathway or that behavior more automatic. So it happens more directly and faster. And so there is a physiological change in the brain that I guess is activated through the dopamine. And what causes the dopamine release is emotion. And so if you're good at hacking your emotions, and that's what we teach in tiny habits, so you can on demand, call on produce an emotion and the stronger the emotion, the faster the habit forms, that's, I hope that's clear to people like if I feel sitting in the lanai chair, and it's like, oh my gosh, this is so comfortable, I feel so much better, I feel so much successful, that's dramatic. Then I never look at the old Home Depot chair again to sit in it. If it's just very small, like, oh, this is kind of nice, but I sort of like the Home Depot chair too. Then you're not going to get the rapid habit formation. So the emotional reaction has to be immediate. And the intensity really matters. The more intense, the faster the habit forms. Now, we've talked a lot about creating positive change in habits. How do we break bad habits that create a lot of positive emotion in us? So, you know, eating the wrong food, smoking cigarettes, these are all habits that a lot of us are trying to change, especially the New Year. And there's positive emotions associated with many of these behaviors in our life. So how do we break that? So you can see why they wired in, right? Good habits and bad habits form in the same way. Now, the emotion could also be a feeling of relief that can wire in a habit. Now, in the tiny habits method, I've chosen the feeling of success to be what you do with celebration. But if you could also, if you could cause yourself to feel relief or release of anxiety on demand, you could use that to wire in habits. It's just, this is not as great a way to do that. As a former smoker, I can tell you, I mean, that's the whole bit of it. You feel better for that few moments after that cigarette than the chemicals that you didn't feel cruddy again. But the cigarette is letting off, beating yourself over the head with a hammer for a brief time. And then the hammer, you start beating yourself again, and you're like, where's that cigarette? And then, and AJ is, I mean, we've been business partners for 15 years now has seen me fight with cigarettes on and off throughout, through that time. But that was always the trickiest part, because it did wire itself to relief, relief from anxiety, release from getting antsy, because that's what the chemical does. It rewires you. Yeah. Yeah. So notice it's emotion. You know, in this case, it's, so overall, it's a net gain in positive emotion that leads as to whether it's the feeling of success or a sense of relief. Now, let me go to the question though. Creating habits and stopping habits are not just opposite processes. They're really different. And the tiny habits method is primarily about creating habits, but it can be used and behavior design can be used to help people. And I don't say break habits. I talk about it as untangling. So let me start there. For most of these habits, like smoking or social media, or the snacking, most of these kinds of habits that people are talking about, it's not just one behavior. It is a set of behaviors. And you can think of that as a tangled cord or a headphone all tangled up, but we call it smoking. We call it snacking. We call it, you know, screen time or what have you. And a more helpful way to think about it, rather than break, break implies that if you put a lot of effort and energy in one moment, it's done. And that's not how it works. You know, you can probably speak to that pretty well. Instead, untangle as the word sets the expectation that it is a process. And just like untangling a rope, you don't start with the hardest. Tangle first, you start with the easiest. Then you go to the next one and the next one, and you'll get there. Even though the tangle looks impossible, you understand that if you go through the process and one by one untangle, pretty soon it will come free. So I think even the shift in that word is important. And I explain more about that in the book than I give. And I'm really, this is in the appendix. I know a lot of you don't like the appendices, but I think the appendices and tiny avids, oh my gosh, if you don't have time to read the book, look at the appendices. I have mapped out what I call the behavior change master plan, which has three phases. And it's really how do you untangle? How do you get rid of unwanted habits? Three phases. Phase one is you practice creating good habits. You don't worry about the smoking, the drinking, the, I mean, if it's life threatening, go get professional help. Stop listening to this. Stop reading my book. Go get the right help of this life threatening. But you first develop more skills of change. And I map out what those skills are. And so rather than going to this thing you struggled with for years and hacking something that's really, really hard, you pick habits you want and you practice creating habits. So your skills of change go up and your confidence goes up. Then you take that to phase two where you look at your habit and we'll just say it's smoking. You write down where all the times the day I smoke and then you pick the easiest one to untangle. And then you go to the next one. If that doesn't do the trick for you, and oftentimes that will, you can simply little by little stop by untangling these things. If that doesn't do the trick and you need some other behavior, then you go to phase three, which is swapping. Swapping is phase three. Now you'll see many people saying the only way to stop without having to swap. That is not true. We've all stopped habits by just, you just stop. But swapping is more complicated. And that's for if you need like to replace smoking with something else. So you figure out what that is. And you know, it's a flow chart. It's kind of an excruciating detail. It's a system. It's a system. And that's what I'm, that's all the behavior design is a system. Although the book is written in narrative with lots of stories, it is a system. And so in the system, swapping is the last phase if you couldn't simply untangle, you know, all the little snarls in the big knot. And then there are, because in swapping, what you're doing is you're both creating habit and stopping habit at the same time. You do not start there. Sometimes people simply creating new habits will, let's say you create some new habits, snacking habits, like find snacks you want, start snacking on those snacks as new habits. And then your identity shifts. And you think, oh, I'm the kind of person who eats healthy, or maybe I'm the kind of person who does healthy behaviors. And then the smoking may go away on its own just because now you think of yourself as a different person. So for that, another reason is just starting with create new habits that you want is absolutely the first thing to do. And last, and I'm going to say again, unless it's life-threatening, damaging you, then bam, go get, find the right person or the right program to help you get started there. I can tell you for myself, it was creating more better habits. AJ and myself, I was off and on for years, stress, whatever would trigger, make trigger certain behaviors. However, it was, we signed up for a half marathon. We had gotten a trainer and there was no way that I could be smoking and then going into how hardcore our trainer was. And then I also really enjoyed the running assignments that I got. And of course, smoking took away from the enjoyment that I was getting from running. And of course, I still run to this day, I try to squeeze in and run a good one a few miles every week, which is very, that's what for me finally allowed me to get a hold where I felt good about it. And stress wasn't so easily able to put me back in those bad habits. I love that example. That's so right on. And let me share one similar from my own life. So in California, we live in one country. We live in the middle of, you know, town, little wine town and so on. And so on my part of that, we started drinking more and more. Like we didn't even like drinking when we moved there. We had no palate, but you know, everyone around you and the context around you influences your behavior. Yeah. And so, and I didn't have a big problem with alcohol, but it was just like not really serving me. And then, you know, through this process of creating new habits, but it really came down to this new habit of surfing and Maui. So we also lived in Maui about half the time and surfing early in the early in the morning was incompatible with drinking at night. And so it was that then made it like, Oh yeah, I'm stopping. And I'm not even going to moderate. I'm just done because in the mornings when I go out, you know, so I'm not I'm there well before the sun comes up in the waves. I want to be a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And so like your quest and you're running and other things, it just made drinking a lot less attractive and certainly something that would be incompatible with what mattered more to me surprisingly. So I don't know if we can first guy remember should run and go surfing, but understand that creating new habits and having a new identity will then help you with those other habits. I love that idea of boosting your confidence with new habits that allows the identity shift to change because now you're fueling yourself with positive emotions that allow you then to realize that you know what the old habit isn't as important to me any longer instead of fighting with nature and the positive emotions that are tied to the bad habit that we're trying to undo and that visualization of a tangled or the visualization of tangling behaviors. Now, Johnny and I rail a lot on technology and how it impacts our behaviors negatively from screen time and social media and you work innovatively in the Bay Area with a lot of companies who are using technology to create positive behavioral change. What are some examples of technology improving our lives to counterbalance Johnny and I bashing on screen time and social media? Yeah, well, let me first start with the class. I teach a new class every year at Stanford. It always has to do with behavior change. And it was the one two years ago where I tell, let's take on the challenge of screen time or, you know, unproductive screen use how you understand what I'm saying. There's no great name for it. So fast forward to today. If you go to screen time.stanford.edu, there's a little genie or little avatar. We call her screen time genie. She asks you a few questions and then she points you to the best solutions to reduce your screen time. And on the back end, we have over 150 ways under 50 techniques or programs or approaches. I think it's the largest collection in the world. But rather than looking at those, we have a little front end cute little genie that directs you. So there are these different approaches. But to your question, oh my gosh, I take, you know, the photos I take on my phone of my friends are really important or an article that I'm reading that's important. I want to follow, I take a screenshot or something I might want to buy. I take a screenshot. And then I have a weekly habit of going back through my photos and processing the photos. Some of them are like, I want to share this. Some of them are to-dos. Some of them are like, no, I guess I really don't want to buy that after all. So just the camera capability is super powerful. I'm using one of my, one of my students is the CEO of something I'm pretty new to. It's called Notion. And it's a way to organize. It's like a dash. It's like, it's like Evernote, but way simpler and better. And so Notion is amazing because anything I want, I'm doing a research project and here's a paper or here's some data. I want to bring it together in one place. Then it becomes the way I gather and access everything. That's terrific. I play music off of, I guess it's not screen time, but it's using technology. So yes, there are lots of good things our mobile phones and technology does for us. There are a handful of problems. And this is, I really try to get journalists and others to be more precise here. The mobile phone is not the problem. It's certain applications on the mobile phone for certain types of people, ranging from games to social media to, I guess, gambling and stuff. So it's not, so when they say mobile phone addiction, it's like, that's, you're describing the problem in such an inaccurate way that it's not helpful in solving the problem. If they said, you know, 13 year old boys overuse of video games at the expense of their homework, now we can understand the problem or clearly to be able to address that. So yes, there are problems, but it's not the mobile phone. And it's everything on the mobile phone. It's not everything in technology. There are specific things that were designed to be, and video games go way, way back. I mean, probably even before I was born, right? So from video games to social media to, I guess those would be two of the big buckets right there. So if any of you are journalists or writing about this, write about it with precision, because if we don't talk about, or don't define the problem accurately, we're going to have a much harder time. Well, we know many engineers in the Bay Area are working to make these apps more addictive and create habits in ourselves that may be to many of us, bad habits on terms of screen time myself included, especially in COVID. I found myself on my bar seeking out information and trying to make sense of what's going on around me. And it has been a difficult battle to be present and remove the entire phone screen time situation from my life. So in those situations where we know that everyone is working to make these bad habits a part of our life, be on your phone more, be on social media more notifications, what are some simple strategies outside of going to screen time.standford.edu that our listeners can use? Yeah, I'll pass forward. I will give you two and maybe more. Number one, one recipe for a tiny habit I do in my life is after I hear my partner talking to me, I will put my phone down or I will turn, I will visibly turn my iPad away. In other words, there's a physical thing I do to indicate to my partner that I'm listening. And that's been great. And it's pretty easy. And it also makes it so I can't like multitask, right? So just, you know, after someone starts talking to me, put the technology where turn it. So you're not tempted and you're not accessing that. That's pretty straightforward. In another, this was two years ago, the same year I did the screen time, maybe this was before the screen time class at my family reunion in Idaho. And I was in charge and I was huge family. I'm third of seven kids and, you know, my siblings have had tons of kids and grandkids, it seems. We pick a theme and I pick airplane mode as our theme. And the idea was, guess what? When we all gather here to our, you know, family cabin on this island near Yellowstone, you can't be on your screen because everyone was pretty unhappy with how it had gone in previous years. Like we gather from everywhere and people sit there and they're looking at their phones on Snapchat or Instagram or what have you. And that was, that was great, actually. I thought I'd get massive rebellion, but I got buy-in even from the kids. We got great buy-in. So just what the first example was a personal habit you can create. The second, I think, is an indicator that you can, when people come to a party, when people show up, like in my class, it's like you can't use technology in my class. Sorry, put it away. Oh, I have to take notes. Take notes on paper. Sorry. You can set for a social arrangement that you're in charge of and even some maybe you're not. You can say, hey, if you come to dinner party mass, there's no phones at the table. And so I think we will get there where the etiquette of using technologies in a social setting is going to shift. And we can be leaders in establishing that. I think it's probably shocking for people to hear that in my Stanford class, at least when it wasn't on Zoom now, it's on Zoom. But before that, it was like no laptops, no iPads, no phones out. You're going to be here 100% fully present. And if not, I want you out of my class. I don't want you taking up a seat for a student that would pay full attention and contribute fully. So I think we're in the process of developing that. And so that would be two examples. One's personal and one's more social and social context. Which is we need to be leaders in that where for some of us, my 747 did not always have smartphones actually had to take notes, all of these different things. But also, when we started implementing it in our classrooms, because kids will be taking notes on their phone. And of course, and I was like, listen, I need you to be writing down notes because whatever you're entering in is not entering in your head. It's just going in your phone or in your computer and it's gone and it's lost. You're not retaining anything. And I've had so many younger clients who would always say, that's just how I do it. No, that's how you have adopted to do it. It doesn't mean that that technology is there. It's actually helping you. It's there. Some can use that technology better than others. But we still have to take in consideration where we're at as human beings and how we learn. And AJ and I talk about this all the time that everybody learns differently and you have to be respectful and honest with how you learn and not try to compensate just because way you're going to take notes on your computer or on your phone is much easier. It may be much easier. It doesn't mean you're retaining it. Well, I think we are in our adolescent stage of these kinds of technologies, meaning we have access to them. We think we have power to use them, but man, we're awkward and we're making mistakes and we're gangly. I think we're figuring it out. And I'm an optimist that we will figure out how to let technology support us in becoming, you know, happier and healthier. And that will understand the things that the things that the ways technology does exactly the opposite. It makes us less happy and less healthy. I think there's more awareness around these issues than ever before and how distracted and addicted we've become to some of these technologies that are hindering us from being present and having these great relationships and being there for our kids and being there for that class to soak up the information. As we enter the new year, we love giving a challenge to our audience. What's a tiny habit that you would encourage everyone in the audience to take on in the new year to change their morning, change their evening, change their life? How about if I give three and I'll leave fast. First thing in the morning, after your feet touch the floor, say it's going to be a great day. Now you can whisper it, you can think it vividly in your head, but you can say it out loud, say it out loud, say it's going to be a great day. Thousands of people I call it the Maui habit. You have a talk at TEDxMaui on this and named it the Maui habit. And it just starts your day in a great way. So that's one. Number two, find a physical activity I do push-ups to do after you pee. So when you're at home, not when I don't do it at Stanford and I don't do it in hotels or at conferences, but after IP, I do two push-ups. Now you can do counter push-ups, you can do squats, you might even stretch, but there's something about the physical, you know, using push-ups or squats that is a gateway. Somebody will say, oh my gosh, I only intend to do this and now not only am I doing 10 to 12 push-ups, but I started doing other exercises that I couldn't get myself to do before. So bam, that. Next, find a way, a moment in your day, to call your parents. And I'm saying this out of experience. Since the pandemic started and my parents being more isolated, that's like, oh, I got to be in a better touch. And so I found that the moment I get in my little Honda element with my board on top, and once I pull onto the road, so after I pull on the road, I will call my parents. And that, I'm suggesting that because doing that on a daily basis has been really a game changer for our relationship. I didn't expect this, but I'm understanding them better. They really look forward to my calls, we're much closer. And it doesn't have to be a long conversation. And it doesn't even have to be interesting. I mean, I'm like, oh, I'm still wearing my wetsuit because it's cold today. And I wore my wetsuit, which I normally don't do. But they love it. So I would say those three, you know, Maui habit, push-ups or squats, and then connect with your parents or if your parents aren't around or just not there with somebody. I love that carving out time for those relationships that matter. Thank you so much for joining us. We love wrapping every episode with a final question of our guest. What do you think is your X factor that has allowed you to reach success in your life? What sets you apart? Oh, other than the people around me and my teachers, who have been massively wonderful, including a Sunday school teacher, she's acknowledged in my book when I was eight. I just think I am endlessly curious. And I never run out of questions. Now, to my teachers, that can be infuriating. But I'm curious and I'm truly curious. And I always have questions. And I think as a researcher, that's a great thing. As someone who teaches a new class every year at Stanford, that's a great thing. It's there's also a downside to that endless curiosity. But I think that's what's helped me question the tradition. Like, does it really work that way? That doesn't feel right to me. So maybe it was is the ability and the proclamination. Thank you so much for stopping by and having fun with me and Johnny. We're excited to work on our Maui habit. Thanks, you guys. I appreciate you helping me share this.