Use the Fan Swarm Technique to Successfully Form New Habits
If you want to stick with your New Year’s resolution or any new habit, don’t get attached to one particular behavior. Instead, come up with as many different behaviors as you can think of, or that Stanford social scientist B.J. Fogg calls it a “swarm of fours.”
Fogg explains the Swarm of Bs technique in his new book Tiny Habits: Small Changes That Change Everything . I have a preview copy of Tiny Habits , and I highly recommend it – I took a whole page of notes while reading the book, and have already begun to apply the advice in my life.
But since it would be unfair to give away the entire book, I’ll just quote (with permission) a section on how Swarm of Bs works:
Let’s say I am leading my friend Mark through this process and he clearly understands his great ambition. He writes in the cloud “relieve stress”.
Then I would say, “Mark, if you could wave a magic wand and force yourself to do any behavior that would reduce your stress, what would it be?”
After Mark comes up with his first behavior – getting a massage every week – I say, “Great. What else?”
We do not stop and do not deeply explore his idea. Mark continues to write, and I say, “Great. What else?”
As I guide people in this process, I like to remind them that they have magical powers at the moment. They can make any behavior themselves. Move to Maui. Invite your dog to work. Find a management job that pays 30 percent more. It’s important to explore and be insanely optimistic at this stage.
[…]
Eventually, you will have a swarm of behavior that will range from wacky to logical and unexpected. And this is good.
Once you’ve generated a swarm of behaviors, start defining behaviors that are either easily achievable or very effective . If you’re lucky, some of the behaviors on your list will be both simple and effective, which means you’ll want to implement those behaviors to kickstart the new habit you want to form.
And yes, you will want multiple behaviors as you work towards your goal of reducing stress, improving sleep, or spending more time with your family. Why? Because there will be days when even one of your simple and effective actions will not be easy to complete, but the rest of your Swarm B can pick up the slack.
Here’s an example: If you decide to reduce stress by regularly massaging, taking your dog to work, and using the snooze button to spend the first nine minutes of each morning practicing mindfulness, your habit of the snooze button will remain the same even if you are so busy that you you need to cancel the massage (and your next massage will still be on your calendar even on the day you can’t practice mindfulness because your kids woke up sick).
“I’ve been studying behavior and habits for over 20 years in my lab at Stanford,” Fogg told me. ” Tiny Habits uses the science of behavior change from my lab to study how we form habits and shows you exactly how you can develop your own simple habits to change your life quickly and easily.”
I have not yet decided what my New Year decisions for 2020 will be, but if I set any big plans or goals, I will also create a swarm of fours that can help me work towards achieving them.
And remember: even though easily achievable and highly effective behaviors are most likely to help you achieve your goals, your Swarm of Fours can also lead you into behaviors you have never thought about before. You may start thinking about the behavior you want to implement, even if it sounds difficult, cocky, or impossible.
By doing something as simple as “brainstorming all the ways to fulfill your New Year’s decision,” you can ultimately change your whole life for the better.