When you want to form a new habit or learn something new, you may think the best way to start is to dedicate as much time and energy as you can to it. If you want a learn new language, for example, you may think that spending a couple of hours every day doing vocab drills will help you learn faster. Well, according to behavioral scientist BJ Fogg, you might be taking the wrong approach. Instead, it’s better to focus on what Fogg calls tiny habits: small, easy to accomplish actions that keep you engaged without overwhelming you.
Sure, if you study Spanish for three hours a day you may learn at a fast rate. The problem, however, is that too often we try to do too much too soon. By setting unrealistic goals or expecting too much from ourselves, new habits can be hard to maintain. Instead, if you only spend five minutes a day, chances are you will be able to sustain and grow the habit over a longer period of time and have a better chance of retaining what you’ve learned.
The Keys To Success
According to Fogg, in order to create lasting behavior change, three elements come together at the same moment need to come together:
- Motivation: You have to want to make a change.
- Ability: The new habit has to be achievable.
- Prompt: There needs to be some notification or reminder that tells you its time to do the behavior.
Creating and sustaining new habits requires all three of these elements to be successful — with any element missing, your new behavior won’t occur. For example, if you want go for a 5 mile run, you’re going to need a lot of motivation to do it. But if you set smaller, easy to achieve goals — like running for 5 minutes — you only need a little motivation to do the new behavior.
The other key factor is to help yourself feel successful. Spending 2 minutes reviewing Spanish tenses may not feel like a big accomplishment, but by celebrating every little win you will reinforce your motivation to continue.
The Future of Cyber Awareness
Tiny habits can not only help people learn a new language or start flossing, it can also play an important role in forming safer, more conscious online practices. Our cyber awareness training program, The PhishMarket™, is designed with these exact principles in mind. The program combines two elements, both based on Fogg’s model:
Phish Simulations: Using phish simulations help expose people to different forms of phish attacks, and motivates them to be more alert when looking at their inbox. While most programs scold or punish users who fall for a phish, The PhishMarket™ instead uses positive reinforcement to encourage users to keep going.
Micro-Lessons: Unlike most training programs that just send you informative videos and infographics, The PhishMarket™ exclusively uses short, interactive lessons that engage users and encourage them to participate and discuss what they’ve learned. By keeping the lessons short, users only need to dedicate a few minutes a day and aren’t inundated with a barrage of information all at once.
Creating smart and safe online habits is vital to our world today. But traditional training techniques are too often boring, inconsistent, and end up feeling like a chore. Instead, we believe the best way to help people make meaningful changes in their online behavior is to focus on the small things. By leveraging Fogg’s tiny habits model, The PhishMarket™ has successfully helped users feel more confident in their ability to spot phish and disinformation.