How I used the Tiny Habits method to set up a wake-up early habit.

The first time I came across the Tiny Habits method, I was curious to test it on waking up early.

Something I had struggled with for a long time. No amount of torture including obnoxious alarms had helped.

Tiny Habits—created by Dr. BJ Fogg, Behavior Scientist at Stanford University— is all about habit formation.

Here is how I applied the Tiny habits method to waking up early -

• Find an anchor to attach my desired behavior to.

An anchor is a behavior that we already do, like an existing habit. “Switching off the alarm clock” was the anchor I settled on.

• Identify the tiny version of my desired behavior. I chose “walk out of the room”.

Putting together the anchor and the tiny behavior led to what Dr. BJ Fogg calls a ‘recipe’.

My recipe was “After I switch off the alarm clock, I will walk out of the room”

Now all I needed was the glue to cement the recipe together.

According to BJ Fogg, Emotions create habits. And celebration is a way to generate positive emotions.

• The celebration I chose was to pump my arms high up a few times, look up and say Yesss.

The last piece was to rehearse the full recipe 6-7 times with the celebration, to wire in the behavior.

Switch off the alarm, walk out of the room, celebrate – repeat

I woke up early the next day. On my first attempt. And never struggled with waking up early ever again.