Just finished watching this excellent BJ Fogg presentation on habit design.

I love his description of using “tiny habits” and then stacking them into long term behaviors. He uses the example of “after I brush my teeth, I will floss ONE tooth” to show how you can form a tiny habit and then grow it. I’ve just decided on “every time I check Facebook, I stand up and stretch for 5 seconds.”

The tooth thing led me to an odd thought. Like many kids, I had braces when I was in middle school. Afterwards I basically never wore my retainer and the subsequent tectonic shifting has left a small gap in my teeth just the right size to consistently get an irritating amount of food stuck in it. As such Im a very diligent glosser and always have it with me even when traveling. I wonder if there’s also a way to create “tiny bothers” that force a habit. I guess a good example be the withings scale that can be set up to auto-tweet your weight each time you use it.

I’m experimenting with this new habit design app Lift which in itself must be a habit before you can use it to create more habits. no idea if it will be useful.