Transcript for

Episode 91:

How to Make Creating a (Spinning) Habit Easier

Habits take behaviors and put them on auto-repeat. What if there was a way to trick your brain into forming a spinning habit easily and fast? I'm going to give you an easy process to experiment with in this episode.

Hello there darling Sheepspotter! Welcome to episode 91 of The Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love.

So, as you know, this month in The Guild we're working on spinning habits. We do this with a challenge to members to spin five minutes per day every day during the month of February. Now, we try in The Guild not just to create the challenges, but also to support members in actually doing the challenges. So in February I turn up live in the group every weekday at 5 p.m. and either I teach a really quick lesson on habit formation or we just spin together for five minutes. Then we celebrate together and go on with our day.

I came up with this challenge after reading BJ Fogg's book Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything (link in show notes). Fogg is the head of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford. He's also a really good writer, and the book is clear and engaging. I recommend it highly.

Today I'm going to share some of Fogg's advice about forming habits. It's a simple framework, but it's really powerful and I've found it really helpful. I'll talk about the framework and then walk through it using an spinning-related habit I've been working on.

B=MAP

First, Fogg posits that any behavior consists of three elements that converge at the same time: we need to be prompted to do the behavior (prompt) when we are able to do it (ability) and are also motivated to do it (motivation).

He abbreviates this as B=Motivation + Ability + Prompt, or B=MAP.

He expresses how this works with a simple graph, with ability on the x axis and motivation on the y. (I'll put a version of this image in the show notes as well). The ability axis starts on the left with things that are difficult to do and moves to the right, where we'd locate things that are easy to do. The motivation axis moves from low motivation to high motivation. So the easier something is, the less motivation you need to actually do it and vice versa: the more difficult something is, the more motivation you need.

Fogg believes that we can actually design our behavior by experimenting with our motivation, ability, and prompt. Of these, prompt and ability are much easier to manipulate than motivation, which is the most complicated and difficult to sustain. So the keys to doing something are creating a prompt (no prompt, no behavior) and, at least at first, making it as easy to do as possible.

So you can see that in our 29-day spinning challenge, I'm providing the prompt by going live, and I've made accomplishing the task as easy as possible. Pretty much everyone can carve out five minutes a day to spin.

But what about the days I don't go live, like the weekend? Well, I encourage them to find another prompt. Fogg says that the best prompts are actions that are already part of our routine. He calls these actions "anchors," and any of them can serve as a prompt. So, if you always make yourself coffee with milk in the morning, and the last step of your coffee-making routine is putting the milk away, you could use putting the milk into the refrigerator as the prompt for five minutes of spinning. If your coffee takes five minutes to brew, you could take the last step of that process as your anchor and spin while the coffee maker is doing its thing.

A key here is managing your self-talk about the smallness of the habit. If you've decided to floss one tooth after brushing your teeth and you're hoping to build up to eventually flossing all your teeth, you must, must, must let that one tooth be enough.

This is something I have struggled with. About four years ago I realized that even a very small amount of exercise is really useful for my mental health. And honestly, just walking around the block will help. So I started walking around the block every day. And gradually, my daily walks got longer, until I was walking a couple of kilometers every day. And then I started feeling like walking around the block wasn't enough, even though I know that walking around to block is enough to make a difference. This is a situation in which you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Even after you've been successfully flossing all your teeth for months, if you're feeling rushed, just floss one tooth! This will keep your habit alive and well. Our mantra during February in The Guild is "five minutes is enough." Let whatever you've decided on for your tiny habit be enough.

Once you've got your prompt and your tiny habit, there's one more thing that you must do, and that is to celebrate that you've done the habit. This is not optional. Do not skip this. One of Fogg's maxims is "People change by feeling good, not bad." So the celebration is crucial because it connects your tiny habit to feeling good.

Let me give you a spinning example of a habit I'm currently working on. On my treadle wheels that have stretchy drive bands, I often forget to take my brake band off the whorl when I finish spinning. This isn't the worst thing in the world, but it does speed up the rate at which the drive band stretches out and eventually you get to the point where your drive band isn't as efficient when you're working with small whorls and high drive ratios.

When I'm ending a spinning session, the very last thing that I do is to wind the end of my singles around the scotch tension knob. So that's my anchor: winding my singles around the scotch tension knob. My tiny habit is taking the drive band off the whorl. When I remember to do this, I have a silly little dance that I do to celebrate. But your celebration could be anything—something you say, either out loud or to yourself, a gesture, a movement, whatever. The important thing is that you celebrate in a small way and create the association in your mind between doing your tiny habit and feeling good.

There's a post in The Flock, Sheepspot’s free online community for inquisitive hand spinners, where you can comment on and discuss this episode if you'd like, and as always I would love to hear what you think about this episode. I'll link to that post in the show notes, which you can find at sheepspot.com/podcast/episode91.

That's it for me this time. I'll be back next time with another episode. I'm excited about this one; it's going to be a little different! While you're waiting for the next episode, spin something (even for five minutes). You know it will do you good.