The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 23 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
BJ Fogg: Repetition does not create habits, it only correlates with habit strength
“There has been a lot of stuff out in the world that says repetition creates habits, but that's actually not how it works. If you look at the study that people cite most when they're making that claim, it's a 2009, 2010 study. It was, you will see that that stu…”
BJ Fogg: Most people form automatic habits within five days using positive emotion
“In my data, I've seen for years that the vast majority of people report that a habit has become automatic or very automatic within five days, and that's a function of their emotion as they do that new behavior.”
Fogg: Silicon Valley culture was dehumanizing, transactional, and driven by greed
“I'd moved out of Silicon Valley in about 2001 because I just felt like it was dehumanizing me. And so, even though I still had teaching and research at Stanford, we kind of escaped about two hours north where I, where we moved to live next to a river, and the …”
Fogg: Quantified Self tracking data fails to create lasting change
“I couldn't get super enthusiastic about the overall idea of quantified self because I knew that just giving somebody data about their sleep or about how many calories or about whatever wasn't going to add up to be a thing that would create lasting change in mo…”
Fogg: Behavior requires motivation, ability, and a prompt converging simultaneously
“Behavior happens when three things come together at the same moment. Motivation, ability, and prompt.”
Fogg: Self-efficacy and confidence generalize across completely different domains
“So I do think that sense of being able to take action and get good results can generalize across domains, even though self-efficacy has mostly been conceptualized as domain-specific.”
Fogg: The feeling of success wires in habits and sustains change
“The feeling of success is what wires in the habit,
And it keeps people going.”
Fogg: Success in tiny behaviors triggers a full personal identity shift
“When people feel successful, even on tiny things, it changes how they see themselves.
In other words, you can get an identity shift from even very tiny changes you feel successful around.”
Fogg: Well-told stories are the only persuasion tactic humans lack defenses against
“So a well-told story in some ways is the only persuasion tactic for which we don't have good defenses for.”
Fogg: Breaking bad habits requires fundamentally different processes than creating new ones
“Creating habits is pretty straightforward and easy, and that's what the tiny habits method is all about. It's for creating habits, stopping unwanted behaviors, or what people call breaking bad habits. It can be much, much harder, and it's not the same thing. T…”
Fogg: Swapping an unwanted habit is a last resort, not a mandatory first step
“Many people say you must swap it. That's not true. In this comprehensive system, that is the last phase.”
Fogg: Information alone does not reliably drive sustained behavior change
“That information alone does not reliably lead to sustained behavior change. Now information can be part of the puzzle, but that alone doesn't seem to do the trick for most people. So seeing statistics, seeing data won't necessarily change somebody's behavior i…”
BJ Fogg: Behavior is made easier only through training, environmental redesign, or shrinking actions
“You can change the person to make it easier to do by skilling them up. You can change the environment by giving people tools and resources or yourself tools and resources. And in the third approach, if you need this, you take it and you just Scale the behavior…”
BJ Fogg: Changing perception of surroundings changes one's behavioral environment
“That's one way we can change the environment is change our perception of it.”
Fogg: Prompts for hard tasks must occur during peak motivation waves
“And if you need people to do hard things, you've got to prompt them
When there's a motivation wave, not after the wave has subsided.”
Fogg: Motivation and ability compensate for each other to drive action
“It's a compensatory relationship, so they can compensate for each other. So if motivation is Low for any given behavior, then the ability must be high. In other words, it has to be easy to do. Otherwise, you won't do it. If motivation is low, and it's hard, yo…”
Fogg: Sustaining high motivation is hard; adjust task difficulty instead
“And that is really exciting because it's quite hard for anybody to design a way to increase your motivation and sustain it, keep it at super high levels over time. That's very hard to do. So because that's a reality, instead you can say, well, if motivation's …”
Fogg: Behavior design's first maxim is helping people do what they already want
“Maxim number one is help people do what they already want to do.”
Fogg: Stories are a technology for transmitting cause-and-effect relationships across generations
“Stories are a technology for transmitting cause and effect relationships within communities and through the generations.”
Fogg: A Refrigerator's Behavioral Job Is Facilitating Healthy Eating
“Oh my gosh, the job of the fridge isn't to keep things cold. No, the job of the fridge is to help us eat on our game plan.”
Fogg: Good and bad habits form through identical neurological mechanisms
“The way they form good habits, what we call good habits and bad habits, they all form in the same way. Our brain The way that brain gets rewired, it's not like here are the good habits and bad habits. It's just think behaviors become automatic, and then it's o…”
Fogg: 20% of Tiny Habits participants take on hard behaviors in five days
“And about 20% of the people, week after week, would report that within the five-day program they would step up and do a hard behavior.”
Fogg: Social behavior change relies on destination or journey groups
“Like if you want to change your behavior, you can join a destination group or a journey group. A destination group is a community that is already doing what you aspire to do. So let's say you aspire to work out. Oh, let's pick something easier. You aspire to s…”