HEY HABIT TRACKER BLOG
By Mary Jones | March 19, 2026 | 4 min read
Tags: tiny habits, habit stacking, atomic habits, BJ Fogg, James Clear
Part 3 of 4 in our Build Habits That Stick series
In Part 1 I told you how a crush accidentally became a 40-year habit. In Part 2 we unpacked the Habit Loop and why “just stop doing that” is terrible advice. Now let’s get practical.
Start So Small It’s Almost Embarrassing
This is where I wish someone had sat me down at 24 and said: “You don’t have to run five miles on day one, you lunatic.”
BJ Fogg is a behavioral scientist at Stanford who’s spent over 20 years studying why people fail at changing their behavior. His Tiny Habits method boils down to something that sounds too simple to work: make the habit so small you literally can’t say no.
His Behavior Model says behavior happens when three things line up: Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt. And his argument—which I think is genius—is to stop trying to boost motivation (it’s fickle, it comes and goes, it’s basically a fair-weather friend) and instead make the behavior so ridiculously easy that you barely need motivation at all.
What does “ridiculously easy” look like?
• Want to meditate? Do one breath. Literally one.
• Want to read more? Open the book. That’s the habit. If you read a page, great. If not, you still did the thing.
• Want to exercise? Put on the shoes. You don’t even have to leave the house.
• Want to journal? Write one sentence. Even if it’s “Today was weird.”
I know what you’re thinking. “One breath? That’s not going to change my life.” And you’re right—one breath won’t. But one breath today, followed by one breath tomorrow, followed by “eh, might as well do three” on day four—that’s how it builds. Fogg’s research shows that emotions, not repetition, are what wire habits in. Feeling good about a tiny win matters more than grinding through a big one.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Shrink the habit until it’s almost laughable. Then celebrate doing it. Your brain doesn’t care about the size of the action—it cares about how it made you feel.
Piggyback on What You Already Do
James Clear’s Atomic Habits is one of those books that sells a zillion copies and you think, “it can’t be that good,” and then you read it and go, “okay fine, it’s that good.” One of his best ideas is habit stacking—attaching a new behavior to something you already do on autopilot.
“After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”
The logic is neuroscience-y but makes total sense: your existing habits have strong neural pathways already built. Instead of constructing new wiring from scratch, you’re basically running new cable along existing conduit. Clear calls it leveraging synaptic pruning—your brain strengthens the connections it uses and prunes the ones it doesn’t.
Some examples that actually work:
• “After I pour my coffee, I’ll write down one thing I’m grateful for.”
• “After I sit down at my desk, I’ll open my habit tracker and log yesterday.”
• “After I brush my teeth, I’ll read one page.”
Clear also talks about implementation intentions—being really specific about when and where. Not “I’ll exercise more” (which means nothing) but “I’ll walk for 10 minutes at noon in the parking lot.” Research from Stanford shows people who spell it out like this are significantly more likely to actually follow through. Specificity is boring but it works.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Stack new habits on top of existing ones. “After [thing I already do], I will [new thing].” Let your brain’s existing wiring do most of the work.
Bribe Yourself (Strategically)
If habit stacking is about when, temptation bundling is about why bother. The concept comes from Katy Milkman, a behavioral scientist at Wharton, and it's beautifully simple: pair something you dread with something you love.
In her study, Milkman gave participants access to addictive audiobooks — but only at the gym. The result? Gym attendance jumped significantly. The audiobook was the bribe. The workout was the price of admission.
When I first read this study, I immediately thought of a friend of mine who had to drive 45 minutes for chemotherapy every month. She told me it sucked — but at least she got to stop at this fabulous coffee shop nearby with French pastries she adored. She'd turned one of the worst experiences imaginable into something she could almost look forward to. She wasn't thinking about behavioral science. She was just surviving. But that's temptation bundling in its purest form — and probably its most powerful.
Some everyday examples:
- Hate running? Only listen to your favorite podcast while you run.
- Dread folding laundry? That's your guilt-free reality TV time.
- Can't stand meal prepping? Queue up the playlist that makes you feel like a chef in a movie montage.
The trick is making the pairing exclusive. If you listen to that podcast everywhere, it stops being a reward. It has to be only available during the dreaded habit. That's what creates the pull.
Where habit stacking says "after I do X, I'll do Y," temptation bundling says "I only get to enjoy X while I'm doing Y." One is about sequence. The other is about motivation. Use both.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Pair a habit you're avoiding with a treat you can't resist — but only let yourself have the treat during the habit. Your brain will start looking forward to the thing it used to dread.
Next week in Part 4: What I’ve learned after 40 years—and the six-step cheat sheet for tomorrow morning.
Sources
- Fogg, B.J. (2020). Tiny Habits. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. tinyhabits.com
- Fogg, B.J. (2009). Behavior Model for Persuasive Design. behaviormodel.org
- Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits. Avery. jamesclear.com
- Stanford GSB. “Building Habits: The Key to Lasting Behavior Change.” gsb.stanford.edu
- Milkman, K.L., Minson, J.A., & Volpp, K.G.M. (2014). "Holding the Hunger Games Hostage at the Gym: An Evaluation of Temptation Bundling." Management Science, 60(2), 283–299. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1784
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