Yzabel / December 31, 2019

Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by B.J. Fogg
My rating: ★★★☆☆

Blurb:

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I can’t decide if this book taught me a lot, or if, all in all, it was all logical stuff and I already knew it without knowing it. I’d say, it’s both.

In hindsight, it makes a lot of sense and is definitely logical: of course starting with baby steps / tiny habits is much more manageable than gunning for some huge change (hello, New Year Resolutions that 99.5% of people never uphold past the first week, and are basically one huge permission we give ourselves to fail, which is why I’ve stopped making them for years). On the other hand, it all *sounds* easy, but if it *was* so easy, we’d all be doing it naturally in a snap of fingers. And it’s absolutely obvious by now that a lot of people, myself included, are pretty much rubbish at “naturally” starting this kind of thing.

All in all, for me, the book wasn’t ground-breaking in itself—the basic theory was more of a “duh!” moment than anything else. However, the author gives pointers and exercises that seem in general useful, and give ideas to start if the whole thing appears really overwhelming. It’s possibly even more useful for people who tend to approach things with an all-or-nothing mentality, since going “all” with a tiny habit (ex: flossing one tooth) is easy to achieve, leads without too much trouble to doing the rest while we’re at it, but sill consists in a success. (Although, for anyone who’s remotely like me, doing more than you planned for also easily leads to unconsciously viewing the “more” as the only possible way of succeeding, which defeats the purpose. But that’s not what the book tells us to do anyway—that’s a personal pitfall.)