Hi all and welcome to another edition of Musician’s Maintenance Weekly, where this week it’s my job to give you a few tools to make taking care of your body a consistent habit rather than something you think about but don’t actually do.
That’s right, we’re taking a break from exercise and injury. Instead we are going to look at behavior change, because it doesn’t really matter if I give you a 10 exercise injury prevention program if you don’t actually do the exercises.
Similar to practicing your instrument, the hard part isn’t knowing what to do. The hard part is doing it consistently enough for long enough to make a lasting change.
With that in mind, let’s look at some models that can help you with the hard part.
1. B=MAP: The behavior equation
According to Stanford professor and behavior design guru BJ Fogg, behavior is as simple as the equation B=MAP. In other words for a behavior (B) to happen, three things need to occur at the same time…
- Motivation (M): Motivation can be high or low.
- Ability (A): Ability can be high or low. Or the behavior can be easy or hard.
- Prompt (P): We need to remember to do it.
If any of these ingredients are missing, the behavior won’t happen. Also, there is a trade-off between motivation and ability. If you are highly motivated, you can do hard things. If motivation is low, then hard things tend to not happen. And here lies the problem with maintaining your body.
Motivation to maintain your body is often low, but exercising is hard. So there is a mismatch which makes the behavior less likely to happen. Fortunately, there are many possible solutions. The solution that Fogg thinks is best isn’t to get more motivated or try to increase ability. It’s to start small and make the task easier. He’s even written a book about it called Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything (Affiliate).
Fogg argues that the simplicity of a behavior is limited by one of five factors: money, time, physical effort, mental effort, and routine. With that in mind, here are some ways the 10 exercise injury prevention program could be made simpler.
Money: Not relevant here. The program is free (although sometimes spending money on something can increase your motivation since it’s a waste if you don’t use what you paid for).
Time: Don’t do the whole program each day. Start with just 1 exercise. Or if you want to start super small, just pull up the program and look at it.
Physical effort: Don’t start with the exercises that are hard for you. Don’t do all the exercises. Stop when you start to get tired.
Mental effort: This is more challenging since there is increased mental effort until you learn the movements. I could potentially make it into a video or audio follow-along program which would mean you don’t have to think about tempo, counting, or what’s next.
Routine: Pick a time each day when you have the time, energy and the program in front of you. Set a reminder on your phone, or link it to something that is already a routine.
Those are a few ideas. Hit reply and let me know if you are interested in a “tiny habits” version of the program (where you would start very small and gradually work up to the full program). Also let me know if there are other barriers to getting the program done, or if you have suggestions on ways to make it easier (a pdf to print, a tracking grid, follow-along program, or others). I want to help.
Check out the link below if you want to go deeper into BJ Fogg’s behavior model. Obviously you could apply this approach not only to physical health, but a whole host of other areas in your life and career as well.
Read: BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model
2. The behavior change sorting hat
The B=MAP equation is a nice framework, but it’s not as simple as it appears. There’s actually quite a few moving parts, and different people are going to be influenced by it in different ways. Knowing your personality and how it relates to behavior change can be key to picking strategies that don’t just theoretically work, but actually work for you.
Gretchen Rubin tackled this issue in her book Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives (Affiliate). The book offers 21 different behavior change strategies and includes a chapter on what she calls “the four tendencies.” She argues that people can be divided into four groups depending on how they respond to inner and outer expectations.
- Upholders: Readily respond readily to inner and outer expectations
- Questioners: Question all expectations; they’ll meet an expectation if they think it makes sense — essentially, they make all expectations into inner expectations
- Obligers: Meet outer expectations, but struggle to meet expectations they impose on themselves
- Rebels: Resist all expectations, inner and outer alike.
Want to know what your tendency is? Rubin created The Four Tendencies Quiz to help you figure it out (although be aware that she asks for your email address in return for the info).
The topic was so popular that she actually wrote a whole book about it called The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (Affiliate).
Take the quiz, figure out your tendency, then check out the article below to learn a few behavior change strategies specific to your tendency.
Read: Want to Change an Important Habit? Tips for Upholders, Questioners, Obligers & Rebels
3. More books on behavior change
Here’s just a few more of my favorite books on behavior change in case you are a reader like me.
- Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (Affiliate)
- Another great framework with ideas for how to make change happen.
- The Power of Habit (Affiliate)
- Especially useful for learning how “bad” habits work and how to break them.
- The Bullet Journal Method (Affiliate)
- I’ve shared this before, but having a method to track your efforts can be incredibly helpful in changing a behavior.