Or you might hear your phone ringing at the bottom of your bag, but there’s so much crap in there that you can’t find it – you didn’t have the ability to answer the call, so it went to voicemail. Perhaps you see that it’s your boss calling on a weekend or a telemarketer calling while you’re eating dinner, so your motivation is too low and you ignore the call. If someone rings and you don’t answer, there are a few possible explanations. Let’s apply these to a trivial example – the behaviour of answering a phone call. Ability is like the rational rider – if it knows exactly what to do then you’re more likely to take action when prompted, but any confusion and the rider thinks that the task is too hard and gives up. At 7am on Monday morning your motivation is driving you to the gym, but at 7pm on a Friday night your lack of motivation is driving you to pick up a pizza. Motivation is like the emotional elephant, it can be fickle.

The easier an action is, or the higher your motivation, the more likely you will be to act when prompted.

Using these three elements, we can understand every single behaviour we do every single day.

Ability – your capacity to do the behavior.

Motivation – your desire to do the behavior.

Once you understand the model, you can start analysing all of your behaviours.īehavior (B) = Motivation (M) & Ability (A) & Prompt (P)īehaviour happens when the three elements come together: It’s based on principles that show us how these elements work together to drive our every action, from flossing your teeth to running a marathon. The Fogg behavior model represents the three universal elements of behaviour. B=MAP is the combination lock to install long term habits. Similarly, any habits you’re not happy with aren’t entirely your fault, you just haven’t yet been taught how to effectively change your behaviour.īJ Fogg’s behaviour model boils any action down to three simple components: Motivation, Ability, Prompt. You would blame the manufacturer instead. But you probably wouldn’t blame yourself. If you tried to put together a chest of drawers with faulty instructions and parts missing, you would feel frustrated. If you have attempted to do something different in the past and haven’t seen the results, you’ve probably figured out by now that change is hard. But for most of us, there is a painful gap between what people want and what they actually do.

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