In a recent episode of David Kadavy’s Love Your Work podcast, Stanford behavioral scientist BJ Fogg shared a method achieving an aspiration. He calls the exercise “Swarm of B’s.”

1. Write Down Your Aspiration
   You start with an outcome you hope to achieve. This aspiration could be something like becoming an effective writer or getting in shape. Write this aspiration down on a sheet of paper.
   
   Now, imagine this aspiration is surrounded by a swarm of “b’s.”
2. Make the B’s Into Behaviors
   Write down multiple behaviors that can help you achieve your aspiration. For our example of becoming an effective writer, this could be writing for 20 minutes a day. You could commit some time to  reading well-written books. You can take an online creative writing course. Come up with as many behaviors as possible. This is divergent thinking, because there is no perfect behavior for everyone.
   
3. Choose a Behavior That Fits You
   BJ mentions that the mistake most people make is designing for the aspiration instead of the behavior. You cannot design directly for the abstract behavior (become a more effective writer), but you can design for a behavior. If you choose to read well-written books, part of your design could be to replace surfing social media with reading your target books. So, what are the characteristics you should look for in a behavior?
   1. It’s an effective behavior that will help you achieve your aspiration.
   2. It’s something that you can do.
   3. It’s something you want to do.

BJ also encourages people to choose a small behavior. If we select a behavior that requires a large commitment or effort, then we will use its significance as an excuse not to do it. Choose something that doesn’t initially require a lot of will power.

So, next time you want to create behavior change in yourself… design for behaviors, choose a small, do-able behavior and use a swarm of b’s to motivate yourself to change.