This document provides a guide for using negative habits like frequent Facebook checking to trigger positive new behaviors. It suggests associating the new behavior, like doing pushups, with the existing habitual behavior of opening Facebook every 20 minutes. Specifically, it proposes the habit "After every time I open Facebook, I will do 5 pushups." It also describes how to redirect the Facebook domain to a motivational site that triggers the new behavior. The guide aims to leverage reliable existing habits or "anchors" to help establish new positive routines.

1. Addicted to Facebook? Get ripped instead!
A guide towards leveraging negative habits in your life to trigger new, positive behaviors
Maurizio Caló Caligaris maurizio@cs.stanford.edu

2. Got the
addiction?

3. If you find yourself mindlessly opening
facebook.com in a new browser tab every 20
minutes, GREAT!

4. HUH
?

5. If you find yourself mindlessly opening
facebook.com in a new browser tab every 20
minutes, GREAT!
You can use this addiction to trigger a new,
positive behavior in your life.

6. The key to developing a new behavior (such as
doing pushups) is to associate it with an already
existing habit you do reliably (called an “anchor”)
and attach the new behavior after the anchor.
[BJ Fogg, Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxngufGsdzg)

7. The Secret Recipe for Creating a New Habit
“After every time I [extremely reliable habit /
anchor] , I will [new habit].”
For more info, see BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits program: http://tinyhabits.com/

8. “After every time I open Facebook.com in a new
browser tab, I will do 5 pushups”.

9. To make the task easier, change your [virtual]
environment:
Redirect Facebook.com to a motivational website
which triggers you to do pushups.

10. Facebook.com 107.21.119.50
Clicking on the image takes you to Facebook, so if you really want to use Facebook, you could!

11. 1. In Finder, choose Go=> Go to
Folder.
1. Open Notepad or some other 2.In the Go to Folder dialog,
text editor with elevated type /etc/
privileges (right click and clicking
Run As Administrator) 3.Locate the hosts file and Cmd
+click it. From the context
2. Open the file named hosts, menu, choose Get Infor. In the
located in C:WINDOWS Ownership & permissions area,
SYSTEM32DRIVERSETC set You can to Read & Write
3.Add the following line: 4. Open the hosts file
107.21.119.50 facebook.com
5.Add the following line:
107.21.119.50 facebook.com

12. Frequently Asked Questions

13. What if I can’t do any pushups
in my workplace?
This guide was aimed for college students, who
often study from their dorm rooms and spent a
lot of hours in front of their laptops, so it’s easy
for them to do pushups right there.
You can also try to associate opening
Facebook.com with a different habit besides
doing pushups!

14. What if I want to develop a
different new habit that’s not
doing pushups?
Absolutely! You can say: “After everytime I open
Facebook.com (or Reddit.com) in a new browser
tab, I will:
-Think of one positive thing that happened today
-Close my eyes and take a deep breath/meditate
-Stretch one part of my body briefly
-etc.
If you’d like to customize the motivational website so a different image shows
up, or if you want the image to link to a different site (e.g. Reddit) please leave a
comment and I’ll work on it!

15. But this won’t help me quit FB!
Quitting Facebook is hard, and I’d argue it’s not
worth it, as Facebook is a wonderful
communication tool.
The whole point of this guide is to help you
become aware of the already existing habits in your
life (“anchors”), start noticing when you do those
habits and use those habits to your advantage to
trigger positive events.

16. maurizio@cs.stanford.edu
I’m Maurizio Calo Caligaris and I’m
an aspiring entrepreneur / CS
masters student at Stanford. I’m
Thanks!
interested in behavior design, life
design, self-improvement & using
technology to transform people’s
lives.