# Understanding Human Behavior. The One Simple Model I Keep Coming Back To

By [therealarkin](https://paragraph.com/@therealarkin) · 2022-01-19

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Human behavior is a complex topic, and Fogg’s model is a great way to understand it. It’s simple yet powerful. It can help you design for behavior change and debug when users don’t  

I was the first PM on [Waze Carpool.](https://www.waze.com/carpool) It was all about behavior change, as 80% of people commute alone. I read a ton of research on behavior change, persuasion, etc. 

The more I researched the topic, the more I wanted to learn directly from BJ Fogg. I attended his workshop and had a blast. Let me share the one model that I keep coming back to:

For a behavior to occur, three conditions must meet at the same time: Motivation, Ability, and Prompt
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[B=MAP.](https://behaviormodel.org/) 

*   **M**otivation - person’s level of desire to do a behavior.
    
*   **A**bility - person’s level of Ability (or lack of) to do a behavior.
    
*   **P**rompt - No behavior happens without a prompt. It can be external or internal. An email with a call to action or your stomach telling you it’s time to eat.
    

Motivation and Ability work together and have compensatory relationships. The more challenging something to do (=lower Ability), the more Motivation you need to do it and vice versa. Tax filing is painful (no thanks, [intuit](https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free)), but [95%](https://www.forbes.com/sites/irswatch/2014/08/27/7-million-taxpayers-fail-to-file-their-income-taxes/?sh=616fbe9a706f) of US households jump through the hoops because we are highly motivated to avoid IRS penalties.

Motivation is hard to count on
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Motivation is flaky. Many make New Year’s resolutions; however, [80% drop them](https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/a-study-of-800-million-activities-predicts-most-new-years-resolutions-will-be-abandoned-on-january-19-how-you-cancreate-new-habits-that-actually-stick.html) by the second week of February. From my experience - most product experiments that target ways to increase motivation, make modest gains, or fail. 

Instead, utilize times when motivation is high to ask users to do hard things that will **prompt** and make future actions **_easy_**. For example, if a user just fully watched a video and liked it, ask them to enable notifications (**\=Prompt**) for that creator to learn about new videos. If you are motivated at night to exercise tomorrow morning, set the alarm clock (=**Prompt**) & and get your gym clothes ready by your bed (=**Ability**).

Make the behavior easier is usually the way to go
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Start small, ask users for little. Reduce friction wherever possible. Save them time and money.

*   Removing [required sign-up](https://articles.uie.com/three_hund_million_button/) before checkout increased sales by $300M /year for this e-commerce website- “I’m not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something.” 
    
*   Think how Robinhood made it free to trade stocks on mobile, then reduced friction even further by letting them buy fractional shares.
    
*   Don't forget messaging. We tested messaging that emphasized the ‘easiness of the process (i.e., set carpool easily in 2 clicks) vs. messaging to increase motivation, and the ‘easier’ messaging won every time.
    

Try the model yourself to understand any behavior. Sign up for BJ’s [free tiny habits course](https://tinyhabits.com/join/) to learn firsthand about behavior design. Use the model, and let me know how it goes!

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*Originally published on [therealarkin](https://paragraph.com/@therealarkin/understanding-human-behavior-the-one-simple-model-i-keep-coming-back-to)*