The first thing to remember is that there is no one solution for every behavior challenge. Our job is to adjust the components - Motivation, Ability, and Prompt - and find out what combination works best in each circumstance to get the behavior we want.

MOTIVATING TOWARD AN ABSTRACTION DOESN’T YIELD RESULTS: We all want to be healthy. We all want to have more patience with our kids. We all want to feel fulfilled by our work. And our desire to achieve these aspirations is enduring. (Or at least it doesn’t change quickly.) This seems like a good thing, right? Yes, it is. An aspiration is an excellent starting point for changing your life.

Millions of people genuinely aspire to live healthier, less stressful, and more fulfilling lives. But here’s the problem: People often believe that motivating themselves toward an aspiration will lead to lasting change. So people focus on aspirations. And they focus on motivation. And that combo doesn’t produce results.

In the previous chapters, you’ve already been working on Behavior Crafting even though I didn’t use that term. You have already learned how to:

• Identify a lot of behavior options (chapter 2) 

• Match yourself with behaviors that will lead to your aspiration (chapter 2) 

• Make the behavior easier to do (chapter 3)

It’s time to set the record straight and acknowledge that bad habits are not fundamentally different from good habits when it comes to basic components. Behavior is behavior; it’s always a result of motivation, ability, and a prompt coming together at the same moment.

Objectives, goals, states and actions evolve together because learning about the nature of high-level goals is a never-ending process. The distinction between means and ends, which seems obvious and important in simple problem solving, is, as Lindblom explains, not central to practical decision making. The process in which well defined and prioritised objectives are broken down into specific states and actions whose progress can be monitored and measured is not the reality of how people find fulfilment in their lives, create great art, establish great societies or build good businesses.