Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones · chapter 13 · id atomic-habits-c13-03-a-habit-must-be-established-be

“A habit must be established before it can be improved. The Two-Minute Rule creates a "gateway habit" that naturally leads to the full behavior over time.”

needs contextconfidence: medium⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending

Receipts

BJ Fogg, Tiny Habits (2019) / Stanford Behavior Design Labsource alive

Fogg advocates starting with extremely small behaviors ("after I use the bathroom, I will do two push-ups"). His program reports anecdotal success but limited peer-reviewed RCT evidence for the "scaling up" mechanism.

Gollwitzer 1999 / Behavioral shaping (Skinnerian tradition)DOI registry: valid

The general principle of reinforcing successive approximations toward a target behavior is established in behavioral psychology. Applied to self-directed habit change, the evidence is thinner.

This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us — corrections are loud here.