5 Tricks To Make New Habits Stick
These research-based techniques will improve your chances of success
Most of have had to adopt new exercise routines. Here’s how to keep them going
MOST OF US HAVE HAD TO CHANGE our normal exercise routine recently. Perhaps you’ve started running (if so, welcome!) or you may be a long-time runner whose daily schedule has been disrupted and you are not running consistently. Following a revamped, restricted routine may have been easy at first, but you may have struggled to maintain the schedule you set yourself. ‘All new behaviours are hard to establish,’ says Nanette Mutrie, a professor at the Institute for Sport, Physical Education and Health Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. ‘People often take several attempts to achieve the new plan.’
Here are five ways to stick with your desired new routine, with input from Mutrie and other experts in habit formation.
1
Cues and rewards ‘We form a habit when we repeatedly do a certain action in the presence of a cue,’ says Benjamin Gardner, a psychology professor at King’s College in London.
The cue, says Gardner, can be anything – a location, a time of day, and so on. What matters is that a specific cue exists. A vague sense of, ‘I think I’ll go for a run today’ is less motivating than, ‘It’s 6am, time to meet my running buddy at the usual spot.’
‘When we do the action…that reinforces a mental association between the situation and the action,’ says Gardner. ‘The more rewarding the experience of the action, the more this mental association is reinforced. The next time the cue is encountered, the more likely we are to consider doing the action, because we know from experience that this action is a satisfactory thing to do in that situation.’
The ‘reward’ in this system does not need to be a tangible item, such as a blueberry muffin. Many runners find the run itself to be its own reward (intrinsic motivation).
2
‘If-then’ thinking Reacting to a cue and getting a reward might make you feel like you’re a dog training itself. If that idea doesn’t appeal to you, recast things: tell yourself you’re trying to meet new goals. Then use ‘if-then’ thinking to meet them.
Peter Gollwitzer, a professor of psychology at New York University, has researched how people translate having an aspirational goal (‘I want to replace my gym work with at-home strength work‘) to achieving it. The key, Gollwitzer has found, is to form what he calls ‘implementation intentions’ – when, where and how you’ll act to achieve a goal.
Simply, Gollwitzer recommends ‘if-then’ thinking, in which the ‘if’ is akin to the ‘cue’ Gardner described, and the ‘then’ is the desired action that will lead you to meet your goal. For the person aiming for a consistent at-home strength routine, the ‘if’ could be ‘If I just got home from my run,’ and the then could be, ‘then
I’ll do dumbbell exercises’ or ‘then
I’ll follow it with a core routine.
3
The auto impulse
As Mutrie notes, people often struggle to establish new good habits. So don’t consider yourself weak-willed if you have been unable to immediately adapt to the new reality. Keep setting yourself up for success by creating good cues, and do your desired behaviour the next time you encounter those cues.
Have faith that sticking to your new routine will become easier.
‘As the habit gets stronger, it acquires the capacity to trigger the behaviour automatically, without requiring any prior deliberation,’ says Gardner.
Eventually, your default upon encountering a cue, such as a midday alarm to remind you to take a work break, will be to do 10 minutes of stretching or whatever new action you’ve tied to that cue.
While waiting for that automatic impulse to kick in, focus on the rewards. ‘Those who succeed will have found that the benefits they feel provide them with the motivation to overcome barriers,’ says Mutrie.
4
Choice architecture Choice architecture is an idea that originated in behavioural economics. It has to do with how the environment in which we make choices affects the likelihood that we’ll make a desirable decision.
The classic example concerns a workplace retirement plan. When participating in the plan is the default, more people take part than when they have to opt in to the programme.
Think of choice architecture as
‘making it easy to do the right thing’. This thinking lies behind advice such as to keep a water bottle at your desk to ensure you’re well hydrated, or to lay out your outfit the night before a planned morning run.
In the context of creating new habits, choice architecture means that, in addition to being as specific as possible, your cues are easily encountered. In practical terms, being able to see your foam roller from your couch, or not having to dig your weights out of the attic every time you use them, will make it more likely your use of them will become a habit.
5
A change of plan Despite setting up cues and rewards, or practising ‘if-then’ thinking, you might still fall short. Time to step back and look at your plan.
‘If someone fails to establish a desired habit, it would be worth reconsidering whether the behaviour is unrealistic,’ notes Gardner. For example, if you’ve been using cardio machines at the gym three times a week, and now want to run outside daily because otherwise you’re going to lose your mind, that might be too big of a leap.
‘A good idea is to review goals every week,’ says Mutrie. ‘If you’re not achieving them, try for a goal that is more realistic.’
You can scrap your plans if the reward side of the cue-reward formula isn’t working for you. ‘You may discover that, after attempting to do the behaviour, it isn’t as enjoyable as you thought,’ says Gardner.
Make your new habits a positive in your life. As Mutrie says, ‘Be nice to yourself rather than a hard taskmaster, and you will be more likely to succeed.’