MAKE A HABIT OF IT

Our myth-busting guide to making sure your New Year’s resolutions stick

MYTH #1 IF YOU SCREW UP, YOUR GOAL IS KAPUT MYTH BUSTER

Once the stuff of cheesy motivational posters involving desert-scapes and road signs, failure has undergone a reputation rebrand to rival working from home’s. And if the anecdotal evidence of everyone from Alain de Botton to Jane Garvey via Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast hasn’t convinced you that failure is the blueprint for success, may we refer you to the research of John C Norcross, whose work on goal-setting has shown that more than 70% of successful ‘resolvers’ felt that a slip-up made them try harder, be that by rekindling their commitment, increasing their awareness of the problem’s severity or by inspiring a refinement in their action plan. The key to turning a habit-fail into a teaching moment, says Norcross, is avoiding self-blame. Focus instead on the success you enjoyed before you slipped up, then go again.

MYTH #2 YOU CAN FORM ANY NEW HABIT IF YOU KEEP HAMMERING AWAY AT IT MYTH BUSTER

Emphatically not a runner? We hate to break it to you, but no amount of pavement-pounding is going to make it feel less like a punishment. Whether it’s a 10k you’re aiming for, a deadlift PB or you just want to properly get into yoga, putting in the hours alone isn’t enough to make you stick with it. You need to enjoy it – and not just because life’s too short. ‘If something feels nice and triggers a sensation of success, it can rewire the brain in a way that propels you to perform the habit more often,’ says BJ Fogg, director of the Behaviour Design Lab at Stanford University and author of Tiny Habits: The Small Changes

That Change Everything. ‘This happens via the production of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which affects motivation and mood, among other things.’ If it’s awkward or plain painful? ‘It won’t become a true habit,’ confirms Fogg. If getting more exercise is your goal, pick a form you enjoy – say, a hip-hop class instead of running on a treadmill for the sake of it. (See p82 for more on how to find your thing with fitness.)

MYTH #3 AIMING HIGH LEADS TO BIG CHANGES MYTH BUSTER

Declared your (possibly remote) intention to run a marathon on 1 January? Well done you. But know you have more chance of realising your goal if you shoot for something smaller. The ‘small changes’ approach has been extensively studied and found to be associated with an increase in physical activity, improvement in nutrition and maintenance of weight, among other things. So convinced is Fogg of its efficacy, he named his book after the concept. His algorithm for starting small can be broken down into three elements: motivation, ability and prompt. First, take a habit you want to adopt and scale it back to its most basic form. Want to read more? Make it a paragraph a night. Meditate?

Start with three deep breaths. Next, pick a time slot in the day to do it. Finally, give yourself a prompt. Think breaking for lunch or closing your laptop at 6pm. Start small, finish big.

MYTH #4 IT TAKES 21 DAYS TO FORM A HABIT MYTH BUSTER

This rumour has deep roots. The number first entered our collective consciousness in 1960 via the work of cosmetic surgeon and author Dr Maxwell Maltz, who observed a minimum period of around 21 days for a mental image to ‘dissolve’ and a new one to ‘gel’. His book went on to sell 30 million copies, and while research has delivered multiple numbers since, this one remains the most oft cited. And yet, more recent and robust research suggests the period could be three times as long. When scientists from University College London monitored the time it took for the new eating, drinking and exercise habits of volunteers to become automatic in their now-famous 2009 study, the period ranged from 18 to 254 days, with a median of 66 days. Where you fall on the early to late-adopter scale will depend on what the habit is, how difficult it is and how you feel about it, but repetition is key, confirms Dr Tara Swart, neuroscientistturned-executive advisor and author of

The Source (£12.99, Ebury). ‘Any habit is about building up a pathway in your brain so that it becomes your default, which makes it easy,’ she explains. ‘The reason we fail is that it takes a lot of work to get to that point. Sustainable behaviour change isn’t time-bound, it’s more to do with the intensity of the effort that it will take to create the neural pathway for that activity.’ While we can’t offer you an evidencebased timestamp, we can tell you this: rinse and repeat until the habit sticks.