Why habits fail Part 1/2 — Dr. Pylin Coaching

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In the last post, we learned that you only need 3 things for a behaviour to become a habit:

Reliable Prompt: something to cue your brain to activate the habit
Repetition: without repetition, the brain will not lock in the Prompt (A) —> Behaviour (B) association for a behaviour to become a habit
Reward: ensuring your brain has some kind of dopamine boost

If it only takes 3 things for a habit to form, then why do so many people fail at keeping up with their new year resolution to engage in some kind of habit?

Today’s post will focus on 3 factors, and the next post will focus on 3 additional factors.

1. They focus too much on motivation.

Have you experienced this:

It’s new year’s eve, and you reflect upon your year and realize you didn’t reach some of your goals again. So because it’s new year’s eve, you are super pumped to really, finally, for the last time get your act together and try really really hard.

You start off January really strong doing your new habit daily. You’re finally killing it!

…But then February hits and work gets busier again, your health was a bit better during the holidays, but now with the resumed life stressors you don’t feel well again, some unexpected social and familial obligations crop up, you feel overwhelmed with a lot that is going on...so it’s hard to motivate yourself to do the habits you intended to do, and you stop.

It is easy to dream up your ideal self, ideal life, and ideal time to do everything you want to do in life when you start a new year’s resolution. Motivation to change is almost at maximum at this time for many people.

However, motivation is a fickle friend/fiend. She goes up and down depending on many things, for example, motivation tends to be higher in the mornings and lower in the evenings, and higher in the beginning of the week, and lower by the end of the week.

So trying to keep a consistent habit by relying on something that is not consistent like motivation is a sure way to not be able to perform the behaviour repetitively enough so that it becomes a true (unconscious) habit.

2. They make the habit too hard for themselves.

A lot of my clients are high-achievers who want to go after big goals, want to create big impact, and do all the things. Lofty goals are not the problem; the problem is that some of the things they expect to do daily (to make something become a habit) are too hard.

What do I mean by "too hard"? Let’s use a fictional example with "Mayke".

Mayke works from home. She wants to start her exercise regime again and be able to do the full 30 minutes of her workout routine. She’s exercised before, so it’s not like the exercises she wants to do are too hard for her to accomplish.

However, what becomes “too hard” is when she has to do 30 minutes of her exercises daily when her life is changing too much.

Mayke has health problems where she has pains that just show up on seemingly random days and she can barely work. Mayke has young children at home who demand her attention at random times throughout the day. Mayke also is looking for a new job, and she will get interview schedules on random days. Every time Mayke feels like she's gotten her schedule and routine under control so she can perfectly fit in her 30 minutes of exercise routine, some life curve ball gets thrown her way, and she can't do 30 minutes, let alone even start.

What’s too hard for Mayke is to commit to doing 30 mins of exercise daily no matter her life circumstance. It is too hard if you cannot do the behaviour(s) at your most tired, sickest, laziest, and busiest day.

The key to consistency in habit formation is to make sure it is executed daily, so that it has to be easy enough to actually be done daily.

Ambitious people who are into self-improvement find it hard to make something simpler but more consistent. Instead, they tend to shoot too high and end up crashing too quickly, because the effort it takes to execute is not sustainable.

3. They don't design their environment.

We underestimate how much our environmental context has an impact on us. It can hinder our progress in terms of habits or we can harness its power for our benefit.

Research by psychologists, Drs. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (the latter who has won the Nobel prize in ecomomics) have shown that as humans, we have two systems of thinking, namely System 1 and System 2 (See Further Reading section below).

System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort, and no sense of voluntary control.
System 2 is slower, more deliberate, logical, effortful, and conscious, and is often associated with the experience of agency and choice.

Most of the time our brain actually operates with System 1 to be efficient. Imagine you had to literally make a conscious decision on everything such as when you walk, having to focus on your left foot, then right foot, then left foot etc. Anyone who has been a major accident and has gone through rehab programs will know the agony of really focusing on “normal” daily activities that now require tons of effort such as walking.

So the pro of System 1 is for our brain to be efficient, but the con is that especially when we are lazy, tired, or distracted, it is also the default mode of operation, and it will choose the path of least resistance.

For example, when you are super hungry and tired at the end of the day, if a candy bar is within our line of sight and within reach, whereas a fruit is out of sight in the fridge, it is easier for your brain to reach for the candy bar than take that extra step to get the fruit out of the fridge.

Because of this tendency, unless you work on becoming your own "choice architects”, the person who creates an environment to help influence their decisions for the better, you may keep falling back to making unwanted behaviours and decisions that go against the habit you are trying to form.

(Read more about what Google did about this in the Further Reading section below)

What are three additional factors that stops people from being successful with their habits?

Find out in the next post 🤓

Today's Action:

Last week’s action was to think about a goal you want to achieve, and some habits that can help you get there. Today’s action builds on those actions.

Make your habit super easy: One way to get around the motivation and difficulty levels of habits above is to make your habit as tiny as possible.

Imagine yourself at your laziest, busiest, most stressed out, drunk or sleep-deprived self. Under that circumstance, what is the minimum action you can do as part of your habit?
For example, if your habit is to write one blog post daily, your tiniest version of this habit could be to write one sentence.
Heck, on even harder days, it may be to just open the laptop to the blank page where you usually write your blog.
There is no judgement here of how tiny the behaviour is as long as you can do it daily, especially on days your are your laziest, busiest, most stressed out, drunk, or sleep-deprived self.
The goal here isn’t to only do the tiniest version all the time; it’s about the bare minimum you could do to keep your repetition of habits going even on days you are barely functioning. Be realistic with yourself.

Design your environment: On a day that you have extra time and energy (and resource), take the time and effort to design your environment to make the habit you want to do easier, or the habit you want to stop harder.

For example, if you want to do more yoga, you may want to research the best yoga mat and buy multiple mats to put in every room in your house.
If you want to stop eating junk food, you may want to move all the candies into the back of your cabinets or into your highest cabinets (or throw them all out at once).

Share your tiny habit and/or environmental design with me, your friends, your family, or accountability partner!

Until next time!
~Pylin

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P.P.S. I’d love to hear from you! Let me know if you love a topic, don’t like a topic, want to hear about a certain topic. I’m all about learning from others and connecting! Email link below or pylin@drpylin.com