Make your defaults work for you.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to make changes to your life without effort? Sounds too good to be true? I have good news for you, there is something that can help you not only start changing things, but also stick to them long-term.
Ask yourself the question of what has previously made you fail your new year’s resolutions. What makes it difficult for you to continue going to the gym, stop smoking and spend less time mindlessly scrolling on social media? Most likely, it is falling into your old behaviour pattern. In the case of going to the gym; Not going to the gym soon starts to be easier than going. You started smoking again, because you felt left out each time your colleagues or friends went outside for their smoking breaks. You end up scrolling on social media, because you experience a lull in your day and you see the little red number next to the app icon and become curious.
One thing that all three of these scenarios have in common is that you failed to make a long-term behaviour change, because eventually you run out of motivation to help you do (or not do) the old behaviour. Eventually not going to the gym is easier than going, smoking is more social than not smoking and you really want to know what hides behind the little red notification!
Relying on motivation as the main driver to stick with new behaviours is not enough. Sure, it can give you a nice boost in the beginning when the goal is still new and exciting, but once the first excitement is gone, often so will be the streak of maintaining your new habit.
Instead you need something else, something that will keep you going. “And what is that?” you might ask (Hey, no need to get so snarky with me).
Let me ask you this: Why are the old behaviours easier to maintain, than the new behaviours?
“Because I am lazy and innately horrible at doing the right thing.” Hm, I think you might be onto something here, but I’d love to unpack the self-criticism with you at some point.
Re-phrasing the answer we could also say:
Going back to older behaviour patterns is easier, because they don’t require as much active decision making.
So let’s build the new behaviour pattern in a way that doesn’t require much active decision making either.
Set your defaults smartly.
One way we can phrase this is to say we “set our defaults smartly“. A default can be defined as “the thing that exists or happens if you do not change it intentionally by performing an action.” (Cambridge Dictionary). This means that a default is a previously made selection of behaviour in this case. This also means that if we learn to make a decision, that is more in line with our goals, we will get there more easily.
The first problem is that if we don’t consciously make the decision, we will automatically fall back onto decisions made by ease or circumstances (e.g. not going to the gym, joining the colleagues for their break and clicking on the social media icon).
The second problem is that making decisions gets tiring over time. This is called decision fatigue. Tierney, the person who first coined the term, defined decision fatigue like this: “…peoples’ decision making to become impaired as a result of having recently taken multiple decisions.” (Baumeister, 2003; Tierney, 2011).
So basically, decision fatigue is the decreasing ability to make decisions. The more decisions we have already made in the day, the harder it gets to make more decisions. What many people don’t know is that it takes energy to make decisions and that the energy is a finite resource that weans over the course of the day. It is a bit like a muscle that gets fatigued with extended use and that needs time to recover.
Just like a muscle the energy is replenished with rest. Usually we feel more capable of making decisions earlier in the day, when we haven’t had to make many decisions yet. Later on in the day it is more difficult. This is why deciding to work out in the afternoon or evening or starting mentally hard tasks such as doing the taxes feels more difficult, if not impossible later in the day or week.
If your default in the evening is, as it is for many, to sit on the couch and watch tv, it can be very difficult to then make the active decision and do something more strenuous, such working out. If it is easier to nod and join your colleagues for a smoke break, then it is less likely that you will shake your head and remain behind. Similarly, if it is easier to just click on the social media icon when the little red number appears, than to ignore it, you are more likely to follow that initial impulse and end up browsing Instagram.
Here is what you can do about this:
Generally speaking, you want to make it more difficult to do the things you want to do less and easier to do the things you want to do more often. If your goal is to work out more often you can help yourself by bringing your prepared workout bag to work and go straight to the gym from work. This will make it easier to go, because you don’t have to scrounge up the motivation to get up from the couch once you have reached home.
If your goal is to stop smoking, you want to make it more difficult for yourself to smoke. This can be helped by not buying cigarettes (duh!) and letting your colleagues know that you are trying to stop (social pressure). Additionally, you can bring something with you, for example an enjoyable snack and your favourite novel to spend the time doing something you like. This way, you won’t feel so left out. If it is the social component you are enjoying, see if you can strike up a chat with one of your non-smoker colleagues and spend a few minutes catching up with them instead.
Finally, you can decrease your social media consumption by turning off the little notifications you get, that trigger you to click on the icon. You can also add hurdles between you and the app(s), for example a timer within the app that blocks the app when you’ve reached a daily limit of time spent on it, or put all of your social media apps in a folder that is not as easy to access from your main screen.
To summarize, you want to identify your triggers and the benefits you reap from behaviours you are trying to avoid (e.g. social interaction during smoke breaks, satisfying your curiosity from social media) and use this information to make it harder to act on them (e.g. replacing the behaviour with something else that is pleasant). On the other hand you want to make it easier to do the things you want to do more (e.g. be prepared and go to the gym straight from work and add positive reinforcement to make it enjoyable).
Most of the sessions I hold with my clients center around behaviour change. Whether it is health behaviours or behaviours in relationships, it all comes down to understanding the triggers and needs and then replacing the behaviours with better alternatives. This is of course not as easy at it sounds (if it was, we would all be our best selves). I would like to help you with that. Contact me and ask me for a free 15-minute get-to-know meeting.
References:
Baumeister, Roy F (2003), “The Psychology of Irrationality”, in Brocas, Isabelle; Carrillo, Juan D (eds.), The Psychology of Economic Decisions: Rationality and well-being, pp. 1–15,
ISBN 978-0-19-925108-7.
Tierney, John (August 21, 2011). “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?”. New York Times Magazine. Retrieved August 23, 2011.
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash
Margaretha Madoures 