Things to Remember
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Behaviors don't exist in a vacuum: That healthy habit you're trying to build (like going to bed earlier) isn't just one thing - it's connected to everything else in your life. When your partner's schedule changes or work gets busier, it can throw off your whole routine without you realizing why.
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Start ridiculously small: Instead of overhauling your entire life, find the tiniest change that could create a ripple effect. Prep just Monday's lunch instead of a week's worth of meals. Your brain builds habits the same way whether the action is big or small - repetition is what matters, not the size of the change.
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You have limited daily energy: Think of yourself as having a daily budget of mental and physical energy. Every decision and new habit costs energy. Trying to start five new healthy habits at once while keeping up with everything else in your life is like trying to spend money you don't have - something will break.
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Do an honest energy audit first: Before adding something new (like morning workouts), ask yourself what you can realistically reduce or drop. Maybe that means less social media scrolling, saying no to some commitments, or accepting that your house won't be perfect. You can't add without subtracting something else.
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Be specific about when and where: Instead of vague goals like "I'll exercise more," decide exactly when and where: "I'll walk around the block twice every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:15 AM." Your brain responds much better to concrete plans than general intentions.
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One behavior often requires changing 3-5 others: Research shows that when people successfully stick to a new health habit, they usually end up adjusting several related behaviors - even if they didn't plan to. This is normal, not a sign you're doing it wrong.
This article explains why behaviour changes fail when we ignore the hidden environmental and social factors that actually sustain them.
Someone asked me recently why their sleep schedule kept slipping back to midnight, despite weeks of successfully going to bed at 10:30. They'd done everything right: dim lights, no screens, chamomile tea. For three weeks, it worked. Then it didn't.
Common Behaviour Change Approaches - Effectiveness & When They Fail
| Approach | How It Works | Why It Often Fails | Best Used When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comprehensive Overhaul | Change multiple behaviours simultaneously (diet, exercise, sleep, stress management) | Depletes decision budget too quickly; ignores behavioural interdependence | You have high baseline energy, external support, and controlled environment |
| Isolated Habit Change | Focus on single behaviour in isolation (e.g., "just go to bed earlier") | Ignores the web of contextual factors; assumes behaviour exists independently | The behaviour has minimal dependencies on other life factors |
| Minimum Viable Change | Identify smallest change that creates downstream effects | May feel too slow for those wanting rapid transformation | You're working within existing constraints and need sustainable momentum |
| Willpower-Based Method | Rely on conscious self-control and motivation | Finite cognitive resource; doesn't build automatic neural pathways | Short-term goals with clear endpoints (1-2 weeks maximum) |
| Environment-First Design | Modify context and circumstances before forcing behaviour | Requires identifying hidden variables; may need trial and error | Your environment is somewhat controllable and patterns are consistent |
Key Factors That Determine Behaviour Change Success
- Behavioural Interdependence
- What it means: One habit affects 3-5 related behaviours automatically
- Why it matters: Successful changes usually require modifying connected behaviours, not just the target habit
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Action step: Map what else shifts when you change your target behaviour
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Decision Budget
- What it means: Finite daily cognitive, emotional, and metabolic resources
- Why it matters: Every choice and behaviour change depletes this budget
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Action step: Track your energy patterns before adding new demands
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Neural Pathway Formation
- What it means: Basal ganglia consolidates habits through repetition, regardless of size
- Why it matters: 30 repetitions of small behaviour > 5 attempts at large behaviour
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Action step: Prioritize consistency over comprehensiveness
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Contextual Stability
- What it means: Behaviours depend on web of circumstances, relationships, and biological rhythms
- Why it matters: When context changes (partner's schedule, job hours), behaviours collapse
- Action step: Identify which environmental factors support vs. undermine your target habit
"What changed?" I asked.
"Nothing," they said. Then, after a pause: "Well, my partner started a new job. Different hours."
Everything.
The Context Problem
We treat behaviour like it exists in isolation - as if "going to bed at 10:30" is a single, stable thing you can install and maintain. It's not. Every behaviour sits inside a web of other behaviours, circumstances, relationships, and biological rhythms. Change one thread, and the whole web shifts.
This is where most health advice falls apart. Not because the advice is wrong, but because it ignores the system it's being inserted into.
Take morning exercise. Standard recommendation: "Just wake up earlier and go for a run." Sounds simple. But that "just" hides about twelve other variables: what time you went to bed, how well you slept, whether you ate enough dinner, your baseline cortisol curve, whether your partner snores, if your knees hurt when it's cold, what your commute looks like, whether you have children who wake at unpredictable hours.
You're not just changing one behaviour. You're negotiating with an entire ecosystem.
The research term for this is "behavioural interdependence" - the way one habit either supports or undermines others. A 2019 meta-analysis in Health Psychology Review found that successful behaviour change rarely happens in isolation. People who sustained new health behaviours usually modified 3-5 related behaviours simultaneously, even when they only intended to change one.
Which sounds exhausting. And it would be, if you tried to control all of them consciously. But most of it happens automatically, once you understand the system you're working within.
The Minimum Viable Change
There's this tendency in medicine - and in people generally - to want comprehensive solutions. Fix everything at once. Overhaul the whole system. I understand the impulse. It feels more serious, more committed.
But the body doesn't reward comprehensiveness. It rewards consistency.
What's the smallest change that creates downstream effects?
Not "What's the perfect diet?" but "What one meal could I make differently that would shift my hunger patterns for the rest of the day?"
Not "How do I fix my sleep?" but "What one thing makes it harder to fall asleep that I could actually modify?"
This isn't about being incremental for its own sake. It's about finding the leverage point - the change that cascades.
Example: Someone tells me they can't stick to meal prep because Sunday afternoons feel overwhelming. Fine. Don't meal prep on Sunday. What if you prepped Monday's lunch on Sunday night, after dinner, when the kitchen is already in use and cleaning up anyway? One meal. Next week, maybe two.
The goal isn't meal prep. The goal is building the neural pathway that says: "I'm someone who prepares food in advance." Once that identity exists - even for a single meal - it wants to expand. Not because you force it, but because consistency feels better than chaos.
There's neuroscience here too. The basal ganglia - the brain region responsible for habit formation - doesn't distinguish between "big" and "small" behaviours. It just registers: repetition, reward, consolidation. A small behaviour repeated 30 times builds stronger neural pathways than a large behaviour attempted 5 times and abandoned.
The Energy Accounting Problem
Most people don't realise they're running an energy deficit until they're already in it.
By "energy," I don't just mean calories - though that's part of it. I mean the total available metabolic, cognitive, and emotional resources you have on any given day. Call it your "decision budget."
Every choice depletes it slightly. Every behaviour change requires an upfront energy investment before it becomes automatic. And most people try to implement 4-5 new behaviours simultaneously while maintaining their existing life, work, relationships, and responsibilities.
The maths doesn't work.
This is why January gym memberships fail. Not because people lack discipline, but because they're trying to fund a new behaviour from an already overdrawn account. You can't make a 6 AM gym habit sustainable if your baseline sleep is six hours, your commute is an hour each way, and your cognitive load at work just doubled.
Something has to give. Usually, it's the gym habit - because it's the newest, least integrated, most optional thing in your life.
The solution isn't willpower. It's better accounting.
Before adding a new behaviour, ask: What existing obligation can I reduce or eliminate? What low-value activity is consuming energy that could be reallocated?
Brutal honesty required here. Sometimes the answer is: "I can't add anything new right now without breaking something else." That's useful information. Better to know it in advance than discover it three weeks in when everything collapses.
Or maybe the answer is: "I can do this, but only if I stop trying to maintain X" - where X is scrolling social media for 40 minutes before bed, or saying yes to every social obligation, or keeping the house spotless.
Energy is finite. Behaviour change costs energy. The equation has to balance.
Implementation Intentions: The Under-Used Tool
There's a cognitive psychology concept that sounds technical but isn't: implementation intentions. Essentially, it's pre-deciding the exact conditions under which you'll execute a behaviour.
Not: "I'll exercise more."
But: "Monday, Wednesday, Friday, at 6:15 AM, I'll put on my running shoes and go around the block twice."
The specificity matters. The "when" and "where" matter more than the "what." A 2006 review by Gollwitzer and Sheeran found that implementation intentions increased the likelihood of goal achievement by 2-3 times compared to general goal-setting.
Why? Because they bypass the decision-making moment.
At 6:15 AM on Monday, you're not deciding whether to exercise. That decision was made days ago. You're just executing a pre-existing plan. The cognitive load is minimal. The willpower requirement is lower.
This works best when paired with environmental design. If the plan is "put on running shoes," the shoes need to be visible, accessible, already tied. Not buried in the closet behind winter boots.
Small detail. Massive difference.
I've watched this play out repeatedly. Someone has a vague intention to "eat healthier." They buy vegetables. The vegetables rot in the crisper. Why? Because "eat healthier" isn't an implementation intention. There's no trigger, no specific action, no pre-decided moment.
Compare that to: "On Sunday at 7 PM, I'll chop vegetables and put them in the front of the fridge in clear containers." Now there's a when, a what, and a where. The next time they're hungry and open the fridge, the vegetables are visible, accessible, pre-cut. The decision becomes easier.
Behaviour change isn't about motivation. It's about reducing friction at the moment of action.
The Relapse Script
Here's something nobody talks about: relapse isn't failure. It's data.
Every time a behaviour slips, it's revealing something about the system. Usually something you didn't see before.
The person whose sleep schedule collapsed when their partner changed jobs - that revealed a hidden dependency. Their sleep routine required a stable anchor (partner going to bed at the same time). Without that anchor, the routine destabilised.
Useful information.
Now they know: if circumstances change again, the sleep routine needs to be re-anchored to something internal, not external. Maybe a specific time-based alarm. Maybe a body-based cue (first yawn after 9:30 PM = begin wind-down sequence).
Or take the person who meal-prepped successfully for three weeks, then stopped. What happened in week four? Usually: unexpected overtime at work, or a social event on Sunday, or they got sick, or their child had a crisis.
The behaviour wasn't broken. The system was temporarily disrupted.
The question isn't "Why did I fail?" It's "What disrupted the system, and how can I design for that disruption next time?"
This is where most people give up prematurely. They interpret relapse as personal weakness rather than system feedback. They think: "I can't maintain this," when the actual message is: "This design doesn't account for variable X."
Different conclusions. Different actions.
The Social Scaffolding
Behaviour doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists in relationships.
Your sleep affects your partner. Your food choices affect your family. Your exercise routine affects who you see, when, and how often.
Change one behaviour, and you're implicitly asking your social environment to accommodate that change. Sometimes they will. Sometimes they won't. Often they don't even realise you're asking.
This is the invisible resistance nobody warns you about.
You decide to stop drinking alcohol. Your friends keep inviting you to bars. Not because they're sabotaging you - they're just maintaining their existing patterns, and you used to be part of those patterns.
You start going to bed earlier. Your partner still watches TV until midnight. Now you're navigating mismatched rhythms, unspoken tension, the feeling that you're imposing a constraint on their evening.
These aren't insurmountable problems. But they need to be addressed explicitly, not ignored.
The research on social support and behaviour change is consistent: people who explicitly negotiate their new behaviour with their social environment succeed at 2-3 times higher rates than those who try to change privately.
"Negotiate" here means: communicate the change, explain why it matters, request specific accommodations, and crucially - offer something in return.
"I'm trying to sleep earlier, which means I won't be available for late-night calls. But I'll make sure we talk earlier in the evening instead."
Not demanding. Not apologising. Just... clarifying the new terms.
The Maintenance Illusion
Here's the uncomfortable truth: most behaviours don't "become automatic" in the way we imagine.
They don't reach a magical point where they require zero effort, zero thought, zero maintenance. Even deeply ingrained habits require periodic reinforcement.
The research suggests habit formation takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days, with an average around 66 days. But even after that, environmental changes, stress, illness, or disrupted routines can destabilise the habit. It doesn't disappear completely, but it requires re-establishment.
This is normal. Not failure.
The expectation that a behaviour should be "effortless" after a certain point is, itself, a setup for disappointment. Better to expect periodic maintenance. Plan for it. Budget energy for it.
Think of it like a garden. You don't plant seeds, water them for three months, then assume the garden will sustain itself forever. Some seasons require more maintenance than others. Some years, things die and need replanting. That's not gardening failure. That's gardening.
Same with behaviour.
Someone who exercises regularly for five years will still have periods where motivation drops, circumstances shift, and the routine needs conscious re-establishment. The difference is: they know this. They don't interpret it as regression. They just... restart. Less drama. Less self-judgment.
The goal isn't perfection. It's resilience.
The crumpled Post-it note is still in my drawer. I don't know if that person ever found a version of those goals that worked. Maybe they did, eventually. Maybe they found smaller goals, or different goals, or decided those particular goals weren't actually theirs to begin with.
What I do know: the goals themselves weren't the problem. The architecture around them was.
