The New Habit Challenge: Is The Key To Accomplishing Our Goals As Simple As Tricking Ourselves?
Join our resident habit expert Rachel Gillett and other Fast Company staff on Friday, December 5 at 11 a.m. EST as we discuss what happened when we retrained our brains for success.
Marketers have been using visual triggers for a long time to trick us into associating one thing with the need to buy their products, but what if we could use the same concept to remind ourselves to accomplish our goals?
Dan Heath and Chip Heath, authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, suggest placing visual clues from our daily lives in prominent places to trick yourself into accomplishing your goals.Here's how to do it: Start by making a list of goals you want to accomplish. Next, think of what environmental cues you would associate with each goal. And lastly, place these cues in a prominent place where you’ll see them. These visual clues will elicit the lasting effect you need to create psychological connections between your goals and the things you commonly encounter in your daily regimen.
For example, you could place pink running shoes in front of your bedroom door to remind yourself to work out. Or you could change your computer and online passwords to phrases that remind you of your goals. This man used passwords like Forgive@h3r to recover after a depressing divorce and Quit@smoking4ever to stop smoking overnight.
For this week's habit challenge, several of us at Fast Company plan to see if establishing visual cues can help us accomplish our goals.
Join us for a live chat at 11 a.m. EST on Friday, December 5 to find out how it went, share your thoughts, and ask us questions.
Did you try using visuals to accomplish your goals? Tell us about your experience in the "make a comment" box below or join in the discussion on Friday.
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This was one of my visual motivators for the week...Idris Elba.
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Hi, everyone! I’m Rachel, editorial assistant here at Fast Company and resident habit challenge expert/guinea pig. I’ll be hosting the chat with some other FastCo. staff today, and we’ll be getting started in about 10 minutes, so get your questions ready!
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The New Habit Challenge: Trick Yourself Into Accomplishing Your Goals
Fast CompanyUse visual cues to remind you on a daily or even hourly basis about your goals and the tasks needed to accomplish them.
Don't forget to brush up on this week's challenge. -
We’re all set to begin, and I’ll kick things off by introducing our staff who participated in this week’s habit challenge, using environmental triggers to accomplish our goals. Welcome Production Director Carly Migliori, Director Of Web Projects Claudia Rojas, and Co.Exist Senior Editor Ariel Schwartz.
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Just a reminder, this week’s challenge was inspired by the marketing tactic of using visual triggers to trick us into associating one thing with the need to buy their products. We wondered if we could use the same concept to remind ourselves to accomplish our goals.
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Let’s start off by talking about what triggers we used and what goals we wanted to accomplish.
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Since I’m saving up for a wedding, I kept a quarter on my desk to curb my frivolous spending. Every time I felt tempted to buy coffee or lunch, I’d look at the quarter and think, “That’s all you have to spend today, so cut it out!”
I also want to keep up healthier habits, so I made a mental note to associate my water cup with eating healthier lunches and drinking plenty of water throughout the day.
Lastly, I kept my running shoes in front of my bedroom door to remind myself to work out each morning. -
My week was spent traveling between two coasts, so I chose a single goal that I thought would be most attainable: going running once a day, which I have recently been pretty lax about but usually makes me happier and more productive. I kept a digital stickie note on my desktop reminding me to run, and when possible, kept my running clothes and shoes close to the door.
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I went on a serious rich and luxurious food binge over the Thanksgiving holiday, so I decided to not eat any junk food, particularly from the notorious "rainbow table" in our office, this week. So I used the rainbow-colored table as a cue to stay away. I also have a photo of Idris Elba at my desk, so every time I wanted to have a snack, I looked at him. Idris Elba is clearly not chowing down on rice krispies treats.I also wanted to go to bed early, between 10-11 p.m., each night this week. So, I made my bedroom a sanctuary. I made my bed every morning (I also tricked myself to keep my room clean miraculously), so that I wanted to hop in early with a book every night.
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I wanted to get earlier to work to have time to plan the day and to commit 30 minutes of my time to draw. Two things that i haven't done in a while.
I started on Sunday night, I cleaned my workspace and left my sketchbook ready for the next day. Since I have trouble sleeping "visual" (or mental) queue was yoga. I did 20 mins of yoga to relax and unwind. I felt happy and accomplished. -
Did these cues remind you of your goals? How often?
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Yes! I was excited to see my desk clean every morning, and since yoga help me relax before going to sleep seeing the mat there made it easy just to do it.
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I sit right by the rainbow table, so I see it all day. There is food on the table at least 60% of the time, so I would say that I was constantly reminded of my no-junk-food goal all week. (I should also mention that I didn't count adult beverages as junk food.)
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All the time. I could see the stickie all day out of the corner of my eye while working. I also made sure to pass my workout clothes and sneakers frequently, which was easy since I usually work from home (Monday was an exception because I was in the Fast Company office and so I relied on my stickie note alone). I had my clothes on my bed and my sneakers either by the kitchen door so I couldn't leave without seeing them or in my bedroom, depending on location.
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Coming home to a clean and inviting bedroom definitely made it easier for me to want to go in there earlier than usual. I feel like I started to get into a routine by the end of the week, too.
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SOMEBODY (I know exactly who) made Chex mix, brought it to work, and put it on the rainbow table. I have a daily meeting with our print staff every morning at this table. So, watching everyone else scarf handfuls of this was frankly very unpleasant!
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Yes. I think coming home to a clean room was a big boost.
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I have to say, I love how meta this week’s habit challenge was. We were essentially using one habit change to affect more habit change.
BUT
I also feel like this habit is a piece of a larger habit change puzzle, and there are other components necessary to see the bigger picture. -
The Secret To Changing Your Habits: Start Incredibly Small
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Experts say that successfully changing our habits starts with setting small, manageable goals. Did you notice that you were more successful accomplishing your goals this week when they were more actionable?
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For example, while my overall goal is to save a huge chunk of money for a wedding that’s months away, I started small by breaking this down into more actionable goals, like not buying breakfast or lunch.
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Yes, it was definitely easy to start small, especially for my going to bed earlier goal. I think this will help me get into a more long-term routine of getting to bed earlier, taking more time to read at night, and watching less TV.
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I think so. For me, having exercise gear nearby was key, because just the act of putting it on is enough to get me to go run (achieving my ultimate goal of a mental boost). And it's definitely something I can do (almost) every day.
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I had two goals and I ended up doing three things that i wanted to do... well, two and a half
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I'm reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and he talks a lot about how one small habit change will lead to many other habit changes. It's a great book, I highly recommend it!
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On the flip side of this, when you set a much larger goal, did you find it to be too intimidating to act on, and did you visual cues just make you feel guilty?
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For me, I think I went about the running shoes by the door in the wrong way. My goal was, lose a ton of weight! Yea, that’s pretty intimidating. I think if I had set the goal to simply, put the shoes on and just get moving, I would have been more successful. Instead, all I saw when I walked past my shoes again after I woke up too late to work out was a hot pink symbol of failure! Argh!
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Just "no junk fo