There are plenty of self-betterment goals you can set as a new year approaches, both in and out of the gym, but no matter what you endeavor to do, it's important to have an implementation strategy that ensures you'll actually get it done. One way you can better situate yourself for success is by attaching "cues" to your resolutions. Here's why it works, and how to do it.
If you wake up on a Saturday morning and want to tidy up your living space, you'll have more success defining a room you want to clean up than attempting to just generally "clean the house," right? When it comes to New Year's resolutions, that specificity is important, since you're planning for 12 months of change and you'll need some kind of road map. Instead of saying your resolution is to "eat healthier," you should define what your diet is missing, then drill down on it: "I want to eat 10 more grams of protein every day," for example.
We rely on automatic processes to do the standard stuff in our daily lives, like how we just automatically turn on the coffee pot after waking up or grab keys on the way out the door. In those cases, waking up and walking out the door are actually cues that signal to our brains it's time to fulfill the second half of the process. Building your resolutions around cues will help them become second-nature habits, too. Here are some examples:
If you want to be more productive at work, try turning the Pomodoro technique into a resolution: "When I work for 25 minutes, I'll take a five-minute break."
"When my meetings end, I'll take five minutes for meditation."
"When the 6:00 news ends, I'll call my mom."
Why cues work for New Year's resolutions
There are a few reasons tying your resolutions to existing cues will help you stick with them. First, you're creating those automatic processes in your brain, basically Pavlov-ing your subconscious self into taking action whenever your trigger occurs. It will take a few weeks of conscious effort, yes, but you will already know when you're supposed to act on your new habit, which is half the battle.
Stick with your cues, but give yourself some space those first few weeks. You might find that the timing you set up doesn't work well with your existing schedule. You just won't stick to the goal as well if you can't make it work. Research shows that if you're following the cue method, it will take about two months, on average, for the habit to form, so use that time to take note of what's working, what isn't, and what could be changed. If you have a goal of being more connected to friends and family, for instance, you might align your cue to call home with the time you spend doing the dishes every night, only to find you're too tired in the evening or eat out too frequently for that one to stick. Switching the cue to calling home when you get in the car to head to work in the morning might work better. Just make sure you stick to it once you figure out the best timing.
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