Give Yourself SMART Support
Written by Dr. Karen Smith, PhD
Springtime check-in: how are we doing with those New Year’s resolutions?
We love a challenge, don’t we? From silly (remember that ice bucket thing a few years ago?) to self-focused (Dry January, Fit February, etc.) to significant (emergency fund drives for people in need), we like to meet a goal. We start the diet, download the fitness app, buy the DIY home improvement manual, and then…
You may have begun 2022 with a shot of optimism and a list of resolutions. Now that it's spring, how’s that working for you? If you’re like most of us, you abandoned those good intentions about 6 weeks ago. That’s right. The vast majority of us give up our New Year/New Me projects after about ten days. Resolutions that require us to establish a new habit and/or let go of an old one are hard to realize.
Change is an active, dynamic process.
It requires a lot from us. Why do we have so much trouble sustaining our efforts?
Maybe we weren’t really ready. Without a clear vision of why change is necessary, or how it will benefit us, we’re unlikely to have the energy or enthusiasm to go the distance. We’ll literally forget to do the thing we said we were going to do.
Maybe we didn’t think it through. Without a clear, achievable goal, it’s easy to lose focus. A goal that is SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound – helps you understand exactly what you need to do and when and how to do it.
Maybe we didn’t plan ahead. There are lots of obstacles to meeting a goal. We often fail to predict and plan for these obstacles, so we get tripped up by them.
Maybe we stopped paying attention. Without a system in place to track, monitor, tweak, and adjust our plan, we lose focus and momentum – and we miss out on opportunities to celebrate the small successes that motivate us to keep pushing forward.
To make transformational, sustainable change in our daily practices, we need to make it as easy as possible. This leads us to a concept that habit formation experts call friction.
Friction is defined as anything that makes it harder for you to achieve your goal.
Lasting behavior change requires that we plan ahead by identifying clear strategies to help us overcome those obstacles before we encounter them. For example, if your goal is to exercise each morning before breakfast, ask yourself: what would make that easier? Maybe you could reduce the friction of the coziness of pajamas by sleeping in your exercise clothes. Or, maybe you could remove the friction of early caffeine cravings by running/walking to a coffee shop for your first cup of the day. The point is to anticipate and prepare for the things that will make it hard for you to exercise before breakfast.
Sometimes adding friction to an old habit makes the new habit easier to sustain. For example, if you’re trying to spend less time scrolling on your phone, add some friction by keeping your phone in a basket or a drawer when you’re not using it. That way, you have to overcome an obstacle in order to engage in your old habit.
These ways of arranging your environment to support your goals are life hacks, if you will. As part of a SMART plan for change, they can grow your good intentions into sustainable actions. Now that spring has sprung, pick a fresh goal that you’re ready to tackle. Think it through, plan for the inevitable obstacles, and set up a system to monitor, adjust, and celebrate your progress.