Want to Change Your Habits? Scrap The New Year’s Resolutions. Try This 4-Step Behavior Design Approach.
By: Alexey Ivanov
Tags: Design Thinking, Motivation, Behavior Change, Habits, Coaching

Every year millions of people commit to changing their lives, starting January 1st. And every year their efforts last for a month, two months tops, before flopping.

The reason? We overestimate how much we can do, and underestimate the power of our internal ‘psychological immune system’ — our built-in resistance to change.

Robert Keagan, professor at Harvard School of Education, gives this research example. When patients are faced with the unpleasant news from their doctors that they have to change their habits to avoid dying in the next year or two, such as quitting smoking or cutting out certain foods, only 17% of all people commit to changing their behavior. This is due to our natural tendency to resist change, even if it can save our lives. Imagine how little change happens when it’s not a life or death matter.

What’s even more common in my coaching practice is that people try to change too many things at once. By doing that, they have to rely on too much discipline and willpower, which leads to lower success rates.

How do you change then?

The key is understanding the power of behavior change, powered by science and design thinking:

Frame: More-Less-Enough-Random Ideate: 12 wants. Design: 12 tiny, specific, doable, supported routines. Implement: ‘30-day trials’ over 12 months.

Framing

Framing is how we define the challenge. Research says that by merely formulating and speaking out our goals and constraints in the right way, we are more likely to achieve them.

Here is a simple frame for behavior change from Coacherama, called More-Less-Enough-Random:

What are three things that you’d like to have more of? What are three things that you’d like to have less of? What are three things that you have enough of? What are three spontaneous, random things you’d like to add to your life?

By simply listing those things, you’d have a framework that can help implement new behaviors that actually stick, and that lasts for 12 months.

Ideating

Let’s go over the themes we just framed, and think of only three things that we’d like to change for each. For every person it’s different.

It’s important to prioritize ideas after ideating. If you have more than 3 ideas for each theme, take some time to list them all, and then prioritize only the top 3 in each category. The key to success is not to overburden yourself with new practices.

To get more creative here is one of my favorite ‘futurescaping’ exercises.

Imagine you are 125 years old, at your deathbed, surrounded by your loved ones. You’re looking back at life, and realize something shifted for you around the years 2020–2021. You changed some habits and instituted new behaviors back then. And that changed everything. What were the things you did? List them under each of the four themes.

Here’s a real example of a coaching client of mine. Let’s call him Dave.

After doing the ‘futurescaping’ exercise, Dave came up with the following list.

I want more of:

Focus : I want to have my focus of attention and mental sharpness.

: I want to have my focus of attention and mental sharpness. Healthy sleep: I want to feel restored in the morning.

I want to feel restored in the morning. Vitality: I want to feel alive and energetic in my body.

I want less of:

Mindless eating : I want to eat less and get more fit.

: I want to eat less and get more fit. Stuff & physical things: I want to declutter my space and my home.

I want to declutter my space and my home. Information: I want to be less on social media and my phone.

So far it’s simple, but let’s look at the things we already have enough of.

For example, Swedes take pride in their national philosophy of lagom: having not too much, not too little, but just enough. The practices here have to do with noticing, celebrating, and appreciating what you already have in abundance.

I have enough of:

Friends & Family: I’m blessed with my family and friends supporting me.

I’m blessed with my family and friends supporting me. Time : I have relatively enough time for myself and my family.

: I have relatively enough time for myself and my family. Love: I have an intimate relationship that makes me feel nourished and loved.

Finally, let’s look into spontaneity. Mediators practicing Nonviolent Communication consider spontaneity one of the basic human needs. It contributes greatly to the general feeling of freedom. For us, it’s all the activities that bring joy, flow, randomness, foolishness, and childishness into our everyday lives.

I want to have acts of spontaneity:

Dance : I want to express myself more through dance.

: I want to express myself more through dance. Travel : I want to explore new destinations more often.

: I want to explore new destinations more often. Wildcard: free time in my schedule to do random things.

Designing Tiny, Specific, Doable, and Supported Practices

We arrived at 12 ‘wants’ under four themes. Let’s get into designing behavior change practices for each. The key here is that practices need to be:

Tiny, so you don’t freak out or become a victim of sudden laziness. Specific, so you know exactly what you do. Doable from the get-go, so you won’t back up. Supported by ourselves, our community, and our environment.

Let’s go over those three things.

1. Tiny

Imagine you want to stay fit. So you decide to add a habit of running as a new daily routine. In your mind, you think running 5 miles a day is a good result. Instead of setting a final goal of five miles, start with a simple goal of running one block, and adding one more block every day. By the end of the month, you'd be able to run your five miles easily. And you’re internal immune system would adjust by then.

2. Specific

Define the time of the day and the amount of whatever you’d be doing. For example, if you’re adding a gratitude practice, make sure you specify that you give gratitude to 1) three people, events, or things in your life 2) every day 3) right before you start your dinner.

3. Doable from the start

A common theme is to choose something you think is doable, while it’s not that easy. E.g., if you are picking up yoga as a practice, you might need time to stretch and adjust your body to an extent that it can handle the poses you’re interested in.

4. Supported

If our environment and connections don’t offer support to the upcoming change, we’re likely to slip and fail. Designing the practices, we should think of three levels of support:

Self-support: I have the ability, drive, and commitment to create lasting change. But most importantly, there is an internal ‘yes’ when I think of the transformation.

Community support

: I have friends, family, and close connections who I can tell about my plans, and who can be my cheerleaders throughout the process.

Environment support: I see that the environment will support me, and if potential interruptions occur, I’d be able to overcome them.

List All 12 Practices

Now let’s look closer at each ‘want’, and design 12 practices that would be tiny and rewarding. I’ll use Dave’s list as an example.

More focus: Daily meditation first time in the morning, starting with 10 minutes, and expanding to 20 mins within a month. More sleep: Go to bed every day at 11 pm, aiming at 10 pm by the end of the month. Wake up at 7 am every day. Including weekends. More vitality: Start exercising yoga with a 7 Minute Yoga app. Exercises start at 15 minutes and upper-beginner level, aiming at 30 minutes and medium-intermediate level by the end of the month. Less eating: Practice a healthy diet and intermittent fasting built-in. Two meals a day: breakfast at 10 am and dinner at 6 pm. No more than one dinner out a week. Less stuff: Every day for one month, give away, sell, or collect for sending to a thrift store one item that hasn’t been used by me for more than 6 months. Less information: no phone two hours before bed — substituting it with X. Digital detox every Saturday. Celebrate friends & family: daily gratitude practice before going to bed: 3 people who I appreciate having in my life. Celebrate time for self: spend at least 30 minutes before bed every day listening to audiobooks. Celebrate love: buy flowers every Friday, spend time together out of the house on Saturdays. Spontaneous dance: go to a contact improv class every Thursday at 7 pm. Spontaneous travel: find a new travel destination every week, plan it and go there; the destination can be super-local (a new park in the city), within a 2-hour drive, or remote over the weekend. Spontaneous calendar: every week, free up my Sunday and don’t plan anything. Have it open for random invitations or spontaneous ideas.

Implement

The key to implementing these 12 practices is careful planning, some discipline, and a secret sauce: a method called ‘21-day Trial’.

21-day Trials

Researchers still argue how long it takes for an action to become a sticky daily ritual. The consensus that the minimum is somewhere between 21 and 30 days. To try things out, let’s stick with three weeks.

Here is how our 21-day trials will work. We’re going to give each practice our full undivided attention and go for it for three weeks. If after this time it doesn’t work for us for whatever reason, we can adjust the routine or even drop it.

The idea is that we don’t know if all 12 practices would work before we try them. We might want to change something or adjust as we implement. Every three weeks we’ll be adding a new routine, and go with it until it’s fully embraced by our body.

Sequence and Mixing

It’s helpful to make a plan for our 12 activities. I recommend this sequence: 1) less of, and then adding things you want 2) more of, and then add ‘enough’ and ‘spontaneous’ themes.

It’s possible to mix and add two or three practices at the same time. It can be tricky, however. If you have a tendency for procrastination, losing attention quickly, or general lack of focus, then going with one thing at a time will be a game-changer in implementation.

Make a plan

We can use Google Calendar for it. Or we can draw it and put it on a wall, like Dave did: