Krisztian Komandi的动态

#20 Routines vs flexibility? Recently I started working with a personal trainer. This 1.5 years of sitting in an unsuitable chair at an unsuitable desk pushed me to the edge. During our first meet, which was more of a consultancy, we discussed what the program would look like. She arrived with a form to be filled out before starting working together. I immediately became alert. Starting doing regular physical exercising is a really hard work. You don't see the benefits for quite a while. The goals might be vague. The first couple times might actually be very painful. So I was looking for signs of smart nudges or behavioural science inspired elements that help me bridge this intention action gap between wanting to move and actually moving. Specifically, I was looking for three things if they are covered in the form at this point: ? The Why? I was asked about the goals I want to achieve during the program and we divided it into major milestones so it becomes more achievable and accessible. (OK, to be fair it was included in the form but she recommended skipping it because most people can't really weigh up what's realistically achievable under a couple months.) ? The What? We discussed transparently what the first couple of classes will be about and how the next ones will build on it. So I'm not left in the dark, I know what I sign up for! I might be afraid of the muscle soreness but I definitely cant be afraid of the uncertainty of whats coming! ? The How? I expected that we'd agree on a specific time when I would come every week - but that wasn't the case. We would need to arrange for next week every weekend in text messages. Where is consistency that helps build a habit?? Where is plan making that helps avoid the unexpected excuses?? Luckily, I was just reading Katy Milkman's How To Change and a couple days later I understood why I was wrong - and that most behavioural scientist would have been agreed with me. In an experiement testing whether incentivising routine or flexible exercising works better, they found that routine incentives generated fewer gym visits than flexible incentives, both during the intervention and after incentives were removed. When participants were payed each day they visited the gym, regardless of the timing, they were more likely to go persistently! Flexibility helped create a little wiggle room for habits to emerge because it assisted the adaptation to our complicated life. (https://lnkd.in/esUcRA6T) Consistency seems intuitively important when building an exercise regime. But it seems that a little bit of flexibility helps create the magic. Come back to me in a few months, and I'll tell you if it worked on me! #30days30nudgets is my challenge to write 30 short posts in 30 days unfolding a phenomenon, observation or story with a #behaviouralscience element I came across in the world.