Have you ever found yourself on your couch at 7pm, watching Netflix after a long day at work, totally zonked, after getting the bus home instead of the gym?
Or with a full Uber Eats order in front of you instead of the meal you’d told yourself you’d cook tonight.
Or scrolling your phone in bed at 1am instead of getting a decent night’s sleep as you’d planned.
Because if yes, same.
This is issue 2 of my Wellbeing by Design Rentrée series. Last week I invited you to ask yourself what to take off your wellbeing load.
This week we take one habit worth keeping, and look at where and how it actually falls apart.
“How do I stay consistent with healthy habits when life gets busy?”
That’s probably the most common question I get as a Health Coach.
The thing is when we think about consistency, discipline and self-control (or our lack of), we picture those last seconds, the moment we cave: the bus stop, the Uber Eats checkout, the phone at 1am.
But the couch is only the end of a timeline. You actually had options all day.
You can change the situation early (leave the biscuits at the shop), you can try to shift your attention to something else, you can talk yourself out of it, or you can try saying no at the last second in the heat of the moment.
The earlier you act on that timeline, the less it costs you.
Leaving the biscuits at the shop is easy. Not eating them once they’re on the counter is not.
Researchers followed 159 first-year university students for a week. Their phones buzzed a few times a day to ask what they were tempted by and whether they resisted. At the end of term the researchers checked how their goals had gone.
Resisting temptation did not predict who reached their goals. What predicted it was how many temptations people ran into in the first place. Each one wore them down a little, whether they gave in or not.
The study only followed students for 1 term, so it shows a pattern rather than proving cause and effect. But it’s a pattern I see all the time.
Translation: you don’t reach your goals by resisting more temptations. You reach them by running into fewer temptations.
Which means that you’re looking at the wrong moment.
You replay the couch, the takeaway, the scroll, and feel like shit about that.
But the moment actually worth auditing is probably 2 or 3 steps before that.
It was the 4pm meeting that overran which meant you had zero energy or headspace for the gym after work (despite knowing it would make you feel soooo much better).
It was the fact there was nothing in the fridge to actually cook with.
It was the fact you picked up your phone to check something real quick at 8pm, but you’re still scrolling mindlessly 3 hours later.
Nobody feels guilty about a 4pm meeting, which is exactly why you don’t notice it taking over your evening.
I wrote about the plans we make on a calm Sunday in one of my favourite essays.
This is about what a busy Wednesday afternoon does to our cute little Sunday plans.
⚡️ Your Wellbeing by Design experiment: The First Domino
You already know what you want to do. This week we find out where your day gets in the way.
Pick 1 thing you want to do this week but that keeps not happening.
Think of the last time it did not happen, starting from the moment you knew your plan was off.
Now, walk backwards through that day. What happened just before? And before that? Stop at the first ordinary moment when doing the thing became way less likely. That’s your first domino, the moment on the couch is the last one.
Change 1 thing at that moment only. Not at the end. Something that changes the situation (where the bag is, which route you take, when you sit down, where the charger lives), not something you have to remember to resist.
Run this tiny experiment for a week.
Do a quick audit: Did that early moment show up this week? Did the 1 change hold when it did?
So it should look something like:
My last domino was [the couch]. My first domino was [X]. This week I change [1 thing] there.
Here are some examples for inspo:
Your gym bag comes to the office with you, so you can stop at the gym on the way home instead of making a separate trip.
A healthy ready meal goes from the freezer to the fridge in the morning before you leave for work.
Do your 8pm ‘quick check’ standing up in the kitchen, then leave the phone on the charger there. The phone check still happens, the 3 hours of mindless scrolling afterwards don’t.
Put your walking shoes by the front door on Saturday night, so Sunday morning doesn’t begin with deciding whether you can be bothered.
Eat something at 4pm so you don’t leave work famished.
So next time you find yourself on the couch at 7pm watching a Netflix show instead of going to the gym, skip the lecture.
That’s just the last domino.
What would be more useful?
Go find the first one and knock that bitch over.
With love,
Noemie x
Key Sources
Angela L. Duckworth, Tamar Szabó Gendler and James J. Gross, ‘Situational Strategies for Self-Control’ (2016) 11(1) Perspectives on Psychological Science 35 <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26817725/>.
Marina Milyavskaya and Michael Inzlicht, ‘What’s So Great About Self-Control? Examining the Importance of Effortful Self-Control and Temptation in Predicting Real-Life Depletion and Goal Attainment’ (2017) 8(6) Social Psychological and Personality Science 603 <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550616679237>.
Noemie Mooney is an ACE Certified Health Coach, ICF-trained Behaviour Change Specialist, certified yoga instructor, and creator of the MAKE SPACE Method™. Trained in design thinking at the Stanford d.school, she writes Unwritten Potential, a newsletter about evidence-based wellbeing, sustainable habits, mental wellbeing, and health behaviour change for smart, health-curious people who want to feel their best without making it a full-time job.
I think we've made health seem more complicated than it needs to be. Most people don't need more inputs. They need more consistency with the fundamentals. The basics may not be exciting, but they still seem to deliver the biggest returns.