The Science-Backed Importance of Utilizing Prompts for Your New Year's Goals
Due to my job leading spin classes, I get an up-close view of a recurring situation each year: The classes are filled to capacity during the initial weeks as individuals make their New Year's resolutions, but come mid-February, I'm back to teaching smaller groups, grateful that the "New Year's resolution followers" have departed. It's always a bummer to see these new faces leave, but I do believe that one can set and maintain a New Year's resolution, despite the statistics.
There are numerous self-improvement objectives that you can establish as the year approaches, both for your fitness journey and beyond. Regardless of your goals, it's crucial to develop a strategy to ensure you execute them successfully. One method to boost your chances of achieving your resolutions is by linking them to "cues." Let me explain why and how to do it.
Connecting Your New Year's Resolutions to Cues
The more specific your objectives are, the more likely they are to be successful. This concept applies to just about everything, from tidying up your house to setting health goals. If you aim to clean your home on a Saturday morning, it's more effective to choose a room to focus on than to simply "clean the house." When it comes to New Year's resolutions, specificity is key, especially since you're planning for 12 months of change. Instead of setting a resolution to "eat healthier," make it more concrete by pinpointing what needs improvement, like "I want to consume 10 more grams of protein every day."
Cues will be invaluable in this context. Research indicates that adding a cue, a specific prompt for action, to your goals can enhance their implementation. We rely on automatic processes to manage routine tasks in our daily lives, like turning on the coffee maker after waking up or grabbing our keys on the way out. These triggers, like waking up or leaving the house, signal our brains to carry out the second part of the process. By incorporating cues into your resolutions, you'll help them transform into natural habits as well. Here are some examples:
- If your New Year's resolution is to save a specific amount of money by December, make it something like, "When I spend $X, I'll transfer $Y into savings."
- If you aspire to be more productive at work, try using the Pomodoro technique as a resolution: "After working for 25 minutes, I'll take a five-minute break."
- "When I sit down at my desk, I'll respond to all new emails."
- "When my meetings conclude, I'll take five minutes for meditation."
- "When work ends, I'll put on my sneakers and head straight to the gym."
- "When the 6:00 news broadcast ends, I'll call my mom."
The Reasons Behind Cues and New Year's Resolutions
Why do cues work effectively for New Year's resolutions? Here are a few reasons:
- You're creating automated processes in your brain, essentially Pavlov-training your subconscious self to take action whenever your trigger occurs. While it requires a few weeks of intentional effort, recognizing the moment for action is half the battle.
- Operating this way leaves less room for error. Without a defined schedule and cues, you may forget to do your new task or even consciously avoid it. Setting reminders in your calendar can help, as the push alert emphasizes that it's time to get started and the visual reminder acts as a reminder that you have something to accomplish, making it harder to double-book. If your cue to exercise is leaving work at 5, it will take a few weeks to develop the habit of declining post-work social invitations, which is why setting the exercise time in your calendar every day after work will help you stay on track.
Stick with your cues, but allow yourself some flexibility during the initial weeks. You might discover that the timing doesn't align well with your current schedule. If you're using the cue method, it will typically take about two months, on average, for the habit to form, so use this time to take note of what's working, what isn't, and what could be adjusted. If your goal is to be more connected with loved ones, you might link your cue to call home while doing the dishes every night, only to find that you're too tired in the evening or eat out too often. Switching the cue to call home when you get in the car to head to work in the morning might work better. Just stick to it once you've identified the best timing.
To keep your New Year's resolution of consuming more protein, you could set a cue like, "When I prepare my lunch, I'll add an extra serving of lean meat or beans." If your work resolution is to be more productive using the Pomodoro technique, a cue could be, "After finishing a task, I'll take a break for five minutes before starting the next one."
