by Caryl Teh

If you’re struggling to stick to the healthy habits you started as part of your New Year resolutions, or just being consistent in general, it doesn’t mean you’ll never be able to. Here’s 5 reasons you might be struggling, and how you can start tackling them.

1. You’re Too Vague About Your Goal

If you decided that “I want to run more often”, you’ve left your brain with too many decisions to make. What exactly does “more often” mean? When and how far are you going to run each time?

By the time you’ve figured out the answers to those questions, your brain is already depleted. And lounging on the couch with a bag of your favourite potato chips and Netflix reruns seems like a much more appealing endeavour than keeping fit.

Solution: Create Implementation Intentions

A better way to approach a goal is to write an implementation intention, which specifies a day, time, and place to perform your desired behaviour. For example, “On Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:30am, I will run for 30 minutes at my neighbourhood park. (If it rains or we’re in lockdown, I’ll run on my treadmill.)” In one simple statement, you’ve told your brain when, where, and what to do, eliminating any unnecessary decision-making. A UK study found that this drastically increases your likelihood to follow through.

2. You’ve Left Obstacles In Your Way

Your brain wants to help you survive, which means it will find any way to conserve energy. So if your new habit requires extra energy, you’re less likely to stick to it.

For example, you might decide to sketch a new logo every day to sharpen your graphic design skills. But if your sketchbook is high on a shelf in your closet and your pencils are buried in your junk drawer, you’ve created obstacles to overcome before you can even get started.

Solution: Eliminate Obstacles Wherever Possible

(1) Prime your environment
Author and productivity expert James Clear recommends priming your environment to make future habits easier. Place cues in obvious places to trigger your desired behavior. For example, place your sketchbook and pencils inside your bag so that the materials are always with you, and you can’t help but see them every time you reach for something in your bag.

(2) Automate
Reduce the amount of energy it will take to get started by automating everything you can. For example, instead of just relying on your brain to remember, you could set notifications on your phone to remind you to start sketching. Alternatively, subscribe to a website or schedule sketching prompt emails to be sent to you every day.

3. You’re Too Focused On The Outcome

Outcomes are important. They set the goal posts so you know when you’ve reached your goal. But focusing solely on outcomes blocks your brain from getting the immediate rewards it craves to stay motivated. For example, if you frame your goal as, “I want to get promoted to a senior engineering position,” two problems arise:

• That may take a long time, and your brain will get sick of waiting for the reward.
• That’s outside of your control since a lot of factors are at play when your manager or boss are the ones who decide who should get a promotion, so you may never see the reward.

Solution: Reframe Your Outcome Goal As A Learning Goal

Outcome goals focus on the end result, while learning goals focus on the mastery you can gain along the way. 

Learning goals can help you ensure that, even if you don’t reach the outcome, you enjoyed & feel fulfilled by the journey. One study at a Canadian university found that when MBA students set learning goals (eg. finding ways to network or understanding different viewpoints), they ended up being more satisfied with the MBA program than those who had set outcome goals (eg. achieving a specific GPA or salary level).

So instead of saying, “I want to get a promotion,” try reframing it as, “I want to master JavaScript, improve my leadership skills, and learn at least 3 things that I can write down from my mentor each week.” Not only will this give your brain the dopamine boost with every small win, it will also help you focus on the things you can control.

4. You’re Relying Too Much On Willpower

Resisting temptation is laudable, but few of us can hold out against a constant barrage of distractions 100% of the time. Instead of relying on willpower, what if you hardly needed to use it at all?

“‘Disciplined’ people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control,” writes James Clear in his bestselling book, Atomic Habits. “In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.”

Solution: Make A Ulysses Pact

A Ulysses pact (a.k.a. a commitment device) helps you resist temptation by somehow tying you to your desired behaviour in anticipation of the temptation. It is named after the hero of Homer’s Odyssey who had his men tie him to the ship’s mast so he could pass the deadly Sirens without being lured to his own doom by their song.

For example, an office worker placed her iPhone into a kitchen safe, which wouldn’t unlock until the timer reached zero, to ensure that she got her work done. Instead of relying on willpower, she made a Ulysses pact with herself by putting the temptation in a place where she physically couldn’t access it for several hours.

Let’s say there’s a group you really want to participate in, but you know that your future self might be tempted to sometimes skip the meetings because they are held at night and you might be too tired. You could try making a Ulysses pact with yourself by signing up to be a group leader. That ties your hands because you can’t skip a meeting that you will be leading.

5. You Place Too Much Value On Emotions

If you’re being consistent, feeling bored is unavoidable. You have a brain wired to crave novelty every now and then. Therein lies the seeming contradiction: although doing the same thing over and over again is crucial to success, it is also directly opposes brain’s reward-seeking tendencies.

Even the pros have days when they don’t feel like practising. Basketball sensation, Steph Curry describes the three months in which he spent hours a day perfecting his shot as “the worst summer of my life.” Imagine if a young Curry, feeling exhausted and frustrated after the thousandth time repeating the same motion, had said, “You know what? Maybe this means I’m just not cut out for this.” Basketball fans would never have seen the two-time MVP they know and love today.

So drill this into your mind: Feelings like boredom, frustration, even despair, do not necessarily mean something is wrong with your goal. They don’t mean you don’t have what it takes. They just indicate that you might need a break. Or it may be time to give your brain the dopamine hit it craves. Here’s how.

Solution: Spice Up Your Routine with Variety

Thankfully, consistency and variety can coexist and stave off feelings of boredom. Here are some examples for infusing a routine task with exciting variety:

• Write five pages of your novel every morning, but switch the location of where you do your writing.
• Work out in your living room every evening, but change up the exercise routines you do.
• Read for 20 minutes before bed, but alternate the genres of the books you read, from mystery to self-help to sci-fi.
• Journal every morning for 15 minutes, but use an online prompt generator to surprise yourself with what you should write about.
• Host a monthly all-hands meeting with your team, but invite a new speaker each time to keep things interesting.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to keep life interesting while maintaining consistency. The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

You won’t become a consistency master overnight because building consistency takes intentionality and a lot of effort! It’s a marathon, not a sprint. But we hope that this article has given you a place to start. Be patient with yourself, and know that it’s ok to not reach your goal every single time. The most important thing is that you never give up. And you’ll be amazed to see how much your consistency will grow over time. You can do it!