How To Change

How To Change identifies the stumbling blocks that are in your way of reaching your goals and improving yourself and the research-backed ways to get over them, including how to beat some of the worst productivity and life problems like procrastination, laziness, and much more.

Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution? Some people might joke about how many people use the New Year as a time to make drastic changes. Why would a new year suddenly make goals more attainable?

But actually, there is some benefit to starting in the new year. It is not because the month of January is different from other months but because of what it represents- a fresh start. Other fresh starts could be a birthday, a new semester, or even a Monday.

The author discovered this when she and her colleagues examined data from college campus fitness centers. So what about a fresh start is so special?

A fresh start gives you a new perspective. It places a distance between the previous goals you didn’t reach and the new ones you aspire to.

However, fresh starts aren’t always a miracle for change. Two studies that looked at college students’ gym activity during the school year found that breaks caused a significant disruption in students’ new, healthy routines. The breaks could definitely be seen as a fresh start, just not a positive one for goals.

The author says to be on the lookout for new fresh starts if you want to start changing and make sure they don’t have a disruptive effect on your progress.

So say you have started your goals with a fresh start and are eager to change, but soon enough, you’re finding it hard to fight off impulses. Instead of reaching for an apple, you’re reaching for chips, or you’re consumed with social media rather than studying. Another word for impulsivity is present bias. Acting impulsively places instant gratification over long-term goals. It leads you to look for immediate pleasures and forget about the rewards you would have down the line if you stuck to your goals. One of the strategies the author has for fighting impulsivity is to use what she calls temptation bundling. This is where you pair a pleasurable activity with a challenging one to make it more appealing. An example of this would be watching your favorite show while running on a treadmill. Another technique is gamification, where you make real-world tasks seem more fun by adding elements of a game to them, like keeping score or adding rewards. An example of this is using a step counter that gives you badges to reward you for reaching a walking goal. Another common issue that might…