209. how to set habits you'll *actually* use [solo]

Welcome to Sheeper Assisted. I'm your host Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Sheeper Assisted is the teen mental health podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode I'll bring you authentic, accessible and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental Wellness

you can expect. Evidence based teen approved resources, coping skills including lots of DBT insights and education and each piece of content you consume. She Persisted offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living. So let's dive in this week on She persisted. If you are on TikTok or Instagram reels, you guys seen those super Moody, low brightness entrepreneur videos.

They have the big microphones. They're like never tell anyone your goals. Build in private, work in private, celebrate publicly. Never tell anyone what your plans are wrong. Psychologically, scientifically speaking, if you want to reach your goal, you will declare your goal publicly and you will do so in person.

You will tell those around you what you're working towards, what you're trying to do, and you are exponentially more likely to achieve that goal than if you are the only one that is aware of that goal and holding yourself accountable. Hello, hello, and welcome to Cheap Assisted. If this is your first episode, I'm so excited you're here. If this is not your first episode, welcome back. Happy 2025. We have a really exciting

episode. It is going to set you up for success, I think this year with your goals and your habits and successes and failures and all the things. We're going to dive into a lot of psychology research and all those topics. And then I'm going to talk about my goals for 2025. And I know we're a little bit late. I'm recording this on January

12th. I know a lot of people do their goal setting content like end of December, very beginning of January. I was on a mental hiatus after the full semester and grad school apps and finals and all the things. I've been taking a little bit of a mental break, doing lots of reading, relaxing over winter break. But we're back. I start my final semester at Penn in a couple of days, which

is absolutely wild. And I'm setting my goals right now for 2025. And I hope that this is helpful for you guys as well as you're starting school and that it's not too late and you guys still find value from this. Also, you are just getting back into your school routine or you have new classes or a new schedule or any big changes

happening. That is scientifically the best time to start new habits and routines because it's easier to implement them in a new environment than it is in your same environment with new behaviors because those cues are tied to old behaviors. So hopefully this will be a good point for you guys to implement those things. And I hope you guys find a lot of value from this episode and we're just going to dive right in. The first thing that we're going to talk about is the difference

between motivation and volition. So motivation is why we do something. It's a lot of times tied to our lived experiences, our emotions, our values, our interests. That's kind of what is urging us to do something. But our volition is how we do something. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Our volition with regard to habits and routines and plans and goals and successes and failures.

Like how can we be most effective and get the outcomes that we want and follow through and building on that idea within our volition? There are four different little steps that you could call them. I'm going to give you guys a lot of frameworks and ways to think about goals and take what you like, leave what you don't. But I feel like it's helpful to kind of hear different ways of thinking about these things and where you can potentially insert new thoughts and behaviors to be

more efficient and improved. So this one comes from an article called Mindset Theory of Action phases. And if then planning is from 2019, we can put it in the show notes. But there are four steps that take place when an action occurs. So that's pre decisional. So that's like your pros and cons thinking about if you want to do this thing, weighing your options, then we have our preactional. So taking our steps to set ourselves up for success, what

is going to happen? And we're going to talk a lot about this preactional phase today. There's the actual, so you actually do the thing and then the post actual reflecting on it, getting feedback, was it effective, what would I change next time, etcetera. And so within that pre actual phase, there is something that you can implement called an implementation intention. So this is a specific plan that is better than a goal intention.

So a goal intention would be I want to get better running, I'm going to start running, I am going to run a 5K, I'm going to run everyday. Like those are goal intentions, an if then plan and when we learn them in grit lab this past semester, which I'm pulling a lot from my notes for that. And you guys are going to get a grit lab recap episode, the next solo episode, which I'm really excited about.

We learned about them as when then plans, which it rhymes a little bit easier to remember and it makes more sense. But the when is the cue? So when I get home from school, when it turns 5:00, when my alarm goes off in the morning, then I'm going to run one mile. Then I am going to get up, put on my work at clothes, go downstairs and walk 2 miles. So one way we can set a goal that's more effective than just saying I'd like to do this is an implementation intention.

So when this thing happens, then I will do this. Some other characteristics of effective goals is that they're specific, they're challenging, and they're declared publicly in person, which if you are on TikTok or Instagram Reels, you guys seen those like super Moody, low brightness entrepreneur videos. They have the big microphones. They're like never tell anyone your goals build in private, work in private, celebrate publicly. Never tell anyone what your plans are wrong.

Psychologically, scientifically speaking, if you want to reach your goal, you will declare your goal publicly and you will do so in person. You will tell those around you what you're working towards, what you're trying to do, and you are exponentially more likely to achieve that goal than if you are the only one that is aware of that goal and holding

yourself accountable. Another statistic that I'll give you related to this is that 7% of people achieve their goals without setting an intention, only 7%. So if we're not setting specific intentions, if we're not being clear about what we want to achieve, we're not going to achieve that thing. But it's not just magically going to happen or change in our life. As humans, we're wired to do as little as possible.

Like we're wired to conserve energy and stay in our routines and stay in our habits and stay in our comfort zone and not change or move out of that. Like evolutionary speaking, that's what we're meant to do. So creating new habits, setting new goals, pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone is a really foreign and not intuitive experience. So it's not just magically going to happen. We have to put effort and guardrails in place to allow us

to get to that end point. And then another piece of an effective goal is that you have to have a sub goal related to your performance. When you don't have a sub goal that's performance related, you don't have a goal at all. So if we go back to the 5K example, if your goal is to run a 5K in under 30 minutes, I feel like I've had friends that run 5 Ki feel like they said 30 minutes was like sometime that people run a 5K in. I don't know. I don't run 5 KS. You will say have sub goals

related to your performance. I will run a mile in under 10 minutes. I will run 2 miles in under 18 minutes. I will run 3 miles in under 25 minutes. And you will attach dates to those and specific measurable outcomes related to your performance. And you can be flexible with that. Maybe you have to push it back. Maybe you have to give yourself more grace. But those sub goals related to your performance are really important so that you eventually get to that outcome.

Because again, it's just not magically going to happen. We're wired against those goals magically happening. So we have to be really intentional and objective with the way that we measure if we're on the right track. So I'm going to give you guys another framework for goals before we talk about plans. And so there's this thing called the Rubicon model. And if you've ever heard of the phrase like crossing the Rubicon, it's like crossing a

river. And the point is that once you've crossed, you can't go back. Like you've committed to something, you've made the decision, and now you're in the process of implementing that. There's no reverse. You can't draw out of it like you've made the decision, you've made the commitment. So basically in the Rubicon model, this model of actions and goals happening, the first step is deliberating thinking about what the goal is. That's what we're doing right

now. Then you're going to set a goal and we're going to talk about all the best ways to set a goal. We talked about specific challenging, declared publicly sub goals related to performance. We'll talk about more things that you can do your when. Then plans will give you more frameworks, but you set your goal and that is crossing the Rubicon. Once you've set that goal, you can't go back. The goal's been set and now you either achieve it or you don't.

After that you plan, which we're going to also do today. So plan to set yourself up for success, you act, you actually do the behavior and then you evaluate. Did it work? Did not work, you get feedback, etcetera. And so that's one way that we can view goals. So again, deliberate, set a goal, plan, act and evaluate. So now we're going to kind of circle in on plans. What are plans? Why do we set them? What purpose do they serve? How can we be more effective with the plans that we set?

And then we're going to continue along this cycle of like goal setting and what we're going to do. So plans are the articulation of an intended future action. And we could say when thens are plans, the implementation intentions are a version of plans. But plans are really powerful. There are studies that have been done about the specificity of a flu shot appointment and how likely it is that people actually get their vaccinations.

So they mailed out these little cards and some of them just said just get your flu shot. Some of them said get your flu shot at this date. Some of them said get your flu shot at this date, at this time, at this specific location. And it was drastically different how many people showed up and actually got vaccinated when they were given a specific plan with the location and the time and what was going to happen.

Rather than just saying do this, the implementation intention of like get your flu shot or the goal intention, I'm going to get vaccinated. And the, the completion rate here is really wild. So 32% versus 71% completion rate when saying where and when you're going to do something versus again, just having that general idea of like, I'd like to do this thing in general at some point in the future. And so we're going to get into habits, right? Habits are like, we go on autopilot.

We don't think through things. We just react. We have the cue and then the behavior. So you don't have that thought of like, should I do this? Should I not do this? Pros and cons? What are the benefits? Instead, you just say, I woke up, my alarm went off. So then I did the thing. Implementation intentions. And these really specific plans can kind of act as that. You're not thinking because you've already made the plan. It's a certain date, it's a certain time, so you do the thing.

And again, 32 versus 71% difference in completion rates when you have that plan, that implementation intention of what time is it happening and where is it happening. But plans don't always work. There's this really interesting thing called the planning fallacy. So we plan for the best case scenario, but we also expect the outcome to reflect that. And that's not the case. Our plans don't always go according to our intentions. The best case scenario isn't always going to happen.

So it's important to flag that, but they increase the likelihood of us being really flawed and inefficient at completing these goals as humans. It increases the likelihood of us actually following through. So how can we set effective goals and make plans that increase the likelihood of us doing something? I'm going to give you guys a framework, and I'm hoping to have the scientist who came up with this on the podcast at some point.

We're still figuring out scheduling, but it will be a really great episode when it comes out. But this is called the WOOP framework, and it's been shown to increase GPA, improve school conduct, improve attendance. It's a really powerful framework and improving behavioral outcomes and again, decreasing our human nature of not doing different behaviors automatically. So WOOP stands for wish, outcome, obstacle and plan. So wish, what's the goal that you want to achieve?

We're going to set that intention, the outcome. How will you feel when you achieve this outcome? We're going to talk about positive thinking, which actually decreases the likelihood of you achieving your goal, which is an interesting paradox. But how do you want to feel like what is the positive that's on the other side of doing this hard thing? Obstacles. What are the main obstacles? Are you going to procrastinate? Are you going to get distracted? Are you going to scroll on Tiktok?

Are you going to not want to do it and just decide not to? Like, what are the potential obstacles that would prevent you from completing this goal? And then plan how are you going to tackle these obstacles? Are you going to shut off your phone? Are you going to let your friends know in advance? Like I can't do that this day, I have this thing that I'm trying to do. Are you going to prepare for the fact that you're going to procrastinate and write down the pros and cons?

So in the moment, you know, like I thought this out, this is really important to me and I'm going to do the opposite of what I want to do, which is procrastinate. So that's the WOOT method, effective, evidence based, simple, and you can use it for almost any goal. I want to give you guys a couple little like facts, things to be aware of when it comes to human psychology and goals that I think can be helpful when you're creating these loop goals.

And we're just generally structuring our plans and what we hope to happen. So the first is the importance of examples and models. We learn faster and more effectively and better when we have an example of something or

a model of something. So they did this study where they had people use ChatGPT to write a cover letter and they objectively rated the quality of the cover letter when people worked completely independently and on their own versus when they worked with ChatGPT to write a cover letter. And they found that people learn faster and they produce better cover letters when they work with ChatGPT, which was the opposite of the hypothesis. They didn't think that people

would get better. They're not actually learning because they're working with something else and they're getting examples. The answers are quote UN quote being handed to them, but that wasn't the case. They learned more effectively by having an example and being shown what to do. This is also something you hear a lot in medicine. See one, do one, teach, 1. You observe you have that model, you take it in, you then do 1, you practice and then you teach to really solidify and reinforce

that learning. So we learned really well by example. Anytime you have a goal that the skill you haven't already established. What examples can you look at? If you want to start posting on TikTok or online more, follow creators who are documenting their journey of posting regularly. If you want to learn how to edit videos, watch video editing

tutorials. If you want to get a certain grade in a certain class, compare past work that you've submitted versus a friend who's gotten A's own assignments. What are the differences? Go to the teacher and ask them for examples of past assignments that have gotten good grades.

Another piece of thing to keep in mind is that as humans, we have really social brains when they've done research on what sets us apart as humans, as being really an exceptional species compared to like chimps or apes or maybe those lions or dolphins. These other animals that are smart and have similar brains to us but are in nowhere near as innovative and evolved as we are. What sets us apart is not the structure of our brain. The number of neurons, the complexity is our social brain.

It's our ability to relate with others and communicate with them and collaborate and work together like that is what you is unique about us and it's allowed us to thrive as a species. So we use that to our example. We learn socially, we learn with others and so collaborate with others, get feedback from others. So those are two things that we're really going to expedite the rate that you're learning and executing on these goals, which is one, working with others, and two, learning from

models. And then the last thing that I'm going to mention here is this thing called the three box model or process theory. And this is a theory of emotions, and it comes from Doctor Angela Duckworth and then a professor at Stanford. And it's technically four different steps, but she condenses it down to just three for the purpose of understanding this easily and implementing it. So we have our situation that we put ourselves in our box 1, the

context box 2 is our thoughts. How do we interpret the situation? Technically, it's our attention and our appraisal, but like, what do we think about and react to with regard to this situation? And then three, we have our response. How do we behave? Do we achieve the goal? Like what happens after we've been in a situation? We thought about it, and then how do we respond? And we do a lot of episodes on this podcast about how we think about things because that's really powerful.

It can change how we feel. We do a lot about how we can change our behaviors, which then in turn changes our feelings and our thoughts. But for the purpose of this episode, I really want to emphasize that Box 1, and this is one of my biggest takeaways from this class, which we're going to again, do a recap on Grit Lab and you guys are going to hear all about this. But the box one that you put yourself in is going to impact the thoughts you have and the

actions you take. So are you putting yourself in a situation where you'll be held accountable, where you will have deadlines that help you towards a larger goal? Do you have others achieving similar goals to you so you guys can work together and collaborate? Do you have models of what you should be doing? An example so that you can thrive and do what you're supposed to be doing? So what box 1 are you putting yourself in and are you giving yourself the best chance of

success? The example I'll give you guys of this is me doing my work, which is that when I go to my room at Penn and after class I like sit and relax and I read a book or I watch TV or just hang out, eat a snack. I will not do work. I've tried, it just doesn't happen. Maybe I'll do a little bit of work like 3 hours later, but it's not going to happen.

If I refuse and like white knuckle my way to not going to my room and I sit at a coffee shop or I sit in an empty building or I sit in a classroom, I will get my work done. I might be a little bit more tired. I might be like, oh I just want to be done for the day, but I will get my work done before I go back to my dorm. When I'm go back to my dorm room after class, I'm like, oh I get to relax. I'm so excited. I'm done for the day. I'm not setting myself up for success.

My Box 1 is not conductive to me getting my work done.

When I go to Starbucks or I meet up with friends or I sit in a classroom and intend to do my work, I'm setting myself up for success because I know that I'm more likely to complete my work and then get to go home to my lovely room and get ready for bed and watch TV. So think about your Box 1. I think that's the most powerful thing you can manipulate when it comes to goal setting because you don't have to like work against yourself with your emotions and your thoughts.

You're setting yourself up for success to be productive or whatever. It is the goal that you're achieving. So to recap so far, motivation is why we do something. Volition is how we do it. Our goals direct, our energy, our plans specify what we're going to do and ideally when and where we're going to do it.

The more specific the better. And then we have our woo, which is our wish, our outcome, our obstacle and our plan, a really effective evidence based framework to set our goals and have a higher likelihood of achieving them. So with that little summary talked about what goals are, what plans are, how do we set our goals, how can we set

ourselves up for success there? A lot of your execution of your goals is going to come down to our habits because as humans, we're really bad at using willpower and self-control. We're just not good at it. It requires a lot of emotional and mental energy. As humans, we're wired to conserve energy, doing as little as possible.

And so when we set goals that require us to do the opposite of that or like brains and body are fighting against us so we can use willpower psychologically, But scientifically speaking, it's the least effective way to achieve our goals because it requires a lot of emotional energy, a lot of mental energy, and the likelihood of you achieving your goal based on willpower and self-control is low. What's more effective is habits because we think about the box

model, right? So we had our context that we put ourselves in, which is our box 1. Box 2 is our attention and appraisals or our thoughts. And then box 3 is our response or our actions. A habit removes box 2. Like obviously we're always thinking, but for example, purposes to explain this, we don't think, we just do. So we're in a context and the

response is our habit. And there's a lot of different ways that we form habits and a lot of different contexts that these show up. We could think of like classical conditioning. If you've ever watched The Office where there's that episode where Jim trains Dwight, every time he hears the computer ping, he asks for breath mint. This also happened with dogs. Whenever they pressed a lever, food came out. So they pressed a lever.

They would expect food. They would salvate at the sound of the bell when they pressed a little lever. So they're not thinking. They're not thinking I'm hungry. I could go for a snack right now. They've conditioned that response where they hear the cue that box 1 happens and the result is the habit, which is that they salvate or they want food.

These also happen in more complex situations where there is some thought involved, but it's a lot less thought involved because you've already solidified that mental pathway. Like, you know, your body knows this thing happens. This is how I respond. So an example might be when you pick up your toothbrush, you put your toothpaste on it. Or after you brush your teeth, you floss.

We have bad habits. When I feel bored, I will open my phone and go on TikTok. Maybe when your alarm goes off in the morning, you sit up, you turn off your alarm. Or maybe for me, my alarm goes off, I snooze. These are habits that, again, are a little bit more complex. Sometimes they're like multiple series of steps, but the context happens and you respond behaviorally.

And this is more effective long term than relying on your thoughts to overpower your internal urges to not do the thing every single time you want to execute a behavior. Another really interesting thing about habits is these are states, not traits. We're putting ourselves in a context. It's not a certain ability or mentality that you have to already be in possession of to be able to thrive in this area. You don't have to have a certain

thing to be able to thrive. You're just putting yourself in this state and depending on how well you do that, that will impact the outcome you get. I'm going to give you guys some learnings from a study we read called Healthy through Habit interventions for initiating and maintaining health behavior changes. So improving health, promoting behavior is things like working out, eating healthy, etcetera.

And how different interventions increase the likelihood of people engaging in those behaviors and maintaining them long term. So the findings were the interventions are not super successful long term for short term behavior change, they work like the first three weeks of January, but months and years down the line, they're not that effective. But Breaking Bad habits and forming healthy habits simultaneously, that's what

leads to long term outcomes. So when we're setting our habits, we're not just like I'm going to implement this new intervention, I'm going to start this new thing that doesn't work, but breaking a bad habit while replacing it with a healthier habit is effective to get that long term outcome. Another thing worth noting, you're listening to a podcast, you're learning about behavior change and habits and goal setting. Knowing about something just not

lead to behavior change. They've done a ton of research on educating people that like vegetables are good to have, they contribute to your health. This is something that is a health promoting behavior. It's good for you. You'll get these outcomes doesn't lead to people eating more vegetables. So just because you know something, just because the knowledge is introduced and you're now aware of it doesn't lead to behavior change. So take this episode with a grain of salt.

Actually implement it or it's not going to magically work. And like I said, willpower is really ineffective. And they found that in the study as well, which is that healthy behaviors are a result of habits, not willpower. People that engage in healthy behaviors like taking the stairs rather than the elevator, walking a certain amount every day, working out, eating healthy, that's habits.

That's not willpower every day. They're not saying like, I'd like to do this thing and now I'm going to force myself to do it. They do it because it's a habit and they've done it 6000 times before, so they're going to continue to do it again. And the key here is to make the choice easy by setting up that habit. So there are three steps to habit formation, behavioral repetition, associated context cues and rewards. So you're repeating the behavior.

You have your cues that when, then statement, when this thing's happened, then I will do the behavior and then rewards. You have to reward yourself. You have to make it enjoyable. A lot of the times the goals we're setting for ourselves aren't necessarily innately enjoyable or we don't reap the rewards for like weeks, months, years.

So for example, if your goal is to study 30 minutes a day before every exam, rather than just like cramming right before the exam, maybe you buy yourself a special treat that you eat when you're studying, but you don't eat it any of the time. Or you say I'm going to watch an episode of my favorite TV show after I finish studying, but I won't let myself do that unless I do my 30 minutes of studying or I'm going to study with friends. If that works for you, it might

not. So that that's rewarding in itself. A little fact about rewards. The mint and toothpaste, there's no function. It's just rewarding. It's a positive experience. So people are more likely to brush their teeth when they have like a positive, good tasting mint toothpaste than if it was just like bland, disgusting paste.

Same thing with kids. They have these really intense, interesting flavors like bubble gum and blue Raspberry, like all of these really intense flavors because it's more positive and rewarding and it gets kids to learn to brush their teeth than if they were using for them something aversive, which is mint. And we talked about this. You might be able to infer this, but habits are a lot more effective and bring results a lot more than intentions.

Do you guys also might have heard that like it takes 18 times to form a habit or some people say it's 200 days, sometimes it's five to six weeks. It really depends on the person. It's about repetition. So there's not a certain number of times you need to do a habit. There's not a certain number of days that you need to have that mentality. It's going to be dependent on the person. So we talked about context cues as being the thing that's going to initiate your habit.

Again, we're not thinking about things, we just have the context box 1 and then our result box 3. So things that you can do is cues at the time of day, a location, a prior behavior or person. So I'll give you an example for all of these for like brushing your teeth, maybe it's the time of day, morning when I wake up, I brush my teeth. Before I go to bed, I brush my teeth. Maybe it's the location when I'm standing in front of the

bathroom sink, I brush my teeth. Maybe it's the prior behavior. After I floss, I brush my teeth. After I wash my face, I brush my teeth. Maybe it's people I don't know. I brush my teeth by myself. I'm lonely person, maybe when my like partner or spouse or whatever is brushing their teeth, I brush my teeth next to them. So these are different ways that those cues initiate the behavior. And you can do this for any behavior that you're implementing.

Do as many of them as possible. So like what time, what is the location? Is someone else going to be there? And what is the behavior that's happening before your implementation intention? Like I want to do this thing as a stepping stone towards the habit, but that's not enough, right? So like, I want to do this thing, the when, then that is going to allow you to get towards that goal, but it's not going to work entirely by itself.

Another way that you can increase the likelihood of implementing a new habit is piggybacking or habit stacking. You guys have probably seen this all over social media. It's pretty popular. One of those like more widely known ways to build habits. But the idea is that you stack an existing habit with a new one you want to build. So maybe you want to meditate. So you take a habit that's really solidified in your life, brushing your teeth.

You say during the two minutes that I'm brushing my teeth, I'm going to meditate. And so over time, you've already had that cue established. So you're always going to brush your teeth. And because that's something that happens every day and that time is carved out and you know it's going to take place, you have it stacked On top of that, while I'm brushing my teeth, I'm meditating. We talked about that rewards are an important piece of habit formation. There's a couple of different

ways you can implement rewards. One is the intrinsic payoff. You feel good, you're proud of yourself, you did the thing. Maybe it's a sense of pride, maybe it's a sense of mastery. Maybe if you're doing something like working out, there's dopamine involved. So the intrinsic payoff is one way to have that positive reinforcement. A second is the extrinsic reward. So like watching a show, seeing a person, something externally

that's rewarding. Another one is avoiding negative consequences, which is called a contingency contract. So like if you've ever heard of timeshares, when people sign timeshares, they have all these contingencies for what's going to happen if this person tries to like sell the timeshare. They owe a ton of money, they have to go to court.

I don't really know. I've never signed a timeshare thing, but there's a lot of things in place that make it really aversive and really negative to pull out of a timeshare contract. That's what you want to do if you don't fulfill your habit. And avoiding native consequences is a lot easier when someone else is putting them on you rather than you're the one in charge of having that negative consequence take place. But a really good example of this is putting on your seat belt.

So when you get in the car and you start driving without a seat belt, the beep, beep, beep happens, right? The way that you get that set up is you put your seat belt on and that's a habit in itself, but you are avoiding the negative consequence of the aversive beeping noise by putting on your seat belt. So that's how that habit is formed. The most effective reward that you can use when building your habit is an uncertain reward. So this means it happens at a random interval.

Again, this is something that is harder to do on yourself. The best example of this is like the TikTok algorithm or gambling. Every couple of videos you get something really funny. Some of them are dead, some of them are horrible, but every couple of videos you get something that's really enjoyable and you laugh and you enjoy it, but it's uncertain. And so it's a really effective reinforcement for scrolling on the algorithm. Similarly, you don't win every time you gamble.

You don't win every five times or 10 times. It's not a predictable interval, but every so often, when you're least expecting it, you get that positive reward, which is a really positive experience. Again, these are harder to do on yourself, so if you have any ideas of how to do a random reward interval schedule, let me know and I can share it on the podcast. But if you can somehow manufacture that for yourself, that will be the most effective way to reward yourself for doing a habit.

So the three things that you're going to do when you're doing your habit, just to reiterate response repetition. So when you have the queue, you do the response, you engage in the habit, You need to have a certain number of repetitions. It's different for each person, but you have to have enough repeats of your habit for it to actually solidify. The second is the stable cues. You have to have the same cues

every single time. Again, we talked about location, time of day, prior behaviors, people's. Those have to be consistent and stable so you know what to expect and you train yourself. And then uncertain rewards. Again, you could use other rewards because those are easier to implement, but the most effective way to have a habit and form it quickly is uncertain rewards. So we talked about a couple minutes ago how it's not as effective to just introduce an intervention.

It's best to break a bad habit and replace it with a good one. So for example, when I try to scroll less on TikTok, I say I will not scroll on TikTok and said I will watch an episode of television. Is this great? Is this like perfect an intervention of no being on screens? No, but it's better. It's less engaging, it's less stimulating, it's a step in the right direction. So ways that you can break

habits is cue disruption. So removing, for example, the time of day, the people, the location, the behavior. I talked to you guys about how not going to my room after class makes me a lot better about getting all my work done before bed. Another one is environmental re engineering. I told you guys the beginning of this, having a new schedule, having a new routine is the best way to start new habits. This is because you're breaking

old ones. So a new location, a new routine, a new schedule, best time to break an old habit. And 3rd is vigilant monitoring and inhibition. Vigilant monitoring is literally just telling yourself don't do it. It sounds dumb. Again, we're not relying on both power, but short term breaking

habits. Research shows that it's really effective and people do this a lot when they successfully break habits as they tell themselves over and over again, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. And then the last thing I will give you for this little like habit overview from this article is to add or reduce behavioral friction. So you guys have probably heard of this and you probably do this in your own lives without being aware of it.

But an example of this is the screen time app, right? So you are increasing behavioral friction that when you go to open TikTok, you have to type in a password or you have to click one more minute, 15 more minutes. You're increasing the number of steps in the amount of energy it takes to engage in the behavior. You can also reduce behavioral friction. For example, if you're trying to work out in the morning, sleep in your workout clothes, you're

reducing behavioral friction. You don't have to wake up in the morning and go through the energy of picking out your outfit and getting dressed and getting ready. Nope, you wake up, the outfit's on, you can immediately work out. So increasing or reducing behavioral friction, again, as humans were wired to conserve energy, making yourself do more to do the thing you're less likely to do it, and doing less makes you more likely to do it.

Another little fun fact she'll give you about habits moving into more general things. They're not a personality type that's associated with your ability to build habits or maintain habits. It's not people that have a certain trait or think about things a certain way, but people vary with how much dopamine gets released when they engage in

certain behaviors. So people that have like an insane amount of dopamine released when they gamble, that's going to be a stronger solidified habit than people that have no mental response. So what gets in the way of us achieving our goals and following through with our habit? A lot of the time it's our willpower and our ability to do the actual thing right. So we have this conflict between the easier choice, probably the more enjoyable one, and the habit or the goal that we've set

for ourselves. You're like working uphill. I want you to remember when you're setting goals and habits, like give yourself some grace here because you're literally trying to tell yourself, do the worst thing, do the last fun thing, do the harder thing like it's hard.

It's not easy. And so give yourself a lot of grace, a lot of praise, a lot of reward because it's not easy to build new habit and your entire body and mind is wired against it. But the piece of advice here is to instead going back, we said this at the beginning, change your box 1, not your box 3. So your box 3 is your willpower, right? Trying to get yourself not to do the behavior Box 1 is the situation you're putting yourself in that would result in the behavior at all.

So again, if I don't go back to my room before a certain time, I'm not even in the position where I have to exercise willpower and say say, don't sit in bed and scroll on TikTok to your work. Instead, I just have to do my work because I'm sitting in a random classroom with my laptop. So again, change your box 1, not your box 3. Don't rely on willpower. Put yourself in a situation that

sets yourself up for success. But I'm going to give you guys a couple of tips for how you can increase your willpower if you need it. Again, I wouldn't recommend relying on this. It's not super effective long term, it's not efficient. But in those moments where you're like, I can't do this, like I really don't want to, here's what you're going to do. The first thing is to deploy your attention. So pay attention to other

things. A lot of you guys have probably heard of the marshmallow experiment. They did this at Stanford a number of years ago where they had like 3 year old kids sit in a room. They gave them a marshmallow and they said if you wait 3 minutes and don't eat this marshmallow, you'll get 2 marshmallows. And the kids that waited and used willpower, they have better

outcomes long term. And there's like a lot of drama with this study because they were kids of Stanford professors and that already they're more likely to have positive outcomes. Whatever we can discuss at a later time. But basically, they observed these kids and they found that the older kids looked away from the marshmallow to increase their willpower. If they weren't looking at it, they didn't have to mentally say don't eat it, don't do this. I'm not supposed to do this.

The kids knew. They said if I don't like the marshmallow, I'm not going to remember as vividly that it's there, so we don't have to exercise as much willpower. So distract yourself. Listen to music, think about something else, watch a show, do something that takes your attention away from the thing that you want to do. Another thing that you're going to do is psychologically distance yourself from the situation. So you're literally going to imagine yourself in the

situation from third person. This increases your emotion regulation. This comes from Ethan Cross, who's an emotion researcher. But what you're going to do is instead of being first person, being like, should I go to the gym? Should I not go to the gym? Pretend you're in a movie. Imagine looking at yourself in your room or at your desk wherever you're sitting when you're making this decision and imagine yourself going through the motions and doing the pros and cons.

You're going to regulate your emotions more effectively, you're sychologically distanced, and you're more likely to engage in the positive behavior. The next thing that you can do is to change the situation or environment. So there's a number of ways you can do this. One of this is game theories, imagining that you're playing a game within yourself, like you're in a war against yourself and the goal is to be a temptation. So you're using tactics to like outsmart yourself and increase

your willpower. Again, gamifying things is really effective in getting us to get our results. So imagine like you're at war with yourself and what tactics can you use to not get yourself to engage in the thing? Another study that showed the impact of changing the environment was that the further away kids put their phones when they're studying, the higher their GPA was. So whether it was on the desk next to them, whether it was in their backpack on the floor, was it in the other room?

Was it not even on them when they were at the library? Did they leave it at home? The further their phone was from them when they were studying, the higher their GPA was. But there's also this really challenging paradox where people know that they should change the situation, but they just don't. So you know that like situation modification is going to improve your goal accomplishment. But again, knowledge doesn't always lead to that change of behavior.

So here's a piece of knowledge. Even though this isn't going to cause the behavior change, it can help you when you're doing that like mental willpower and deciding to do these when then statements and create the habits. Changing the situation changes temptation. When you change the situation, you feel less tempted. Another little fun fact is that the number of self-control strategies that kids used correlated with their SAT score. So did they move their phone away?

Did they study in a new environment? Did they use positive rewards after? Did they increase behavioral friction to getting to their phone? The number of these strategies they employed, the higher their score. So again, what's your box 1? Are you setting yourself up for success and doing everything possible to encourage that outcome you're hoping for? So here's your little habit summary, and then we're going to talk about my goals for this year and habits I'm trying to create.

So habits circumvent the thought box box too. So you go straight from your situation to your action. Consistent rewards are more effective. Your routine should be as habitual as possible. So taking out the thought process as much as you can, trying to implement systems rather than just doing it and exerting that mental willpower because it's really not

effective. And statistically speaking, if your goal or habit requires doing something that requires a lot of attention and thought and focus, doing it in the morning, statistically you will have less distractions than if you do it later in the day. So if you're trying to study or learn a new skill, if you can, if you have the schedule flexibility, do that in the morning at the beginning of your

day rather than at the end. So your little summary is that you always have an easier, more enjoyable alternative to doing your harder habits. We can use strategies to target the context that we put ourselves in and the thoughts that we'll have, the lack of thought so that we can influence the behavior or the outcome. And again, habits are autopilot in response to our cues. So we intentionally make and

break them. And I gave you guys a bunch of tips and tricks and skills that you can use to implement new habits when breaking old ones. So there is your habit one O 1. I hope that was helpful. And I hope you guys have a bit more information on how we can set goals, how we can set plans, how we can actually follow through with those using habits. And then we're going to talk a little bit about my habits and goals for 2025 and I will run here what you guys are working

towards. So send me a message, comment on Instagram, leave a comment on here and keep me posted. I'm really curious. So my ongoing goal and routine and habit is always my sleep. I'm not a good sleeper. It's been a problem since like middle school. It's somewhat physical. I have an OR ring and I've never gotten above like an 85. Above an 85 you get a crown. I've never gotten a sleep crown and I've had my OR ring for three years. My average every year is in the

60s. I'm not a good sleeper. I'm always tired. That is where I can use improvement. And we talked about how our goals need to be something that we can control. So I'm not going to set the goal of I'm going to sleep better. I'm doing things that are more sleep hygiene based. So one of my biggest goals this year is to get up at the same time every day with a little bit of variation, but generally within one hour. And I'm going to like give

myself grace. It's not going to be something crazy like 6:00 AM or 5:00 AM. The earliest classes I have this semester are 1015. So my goal is that throughout the whole semester, I'm going to get to the point where every single day, six out of seven days of the week, I am up by 9:00 AM. And that is regardless of what time I go to bed the night before. Because when you sleep later and you keep snoozing that it's harder to fall asleep that night.

And then just becomes a whole recurring cycle that it makes it really challenging to break. So my goal for myself this semester and this year is to wake up consistently 6 out of seven days of the week, give myself a little grace by 9:00 AM. One of my biggest walls that I hit as far as habits and routines and all these things that improve my mental health is my sleep and daily productivity. I find that when it's hard to fall asleep, I stay up late.

I sleep and later I end up behind on things. I'm napping during the day, I think can't be productive and get what I need to get done. And then I'm stressed and I'm staying up later because I'm stressed. It's a recurring cycle and it leads to so much unnecessary anxiety and overwhelm that's really preventable with a consistent sleep and daily routine. Magic Mind is a really cool framework for looking at this and these basic foundational principles that we need to

maintain to be able to thrive. They are sleep, diet, exercise, stress management, and exogenous compounds, and all of these contribute to mental wealth. So investing in our habits that we can increase our emotional baseline, improve our resilience so that we're less susceptible to mental health challenges when we do struggle with one of those pillars.

For me the biggest too is definitely SLEE and stress management, and one of my favorite hacks for this is Magic Mine. They just came out with slee shots. I've already been using their focus shots for years at this point. It is a great natural alternative to increasing caffeine or other supplements to improve your sleep and focus. You can use both shots for 24 hours of mental performance. Sleep shots help with better sleep and focus shots help with

daytime clarity. Their sleep shots have made such a difference in my nighttime routine and increasing that queue of it's time to go to bed, it's time to relax and wind down and having an easier time falling asleep at night. I love the Magic Mind mental performance shot during the day. It really helps with focus and clarity and decreasing stress. I'm not a huge caffeine person because I'm really mindful of how it impacts my anxiety. I will do one, maybe 2 cups of

coffee at the very most. So this is a great alternative because it has matcha and natural herbs that help decrease stress, increase your sense of calmness, and improve your mood. I pair it with my iced vanilla latte in the morning and it's the perfect duo, especially on a heavy class load day or if I'm feeling extra stressed or overwhelmed. You guys know I'm big on research. They've developed this over the past 10 years with hundreds of iterations for the perfect formula.

There's over 200 studies behind every single ingredient. It definitely been trying and you can target 2 really important parts of your mental health routine in your sleep and then your daily productivity and focus. They're offering an amazing deal, which is 45% off the Magic

Mind bundle. You can use the link in the show notes, just magicmind.com/she persisted Jan. Again, that's magicmind.com/she Persisted Jan Make sure to check out Magic Mind Performance Shots and Sleep and their new bundle in the show notes. Another goal is one that I've been doing for a couple of years now, but I again have the OR ring and so I track a lot of my behaviors like my sleep and my activity. And I found that when I get above like 7.5000 steps, I am out and about and doing things

and generally being productive. It doesn't necessarily mean that I have classes that day or I'm getting an insane amount of work done or I'm working out, but it means I've been around campus. Maybe I wouldn't got coffee, maybe I saw a friend class days. It meant I was like walking to and from my classes. It's a good predictor that I physically have done something with the day. So 6 out of seven days of the week, I'm aiming to get 7.5000 steps.

And because I live on campus and things are like a little bit spread out, not too bad. But like I can easily get 7 1/2 thousand steps if I'm going to class or just going somewhere throughout the day. It's an achievable goal, but it also is a predictor that routine wise I'm in a good space mentally. So that's another goal for myself this year. I am constantly. It's not even an uphill paddle. There's no reason for why I don't post on TikTok more, do more short form videos or why

I'm not on stories more often. I just don't do it. And I really, really want to get better at it. Every single year I'm like, I'm going to post on TikTok more, I'm going to do a series, I'm going to edit videos. And a lot of this comes from the fact that I do a lot of social media management video editing for other people. I have social media clients that I help them on their podcasts and their platforms as part of my social media agency that I

run. So by the time it gets to cheaper assisted and this other content that I'm just making for fun, it tends to be I'm more burnt out, like there's not enough energy to expend. But I have to think about the box one that I'm putting myself in there. That's not a great box one. I'm setting myself up for failure. So my goal is to post at least three TikTok real short form videos a week and do stories at least three days a week. And that can just be like one or

two slides. It can just be showing up and sharing with you guys the new episode. But the box 1 there that I'm going to give myself so I can be more effective is to plan out the prompts and do those the week before. It's going to be related to the insights and analytics of what's performed well in the account in the past. And it's going to be related to what I'm already talking about in the episode.

So I'm decreasing the friction. Like I know what I'm going to talk about decreasing the mental load. And then time wise, I'm going to do it when I'm getting ready in the morning because it's engaging for you guys to watch. It's a habit that's already happening, which is that I'm getting ready for the day, doing my hair and makeup, and I can just talk to the camera while I'm doing that.

And so I'm reducing friction, I'm decreasing the amount of energy I'm expending by planning the prompts and I'm making it achievable, which is like three days a week, which I can do. So if I'm not posting, get mad at me because this is an achievable goal that I'm making very easy for myself so I can do it. Another goal that I've been working on is running. I am not a very athletic person. I love walking. It's like one of my favorite things. I'll walk around campus.

I listen to my Taylor Swift, love it. I want to be able to like run a mile and not be dying. I'm OK at it. I have to be like, oh, this is horrible. I can do it. I like watch the mileage go down on the treadmill. So before break, I was pretty consistent doing a run a couple days a week on the treadmill. I would walk and then I'd do my mile of running. I'd be really out of breath. And so I want to keep doing that. So I'm going to say once a week I'm going to run a mile on the

treadmill. I feel like that's realistic and achievable. And I have to do a couple of weeks of my schedule to determine what day will make the most sense to set myself up for success. So I'm going to set a time. The location is going to be the gym in my building. I will set the time and the day so that I can be more effective with that goal. But that is another goal that I'm setting for myself. And then the last goal that I'll share with you guys is like

exposure therapy related. We've done episodes in the past on exposure therapy. I think it's something that everyone could benefit from implementing in their life, especially if you're a young adult, especially in social situations. Whenever I'm like uncomfortable or feeling some avoidance in any social respect, I try and do a

little bit of exposure therapy. Other it's talking to people in line when you're grabbing a coffee, making friends in class, getting someone's number to ask them a question about an assignment, those types of things. I try to do one of those like every week ish where I'm pushing myself outside of my comfort zone.

I'm building those social relationships, I'm building that skill set and I find that's really helpful for a the mental health piece of feeling connected and engaged in your community, but also the exposure therapy piece of decreasing avoidance and anxiety around social relationships. So those are some of my goals. I really want to know what your guys's are. Leave a comment, DM me all the things if you guys enjoyed this episode, share on social media,

leave a review. It really helps out the podcast. And also would love to hear what you guys want to hear about on the podcast this year. So if you have any guest requests or styles of episodes or things you want me to talk about, definitely keep me posted. I'm very much open to suggestions and I have a lot of things in mind, but I really want to know what you guys want

to hear. So keep me posted, give me all your ideas, and with that, I'm going to hop off and I hope you guys have a great start to your spring semester in 2025. And you got that?