Parents can do a long-term good for their children by cultivating that it’s an automatic decision instigated by your own internal or environmental cue. A good habit is a gift parents can give to their children: reading habit, neat habit, exercise habit, caring habit, etc.
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Cue Workout Motivation With a Simple Trick
Science shows that instigation habits, or creating specific cues, is a surefire way to guarantee your workouts actually happen
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Getting out the door is 90 percent of the battle, but workout motivation can be tough to find at the crack of dawn or after a long, exhausting day. (See: 21 Ridiculous Ways We Justify Skipping the Gym.) Luckily, this simple problem has an equally simple solution, according to a new study just published in Health Psychology. And that miracle fix can be summed up in two words: instigation habits.
An instigation habit, a subcategory of a regular habit, is where an internal or environmental cue—like an alarm on your phone or gym bag placed near the door—automatically kickstarts a decision in your brain.
"It's not something you have to deliberate about; you don't have to consider the pros and cons of going to the gym after work," explained study author L. Alison Phillips, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University to TIME.
In the study, researchers interviewed 123 people about their exercise routines and motivations. While the participants reported using a variety of tricks to motivate themselves to workout—including planning workouts out in advance or mentally rehearsing what they needed to do—the most consistent exercisers used methods that all fell into the category of instigation habits.
While many of the subjects relied on audio cues (like an alarm), visual cues also worked well. For instance, putting a Post-It note on your desk, hanging a paper calendar with days you worked out checked off (don't want to break a streak!), or tacking a fitspiration picture on your bathroom mirror are all effective instigation habits. Each is a simple effort, but it can make all the difference between heading toward a Netflix marathon or an actual marathon. (Unless it's one of these 25 Good Reasons Not to Run a Marathon.)
If you're more of a Type A person, try scheduling your workout, just like you would any other activity, suggests Vernon Williams, M.D., a neurologist and founding director of the Kerlan-Jobe Center for Sports Neurology in Los Angeles. "Schedule a specific time each day, right there in your calendar, and put it on repeat. Then vigorously protect that time," he says, adding that he prefers morning workouts, as it's less likely something will interfere and you can get it done when you have the most motivation. Bonus: If you do it through your phone or e-mail, you can take advantage of audio, visual, and physical cues by setting it to vibrate, ring, and/or post an alert to your home screen. And if something comes up and you miss your workout? Reschedule it, he says, just like you would any urgent event—because your health really is that important.
Williams adds that another great instigation habit is having a workout buddy. Just seeing them can remind you of your (hopefully scheduled!) workout and inspire you to not skip it and risk letting them down. (Plus, Having a Fitness Buddy Is the Best Thing Ever.)
But one lesson the researchers learned is that whatever cue you pick, it needs to be deliberate. You have to set up your habit with the specific intention that it will be your cue to get your sweat on and shouldn't be associated with anything else, otherwise that automatic association won't kick in. (So no, you can't rely on your dog's adorable mug to remind you to go for a run.)
And, as with all habits, the more you do it, the stronger the pattern will become. So pick up your phone and schedule your workout right now—no excuses.
Getting out the door is 90 percent of the battle, but workout motivation can be tough to find at the crack of dawn or after a long, exhausting day. (See: 21 Ridiculous Ways We Justify Skipping the Gym.) Luckily, this simple problem has an equally simple solution, according to a new study just published in Health Psychology. And that miracle fix can be summed up in two words: instigation habits.
An instigation habit, a subcategory of a regular habit, is where an internal or environmental cue—like an alarm on your phone or gym bag placed near the door—automatically kickstarts a decision in your brain.
"It's not something you have to deliberate about; you don't have to consider the pros and cons of going to the gym after work," explained study author L. Alison Phillips, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University to TIME.
In the study, researchers interviewed 123 people about their exercise routines and motivations. While the participants reported using a variety of tricks to motivate themselves to workout—including planning workouts out in advance or mentally rehearsing what they needed to do—the most consistent exercisers used methods that all fell into the category of instigation habits.
While many of the subjects relied on audio cues (like an alarm), visual cues also worked well. For instance, putting a Post-It note on your desk, hanging a paper calendar with days you worked out checked off (don't want to break a streak!), or tacking a fitspiration picture on your bathroom mirror are all effective instigation habits. Each is a simple effort, but it can make all the difference between heading toward a Netflix marathon or an actual marathon. (Unless it's one of these 25 Good Reasons Not to Run a Marathon.)
If you're more of a Type A person, try scheduling your workout, just like you would any other activity, suggests Vernon Williams, M.D., a neurologist and founding director of the Kerlan-Jobe Center for Sports Neurology in Los Angeles. "Schedule a specific time each day, right there in your calendar, and put it on repeat. Then vigorously protect that time," he says, adding that he prefers morning workouts, as it's less likely something will interfere and you can get it done when you have the most motivation. Bonus: If you do it through your phone or e-mail, you can take advantage of audio, visual, and physical cues by setting it to vibrate, ring, and/or post an alert to your home screen. And if something comes up and you miss your workout? Reschedule it, he says, just like you would any urgent event—because your health really is that important.
Williams adds that another great instigation habit is having a workout buddy. Just seeing them can remind you of your (hopefully scheduled!) workout and inspire you to not skip it and risk letting them down. (Plus, Having a Fitness Buddy Is the Best Thing Ever.)
But one lesson the researchers learned is that whatever cue you pick, it needs to be deliberate. You have to set up your habit with the specific intention that it will be your cue to get your sweat on and shouldn't be associated with anything else, otherwise that automatic association won't kick in. (So no, you can't rely on your dog's adorable mug to remind you to go for a run.)
And, as with all habits, the more you do it, the stronger the pattern will become. So pick up your phone and schedule your workout right now—no excuses.
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Here’s the Best Way to Make Your Exercise Habit Stick
Having this kind of habit will make you a more successful exerciser
It’s not always easy to convince yourself to exercise after a long day of work. (Ok, it’s never easy.) But people who consistently manage to do it may be using a simple trick—whether they realize it or not—according to a new study published in the journal Health Psychology.
The most consistent exercisers, researchers found, were those who made exercise into a specific type of habit—one triggered by a cue, like hearing your morning alarm and going to the gym without even thinking about it, or getting stressed and immediately deciding to exercise. “It’s not something you have to deliberate about; you don’t have to consider the pros and cons of going to the gym after work,” explains L. Alison Phillips, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University and one of the study’s authors. Instead, it’s an automatic decision instigated by your own internal or environmental cue.
The researchers wanted to see whether this type of habit, known as an instigation habit, was better than another type of habit at predicting who stuck with a month of exercise. At the beginning and end of the monthlong study, they asked 123 university students and faculty questions that assessed how often they exercised and how strong their exercise habits were—whether they did it without thinking, for example. From these questions, they gleaned whether a person has a strong instigation habit—one where a cue triggers the instantaneous decision to exercise—and whether a person has a strong execution habit—that is, knowing exactly what kind of exercise they’ll do once you get to the gym, or being able to go through the motions of an exercise routine while being mentally checked out.
The only factor that predicted how often a person exercised over the long-term, they found, was the strength of their instigation habit.
MORE: 7 Psychology Tricks To Make Your Resolutions Stick
It got stronger with time, too. “When people started exercising more frequently over the month and became more active, I saw that their instigation habit strength increased with that frequency, but execution habit didn’t really change in relation to frequency at all,” Phillips says. Zoning out mentally during exercise didn’t have a negative effect, but it didn’t help a person adhere to a regimen, either.
That’s good news for newbie exercisers who might be intimidated by the same routine day in, day out. “In the long term, it seems beneficial, or at least not harmful, to have variety in your routine,” Phillips says of the results. “A lot of people might shy away from starting to exercise because they think, oh man, I can’t possibly imagine myself doing this forever. They might think of one boring routine—running on the treadmill—and to them it sounds like torture, so they give up before they even begin.”
Some repetitive behaviors do reinforce exercise, she says. “When you’re just starting to develop an exercise routine, I think it might be helpful to engage in the same behaviors, to have this patterned action.” But sticking with a cue—instead of clinging to the same tired routine—appears to be what will get you back to your workout again and again.
