Elastic habits are harder to maintain in the short term, but easier in the long term.
🔑 If a habit is too rigid, it will break with its support system
When it comes to good, long term behavior change in the real (busy) world, it can be better to cultivate elastic habits rather than strict routines. A study was run in which students at a university were given a reward if they showed up to the gym at a specific time 5 days a week, and another group of students was given a reward simply for showing up to the gym 5 days a week. During the period when the rewards were being given, those students who were only paid for showing up at a given time were more likely to be successful… but several months after the reward period ended many more of the students who were not forced to show up at a given time were still regularly exercising. The theory is that those students who were forced to show up at a given time were more successful by bending their life around the exercise, which made them show up consistently, but when the reward period was over, other priorities got in the way of that routine and the exercise habit died with the particulars of the routine. Those who made a habit of figuring out how to show up were more likely to stick with it when life threw them curveballs.