The Habit Society

⚡️ Our Girl Goldilocks

To: Society Members

Good Morning!

We know, middles usually suck. Middle seat, middle school, middle child (sorry). But, I bet you’re forgetting the one girl that made middle cool again: Goldilocks.

Juuuuust Right

The Goldilocks Rule: We experience optimal motivation when tasks are just the right amount of difficulty based on our current abilities. Not too easy. Not too hard. Just right.

Finding the Middle Ground

In order to stick to a new habit, we have to find the perfect middle ground between too easy and too hard.

Too easy…if something’s too easy, you’ll get bored. Just the right amount of failure pushes you to work harder. Think about that time you played soccer with your 5-year-old cousin. It wasn’t a win to brag about, was it?

Too hard...you’ll lose all motivation because winning just won’t seem attainable. We need some wins. That feeling of success makes us think, wow I want that again. BJ Fogg says, “something in our lizard brains inherently understands how high these stakes would be, which is why it can feel hard to start something new if it’s too big.” If you’re trying to learn guitar, you probably shouldn’t start with a Jimi Hendrix song. (@GenZ, replace Jimi Hendrix with James Charles and guitar with a Morphe Palette.)

The ~Optimal~ Zone

There’s a sweet spot to reach peak motivation without failing or getting bored. It’s called The Optimal Zone. We love a good graph:

Via Thinking Tales

As you can see, the optimal zone is juuust the right amount of difficulty so as to not get bored, while also avoiding ‘failure’. This is where peak motivation happens.

1. Ask yourself: Is the habit you are trying to stick to too hard?

When you’re doing that Peloton Bootcamp workout, do you find yourself only doing 1/12 reps? Someone’s gotta tell you this – it’s too hard. Go for something easier at first, then work up to it.

On the other hand…

2. Is the habit too easy?

Did you choose beginner’s level yoga again??? If you’ve been doing the same workout for months on end, you can probably step it up. You need a challenge to keep you motivated.

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