Google Spent Months Learning Why Habits Fail. The Answer Often Comes Down to 1 Powerful Word

A LinkedIn follower asked me for advice on building his business. As Mark Cuban says, “Sales cures all,” as does consistency, so he decided that every day he would make cold calls between 2 and 4 p.m.

That worked for the first week or so. But despite his best efforts, he couldn’t seem to stick to that routine. Employees needed him. Current customers called. Like most entrepreneurs, he wears lots of hats, and carving out a specific two-hour window every day seemed impossible.

Which means his cold-call routine never took hold.

Hold that thought.

A few years ago, Google wanted to help employees exercise more often. (Hat tip to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daily newsletter for the study.)

In a study published in Management Science, the research team assigned employees to one of three groups. One group was asked to designate a convenient two-hour window, then were told to follow a strict routine: something along the lines of “work out at 6 p.m. every day.” A second group followed a flexible plan, working out whenever they wished. Participants in both of those groups were paid every time they completed a workout.

The third group, the control group, was simply “encouraged” to work out more; no routine, no plan, no pay.

Unsurprisingly, getting paid to exercise worked a treat: both the routine and the flexible group worked out more often than the control group.

More surprisingly, after four weeks — when the exercise habit was theoretically established, and the researchers stopped paying participants — the flexible group (the people who followed a plan) were more than twice as likely to keep working out than the strict group (the people who had established a rigid routine).

That’s what happened to my LinkedIn friend. He created a strict routine, since that’s what high achievers apparently do. He also had an incentive; in effect, he got paid for making cold calls, since some percentage of those calls result in sales.

Routines are great, until something disrupts that routine. In fact, the more rigid your routine, the more likely that routine is to be disrupted. Miss today’s 6 p.m. workout and you’ll have to try again tomorrow.

The flexible group? They also had an incentive to work out, but exercise wasn’t tied to a specific routine or time. Often they worked out when they planned. Sometimes, though, they worked out when they could. Or squeezed a shorter workout in. The incentive made them want to work out, and taking a flexible approach gave them the latitude to figure out how to make it happen.

The more flexible approach isn’t a routine. It’s a practice. Here are a few examples of the difference:

• Making cold calls between 4 and 6 p.m. every day is a routine. Making 10 cold calls by the end of every day is a practice.
• Holding an all-hands Zoom call every day at 10 a.m. is a routine. Checking in with one or two employees by the end of every day to see if they need help is a practice.
• Eating broccoli and a sweet potato for lunch every day is a routine. Getting four or five servings of vegetables every day is a practice.

Routines are what you do. Practices are also what you do, but more importantly, they become who you are.

Can’t make cold calls at 4 p.m.? If you truly believe sales cures all and you make sales a practice, you’ll catch up later or make a few calls earlier in the day. Can’t hold an all-hands Zoom call at 10 a.m.? If you truly believe your job is to motivate and develop employees, you’ll make checking in with employees a practice. You’ll stop by and chat with someone on your way to your office. Or you’ll spend a few minutes pitching in on the shop floor.

If what you want to do is important, you’ll find a way.

As Ryan Holiday writes:

The difference is in the flexibility.

One is about daily rhythm. The other is a lifelong pursuit. One can be ruined by something as simple as hitting the snooze button one too many times or getting called into work unexpectedly. The other can adapt accordingly.

One (a routine) is something you made up. The other (a practice) is something you do.

Routines are fine, but if something happens to disrupt your routine, take a step back and focus on the goal your routine is designed to help you achieve — and then just achieve that goal, this time in a different way.

Never lose sight of the fact that every element in a routine is goal-driven, and there are a variety of different ways to achieve a goal. To grow sales. To check in with employees. To monitor performance. To get customer feedback.

To do almost anything.

If you can follow a certain routine, great. I eat the same thing for breakfast every day. That’s easy.

In most cases, though, routines are tough to consistently follow. That’s where practices come in. I want to live a longer, healthier life, so I try to work out every day. Most days, that’s around 4 in the afternoon. But sometimes it’s as late as 7 or 8 p.m., other times earlier in the day.

Working out is a lifelong pursuit. As Holiday would say, it’s not something I made up. It’s what I do.