On the Choiceology podcast, Dr. Katy Milkman & Marissa Sharif tell us:
“My favorite study has been in the context of encouraging people to track their steps and reach an individualized step goal. So what we did is we had randomly assigned people to a few different conditions. We had a hard goal, which is reach your step goal. Let’s say it’s 10,000 steps. So reach 10,000 steps seven days of the week. An easy goal, which in this case would be reach your step goal, so maybe 10,000 steps, five days of the week. And then we had an emergency reserve goal, which would be reach your step goal. So reach 10,000 steps seven days of the week, but you have two emergency skip days. And so what we found is that people with these emergency reserve goals ended up taking more steps and reaching their step goal more often than both the easy goal and the hard goal.“
“I would say emergency reserves with tough goals stretch you, then you’re a hoarder by nature, so you hoard the reserves and don’t use them. And finally, if you do have a misstep, you have an excuse so you don’t give up on yourself.”
“Emergency reserves can improve goal achievement substantially. In a study of step counts, emergency reserves boosted steps taken over and above standard goals by 20%, and increased goal achievement by 40%. In other studies, goal achievement has even doubled with the use of emergency reserves.“
Mulligans, skip days, cheat meals, and get-out-of-jail-free cards are essential for sticking to our long-term goals.
Let’s incorporate emergency reserves into our goals to increase goal achievement by 40% or more.
