Michelle Segar's team sat down with twenty-seven adults who had all tried to exercise regularly and all failed to keep it going. They wanted to know what happened on the days people didn't go.
What came back wasn't a lack of motivation. It was a rigid, all or nothing plan that couldn't flex to fit their day. People had decided what counted as a real workout, and when the day didn't allow for that, they did nothing at all rather than do less.
Their first finding is that the rigid version of the plan is what sets up the collapse. Not the missed day.[1]
Dieting researchers named this the What the Hell Effect, and psychologists now use it well past food. It's the name for the consequences of all or nothing thinking. After a small setback we think, what the hell, I can't hit my goal, so I might as well abandon it entirely.
What actually worked
Katy Milkman studies behavior change at Wharton. She was also lead author on one of the largest experiments on exercise behavior ever conducted, testing 54 ideas across 61,293 gym members.
One idea started from a simple observation: missing a single workout barely registers in your long-run health, but it can make you feel you've already failed, and that's what stops you going back. So it paid people about ten cents, for showing up to a workout they'd scheduled after missing the one before. Ten cents. It was the best performing intervention of the 54..[2]
Every habit app is built to reward the unbroken run. The best result anyone has produced came from rewarding the return.
What we built instead
Try Easier has no streaks. One of the first things the app asks is that you commit to coming back if you miss a week. The other is that you show up at least once a week.
We can't put ten cents in your pocket for coming back, but we can make sure you have an easy goal for the exact point most habits die. Miss a week and all the next one asks is that you show up once. Do more if you feel like it, but showing up at all is the step that matters.
Streak apps take the streak away at the exact moment you're most likely to quit. You had a bad week, so they make it worse. We built ours to raise the odds you come back, because a habit isn't a perfect record. It's still doing the thing a year later.
