One advantage of being in the grey hair (in my case no hair) stage of life is that working in health promotion over many years has exposed me to lots of good ideas. I am most attracted to ideas that can be applied in the day-to-day reality of a busy work and family life, including these days being a grandad. The science of small habits is one idea that I have found particularly helpful.
In a nutshell it’s about aligning your habits with the person that you want to be, and then building those habits into your day to day activity, starting small and slowly growing them overtime.
It’s a simple idea but can be hard to do as life’s demands can easily dictate what we find time to do each day. I find getting started on a new habit is always the hardest part. Making it easy at the beginning is the best way to trick my mind that I am not too tired or busy to do it. Like Richard Thaler (co-author of “Nudge”) said, “if you want people to do something, make it easy”.
The other idea that works for me is to associate a new small habit with something else that I do every day. For example, having a cuppa is an important part of my morning routine. As I also want to learn more te reo Māori, I have downloaded the Te Aka app on my phone and when having a cuppa by myself I learn some new words and phrases.
James Clear in his book “Atomic Habits” calls this ‘habit stacking’, associating a new habit with a current one so you don’t have to think about doing the new habit, it just becomes part of your routine.
Whether it’s eating healthy, getting fitter, practising a mental skill, or learning a new song on the guitar, I have found starting new habits, in small and easy to do ways works well for me.
I have also used these ideas in the planning and design of mental health promotion initiatives. For example, key insights from farmers when we were designing ‘Farmstrong’ included that they wanted to be successful farmers, but they were not looking for health information as they were too busy.
Based on these insights, our Ambassador Sam Whitelock promotes easy ways to improve your physical and mental health that make you a better farmer.
Farmers being a competitive group who like their sport, relate well to Sam who as a farmer can translate small habits he has learnt during his professional rugby career to the reality of day to day farming.
Sam shares a one minute deep breathing technique to stay in the present when you are feeling overwhelmed. He uses habit stacking to fit in his knee strengthening exercises each day by standing on one leg when he cleans his teeth and doing them then.
If you want a helpful framework for how to apply the science of small habits in easy ways into your health promotion initiatives, check out the EAST Model developed by the behavioural insights team in the UK. EAST stands for making what you are promoting; Easy to do, Attractive, Social and Timely. I have found it a very practical and helpful framework to refer to when planning a new initiative.
About Gerard
Gerard Vaughan, M Soc Sci (Hons), is a founding Programme Director of Farmstrong, a wellbeing programme for farmers and growers. Since working on the initial idea for Farmstrong in 2014, he has led the programme through the various phases of research, concept development, programme scoping, impact framework design, partnership establishment, launch in 2015 and continues to oversee the programmes ongoing implementation.
Gerard also chairs Governance Groups of other New Zealand mental health related programmes, within manufacturing, residential construction and NZ Rugby. He is also an advisor to the Scotland Farmstrong programme that launched in 2023.
Prior to Farmstrong Gerard spent five years as CEO of the Alcohol Advisory Council of NZ (with a mission to reduce harms from alcohol misuse), and five years leading NZ’s national mental health campaign Like Minds, Like Mine, to reduce stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness.
Gerard is a father to two young adults who keep him grounded and a two year old grandson who makes him laugh a lot.
Book details
Clear, James. (2018). Atomic habits: Tiny changes, remarkable results: An easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones. Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random.
Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2021). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness. Allen Lane, UK.
Service, O., Hallsworth, M., Halpern, D., Algate, F., Gallagher, R., Nguyen, S., Ruda, S., Sanders, M., Pelenur, M., Gyani, A., Harper, H., Reinhard, J., & Kirkman, E. (2012). EAST: Four simple ways to apply behavioural insights. The Behavioural Insights Team, UK.