Does Self Improvement Work?

Data on Effectiveness of Changing Personal Environments to Achieve Behavior Change

Introduction

To help people make systemic changes in their lives we suggested the following seven steps:

1. Make a resolution that is realistic and that you care about.
2. Put together a team of "process owners," people who live with you and who help you carry out daily living activities.
3. Together describe life processes and ecological factors that affect your habits.
4. As a team, list possible environmental changes & simultaneously make several changes.
5. Monitor progress.
6. Engage in cycles of improvement. Plan for, do, check and act again.
7. Publicly post your story so that all team members have access to your progress. 

People who follow these steps, i.e. people who seek ecological and systemic solutions to their habits, are more likely to achieve their resolutions.  From this perspective will power is not a characteristic of the person but a feature of the environment. When the individual modifies his environment, he changes his ability to stay the course and succeed, he engineers his own will power.    Of course, will power is elusive.  Eventually it waivers and people sometimes fail to achieve their resolutions.  We claim that people who follow our advice are more likely to stay the course.

The central idea behind our proposed method is that one can change the environment to accomplish personal goals.  For example, a person can reduce the room temperature to increase energy consumption.  Another person may join a car pool in order to make it home in time to cook.  Still another person may commute to work by bicycling.  Yet another person may raise his work desk and work standing up.  A large number of studies support the role of environment in habit formation.  Most of these studies are in maintaining recovery from drug abuse.  Our own earlier study provides data on a diverse set of personal resolutions.  In this study of a few graduate students, we reported that 83% of participants achieved their resolutions within 15 weeks. 

No one can guarantee success.  Some people follow our advice and do not accomplish their goals.  Others readily succeed, even when they are not following our advice.  The empirical question is whether our advice improves the likelihood of success.  It is a game of chance and the question is whether the probability of success is improved when people follow our advice.  The answer to this empirical question is not simple.  Some people do not follow our advice even when exposed to its logic.  For example, we asked participants to modify their environment but they may have misunderstood us; or even when they understood us they may have been unable or unwilling to do so.  The very definition of success is murky.  Some people will consider modest weight loss as success, others or the same person at a different time, will consider such weight loss as inadequate.  We asked participants to set their own goals and define what they consider success.  Obviously, the probability of success depends on how difficult their goals were and how long a time they had to achieve it.  Short and long follow up periods affect the probability of success.   

Methods

Results

One of the central themes in our proposed approach is that resolutions are more likely to be accomplished if one brings about changes in the environment as opposed to simply relying on motivation.  To address this question in more detail, we ask participants to describe the nature of the change they undertook .  If our claim is correct, then success must be more likely among people who bring about environmental changes.   Table 2 shows the relationship between nature of the intervention and success rates.