After trying to build a healthy habit app for several years, we have found that the most effective way to do it is to turn what you're trying to do into a game.

After trying to build a healthy habit app for several years, we have found that the most effective way to do it is to turn what you're trying to do into a game. It doesn't need to use technology - you could just be doing it on a piece of paper. There's an important psychological reason behind this. When we usually try to build a habit(or 'change a behavior'), we're going against our default nature. If that weren't the case, you'd already have acquired that habit. Now going against your nature takes willpower. And research has established [1] that we have a limited amount (budget) of willpower everyday. Expend the budget on one thing, and you have no more of it for another. In experiments, people are more easily tempted by an unhealthy snack after a hard day, because they've already used up their willpower for the day. Bottomline: willpower based behavior change is very hard to sustain. Also, we usually interpret our failings to keep up with our behavior change effort as guilt and failure, rather than the budget of willpower drying up, which is what it actually is. That starts a negative connotation with the very thing that was supposed to bring a positive change to our lives. I don't want to sound promotional, but we're seeing incredible change in people's walking behavior by turning it into a fun engaging game/app [2]. It just seems to work where an 'endless willpower' driven approach fails. The interesting insight into this process is that the healthy habit needs to be a side effect of this game. It cannot be the main focus of the game. In other words, there must be a strong gaming core loop that's just fun and sticky by itself, and which is what people think of when they think of the game. The core loop is basically going to be fed by (among other things) elements of your healthy habit. [1] http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/willpower-facts http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/willpower-facts [2] http://battlesteps.com http://battlesteps.com