Change Yourself: How to Rewire Your Brain to be More Productive, Fit in 2013

If you made a new year's resolution, odds are you made the same one I did: to lose weight and get in shape. Everyone wants to do it, but few succeed in keeping the resolution for long.

 

Recent research found that 25 percent of people making a new year's resolution maintain it for less than a week. Despite a wealth of weight-loss programs, apps, diets and fitness plans -- it's tough for us mere mortals to change our behavior.

The No. 2 most-popular resolution is to get ourselves organized. Many people turn to productivity applications to help them organize their tasks, clean-up their calendar and get more things done. But it's hard to be productive with productivity tools.

Search "productivity" in the iTunes or Android stores and you'll find tons of tools to help you out. But if app retention is any measure of success, most productivity apps fare no better than a typical weight-loss plan. The average productivity app retention drops to 35 percent over three months.

Wouldn't it be amazing if, this year, we were able to maintain more of our resolutions to improve ourselves?

Top 10 Mistakes in Behavior Change from Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford

Whether you want to lose weight, increase your productivity or just better yourself, changing your behavior is tough. Dr. BJ Fogg runs the "Persuasive Technology Lab" at Stanford and has spent a ton of time looking at how technology can help you do this.

To successfully change your behavior, Fogg says, three things must come together: motivation, ability and triggers. The three work on a spectrum. Grossly simplified, difficult habits need higher motivation. Easier habits need less. The opportunities to trigger those habits affect this spectrum. E.g., a highly motivated marathon runner probably has an easier time developing healthy eating habits that would be hard to do for someone who is not as motivated.

Taking cues from this thinking, if you want to drive a desired change in human behavior -- whether the adoption of a new service or tool, or a change in personal habit -- you may find greater success with these four concepts:

1) Take baby steps

Break your goal down into small, achievable, bite-size steps that can be repeated. Want to run your first 10k race despite a lack of fitness? Start with just getting up and walking once around the office for 10 minutes at least once a day. Do this everyday for a week. You'll build on this small habit later. (Btw, check out Fogg's "Tiny Habits" plan. The "Couch to 5K" plan is a great example of this, too.)

Drowning in a sea of emails, meetings and tasks? Spend the first 10 minutes each day writing down the one thing you will absolutely get done today, and save the last 10 minutes of the day checking it off your list. You'll build on this habit later. (Btw, Square/Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey gives all his new employees this checklist book -- it's an easy read, and might help you get started.)

2) Enlist your friends

To-do lists are nice, but there's rarely any accountability if you don't keep up the habit. But your friends and colleagues can help. I find the more effective productivity and self-improvement apps bring your network into the picture -- cheering you on when you succeed, and giving you that extra push when you need it.

3) Increase your opportunities to take baby steps

If you can't take those baby steps with frequency, it's hard to truly make it a habit. You need more triggers. Your mobile phone can be a big help in this way. For example, the MyFitnessPal app congratulates you for maintaining your daily habits, while also reminding you to log your fitness or calories in case you forget.

If you use a task list app, take your phone with you wherever you go so you can always add or mark off a task on the spot. Putting it off until later gives you too many chances to forget and never track it.

4) Expand your goals and routine

Once you've developed some consistency with your daily habits, it's time to level up, and increase your goal. A lot of people hit the wall in fitness after a couple of months of their routine. They have the habit of exercising, but without changing up the goal, their body acclimates to their exercise routine and the pace of change slows.

Change is never easy. But I hope these techniques may help you. They've been working for me through the fitness apps my friends and I have been using -- I've lost about 10 pounds in the last few weeks. Now, it's your turn!