Richard Wiseman did a study of people who achieved their resolutions and found that people who succeeded had a plan.

He sums up the results in under a minute here:

“But planning is hard…“, you say.

Want a powerful but passive way to increase your chance of success? Get ready to move some furniture.

Manipulate Context

Manipulate your environment so as to make what you should do easy and what you shouldn’t do hard.

You can resist bad habits by avoiding the triggers that make you want to do them. Context is key.

Change your environment so you don’t have to exert self-control. Throw out the donuts. Hide the booze. This has been shown to be very powerful.

Via Habit:

“Whether we’re talking about college students or people in the community, 45% of the behaviors participants listed in their diaries tended to be repeated in the same location almost every day.”

If you can make good habits take 20 seconds less time to perform and bad habits 20 seconds longer, you’ll likely see big changes in your behavior.

Adding things to your environment can be a big help too: Reminders to do the right thing (like signs or even text messages) work.