Getting the audience ready to go on REPEAT.

Getting the audience ready to go on REPEAT.

Welcome back to the Behavior Change Trio. In this series, I define three different types of behavior and describe how our messages and engagement strategies should be tailored for each. We already covered actions and today we’re diving into routines.

I’m going to be honest, y’all. The waters will start to get murky here with routines and habits.

We may not correctly distinguish routines from habits every time, and that’s okay. Our intention is to understand how these different behaviors feel to our audience—what their experiences are like—so we can provide the support, tools, and motivation they need most.

Let’s dive in.

Routines are tasks we do regularly that take conscious effort, time, and thought to complete.

Unlike actions, routines occur repeatedly within a year and vary in frequency from daily to weekly to quarterly.

Habits and routines can look very similar on paper.

Habits are behaviors we complete regularly on “autopilot,” requiring little to no active thought. Routines, on the other hand, require effort every single time we do them.

Here’s a list of behaviors I’ve been doing most of my life that have never stopped being an effort to complete:

• Doing my laundry.

• Putting away clean laundry.

• Cleaning any part of the house.

• Meal planning.

• Grocery shopping.

• Exercising.

• Changing the bed sheets.

• Calling my parents.

Do you know how I know these things are routines? Clue #1 is that I have nearly all these items scheduled in my calendar to push me to get them done.

The fact that I have done these things for decades and they’re still not on autopilot is clue #2.

And clue #3 is that I need very little encouragement to push these tasks to another day. Very. Little.

While I would LOVE for these tasks to become a habit one day, it’s just not realistic for that to happen. These to-dos require too much time and intention to become “muscle memory” habits.

“[W]e have to accept that only certain kinds of behaviors can become habits, and that certain behaviors will never become habits.” – Nir Eyal.

We will revisit the idea that not all behaviors can become habits throughout the next two posts.

How to spot actions in your project.

Here are indications that you have a routine in your project.

You want the audience to complete the task repeatedly and consistently within a given time period or throughout the year. These steps may look like actions, but if you want the audience to repeat the step more than once a year, then it is a routine.

Ongoing engagement projects are most likely to have routines as we work to keep the audience involved in our work and ask them to take action consistently.

The step looks like a habit, but it’s highly unlikely the audience can do it on “autopilot” right away. This fine line is where the waters get murky. New behaviors, like “composting food scraps,” can become habits, but they will look like routines at first, as the audience practices and trials the behavior until it becomes second nature.

If you’re crafting a behavior journey like the example below, adding a routine step before the habit one can be helpful to highlight that there is a learning curve for the behavior.

“For those actions that can turn into habits, we can begin by making them into routines. As long as we know the difference between a habit (a behavior done with little or no thought) and a routine (a series of actions regularly followed) we can plan accordingly and not be disappointed.” – Nir Eyal.

Completing the step requires effort and thought every single time. This indication is true for routines that look like actions but require repeated attendance, like joining quarterly fisher association meetings. More importantly, it highlights behaviors that will not transition from routines into automatic habits.

To help identify these routines, consider if the steps require planning, intention-setting, and reminders to complete, AND would be tempting for the audience to skip if they could.

In other words, does it feel similar to doing the laundry, changing the sheets, and exercising? If yes, those are clues you may be asking the audience to adopt a routine.

“Habits are a type of routine, but not all routines become habits.” – Nir Eyal.

Common barriers to completing actions.

The top three challenges audience members face with starting and sticking with routines are:

→ Learning a new skill. “How in the world do I track and record how much fish I caught?”
Adopting sustainable practices is new for many people, which means our audience does not have the skills they need to get started. Learning a new skill can be very uncomfortable and awkward, leading to some audience members abandoning their efforts.

→ Procrastination. “I’d rather do this tomorrow.”
The temptation to skip a routine or postpone it until next week is ever-present, and it’s one of the defining characteristics of a routine. Since these behaviors are often uncomfortable and inconvenient, we can easily convince ourselves to “do it later.”

→ Consistency. “I have to do this again?!?! Didn’t I just do it last week???”
Achieving actions is hard; achieving a “series of actions regularly” is even harder! Repetition is necessary for routines to produce the desired results: we need the audience to show up to the quarterly meetings, training workshops, webinars, and volunteer activities. But the need for consistency can be exhausting and overwhelming for the audience.

What audiences need from us to repeat routines.

Messages for routines should boost the audience’s confidence in starting a new sustainable practice, and outreach plans should be as consistent as we want the behavior to be.

Audiences need to receive these three elements to start something new.

Learning Resources.

Since most routines represent completely new practices for audience members, it’s helpful to teach audiences how to do the behavior accurately.

• Offer a series of training workshops for small groups and communities to learn new skills and practice them in a safe environment. If budgets permit, provide audiences with a starter set of tools they can use at home.

• Ensure written instructions and learning materials are easy to understand and readily accessible to the audience.

• Create videos or photo carousels demonstrating the desired behavior so the audience can follow along and emulate the practice.

• Empower the audience to believe in themselves and their ability to successfully sustain these new practices.

The Hamilton County ReSource program, which focuses on recycling and waste reduction in Hamilton County, Ohio, offers various workshops to help residents learn the skills they need to repair, reuse, and upcycle items they already own. Complementing these events with ongoing resources or subsequent workshops would further equip audiences with waste reduction skills.

Reminders!

Audience members are more likely to consistently repeat routines when we provide them with prompts, nudges, and reminders. This is similar to what audiences need to complete actions, but we don’t have the time-limited, scarcity aspect on our side with routines. However, we can still:

• Recommend ways the audience can remember to complete the step. You can suggest they save it to their calendar – like I do for all the routines in my life – or use choice architecture to create prompts and nudges at home.

• Use multiple outreach touchpoints (email, social media, text messages, etc.) to keep the task top of mind.

• Switch up the content of the reminders to keep the routine fresh and exciting.

The Meatless Monday campaign is built for routines! It asks the audience to repeat the practice every Monday, which is easy to remember, and provides new ideas on social media and over email for meatless recipes to cook each week.

Support and motivation.

Our messages should support the audience’s efforts and motivate them to keep going to prevent procrastination (as much as possible) and encourage consistency.

• Reinforce their capacity to make the desired change. These messages can build upon the initial learning sessions by resharing resources, highlighting motivational soundbytes, and providing top tips from people further along the journey.

• Be real about the challenges of adopting new routines by sharing suggestions for overcoming procrastination or re-starting the practice if they’ve fallen behind. Remind them why they started this journey in the first place to help them focus on the bigger picture.

• Consider if feedback loops can help keep the audience on track by providing updates on their progress and success rates. Guess what?!?! I’ve written a whole blog about feedback loops and produced a how-to video on the topic!

Feedback loops can include motivational instruments like streaks, which celebrate the audience’s consistent use of a program or app, such as using Duolingo for 50 days in a row.

What’s on repeat for you?

Think about the sustainability routines in your life: it can be meal planning to reduce food waste, bringing reusable bags to the grocery store, mending and repairing items you own, or anything else that comes to mind.

Consider what would make it easier to complete those tasks in a timely and consistent manner—besides having a robot army or clones to do them for you.

The ideas you dream up may lead to real-world solutions for the routines in your behavior change project.

→ Coming up next: Habits!

Do you want to create a detailed behavior journey for your project, like the ones shown above? Then join the Making Moves course! We start designing journeys in lesson 1 and refine them throughout the 8-week course, so you walk away with a clear, structured plan for motivating audiences to protect the planet.