How behavior change, motivation, and habit formation work today

Originally published on October 5, 2022

Behavior change works better when goals are concrete, environments reduce friction, and setbacks are planned for before they happen. In Episode 192 of the WHOOP Podcast, Global Head of Human Performance, Principal Scientist at WHOOP Kristen Holmes talks with cognitive scientist Dr. Maya Shankar about why people get stuck, what actually drives motivation, and how to make healthier routines easier to repeat. Shankar brings experience from academia, the Obama White House, the United Nations, and her podcast A Slight Change of Plans. The conversation covers identity, fresh starts, self-control, decision-making, and how to use data without letting one bad day define the whole effort.

To listen to episode 192 in full, head to the WHOOP Podcast on YouTube.

Why can identity shifts make behavior change feel so hard?

Behavior change often feels hard because a disrupted habit can also feel like a disrupted identity. Shankar describes this through the lens of identity foreclosure, a concept in cognitive science that explains how people can lock into one role before exploring other possible versions of themselves.

Her own story makes the point concrete. After years of serious violin training at The Juilliard School and mentorship from Itzhak Perlman, a tendon injury in her left hand ended the path she expected to follow. Shankar later found a new direction after reading Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct, then studying cognitive science at Yale University. The lesson she drew from that change applies far beyond music: when a role disappears, the traits underneath it can still carry forward.

Shankar puts the emotional cost plainly.

“I expected to mourn the loss of the violin when I first lost it, and I did not expect to mourn the loss of myself.”

That framing matters for health goals too. If someone sees themselves only as a runner, a disciplined eater, or a person who never misses a workout, one interruption can feel like proof that the identity is gone. Shankar’s alternative is to anchor identity to deeper traits such as curiosity, consistency, or connection. That creates more room to adapt without feeling erased. WHOOP members working on behavior change can use the same approach by focusing on the kind of person they want to be across time, then using data as feedback rather than as an identity label.

If you want to hear Shankar unpack identity foreclosure and life transitions, listen to the full episode on Youtube.

What you should take away

• Identity foreclosure can make a setback feel like a loss of self, not just a loss of routine.
• Attaching identity to underlying values or traits can make change feel less threatening.
• A broken plan does less damage when your self-concept is broader than one role.

How can fresh starts make new health habits easier?

Once identity becomes more flexible, timing becomes the next useful lever. Shankar points to the fresh start effect, identified by Katherine Milkman and colleagues, as a practical way to use natural transitions to support new habits.

A fresh start creates a sense of psychological separation between an old chapter and a new one. Sometimes that is a major life change, such as a move or a new job. Sometimes it is smaller, such as a birthday, a new month, or even a Sunday. The reason it helps is simple: routines are already being rearranged, so there is less built-in momentum holding the old behavior in place.

Shankar explains why a move can be especially powerful.

“Your commute to work is going to change, where you get your coffee in the morning is going to change, your friendship group might change. So it’s fertile soil for introducing other changes because you don’t have these built-in routines and habits that you’re really stuck to.”

That does not mean you need a dramatic reset to make progress. A defined start point can be enough. Someone beginning a new sleep routine, cutting back late-night alcohol, or committing to morning walks can use a meaningful date as a marker, then begin the behavior immediately while the new frame still feels real. For a broader guide to behavior planning, WHOOP also covers related strategies in Mastering Behavioral Change: Insights from Behavior Change Experts.

If you want to hear Shankar go deeper on the fresh start effect, listen to the full episode on Youtube.

What you should take away

• Fresh starts work because they create psychological distance from older routines.
• A meaningful date can be enough to support a new behavior, even without a major life event.
• Starting a habit quickly after a transition can make it easier to repeat.

How do you close the gap between intention and action?

A fresh start can create momentum, but momentum still needs a plan. Shankar says the central behavior problem is the intention-action gap: people often know what they want, but fail to convert that intention into daily steps.

Her answer is to keep the large goal, then break it into concrete micro-milestones. A marathon goal, lower cholesterol goal, or better sleep goal only becomes real when it shows up as a normal task on an ordinary day. That is why Shankar argues for turning abstract ambition into specific action, then shortening time horizons when motivation naturally dips.

She credits University of Chicago Booth School of Business professor Ayelet Fishbach for a useful insight here. Motivation tends to rise at the start of a goal and again near the finish, but it often drops in the middle. Fishbach calls this the “middle problem”. One fix is to turn a year-long project into shorter blocks so the middle never feels endless. That is closely aligned with how WHOOP data works best: a long-term goal becomes easier to manage when you review it in smaller windows and look for repeatable patterns.

Shankar captures the idea in one line.

“Long-term goal pursuit is just the execution of that long-term goal on any given day.”

That principle also fits other WHOOP conversations about habit formation, including How to Break and Build Habit Loops with Dr. Jud Brewer and Scientific-Backed Approaches to Goal Setting with Dr. Gina Merchant.

If you want to hear Shankar unpack the intention-action gap and micro-milestones, listen to the full episode on Youtube.

What you should take away

• Big goals need day-level actions before they become achievable.
• Shorter planning blocks can reduce the motivation drop that often happens in the middle of a long goal.
• Useful progress measures describe what success looks like today, not only at the finish line.

What should you do when setbacks derail a goal?

Once a plan is concrete, the next challenge is what happens when life interrupts it. Shankar argues that many people fail because they treat goals as all-or-nothing tests, then interpret a missed day as total collapse.

Her fix is to build setbacks into the plan in advance. She points to research on creating an “[emergency reserve]” inside goal pursuit. In practice, that means deciding before you begin that some days will go off track, then defining how much disruption the plan can absorb. If your goal is six gym days each week, the reserve might be a smaller number of missed sessions across a month. If the interruption is larger, such as illness or grief, the reserve has to be larger too.

Shankar makes the benefit clear.

“When we can lift the all-or-nothing purity, success versus failure mindset when it comes to goal pursuit, that can actually lead us to not even thinking about it as a restart, but actually as a continuation of the goal.”

This is a practical way to stay engaged after missed workouts, travel, family stress, or a bad stretch of sleep. The goal is not perfect continuity. The goal is a design sturdy enough to survive real life. For a related discussion, see Expert Tips for Sticking with Your New Year’s Goal.

If you want to hear Shankar go deeper on setbacks and emergency reserves, listen to the full episode on Youtube.

What you should take away

• All-or-nothing thinking turns a normal interruption into a false failure.
• An emergency reserve makes room for missed days before they happen.
• A plan that can absorb disruption is more useful than a plan that looks perfect on paper.

How can you make healthy habits easier without relying on willpower?

Planning for setbacks helps, but daily friction still decides whether a habit survives. Shankar says self-control is often treated like a limited fuel tank when a better move is to redesign the environment so less self-control is required in the first place.

That idea comes through in small examples. If digital distractions derail focused work, remove the extra tabs and silence notifications before the task begins. If getting to the gym fails because too many choices show up in the morning, make those choices the night before. This is classic choice architecture: change the environment, and the behavior becomes easier to repeat.

Shankar gives a concrete version of that strategy.

“Pack your bag the night before and literally leave it by the door so that there’s no decision-making to be made in the morning and you don’t need to use any cognitive effort to set yourself up for success.”

The same logic applies to food, screens, and sleep. If a late-night habit keeps repeating, the first question is whether the cue is always available. Making a behavior slightly harder can matter as much as increasing motivation. WHOOP members can pair this approach with behavior logging in the WHOOP app, then review whether a change in environment actually produces better Sleep or steadier Recovery over time.

What you should take away

• Better choice architecture can reduce the need for self-control.
• Pre-deciding small details can remove the friction that stops a habit before it starts.
• Environmental changes often work best when the cue for the unwanted behavior becomes less available.

How should data guide behavior change without increasing anxiety?

Even with a better environment, people still need feedback, and that is where data becomes useful or stressful. Shankar’s caution is that people often want the body to behave like a simple input-output machine, then get discouraged when effort and outcome do not line up right away.

Her answer is to distinguish inputs from outputs and to extend the time horizon. Nutrition is her main example. A person may eat in a healthier way for weeks without seeing an immediate change in a scale reading or blood marker. The behavior can still be worthwhile. The same logic applies to sleep. One rough night or one lower score should not erase the work of building a stronger routine.

Shankar says it directly.

“It can be a little dangerous sometimes to focus too much on metrics because they might not always reflect in real time the effort that you’re putting in.”

For WHOOP members, that means treating daily readings as signals, not verdicts. Trends in Sleep, Recovery, resting heart rate, or heart rate variability are more informative across weeks than as a single morning judgment. This section of the conversation also intersects with decision-making research. Shankar notes that people have a present bias, meaning short-term rewards often outweigh future benefits, and she describes research showing that uncertainty itself can distort choices. In one study she cites, people reported more stress with a 50 percent chance of an electric shock than with a 100 percent chance of receiving one. The practical point is that bad decisions are not always about weak discipline. Sometimes they reflect how uncomfortable uncertainty feels.

What you should take away

• Behavior data is most useful when trends are reviewed over longer time horizons.
• Inputs and outputs do not always line up on the same day, especially for nutrition and sleep.
• One difficult score should prompt context and review, not panic.

How can small rituals and moments of awe improve resilience?

After data and planning, Shankar turns to something more human: stability and perspective. When life feels uncertain, she recommends a small ritual that remains available even during travel, grief, or upheaval. The ritual does not need to be impressive. It needs to be repeatable.

Her example is a daily cup of Indian-style tea with freshly cut ginger, boiled milk, and cardamom. The function of that ritual is psychological. It signals that at least one thing in the day still holds. Shankar also points to awe as a resilience tool. Awe can come from music, a sunset, a tree, or any brief experience that makes a problem feel smaller in a wider frame.

The research behind that idea goes back to Roger Ulrich’s 1984 study in Science, which found that post-surgical patients with a window view of nature recovered better than those whose rooms faced a brick wall. Shankar uses that result to argue for deliberately noticing beauty in ordinary settings.

She closes the conversation with a direct recommendation.

“I would just encourage folks, as you’re commuting to work or you’re living everyday life, just find literally one second to appreciate something beautiful around you.”

The behavior lesson here is easy to miss: resilience is partly built through ordinary, repeated experiences that make disruption easier to tolerate. A stable ritual and a little awe will not solve every hard problem, but they can change the nervous system context in which those problems are being carried.

What you should take away

• Small rituals can create a sense of stability during uncertain periods.
• Awe can come from brief, ordinary experiences, not only from rare events.
• Exposure to nature has been linked to better recovery and resilience in clinical research.

The bottom line

• Identity foreclosure can make a missed habit feel like a loss of self, which is why broader identity anchors can improve resilience.
• Fresh starts can support behavior change because transitions weaken old routines and make new behaviors easier to install.
• Large goals become more achievable when they are converted into micro-milestones with shorter planning horizons.
• An emergency reserve helps people continue a goal after disruption instead of treating one setback as full failure.
• Better environment design can reduce the amount of self-control a habit requires each day.
• Behavior data becomes more useful when reviewed as a trend over time rather than as a judgment on one day.
• Small rituals and moments of awe can improve resilience by creating stability and perspective during uncertain periods.

Frequently asked questions about things discussed in this episode

How does WHOOP help you spot behavior change patterns over time?

WHOOP helps you spot behavior change patterns by pairing physiological trends with the behaviors you log, so one difficult day does not become the whole story. Looking at changes across days and weeks can make it easier to connect routines with shifts in Sleep, Recovery, resting heart rate, or heart rate variability.

What does WHOOP do for people working on new sleep habits?

WHOOP tracks sleep over time, which makes it easier to judge consistency instead of reacting to a single rough night. That longer view fits Shankar’s point that metrics are most useful when they reflect patterns rather than one morning score.

How does WHOOP fit with the fresh start effect?

WHOOP gives people a baseline at the start of a new routine, training block, move, or season, which makes a fresh start easier to observe. That can help you see whether a new behavior actually sticks after the motivational lift of the first few days fades.

What does WHOOP show after a setback or interrupted routine?

WHOOP shows what happens after a setback by capturing the physiological pattern around missed sleep, travel, illness, stress, or a break in training. That makes it easier to treat setbacks as part of the process and to judge recovery from the interruption with context.

How does WHOOP support habits without relying only on willpower?

WHOOP supports habit change by making routines visible and reviewable, which helps people redesign their environment around what actually happens. Pairing data with consistent logging can show whether a simpler morning setup, fewer distractions, or a different evening routine leads to more repeatable results.

What does WHOOP do for people who feel anxious about daily metrics?

WHOOP works best for anxious decision-making when the data is used as feedback across time, not as a daily verdict. Reviewing trends, context, and behaviors together can reduce the urge to overreact to one low Recovery or one poor night of sleep.

For behavior change, the value of WHOOP is seeing whether a fresh start, a setback, or a daily ritual becomes a real pattern you can learn from.