Why common sense isn’t common action

A lot of the best advice out there is common sense. For example:

• “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
• Spend less time looking at screens and more time with people
• Make sure to get seven or eight hours of sleep every night
• Get more exercise and sit for less time every day

Yet so often, despite how much sense changes like these make, we don’t follow through with what we know we should. Common sense falls apart.

Why? It’s complicated, of course. Some of the reasons are neurological, like that exercising self-control requires deploying self-regulation, which at a certain point gets exhausting. Others are psychological, like that a change conflicts with our values or our identity.

The solution to all this might even be considered common sense in itself: we must consider the daily reality of change. In other words, we must consider the point at which the rubber actually meets the road, the exact ways in which our days will be different once we’ve made a change.

Change is easy to romanticize. As a result, we often build a sepia-toned fantasy of what it will be like after we’ve made a change, like losing 20 pounds or saving enough for retirement to afford unlimited vacations.

Yet, change gets complicated when the changes we romanticize collide with the reality of our everyday lives.

As you try to integrate a new habit or routine into your days, think about the exact ways your days will be different. Remember: your days will need to be different for your life to be different.

It’s good that, by default, we strive to become an idealized version of our current self. This motivation leads us to more significant progress in work and life. But while making a change, we must think about how a change will react with the lives we already lead—and how our days are already structured. Anticipating this interaction point can go a long way to making change stick.