My goal: Change what surrounds me in order to make:

(1) good health behavior more likely or (2) bad health behaviors less likely.

Here’s what I did, and what I found.

Kelly Schmutte10.16.12

Changing 3 Things About My Environment for Better Health

My goal: Encourage flossing twice a day (or more) by changing the dispensing experience into something playful

1. Floss Art

BORING!

FUN!!

What I did:• Stick pre-cut lengths of

floss on my bathroom mirror with colorful sticky dots that I’d colored in (I tried masking tape at first, but it looked too ugly)

• I made an interesting design with the floss pieces (some anchored at both ends, some dangling)

• I even cut some dots to look like balloons with a hanging tail!

What I learned:• It’s totally fun to “pluck” pieces of floss off of

the mirror!• Investing in the preparation (by coloring the

dots myself) made me take ownership of this new habit, and increased my excitement

• Not only did I floss twice a day (after brushing), but did other “opportunistic” flossing, as well (ex: I was dashing off to class, and realized I had something in my teeth that I wanted to get).

• My roommate has been away the past week, but I think she would have been encouraged to join in, too.

• I could see this being a new product! Floss manufacturers could offer color-in sticky shapes and pre-cut floss pieces. Another less in-your-face idea I had was to have a suction-mounted balloon-shaped dispenser where the floss tail hung down like the balloon string.

1. Floss Art

1. Floss Art

What’s going on in the Fogg Behavior Model?• Increase A: Make it easier

(don’t have to reach in the cabinet)

• Increase M: Flossing is a fun, different experience. There is also the added motivation of wanting to remove floss from the mirror to have a less obstructed view.

• Trigger! It’s hard to look in the mirror without being reminded of flossing!

B = MAT

**

My goal: Do a series of abs exercises every day for 16 days, increasing the difficulty slightly each day, working towards a publicly viewable goal

2. Victory Chain

What I did:• Wrote out 16 days

worth of abs exercises on colored strips of paper (4 different exercises, 4 increasing levels of each)

• Made a paper chain out of the strips and mounted it on my front door

• I put a motivational victory message at the top

• The idea is you tear off one strip and do that exercise each day until you reach “Victory!”

• I left a place for random passerby to leave feedback

What I learned:• It’s satisfying to rip off a piece of paper and

see visible progress towards your goal.• I’ve stuck with it so far! (it’s working)• It’s not always convenient to do the ab

exercise when you come in the door… you might be short on time or not in the right clothes.

• Public accountability is a definite motivator, though.

• No one commented on my paper chain as I’d hoped, but I think in an undergrad dorm, you would certainly get much more involvement from peers (I live in grad housing)

2. Victory Chain

2. Victory ChainWhat’s going on in the Fogg Behavior Model?• Trigger! Every time I walk

in the front door, I’m reminded to do an ab exercise. I take a physical object with me inside (the slip of paper) that reminds me to do it.

• Increase M: I am working toward a visible goal, and each day counts. I feel like I’m making progress. Also, public accountability motivates me.

B = MAT

**

My goal: Substitute my urge to snack (when I’m not truly hungry) with a healthier type of break: taking a walk

3. Snacking Substitution

What I did:• Put my running shoes

(and socks) in front of my closed pantry door so that I’d have to move them before getting a snack

What I learned:• Totally didn’t work.• I realized I didn’t really want to stop

snacking in some cases. I knew it wasn’t great for me, but I felt overall good about my eating habits, and like I could afford to indulge.

• It’s too easy to move the shoes and open the pantry door… To really make the trigger effective, I would have needed to throw out the snack foods completely.

• I would also forget to put my running shoes back in front of the pantry after working out, since that was a new habit I needed to learn.

3. Snacking Substitution

What’s going on in the Fogg Behavior Model?• Trigger! Every time I open

the pantry door, I’m reminded that I should try walking instead.

• No real increase in ability or motivation. I still wanted to snack (and had the ability to), and wasn’t motivated to go for a walk. Therefore, the trigger didn’t work.

B = MAT

*

3. Snacking Substitution

(no change)