What-the-Hell Effect

 Momentum matters and it goes both ways. When you’re on a streak, you’ll fight hard not to break it. But when you falter, it’s all too easy to get caught in a negative momentum cycle psychologists refer to as the “What-the-Hell Effect.” This phenomenon describes the downward spiral that can happen when we allow our initial misstep to justify next, and so on. Well-documented for diets and binge eating, it also shows up anywhere you need willpower. Positive momentum with exercise, budgeting, sobriety, and lead generation can all get derailed when we double down on our mistakes.

The good news is that a single stumble doesn’t measurably impact habit formation. Life happens. We recover and continue forward. When researchers asked 96 volunteers to track their habit-building, many missed a day. But a solitary slip up didn’t seem to matter if they got back on the proverbial horse. It was only when they repeated the mistake that they failed.

Here’s the moral: Don’t give up when you slip up.

Most of your success will come from daily deposits toward your success. You follow the diet. You lace your shoes and go for a run. You avoid splurging at Target. You dutifully connect with your database. The days you do it blur unremarkably. But it’s not so much the good days that make the difference. It’s how we handle the bad days that matters.