Motivation
How to Change: The Hard Way and the Easy Way
To successfully change, we must have the right theory of change.
Posted January 3, 2025 Reviewed by Tyler Woods
Key points
- To achieve goals, we must change.
- Change occurs because of two factors: Person factors and situational factors.
- Although many people naturally try to change person factors, this is hard.
- Easier and more effective is to change situational factors.
The new year is upon us, and with it comes the desire to better ourselves—read more, exercise more, build wealth, and be a better spouse, parent, or friend. New year resolutions abound.
Along with this spirit of rejuvenation, the more cynical of us rightly point out that the majority of New Year's resolutions fail. Although we want to do all the wonderful things stated in the opening paragraph, many of us will not.
Why? One reason is that we don’t have a correct theory of change. If we had the right theory, we would be able to take steps to increase the probability that the change we desire actually occurs.
The right theory of change
Change means going from a beginning state to a different state. Understanding how to change requires us to first understand why we are in the beginning state in the first place.
Academic research suggests that, in very broad terms, there are two factors that jointly determine why we do what we do.
First, we do what we do because of who we are. These are “person” factors: Our personality, preferences, habits, attitudes. All of these contribute to our repeated actions and choices.
Second, we do what we do because of the situations we are in. These are “situation” factors: The people we surround ourselves with, the norms and customs of a given social group, the constraints we face in terms of time, money, or attention. All of these also help determine what we do repeatedly.
Both person and situation factors influence our behavior. To change our behavior, we must change either or both of them.
Changing the hard way
Person factors are the natural way many of us think about change.
One of the common catchphrases linked to New Year resolutions is: “New year, new you.” This exemplifies the point. When we think about change, we think first about changing ourselves.
However, this is the hard way. None of the person factors are easy to change. Our personalities are set by a constellation of preferences, genetics, and habits over many years. Many of our preferences are automatic and intuitive; our likes and dislikes often arise without conscious awareness. Our habits are deeply ingrained and triggered by elements that abound in our usual environment.
It’s hard to change ourselves.
Changing the easy way
However, don’t despair. The theory of change I proposed has another component: The situation.
As noted, it is far less common to think of change as situational. This is a mistake. Changing the situations we find ourselves in is likely to be far easier than changing who we are.
For almost any goal we seek to accomplish, it is possible to find a situation we are in that frustrates progress.
Take building wealth. One component of doing so is being smart about how we spend our money. Here is a personal example: I tracked the purchases I had made in the past year that I later thought were dubious. It turned out that frequently, they originated in marketing emails from brands and companies I liked.
This is a situational factor: My inbox was littered with enticing emails goading me to spend money. I mass-unsubscribed, and this helped my bank account substantively. I now spend less on unnecessary items.
Notice that this is a situational change: I did not change my spendthrift habits; I just got out of a detrimental situation.
Another example: I noticed with chagrin that I tend to come under-prepared to many professional meetings. My initial thought was that there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to get through all the pre-readings involved, often amounting to dozens of pages for each meeting.
However, upon reflection, I realized that it was not so much a lack of time, but rather the hectic pace that characterizes workdays: Constantly multi-tasking between emails, writing, meetings, and other tasks.
To change this situation, I self-scheduled big meetings to start 30 minutes before they actually did for everyone else. This gave me 30 minutes of relative peace and quiet and improved my preparation appreciably. My colleagues started marveling at how I always seemed to have the facts at the tips of my fingers.
Hacking situational change: Delegation
As theory of change makes clear, changing the situation is often easier and more effective than changing yourself. Try it. See what happens.
To complement the benefits of changing the situation, consider using delegation in ways that can turbo-charge the results. Delegation means wisely letting go of responsibility and tasks to improve outcomes. Consider getting the help of other people to delegate tasks that are difficult to master on your own.
For example, take the goal of having a stronger professional network. “Being more charismatic” is hard because it involves changing yourself. Putting yourself in situations that force you to meet interesting colleagues is better because it involves changing the situations you are in.
Even more effective would be to ask an assistant (or use an app) to list every person you meet and with whom you would like to interact in the future. Also list one or two tidbits of information about that person: A topic they are interested in, a milestone they told you about. Then, schedule a weekly slot of 15 minutes to follow up with these contacts. Ask your assistant to compose emails from your list and send them to people on your list. Soon, you will become the king of follow-ups. Your network ties will become increasingly strong.
This is the multiplicative power of combining changing the situation and delegating.
A final thought
When we want to accomplish something, we must have the correct theory of how it works. In the case of change, understanding its dual components is key. Changing the situation we are in will often be easier than changing our personal factors.
This is not to say that aspiring to change ourselves is ill-advised. In fact, it can be reasonably argued that our ultimate goal should be to become better and better persons.
Having said this, the road to self-change can be made easier by changing the situations we find ourselves in. Here is one way to think about this:
Most of our lives, we exhibit the same behavior in the same situations. Changing the situations we are in will give us the opportunity to change our behaviors as well, which ultimately will trickle down to changing who we are. As time goes by and our new habits solidify, we may also be able to exhibit different behaviors in the old situations we used to be in.
That would be true change—behaving differently despite being in the same situation. For me, it would mean avoiding making frivolous purchases despite getting marketing emails and preparing for meetings without having to schedule extra 30-minute buffers. What would it mean for you?
References
Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21–38.
Jones, E. E., & Harris, V. A. (1967). The attribution of attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3, 1–24.
Klein, N., & O’Brien, E. (2018). People use less information than they think to make up their minds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 115, 13222-13227.
Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In Advances in experimental social psychology. (Vol. 10, pp. 173–220). Academic Press.
Zajonc, R. B. (1980) Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35, 151–175.