Will you be as sustainable after a break?

As I’ve been working through the end of the semester, I’ve struggled with a few of my habits. I’m not as consistent with my workouts or a few chores as I faced a wall of assignment reviews to get students timely feedback. Now, we’re looking at the Christmas break where my schedule will vary a lot more. So, will I come back to all my positive habits on the other side?

Ratay and colleagues (2024) studied how the Christmas break impacted pro-environmental behaviours like carrying reusable food containers. There is good news and bad in what they found. Similar to other findings that they draw on for fitness, people do lose some of their habits after a break. It’s about a 17% drop in using reusable food containers after a break. But, the stronger the habit is and the more consistent it was before the break, the less likely it is to fall afterwards.

I think it’s good news that the drop is only 17%. That is less than I expected. But, it makes me wonder how you can build durability in when you encourage new behaviours. This is something that is often on my mind at the end of the semester because a lot of the students in my classes talk about changing habits because of things that they’ve learned. But I wonder how successful those changes will be? They haven’t generally had time to build up the consistency of their new habit. Does that mean that they’ll all fall in the 17%? I wonder what the influence might be of why they adopt the new habit. Will that change whether they start back up again or not?

What do you think, what habits are you concerned you’ll stop if you take a break? What actions do you take to avoid that?