6min read
Knowing what would be good for you and doing it regularly are very different things.
Perhaps you know that strength training matters more as you get older. You know that more plants, enough protein, more movement and better sleep would support your health.
And still, the workout that sounded manageable on Sunday does not happen on Wednesday. The lunch you meant to prepare loses out to whatever is quickest. The 10-minute walk feels too small to bother with. The chocolate after dinner is irresistible.
None of this necessarily means you need to get more health and nutritional information.
Sometimes you do. Reliable information matters, especially when the advice around you is contradictory or wrong. But reaching a goal means turning what you know into actions that fit a real life.
So when the thought is, “I know what to do. Why am I not doing it?”, a better question is: What is actually getting in the way?
If you read nothing else, read this
One thing worth knowing: When you know what to do and still do not do it, more information may not be what is missing. Look at what the current behaviour gives you, and what the new one costs. Do you have a plan that fits your real, messy week?
One thing to ponder: Think of something you would like to change for better health. Why does it matter to you? What would be different if you achieved it? What are you willing to give to get there?
One thing to experiment with: Choose one action you want to do consistently where something gets in the way. What makes it hard to follow through, and how could you make it easier?
Knowing the principle is not the same as knowing what to do next
“Eat less and move more.” “Prioritise sleep.”
They sound like instructions. They still do not tell someone what to do on Tuesday.
Someone may know protein matters but not how to build a meal around it. Others may know strength training matters, but have no idea what to do in a gym. That is a genuine information or skill gap.
But when someone already knows enough to take action, adding more information may not help. Research on behaviour change finds that knowledge alone tends to be a weaker lever than practical skills, supportive habits, and fewer obstacles to taking action.[1]
Why does it matter to you?
Before trying to fix the plan, it is worth asking why the goal matters in the first place.
Some goals make sense on paper, but do not have much pull in real life. “I should lose weight” or “I should exercise more” may be true, but what would achieving that actually change? More energy? Feeling stronger? Being able to travel, play with grandchildren, feel more comfortable in clothes, or protect health for the years ahead?
If a goal is not connected to something that genuinely matters, it is much harder for it to compete with everything else asking for our time, attention and energy.
Research on autonomous motivation points in the same direction: we are more likely to act when the reason feels like our own, rather than something imposed on us.[2]
Our current habits serve a purpose (even if we want to change)
One may want to lose weight and also want the chocolate after dinner. Another one may want better sleep and still value the quiet hour after everyone else has gone to bed.
There may be a reward in the current choice. It may offer comfort, pleasure, convenience, rest or simply less effort.
There may be a price to pay for the alternative too. Exercise takes time and effort. Cooking means shopping, preparation and washing up. An unfamiliar gym can feel awkward. Going to bed earlier may mean giving up the only quiet hour of the day.
Many of those costs are due now. Much of what we hope to gain lies further ahead in the future.
Even the best intentions do not make that trade-off disappear.
So it helps to make it visible:
What do I get from what I do now?
What is staying the same costing me?
What would change give me?
What would changing cost me?
If someone orders a takeaway to save time and skip the cooking and everything that comes with it, more healthy recipes do not solve the problem. If chocolate is the pause and relief at the end of a hard day, knowing that yoghurt has more protein does not change why chocolate feels irresistible.
Not every behaviour hides a deep need. Convenience is enough. Pleasure is enough.
The point is to understand what is competing with the longer-term goal.
What looks like one simple action often isn’t
“Exercise three times this week” sounds simple.
In reality it may mean finding three gaps in a busy week, deciding what to do, getting kit ready, travelling, using unfamiliar equipment, showering afterwards and allowing enough time for the whole thing.
A one-hour gym session can easily require two hours of someone’s day.
“Take lunch to work” may mean deciding what to eat, buying the food, preparing it, checking whether it needs refrigeration or reheating, remembering to pack it for work and finding time to eat it.
Eating better, or eating less, often requires more thought and planning than simply knowing which foods to choose.
An action can look perfectly doable because the smaller prerequisites have not been counted. Once those hidden steps are visible, ask which can be removed or made easier. Think of it as lowering the activation energy: the effort needed before the behaviour can even begin.
Choose the workout the night before. Start at home if commuting is the obstacle. Use frozen vegetables, rotisserie chicken and microwave rice when cooking from scratch is not realistic.
Reducing friction is not the same as avoiding effort. Some things that are worthwhile can still take time, effort and a fair bit of discomfort.
There is simply no prize for difficulty that does not need to be there.
A plan has to survive a messy week
Knowing the action is not the same as having a plan for it.
What, when and where will it happen? And how will you deal with the obstacles you can foresee? Planning those details improves follow-through.[3]
A plan that only works after a good night’s sleep, when work finishes on time and nobody needs anything from you is a fragile plan. So, a thirty-minute walk might sometimes become ten minutes. A forty-five-minute strength session might become two body-weight exercises in the kitchen. The smaller version is not the ultimate goal, and ten minutes is not equivalent to forty-five.
It keeps the practice alive and that is all that matters.
Sometimes we make progress, get stronger and more capable, and raise the bar. That is progression.
At other times one can already do the usual thing, but the capacity is simply not there that day, because there is less time, less energy or competing priorities. It’s time to lower the bar. That is flexibility.
Both can work alongside an ambitious goal.
Different expectations can make good progress look inadequate
People have various expectations about how they see progress: how fast it should happen, how easy it should feel, how consistent they should be, and what reaching the goal will look like. Those expectations shape how certain outcomes are interpreted.
It is possible to know what to do, take action, and still give up simply because the progress does not feel good enough.
If a workout is expected to last an hour, ten minutes looks pointless. If the weight on the scale is expected to go down every week, an ordinary fluctuation looks like evidence that nothing is working. If a routine is expected to become easy quickly, some effort that is otherwise expected can be interpreted as “this isn’t for me”.
An action does not have to be ambitious all the time or even to look like it was initially planned to be worth doing.
But neither should someone keep following an approach simply because they have started it.
If someone has been strength training for two weeks and cannot yet see a change in their body, it is probably too early to judge the result.
If someone planned three gym sessions every week but repeatedly manages only one because the travel and time commitment do not fit their life, the plan needs changing.
If a way of eating leaves people persistently hungry or is so complicated that they cannot maintain it, continuing for longer is unlikely to solve the problem.
Give an approach enough time and consistent practice to judge the result. If it is not working, change it, but don’t abandon your goal.
Different problems need different solutions
The knowing-doing gap is not one problem.
It may involve lack of information or missing key skills. It may also require better understanding of the inevitable trade-offs that come with any change.
Other times we need to break a goal down into tiny steps and simplify the set-up, to make sure we can take consistent action.
If a plan only works on good days, we need to come up with a version that survives the challenging days.
And if our progress feels inadequate, we need to check our expectations, with curiosity rather than judgement, and see how consistent we are, before changing course.
There will be times when things don’t go as planned, and that is useful feedback to course correct. It’s not a failure and certainly no reason to abandon the goal.
The question is not: “Why can’t I just do it?”
It is: What exactly is getting in the way, and what would make the next action possible?
And underneath it all: “Why does it matter to me?”
If you want help working out what's worth your effort and what isn't, get in touch. We’ll have a friendly conversation, and you'll leave clearer on what actually drives results in midlife, whether or not we work together.
References
Albarracín D, Fayaz-Farkhad B, Granados Samayoa JA. Determinants of behaviour and their efficacy as targets of behavioural change interventions. Nature Reviews Psychology. 2024;3:377-392. doi:10.1038/s44159-024-00305-0.
Sheeran P, Wright CE, Avishai A, et al. Does increasing autonomous motivation or perceived competence lead to health behavior change? A meta-analysis. Health Psychology. 2021;40(10):706-716. doi:10.1037/hea0001111.
Peng S, Othman AT, Yuan F, Liang J. The effectiveness of planning interventions for improving physical activity in the general population: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2022;19(12):7337. doi:10.3390/ijerph19127337.