According to behavioral science, why your spin bike has become a clothes rack – and what you can do about it

There’s a good chance that the end of the year has made you take stock of some of your New Year’s resolutions for 2024. Perhaps, like us, you bought a home spinning bike or rowing machine in January. Most likely, in March you realized that you used much less of it than you planned. And most likely by June it disappeared under a pile of clothes.

You are not alone. From the latest Gallup survey shows that seven in ten adults plan to set goals for the next year. According to politicianthe most common are health goals (exercise and diet), followed by saving money. Here’s why sale of exercise equipment peak in January.

But tests shows that a quarter of us fail to keep our New Year’s resolutions after just one week, and more than half within six months. After two years, only 20% of people succeed.

So why do we keep making resolutions – often involving big expenses – even though we keep breaking them, and what can we do to persevere? How can you replace your spin bike? Recent discoveries in behavioral science provide some answers.

Why we try and why we fail

You bought a spin bike because you are human.

Other animals don’t exercise. Many of them are goal-oriented (chase or escape), but only people have the ability to self-improvement to better achieve your goals in the future. Exercise is an example of this.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow famously put it that self-actualization – realizing one’s potential – at the top of the hierarchy of human needs. You want to be the most perfect version of yourself you can be. It’s natural.

The problem is that regular exercise requires willpower and discipline that most of us lack. Especially when you are faced with a choice between a comfortable couch and a spinning bike. Your ambition may be willingbut your body is weak. Practice hard.

This is because our brains evolved during the Stone Age wandering around made sense of survival whenever the opportunity arose. With limited food, our ancestors had to save energy for the next chase or flight.

This also applies to other defects, e.g overeating Or overeating sweet foods. However, in today’s world where we use much more energy than usual, these things are often counterproductive.

Self-regulation

But your bike is also a beacon of hope. Although our psychology is often at odds with modernity, we have an advantage: the ability to self-regulate. At best, we can overcome everyday temptations and move toward long-term goals.

Psychological research identified two key elements (in addition to setting goals): monitoring your behavior for any violations and correcting them when detected.

So far you’ve achieved two of the three points: you dedicated yourself to your motorcycle and realized that you didn’t keep your word. Now it’s time to work on proofreading.

Be bored

Zen masters turn weakness into strength. You too can use human psychological weaknesses resulting from our evolution to your advantage. This is called self-nudge: changing your own choices to increase the likelihood of making the best decisions.

An example is the “sunk cost fallacy,” our tendency to base decisions on irreversible past expenses.

Here’s where a spin bike makes sense: After the expense, you can have more motivation go for a new bike rather than go to the gym. The membership can be canceled easily, but the bike has been purchased.

You can also go wholesale and use the same tools used by the government’s Behavioral Analysis Units on yourself. For example, policymakers use EAST framework to make our desired behaviors easy, attractive, social and current for us.

There is a spin bike at home easy to use compared to transforming into their fanciest Lululemonspacking equipment, driving to the gym and parking the car.

It’s also timely. You can use your home spin bike whenever it is convenient for you, without having to queue for lockers, equipment and showers.

Why not make it attractive too? Many home exercisers use a spoonful of sugar to reduce the effects of the drug. In our house, the spin bike is permanently parked in front of the widescreen TV. Behaviorists call it combining temptations.

You can also make your spin bike social. This is The peloton phenomenon: instructors, leaderboards and interactions with the training community.

Turn over a new leaf

Is it worth trying again in 2025? Yes.

The New Year is a natural opportunity for self-improvement due to… fresh start effect. The psychologist discovered that events that mark the passage of time (birthdays, holidays, new years) allow people to mentally cast their failures into the past and start over with a clean slate. This is an amazing tactic and it works.

The lesson is that the end of the year presents the perfect opportunity to make much-needed changes. But that’s not enough. You also need some simple strategies to help you stick to them.