The Lawyer’s Well-Being Brief

A Surprising Reason Why Our Habits Might Fail

“We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality.”-Daniel J. Boorstin

Welcome back or welcome to, the Lawyer’s Well-being Brief. Every week, I share insights and tools to help us improve our well-being. This week we look at a study at Google on why our habits might fail.

One Big Idea

Consistency is the foundation of a good habit. But an inflexible approach might be why you struggle to make new habits stick.

What?

In 2012, a group of academics and scientists were invited to Google headquarters, because Google had a problem. A Google human resources vice president had a seemingly innocuous set of questions. Google offers its employees a wide range of benefits and programs designed to make their lives and jobs better and to solve such problems as undersaving for retirement, overuse of social media, physical inactivity, unhealthy eating, and smoking.

Why weren’t employees clamoring to take advantage of free skill-building classes? Why weren’t they signing up for the company’s 401(k) match and personal trainers? Why were so many of the programs that the…