This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg.

Habits are only good or bad in relation to your goals.

Every year, as the New Year approaches all across America, millions of us take a look at our lives and think about making changes.

Changes in how we exercise, the money we save, the hours we spend on the Internet.

We always think of discipline as sort of self-denial.

It's the kind of white knuckling it through.

We're going to make ourselves do it.

So that's a high effort, sort of a process.

For those of us who actually make fresh goals, fewer than half of us will

stick with them. Many of us won't even get through January. But research psychologist Wendy Wood

thinks that's because we're thinking about our goals upside down. A lot of goals aren't about

making fresh habits. So we really are trying to change a habit that we've already formed.

And that requires different strategies than willpower and motivation.

Dr. Wendy Wood is Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the University of Southern California,

and she thinks, persistent behavior change is solvable.

Just to start out, Wendy, to ask for perhaps obvious question, what is a habit?

A habit is actually, it's an answer.

It's a solution.

It's a way that people stick with behavior.

It's a way they persist.

Habits you can think of as a sort of learning mechanism.

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