Module 6 · Environment & context · Research-supported
Home and family
Habits in shared spaces, and agreeing changes with the people you live with.
6 min read · Level: Intermediate · Free — no account needed to read
The problem it solves
How do you build habits in a home you share?
The concept
Families and housemates shape each other’s habits through shared spaces, shared food, shared schedules and shared example. A habit that works alone can struggle when the kitchen, the TV or the evening belongs to everyone.
Talking helps: explain what you’re trying to do and ask for one specific kind of support — keeping one shelf for you, a quiet hour, joining you for a walk. Most people help more when they know what would help.
Where the space can’t change, find a part of it that can: a corner, a drawer, a time of day when the room is yours.
Why it matters
Practical social support is a recognised behaviour-change technique, and agreeing changes with the people you live with prevents your habit from colliding with theirs.
Research-supported: Good studies support it, but there are fewer of them, the effects are modest, or they come from a narrow set of situations.
See it happen
Nour wants to eat fewer sweets, but her family keeps them in a bowl on the dining table.
- The ordinary first approach
- She should ignore the bowl; it’s not fair to ask everyone else to change.
- With the idea
- She asks if the bowl could live in a cupboard, and keeps a fruit bowl on the table instead.
- What changed
- One small, agreed change removed a daily cue without asking anyone to give anything up.
Easy to get wrong
- Expecting others to guess what would help.
- Asking for big changes when a small one would do.
- Judging family members’ habits instead of focusing on your own.
Try it now: Make one request
- Pick one habit that collides with a shared space or time.
- Write one small, specific change that would help.
- Ask the person it affects, kindly.
Apply it to one of your habits
For one of your habits, what one small request of someone you live with would help it?
Reflect
- Which shared space affects your habits most?
Go deeper — evidence & sources
- Michie, Richardson, Johnston, Abraham, Francis, Hardeman and colleagues (2013). The Behavior Change Technique Taxonomy (v1) of 93 Hierarchically Clustered Techniques. Annals of Behavioral Medicine. doi:10.1007/s12160-013-9486-6
Techniques that use this idea
- Ask for practical support — Ask one person for one specific kind of help. (Research-supported)
Problems this helps with
- “Other people or my surroundings get in the way.” — The plan works until someone else’s needs, habits or space collide with it.
Related lessons
- The people around you — We drift toward the habits of the people we spend time with. (6 min · Intermediate)
- Accountability that helps — Sharing a plan with someone — and how to keep it supportive, not shaming. (6 min · Beginner)
- Your environment is doing half the work — People who seem disciplined often simply meet fewer temptations. (6 min · Beginner)