Module 7 · Planning & self-regulation · Research-supported

Prompts and reminders — and when to let them go

Reminders help you remember; a habit is when you no longer need them.

6 min read · Level: Intermediate · Free — no account needed to read

The problem it solves

Do reminders help you build a habit — or keep you depending on them?

The concept

Prompts and reminders help you remember to act: an alarm, a note, a notification. They are genuinely useful when a habit is new or easy to forget.

But a reminder is an external cue. Research suggests relying on it can help you remember while slowing the growth of the habit itself, because the cue never becomes part of your routine. Cues tied to an existing daily event seem to support habit formation better.

A good approach: use a reminder at first, timed to the exact moment, attach the habit to a routine, and then deliberately rely on the reminder less as the routine takes over.

Why it matters

Knowing this trade-off stops people from mistaking “I do it when the alarm goes off” for a habit, and helps them move toward cues that last.

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

Yara has taken her medication with a phone alarm every day for a year. When her phone broke, she missed three days.

The ordinary first approach

The alarm worked perfectly, so there’s nothing to change.

With the idea

She keeps the alarm but also links the medication to making her morning tea, with the box beside the kettle.

What changed

The behaviour now has an internal cue as well as an external one.

Easy to get wrong

• Setting reminders at times when you can’t act.
• Letting reminders pile up until you dismiss them all.
• Never moving from a reminder to a routine-based cue.

Try it now: Upgrade one reminder

1. Pick one habit you rely on a reminder for.
2. Choose a daily routine it could follow instead.
3. Keep the reminder for two weeks, then try a day without it.

Apply it to one of your habits

For one of your habits, is it cued by a reminder or by a routine? What would move it toward a routine?

Reflect

• Which reminders do you now dismiss without acting on?

Go deeper — evidence & sources

• Tobias (2009). Changing behavior by memory aids: A social psychological model of prospective memory and habit development tested with dynamic field data. Psychological Review. doi:10.1037/a0015512
• Stawarz, Cox & Blandford (2015). Beyond Self-Tracking and Reminders: Designing Smartphone Apps That Support Habit Formation. Proceedings of CHI 2015. doi:10.1145/2702123.2702230
• Rogers & Milkman (2016). Reminders Through Association. Psychological Science. doi:10.1177/0956797616643071