Do habit reminders work? What the research says

Short answer: reminders help you do a habit, but on their own they don’t make it automatic. In a four-week study of habit apps, relying on reminders “supported repetition but hindered habit development,” while tying the habit to an everyday event led to more automaticity. Use a reminder as a bridge: point it at a cue you already have, and let the cue take over.

A reminder is the first feature every habit app has, and it’s easy to see why. You forget; the phone doesn’t. But the goal of a habit is to stop needing to remember, and that’s where reminders get complicated.

What the research says about reminders

Reminders do get things done

For simply getting a task done, reminders work. A 2016 meta-analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine pooled 16 randomised trials with 2,742 patients and found that text message reminders roughly doubled the odds of taking medication as prescribed (odds ratio 2.11). The authors add a caution: the trials were short and mostly relied on people reporting their own adherence.

But they can get in the way of the habit

Doing something and having a habit aren’t the same. Psychologists define habits as actions triggered automatically by the context they’re linked to: washing your hands after using the toilet, putting on a seatbelt after getting into the car. The trigger is the situation, not a notification.

That’s what Katarzyna Stawarz, Anna Cox and Ann Blandford tested at University College London. In their four-week study, published at CHI 2015, people who relied on reminders repeated the behaviour, but it became less automatic than for people who linked it to an event in their day. Their review of 115 habit apps found that they focused on self-tracking and reminders, and didn’t support event-based cues.

The likely reason: if the phone always tells you when, the phone becomes the cue. Take the reminder away and nothing in your day triggers the habit.

The reminder should fade as the habit grows

A 2009 model in Psychological Review by Robert Tobias, calibrated on data from a behaviour-change campaign, points the same way. It found that a reminder’s effect depends on how committed the person is and fades over time, and that habits, once formed, replace the reminding effect of the memory aid. In the model, habits were nearly fully developed after about a month for people who did the behaviour often enough.

How to use reminders so they build a habit

Point the reminder at a cue, not a time

“8:00 pm: read” asks you to obey a clock. “After dinner, read two pages” gives you a moment that happens anyway. Write the habit as a habit stack first, then set the reminder for when that cue usually happens, so the notification points you back to the cue rather than replacing it.

Say why, not just what

A reminder that says “Read” is easy to swipe away. Tobias’s model suggests reminders work better for people who are committed, so give the reminder a reason: “Read two pages, so that I become a reader.” It turns the notification into a small reminder of who you’re trying to become.

Keep it to one, at the right moment

The best reminder arrives just before you can act, not an hour earlier and not three times a day. If you ignore a reminder most days, move it or rewrite the habit; don’t add another.

Let it go quiet

Once you notice you’re doing the habit before the reminder fires, that’s the signal it has done its job. Turn it off, or keep it only for days the cue is likely to be missing, like travel or weekends.

If you want help writing the cue and the reason in one line, the free habit plan builder does it with you.

The short version

• Reminders help you get a task done: text reminders roughly doubled medication adherence in one meta-analysis.
• On their own, they can slow habit formation. The phone becomes the cue instead of your day.
• Link the habit to an everyday event, and set the reminder for that moment.
• Put your reason in the reminder, keep it to one, and let it go quiet once the habit runs itself.