“A key insight in behavioural science is that knowledge alone does not lead to behaviour change.”
Phillippa Lally, University of Surrey interview (2026)
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Preparing for the Moment
Psychologist Phillippa Lally studies how repeated actions become more automatic. Asked in a University of Surrey interview whether she finds it easy to apply that knowledge herself, she describes the pressures of work and family. Knowing the research does not make her days free of competing demands. She uses its insights where she can, including making specific plans for when and where to act.
Her observation is familiar to anyone who has understood a problem on Sunday and repeated it by Thursday. We may have meant every word when we promised to be more careful. But the next opportunity arrives amid shopping, messages, and other people’s plans. Someone asks whether we can help, and our thumb moves toward “Of course” before we have checked. The useful question becomes how to bring our intention into that moment, while there is still a choice to make.
The Answer That Comes Easily
Consider Luis, a fictional volunteer who has recently retired and helps with a neighborhood food-distribution group. He likes the early collections, the familiar faces at the loading door, and the satisfaction of a car packed properly. His fellow volunteers have learned that he can fit one more crate into almost any space. When the coordinator, Sam, asks for extra help, he is usually quick to offer.
Last month, Luis agreed to collect a donation on an afternoon when he had already promised to drive his brother to an appointment. He discovered the clash the evening before. Sam found another driver, but only after several calls and a rearrangement of the following day’s routes.
Luis apologized. He could see the inconvenience and meant it when he said he would check more carefully. For several days, the conversation stayed with him. By the following week, he was thinking about other things.
Then Sam asked in the group chat whether anyone could cover a Thursday morning collection.
Standing in the supermarket with a bag of oranges, Luis recognized the collection point. He liked the person who ran it and could not immediately remember anything else planned for Thursday. His calendar was on the same phone. He had not opened it yet.
Nothing about that moment felt like a test of whether he had changed. It felt like someone asking for help.
He had promised to check more carefully, but had left himself to remember that promise at the right time. The request drew his attention to the help he could offer. He needed a way for the request itself to remind him to check.
Giving the Intention Somewhere to Happen
We often recognize progress at the moment of understanding. An uncomfortable conversation becomes clearer. We see our part in what happened and feel ready to approach things differently. That realization can be valuable. It can also leave the next practical step surprisingly vague.
Psychologists Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran examined a planning approach called implementation intentions. These plans connect a particular situation with a chosen response: when this happens, I will do that. Their 2006 meta-analysis found an overall benefit for goal attainment across the tests included in the review. A person decides in advance what to do when a particular opportunity or difficulty appears.
For Luis, the plan could be simple: when a collection request appears, open the calendar before offering to take it. If he cannot check at that moment, he can say when he will have an answer. He still needs to judge whether the journey is feasible, including travel time and other commitments. The plan creates a pause in which that judgment can happen.
A person who tends to interrupt might prepare to write down a thought while the other person finishes. Someone who repeatedly forgets an agreed handoff might attach it to an existing end-of-day check. The useful detail is the recognizable moment and the feasible action available within it.
These are possible applications, not guarantees. A plan cannot supply missing time, remove a conflicting obligation, or make an unreasonable request fair. It can, however, help us bring a decision we have already made into the situation where we need to use it.
Habit formation is a related but separate process. Lally and colleagues studied people repeating selected eating, drinking, or activity behaviors in a consistent context. Participants reported that their chosen actions generally became more automatic, although the patterns varied. That finding concerns repeated daily behaviors, not the time needed to become a reliable volunteer. The two processes can work together: a deliberate plan can guide a response while repetition may make it more automatic.
Luis can use a calendar check successfully while still having to remind himself to do it. He need not wait for the action to become effortless before it is useful.
Three Ordinary Requests
At the supermarket, Luis pauses over the message and opens his calendar before replying. Thursday morning is free, but he has an appointment at noon. He checks the collection window and allows for loading and the drive back. There is enough time. Sam confirms his offer, and Luis adds the collection to his calendar before putting the phone away.
The next week, another request arrives while he is making coffee. This time, his daughter is visiting during the available collection window. He considers offering anyway; perhaps he could fit everything in. Then he looks at the times again.
“I can’t cover that one,” he writes.
Another volunteer accepts later that afternoon. Luis and his daughter keep their plans. There is no special acknowledgment of his restraint, and Sam has no reason to know how close the answer came to being different.
On a third occasion, Luis has checked carefully and accepted a collection he can comfortably manage. That morning, his car will not start. For a few minutes, he tries to persuade himself that the problem will be quick to fix. He could wait until he knows more before inconveniencing anyone.
Instead, he uses the group’s agreed contact route to tell Sam that he cannot currently make the collection and that the repair time is uncertain. Sam tells him another arrangement will be made. Luis confirms that he will leave the collection with Sam, so they are not both trying to organize it.
Sam still has a collection to cover. Hearing promptly gives Sam more time to do that, with a clear understanding that Luis is unavailable. The calendar check could prevent a double booking; a different response was needed when the car failed.
What Other People Can Plan Around
In many groups, the quick offer is easy to appreciate. Everyone can see who steps forward. The checking that makes an offer realistic happens out of view, and a person who pauses may worry that they seem reluctant. Over time, we can begin to associate being helpful with answering quickly, even when a slower answer would be more useful.
For Luis, checking first may feel less generous than immediately volunteering. The quick yes offers a pleasant certainty: someone needs help, and he can be the person who provides it. A pause leaves open the possibility that he cannot.
Yet the group needs information it can use. A clear refusal can be more helpful than an offer that has to be withdrawn after everyone has arranged the day around it. Accurate commitments allow Sam and the other volunteers to make decisions about their own time.
Lucivara’s pursuit of human potential includes developing capacities that make shared life more workable. Judging our capacity and communicating our limits help others make choices of their own. Sam can plan a route around the availability Luis has actually checked. A colleague can plan the next stage of a task around an agreed handoff. Our progress has a practical consequence beyond how we feel about ourselves.
The principle of Designed Systems and Leverage directs attention to the arrangements that support those intentions. At the scale of one person’s day, the useful adjustment may be small: a calendar opened before an answer, a realistic response time, an agreed route for reporting a problem. Its value comes from what it enables people to do.
There are limits to what one person can change. If a group routinely makes urgent requests because its scheduling process is inadequate, a volunteer’s careful calendar cannot fix that entire problem. Personal follow-through and shared organization both deserve attention. Luis can improve his own commitments while raising a recurring difficulty with the people who can address it.
The purpose of examining his behavior is to make participation more workable. Being dependable should leave room for illness, family responsibilities, changed circumstances, and an honest no.
A Review That Leaves Room to Learn
After several weeks, Luis can ask more useful questions than whether he feels like a different person. Did he check before accepting? Did the calendar contain the information he needed? Were his estimates realistic? When something changed, did he communicate soon enough for the group to respond?
Those questions might uncover another adjustment. Perhaps appointments are recorded, but travel time is routinely missing. Perhaps one collection takes longer than the group’s estimate. The first plan has given him something to examine, including where it falls short.
He can also ask Sam, at a convenient moment, whether his replies are giving enough notice and clarity. Sam can answer briefly, suggest a change, or decline the conversation. Luis remains responsible for keeping track of his own commitments; he is not asking Sam to supervise his improvement.
Several successful weeks cannot settle every question about the future. They can provide evidence of a response that is becoming more consistent. If he accepts another request without checking, he can correct the commitment promptly and examine what interrupted his plan. That gives him a specific problem to work on. He can take the lapse seriously without discarding the changes that have helped.
Luis puts a short review on his calendar for the end of the month. He will look at the requests he accepted, the ones he declined, and any arrangements he had to change. By then, he will have a few weeks of ordinary decisions to learn from.
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Practice: Make the Change Observable
Objective: Turn one intended change into an action you can try and review. Time: 10 minutes.
Choose a manageable situation that recurs in your life. It may involve a commitment, a conversation, or an agreed task. Describe what usually happens, keeping observable events separate from assumptions about your motives or someone else’s.
Identify the moment when a different response would be possible. Write a brief plan connecting that moment to one feasible action. Include what you will do if you cannot carry it out as intended, and check that the plan respects your capacity and other people’s choices.
Choose a review date. Decide what you can observe yourself and whether feedback from a willing person would help. You can complete this reflection privately; nobody else needs to monitor it.
Expected outcome: One specific plan, a response to foreseeable difficulty, and a review point that lets you learn from what happens.
Scientific Summary
Gollwitzer and Sheeran’s 2006 meta-analysis reports an overall positive effect of implementation intentions on goal attainment across 94 independent tests. These plans connect a specified situation with a goal-directed response. The findings do not establish that planning produces ethical conduct or restores interpersonal trust.
Lally and colleagues’ study followed 96 volunteers attempting daily eating, drinking, or activity behaviors over 12 weeks. It used self-reported behavior and automaticity; 82 participants supplied sufficient data for analysis, and model fit varied. These findings concern specific daily behaviors and do not establish a universal timetable for personal change.
Luis and the volunteer group are fictional. Their experience illustrates an editorial application of planning research. The civic interpretation belongs to Lucivara’s philosophy, and the practice is a reflection aid rather than a validated intervention.
References
Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674
University of Surrey. (2026, January 21). Does it really take 66 days to form a habit? We asked the expert, Dr Pippa Lally. Read the interview.
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