Einstein, Egg & Cress
You try a new ritual once. It doesn’t quite stick, so you abandon it altogether, declaring: “This just doesn’t work for me.”
Maybe it was the gym. You got the membership, bought the gear, and rode the wave of motivation for a week or two. But then work got busy, life got noisy, the wave flattened, you found excuses not to go and the new ritual slowly faded.
Or maybe you tried meal prepping. You were tired of relying on Sainsbury’s meal deals - that egg & cress sandwich just wasn't doing it for you anymore and you wanted to nourish your body with better food.
That first Sunday, you stocked up at Tesco and batch-cooked a week’s worth of chicken, roasted veg and quinoa. It felt good. Your fridge looked like a fitness influencer’s dream. Colleagues even complimented your “discipline.”
But by Thursday of week 1, you were bored of the same meal. Sunday rolled around again, and you told yourself that you didn’t have time. That you’d do it next week. You inevitably didn’t (as you knew deep down would be the case). And just like that, the new ritual that felt so promising at the start, fell apart.
We’ve all been there. But why? I believe that the issue is the underlying mindset.
We as a society, typically approach change with an “all-or-nothing” mentality. Either the habit works immediately and perfectly, or it doesn’t work at all.
And I believe that this binary way of thinking is holding us back. Instead of expecting instant perfection, what if you approached behaviour change with the mindset of a scientist?
Scientists follow a process called (unsurprisingly) the scientific method - a structured, curious, and iterative way to test ideas. Let’s say a scientist notices that of all of their basil plants in the kitchen, the one closest to the window has grown the most.
They ask a question: “How does sunlight affect plant growth?”
They form a hypothesis: “If basil plants get more sunlight, they’ll grow taller over 4 weeks.”
Then they design an experiment: three groups of identical basil plants, each exposed to different amounts of sunlight daily (say 2, 6, and 12 hours). All other variables (soil, pot size, water etc.) are kept constant. Over 4 weeks, they measure the height of each plant every few days.
After collecting the data across the 4 weeks, they analyse the results. Now, ask any scientist and they will tell you that rarely, if ever, does an experiment work perfectly the first time out. Of course it doesn’t, there are so many variables at play.
And so, they enter the experiment not expecting perfect results at their first attempt. Then, they tweak, observe, adjust and re-adjust their approach as they rinse and repeat the experiment. That’s the game.
Now, what would it look like if we were to approach our new rituals in the same way?
Observation: “I struggle to focus at work because I keep getting distracted by WhatsApp messages and notifications.”
Hypothesis: “If I put my phone on Do Not Disturb mode from 9am - 12pm, I’ll be less distracted and get more, higher-quality work done.”
Experiment: for one week, from Monday to Friday I will put my phone on Do Not Disturb mode from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. I will track the work that I complete during this time and rate my focus each day on a scale from 1–10.
Results: You notice a clear boost in focus and output. But there’s a problem. Three hours of silence is hard to maintain. Meetings pop up. You get stressed about being unavailable. Maybe your partner tries to reach you and you miss their calls (sorry, Majd!).
Instead of abandoning the focus time altogether, you don’t give up. You instead refine the experiment. You shorten the Do Not Disturb window to 90 minutes and make it flexible. You make it 90 minutes within the window of 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM, so you can work it around meetings. You also adjust your phone settings to allow messages and calls from your partner to come through when your phone is on Do Not Disturb mode (back in Majd’s good books!).
Often, the difference between making a new ritual stick and allowing it to fade, isn’t discipline - it’s mindset. Too often, we treat new rituals like pass/fail tests. But real change is experimental, not binary.
Maybe the gym could work for you, but you need a PT, gym buddy or to sign up to classes to keep you accountable. Or perhaps the gym isn’t for you, but instead a better, more sustainable ritual around your health would be going for a walk each morning.
You got bored of having the same meal for lunch each day when you tried meal prepping. Okay, what if you were to make a variety of meals, or decided to meal prep for 3 days a week instead of 5?
In this way, if you were to treat your rituals like a scientist treats an experiment - with curiosity, not judgment - you’d stop quitting just because it didn’t go perfectly the first time. You’d adapt, adjust, try again.
Because that’s how meaningful change actually happens: not through perfection, but through iteration.
And so, the next time you try implementing a new ritual, I invite you to enter into it with the mindset of the scientist. To not expect or aim to be flawless. Instead aim to be curious. Aim to test.
And when the first run doesn’t work perfectly? Don’t abandon the ritual. Instead get curious, button up your lab coat, tweak the variables and try again.
So, before we head into the weekend, I encourage you to think of a healthy habit you once tried but dropped when it didn’t stick. Something that you would love to make a part of your daily or weekly routine. What’s one small tweak you could make to give it another go next week?