Resisting, Recognizing, and Returning: A Three-Component Model and Review of Persistence in Episodic Goals

Abstract

According to prior work, persistent goal pursuit is a continuous process where persisting is a matter of resisting the urge to give up. In everyday goals, however, persistence is often episodic, and its causes are more complex. People pause and resume pursuit many times. Whether people persist reflects more than will power and motivation, it also reflects the other goals they pursue, their resources, and the attentional demands of daily life. People can fail to persist not just because they gave up, but also because they failed to act. We propose a general model of persistence that accommodates the complexity of episodic goals. We argue that persistent goal pursuit is a function of three processes: resisting the urge to give up, recognizing opportunities for pursuit, and returning to pursuit. The broad factors that help and hurt persistence can be organized within these components. These components can also explain the mechanisms of four effective strategies for persistence: removing distractions, using reminders, using implementation intentions, and forming habits. The recognizing-resisting-returning model integrates and improves on extant theories of persistence and goal pursuit and is consistent with empirical work from laboratory and naturalistic settings.

“Never give up” is a common piece of advice that reflects a conception of persistence and goal pursuit held by many lay people and scholars alike: accomplishing most goals in daily life requires deliberately resisting the temptation to quit. This model of persistence as resisting accurately and comprehensively describes the process of persistence in goals that can be continuously pursued, like completing one-off tasks. But how comprehensively does this model describe the process of persistence in everyday goals? And how well do theories based on this model predict and explain factors that affect persistence in daily life?

Most goal pursuit, and thus most persistence, in daily life is episodic rather than continuous. People do not start and finish goals in one uninterrupted episode. They pursue goals across many episodes and often over long periods of time. Some goals require episodic pursuit by design (e.g., “meditate daily,” “eat vegetarian on Mondays”). Other goals require episodic pursuit because they are maintenance goals that require regular attention (e.g., “keep the lawn looking nice”) or because they are abstract and involve the regulation of behavior across domains and time, and may be pursued dynamically by a wide variety of potential means (e.g., “be healthy”). For example, in pursuing a goal to be physically healthy, a person may regulate what they eat, how often they eat, their physical activity, and how they cope with negative emotions. Some goals are not inherently episodic but are pursued episodically. People are sometimes distracted during pursuit or choose to pause pursuit for strategic reasons. Taking breaks can be useful, especially when pursuit is mentally or physically demanding. Episodic pursuit of goals requires different behaviors and strategies than continuous pursuit. Similarly, persistence in episodic goals operates differently and is affected by different factors than persistence in continuous goals.

The critical differences between persistence in episodic goals and persistence in continuous goals are that, whereas continuous persistence operates in a single episode and entails resisting the urge to give up, episodic persistence operates across episodes and entails more than just resisting the urge to give up during ongoing pursuit. Episodic persistence requires initiation; people have to repeatedly initiate new episodes of pursuit in order to persist. Thus, a model of persistence as resisting has limited relevance to persistence in everyday goals. Theories of goal-directed activity based on this model also have limited relevance to goal pursuit in daily life. Such theories fail to account for the many factors that support or undermine the initiation of goal pursuit episodes. “Never give up” is bad, or at least incomplete, advice.

We propose a general model of persistence that accommodates the complexity of everyday goals by conceiving of persistence as entailing inhibition and initiation. We argue that persistent goal pursuit is a function of three processes: in addition to resisting the urge to give up (inhibition), persistence also entails recognizing opportunities for pursuit and returning to pursuit (initiation). This resisting-recognizing-returning framework is useful for integrating and explaining persistence in everyday goals. We demonstrate this usefulness by reviewing theoretical factors that help (or undermine) persistence, and explaining the mechanisms of four strategies for persistence in daily life that cannot be adequately explained in terms of existing theory: removing distractions, using reminders, using implementation intentions, and habit formation. Throughout the paper, we focus on the influence of goal features and contexts on persistence, rather than on individual differences often linked to persistent pursuit of everyday goals (Baum & Locke, 2004; Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007; Ludwig, Srivastava, Berkman, & Donnellan, 2018; Roberts, Lejuez, Krueger, Richards, & Hill, 2014).

Existing Theories of Persistence

Theories of persistence and goal pursuit rely on an implicit model of persistence that conceives of persistence as a continuous process that arises from resisting the urge to quit. This model is rarely formally outlined but is often implied by definitions and operationalizations (e.g., Ghassemi, Bernecker, Herrmann & Brandstätter, 2017). For example, a common laboratory paradigm for studying persistence is giving participants an impossible puzzle or task and observing how long they spend or how much progress they make (e.g., Alquist et al., 2018; Barber, Grawitch, & Munz, 2012; Lench & Levine, 2008). In the context of an impossible puzzle, persistence entails resisting the urge to stop, and stopping pursuit represents a failure to persist.

Although most research on persistence shares this common model of persistence as resisting, there is not a single theoretical account of the causes of persistence. Two approaches to understanding the causes of persistence dominate. First, the causes of persistence are often understood in terms of motivation (e.g., Heath, Larrick, & Wu, 1999; Holding, Hope, Harvey, Marion Jetten, & Koestner, 2017; Jacobs, Prentice-Dunn, & Rogers, 1984; Ntoumanis & Sedikides, 2018; Woolley & Fishbach, 2016). Some motivation theories argue that persistence is determined by the value people derive from a goal and the likelihood of achieving it (Carver, Blaney, & Scheier, 1979; Klinger, 1975; Eccles & Wigfield, 2002; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). Other motivation theories argue that persistence reflects people’s stated reasons for pursuit (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Motivation theories are not specific to persistence, but instead describe general goal pursuit processes that have direct relevance to persistence. An impressive corpus of empirical research identifies motivation-related causes of persistence, ranging from identity (Oyserman, Gant & Ager, 1995) to financial incentives (e.g., Volpp et al., 2009). Notably, motivation is associated with persistence in both laboratory settings and in meaningful long-term goals (e.g., Sheldon & Elliot, 1998; Yeager et al., 2014).

Second, the causes of persistence are also understood in terms of self-control. Self-control is the prioritization of an abstract or long-term goal over a conflicting, proximal alternative, such as the desire to quit (Hoyle & Davisson, 2016). The model of persistence as resisting pairs naturally with self-control explanations. In fact, the constructs are sometimes defined and operationalized interchangeably (e.g., Alquist et al., 2018). Thus, some accounts of self-control offer a tautological explanation of the causes of persistence. Contemporary theories of self-control bridge motivational and classic self-control explanations in framing the causes of self-control in terms of subjective value (e.g., Inzlicht, Schmeichel & Macrae, 2014). Behavioral and neuroscientific evidence suggest that people integrate information relevant to subjective value (i.e., predicted costs and rewards) when making self-regulatory decisions, including, for example, whether to persist or quit (Berkman, Hutcherson, Livingston, Kahn, & Inzlicht, 2017; McGuire & Kable, 2012, 2016). The subjective value framework can encompass factors that are also accounted for by motivation (e.g., identity; Berkman, Livingston, & Kahn, 2017). Thus, theories of self-control and theories of motivation identify similar causes of persistence.

A third theoretical approach that merits mention is not focused on persistence itself, but on a particular non-persistence phenomenon: goal disengagement. Theories of goal adjustment describe that people adjust to unattainable goals by deliberately disengaging from them and reengaging in different, more attainable goals (Brandstätter & Schüler, 2013; Ghassemi, Bernecker, Herrmann, & Brandstatter, 2017; Klinger, 1975; Wrosch, Scheier, Miller, Schulz & Carver, 2003). Specifically, when people experience challenges during the process of goal pursuit, the accrual of negative feedback spurs a so-called action crisis, during which people deliberately consider the costs and benefits of continuing pursuit versus giving up (Brandstätter et al., 2013; Brandstätter & Schüler, 2013). Navigating disengagement decisions well and giving up on goals when it is beneficial to do so is theorized to be an essential self-regulatory skill (Wrosch et al., 2003). Despite their conceptual relevance to persistence in daily life, theories of goal adjustment do not offer concrete descriptions of the factors that affect whether people persist in goal pursuit, beyond those accounted for by subjective value (e.g., efficacy). Instead, theories offer the insight that disengagement is beneficial when goals are unattainable (e.g., Wrosch, Scheier, Carver, Schulz, 2003), describe factors that affect action crises (e.g., Brandstätter & Schuler, 2013; Ghassemi, Bernecker, Herrmann, & Brandstätter, 2017), or describe factors that affect well-being among people who have chosen to disengage from a goal or been forced by circumstances to disengage from a goal (e.g., Wrosch et al. 2003). Thus, theories of goal disengagement offer accounts of (non-)persistence that are redundant with those provided by motivational and self-control accounts or accounts of tangential phenomena (i.e., action crises, post-disengagement processes).

When persistence is continuous, extant theories can offer reasonably complete explanations of whether and why people persist (or fail to). In the typically continuous goals to run a marathon or complete a planned work out, whether a person persists until the goal is achieved can be reasonably explained by subjective value and its antecedents (Brandstätter & Schuler, 2012; Hennecke, Czikmantori, Brandstätter, 2018; Woolley & Fishbach, 2016). For example, subjective value integrates factors like whether a person is running as part of an official race or as informal exercise, how badly a person wants to finish the run, how painful and unpleasant the process of running is, how fun and rewarding the process of running is, how a person thinks about the goal or their progress towards it, and whether a person thinks they are capable of finishing the run.

However, in episodic goals, many other factors can affect persistence. In the necessarily episodic goal to train to run a 5k race, whether someone sticks with this goal over the course of weeks or months is not due just to motivation and self-control. Persistence in daily life is affected by contextual factors, including those that are not under people’s control. People may fail to persist in the training goal for many reasons. They may develop an injury and decide to deliberately disengage from the goal. They may also have stopped pursuit without deliberately deciding to, or perhaps without even noticing, for example, because their work schedule changed and disrupted their routines or sleep, because they had a bad cold, because their running partner developed an injury, or because the goal to train for a 5k race got buried under more important tasks in the busy reality of daily life. Many of these possible reasons for failing to persist are accounted for by existing theories, but no single model of persistence accounts for all of them.

The Present Work

This work aims to offer a comprehensive model of persistence in everyday life that organizes the factors that affect persistence and the strategies that support it. The present work draws on contemporary research in the self-regulation and goal pursuit literatures that characterizes dynamic aspects of everyday goal pursuit (e.g., Converse et al., 2019; Hofmann et al., 2012; Milyavskaya & Inzlicht, 2017; Veilleux et al., 2018; Woolley & Fishbach, 2016). It identifies factors that operate outside of controlled laboratory settings, such as those related to the passage of time (Etkin, 2019), the social context of pursuit (Fitzsimons et al., 2015), and to resource constraints and affordances (Shah, Hall, & Leander, 2009).

The novel contributions of the present work stem from bringing discrepant observations and ideas together. Many of the ideas presented here are not themselves new but are integrated and organized in ways that offer new insights into everyday goal pursuit. Our model offers a coherent explanation for the influence of the varied array of heterogeneous factors that can affect persistence in daily life and for the effectiveness of goal pursuit strategies grounded in separate theoretical traditions (e.g., forming habits, Carden & Wood, 2018; using implementation intentions, Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). Rather than offering a substitute for prior theoretical explanations or an exhaustive enumeration of all factors relevant to persistence, the present model serves as a framework for relating these insights and findings to persistence in daily life.

The Model: Persistence as Resisting, Recognizing, and Returning

To elucidate the process and causes of persistence in everyday goals, we offer a three-component model. Rather than focusing exclusively on persistence as resisting, the model posits that in daily life, persistence often entails 1) resisting the urge to give up, 2) recognizing opportunities for pursuit and 3) returning to the goal by re-engaging in pursuit.

The first component of persistence is resisting the urge to give up. When people are engaged in pursuit and they want to quit, they need to resist this desire to persist. In episodic persistence, people can give up (and must resist giving up) in two ways. First, they can give up on a particular episode of pursuit but remain committed to the goal. For example, in the goal of training to run a 5k race, a person could decide to quit a training run half-way through without giving up the broader training goal. Second, people can give up on the goal itself. For example, someone could decide they will no longer train to run the 5k race. In episodic persistence, the essential kind of resistance is resisting the urge to give up on the goal. Although resisting the urge to give up on pursuit episodes is important for making progress on the goal, it won’t ensure persistence.

The second and third components of persistence are recognizing and returning. We define recognizing as being consciously aware of a current or future opportunity for pursuit. We define returning as seizing an opportunity for pursuit: the actual act of re-engaging in pursuit. Recognizing and returning bridge the gap between episodes of pursuit; they become relevant when people are not engaged in pursuit but remain committed to a goal. In the goal to train to run a 5k race, for example, whether a person is persistent will depend on whether after completing one training run, they go on another. When people have paused pursuit, no matter the reason, they must return to pursuit to persist. To return to pursuit, people often (but not always) need to first recognize opportunities for pursuit. For example, when goal pursuit is habitual, people can engage in pursuit without consciously recognizing the opportunity first (Wood & Rünger, 2016).

Whether preceded by recognizing or not, returning is relevant for all kinds of episodic goals, regardless of the form pursuit takes. In some goals, returning is easy to identify. To return to the goal to “eat vegetarian on Mondays” a person would avoid eating meat on a Monday. In other goals, returning can take many forms. In the goal to “be a good person” returning might involve holding a door open for someone, noticing and working against a cruel thought, or donating to charity, depending on how a person construes and experiences these actions.

The critical role of recognizing and returning in everyday goal pursuit reveals the nature of failure in everyday persistence: In daily life, failures to persist almost never result from one action taken or not taken, but instead result from many individual failures to recognize and return. Failures to recognize and failures to return have different phenomenology, causes, and solutions.

Failures to recognize can happen without deliberate awareness or intention. For example, a person with a goal to train to run a 5k may have no plans to run during the busy week ahead, but a cancelled event creates an opportunity for the person to run. However, the person doesn’t recognize the opportunity as such and fills that time with other activities. This person did not deliberately give up on their training goal, but they did fail to act. Repeated failures to recognize opportunities for pursuit like this one can quietly contribute to a passive failure to persist (e.g., a frozen goal; Davydenko, Werner & Milyavskaya, 2019).

In contrast to failures to recognize, failures to return are often noticeable. In the previous situation, after the cancelled event, the person may realize that they could use that time to go for a training run. However, they decide they would rather not. In this case, the person has failed to persist (at least temporarily). This failure was not a deliberate decision to disengage from the goal; It was caused by a decision to not act. Repeated failures to return to goals despite recognizing opportunities can also contribute to a passive failure to persist.

In the pursuit of episodic, everyday goals, failures in persistence can result from “giving up” or from a series of unnoticed or missed opportunities, and the resisting-recognizing-returning model can help identify goals that are particularly vulnerable to each kinds of persistence failure. Some goals require relatively more resisting (e.g., those for which pursuit is very unpleasant), some circumstances make recognizing relatively more important (e.g., when on vacation, people may be at risk of missing opportunities to keep up with their goals), and some goals require more care in returning (e.g., keeping up with goals sometimes requires rearranging schedules to make returning possible). Although there are differences in factors that support resisting, recognizing, and returning, some factors support all three. Namely, the effects of motivational factors (and factors that operate through subjective value) operate at each stage.

Factors that Support Resisting

During ongoing goal pursuit, people make more progress when they are able to resist the urge to quit goal pursuit. Several theoretical perspectives are relevant to identifying factors that support resisting. Theories of motivation and inhibitory self-control are relevant to resisting, recognizing, and returning, but are particularly central to understanding the factors that affect persistence via resisting. Here, we consider factors that relate to varieties of stopping goal pursuit that occur with awareness, including cessations of episodes of pursuit and disengagement from goals. Although the distinction of cessation of goal pursuit and disengagement from goals is important, it is not typically made in theoretical or empirical work in ways that allow us to delineate factors specific to one variety of quitting versus the other.

Two central constructs to theoretical perspectives on factors that support resisting are value and attainability (for a review from the perspective of motivation, see Eccles & Wigfield, 2002). Value encompasses many key constructs in the persistence literature such as goal commitment (Kruglanski et al., 2002), passion (Vallerand et al., 2003; Jachimowicz, Wihler, Bailey, & Galinsky, 2018), and intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2000), which are each supportive of resisting the urge to give up. To resist the urge to give up, a goal’s positive value must surpass any negative costs of pursuit or attainment, including opportunity costs and sunk costs (Arkes & Blumer, 1985; Aspinwall & Richter, 1999; Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Fox & Hoffman, 2002). Persistence is associated with highly valued goals (Klinger, 1975; Rothman, Baldwin, Hertel, & Fuglestad, 2004; Berkman et al., 2017), including goals that are strongly associated with valued identities (Oyserman, Gant, & Ager, 1995; Berkman, Livingston, & Kahn, 2017), goals that promise financial incentives, accolades, or social rewards like verbal praise (e.g., Baker & Kirsch, 1991; Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999; Heyman & Ariely, 2004), or goals whose pursuit is or is thought to be hedonically rewarding (Freund & Hennecke, 2015; Woolley & Fishbach, 2016; Higgins, 2006). Simply focusing on the anticipated payoff of pursuit also supports persistence (Mischel, Shoda & Rodriguez, 1989; Woolley & Fishbach, 2016). Conversely, costly pursuit undermines persistence. However, like positive value, cost is subjective. Sometimes pursuit that seems costly -- for example, because it is very difficult -- is valued because of the aversive effort it requires (Inzlicht, Shenhav, & Olivola, 2018; Koole, Jostman, & Baumann, 2012).

Attainability encompasses actual and perceived efficacy with respect to pursuit and the goal itself. When attainability is high, meaning that the pursuer thinks he or she is likely to achieve the goal, people are more likely to resist the urge to give up (Bandura, 1982; Battle, 1965; Jacobs, Prentice-Dunn & Rogers, 1984; Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). When attainability is low, people are more likely to give up on goals (Brehm & Self, 1989; Carver, Blaney, & Scheier, 1979; Klinger, 1975; McGuire & Kable, 2016; Shah & Higgins, 1997; Skinner, 1995; Weiner, 1985). Thus, resisting the temptation to abandon pursuit can be attributed, in part, to judgments of attainability, including subjective assessments of attainability (e.g., as affected by how people frame a goal or the kind of feedback they receive).

In sum, people give up on goals or on episodes of pursuit for many reasons and in response to a great variety of factors, which are well-explained in terms of motivation and motivation-related theoretical models (e.g., models of self-control and goal disengagement). Extant motivational models of persistence use different terminology, but they all posit that value and attainability guide whether people persist. Motivation is relevant to understanding persistence in all everyday goals, including episodic goals. Just as attainability and value guide resisting, they should also guide recognizing and returning. However, persistence in episodic goals almost always requires more than motivation. In the next sections, we review work on non-motivational factors that can affect persistence through resisting and returning. These factors are non-motivational in the sense that their mechanisms are typically understood as having cognitive or extrapersonal mechanisms, but they can and often do have motivational consequences.

Factors that Create a Need to Return

Many pursuits in daily life are episodic and require pursuers to return to them, including goals that could be accomplished in one episode. Sometimes people take days to finish potentially continuous tasks like composing an email, for example. In this section, we discuss the non-motivational factors that create a need to return. When do people compose emails in a single uninterrupted session and when do they compose emails across separate sessions, requiring them to return to the task? Features of pursuit and the pursuit context can create a need to return in both continuous goals and goals where persistence is already episodic by disrupting ongoing goal pursuit.

Disruptions to goal pursuit can come from the pursuit environment and pursuit means, as well as from people’s own thoughts or simply from the natural course of pursuit. Physical environments that have potential perceptual distractions, like noises or flickering lights, can undermine goal pursuit by interrupting it (Altmann, Trafton, & Hambrick, 2014; Marsh, Hicks, & Bink, 1998; Patalano & Seifert, 1997). Goals that rely on multifinal means—means of pursuit that serve multiple goals—are more vulnerable to interruption. For example, most people have had the experience of reaching for their smartphone for one purpose, only to be distracted by one of the many other activities smartphones offer. Even in environments without obvious distractors, people’s minds often wander in ways that can derail an episode of pursuit (McVay & Kane, 2009; McVay, Kane, & Kwapil, 2009). People think about something other than what they are doing as often as 47% of the time (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010). Although little research has examined the effects of mind wandering on goal pursuit in everyday contexts (such as in the workplace), theory suggests that how goal pursuit is going can affect how vulnerable goals are to interruption. For example, when motivation for a focal task is high, people’s minds may wander less (Seli, Cheyne, Xu, Purdon & Smilek, 2015), and they may be less distracted by exogenous interruptions (e.g., as in flow states; Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009).

Disruptions to goal pursuit can also arise even when people are working with focus in distraction-free environments. People often underestimate the amount of time tasks require (Buehler, Griffin, & Ross, 1994), particularly when tasks are complex. When tasks take longer than planned, sometimes pursuit must be paused and resumed later. Even seemingly simple goals can involve multiple steps. Such sub-goals create opportunities for logistical barriers to stop pursuit, particularly if they require other people or resources that aren’t available. Other times, people create the need to return when they take breaks during pursuit. Because people have limited time and energy but many goals, they often switch from one task to another when their energy or motivation wanes (Inzlicht, Schmeichel & Macrae, 2014) or when progress on the focal goal allows them to shift their attention to other priorities (Fitzsimons, Friesen, Orehek, & Kruglanski, 2009). When people have made progress towards a goal, they often “coast” and pause pursuit (Thürmer, Scheier & Carver, 2019), creating a need to return later. In this way, goal progress can ironically make goals vulnerable to failure.

In everyday contexts, multiple factors can affect persistence and non-persistence by creating a need to return to goal pursuit in goal pursuits that could otherwise be continuous. These factors can be related to features of goals and pursuits, or they may have more to do with the goal pursuit context. Regardless of the origin, any discontinuation of pursuit can derail pursuit of a goal permanently. On the other hand, an interruption of pursuit – like an incoming phone call–will not necessarily prevent persistence. The key factor that determines whether a discontinuation results in non-persistence is whether the pursuer later returns to the goal. In the next sections, we outline factors that support recognizing and returning.

Factors that Support Recognizing

For goals that require returning, recognizing is often important for persistence. Recognizing is supported by many dynamic cognitive processes (e.g., attentional control and focus, error detection, working memory), and encompasses not just recalling that one holds a goal, but also recognizing the relevance of a held goal to a present or future opportunity.Whether people recognize opportunities for pursuit depends on a complex interplay between cognitive factors, individual differences, and environmental factors that together affect when and how reliably the goal comes to mind. In addition, recognizing is contingent on the presence of opportunities, which come and go; for most goals, the resources, settings, or partners on which pursuit relies are not always available (Shah, Hall, & Leander, 2009).

In daily life, recognizing opportunities to engage in goal pursuit is often facilitated by cognitive goal activation (Altman & Trafton, 2002), an automatic process triggered when people encounter or think about cues associated with a goal (Kruglanski et al., 2002; Einstein & McDaniel, 2005). Goal cues can be any object, place, or person that is naturally or intentionally associated with a goal. For example, when a person sees a friend they sometimes run with, their goal to train to run a 5k may become cognitively activated, increasing the likelihood that they will recognize opportunities relevant to that goal. Often, goals are activated by their means of pursuit. For example, running gear, common running trails, music listened to while running, or the gym used for cross training may each bring the goal to train to run a 5k to mind (Shah, 2005). Cues vary in how reliably they activate goals, in part due to features of cues themselves. Perceptually distinctive cues are generally more effective at bringing goals to mind than mundane ones because people notice them more (McDaniel & Einstein, 2000; Rogers & Milkman, 2016). All else being equal, neon sneakers should support recognition of a running goal more reliably than beige sneakers. Goal-consistent cues can spur recognizing, such as when sneakers bring to mind the goal to run, but so too can goal-inconsistent means (Myrseth & Fishbach, 2009). For example, an invitation to a Saturday morning brunch might bring to mind the goal to run for someone who typically runs on Saturday mornings.

Some goals are more easily or chronically cognitively activated than others in ways that affect recognizing (Förster, Liberman, & Friedman, 2007). Unfinished goals, for example, are given cognitive priority relative to completed goals (Marsh, Hicks, & Bink, 1998; Zeigarnik, 1927). Goals that fulfill basic needs, goals associated with identity or aspirational identity, and important terminal goals (i.e., goals that are not instrumental to any others) are thought to be more chronically activated and less likely to be forgotten or overlooked (Aarts, Dijksterhuis, & Vries, 2001; Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2017). Goals that are strongly associated with attainment means are more readily activated by those means (Shah, 2005), including goals with recent and frequent prior activation (Higgins & King, 1981) and goals with few means and uniquely associated means (Shah & Kruglanski, 2000). For example, when a person with a running goal consistently uses the same sneakers for training runs and for nothing else, the sneakers will support recognition of the goal more reliably than sneakers used for many different purposes, or than one of several pairs of sneakers used for training runs.

Although in general, a strong relationship between a goal and associated cues facilitates persistence via recognizing, there are exceptions. Strong associations between goals and cues can be a liability when the associated cues become unavailable. Even brief, temporary changes to environments, such as vacations, can threaten persistence by removing the cues on which goal activation relies and making recognizing opportunities for pursuit less likely. Similarly, for strongly habitual goals ordinarily activated by means (e.g., flossing), seemingly small changes to means (e.g., storing the floss elsewhere) may be a barrier to recognizing. In the absence of associated means, pursuits whose recognition relies on means activation may be neglected, even if substitutable means are available. In other instances, encountering goal-related cues may not result in goal activation and recognition. For example, goals can be inhibited when similar goals are activated or when pursuit of other goals is underway due to goal shielding (for a review see Shah, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2002).

In complex everyday goals, supporting recognizing is not be simply a matter of cognitively activating a goal through exposure to goal-related cues. People often need to actively identify or create opportunities for pursuit. Most everyday goal pursuits are complex (e.g., lose weight, get in shape), and can be pursued through many different means and subgoals, some of which may be unknown to the pursuer. Skill in self-regulation may entail skill in recognizing by gathering information about pursuit opportunities, actively monitoring for them (Kotabe & Hofmann, 2015; Myrseth & Fishbach, 2009), and, when opportunities are not present, creating them or adjusting pursuit within the restraints of the siutation (Brandtstätter & Renner, 1990; Brandtstätter & Rothermund, 2002).

Factors that Support Returning

For goals that require returning, recognizing opportunities for pursuit is not enough. To persist, people must initiate a new episode of pursuit. Features of goals, pursuits, and contexts can affect whether people return. They do this in two ways: they can support (or undermine) returning by affecting whether people are able to engage in pursuit and whether people choose to engage in pursuit.

People are not always able to engage in goal pursuit, even when they recognize opportunities to. Most goals rely on resources, settings, or partners whose absence may be a barrier to initiating pursuit (Shah, Hall, & Leander, 2009). Some goals, like training to run a 5k race, require time but can be pursued almost anywhere and with little equipment. Other goals may have more requirements, like specialized tools or a pursuit partner. All else equal, goals for which means are always available are easier to return to and persist in than goals for which means are only sometimes available. The more limitations there are on pursuit, the less likely someone is to return. These limitations can arise from qualities of a goal or from the broader context of pursuit, like people’s resource constraints or the other goals that a person holds. Sometimes, people are not able to engage in one pursuit because they are attending to another, more important pursuit.

Even when people can engage in pursuit, they sometimes choose not to. The same motivational factors that affect whether people resist the urge to give up also affect whether people return to pursuit, with similar consequences for persistence. Sometimes, the choice to initiate pursuit is particularly challenging because people must overcome a desire to keep doing what they are doing (Hoyle & Davisson, 2016), such as when a person is comfortably watching television and realizes that they could be going for a run. In sum, whether people return to episodic goals is influenced by contextual and extrapersonal factors (i.e., whether people can engage in pursuit) as well as motivational factors (i.e., whether people will choose to).

Strategies for Episodic Persistence

The resisting-recognizing-returning model is useful for organizing the factors that help (and hurt) persistence and it is also useful for concretely explaining how strategies that promote or support persistent goal pursuit work. There are many strategies that contribute to persistence in everyday life. Some strategies have mechanisms that are well understood in terms of self-control, motivation, and subjective value. For example, focusing on the rewards associated with goal pursuit can promote persistence in both continuous and episodic pursuits (Woolley & Fishbach, 2016, 2017). This strategy works by making goals more valuable and helping people want to engage in pursuit. However, many strategies cannot be explained in terms of subjective value. Here, we explain the influence of four general self-regulatory strategies that contribute to episodic persistence. These strategies are not central to existing theories of persistence, but their relevance for persistence is evident in the recognizing and returning components we have identified.

Removing Distractions Mitigates the Need to Resist and Return

Endogenous and exogenous distractions during episodes of pursuit can pause pursuit and create the need for returning. To the extent that automatic responses to extraneous external stimuli interrupt pursuit (Altmann, Trafton, & Hambrick, 2014; Marsh, Hicks, & Bank, 1998; Patalano & Seifert, 1997), removing potential sources of interruption can benefit engagement in ongoing pursuit. Smartphones represent a major source of distraction that did not exist in an earlier era and that can potentially distract goal pursuit (e.g., in school, Tassel, Kortun, Shepard, Rahmati, Zhong, 2014). Removing distractions, for example, by silencing smartphone notifications, can improve engagement in a goal. People who put their smartphones out of view during a family meal reported feeling less distracted and enjoying the meal more, benefiting from the removal of a distraction from the goal of engaging with family members around the dinner table (Dwyer, Kushal, & Dunn, 2018).

Removing distractions by modifying or selecting the pursuit environment (e.g., silencing notifications or restricting access to websites) benefits persistence by minimizing interruptions and reducing the need to return to pursuit. However, relatively little is known about the distractions that most often derail goal pursuit or how people can most effectively avoid unwanted distractions caused by their own thoughts or by competing goals (e.g., task switching has primarily been studied in controlled laboratory settings and in the context of simple tasks; Kiesel et al., 2010; Inzlicht, Schmeichel & Macrae, 2014).

Reminders Aid Recognizing

Reminders are prospective memory devices that people can use to bring a goal or a plan to pursue a goal to mind (McDaniel & Einstein, 2000). Reminders can be messages or cues that are naturally or intentionally associated with goals. Reminders can be surprisingly effective for helping people stick with goals and plans in daily life: reminder bracelets increased the frequency of condom use (Dal Can, MacDonald, Fong, Zanna, & Elton-Marshall, 2006); reminder letters, postcards, and phone calls increased follow-through on immunization in a range of medical settings (Silage et al., 2000); and reminder text messages improved medication adherence across a variety of contexts and populations (Vervloet et al., 2012).

Reminders help persistence by ensuring that people recognize opportunities to return to pursuit. Cue-based reminders are more effective if they rely on strong cues (e.g., perceptually distinct cues, Rogers & Milkman, 2016), as stronger cues lead to more reliable recognition. Whether reminders are messages or cues, the most effective reminders bring goals to mind in the moments they can be pursued (Guynn, McDaniel, & Einstein, 1998). Reminders will help any goal that is vulnerable to being forgotten but should be most effective for goals that people will choose to return to (once they recognize the opportunity). Reminders should therefore work best for goals that people can pursue and are motivated to pursue.

Implementation Intentions Aid Recognizing and Returning

Implementation intentions are one of the most effective strategies for promoting persistence (Adriaanse, Vinkers, De Ridder, Hox, & De Wit, 2011; Gollwitzer, 1999; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Sheeran, 2002). They are a special form of reminder: a rehearsed if-then plan that links a specific time or place cue to a specific goal-related action. In its classic form, an implementation intention involves crafting and practicing a verbal statement in the following form: “When situation x arises, I will perform response y!” (Gollwitzer, 1999).

Implementation intentions work by ensuring that people recognize opportunities for pursuit in an ideal moment for pursuit, thus making returning more likely. Implementation intentions may also support returning in another way: Forming implementation intentions requires people to proactively think about and plan their goal pursuit. If no ideal future pursuit opportunity exists, forming an implementation intention may encourage people to create that situation. Implementation intentions, like other reminders, should be most effective for goal pursuits for which the primary cause of failure is failing to recognize opportunities for pursuit. Implementation intentions should not be particularly effective for goals that are of low subjective value, and that people are not motivated to pursue (Sheeran, Webb, & Gollwitzer, 2005).

Forming Habits Makes Returning Automatic

Habits form when people pursue goals frequently in stable contexts. Frequent and stable pursuit creates a strong association between the context and pursuit, causing pursuit to become more effortless and automatic (Gardner, 2015; Lally & Gardner, 2013; Wood, Quinn, & Kashy, 2002; Wood & Rünger, 2016). Habits both facilitate and reflect persistence (Galla & Duckworth, 2015). They form spontaneously upon repetition, so for frequent pursuits, being persistent causes habits to form. As a result, strategies for persistence like reminders and implementation intentions also support habit formation (de Mel, McIntosh, & Woodruff, 2013; Orbell & Verplanken, 2010). Although habits form naturally, people can also intentionally form habits (Judah, Gardner & Aunger, 2013). For example, people can cultivate habits by performing behaviors in the same context, at the same time of day, and without multitasking (Lally, Chipperfield, & Wardle, 2008).

Habits help persistence by ensuring returning when performance contexts remain stable. They do so by helping people avoid common pitfalls of episodic goal pursuit. When people have formed habits, they can return without consciously recognizing opportunities for pursuit. When people have formed habits, they can also return without deliberately deciding to: Engaging in habitual behavior doesn’t require in-the-moment self-control or motivation (Carden & Wood, 2018). If people have a habit relevant for pursuit of a goal, they can fail to recognize and fail to choose to return, but still be persistent in pursuit of the goal. Although habits are a powerful tool for persistence, forming habits is not possible for all goals. Goals that people pursue rarely or across diverse settings, for example, are not conducive to habit formation. However, for goals that people can pursue daily or near daily, habit formation is possible.

Summary and Conclusion

Classic models of persistence make assumptions that do not hold in everyday life. These models conceive of individual goal pursuits as if they exist in isolation from other pursuits. These models also conceive of goal pursuit as a continuous process, like a constantly adjusting thermostat (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1990). However, in everyday life people juggle many goals at once. Everyday goal pursuit is not continuous; it frequently unfolds across many episodes, making it messy and prone to failure.

Prior empirical and theoretical work indicate that persistence in everyday life is not just a matter of motivation or self-control, and that it is more complex than simply resisting the urge to give up. For example, contradicting extant models of persistence, people sometimes fail in goal pursuit because they fail to recognize opportunities for pursuit (Myrseth & Fishbach, 2009) or because they fail to return to pursuit despite recognizing opportunities (Hoyle & Davisson, 2016). For this reason, reminders can benefit persistence (Vervloet et al., 2012) as can strategies that ease or automatize returning to pursuit, like implementation intentions (Gollwitzer, 1999) and habit formation (Wood & Rünger, 2016). In addition, contradicting extant models of goal disengagement (e.g., Wrosch et al., 2003), giving up on goals is not always a deliberate process (Davydenko et al., 2019; Moshontz, 2020).

We have outlined a model that integrates conventional theoretical perspectives with these insights about the complexities of persistence in everyday life. The general model of persistence in episodic goals that we present accommodates the kinds of goals that people spontaneously set and pursue in daily life, like being healthy, losing weight, and saving money (Veilleaux et al., 2018). We propose that “never giving up” benefits persistence during simple goal pursuits, ongoing episodes of pursuit, and when people are deliberately considering disengaging from goals, but that identifying and seizing opportunities to (re)engage in pursuit following inevitable lapses and breaks is essential to persistence in most goals. The factors that help and hurt persistence can be organized within the processes of resisting, recognizing, and returning. Moreover, the resisting-recognizing-returning model can be used to explain the effectiveness of strategies that do not operate through motivation. By focusing on the general processes that give rise to persistence rather than on the effects of specific factors or strategies, this model will continue to be useful as collective understanding of goal pursuit in the noisy reality of everyday persistence advances.

The resting-recognizing-returning model is useful for organizing past research and guiding future research, but it leaves some definitional issues unresolved. In the context of everyday goals, episodes of pursuit can be difficult to define conceptually and measure concretely. To better understand how often goal pursuit in daily life is episodic and to advance our understanding of episodic pursuit, future research should work to characterize lapses in pursuit. Validly measuring episodes of pursuit will require thoughtful and context-specific operationalization. For example, for a goal to run a 5k race, episodes of pursuit may be best operationalized as a training run captured by a fitness tracker, whereas for a goal to reduce social anxiety, episodes of pursuit may be best operationalized using a direct self-report measure. In addition, the present model relies heavily on the goal construct and thus inherits its definitional problems. The construct of a goal is unstable across contexts and perspectives such that a focal goal can always be conceptualized as a means to a higher-order goal. This instability is problematic because it makes precisely defining persistence across contexts and perspectives challenging. For example, if someone abandons a weight loss goal and begins again months later, have they demonstrated persistence by re-engaging in the old goal, or have they set a new goal? If someone abandons one diet and starts another, have they demonstrated persistence with respect to their weight-loss goal or demonstrated non-persistence with respect to the goal to adhere to a specific diet? These definitional questions about persistence are perhaps best answered within specific goal pursuit contexts. Just as there is likely not a universally valid definition of a goal pursuit episode, there is likely not a universally valid definition of persistence or goal disengagement. Although our model does not answer all questions about everyday goal pursuit, it offers a promising framework for connecting and organizing constructs and factors likely to bring answers to these questions while suggesting new questions for future research.