Reaching Your Goals – Try “Cheat Days”
Recent Wharton research finds that people who utilize “emergency reserves” – such as a cheat day on a diet – are more likely to attain their goals.
Knowledge@Wharton: What are the key takeaways? Does having an emergency reserve simply make people feel better psychologically, or is something else going on?
Sharif: I think there are two things going on for why people with emergency reserves are performing better. The first one is that people try to resist using their emergency reserves. They try to hold on to them. They’re waiting for a better or more emergency situation to use them later on, and they kind of feel bad using them if it’s not an emergency situation.