{"id":12372,"date":"2026-10-25T10:35:56","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T10:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=12372"},"modified":"2026-10-25T10:35:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T10:35:58","slug":"discipline-is-good-but-when-achieving-big-goals-taking-skip-days-is-just-as-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=12372","title":{"rendered":"Discipline is good. But when achieving big goals, taking \u2018skip days\u2019 is just as important."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s paradoxical. Planning time off makes big achievements easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of us share a strange wiring: once we set a goal, the first setback makes it suddenly feel unachievable, and we are more likely to quit. It\u2019s the first moment when you decide you can\u2019t make it to the gym. It\u2019s that first cigarette you bum after quitting. It\u2019s the night you stay in instead of taking the dog out to get your steps in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe problem is that these small failures really derail people,\u201d Marissa Sharif, assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School, said on the Ripple Effect podcast. Sharif calls the setback the \u201cWhat the hell?\u201d effect. \u201cBasically, when we miss going to the gym one day or miss that weekly budget goal, we kind of completely abandon the goal. And the idea is, you know, \u2018I failed today. There\u2019s no way I\u2019m going to be able to reach the goal this week. What the hell? Why would I continue?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to use \u2018skip days\u2019 to achieve your goals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The good news is that in her research, Sharif found that if we plan for unexpected slip-ups while pursuing our goals, we\u2019re much more likely to achieve them. To boil it down, if we slip up and miss a day at the gym, we believe we can\u2019t achieve the goal. But if we bake some skip days into the plan, we\u2019re more likely to pick up where we left off after we fall short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"man<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In her research, Sharif tested three goal options for someone whose goal is to get 10,000 steps a day:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.) Do 10,000 steps 7 days a week<\/p>\n\n\n\n

B.) Do 10,000 steps 5 days a week<\/p>\n\n\n\n

C.) Do 10,000 steps 5 days a week, with two skip days<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe emergency skip version does better than both seven and five,\u201d Sharif continued. \u201cAnd that\u2019s because people don\u2019t want to use their emergency skips. But it also helps them if they do have to use them. So it\u2019s kind of combining the benefits of both worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"treadmill,<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Skip days are the key to success<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A big part of it is that when you bake skip days into the plan, you feel a lot better when you miss a day, so you are less likely to give up. After all, you\u2019re still sticking to the plan. \u201cIt kind of takes away these negative feelings about goal failure and allows people to keep going week to week to reach these bigger goals,\u201d Sharif said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2021 study by Sharif and Suzanne Shu of 315 graduate students found that, over the course of a five-week study on achieving step goals, those who had \u201creserve conditions\u201d or, as we call them in this piece, skip days, reached their step goals on 40% more days per week than those who did not.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s comforting to know that none of us are perfect, and the best way to achieve a goal isn\u2019t just white-knuckled discipline. It\u2019s understanding that we are all human, things come up that are out of our control, and sometimes we\u2019re just not feeling up to pushing ourselves. If you\u2019re going to create a system to achieve big things, why not do so with a bit of grace?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s paradoxical. Planning time off makes big achievements easier. Most of us share a strange wiring: once we set a goal, the first setback makes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/864101161_1119728820467528_5506929027533968847_n.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12374,"href":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12372\/revisions\/12374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}