Why Brain Training Habits Fail, and What Keeps Them Going

In 2021, Katherine Milkman of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues published a megastudy in Nature involving 61,293 members of an American fitness chain. Thirty scientists from 15 universities designed 54 different four-week programs to get people to the gym more often, and the programs were tested side by side.

Of the 54 programs, 45% clearly increased weekly gym visits, by 9% to 27%. The most effective one gave a very small reward to people who came back after missing a planned workout. Yet only 8% of the programs still had a clear, measurable effect after the four weeks were over.

That is how hard it is to keep something going. Brain training is no different. In this post I write about why brain training habits fail and what helps them last, drawing on research and on what I said in the BrainDojo developer interview.

Why it doesn’t last

Many people have started a brain training app a few times and stopped each time. One view is that the reason usually lies less in weak willpower and more in how we start and the systems we use.

Making “every day” the goal

We tend to think a habit means doing something every day. But with a daily goal, missing one day means the streak is broken. Motivation drops, and that is the end of it. This is a common pattern.

When I was asked in the developer interview why BrainDojo does not push you to do it every day, I said:

When doing it every day is the standard for a habit, I felt it was pretty tough. Even keeping at it in moderation, you can feel the effects of brain training.

Each session feels heavy

A 30-minute session will not happen on a busy day. If starting involves choosing what to do or changing settings, that alone is enough to put it off. To keep going, it matters how light each session can be.

No sense of progress

If you train every day and cannot tell whether you are changing, the reason to continue fades. In the interview I was asked what decides whether people keep doing something, and answered:

Ease and a sense of growth. I think people keep doing something when they feel a return that beats their expectations for the cost they put in.

Nothing brings you back after a break

Once you miss a day, it is easier to miss the next one too. This may be why, in the study above, a reward for coming back after a missed workout worked best. Milkman told Penn Today that the amount of money was trivial, but it drew attention to the idea of avoiding multiple missed visits.

Building a system that lasts

Here are some ways to build that.

Set a small minimum. Decide on an amount you can do even on your most tired day, such as “3 minutes” or “just one.” Doing more on good days is fine, but set the goal at the smallest amount.

Think in weeks. A weekly goal like “3 days a week” instead of every day means a missed day can be made up within the week. I wrote about how much and how often in How Many Minutes a Day Should You Do Brain Training?

Decide on a time and a cue. Tie it to something you already do every day, such as “after my morning coffee,” and it becomes easier to remember. Choosing a time of day is covered in Brain Training in the Morning or at Night: Which Is Better?

Make progress visible. Not the score on the task you practiced, but a measure taken with the same yardstick at some interval. That tells you where you stand.

How to restart after a break

The days after a break matter.

In a 2014 study, Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis of the University of Pennsylvania showed that people are more likely to start working toward their goals after temporal landmarks: the start of a week, a month or a year, or after a birthday. This is known as the fresh start effect.

So after a break, one approach is to make the next landmark your restart day: a Monday, the first of the month. But waiting too long for a landmark can make the break longer. Another option is to do just your minimum on the day after the break. Do one, and you are back.

You do not need to do two days’ worth to make up for it. That turns brain training into something heavy.

The systems in BrainDojo

BrainDojo is an iPhone and iPad app for keeping up daily brain training with short mini-games. I introduced the calendar where you stamp the days you trained in Getting Started with BrainDojo, so here I cover the other features meant to help you continue.

This week’s goal. Choose how many days a week to train: 2, 3, 5 or every day. The app says, “It doesn’t have to be every day. Missed a day? You can make it up within the week.” You can change the goal from the home screen at any time.

Set the daily amount up front. In BrainDojo setup, the answer to “How much time can you spend a day?” (3 minutes, 5 minutes, or 10 minutes or more) sets the number of trainings per day to 2, 3 or 5. It is the idea of a small minimum, built into a setting. You can redo the setup from Settings.

No need to choose what to do. Today’s Training on the home screen picks the day’s set automatically and changes at midnight. Open it and work from the top. You can long-press a training you like to add it to Favorites and start it quickly.

Cues to remember. Reminder Settings let you set a time for each day of the week, and the Don’t-forget Reminder can nudge you again on days you have not trained yet. The home screen widget also shows the day’s training.

Measuring progress. The Brain Dojo Check, once a day, uses three tests to measure processing speed, inhibition and short-term memory, and shows a rank from 10th Kyu to 10th Dan with a radar chart. The tests are not the same every time, so it is better to watch how your rank moves than the score on any one day.

A word from your master. The home screen shows a short word from a master, based on Zen sayings, that fits your streak and the time of day. In the interview I said, “Keeping up brain training is hard, so I thought it would be good to have someone like a Zen master.”

Every training except the newest ones is free to play, and so are Today’s Training, the Brain Dojo Check once a day, and the stamp calendar. The free version shows ads. BrainDojo Plus removes them and opens the new trainings anytime. When a new training appears in Today’s Training, you can play it free that day.

BrainDojo Free vs Plus compares the two plans.