FAQs

The Berkeley Habit Lab is a behavioral change program created by a psychologist and corporate change-maker duo. Having experienced struggles with habit compliance in our own lives, we devised a program that uses all the tools of modern behavioral science to create effective behavioral change toward meaningful and relevant goals. Using the BHL process, 100% of our participants have achieved successful behavioral change.

Our program includes a combination of personal goal coaching and daily or weekly reward and punishments.

As a client, you can expect the following:

• A 1-hour Kickoff Session to develop your habit goals and create strategies for success. We go extremely deep here, from the emotional/psychological to the raw logistics needed for successful behavioral change. By the end of this session, you will have a clearly defined habit plan and success strategies.

• Ongoing Coaching Throughout the program, you will have 5x 30-minute coaching sessions to check-in on your progress, modify your habits as needed, and develop additional strategies as real-world challenges come up.

• Daily / Weekly Progress Tracking You will check in via text messages on a daily or weekly basis, depending on your habit, to confirm your progress. Numerous participants have reported that this social accountability to the (real human) coaches as well as their cheerleading has been the biggest factor in their continued success.

• Financial Punishments We collaboratively establish a financial punishment that is automatically charged should you miss your habit. Behavioral Economics research shows that the psychological pain of losing is twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. We use this as one of the core components to drive successful behavioral change and habit compliance.

• Success Tracking and Reporting Your coach will track your progress and deliver compliance statistics. We also do self-efficacy surveys along the way to measure how your habit development has contributed to your overall well-being.

The Berkeley Habit Lab program is for people who have longed to accomplish a personal goal, tried every strategy in the book, and have failed to date.

Many of our clients have tried for years to create and maintain habits (such as exercise, reading, meditation, self-care, etc.) but have had a hard time maintaining their habit for more than a few days or haven’t been able to get themselves to even start.

The majority of our participants focus on health-related habits including exercise, diet, and sleep. That said, we support any type of behavioral change as long as it can be clearly defined as a SMART goal and tracked on a daily or weekly basis. We love unique ideas and are energized by creative challenges!

• 6 coaching sessions

• A habit plan and success strategy tailor-made for you

• Regular text check-ins with your coach for habit compliance

• Financial punishments for habit misses

• Life-changing behavioral change

The 10 Week Program costs $150/week for 10 weeks. We have a satisfaction guarantee, which makes starting the program stress-free.

While many of our clients find the 10 Week Program to instill permanent changes in their behavior, others enjoy the regular communication and accountability they receive via ongoing support from their coach. For these individuals, we offer the Ongoing Habit Support Program.

The Ongoing Habit Support Program includes continued text check-ins and habit tracking with your coach. Coaching sessions can be added a la carte as needed.

Habit coaching focuses on the higher-level concept of behavioral change and can be achieved through structural techniques that have little to do with the specifics of the underlying habit. So while we are not experts in health, sleep, wellness, etc., our coaching team brings years of counseling, psychology, and behavioral science to rapidly create meaningful change. We work with you and rely on your knowledge of the habit or goal you are pursuing, but will develop a structural plan so that you have strategies to overcome the barriers - both internal and external - that have held you back in the past.

Information collected through participation in our program is held strictly confidential shared during sessions or in correspondence with your coach cannot be disclosed without written permission.

• Behavioral Economics research shows that the psychological pain of losing is twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. We use this as one of the core components to drive successful behavioral change and habit compliance.

• All Berkeley Habit Lab participants have a financial punishment for each time they miss their habit. You get to decide the $ amount. We recommend choosing an amount that is painful enough that you will choose to do your habit rather than need to pay the fee. This number is expected to vary from person to person.

• We find that most participants begin their habit journey with a lot of enthusiasm and energy, but after a few weeks continued compliance becomes more difficult. For this reason, the financial punishments increase with each failure. While we work with each participant to determine a customized program, typically you would see the punishment doubling with each miss.

• Financial punishments are charged to your credit card on file at the time that a habit is missed according to pre-specified agreements we make around your habit. Proceeds go to the Berkeley Habit Lab. While we considered using an anti-charity approach, we don’t want to live in a world that supports causes we or our participants don’t believe in and have decided not to use this approach.

• Your coach’s compensation is in no way tied to the financial punishment and comes only from the program fee. We do not want you to ever have to pay the punishment. This is simply here because it is the most effective tool in the behavioral change toolbox.

If at the end of the program you are not satisfied with your results and have achieved less than 90% habit compliance, we will refund your program fee. The financial punishment fees are non-refundable as doing so would severely limit their efficacy.

Research shows that it takes 2+ months for new habits to become automatic. The 10 Week Program will kickstart you new habit and create structures that set you up for long-term success.

After the 10 Week Program, clients may choose to continue receiving support via our Ongoing Habit Support Program.

Many existing behavior-change programs are designed using a self-service model. As a participant, you are expected to identify the goal, predict the blockers, track your own progress, and hold yourself accountable (often through an app or other tech-enabled system). The key difference between our program and others out there is that our program is relational. Through a 1:1 relationship with your coach, you will be assisted in ensuring your habits really reflect your long-term goals. You will have a thought partner in identifying potential blockers and solutions. You will have real-time encouragement and accountability from a real human. In short - you won’t have to do it alone.

Also, our program works.