Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania wanted to answer a question once and for all: how do you get people to stick to something instead of quitting? So they did what anyone would do. They found 61,000 gym members and tried more than 50 different methods of getting them back on the treadmill.
They tested motivational texts, peer pressure systems, various reward structures, planning tools, reminders — everything behavioral scientists had theorized might work. (Nature) The results surprised even the experts. The most effective intervention wasn't fancy or complex. It was a tiny financial reward for coming back after missing a workout. (Businessinsider)
The bonus? Nine cents. (Businessinsider)
That nine cent bonus, added to a baseline reward of 22 cents per gym visit, increased attendance by roughly 16% during the four week study period. The intervention wasn't just about the money (which was deliberately trivial). It was about signaling something important: the day after you miss matters more than any other day. (Businessinsider)
Study author Katherine Milkman, a professor at Wharton, explained that the intervention's power came from preventing one slip up from derailing the whole routine. The incentive wasn't about the cash itself; it was about interrupting the psychological spiral that begins when someone breaks their commitment. (Businessinsider)
But this isn't just an interesting fact about gyms. This is the same psychology that makes you finish the sleeve after eating one Oreo. The same reason a missed meditation session turns into a week without meditating. The same pattern that causes people to abandon your app after skipping one day in their first week.
One miss creates permission for the second miss. The second miss makes the third inevitable. And by the fourth day, the identity has shifted from "person who does this thing" to "person who tried and couldn't stick with it."
If you're building anything that requires repeated behavior (an app, a business, a creative practice, a fitness routine), understanding this pattern is worth considerably more than nine cents. Because once you see it, you can design for it.
The First Week Window
People who miss a day in their first week with a new habit are highly likely to miss two days. And people who miss multiple days in that crucial early period will probably quit entirely.
Think about what happens when you miss a day. You feel a little guilty. Maybe embarrassed. The next day, returning feels harder because now you have to confront that missed day. It's easier to skip again. By day three, you've already mentally moved on. The habit never formed.
This is why the first week is so critical. You haven't built enough momentum yet to survive a stumble. The identity is fragile. The commitment is new. And the obstacles that caused the first miss haven't gone away.
The research tells us something crucial: the first week isn't about perfection. It's about recovery.
What Makes Comeback Different From Consistency
The Nature study tested 54 different four week programs, everything from text reminders to peer pressure systems to various reward structures. About 45% of the interventions successfully increased gym visits by 9% to 27% during the study period. (NaturePubMed)
But here's what makes the recovery incentive special: it acknowledged human nature. People miss days. Plans fall apart. Life intervenes. The question isn't whether you'll stumble. The question is what happens next.
Most interventions in the study focused on maintaining consistency. The winning strategy focused on recovery. When participants knew they'd get a small bonus for returning after a missed workout, it reframed the experience. Missing wasn't failure; it was an opportunity to earn something extra by coming back. (Nature)
This reframing is everything. Because the psychology of "I failed" versus "I earned a comeback bonus" creates completely different trajectories. One ends the story. The other continues it.
Building Your Own Recovery System
So how do you apply this to your life, or to products you're building?
First, identify what "missing a day" means in your context. For exercise, it's obvious. For writing, maybe it's skipping your morning pages. For learning a language, it's not opening the app. For a productivity tool, it's not completing your daily review. Whatever the core behavior is, you need to know when the pattern breaks.
Second, create a recovery pathway that's actually different from normal engagement. Don't just try harder with the same routine. The gym study used a financial incentive, but the mechanism could be anything: a special reward, a shorter easier version of the task, unlocked content, a different kind of message that acknowledges the gap and makes returning feel positive rather than shameful.
Third, make the recovery mechanism visible from the start. The gym study showed participants the recovery bonus structure upfront. They knew that coming back after a miss would earn them something extra. This changes the psychological framing before anyone has even missed yet. When you start a new habit, plan for the comeback before you need it.
Fourth, front load value in that first week. The reason recovery matters so much early on is because habits haven't formed yet. The study found that only 8% of interventions created behavior changes that lasted beyond the four week period. (Nature) Habit formation takes time. Your first week needs to be engaging enough that missing feels like losing something real.
Why Reminders Aren't Enough
Here's what doesn't work: just getting a better reminder.
Every app sends a notification when you've been inactive. "We miss you!" "Come back!" "Your streak is about to break!"
These rarely work because they're trying to use guilt or FOMO as the primary motivator. The gym study shows that's not enough. Milkman noted that people underappreciate all the obstacles in people's lives that make maintaining habits difficult. A simple reminder doesn't address those obstacles. (Businessinsider)
The notification or reminder needs to come with something: an easier path back in, a reward for returning, a special incentive, a reason to believe that today will be different from yesterday.
If someone missed yesterday because they were overwhelmed, tired, or dealing with unexpected chaos, sending them the exact same task with the exact same difficulty level won't work. The circumstances that caused the miss are probably still there. The reminder just adds guilt on top of an already impossible situation.
But if you send them a modified version (shorter, easier, with a bonus), you're acknowledging reality and offering a genuine bridge back.
What This Means for Building Habits
If you're trying to build a new habit, your success in the first week predicts long term survival. You form your mental model fast. If you see yourself as "someone who does this daily," you'll keep coming back. If you see yourself as "someone who tried this but couldn't stick with it," you're done.
Your job isn't just to maintain perfection. It's to build an identity around the behavior.
The nine cent solution works because it reframes the stumble. Instead of "I failed," it becomes "I earned a bonus by coming back." The identity shifts from failure to resilience.
This is why the first week recovery mechanism matters so much. It's not just about saving that one session. It's about learning that missing is normal, that the system expects it, and that coming back is always possible.
And if you're building products, these same principles apply to your users. Their first week determines whether they become long term users or churn statistics. Design for the comeback, not just the streak.
Making It Real
The specifics will vary depending on what you're trying to do, but the framework stays the same.
For learning a language: give yourself double credit on the first lesson after a missed day in week one. Make it a "comeback bonus" that feels special rather than remedial.
For tracking habits: after you miss logging a habit, try tracking just one habit the next day instead of five. Make reentry easier, not harder.
For meditation: after a missed session, do a three minute practice instead of twenty. Acknowledge the gap. Make the return meaningful without demanding perfection.
For exercise: exactly what the gym study showed. Extra recognition, a special playlist, anything that makes the day after a miss feel like a fresh opportunity rather than a reminder of yesterday's failure.
For a fitness app: offer double XP on the first workout after a missed day in week one. For a productivity tool: after someone misses their daily review, give them a simplified one question version. For a learning platform: unlock a special recovery lesson designed to be completed in half the normal time.
The pattern repeats across contexts: make the comeback different, make it easier, make it feel like winning rather than remedial work.
The Psychology of the Second Chance
The research team noted that most interventions stopped working once the incentives ended, suggesting that external rewards need to continue for people to stay motivated. (Businessinsider) This might sound discouraging. It means you can't just run a one week promotion on yourself and expect permanent behavior change.
But here's the opportunity: if you design your life around continuous recovery, you're not trying to become a perfect person who never misses. You're creating a system that meets you where you are and helps you keep going anyway.
The gym study gives us permission to stop chasing perfection. You will miss days. Your routine will have drop offs. What matters is whether you've built the bridges that let you come back.
This is actually liberating. Most people abandon habits because they believe the story that one miss means failure. They internalize the idea that successful people are the ones who never break their streaks, who have iron willpower, who execute flawlessly.
But the research suggests something different: successful people aren't the ones who never miss. They're the ones who've built systems that make coming back easier than staying away.
The Real Cost of a Habit
Nine cents isn't magic. But the principle behind it might as well be: the day after you miss matters more than any other day.
Design for that day, especially in the first week, and you'll stick with more habits than any amount of streak obsession or self criticism ever could. Build recovery mechanisms into your products, and you'll retain more users than any amount of notification optimization or engagement tricks.
The cost of designing a habit isn't nine cents. It's the willingness to assume imperfection and plan for it. To stop designing for the person you wish you were (or the user you wish you had) and start designing for the person you actually are, complete with obstacles, bad days, and inevitable misses.
You don't need to be perfect. You need a system that works even when you're not.
Sam Liberty is a gamification expert, applied game designer, and consultant. His clients include The World Bank, Click Therapeutics, and DARPA. He teaches game design at Northeastern University. He is the former Lead Game Designer at Sidekick Health.