Resisting, Recognizing, and Returning: A Three-Component Model and Review of Persistence in Episodic Goals

According to prior work, persistent goal pursuit is a continuous process where persisting is a matter of resisting the urge to give up. In everyday goals, however, persistence is often episodic, and its causes are more complex. People pause and resume pursuit many times. Whether people persist reflects more than will power and motivation, it also reflects the other goals they pursue, their resources, and the attentional demands of daily life. People can fail to persist not just because they gave up, but also because they failed to act. We propose a general model of persistence that accommodates the complexity of episodic goals. We argue that persistent goal pursuit is a function of three processes: resisting the urge to give up, recognizing opportunities for pursuit, and returning to pursuit. The broad factors that help and hurt persistence can be organized within these components. These components can also explain the mechanisms of four effective strategies for persistence: removing distractions, using reminders, using implementation intentions, and forming habits. The recognizing-resisting-returning model integrates and improves on extant theories of persistence and goal pursuit and is consistent with empirical work from laboratory and naturalistic settings.