The science
Nothing here is a hack. It's forty years of boring, solid evidence.
We didn't invent a system. We built the simplest possible product around findings that have held up for decades — and we'll tell you where the evidence is thin, too.
A note on sources
Every citation below is a placeholder until we verify it.
We describe mechanisms we believe are well supported, and we name the work we think they come from. Until each reference has been checked against the original paper and linked here, it stays marked [SOURCE TO VERIFY]. We would rather show you our working than quote a number we can't stand behind.
The finding
The progress principle
Across nearly 12,000 diary entries from 238 professionals, the single strongest driver of good inner work life was making progress on something meaningful — even small progress.
What Momentum does with it
Your habits are sized so you can make real progress on a normal day, and your dashboard shows that progress plainly.
[SOURCE TO VERIFY] Amabile & Kramer, The Progress Principle (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).
The finding
Progress monitoring
A meta-analysis of 138 studies (19,951 participants) found that prompting people to monitor progress towards a goal reliably increases goal attainment — and the effect is larger when progress is recorded and when it's reported publicly.
What Momentum does with it
You log daily, and one named person sees it. Recorded and witnessed — the two conditions the evidence favours.
[SOURCE TO VERIFY] Harkin et al., Psychological Bulletin, 2016.
The finding
Implementation intentions
A meta-analysis of 94 studies found that specifying when, where and how you'll act ('if situation X, then I'll do Y') has a medium-to-large effect on goal attainment compared with goal intentions alone.
What Momentum does with it
Every habit your coach writes has a cue: a time, a place, or an anchor to something already in your day.
[SOURCE TO VERIFY] Gollwitzer & Sheeran, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2006.
The finding
Self-efficacy
Decades of work show that belief in your own capability predicts persistence in the face of setbacks — and that the most powerful source of that belief is mastery experience: actually succeeding at something.
What Momentum does with it
We start with habits small enough to succeed at, because early wins are the raw material for believing the rest is possible.
[SOURCE TO VERIFY] Bandura, Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control (Freeman, 1997).
The finding
Habit formation takes time
In a 12-week study of people building daily habits, automaticity rose along a curve with a median of around 66 days — and, importantly, a single missed day did not meaningfully harm the process.
What Momentum does with it
The repair rule exists because of this. A miss is a data point, never a verdict, and the plan is built for 90 days rather than 9.
[SOURCE TO VERIFY] Lally et al., European Journal of Social Psychology, 2010.
The finding
Accountability and support
Behaviour-change trials consistently find that human support and regular contact improve adherence and outcomes over self-guided tools — attrition from unsupported digital tools is high.
What Momentum does with it
The coach is not a nice extra. Human contact every week is the mechanism, and the software exists to serve it.
[SOURCE TO VERIFY] Michie et al., Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2009; Eysenbach, JMIR, 2005 (the 'law of attrition').
Where we're honest about the limits
None of these studies tested Momentum. They tested mechanisms — monitoring, cues, support, small wins — that we've assembled into a service. We won't claim clinical outcomes we haven't measured, and we won't quote a statistic about ourselves until we have one. Momentum is coaching, not treatment, and it isn't a substitute for medical or mental-health care.