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Co-founder of Greatr

Jip Groen

I design how Greatr feels, and I write about routines, mornings and screen time.

Articles
8
Sources cited
30
Topics
5

Updated First article

I read the research so the advice holds.

Hi, I’m Jip Groen, one of the two co-founders of Greatr, the iPhone app that stacks your habits into a morning or evening routine and keeps the apps you choose locked until you finish your routine. In the app, I design how it feels: the order of a routine, the moment a habit is done, the calm first screen of the day.

On the blog I write about routines, mornings and screen time. I am not a scientist or a clinician, and I will not pretend to be. What I do is read: the studies behind the advice, and the books that made these ideas popular, like Atomic Habits by James Clear, Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg and Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.

One step you take tomorrow beats ten you plan tonight.

I try the methods on my own mornings before I write them up, and when the research and my experience point different ways, I tell you which is which. If something here does not work for you, I would like to hear it: hello@getgreatr.app.

What I write about

How I research

  1. Start from the study, not the summary.

    Before I repeat an idea, I find the paper behind it. Phillippa Lally’s 2010 study of how long habits take to form, Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran’s 2006 review of if-then plans and Wendy Wood and Dennis Rünger’s 2016 review of habit and context are the studies I come back to most often.

  2. Try it on a real morning.

    I test a method on my own routine before I recommend it, and I note where it breaks: the late night, the trip, the morning that belongs to someone else.

  3. End with the smallest step.

    Advice only helps if you can act on it, so I aim to leave you with something small enough to start tomorrow morning.

Every article I write follows our editorial policy. Spotted a mistake? Email hello@getgreatr.app and we will look into it. A post’s date changes only when its content does.

Research I cite

30 sources cited across Jip Groen’s 8 articles, most cited first. 27 of them link to a DOI, PubMed or PMC record.

  1. The Welfare Effects of Social Media

    Hunt Allcott and colleagues, American Economic Review, 2020DOI

    Cited in How to Stop Doomscrolling in the Morning (and What to Do Instead) and Dopamine Detox

  2. Psychology of Habit

    Wendy Wood and Dennis Rünger, Annual Review of Psychology, 2016DOI

    Cited in Dopamine Detox and How to Break a Bad Habit

  3. Recommended Amount of Sleep for a Healthy Adult: A Joint Consensus Statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society

    Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2015

    Cited in A Morning Routine You'll Actually Keep and How to Wake Up Early Without Feeling Tired

  4. How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world

    Phillippa Lally and colleagues, European Journal of Social Psychology, 2010DOI

    Cited in A Morning Routine You'll Actually Keep and How to Build a Reading Habit

  5. Doomscrolling Scale: its Association with Personality Traits, Psychological Distress, Social Media Use, and Wellbeing

    Seydi Ahmet Satici and colleagues, Applied Research in Quality of Life, 2023DOI

    Cited in How to Stop Doomscrolling in the Morning (and What to Do Instead)

  6. Habit formation following routine-based versus time-based cue planning: A randomized controlled trial

    Jan Keller and colleagues, British Journal of Health Psychology, 2021DOI

    Cited in Habit Stacking

  7. Dopamine fasting: Misunderstanding science spawns a maladaptive fad

    Peter Grinspoon, Harvard Health Publishing, 2020

    Cited in Dopamine Detox

  8. WHO guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour

    World Health Organization, 2020

    Cited in A Morning Routine You'll Actually Keep

Show 22 more sourcesShow fewer
  1. Brief, daily meditation enhances attention, memory, mood, and emotional regulation in non-experienced meditators

    Julia Basso and colleagues, Behavioural Brain Research, 2019PubMed

    Cited in A Morning Routine You'll Actually Keep

  2. How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate

    Marc Brysbaert, Journal of Memory and Language, 2019DOI

    Cited in How to Build a Reading Habit

  3. No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

    Melissa Hunt and colleagues, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 2018DOI

    Cited in How to Stop Doomscrolling in the Morning (and What to Do Instead)

  4. Online Positive Affect Journaling in the Improvement of Mental Distress and Well-Being in General Medical Patients With Elevated Anxiety Symptoms: A Preliminary Randomized Controlled Trial

    Joshua Smyth and colleagues, JMIR Mental Health, 2018PMC

    Cited in Journaling for Beginners

  5. So Much to Read, So Little Time: How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help?

    Keith Rayner and colleagues, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2016DOI

    Cited in How to Build a Reading Habit

  6. Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015DOI

    Cited in How to Build a Reading Habit

  7. Pleasure Systems in the Brain

    Kent Berridge and Morten Kringelbach, Neuron, 2015DOI

    Cited in Dopamine Detox

  8. The Attentional Cost of Receiving a Cell Phone Notification

    Cary Stothart and colleagues, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2015DOI

    Cited in How to Stop Doomscrolling in the Morning (and What to Do Instead)

  9. Entrainment of the Human Circadian Clock to the Natural Light-Dark Cycle

    Kenneth Wright and colleagues, Current Biology, 2013DOI

    Cited in How to Wake Up Early Without Feeling Tired

  10. Making health habitual: the psychology of 'habit-formation' and general practice

    Benjamin Gardner, Phillippa Lally and Jane Wardle, British Journal of General Practice, 2012PMC

    Cited in Habit Stacking

  11. Breaking Habits With Implementation Intentions: A Test of Underlying Processes

    Marieke Adriaanse, Peter Gollwitzer and colleagues, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2011DOI

    Cited in How to Break a Bad Habit

  12. The efficacy of habit reversal therapy for tics, habit disorders, and stuttering: A meta-analytic review

    Karina Bate and colleagues, Clinical Psychology Review, 2011DOI

    Cited in How to Break a Bad Habit

  13. Can't Control Yourself? Monitor Those Bad Habits

    Jeffrey Quinn, Wendy Wood and colleagues, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2010DOI

    Cited in How to Break a Bad Habit

  14. Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli

    Matthew Lieberman and colleagues, Psychological Science, 2007PubMed

    Cited in Journaling for Beginners

  15. Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis

    Joanne Frattaroli, Psychological Bulletin, 2006DOI

    Cited in Journaling for Beginners

  16. Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-analysis of Effects and Processes

    Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2006DOI

    Cited in Habit Stacking

  17. Social jetlag: misalignment of biological and social time

    Marc Wittmann, Till Roenneberg and colleagues, Chronobiology International, 2006PubMed

    Cited in How to Wake Up Early Without Feeling Tired

  18. Changing Circumstances, Disrupting Habits

    Wendy Wood, Leona Tam and Melissa Guerrero Witt, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2005DOI

    Cited in How to Break a Bad Habit

  19. Journaling about stressful events: Effects of cognitive processing and emotional expression

    Philip Ullrich and Susan Lutgendorf, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 2002DOI

    Cited in Journaling for Beginners

  20. Stability, precision, and near-24-hour period of the human circadian pacemaker

    Charles Czeisler and colleagues, Science, 1999PubMed

    Cited in How to Wake Up Early Without Feeling Tired

  21. A Neural Substrate of Prediction and Reward

    Wolfram Schultz, Peter Dayan and Read Montague, Science, 1997DOI

    Cited in Dopamine Detox

  22. Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease

    James Pennebaker and Sandra Beall, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1986DOI

    Cited in Journaling for Beginners

What I read

Jeroen Snel and I have both read all 17 of these, roughly from the best known down. Books give us the language; the studies above decide what we claim.

  1. Atomic Habits

    James Clear, 2018

    Small habits, stacked in a fixed order: the idea our routines are built on.

    Mentioned in Habit Stacking.

  2. The Power of Habit

    Charles Duhigg, 2012

    The cue, routine and reward loop, and why you change a habit by keeping the cue and swapping the routine.

  3. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

    Stephen R. Covey, 1989

    Effectiveness as a matter of character, built through seven habits, from being proactive to sharpening the saw.

  1. Thinking, Fast and Slow

    Daniel Kahneman, 2011

    Two ways of thinking, fast intuition and slow deliberation, and the predictable mistakes the fast one makes.

  2. Mindset

    Carol S. Dweck, 2006

    Why believing your abilities can grow changes how you meet effort, feedback and setbacks.

  3. Deep Work

    Cal Newport, 2016

    Focused, undistracted work as a skill you can train, and a rarer one every year.

    Mentioned in How to Focus.

  4. Tiny Habits

    BJ Fogg, 2019

    Start so small you cannot fail, and anchor the new habit to something you already do.

    Mentioned in Habit Stacking.

  5. Grit

    Angela Duckworth, 2016

    Passion and perseverance for long-term goals, and why sustained effort can count as much as talent.

    The author’s studies are cited in How to Build Discipline.

  6. Essentialism

    Greg McKeown, 2014

    Doing less, but better: deciding what really matters and saying no to the rest.

Show 8 more booksShow fewer

  1. The Miracle Morning

    Hal Elrod, 2012

    A morning routine of six short practices, from silence and affirmations to reading and journaling, before the day begins.

  2. Digital Minimalism

    Cal Newport, 2019

    Choose the few apps that serve you on purpose, and let the rest go.

  3. Indistractable

    Nir Eyal, 2019

    Distraction often starts with a feeling, so the fix starts there too, not only with the phone.

  4. Four Thousand Weeks

    Oliver Burkeman, 2021

    A life is about four thousand weeks long, so choosing what to leave undone is the real skill.

  5. Stolen Focus

    Johann Hari, 2022

    Why so many of us struggle to pay attention, and the forces in modern life that pull it away.

  6. Dopamine Nation

    Anna Lembke, 2021

    A psychiatrist on the balance between pleasure and pain, and why a steady supply of easy rewards can leave us wanting more.

  7. Good Habits, Bad Habits

    Wendy Wood, 2019

    A habit researcher on why so much of what we repeat runs on context rather than willpower, and how to shape that context.

    The author’s studies are cited in Dopamine Detox and How to Break a Bad Habit.

  8. Flow

    Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1990

    The psychologist who named flow, on the deep absorption that can make hard work feel rewarding.

Articles by Jip Groen

8 articles, newest first.

  1. Routines

    A Morning Routine You'll Actually Keep: 10, 20 or 45 Minutes

    7 min read4 sources

  2. Screen time

    How to Stop Doomscrolling in the Morning (and What to Do Instead)

    8 min read4 sources

  3. Routines

    Habit Stacking: How to Build a Routine That Sticks

    8 min read3 sources

  4. Mindfulness

    Journaling for Beginners: How to Start and Actually Keep Going

    8 min read5 sources

  5. Screen time

    Dopamine Detox: What the Science Says, and What Works Instead

    8 min read5 sources

  6. Focus

    How to Build a Reading Habit: 8 Steps to Read More Books

    7 min read4 sources

  7. Habits

    How to Break a Bad Habit: 7 Steps That Change the Cue

    7 min read5 sources

  8. Routines

    How to Wake Up Early Without Feeling Tired: A 2-Week Plan

    7 min read4 sources

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