Reminders
Timely prompts that close the gap between what people intend and what they do.
What it means
Reminders are cues that bring an intended action back to mind at a moment when it can actually be performed, counteracting the twin problems of forgetting and present bias. Their effectiveness rests on the fact that many failures to act are not failures of motivation but of memory and timing — people genuinely mean to do the thing but the intention is not active when the opportunity arrives. The mechanism is to re-prime the intention at the decisive moment, which is why timing is critical: a prompt delivered just before the window for action outperforms one delivered too early or too late. Reminders work better when they are personalized, specific, and paired with a clear call to action or a planning prompt that asks people to specify when and how they will act. They are a workhorse of applied behavioral science, repeatedly shown to cut appointment no-shows, raise vaccination and medication adherence, and lift savings contributions. It matters because a well-timed nudge to memory is one of the cheapest and most scalable ways to convert good intentions into completed behavior.
Examples
A text the day before an appointment cuts no-show rates; a prompt asking when and where you will get the shot boosts vaccination.
A bank nudge sent on payday, before the money is spent, moves far more into savings than the identical message sent midweek when the account is already empty.
A shopping list app that pings you as you walk past the supermarket, rather than at breakfast, is the one that actually gets the milk bought.
First described in Widely tested by nudge units; Milkman et al.