About Habit Build
Habit Build is Long-Game Design in practice. It turns goals into durable participation by diagnosing where people drift away, identifying what about the experience is making continuation harder, and redesigning the path so staying engaged and returning after disruption become more likely.
Habit Build is not about making everything easy or fun. It is about making worthwhile participation durable.
Why this combination
"My work sits at the intersection of behavioral science, experience design, digital health, and product strategy. That combination matters because participation rarely breaks down for a single reason. What looks like a motivation problem can also be unnecessary friction, a poor experience, a missing sense of progress, a loss of agency, or an unforgiving way back.
My most useful role is helping organizations see where good intentions are being lost in the lived experience, then redesigning that experience so more people can stay with what matters."
Mike Rucker, PhD
Mike Rucker, PhD
Mike Rucker, PhD, is a behavioral scientist, organizational psychologist, and author of The Fun Habit. His work explores how enjoyment helps people stay connected to meaningful habits, relationships, and places. Drawing on decades of professional and academic experience at the crossroads of health, workplace well-being, and behavior change, Rucker argues that a good life is built not through discipline alone, but rather through practices and pursuits we actually want to return to.
Habit Build is a new practice, built on decades of professional and academic work at the crossroads of health, workplace well-being, and behavior change.
The work behind it
The Fun Habit (Atria / Simon & Schuster, 2023) is where this work started. It argued that fun deserves a more serious place in a good life. Habit Build extends that idea: enjoyment can be part of what helps us keep doing the work.
In September 2026, Mike gave a TEDx talk, Designed to Return, on why the middle of any pursuit decides whether people come back. The recording will be linked here when it is published.
Mike writes about designing the health, work, and learning experiences people keep coming back to.