Willpower is limited. Habits don’t consume willpower. It is therefore a good idea to put habits in place for most of our productive, daily actions. But how? What if you’re not motivated enough? What if you keep failing? Stephen Guise comes to the rescue and tells us to keep it small. Really, really small.
Whether it be an exercise regime, regular writing or keeping in touch with people – the best way to make sure that we’re taking the daily actions that are necessary to success is to turn them into habits. Habits are a sort of autopilot. We barely think about what we’re doing. We’re just doing it. We don’t come up with excuses, we don’t wrestle with opposite desires. We just get up and do the thing. How does one get there? Stephen Guise has put together a marvelous little book. On less than 130 pages he explains in detail how our brains work and why many conventional approaches to build habits cannot possibly work. He then thoroughly explains the alternative of mini habits.
Why motivation isn’t enough
Many people hope for motivation to get them to do what needs to be done. This is highly unsuccessful. Why? Because motivation is dependent on how we feel in the moment. If we feel very motivated, it will take almost no effort to do what we want to do. Our willpower reserves will last longer. But how do we sustain motivation? We don’t. Nobody does. Motivation comes and goes because it depends on emotions. Human emotions are not consistent. They go up and down. An important insight is that habits are essentially boring. We’re not overly passionate about them because we’re on autopilot when we do them. It doesn’t make sense to set up an autopilot based on emotions.
The power of willpower
Willpower is a human resource that can be depleted. Studies have shown over and over again that exercising willpower in one area, will make it all the more harder to exercise it in another area shortly afterwards. Stress, resistance to temptation and trying to do the right thing at all times, drains our willpower resources. But the wonderful thing about willpower is that once we exercise it, we can actually get the job done, no matter how we feel. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to do this all the time?
The magic of mini habits
Guise has found a way to use our willpower to accomplish big things by first doing tiny things. He keeps returning to the theme of the one-pushup habit. Years ago, he wanted to exercise more, but couldn’t get himself to do it. His will was too weak. He then came up with an idea. What if he has one push-up per day as his goal? Not 30, not 20, not getting up at 5am, running around the block in the cold. Just one push-up. This sounds ridiculously small. And that’s the point. By setting a ridiculously small goal, we take away any excuses our brain might come up with. If we have an elaborate exercise regime as a goal, our brain will go on strike. But almost nobody’s brain will argue against a single push-up. And if it does, then go even smaller. Just lie down on the floor.
What does this accomplish?
- We take away any excuse to not take action. A ridiculously small action takes almost no willpower to perform. Our brains will not protest any longer.
- Because the action is so tiny, we will always meet our goal. Short of a catastrophic event, there’s nothing that can hinder us from taking a stupidly easy action. This boosts our confidence. We cannot fail any longer.
- We build momentum. Once we take the tiny, little action, we find more often then not, that it is suddenly easier to continue doing it than not doing it. This leads us to the next two points.
- It is extremely easy to overachieve. Once you do the first pushup, you might suddenly feel that this isn’t as bad as you imagined and just do a second, and a third and before you know it you’ve done 20 push-ups.
- We build a habit. By doing this regularly, we get our brain used to taking action. It might not be big action, but we’re carving out a neurological pathway in our brains that hasn’t existed before. This gives us a basis on which we can build something big.
Guise gives the reader an idea of what he has accomplished by implementing this strategy. By resolving to write 50 words a day every day no matter what, he has found himself often times writing 1000 or 2000 words at a time. Or just by driving to the gym regularly, he’s build up momentum to at some point actually enter the gym.
Possible mini habits that are mentioned in the book are one push-up a day, writing 50 words a day, reading two pages a day, putting on your gym clothes and many more. You can find a longer list of ideas on his website. The book is compact, easily readable and packs in a few more details that I haven’t covered here. He explains, why one shouldn’t attempt more then 4 mini-habits at once as well as why it’s good to have more then one mini-habit. He talks about rewards, habit cues and how long it really takes, to build a new habit (hint: it’s not a fixed number of days). He warns against pitfalls, such as subconsciously demanding more of yourself then your officially stated goal of doing just one little thing.
This book will definitely be a game-changer for many people. It’s concise, to the point, no fluff, easy to read advice that makes sense to you the minute you hear it. It shows you how to take the first small step on a long journey over and over again, only to suddenly find yourself arriving at the destination.
The kindle edition costs 5.99$, the paperback 9.39$ at amazon.