It’s not what you think: How this one method is different from the others

Have you ever tried making a New Years resolution? How successful were you in sticking with that resolution? A quick search online shows that 8 in 10 resolutions fail by February. Its not what you chose as a resolution, but the strategy that most people employ that leads to the failure.

I am going to outline a new strategy I recently learned about from a small book called Mini Habits by Stephen Guise. This my summary and notes from the book, but I highly recomment reading the book.

The secret to building habits is to use willpower and not motivation and emotions as your strategy. Emotions and motivation are unreliable and they also happen to be the most popular methods talked about in books on habit. But willpower is also finite and can be depleted, so how do you use willpower?

The core idea is to start with behaviors that are so small that they consume little or no willpower at all. Stephen gained some of his fame in a post about the one pushup workout. The idea here is that you shrink the behavior to such a small size that you overcome the objections of your brain. You limit this small behavior to 10 minutes or less a day, and each day you complete the behavior, you build success. Success builds on more success. Your beliefs that you can influence your outcome are reinforced, and your willpower is strengthened.

This strategy of small mini habits does not in fact limit how much of the behavior that you can do. It simply establishes a floor on how much you must do each day. But that floor is so low, that you can achieve that minimum each day regardless of your level of motivation or your emotional state. In the case of the one pushup, your down on the floor and you tell yourself that it is absurd to only do one pushup. So you end up doing a few extra. But the author warns, do not set some internal expectation in your mind that you have to do more than your minimum of one pushup. This will sabotage your efforts. Remind yourself that even one pushup is a success.

If you have read any other book on habits, these books often talk about triggers or cues. You can employ a time based cue or an event based cue, but the author talks about a general cue. By general cue, it simply means you perform the behavior sometime that day, it could even be before bed. By building flexibility into the cue, you are more likely to complete it. If you have a bad habit, notice that it probably have many cues and can happen any time of the day. We want the same flexibility but for good habits.

If you encounter resistance in your mind, then revise your behavior. Make it even smaller, or as Stephen says, make it “Stupid” small. What this means is make it so small that your mind thinks it’s absurd. This is really the key. If your mind thinks the behavior is absurd, it will lower its defenses.

There is no fixed time after which a habit will develop. It could be a month or it could be a year. What is important is that you keep at it an look for signs. If the behavior becomes automatic, if it is boring, if it is non-emotional, and if your not worrying about it, there is a good chance it is becoming a habit.

The power in this method is that it gets you started. Your making progress from day one towards your habit. There is nothing stopping you from doing extra pushups, or doing what ever behavior it is that you choose to do. Resist the temptation to raise the bar on your daily minimum, this minimum serves as your safety when your tired or unmotivated. Instead, put extra energy into doing more of the behavior when you have it.