University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Mini Habits
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Mini Habits

Smaller Habits, Bigger Results

Stephen Guise
CreateSpace, 2013
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Personal development blogger Stephen Guise offers a self-improvement program that promises to be “too small to fail.” A “mini habit” is a positive behavior that you perform in its smallest component until it becomes second nature. An exercise program becomes one push-up; a reading goal becomes one sentence. The willpower you need to succeed falls to zero. Guise guarantees that repetition and repeated success can turn any mini habit into a new lifelong pattern. His concept is beautiful in its simplicity. getAbstract recommends Guise’s advice to anyone who wants to make a positive change, even if you read just one sentence at a sitting.

Summary

Mini Habits

No matter how determined or sincere you are, making life changes is hard. You may intend to exercise for an hour a day, but intention without action is pointless. Human beings have a tendency to overestimate their self-discipline. That leads to a disconnection between objectives and results. People commonly set ambitious self-improvement goals, only to fail and feel guilty and discouraged. Failing is not your fault. The blame lies with most popular self-improvement strategies. No matter how many times you try a flawed strategy, you arrive at the same disappointing result.

Instead, decide that you’re better off taking a step, even a small step, than staying in the same place. Taking one small step daily leads you in the right direction and sets you on your way to developing a lifelong habit. The small step requires little willpower, but its results are enormous.

The mini-habit model of behavior modification focuses on adopting positive behaviors, one small increment at a time. It doesn’t effectively break active bad habits, such as alcohol abuse. But it can help you negate passive bad habits, such as laziness or procrastination, by giving you new ways...

About the Author

Stephen Guise, who started writing the Deep Existence blog in 2011, covers personal development strategies.

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