Mini Habits

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...