Small Habits, Significant Impact
Cultivate Positive Habits That Last — Starting Today!
We are all creatures of habits. In fact, our life today is the sum of habits.
We — mostly unconsciously — repeat 95 per cent of our physical and mental patterns from day one to the next.
Everybody wants a transformation.
“Man, I looked kinda fat. I want to lose THAT 10 kgs.”
“I wish I could speak English as well as she does.”
“How is he so motivated? I wish I could be like him more!”
Everybody wants a radical improvement, one rapid success but what we don’t realize is that small habits and little choices are the ones that are transforming us every day.
We are going to learn that, for us to form and most importantly, sustain a habit, it must have (1) obvious cues and it must be (2) easy to start.
It just wasn’t good enough…
I have a friend named Sylvia. she has always wanted to lose weights. She had tried many ways but none of them turned out to be effective. Her friend recommended her to join a group of runners — hoping Sylvia would find another alternative to lose weights.
But, the downside was that group workouts could come in all shapes and sizes — from elite performance squads to casual get-togethers. The group set out to train for a full 42KM marathon run.
The first day, Sylvia was feeling all pumped up, she showed up at 6.30 pm sharp at the botanical park. She was all dressed up in a comfortable blue-black running sweatshirt and lightweight running tights.
She put on her newly-bought pair of light-blue running shoes.
Played her favourite Pop songs on her AirPods, music blasting.
Made sure to tighten her Fitness Watch before she sprinted.
All geared up. Ready to dash. Off she went.
The next day, she did it again.
The third day, again.
The following day, and again!
After two weeks of running together in a group, Sylvia found herself pushing way too hard to catch up with the rest and could no longer cope with the rigorous exercise.
She ended up losing motivation to continue further. She felt severe burnout.
She gave up. It all went downhill.
The only reason that we repeat certain habits or behaviours is that we enjoy doing them and we like the reward and outcome. Just the opposite, if we don’t enjoy the experience along the way we are unlikely to stick with it and that means that you need to figure out ways to bring a reward into the present moment.
The key is to get started with a ritual.
In the book of Atomic Habits [1], the author, James Clear describes how some of the most prolific artists in the world motivate themselves.
They don’t just set schedules to accomplish things, rather they build rituals around their habits.
Twyla Tharp is widely regarded as one of the greatest dancers and choreographers of the modern era. In her best-selling book, The Creative Habit [2], Tharp discusses one of the secrets of her success:
She begins each day with a ritual;
She wakes up every morning at 5.30 am, puts on her workout clothes, leg warmers, sweatshirts, and her hat.
She steps outside of her Manhattan apartment and hails a cab.
After getting in the cab, she would tell the driver to go to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st Street and 1st Avenue.
It is a simple act, but doing it the same way each morning habituates it.
Tharp says that the ritual is not the stretching and weight training each morning at the gym.
The ritual is actually the cab.
The moment I told the driver where to go, I had already completed the ritual.
Why was telling the driver where to go — a successful workout ritual for Tharp.
The moment she gets into the cab, it is much easier for Tharp to continue to the gym to complete her 2-hour workout than to tell the cab driver to turn around and go back to her apartment.
Let’s just think about it, how many times have we failed to sustain a habit because it was way too difficult at the very beginning? Instead of focusing on an entire routine of new behaviour, focus on the starting ritual of that habit or behaviour.
The starting ritual is usually the easiest. It has the minimum number of steps you need to make that makes it easier for you to proceed with the rest of your routine.
Interestingly, many habits in life can be scaled down into an easy two-minute version:
- “Read a book” becomes “Read one page.”
- “Practice guitar” becomes “Take out your guitar and start playing your chord.”
- “Tidy the room” becomes “Organize your clothes lying on the floor.”
- “Fold the laundry” becomes “Fold one pair of socks.”
- “Run three miles” becomes “Put on my running shoes.”
If you can spend two minutes packing your exercising clothes and shoes the night before, the chances are you will turn up for the jogging the next morning.
If you can spend two minutes picking a book off the shelf and reading one page or two, you will find the energy to read a few more pages or even to finish a chapter!
It is more important to get you started in a way that is easy and possible than to think how hard it is to achieve the final result or outcome.
Once you have started doing the right thing, it is much easier to continue doing it.
A new habit should not feel like a daunting challenge — neither should it demotivate you. The actions that follow can be challenging, but the first two minutes of getting started should be easy. Two minutes of reading is better than never picking up a book. It’s far better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Another overlooked driver of habits and human behaviour is our physical environment. People often make choices simply not because of what they are, but because of where they are.
Notice that people tend to eat at fast-food restaurants because it is so easily accessible and available almost everywhere. It seems easier to make the choice than to drive the extra miles to look for other options.
If I walk into the kitchen and see Baskin-Robbins’ chocolate brownie ice cream in the refrigerator, I’ll slide my spoon into the pink pint of delicious icy treats and start eating, even if I hadn’t been thinking about them beforehand.
It is the obvious cues that trigger and stimulate our behaviours.
Too many people try to change their habits without figuring out the “when” and “where” these habits are going to happen.
If you want to practice your guitar more frequently, try putting it right in the middle of your living room so you run across it all the time.
If you want to make sure you exercise the next day, put your running tee, shorts and shoes in your car. Not inside of your car trunk, but some place that is obvious — the passenger seat next to you.
If you want to read more, put the book on your table or even carry it everywhere you go.
Make it obvious and easy to reach.
Every habit is initiated by a cue, and we are more likely to notice cues that stand out. I remembered a friend of mine named Jason, telling me that he’d used to buy a variety of fruits every time he did the grocery shopping. The moment he got home, he would unload the fruits and put them all in the crisper drawer of his refrigerator. It is true that the fruits would be kept and preserved fresh in that compartment. But, the crisper drawer is often placed in the lowest part of the refrigerator where it is not quite visible.
What usually happens was that Jason always forgot about the fruits he bought. It would be months later he realized that he actually bought that many fruits and left uneaten and unattended to! The fruits all went bad.
When the cues that spark a habit are not obvious or often hidden, they are easy to ignore.
It is not easy to read a book when the book is kept inside of a bookshelf — it is not obvious.
It is not easy to water your potted plants when they are nowhere to be seen in the living room area — again, it is not obvious.
Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit, let’s start off by doing the easy things on a more consistent basis. They are the ones that are really transforming us every day.
You’d be surprised how powerful small changes can bring great results in the long run.
Let’s get the ball rolling — starting today!
Acknowledgement
A special shout-out and sincere thank you to Ms Swit Yie, Chong for inspiring me.
References
[1] J. Clear, Atomic Habits: An easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones. 2018.
[2] T. Tharp, The Creative Habit Learn It and Use It For Life, First Edit. & Schuster, Simon, 2003.
