Mini Habits

Mini Habits explains how you can get the most out of the fact that 45% of your behavior happens on autopilot by setting ridiculously small goals, relying on willpower instead of motivation and tracking your progress to live a life that’s full of good mini habits.

Let’s say you want to be able to do 100 push-ups in a row. Where would you start? 10, 20? Doing as many as you can every day? It’s very easy to think that by starting at the highest level you can currently achieve, you’ll reach your goal the fastest, but actually, that’s just a recipe for disaster.

If you can barely do 20 push-ups, doing it for seven days in a row and collapsing on the floor every time will only make you want to trade morning exercise for a bigger breakfast – it’s frustrating and de-motivating. I know what Stephen would tell you: just do one push-up every day.

Wait. One?! Are you serious? Yup. It’s how he got started. Why does it work? Because if all you have to do is one push-up a day, you’ll laugh at the challenge. It won’t be difficult and it’s impossible to get tired.

But as you do your single push-up, Newton’s first law will kick in, which says objects in motion tend to stay in motion. It’s easy to add another 3-4 push-ups to your first one. Overcoming that first, initial hurdle is all it takes.

Soon, you’ll find yourself upgrading to two push-ups a day, then three, and so on.

To know how you’re fairing with your habits, it pays to track them. Last year, I tracked 15 of my habits and learned a lot. Next to good old pen and paper, there’s a whole bunch of habit tracking apps available at this point. Goals are much more powerful the second you write them down (even if you never look at them again), so even just adding habits to a tracker helps.

My favorite, and this won’t be a shock if you’ve known me for a bit, is coach.me. Millions of people track thousands of goals on there, and for each and every single habit you’ll find a wonderful, positive community to support you, cheer you on and answer all your questions. As of 2015, you can even get coaches for specific goals (yours truly was among the first 200 on the platform) .

The most important thing about tracking is looking at your tracker every day and noting your progress. You won’t only know your current level of progress all the time, but also be reminded to finish the habits you haven’t done for the day.