Tiny Habits

Tiny Habits shows you the power of applying small changes to your routine to unleash the full power that habits have to make your life better.

I love setting goals and building new habits. For the last 15 years, I’ve set my goals at the beginning of the year. But many times I found myself failing to uphold all of the massive changes I was trying to make. It was hard to understand why. I knew that exercising, sleeping, and reading more were all good for me, but I still couldn’t follow through!

As I eventually found out, I fell for the Information-Action Fallacy: We assume knowing facts will be enough to make us change. The truth is that no matter how much data we have, and no matter how well it motivates us to begin, it’s just never enough to keep us going.

In the author’s experience, there are three drivers of behavioral change:

Epiphanies Environmental Changes Tiny Adjustments to Existing Habits

An epiphany is a sudden revelation, and, like facts, they’re not enough to inspire us in the long-term. The big problem with these is that we can’t control when they come to us. Environmental changes, like getting your friends to come to the gym with you, are also just as uncontrollable.

That’s why tiny habits are so important because we can change them and, if done right, they do last. When you begin small, even so much that it seems strange to you, the change becomes sustainable over the long-term. And when you increase your ability to be consistent, you dramatically improve your chances of success.

Have you ever taken an online course? I’ve paid for a few myself and I have a hard time finishing them. And I’m not alone: 90% of people who take courses don’t complete them. This is because we overestimate the power of motivation. We can do incredible things when we find some inspiration, as I’m sure you’ve experienced. But the biggest problem is that the change that results from motivation is good only for one-time changes. Long-term growth requires something more. If you want to keep up your good habits over time, you need to persist every day for years. But aspiring to be or do something more is often future-centered instead of focusing on what we can do right now. That’s why you need to utilize the power of behavior because it connects your present abilities with what you want for in the future. Let’s take saving money as an example. If you had the dream of saving 6 months’ worth of expenses, you probably can’t just conjure up that money immediately, right? That makes sense because it’s your future…