Small, consistent habits and incremental improvements create sustainable long-term success and personal growth.
I absolutely love the start of a year – be it in January or the start of a new school year in September. I spend a lot of time and money finding the right planners, systems, and routines that will help me reach these goals, because once I have the right tools and checklists I cannot fail. And yet after a week or so, when that 5 a.m. alarm rings, I find myself hitting snooze on that workout and looking at more than 600 unread emails in my inbox. Is there a path from the person I am now to the person I want to be? Enter habits.
Habits are in high fashion now, but they are nothing new. Habits are simply a standardized action that occurs after a cue. For example, I log on to my computer (cue) and check my email (habit). Or I enter the door (cue) and put my keys on the hook (habit). It’s almost automatic, but at one point I decided to do this. Atomic Habits by James Clear and other books have been talking about the power of habits to create incremental changes. After rereading Clear’s book, I truly understood why the word “atomic” in the title of that book refers to small (versus explosive) change. His mantra throughout the book is “we don’t rise to the level of goals, we fall to the level of our systems.” Can meaningful things happen with a 1 percent change? Short answer: yes.
Here are the takeaways from his book that have affected me the most:
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First you establish a habit, then you optimize it. As a recovering perfectionist, I struggle with doing anything incorrectly. Turns out that a habit “counts” no matter how small or imperfect it is. For example, I want to establish the habit of writing thank you notes as a follow up for meetings. The perfectionist in me requires that each week I send out carefully crafted, multi-paragraphed notes to everyone I meet. That is a lofty goal with lots of room for failure since the task itself requires a series of steps (thinking, then writing, addressing the envelope, finding a stamp, and putting it in the mail).
Clear challenges us to start small then improve. A reading practice starts with one page only. A workout routine starts with a five-minute workout. Start, then perfect. My habits can be bare minimum and imperfect, but they will have an impact. - Make the cues easy. All habits are based on the idea that stimuli cause us to act, almost automatically. If you can make the stimulus easy, the habit is more likely to happen, and the reverse is true. I am a very visual person. If I want to write notecards, I need a stack right by my desk, along with those stamps. If I want to exercise, the clothes are laid out the night before. If I want to limit social media, I silence notifications and toss the phone in another room.
- Don’t break the chain twice. The comic Jerry Seinfeld has a practice of writing jokes daily. Seinfeld says that occasionally life happens and he misses a day – but he never misses two! You don’t want to create the habit of not writing by missing it twice in a row. And since doing the habit doesn’t have to be perfect, he always finds a way to fix the streak the next day. Remember his habit isn’t to write amazing jokes – just to write jokes daily.
- I need bribes, I mean motivation. In the beginning stages, you can’t see the results of the habit and you may need some motivation to keep going. There are a few tricks that can help, including a habit tracker, stacking, and bundling. I mark my calendar every time I work out, noting the progress of consecutive marks even when the scale isn’t moving yet. Stacking is taking advantage of a habit I already have and adding to it. I brush my teeth and, since I’m by the sink, I wash my face too. Bundling is a bit like eating your broccoli and then you get dessert. I answer yesterday’s flagged emails and then I get to check social media.
- Be kind to yourself. My biggest takeaway is that 1 percent improvement is steeped in kindness and grace. I don’t shame myself. There is nothing inherently undisciplined or flawed with me. A habit can be missed, and I work toward getting back on track. The action doesn’t need to be perfect or punishing. Instead, each decision I make is a tiny vote for the person I want to be. For example, instead of saying “I need to lose five pounds,” I see myself as “someone who eats healthy.” That means I am constantly making the small choices that back up my identity as a healthy person. A cluster of “better” decisions adds up.
Ultimately small actions make up the sustainable parts of a long-term journey versus a goal. Losing five pounds either happens or it doesn’t. But working out daily, drinking water, and getting my steps in will be a continued pathway. Writing 50 notecards is a goal; the journey is finding ways to deepen relationships.
Naturally I thought, “Why stop at 1 percent? Let’s shoot for 20!” The problem is that 20 percent isn’t sustainable – as we see by the graveyard of planners and notecards I have in my desk. Or what the gym looks like by February 15. Studies show our brains adapt better to smaller changes and are less likely to see missteps as a failure when we keep it small. I’m playing a long-game here.
Though 1 percent seems negligible, the algorithm of growth over time usually yields a 37 percent increase. Adding 1 percent to my daily 30-minute workout could generate nearly 19 hours of exercise!
If you think all you need is to create that intricate, perfect system (hint: it doesn’t exist) and your life will fall into place, I highly suggest you look at small habits instead. You don’t even need to wait until the start of a new year. You can still buy the workout gear and pens, because let’s be honest, they are fun, but give yourself the gift of a few habits that move you on your journey versus fixating on a goal. The 1 percent improvement could just be the things we all need.
Janki DePalma, LEED AP, CPSM is director of business development at W.E. O’Neil. Contact her at jdepalma@weoneil.com.
