This month felt like a mess.
I played too many video games, got sucked back into scrolling, and hit a roadblock with my recently torn ACL, and my new job starts in two weeks!
It always happens the same way – I’m doing what’s healthy and good, reading books, going to bed early… until something throws me off track.
Overall, life isn’t that bad, though – there are children around the world starving to death, people dying in wars, and people even without Apple TV Premium.
How do they survive? Yet there I was, feeling sorry for myself.
Here’s what pulled me out and is now a strategy I use religously:
Small wins
Small Wins Create Momentum Cascades
In the hole of self-pity, I wondered how I’d even done everything before in the first place – exercised, read books, did THE WORK (you know what it is).
I read through my old journal entries, looked at my past calendars, and there it was. Something so simple that I can’t believe I missed it.
Small wins.
Something magical happened when I did small positive activities. It was the anticipation of energy – like a rollercoaster at the top before the fall, or a Formula 1 car right before the final light.
When I cleaned my bedroom for just 2 minutes (“no monsters under here, check”), without realizing it, I would start doing other “good” things.
Seeing my clean bed would lead me to put on my exercise clothes, which would lead me to go to the gym, which would lead me to eat a healthy breakfast, which would lead me to do THE WORK, which would lead me to walk outside for 5 minutes (“interesting, not poison!”), which would lead me to clean, which would lead me to plan tomorrow, which would lead me to feeling like a winner.
Implementation intentions studies (Gollwitzer et al.) show that specifying when, where, and how a tiny action will occur boosts completion rates by over 300% compared to a vague goal (great compilation article here on micro goals), and the small wins compound on you for the rest of the day.
The Bottom Line
Things still go wrong (wait, now the clocks go back the OTHER direction?!). But now I have the tools.
And the only thing I do, before I turn to the evil triggers or feel myself falling, is give myself one small win. And 9 times out of 10, it fixes everything.
Action item: This week, pick ONE stupidly small daily win – make your bed, clean for 2 minutes, walk to the mailbox. That’s it. Don’t aim higher. Do it right after you wake up. The cascade will handle the rest.
