How to create permanent habitual change using micro goals

How is it that we can simultaneously have a solid understanding of things that are good for us, while also making choices not to do those same things. I’m talking about exercise, writing a journal, meditation and that study or work that has a looming due-date. Sure we make excuses and rationalisations to justify ourselves making our choices, but deep-down, I think we all know, “I didn’t have time to exercise” or “I just forgot” aren’t really valid.

It was about 5 years ago, when the popular game Destiny had been out for a while that I made this realisation. For the first time ever, I’d truly become addicted to a game. I went on in the morning before work, I would be on it when my girlfriend came over, I’d sometimes even go back and play some more when she’d leave at close to midnight. I just loved it!

The world was really engaging, the enemies were clear, a bunch of my friends were playing it, I was making choices and grinding to make progress with my character. As far as I was concerned, this game had it all.

But a realisation began growing as I began to get closer to maxing out my level that was perfectly articulated in a joke with a friend while we were playing. “If I put half the time into improving my life as I do trying to improve my character, I’d be a millionaire by now.”

It stuck with me because, while the ‘millionaire’ bit was a severe exaggeration, the crux of it was true. All those articles I’d read on the train about the benefits of mediation and daily gratitude practice. All the times I’d ordered in some food instead of cooking a healthy meal. All those times I’d promised myself that I’d start exercising more regularly only to be on the couch with the PS4 within 10 minutes of getting home.

Over the following 2 weeks, the realisation dawned on me; my life results were exactly comparative to my life efforts. My failures to implement positive daily habits and actually do all of those things I knew were good for me, was the reason. It wasn’t my lack of time, or my inability to focus on a task. I had all the resources, but I was choosing to funnel them into Destiny instead of other areas of my life.

So I asked myself a simple but life-changing question, “What would happen if I did all the things that I knew were good for me?”

I became slightly obsessed over the answer and began to make a list of things that I wanted to do.

• Gratitude practice
• Meditation
• Journaling/Writing
• Exercise
• Eating right
• Taking a supplement regimen
• Cold showers?

But the list began getting too long and as obsessed as I was, I had a full time job, and I didn’t want to sacrifice down-time or time spent with the girlfriend. Hmm — what to do? After some deliberation I made one small yet seriously enabling amendment to the central question. And that was to turn it into this; “What would happen if I spent 1 hour doing all the things that I knew were good for me?”

And that’s where I started thinking about micro-goals. Milestones so small that I could always achieve them regardless of obstacles that might have gotten in the way. I went small.

The thing is, I’d previously been an avid goal setter but my motivation always seemed to wane. Maybe that’s part of the reason that we tend to avoid doing the things that are good for us, it’s because we’ve tried in the past but have failed in some sense. Or maybe it’s just me. My previous attempts at exercise, or meditation had failed because as my passion for the change diminished, so did my attentiveness and eventually I’d unconsciously remove the changed action all together. The big and exciting changes I’d previously made has failed so I wanted to make my changes so small, that they had all their excitement and sheen removed.

There’s a piece of philosophical advice in this sentiment somewhere. It isn’t the grandness of your action but rather, it’s the sustained, persistent action that leads to success. Yeah, that’s nailed it.

So here was the list of micro-goals I decided to start with. (If you want to try it, you can steal from mine or design your own.)

• 20 minutes of intense exercise, alternating days of running sprints and a kettle bell home workout
• 15 minutes of meditation
• 15 minutes of journaling (including gratitude practice)
• 3 minute cold shower.

I left myself the other 7 minutes for transitioning between and for including a hot shower before moving to cold.

So I began. And to my surprise, it wasn’t easy. An hour a day is actually a significant change to most people’s day. Especially if it’s every day. But I continued on and hit the 1 month milestone. YAY!

What if you can’t even complete a 1 hour routine every day? Make it smaller.

That’s when the struggle started. The first hiccup was on a holiday to the most southern state of Australia, Tasmania, in the middle of winter. Cold showering got really uncomfortable with almost freezing water. Also, travelling around, the meditation and journaling got hard to keep up. So after missing 1 or 2 days on the trip, I arrived home determined to get even smaller. Micro even! I just had to get it down to a level where I could comfortably get it done every day. Every. Single. Day.

Here was my second iterated list:

• 20 minutes of intense exercise had to stay, because any less and I felt like it wasn’t worth it
• 10 minutes of meditation
• 5 minutes of structured journaling. (3 things I was thankful for, 3 goals or things I wanted, 1 thing loved about myself or a lesson I’d learned)
• 3 minute cold shower.

This cut things down to just over 30 minutes and it felt very easy. An easy 30 minute self-care routine that seemed too easy to fail at.

Sure enough after another month of trying this new structure, something wonderful started happening. It was no longer the focus of my day, in fact, some days I even did it without thinking about it. It was becoming a habit, success!

Now as I look back, close to 3 years later — those small goals totally changed my life for the better. I ended up making a couple of tweaks along the way, for example, I no longer exercise every day, but instead I do weight training 5 days a week. And I no longer do the entire routine at one time, instead I have integrated my cold shower into my daily shower and my journaling practice is part of my evening routine before going to sleep. But ultimately the habits that I knew were good for me but I wasn’t doing are now an regular part of my day. Rain or shine.

Sure there’s still lots of things that I could also be doing, but I think that with bigger self-care changes people overlook the most fundamentally important aspect; adherence. Adherence to a positive habit is what changes a manic yo-yo dieter into a healthy person. It turns a occasionally reader into a daily one, a lazy person into a productive one.

So I guess I’ll finish this with one piece of advice. Don’t use your idealistic dreams as a barometer for what you can accomplish, go smaller — go micro. If you’re struggling with 35 minutes a day, try to do something positive for even just 10 minutes, or less if you have to. Ultimately a daily 5 minute meditation habit is going to be much better than 30 minutes a day for a week, then nothing for a lifetime.