To Achieve Big Goals, Start with Micro-Habits

How small actions lead to big results.

Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will lead to remarkable results if you’re willing to stick to them for years

To reach your goals, you need a system. You need to build micro-habits and you have to stay long enough to allow them to do their magic. You hear it over and over again because it’s real.

In 2019, one of the most famous books was Atomic Habits by James Clear. It is a practical guide to breaking Bad Habits and building good habits. The author clearly explains why small daily habits lead to great success.

If you have not read the book yet, be sure to read it. But don’t just read it. Put in practice everything you learn from the book. In the meantime, here are 9 micro-habits that can enhance your life.

Micro-Habits: The Too-Small-to-Fail Plan for Big Results

1. Delay Your Reactions

I know, it’s a fast-moving world. But that does not mean that we have to respond quickly to everything. You have to learn to say, I’ll come back to you on this, I’ll let you know later, and other similar phrases.

Instead of saying yes to an offer just to realize later that it doesn’t fit your schedule, it’s best to take a few minutes to think about it.

It will save you a great amount of time and disappointment in the long term.

2. Push Yourself to Complete the Task When You Do not Feel Like It

Every day, choose a small task you don’t want to do and then go ahead and complete it. From washing dishes to arranging your bed and going for a run to prepare dinner instead of ordering food. It can be anything.

After doing this for a few days, you will realize that the issue is not the task itself. but It’s your habit of postponing things. It’s being convenient, especially when you have the choice. But often, once you take the first step, you get in a good mood and get the work done.

Once you spend a few days completing small tasks, go to larger tasks.

3. Prepare Your Next Day the Night Before

Choose your clothes and put everything in your bag (men may not understand it, but most women have a long list of things they need in their daily bag).

Write down your to-do list and check your calendar to see if you’ve scheduled any meetings or calls. Do your best to make the next day easier.

If you have a plan, you can get things done faster. There is no magic, it is pure logic.

4. Eat Mindfully

When you eat and work/read/watch a movie at the same time, you often eat more than you need. In addition, you don’t enjoy food and don’t be a producer. Can you even taste those vegetables if you’re busy trying to understand the Excel document? Probably not.

Dinner or lunch should not take more than 10-15 minutes. So when did we get so busy that we don’t even have 10 minutes to spare to feed our bodies?

5. Place Your Phone on the Opposite Side of the Room

If you keep your phone next to you while you sleep, you’ll keep pressing the snooze button until it’s too late to get out of bed. But for most of us, the hardest part is getting up, not waking up. That is why this method works.

When your phone is on the other side of the room, you’ll get up and take some steps to stop it from ringing. Then you may realize that you are also thirsty and have a lot to do in the following hours. So your bed doesn’t look comfortable anymore.

6. Write Down Every Idea

“It’s okay, I’ll remember” should go down in history as the biggest lie we ever told ourselves. Of all the things you pick up during the day, you end up forgetting more than half of them.

So make a micro-habit of writing everything down, even the silly things that seems unimportant.

Final Thoughts Concerning Micro-Habits

The main reason people don’t achieve their goals is because they make drastic changes instead of building small daily habits. To do so, just follow these two simple rules:

1. Drop a Bad One

Write down all the bad habits you have and want to get rid of.Instead of fighting a war against yourself and trying to get rid of them all at the same time, So make a micro-habit of choosing only one and focus on that. Take small steps. Smoke one less cigarette. Buy one less unnecessary item each week.

Just after you can quit a bad habit, start working on another one.

2. Add a Good One

The same goes for  the good changes you want to make. Do not try to drink 2 liters of water every day if you only drank 1 cup before. Instead, try to drink 2 cups per day and increase the amount slowly. Add one more vegetable to your plate. Read one more page every day.

Choose something you’re struggling with and slowly increase the amount of time you spend building that good habit. When you feel like it became a habit, begin working on the next one.

You don’t reach to the level of your goals. You going down to the level of your systems.

So make sure you have a well-established system for each goal.