Book Summary: Mini Habits
Stephen Guise’s Mini Habits examines one of the most fundamental principles of any accomplishment. That is that taking small, consistent, daily actions can result in incredible change over time.
Related Book Summaries:
The First 20 Hours – Joshua Kaufman
The Checklist Manifesto – Atul Gawande
Happiness By Design – Paul Dolan
Quotes:
Be the person with embarrassing goals and impressive results instead of one of the many people with impressive goals and embarrassing results.
isn’t it easier just to move forward one centimeter and let momentum help you out?
One small step + desired behavior = high probability of further steps
Mini Habits Book Summary Notes:
- Our lives are governed, for better or worse by our habits.
- That feeling we have when we move through some aspects of our day as if on autopilot, means we’ve converted these actions into habits.
- A study from Duke University showed that up to 45% of our daily actions could be the result of habits.
- Stress can also be a big trigger for pushing us to fall back onto our habits. One of the reasons stress is thought to do this to us is that a major source of stress can be the inability to make a decision. In these circumstances it makes sense that we would naturally be pushed forwards by our default options.
- Habits are the result of a neural path in your brain being made between a queue and an action. These pathways become stronger and more ingrained the more they’re used.
- Making decisions is also a drain on our will power. By converting choices over to habits we free up some of our will power for making other decisions each day.
- Instead of devoting your will power to large choices each day, we can use it to help us begin a mini habit. Something small enough to overcome any friction to getting started.
- Setting such small goals to begin with is also a great way to boost your motivation from completing tasks.
